Retrospective: SoloQuest

For obvious reasons, the last few years have seen a resurgence of interest in solo adventures for use with roleplaying games. Adventures of this sort have a long pedigree, going back at least as far as 1976's Buffalo Castle for Tunnels & Trolls. Other attempts to present a referee-less scenario for use by a single player followed, employing a number of different approaches, some of them quite exotic, like invisible ink and a "magic viewer." 

The most successful ones, however, followed in the footsteps of Buffalo Castle (or perhaps Sugarcane Island?) by presenting a series numbered paragraphs read according to the narrative choices of the reader. This is the format adopted by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone's phenomenally successful Fighting Fantasy series of gamebooks, for instance. It's also the format Chaosium employed for its own forays into the field of solo gaming, starting with SoloQuest in 1982.

Written by Allen LaVergne, who was a player in Steve Perrin's Pavis campaign, SoloQuest presents three adventures for RuneQuest suitable for use by a single player without the need for a referee. The scenarios are not specifically connected to Glorantha and the book's introduction suggests they're completely usable by a character from any RuneQuest setting. The first of these scenarios is "DreamQuest," the most straightforward of the three. Its premise is that the character's favored god appears to him in a dream and asks him "to fulfill a mission, a symbolic reenactment of [the] god's conquests. Unlike most dreams, in this one there are real risks to run and real rewards to gain."

What follows is a series of combat encounters, in which the character's dream self must overcome ever more powerful opponents. There are twenty such encounters, ranging from Sardanik Scrolleater, an armored baboon with a spear, to Errol, a swashbuckling manticore, to Huey and Looie, a pair of ducks, and many more, culminating in the final battle – against the character's doppelganger. Almost all of these encounters are idiosyncratic in one way or another, reflecting the opponent's personality and nature. They typically include an outline of the opponent's tactics in combat and some even note the conditions under which combat might be avoided. "DreamQuest" isn't really an adventure so much as an excuse to run some battles using the RQ rules. How much one enjoys that will likely determine how much one enjoys the scenario as a whole.

The second adventure is "Phony Stones," which concerns the sale of "bogus statues of Issaries" to naive individuals hoping that, by buying them, they might be initiated into the god's cult. The temple of Issaries is thus offering a sizable reward for anyone who can find and capture the perpetrator of this deception. The setting of the adventure is a small town of about 50 residences, which the character will need to investigate to unravel this mystery. Unfortunately, the limitations of the solitaire format hamper one's ability to do so as effectively one might during refereed play. For example, interactions with NPCs are largely pre-scripted, meaning you can only perform whatever actions the numbered paragraphs offer you, which, in many cases, are very few. The end result is fairly unsatisfying, even compared to your average Fighting Fantasy book.

The third adventure is "Maguffin Hunt." The Duke of Jawain hires to the character to enter the hideout of a band of dwarves who have stolen his maguffin. Despite the fact that the duke "will provide a very detailed description of the maguffin," nowhere does the text actually do so. I am left to presume that this ambiguity is intentional, allowing it to be whatever the player imagines it to be. If so, the scenario never makes this clear, which is all the more vexing since, at its conclusion, the character discovers the dwarves no longer even have it. They've sold it to a third party and there's not a hint as to the identity of the buyer. Even so, "Maguffin Hunt" is a little more enjoyable than "Phony Stones," since it's largely a series of combat encounters, which the solo format handles reasonably well, rather than the frustratingly limited investigations of the previous adventure. 

Ultimately, that's the biggest problem with SoloQuest: its scenarios rarely rise above the level of scripted combats, which strikes me as almost criminal when dealing with a game like RuneQuest, whose strength has always been its richly detailed settings and interesting characters. Of course, how one would succeed in presenting such things within the context of a solitaire adventure is a vexing question even in 2023. The computer RPGs of the present are vastly more sophisticated and complex than something like SoloQuest and yet even they often struggle with presenting an imaginary world and its inhabitants with the kind of depth to be found in even a mediocre tabletop session with other human beings. Consequently, I can't judge SoloQuest too harshly for its shortcomings, though I nevertheless wish it were better than it is.

White Dwarf: Issue #39

Issue #39 (March 1983) of White Dwarf sports not only a cover by Nicholas Bibby (who also did last month's cover) but also a new cover logo and non-justified text, the latter of which makes its articles much easier on the eyes (or mine, at any rate). Another addition is a book review column by Dave Langford. In addition, Ian Livingstone mentions in his editorial that this issue is just the start of changes to the magazine. Future issues will include more original fiction, a comic strip, and a column devoted to boardgames. 

Kicking off the issue is part one of "Inhuman Gods" by Phil Masters. The article presents a half-dozen gods for various nonhuman D&D monsters, such as the aaracokra from the Fiend Folio and the desert raiders from issue #12 of White Dwarf. This is the kind of article I ate up when I was younger and, even now, I can appreciate the creativity that went into imagining the types of deities "lesser" species must worship. Nowadays, my natural inclination is toward greater simplicity when it comes to gods and cosmological questions, so I don't favor the "a god for every monster" approach employed here. 

"Open Box" reviews four of TSR's "Endless Quest" choose-your-own-adventure books, including Dungeon of Dread. The reviewer, Marcus L. Rowland, judges them individually, with the lowest receiving 5 out of 10 and the highest 7 out of 10. All, he says, are clearly geared toward younger readers and suffer from "a surfeit of lucky coincidences, cute talking animals, and lousy dialogue." I can't really disagree. Also reviewed is Citybook 1 from Flying Buffalo (7 out of 10) and four Traveller adventures. The first two are by FASA: Rescue on Galatea (6 out of 10) and The Trail of the Sky Raiders (8 out of 10). The other pair are from GDW: Prison Planet (5 out of 10) and Double Adventure 6: Divine Intervention/Night of Conquest (9 out of 10). I'll readily grant that Prison Planet isn't among GDW's best work, but I likely wouldn't judge it as low the reviewer, Andy Slack. 

"Runeblades" by Dave Morris presents rules for creating rune weapons for Chaosium's non-Gloranthan RuneQuest setting, Questworld. I can't say it impressed me much, since it's effectively just a collection of magic swords, none of which stood out as unique in the annals of RPG history. Similarly, part four of "An Introduction to Traveller" by Andy Slack is a bit of a letdown. This installment focuses on campaigns, specifically the kinds of decisions a referee must make before starting a new Traveller campaign. I suppose an utter neophyte might find its discussions of size, scope, the presence of Earthlike worlds, alien races genuinely insightful. For myself, it's more of the same I've read many times in many different places – too bad, as Slack often produced some of the best Traveller material to be found anywhere.

"Slayground" by Marcus L. Rowland is a Champions scenario set at a London fun fair, where three supervillains are causing mayhem. The main attraction here (pun slightly intended) is the environment, which offers unique options for superheroic fisticuffs. It's also interesting to see a Champions adventure in the pages of WD, something I can't recall being a common feature. "Stand By to Repel Boarders" by Andrew Miller is a good, if short, article about starship security in Traveller. Miller discusses airlocks and iris valves, as well as tactics for fighting in enclosed spaces aboard spacegoing vessels. It's a niche article but a useful one, especially if your Traveller adventures sometimes include a little Snapshot-style action.

"The Daughter of Danu" by Alan E. and Charles M. Paull is an AD&D adventure that makes use of the faerie information presented in issues #37 and #38. The scenario is geared toward characters of levels 2-4 and concerns the troubles experienced by a rural village beset by two different tribes of warring goblins, each of which is trying to curry the favor of Black Annis. It's a classic set-up, trite even, but the faerie lore details add just enough spice to make it seem fresh. 

Dave Langford's premier "Critical Mass" column reviews several science fiction and fantasy books, the most significant of which are Arthur C. Clarke's 2010: Odyssey Two, Isaac Asimov's Foundation's Edge, and Robert Heinlein's Friday. Langford likes the first book and has mixed feelings about the second two. Having read all three, I can't say I disagree with his assessment, though I think I probably disliked Friday more than he seems to have. Reading this column is fascinating, primarily because it engenders strange feelings of nostalgia of the time before science fiction and (especially) fantasy literature had become as big as they are today. Also, am I really old enough to remember new books by Clarke, Asimov, and Heinlein? Yikes.

"A Day in the Life of a Monster" by Lewis Pulsipher is an examination of monster intelligence and how it might influence their motivations. Pulsipher even includes a simple system to aid the referee in deciding the goals of a monster (or group of monsters). "Monster Mash" presents two new monsters for use with RuneQuest and "Non-Player Characters" by Roger and Georgia Moore presents three detailed NPCs for use with AD&D (including Konun the Halfling (the joke should be obvious).

All in all, it's a good issue, with lots of varied content. This is quite close to what I think of when I remember White Dwarf: a mix of long and short articles for use with many games but with D&D, RuneQuest, and Traveller predominating, as God intended. What's not to like?

Retrospective: Sugarcane Island

It's funny the memories that stick with you, even after so many decades. When I was in the third grade, my teacher invited a public librarian to come and visit our classroom. The purpose of his visit was twofold. First, he wanted to encourage us to come to our local library to get library cards (I needed no encouragement in this regard, having been an avid visitor of public libraries since I was quite young). Second, he wanted to share with us some books that he thought we might like. I cannot recall most of the books the librarian recommended to us on that day, but one still stands out: Sugarcane Island by Edward Packard.

Context is important here. The librarian's visit probably took place in the spring of 1978. At that time, no one had ever heard of a Choose Your Own Adventure book. That famous series didn't even come into existence until 1979, shortly before I first encountered the D&D Basic Set. Consequently, when the librarian described Sugarcane Island as a book in which I, the reader was the main character (or words to that effect), I was simultaneously baffled and intrigued. I'd never heard of a book like that and my eight year-old brain initially struggled to understand what he meant. It was only after he'd read a portion of it to us and allowed our class – by majority vote! – to decide which choices to make in the unfolding narrative that intrigue won out over bafflement. I had to read this book for myself.

I eventually was able to snag a copy of Sugarcane Island at the library, along with Deadwood City, another proto-CYOA book by the same author. The premise of Sugarcane Island is that the reader is an assistant to a scientist on an expedition to the Galapagos Islands made famous in the English-speaking world by the voyage of Charles Darwin aboard the HMS Beagle. The ship on which you are traveling encounters a bad storm during the night, resulting in your being washed overboard. When you wake up the next morning, you find yourself on the beach of a strange island, the only distinguishing feature being the sugarcane that grows nearby, hence the title of the book.

The "story" of Sugarcane Island is thus one first of survival – you must locate food, water, and shelter – and then of discovery and escape. Your choices determine where you go and what find on the island and that alone was intoxicating to me as a child. I'd never read a book that allowed me to decide where the protagonist went and what he did. That alone was enough to get me to read through it several times in the span of a single day, making different choices each time, trying to see what the "best" course of action was. That was the real appeal of Sugarcane Island for me: it was like a game. 

Eventually, though, I found the limited choices and occasionally arbitrary nature of outcomes to be frustrating. The book's promise of open-endedness was somewhat illusory and it quickly became clear that Packard had decided in advance that there were "right" and "wrong" decisions. That's perfectly understandable, of course, given the inherent limitations of a printed book. Indeed, that's one of the difficulties of all Choose Your Own Adventure Books and their modern descendants, such as computer RPGs: there's simply no practical way to consider every possible choice. Sure, the author can include the most obvious choices and options and, for most readers, that's probably enough. But what if you want to do something unexpected or even downright weird? In that case, you're out of luck.

As I believe I've mentioned elsewhere, I was not a big reader of Choose Your Own Adventure books (aside from the excellent Fighting Fantasy books). To a great extent, this is simply a factor of history: most of the volumes released under that banner didn't come out until after the time I was already playing roleplaying games and they paled in comparison to the fun I had playing D&D or Gamma World. At the same time, it's not incorrect to say that Sugarcane Island paved the way for my eventual embrace of RPGs. In a very real sense, this book made me aware of a desire I didn't even know I had, namely, to determine the choices a protagonist makes in an unfolding story. That Sugarcane Island failed to satisfy that desire fully is no knock against it, which was (and is) a genuinely groundbreaking children's book. I'm very grateful to that nameless librarian who visited my school more than four decades ago. Without him, who knows whether I'd ever have become involved in this hobby that still gives me so much joy more than four decades later?