Solo Adventures For the Win!

Last year, I have been working on five D&D5 Dragonlance solo adventures, one for each of my players.

This solo was important, as it had many aims:

• Take characters from the 4th level to 5th level
• Give character a solo experience so they could shine without being overshadowed by another player character
• Create an adventure dedicated for the target character, so they can build more background, and come back to the group with an interesting story to tell (or not)
• Give them an opportunity to meet with iconic Dragonlance characters, like Raistlin, Gilthanas, or Crysania.
• Give them an opportunity to make a decision or an action that would impact them, their group, or even Ansalon.

If this seems like the Infellows' five year separation to you, then you would be right: To be fair, I realized this much later in the process.

But the initial aim was to have the mage to pass his Test, and I didn't want his Test being solved by the group. So it had to be a solo.

But doing a solo for one player meant I had to do something similar to all players.

And there's no way I would design a full-fledged adventure for each one of my players to enjoy alone.

My Inspiration

The video game Pathfinder: Kingmaker actually gave me a solution to this.

One of the minigames was a Make Your Own Adventure-style series of choices and test rolls. They didn't even bother to make a full game quest for these "situations": Just a few lines of text, choices, rolls, and monochromatic illustrations over sepia-colored parchment, as in the following screenshot:

What if, instead of using the sandbox approach of describing a situation to my player, and then let them decide, them describe the consequences, I tried the approach of describing a situation and a handful of choices that we both know will have different but meaningful impact in the adventure?

In exchange for accepting a moderately limited set of choices, the player knows these choices will have an impact I, as their game master, carefully designed into the adventure.

This is a win-win.

(Of course, there's a caveat: I warned my player beforehand that if they found another choice, that was different from the ones I proposed, they could chose it, with the understanding I might need to pause the adventure to deduce the impacts for the whole adventure).

Let's do it!

So I went for it.

Google Drawings to the Rescue!

This kind of choice can be designed with any vector-based drawing app, but Google Drawings is more than good enough for that:

So, for each player, I designed a graph of events/choices/tests that would represent their solo adventure structure. This enabled me to see if their solo adventure was meaningful enough.

For example, here is the structure of the full solo adventure of one of my players:

(Sorry, it's in French...)

Please note that this isn't new. I'm quite sure every video game (or even paper module for a RPG) had similar tools/structures in place (most probably better designed, more complete, etc.).

I mean, the equivalent for BioWare's Mass Effect trilogy must be insane!, as you can see in the following video from Story Mode:

Anyway: this takes time, but it makes it easy to see how the adventure will go, and if the choices are meaningful.

Also, multi-rolls!

Do you remember the multi-rolls I wrote about in the last post?

Yeah, I used that, too, to make sure one single roll wouldn't ruin my player's experience during their solo.

An example...

For example, one part of this scenario (with the light red background) was how the character infiltrated Lemish to find the secret information (i.e. the macguffin of this scenario).

For reference, this scenario happens around 354 AC, which is two years after the end of the first trilogy.

The problem is: The character's contact was discovered as a spy, and executed (this solo is very grimdark, but I won't go into the details). The player character can investigate (rolls! rolls!), and then realize that the information has been moved to Sanction.

But by visiting Lemish, the player character saw how cruel the Dictator of Lemish was (think Ramsey Bolton, from Game of Thrones), so I let the player the opportunity to do something about it. Or not.

So, one of the possible decision was for the character to infiltrate the dictator's fortress (I won't go into details... again, grimdark, but the character being a mix of an unwilling spy/assassin, some hard choices had to be done), and surprise the dictator at the right time and place, when and where he was vulnerable (this was a small series of dice multi-rolls, not a full fledged infiltration/combat). The player went for it. And succeeded. Then, resumed the course of the adventure toward Sanction.

This seems like a non-choice, as the character would go to Sanction anyway. But this choice had later consequences that I made very public when sharing lore information with all the players:

The Dictator of Lemish had been assassinated by an unknown party, and now, Lemish was in disarray, which both removed a source of pain for the knights of Solamnia in their campaign against the remainders of the dragonarmies, but also, Kyre (the adopted "home" town of the players) was now free from Lemish's aggressive interference (this has been a recurrent problem in past adventures).

Long story short: A player choice during his solo had changed the course of the campaign.

What I learned from this?

Again, I'm sure this is the basics of the typical experience of a game designers, but I did make mistakes along the way. In fact, the first solo I did was so plain when compared to the last one, I called back the player so we could add a chapter.

Beware of railroading

One easy solution is to have a linear series of scenes, each one being given a choice between two outcomes that would lead to the same next scene.

This is railroading, and this is something that players may resent, as their choices are rendered meaningless that this structure.

Choices should have consequences!

Beware of too many possible outcomes!

While it seems cool at first glance, giving a choice with many possible outcomes is counter-productive.

If you try to make these choices meaningful, then you have a lot of work to do, because each choice needs to have different consequences, and may lead in the end into a combinatorial explosion, creating a tree graph of scenes... Most of them ending to never be seen by the player!

That's a lot of work for so little payoff in the end (there's a way to mitigate that, in some cases - see below).

Beware of the BioWare Ending Coloring Solution

To avoid that, one could then be tempted by making gradual changes between outcomes, but this can easily result into falling into the infamous Mass Effect 3 Colored Endings problem:

... which is an elaborate form of railroading.

For what is worth, as a player, I hated that Mass Effect 3 ending. But as a storyteller, it makes sense: In the end, the outcome of Mass Effect would always be related to victory or defeat against the reapers.

And by providing a graduated response (related to how much the galaxy is prepared to the war, which is dependend of your previous choices in the trilogy) and an orthogonal choice at the end on how to try to end the the reaper thread (destruction, control, synthesis), and by providing a video of segments that would show the same moments as they occur depending on the choices the player, you might think everyone would love it.

But no: The differences between the outcomes were either too small, or simply colored, which revealed the technique to the players, who then suspected lazyness or incompetence from BioWare, without realizing how complex the whole trilogy was in term of choices and consequences.

BioWare fixed that partially (the Catalyst remains a crappy idea, as does the Crucible, and the eternal conflict between artificial intelligence and organic life) by providing an expanded ending with vignettes describing what happened to each squad member, which was an excellent idea.

So, what's the solution?

There's no universal solution, but for me, what seemed to work was a mix of the techniques above, which boils down to the following pieces of advice, assuming your adventure is composed of segments:

• Each segment should have one important choice, with different outcomes
  
• Reduce complexity by having different segments leading to the same next segment, but make sure at some point there will be a major divergence
  
• Make each roll and each choice important, and record its outcome
• Invest your creative efforts in choices that have meaningful consequences after the ending of the solo
  
• The last choice can be as bananas as you want, in terms of outcomes, as you'll deal with only one of them in the next adventure
  

These pieces of advice are contradictory, but your job is to combine them.

Examples

The Dilemma of the Apprentice

In one case, the apprentice had the possibility to reveal he had discovered a centuries-old contract between dwarves and mages that would give a fortress back to the dwarves, should the owner mage's lineage was broken (and thus, having to mage inheritors). This led, at the conclusion of the solo, at either...:

• ... the Orders of High Sorcery blaming the apprentice for poor judgement/lack of loyalty and the dwarves being friendly with the character
• ... the Orders of High Sorcery being satisfied with the apprentice loyalty, and the character living with the knowledge he had willingly lied to his dwarf allies

The Dilemma of the Knight

Confronted with the zombie of his princess/love interest, the knight (a fighter) could either succumb to despair, and die, or defend himself, and kill the zombie, which freed the soul of the princess, at which point she actually decided to stay on Krynn as a ghost, out of duty for her people. The knight could then either...:

• ... convince the princess to let go, and rest in peace, which she would accept, and then he would mourn her final death
• ... help her stay (either out of despair, or to respect her wish), which would tie their destinies together
  

The first choice would lead to the character to go back to the kagonesti elves leaving nearby, and become a ranger (and possibly start a possible romance with heartbroken Silvara, hiding among the kagonesti).

The second choice would lead to the soul of the princess to anchor itself into the sword of the knight, the sword then becoming magical and intelligence, and the two joining to fight for her people and hunt the undead who had zombified her back to unlife. The knight would then become a paladin whose divine powers were tied to the ghost of the princess.

As you can see, the outcomes are very different, leading to a change in class of the character.

The Fame of the Faithful

In one case, the faithful, being one of the first clerics on Krynn since the Cataclysm, had their actions and choices impact the status of his own faith, as well as the perception by the population of the clerics of good.

This means that most minor choices and rolls actually added up into a "status" score among knights, among clerics of good, among some characters, and among the population, the final score defining the relation of the faithful character with them (which is how he almost ended up with Crysania despising the faithful for his failed attempt at social interaction being mistaken for a crude attempt at romance)

At the end of the solo, these statuses were acknowledged, and will affect the character from now on.

The All-over-the-board Ending of the Spy

In the end, the spy/assassin could, depending on past choices, a current choice, and a multi-roll, end up in very different outcomes: Interrogated by Kitiara after being discovered hiding Sanction, the spy could end up...:

• dying by suicide
  
• dying under torture
• being freed by the shadowpeople, and leave Sanction
  
• joining back the order of shadow assassins the spy had left and work for the baddies
• offering a deal to Kitiara, exchanging her life (and health) for information she had on one of Kitiara's lieutenant's betrayal, and leave Sanction
• dying under torture by lord Soth, and being brought back as a the fourth of his banshees, now condemned to serve forever the undead knight's unholy appetites.

Of course, some of these endings were definitive and would result into the player either changing character, or playing a traitor.

And some of them would have consequences later. For example, I'm sure the players would have been shocked to meet an overly bitter and aggressively hostile banshee who would be revealed, mid-scene, to having been once their ally.

One Last Advice: Tell the player some of the choices and all the possible outcomes

It might be interesting, after the solo, to discuss back the choices (and rolls) done by the player, revealing what could have been the outcomes.

This has two beneficial effects:

• It reveals to the player how much the solo was tailored for them, and how impactful their choices had been
• In specific cases, if you are okay with that, give the player the opportunity to rewrite history, i.e., retcon some roll or choice, and fast-replay the solo adventure
  

The second effect is more beneficial than you might imagine: This solo is for the player and their character. It's their moment to shine, and this character development is something all the players will share after, and that will have consequences after.

So, yeah, I let the player of the spy character know what could have been the different endings for the spy, and another player was able to retcon part of his solo adventure so we could continue forward with his character following a specific narrative arc that satisfied both of us.

What about the Apprentice?

As already described in a previous post, Philosophies of the Wizards of High Sorcery, one of the point of the test was to determine which of the three philosophies, Vigilance, Curiosity, or Ambition, the apprentice was more attuned to.

And much to his surprise, his decisions showed that he was more of the "curious" archetype, than anything else!

Fun fact, my player had chosen for his character the following art from Woong Seok Kim:

Royal Researcher, by Woong Seok Kim

... which is awesome, by the way. Of course, Krynn being Krynn, there's no way I would have allowed him to just go around with some kind of brown/black/white clothing (even if the black/white constrast was, in itself, interesting).

So I had a bit of fun playing with GIMP, and showed him the following...:

 ... then told him, if he wanted to, he could "rewrite history", make different philosophy choices, and thus, join another order. Of course, the mages, after announcing they advised him to join the Red Robes, let the final choice to the character.

The player appreciated the choice, but decided to stick with the story as already happened: After reflection, he realized that his character, with an "arcane archeologist" penchant, was indeed more curious than ambitious or vigilant.

He thus joined the Red Robes.

Conclusion

I'm quite sure I am not the first one to have this kind of experience, or find these solutions.

Here, all I wanted is to share them, just in case...

😋