Apparently, I like ending these issues of Age of Wonders on cliffhangers, because Issue 3 left us right in the middle of the hairiest (both literally and figuratively) situation our new party has encountered to date. What’s going to happen in Issue 4? I honestly have no idea, but it’s going to be a wild one.

Before we move on to Tatter and her ratfolk horde, however, let’s pause and reflect on all things Age of Wonders. I’m still very much finding my way with this solo-play-emergent-serial-fiction thing, and these pauses are proving to be a vital part of my process, a chance to pull my head up from my keyboard and dice tray, pondering changes to either my approach or story.

Suffice it to say, I’m happy right now and don’t have a lot of tweaks to make. I’m about to learn a lot from Issue 4 and however this temple scene unfolds. I suspect that my next Reflections post will be meaty as a result. Still, here are my musings on the solo game experience to date, using published material as a safety net, and building epic scenes with an eye towards my post-Issue 6 level-up. Enjoy!

Solo Play: So Far So Good

This week I received my months-delayed Kickstarter copy of Evolved, which as you may recall is a superhero game system using Dungeon Crawl Classics as a base. Since superheroes represent my favorite genre and DCC is my favorite game system, there’s a very good chance that if Evolved had met its original release schedule that I would be playing it instead of Crusaders. So, in some ways, this week is a good test of my resolve to stick with Crusaders instead of changing the system in the background to my shiny new toy (although, to be fair, Evolved is likely a system that requires a full reboot since character creation is woven into the stories it tells). Indeed, I know myself well enough that I haven’t even cracked open my chunky, 500-page Evolved rulebook for fear of becoming severely distracted from the rest of my life. When I finally succumb, I suspect my mind will ignite.

Thankfully, nine installments into this experiment and I’m feeling fine about my selection of Crusaders. Last time I mentioned some of the limitations that I see inherent within a simplified system, and those issues still exist. But I like the variant rules that I’ve added to the game. I am also benefiting from the simplified rules system, which allows me to spin up a bonkers scene like the Temple of the Rat God on the fly and with relatively little stress. Creating characters is still a delight, and the recent combat with the Bronze Armor was both tense and cinematic. As long as I’m able to keep a coherent plot while maintaining my focus on nonstop supers-on-supers action, Crusaders is likely to serve my needs. If I ever start wanting to spend more time on interpersonal scenes or other noncombat endeavors (like exploration, hazards, and chases), I’ll likely be frustrated. For now, though, the tool is fitting the job.

Since I’m extoling what’s going well, I’ll also say that I’m absolutely loving the three-installments-per-issue-then-reflections format and equally enjoying switching the point-of-view character each installment. It’s a pace that feels sustainable even while juggling a full-time, travel-heavy job, and moving between voices allows me to live in each protagonist’s brain for a week at a time. I’m not sure what happens if I decide to add another PC into the mix, but I’ll cross that bridge if and when I get there. For now, let’s just make sure our party survives their sojourn into the ratfolk warrens.

Speaking of which…

Published Material as Safety Net

When I played DCC solo for six months, I relied heavily on published adventures, first Portal Under the Stars and then Doom of the Savage Kings. That experiment was focused on learning the game system and fully stretching my gaming legs with some of their most popular adventure modules. Since that time, I’ve GMed several DCC games for groups and have fantasized about running a longer campaign sometime. When I do so, I’ll likely start with published material and then allow the story to morph and evolve into plots intimately tied to the characters’ lives and choices. At the time, though, I was glad to stick closely to the material as written by legends Joseph Goodman and Harley Stroh.

My Crusaders game differs from that first solo play experience in two key ways. First, I am now playing within a homebrewed world and a fantasy-superhero mash-up. There simply is no published material set in Age of Wonders, so anything I would try to use would require heavy modification anyway. Second, as I’ve said repeatedly, Crusaders is a simpler game to learn and master, and is inherently a comics-combat simulator. The goal of Crusaders is to make cool set pieces and have your imaginary actions figures bash against each other, with mechanics underlying it that are easy to pick up. As a result, when I began this experiment, I decided that I would make the story completely emergent and not constrained by published material.

Very quickly, of course, I changed my approach. I found that a blank canvas was a source of stress and inhibiting my ability to set goals and milestones in the story (to be clear: this is a problem with me, not with emergent storytelling). I scanned through my endless shelves of published adventures across many game systems, plucked a few modules that sounded sorta kinda close to my current story, and read through them. For those guessing at home, I used the map in No Small Crimes in Lankhmar as the basis for Sammy Suttar’s home (also, Sammy’s name), and have been relying loosely on Rats of Ilthmar for Issues 3 and 4. The Lankhmar setting, it turns out, is an excellent font of ideas for the urban adventuring of Oakton.

What I have unexpectedly enjoyed is peeking at these published adventures for maps and encounter ideas, without being in any way bound by their story beats. In No Small Crimes (spoiler alert!), the entire conceit of the adventure is that the PCs are shrunk to small size in an abandoned house. In Rats, the PCs are infiltrating a cult to a rat god in which humans are dressed like rats, and the temple is above ground. Most of each published adventure has little to do with what’s happening in Age of Wonders, but is still there to help provide inspiration and handholds when I need them. It’s been awesome; my approach so far has provided me with a creative safety net without constraining my ability to push the protagonists into increasingly wild situations. The result is at best an homage to the published material, and often unrecognizable. I’m excited to maintain my “sort of based on this but not really” approach in the future.

The Current Situation: Where Do We Go From Here?

The scene within the temple is my most ambitious one to date. A whole room full of ratfolk, with two different kinds of lieutenants, and the dastardly villain behind it all. The PCs are hopelessly outnumbered, and if this situation becomes a stand-up fight I’m reasonably sure that they will lose. But can they flee when Maly has gone into the crowd on some scheme plotted by her animal companion Destiny? I’m excited to find out, since I genuinely have no idea how this scene will play out. It could be an enormous brawl that ends with the heroes captured, or it could equally become a mad dash through the ratfolk tunnels towards the surface world, or any other number of outcomes.

My explicit goal is to “wrap up” the ratfolk story somehow by the end of Issue 6, if not before. As a result of last week’s installment, I’m exactly halfway there. My gut tells me that I need to start pointing the PCs towards resolution immediately, yet keep an open mind about side stories or unexpected twists. This enormous temple scene could be the last time we see the ratfolk for now… maybe they manage to take out Tatter and make nice with the remaining populace, for example. But I’m guessing we haven’t come to the end. The fun will be in finding out, and if the ratfolk plot somehow does find a suitable tie-off point, I have a number of smaller subplots with each character to fill out that first “trade paperback” of six issues.  

Finally, let’s continue to pour some love into Roland Brown from drawhaus.com, who continues to create amazing covers for these Age of Wonders issues. This time we got an action shot of Destiny versus Bronze Armor, and next issue features Tatter! Thank you, Roland!

If you’re enjoying the story or have suggestions, drop me a comment below or feel free to email me at jaycms@yahoo.com.

Next Time: Can our heroes escape the temple? [with game notes]