I love the idea of a solo adventure. One character pitted against the wilds and whatever they bring. They are, however, rather hard to run. It puts a great deal of the weight of the game on the game master. You go through the normal run of descriptions of the terrain, weather, the road, monsters, towns, and other things they encounter. You set up and run the encounters and all that the adventure normally entails. However, the solo adventure puts the burden of the role playing on the game master without any other players as foils. In a normal session, you can bet on players talking amongst each other, role playing if you run your table that way, and just generally engaging in such a way to give the GM a break.
Solo adventures do not have that. The GM must deliver all the ‘extra’ stuff and the player to react to them. Once in a blue moon, you might get a player to do a long soliloquy, but not very often.
Solo adventures lean toward the difficult, but on the flip of that, that offers some of the most epic adventures you’ll ever undertake. One character pitted against whatever terror the GM’s mind has conjured. If victory lies at the end of the road. Then you’ll have tales to spin for years, and even if the journey’s end is doom, you’ll have the same tales!
This painting by Julio Dionizio captures the mood of the
solo adventure perfectly. The single rider. The quiet horse. The still winter’s
wood. Perfect!
We've toyed with solo adventures with Castles & Crusades many times, but never actually produced one. Perhaps it is time.
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