Introduction to Fire, Flood, Dirt, and Tornado
For my first solo-play adventure, I will run the WoTC adventure Princes of the Apocalypse.
Episode -1: Introduction to Fire, Flood, Dirt, and Tornado
For my first solo-play adventure, I will run the WoTC adventure Princes of the Apocalypse (available at the local-to-me FLGS) for two reasons: I already own it and have not read it. As I understand it, this is a standard dungeon crawl inspired by the Temple of Elemental Evil and was an early Fifth Edition module. I also suspect that the combats are not terribly challenging, which is good for me, as when I play solo RPGs, I am the least forgiving gamemaster ever, and as a forever gamemaster, I empathize with the monsters.
To structure my solo play, I will be using Tom Scutt’s excellent resources, DM Yourself and DM Yourselves. I, of course, will be ignoring all of the solo play advice and play a party of four rather than a single adventurer, and I am going to do it old school style. When a character dies, I can either resurrect them or bring in a new, level 1 character. For rules, I will use the 2024 edition of the Fifth Edition, except for the Slow Natural Healing and Gritty Realism rules from the 2014 edition. For all those getting excited about the idea of a deadly OSR-type campaign, I am not doing this for that reason, but because things happen between adventures, which forces me to institute downtime.
Finally, let’s get started with the characters. They are all going to be members of the “Swiftarrow Family,” which was founded way back in the B/X year of 1983 with my very first character, Jonathan Swiftarrow. As they have grown, I have realized that they are not a biological family but rather a mercenary guild or adventuring club, where each member takes a nom de guerre ending in “Swiftarrow.” Also, their first names tend to be pretty generic, so they blend into the local culture. So here are the four characters I am planning:
Jonathan Swiftarrow, based on my first-ever D&D character, a B/X Elf. As such, I am going to make Jonathan a gishy frontliner, an Elf Archfey Warlock, probably with the pact of the blade.
Caro Swittarrow, based on another early B/X Elf. Also, a frontliner, but she was never as tanky as Jonathan, so I am going to build her as an Elf Bladesinger Wizard.
Grump Swiftarrow, a healer and malcontent. I can use the excuse of tremorsense when I forget to separate player knowledge from character knowledge from gamemaster knowledge. So, Grump will be a Dwarf Oath of Glory Paladin.
Finally, I need a rogue, so we have Sasha Swiftarrow, a Human Thief Rogue. A non-magic-using Jack-of-all-Trades. The combination of the healer feat and fast hands is a nice combination to have on hand in a party without a full caster healer.
