Death vs. damage in solo adventures

[d4caltrops]

I just died in Blue Frog Tavern after missing a LK L1SR (alas, poor Bruna, you rolled only an 8). The resulting funk inspired me to take another look at "How to Write a Solo Adventure" (2019), which reads as follows (notes from ~1986):

Death Ratio: I don't care if your solo never kills a character, as long as the players think their characters could die. I love it when a solo uses the "Take hits equal to what you missed the roll by" method for handing out damage. ... I'd prefer relatively bloodless solo adventures.

Well! That's quite interesting. Is that the better approach to "losing" in a solo, or does it remove the threat too much?

I am a big fan of the deadliness of the "old school" approach - reward without risk is not rewarding - but there's something innately appealing about ramp-up threat rather than binary dead/not-dead. What if failing at being "better lucky than good" merely hurt a lot instead of being deadly? Is anything lost? Does it make solos too effective for building up "super dude" characters who step into larger campaigns? Or maybe "rocks fall, your dude dies" outcomes *should* be rare, a few per solo, versus taking some serious damage on SR misses?

Meanwhile, I'm off to print another character sheet and roll another dude. Hopefully this time, if I can't be good, I can at least be lucky.

[stefanj]

When I write a solo, I try to put in "not totally dead" situations, especially due to combat in civilized places. For example, in "Down & Out & Under" (which I really need to get laid out one of these days) if your character is defeated when in the streets of the city, they'll end up at a healer's office, or perhaps put in prison (with further SRs to determine release).

In "Journey to Buffalo Castle," if you are defeated by young goblins guarding a village, you'll be held as a slave for a while if defeated. If you fall off a mountain in that adventure, you'll also be held captive.

In places where it isn't likely for you to get help when you're bleeding out, I will "call it."

[ProfGremlin]

I was discussing video games last night with a good friend. He related progressing a character through multiple tiers of difficulty, i.e. play the whole adventure through on Normal, Nightmare or Hellscape difficulties. Would a similar approach work for solos?

I'm just spitballing here but how about:

• Normal Mode - "Take hits equal to what you missed the roll by"
• Tough Mode - Fail the SR and death is a very real possibility

If you run the solo in Tough mode, multiply accumulated APs by 1.5 at the end of the adventure.

Sure, the idea needs fleshing out. The author would need to specify two potential outcomes for each encounter which could complicate writing the solo.  Not quite sure where to take the idea from this point, but it may be a way to increase the re-playability of the solo.

[d4caltrops]

Jun 27, 2021 18:27:20 GMT -5 ProfGremlin said:

I was discussing video games last night with a good friend. He related progressing a character through multiple tiers of difficulty, i.e. play the whole adventure through on Normal, Nightmare or Hellscape difficulties. Would a similar approach work for solos?

I'm just spitballing here but how about:

• Normal Mode - "Take hits equal to what you missed the roll by"
• Tough Mode - Fail the SR and death is a very real possibility

If you run the solo in Tough mode, multiply accumulated APs by 1.5 at the end of the adventure.

Sure, the idea needs fleshing out. The author would need to specify two potential outcomes for each encounter which could complicate writing the solo.  Not quite sure where to take the idea from this point, but it may be a way to increase the re-playability of the solo.

This sounds great! Decision branches that have relevant normal/tough branches could each have a different next step - but not every branch would need one. I think the next step is to give it a try writing a solo.

[oldskolgmr]

Jun 27, 2021 18:27:20 GMT -5 ProfGremlin said:

I was discussing video games last night with a good friend. He related progressing a character through multiple tiers of difficulty, i.e. play the whole adventure through on Normal, Nightmare or Hellscape difficulties. Would a similar approach work for solos?

I'm just spitballing here but how about:

• Normal Mode - "Take hits equal to what you missed the roll by"
• Tough Mode - Fail the SR and death is a very real possibility

If you run the solo in Tough mode, multiply accumulated APs by 1.5 at the end of the adventure.

Sure, the idea needs fleshing out. The author would need to specify two potential outcomes for each encounter which could complicate writing the solo.  Not quite sure where to take the idea from this point, but it may be a way to increase the re-playability of the solo.

I was thinking about a similar idea that was posted on this thread about permanently spending Luck points to save a character's life.
trollbridge.proboards.com/thread/3215/best-solos-kids
These ideas could be linked. 
I like ProfGremlin 's ideas.
My own spin might be to add always add the option to permanently spend Luck points to keep the character from dying. 
We had Fate Points before metagaming was a thing, and Ken called it...Luck SRs (sorta).
Now I'm getting why 5th Ed. let you add more Luck than any other attribute. 
Options I've read on different threads have included:

• A flat scale of the number of Luck points it costs to live through a close shave, and what the after effects are
• Spending 1 (or more points to go back a paragraph)
• Spending Luck points equal to the amount missed on the SR or take CON damage that might kill the character (and too bad if the character if/when Luck runs out)

 


 

[ProfGremlin]

Jun 27, 2021 19:55:42 GMT -5 oldskolgmr said:

Options I've read on different threads have included:

Thanks, oldskolgmr ! I've always liked, and used, the "permanently burn one point of luck to return to a previous paragraph." Just for fun, I'm wondering if maybe that throws someone's luck out of balance in relation to the universe. So, next time you need to make a SR LK - whether you succeed or fail - you'll also need to roll on this handy-dandy Table of the Weird and Wacky. Just add a table in of all sorts of unexpected events/encounters.  Something along the lines of 6d6 possibilities.  Could be good, could be troublesome. Either way, it's memorable.

Yeah, I know, it's adding more crunch to the system so it would be a totally optional experience.

I guess you could add this as Normal mode, Tough mode and Beware the Charts mode!

[cupboardgnome]

In my Fighting Fantasy books conversion for T&T it goes something like this:
It's never fun to lose a favourite character, but cheating death depends on how lucky you are. If you die in combat, add 8 to your Luck and that is your target for the save. If you make the save you wake up at a safe moment in time with just one point of CON.
If your attacker was intelligent they will probably have looted your 'corpse' and left you for dead, so your chances of continued survival without any useful kit are likely to be rather slim.
If your attacker was an animal or a monster that does not use items, then you still have all of your kit.
Note you can only do this once per 5 points of total CON, after that your body has just had enough of near-death experiences and you are permanently deceased. So if your CON is 15 you could potentially cheat death three times in your character's lifetime.
If you die in an instant-death trap or due to some event where there is just no way that you could reasonably survive, just roll up a new character.

[darrght]

This is a brilliant discussion my fellow trolls
When writing a solo, it is always foremost in my mind 'have I made it a "fair" contest? Too deadly vs not deadly enough?'I suspect I tend towards the less deadly end of the spectrum but perhaps those of you who have run characters through my adventures may disagree?
All of the options listed here are really great ideas. I always liked the idea that you could take the recently deceased character and re-roll their lowest attribute or add a D6 to that attribute and try again

[cupboardgnome]

So with all the statistical variations throughout a solitaire, do authors aim for a final survival chance of 50/50, or more like 60/40 in favour?

[zanshin]

You can always run them through Abyss

I would also give my solo characters a fate point for each level they gained and each solo they completed. They could use a fate point to either make a save they failed or reverse a choice they just made.

It helped characters work their way through the solo ladder and felt fair to me.

[mahrundl]

A bunch of good thoughts so far.

I wouldn't personally use a 'Weird and Wacky' table as Prof suggests, not because I don't think that they are a good idea, but because in my campaign, it would get lost among all of the regular 'Weird and Wacky' things that keep happening!    In a game with a slightly tighter grip on sanity though, it would be a very useful feature.

I do like the idea of having multiple attempts at a SR, where applicable. Danhem's solo Crypt of the Wolf Prince used that, as I recall¹. Picking a lock? Unless you fumble or otherwise fail your roll very badly, you can try again. If you haven't succeeded or given up before a certain number of attempts, you'll trigger the poison needle trap and die. Jumping a river of lava? You only get 1 try...

Being able to burn Luck / Fate points to go back a paragraph works, but that does mean that you need to keep track of previous paragraphs, and I'd probably forget.  Still, that's my problem; the idea is good.  It would work well in an electronic format.

If anyone's up for the challenge, it would be interesting to see how a solo written or converted to handle both Normal (forgiving) and Hardcore (instant death) mode worked out.

¹ I think that Danhem got a little frustrated when my playtest character for that solo made every single important SR, dealt with all of the opposition, and cleaned out the entire scenario on the first try.

[quoghmyre]

Another idea is to just keep a grand total of damage you have taken. And each time through try and get less. Work to beat your score.

[speed1000]

The only pet peeve I have is to do away with the you die lines and instead say you take X dice damage (which generally is high enough to kill most).