Even The Dice Are Against Me!
How to keep the enemy planning, plotting, and challenging you in a solo D&D campaign
Hello, and welcome back to the Borderlands!
In our last write-up, the PCs had just returned from the Moathouse, where our fighter Feydras and the others had battled Lubash the ogre and won the day, although Feydras had fallen to 0 hp.
(My house rule allows a save vs. death in this event, where a failure is death, and a success is a point taken away from a random stat. After this, roll d10 against total number of these “scars” and if the result is lower than the number of scars, you die anyways. It’s hard out there!)
Feydras the Bull recuperates with assistance from Curate Hallas, the rest of the party grabs some gear to break into those locked doors at rooms 2 and 3 in the Moathouse dungeon.
Here, I have to make a decision on how to run this type of campaign solo. If I was running this adventure for an in-person table, my villains surely wouldn’t just sit around on their hands waiting for the PCs to come back and beat the hell out of them one room and retreat at a time. They’d get proactive.
I bring the oracle in -
Has Lareth the Beautiful, that arrogant great hope for the chaos cult in the region, made any defensive actions in the dungeons, or set any plans in motion?
I decide it is very likely, and roll.
The result is 666.
A normal tie on my d6 oracle roll indicates “surprise, unexpected result.”
In this case, on such an extreme, I decide that Lareth has, rather than setting up new defenses or making plans within the dungeon, gone outside, to visit one of the humanoid tribes south of the river…I roll to see which, and the result is the goblins.
I roll percentage dice to see what percent of the available goblin “manpower” has been hired.
90%. Geez.
This is some 20+ goblins that are now manning the Moathouse courtyard for an ambush. I check to see if they bring the ogre from the caves with them: yes, indeed.
Ok, things could get really hairy for my crew on their next excursion - but this kind of “living campaign” is necessary for me to have a satisfying feeling in my solo games - I spend a few minutes each session randomly determining NPCs or factions and seeing what they’ve gotten up to, friend and foe alike.
I also check to see if the goblins have run afoul of any of the Moathouse upstairs denizens that I avoided or evaded. Yes, it seems a few of them were eaten by the giant snake, and one curious one lost his life to the giant spider in the tower.
Good for me, bad for them!
What they don’t know is that Ingolf the Woodsman acquired a cloak of elvenkind from the ogre’s room last time, and sneaks in ahead of the crew to check things out. He spots the goblins waiting to ambush, and the party gets the drop on the goblins instead!
A sleep spell from Algyrnon and a devastating charge combined with Ingolf and his 4 hired yeoman laying down a withering volley of arrow fire prompts a morale check which is immediately failed.
Surviving goblins and ogre high tail it back to their HQ. Lareth isn’t going to be pleased.
A quick delve into the Moathouse results in discovery of all the gear in the locked rooms - some kind of invasion is obviously being prepared, and the crew decides to take the info immediately back to the Castellan - she’s going to want to know about this ASAP.
This good turn for the Keep nets me the support of the Castellan in the form of more men, as is laid out in the intro to B2.
PCs return to the Moathouse as a recon mission led by Ingolf - his careful search of the grounds results in discovery of the hidden entrance leading to 15 in the Moathouse dungeon.
Meanwhile, Lareth is considering his next option, and a few rolls decides he will “activate” the evil priest who is living inside the Keep with his acolytes. (Everyone who has ever run B2 is familiar with this bastard…)
He sends word to the Keep, and the anti-cleric prepares a plan to destroy these upstart adventurers once and for all.
Meanwhile, its decided the PCs would like a cleric of their own - they’ve been in talks with Vandra Crowmother, a priestess of Daina, earth-goddess of the old peoples of the Borderlands, before the new gods and men came from the west.
Her sister, Inona, a soothsayer and witch in the service of a powerful guild member merchant prince, has been kidnapped by unknown parties - but her dog has escaped and Vandra is certain it will find her for them. She agrees to join the party if they will help her find her sister first.
(All of this was decided by me wanting a cleric, and then rolling a few oracle dice to determine which faction her “join up quest” would indicate. As it indicated the hobgoblins, I decided to make her sister replace the merchant’s wife in the normal module, and give the PCs a reason to take a breather from the Moathouse.)
The hobgoblin cave assault is a total shitshow.
PCs take the Castellan up on the offer of troop assistance, and the dog leads them to the hobgoblin caves. The goblin cave’s population next to it has been decimated already by the battle at the Moathouse courtyard.
A lot of dice rolls, burning oil, morale checks, and volleys of arrows down hallways later, and the PCs are victorious over the hobgoblins, but almost every single man-at-arms is dead…only 1 survives, plus the sergeant and corporal. They are not pleased.
Treasure haul is pretty decent - the PCs pay a ton of gold to the families of the dead men-at-arms and put on a huge funeral feast with the aid of the Castellan to placate the folk of the Keep, and try to explain that these hobgoblins would’ve been an issue before long, as all seem to be working in tandem to eventually destroy the Keep.
Now, with the goodwill of the guild, and a new party member in Vandra Crowmother, L1 Cleric, the PCs feel confident to return to the Moathouse.
In between all this, I do a lot of fleshing out of NPCs at the Keep and take time during down time to cycle through each one of my PCs and decide what they’re up to in order to add some semblance of “storyline” or motivation to them, which is fun for me and keeps me connected to more than just getting XP.
I’ll dive into my methods for this next time.
What happens next is a debacle wrapped in a tragedy wrapped in a number of dice rolls that went against the party.
Heading to the Moathouse with their 4 yeoman and new party member, the crew is hopeful that they’ll make some good progress (and maybe level up!)
Instead…
A few oracle rolls determine that the evil priest from B2 has trailed them to the Moathouse.
At the same time, Lareth has sent up his half-dozen guardsmen and sergeant to a strategic location, where they’re set up with crossbows and ready to charge in a hammer and anvil move with the priest and his acolytes.
The priest, for the record, has a -1 AC (wtf, entry level adventure, indeed!) and some nasty scrolls, in addition to magic armor and weapons.
Caught between their forces, a heroic and desperate battle begins.
The upshot is that some amazing dice rolls from Ingolf and the yeoman kill the evil priest…20 after 20 after 20! Really amazing stuff. With their leader killed, the acolytes flee the scene, leaving a bloody engagement with Lareth’s soldiers to follow.
Feydras takes multiple natural 20’s in a row, and is killed in a flurry of blows.
Vandra goes down next, as Algyrnon doesn’t want to use his Sleep spell on the group. (His use of the rod of paralysis gotten from the hobgoblins on the priests resulted in disaster as they all made their saving throws easily).
She fails her death save as well and succumbs to her wounds.
Cromlech is badly wounded but fights on, as Ingolf and the yeoman do for most of the guardsmen.
Cromlech scores a critical hit on the sergeant and rolls max damage, killing him with a single blow - the guardsmen make their morale save and fight to the death, with Cromlech at 1 hp when the dust and blood settles.
I ended the session here, thoroughly bummed out to lose Feydras, especially after some of the “roleplaying” between excursions - he was a really good guy trying to do the right thing, and had a few responsibilities back at the keep to one of the dead men-at-arms daughters he was looking out for.
After XP awards, Ingolf and Cromlech hit L2, with Algyrnon needing just a few hundred more. I am currently 3 sessions into the campaign, 2 and 3 were jammed together for this post.
What will happen to them?
Who will replace Feydras and Vandra?
Questions to be answered on the next…
Battle For The Borderlands!
Keep your blades sharp. (It didn’t help Feydras the Bull…)
- Castle Grief
Let me know if you have any questions or specifics you’d like to hear about and I’ll answer in the comments or put it in the next piece.
I've only recently discovered solo play, and decided to give it a try until I can put together a group to meet at least semi-regularly, and it is a surprising level of fun. This write-up gives a good glimpse into how to keep your world "alive" with adversarial activities when otherwise these characters might appear to the players to be stagnant obstacles.
Well done! I had a crush Vandra Crowmother (what a name!) only to see her die so quickly. It's truly the OSR. Dice do not lie!