I have the draft of the new game from Pickpocket Press, Tales of Argosa or Low Fantasy Gaming 2e, whichever name takes your fancy. Having read through most of the 240+ page pdf I now feel ready to get on and play the game.

Before I begin I want to get myself organised. To help me do this I am going to follow the 8 steps to game prep as per the Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master book by Sly Flourish. Although primarily aimed to help GM’s prep for group play, I find these 8 steps do help me organise my solo games.

Lets begin.

Step 1. Review the characters.

A lot of the character creation process in Tales of Argosa is random including race and background, super for us soloists. I decided to create four characters for my adventure and the dice gave me the following. (note, I picked the character classes and names. I rolled a d6 to see if each character was <1-3> male or <4-6> female)

Hedrak – Fighter.

Human male,
Background – Brigand

Peran – Rogue.

Human male
Baclground – Fisherman (starts the game with a fishing rod)

Derowen – Ranger.

Human female
Background – woodcutter

Morwen – Magic User.

Human female
Background – Gong Farmer (not an attractive occupation for a girl).

Rolling on the party bonds table for each character I got (presented here in the order I generated each character).

Derowen – Joint research task
Hedrack – Expedition to find lost ruin.
Peran – Riverboat voyage.
Morwen – Related.

I felt these party bonds could be used to link the characters to each other. Derowen and Hedrack have done some research together and found the location to a lost ruin. Believing the best way to get to the ruins is by riverboat they have enlisted Peran, (who was a fisherman and can sail a boat), to take them there. Morwen and Derowen are sister so Morwen is also enlisted to come on the expedition as well. Maybe the success of this quest is of greater importance to Derowen and Morwen than the other two.

I have some strong ideas as to why each of the four adventures are embarking on this dangerous quest but for now I will refrain from saying more until I see what else the random dice gods turn up.

Step 2. Create a strong start.

To get my strong start I turn to the random encounter section in ToA (Tales of Argosa). There are tables for random encounters in 12 different terrain types so I roll d12 and get 10. The 10th terrain type on the list is Snow, Ice. That’s handy as the images of the characters show them in a snowy setting.
I roll d20 and check random encounter table. Rolling 5 I find my characters are being tracked by a pack of 3d4 (8) wolves hoping the humans will suffer exhaustion before targeting the weakest member.

Outline potential scenes.

Turning to the Snow, Ice random encounter table in ToA again I found the following two entries which I thought would make good scenes. I am not going to flesh them out any further as the characters may never get to them.

The characters stumble upon a ring of humanoid statues, seemingly made of ice, encircle a black, altar like rock. A yellowed bone drinking horn sits atop the altar, covered in frost.

A serpent like cave mouth is set into a low rise, ridge, or escarpment. Flickering torchlight can be seen within.

also

The characters arrive at a small hamlet and spend the night in the local tavern.

Define secrets and clues.

I have created 12 random secrets and clues that the characters may learn through the course of the adventure

Character secrets.

How is the Villain related to the character? Father of Derowen and Morwen.
What ties the character to this location? Hedrak’s paternal grandparents.
What ritual was the character blessed with as a child? Breath underwater.

Historical secrets.

What cruel lord was slain in this place? The Dragon Queen.
What alien power is hidden here? The cauldron of rebirth.
What ancient civilization once thrived here? Dragon. An ancient race of intelligent dragons able to speak and invoke magic.

NPC and Villain secrets.

What foe did the NPC defeat? The Basilisk of fire mountain.
What great power does the NPC possess? They can talk to dragons
What makes the NPC think they are right? The stars foretold them of the coming of the Dragon Queen

Plot and Story secrets.

What dungeon entrance just became revealed? The Summoners Lair.
What villainous event will soon come to pass? The summoning of the Dragon Queen.
What armies just invaded the realm? Derowen and Morwens father leads an army from the southern steppe.

Develop fantastic locations.

Should the characters find the serpent like cave mouth they will find themselves at the entrance of the Summoners Lair. Map from Dyson logos.

I will use maps from Roan Studio pack of winter maps 1 for the village, tavern and the ring of humanoid statues should the characters get there.

I am not going to spend too much time fleshing out the details of these locations just in case the random nature of solo play leads the characters in a different direction.

Outline important NPC’s.

Choose relevant monsters.

I am leaving these two blank for now. ToA has tables for creating adventuring NPC’s on the fly and at the moment the only important NPC that has cropped up is the farther of Derowen and Morwen who is leading an army from the south and aims to bring back the dragon queen.

Select Magic Item Rewards.

Horn of Karagoss. As detailed in ToA page 238.

And with that I think we are ready to start the adventure in part 2.