On the Razor's edge

After a summer break we are back with more Solum playtests. This time we started out in Razor's Edge, a rural small village on the border of civilisation. The adventurers crawled back after their ordeals in the Razor Hill mines, only to discover that all was not well in the little village...

The thing in the deeps

We finally managed to conclude the Treasury in Razor Hills! This session the adventurers started out in a tricky situation which had an abrupt ending, and then delved deeper, discovering The thing in the deeps, before crawling to the surface, and back to civilisation.

Summer rules fiddling

Due to real life happenings no playing has taken place for a few weeks. We are getting back to that soon though, but in the meantime I have fiddled with the rules, especially for player characters. Read the Player's Handbook alpha text here, and more Solum texts can be found here!

Rats, they got in!!!

As the characters were exploring the now abandoned eastern wing of the Razor hill mines they came upon a locked ironclad oak door...

A cancelled playtest leading to new ideas

Due to an unforeseen medical emergency with a friend tonight's play test involved the party moving five squares further into the mines of Razor Hill... And that's OK, real life comes first. But after having driven my wife to said friend's house to babysit while she went off to hospital, I had a sudden burst of creative energy, and plowed an hour or so of planning into Nectar, the sandbox module I have planned for Solum... And here is some more info, in the absence of a play test report.

What's the chance to survive a day in a dungeon?

It turns out that the players are overpowered since the change I made to monster damage. Read all about how I found out, tested it, and and came up with a solution.

Spiders...

After last week's big fight the characters were hoping for a calm evening... Instead they were facing their gravest threat yet.

The end of the Skullcrushers, part 2

The situation is dire. The characters have just climbed down from the roof of the treasury, after having held it for about ten minutes against an onslaught of goblins. They now have their sights set on the chief of the Skullcrushers, a broad shouldered hulking gobling looming at the entrance to their territory.

Around the characters, fighting between the two goblin tribes continue as the advance...

This is part 2 of The end of the Skullcrushers playtest report, in which the combat comes to an end, and I discuss the good, bad and ugly of it all. 

The end of the Skullcrushers, part 1

 Things looked grim when we last left our heroes. Goblins were aware of their position, the characters were standing right in the middle of said goblin's territory, and the rogue was quite badly injured.

Did they escape or die? Find out after this reminder about some of Solum's rules:

Character creation

The character creation process in Solum has not really been touched for a long time, and as we've started playtesting more now it feel like it's time to revisit it.

The basic idea is for it to be fast, with very few options to begin with, but to expand this gradually as you gain levels. Basically the game gets more complicated as you level up.

This is a good strategy because presumably the players also get more proficient as they play more, and it's makes it fun to level up when you get more and more options.

Rolling dice in Solum

Dice are used in most roleplaying games to resolve situations where the outcome is not self evident. I the case of Solum the system is based around Die type, and difficulties. 

Die types range from D4 (four sided dice) to D12 (twelve sided dice) but is normally D6, the more sides your die type have the bigger chance of success you have. 

Difficulties range from 2 (Trivial) to 12 (Divine), but is normally 4. Read on to find out more!

Playtest 5: Right in the face!

After last week's bravado, the characters found themselves in the former jail, discussing how to proceed while adapting the goblin armour to fit the barbarian. Little did they know the evening would end with distant shouts of alarm, drums in the dark...

Nectar - a sandbox in progress for Solum

Image from Wikipedia (Copyright Boberber)

 I've been fiddling with a sandbox for Solum, a sort of campaign setting with a solid introduction, a plethora of interesting locations (that's the sandbox part), and a semi fixed ending.

It's still early days, but suffice it to say that it revolves around bees. Yes, bees. And accompanying them are creatures such as Myconids, the giant Ants, the Flower people, Troglodytes, the Ember druids and the Iron dwarves.

The whole thing takes place in and around the village of Honeytop, a place where the humans try to capitalise on the abundance of bees (and thus honey) in the area. But deep in the mountains hides Apoidea, the bee archetype trapped here in times lost, and she has plans of her own that, you might say, will sting the adventurers and in fact the whole region...

Here's a draft for the very introduction to this thing:


The swarm
The characters are closing in on the remote mountain village of Honeytop. It’s the height of summer and the light woods are verdantly blossoming. The mountains and cliffs are thoroughly warmed up. The high air is cool and the breeze is strong, but the sun is warm.

In the distance they can see the mountain Two tops, the first of many mountains in the Gray mountains, and on a smaller cliff halfway there they see the goal of their trip  - the village with it’s golden brown pointy roofs.

Suddenly the sun seems to darken for a moment, and it appears as if a dark cloud passes over it.

A while later they all sit down by the side of the road to have lunch. Around them is a meadow full of forest flowers and berries. In the distance they can hear a stream.

A faint and almost not noticable noise makes itself heard. It’s a constant sound that slowly increases in strength. Before they have time to react it grows into a deafening buzz, and a huge swarm of bees appears over the tree tops!

The bees descend on the meadow like a rug, but doesn’t seem unusually aggressive. They are large (but not gigantic) and the characters might get stung once or twice.

A few minutes later the swarm lifts as if by command and flies off. One can see that it flies off towards the mountains...

Playtest 4: The thing in the pool

We've had several weeks worth of breaks due to real life issues but we finally managed to continue! Our characters kept exploring the dwarven mines, the rogue leading and the barbarian and cleric following suit.

Its clear that having good explorer skills is a great advantage, especially in a place where random encounters are quite rare.

Game aid: Summary sheet

In order to get the players more informed and to answer a few questions I've put together a One sheet summary of the basic rules and basic adventuring activities.

The sheet also contains some rudimentary equipment lists and some other goodies, so hopefully it'll be a very useful addition. I imagine each player having one along with their character sheet, referencing things like where the game is at in a combat round, how to make attacks and defend oneself and how to deal and take damage.

This document, and other downloadable things, can as always be found on the Downloads page.

Comments are very welcome, the document is by no means finished, it is still an alpha version, and so I look for improvements. Also, using this in the playtests will hopefully improve it.

Playtest 3: The evening of the giant critters

As we started our dwarven explorer had scouted ahead, while the cleric, Viggo and his new found barbarian elf friend Savannah stood about in the dark chatting.

The rogue found a tunnel up ahead from whence he heard strange animal sounds. The barbarian got worried after a while and ran after the rogue, and suddenly the rogue heard noises from behind as well!

A classic stand off moment, with the barbarian and rogue was the result.

Is it OSR?

This is of course a long standing discussion among all sub groups of all things. What can be part of it, what can't? Are you with us or against us? You're either in or out, and there are not grey areas. OSR as a sub culture of RPGs is no different, and going through the forums one can find all sorts of (sometimes heated) debates on the subject. But here is my view of it, serving as a motivation of sorts as to why Solum has OSR in the title, and also perhaps giving the reader an insight into what sort of a game it is.

On the wiki page for OSR (old school revival/renaissance/rules/retro-clones) role playing games it states that the movement "takes its inspiration from the very earliest editions of D&D". It mentions a few prominent games: Castles & Crusades, OSRIC and refers to a page about  Dungeons & Dragons retro-clones. This is all good stuff, and fun.

Playtest 2: Gaining momentum...

Second round of play testing started with the players exploring the main hall of the dwarven mines and the treasury. The rogue quickly determined that the lock is a well made and tricky one, requiring one or several minutes of peace and calm to pick.

Simultaneously the elven barbarian kept lookout, and that was a good thing, because she saw first one, then the other, of the two doors open, and goblins pour out into the hall! The adventurers felt trapped, and I allowed them ample time to discuss what to do...

Playtest 1: Razor Hills treasury

Last night we had our very first play session ever! This is a short report on how it went.

Character creation

Character creation turned out to be swift, as is the goal. Because no one had really read the player's handbook a fair bit of rule explanation was needed, but that is minor.

The main point of concern was the fact that characters have a die type in their basic abilities rather than a fixed value. The way this is presented in the rules may have to be refined.

The characters are: Elven warrior with 5 hp, dwarven rogue with 3 hp.