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.
Starting out - exploring
Once we started to play (using the very first adventure created with the rules in the game master's handbook, The treasury of Razor Hill) things flowed relatively well. It must however be said that I have not been a game master properly for a long time, and one of the players had never played before, the other having played years and years ago. Needless to say this meant we were all a bit unsure of ourselves, but despite this things soon went ahead well.The adventure begins just outside the dungeon, so no social interaction or slow beginnings are needed, something that can be both good and bad. We should probably have spent a little more time talking about why the two characters were together and given them a bit more of a backstory, but I wanted to get them started quickly.
They explored the entrance to the hill, but were noisy and took so long that I rolled for a random encounter while they were exploring the guard room.
The characters both rolled some skill checks, and I must say the system works well. It does take some getting used to for them to keep track of the exploding dice versus extra skill dice. I believe each player needs three or four sets of different coloured dice to clarify this.
First combat
Two giant leeches dropped on the characters from above!Round 1: In round one the leeches had surprise (the characters both failed their perception), and one of them managed to hit the elven warrior, doing a bit of damage and latching on.
Round 2: The warrior ripped the leech of in panic, causing 4 damage to herself and killing herself! The rogue ran at the other one, but the leech was quicker, jumping up and latching on to the rogue for three damage. The rogue was dead!
As expected the game in it's original state is very very lethal for level one characters, but for this first play test I wanted to keep to the basic rules, they need to be tried out after all.
After this deadly battle we decided to implement the Heroic rule, and I gave the characters a couple of healing potions. We resumed the battle, now with both characters having four more hit points.
Round 3: The warrior tries to burn the leech attached to the dwarf, but misses. The dwarf also tries, and succeeds, destroying the leech in the process.
After this they spent three healing potions and rested up a bit.
It was a little tricky to run combat this free form, but the players got into it rather quickly and started elaborating on what was happening during the rounds. All in all it was deadly but fun, and went well.
Finishing up
The characters discovered a hidden door, and spotted a large group of goblins in the room beyond it. They snuck back unnoticed and instead entered the main hall, seeing in the distance, across the bridge, the treasury, as well as two doors, one on each side of the main hall.It was good fun to be role playing again, and overall this was a successful first test of SOLUM. It is still probably terribly unbalanced in parts, but that is easy to sort out as we go along.
The basic system mechanics seems to work well for an OSR game. It's not intrusive and allows for a lot of explanation from the players about what they're doing, and allows a lot of freedom to the gm to rule things without being hindered by the rules.
My biggest concern, and my biggest success as well, is combat. It's maybe a little too lethal, which is bad. But it's very very fast, which is very very good. I think with more players or more henchmen it will be a lot less dangerous, and the Heroic rule will give the characters more of a buffer in case the do get hit. They will, because they're lacking a Cleric, need a lot of healing potions though.
Changes to the game
I've added a section in the game master's handbook about buffing small groups.I'm considering making all monsters one level weaker by lowering their base damage one step per size level. That would make level small creatures do 1 damage rather than D4 per default, making them have to spend one of their points to raise this.
If I go ahead with this the base monster stats would look like this:
| Monster size | Hit die | Attack die | Damage die |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small | T4 | T4 | 1 |
| Normal | T6 | T4 | T4 |
| Large | T8 | T6 | T6 |
| Giant | T10 | T6 | T8 |
| Enormous | T12 | T8 | T10 |
And with two points to spend for a level 1 monster, they will look like one of the below (if they are small):
Small monster1 1
HP 1D6 Attack 1D4 Damage D4 Morale D6Small monster2 1
HP 1D4 Attack 1D6 Damage D4 Morale D6Small monster3 1
HP 1D6 Attack 1D6 Damage 1 Morale D6Small monster4 1
HP 1D4 Attack 1D4 Damage 1 Morale D6+ 2 special abilities
Small monster5 1
HP 1D6 Attack 1D4 Damage 1 Morale D6+ 1 special ability
Small monster6 1
HP 1D4 Attack 1D6 Damage 1 Morale D6+ 1 special ability
Small monster7 1
HP 1D4 Attack 1D4 Damage D4 Morale D6+ 1 special abilities
The goblin example
Goblins currently look like this:
Goblin 1 Humanoid, small, melee
HP 1D4 Attack 1D6 Damage D4 Morale D6
Special
Armoured -1DT damage
After this change, they would look like this:
Goblin 1 Humanoid, small, melee
HP 1D4 Attack 1D6 Damage 1 Morale D6
Special
Armoured -1DT damage
This isn't very attractive, as goblins surely do more than 1 damage. So I'd probably sacrifice their Armoured special ability (which is nice, but not essential) to give them more damage:
Goblin 1 Humanoid, small, melee
HP 1D4 Attack 1D6 Damage D4 Morale D6
As can be seen, this will entail a lot of work as there are hundreds of monsters, but to be fair, most of the work is with the low level monsters.
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