I Need a Solo RPG!
I’ve been on a quest to find the perfect solo tabletop RPG for myself. I have a specific itch, but most games can’t scratch it. There are many out there, but with a few exceptions none have seemed quite right. I have no interest in the many journaling-style games out there, which are really just collections of writing prompts with a game built around them. (The conceit of Colostle, for example, looks amazing, but I just have no interest in making up a story as I go for the sake of a game. When I want to do that, I write.)
Others are more purely skirmish games, focused on fighting. Not interested. I want exploring and stuff to do outside of combat. Game books are awesome — I’m a big fan of the classic Fighting Fantasy series — but I already have some. I enjoy them, but I’m looking for something more freeform. And blah blah blah.
Anyway, it will take a little more play to be sure, but I may have found what I’m looking for: Hexplore it: Valley of the Dead King.
It’s more board game than RPG, but it has enough RPG elements to scratch the itch, and options to turn it into a full narrative, if you want.
Played it for the first time last night and enjoyed it a lot. Here’s why …
Game Basics
You create a character using 24 classes and 24 races, in any combination you choose. You can play with 1-6 characters, either solo or cooperatively with others. Set your stats, get some money, buy stat upgrades and equipment. Standard RPG stuff.
Then you set off into a freeform hex crawl, where you do quests, visit cities and shrines and ruins, deal with starvation and resource management, face weather effects and world events and get lost in the wilderness, and of course, fight bad guys and creatures. There are even big boss monster baddies you can tackle. The map can change each time you play, too. (And there are even more tiles not shown here.)
As you do this, you’re leveling up your character, boosting their stats, and making them more powerful. Again, standard RPG stuff.
The upgrade system is elegant and fun. It’s also non-linear, which I like. It’s card-based and random, so you never quite know how you’re going to grow more powerful, though there are also options to level up what YOU want to level up. Make your hero better at navigating the world, or a better attacker, or give them more health, or whatever. Making your heroes more powerful as you go gives you a nice dopamine hit.
You’re doing all this on a timer, because the Dead King is coming.
The Dead King arrives in a few turns and starts going from city to city, taking them over. You can liberate them, but it’s tough, and he’s going to keep coming regardless. Each city he takes, the faster he moves. This really ramps up the tension. It’s a ticking clock. When he’s taken over all cities, he comes for YOU.
This is the final fight. You have to beat him to win the game.
My First Adventure: I Got Destroyed
In my first game, a flooding river wiped out my two-character party’s food early on. Since one of them was a VERY hungry half-giant who needed to eat all the time, I quickly found myself struggling to keep them fed as we traveled. It consumed most of my money, preventing me from getting equipment upgrades when I visited cities, upgrades I desperately needed for the final battle.
Rescued some dwarves, liberated a city the Dead King had taken, but my half-giant got cursed and couldn’t be healed. I had to backtrack to a shrine I had already visited to lift the curse. This was off the beaten path. My wandering gave the Dead King time to take a city or two. I was then on a quest to guide some halflings around when we got lost in the wilderness, killing a couple more turns for me.
The Dead King took a few more cities, getting faster and faster as he went. I knew the end was coming, so I rushed to a shrine I discovered to get one last upgrade (and beat the first level boss on the way). There, I hunkered down and stocked up on potions and magical artifacts.
The Dead King came for me.
He curb-stomped me. Lasted just three turns. Dude is BRUTAL!
It was good stuff.
And all of this was done in just a few hours, playing for my very first time and just feeling my way through the gameplay. One sitting, one full adventure with its own unique story. Awesome.
There Are Soooo Many Options!
The game is a sandbox, but it has a full campaign supplement available for people who want a more narrative experience. It’s got four or five full chapters of adventures, a full branching narrative, background and lore, loads of character options, and more. It’s a 500-page beast!
It’s also just one of FOUR games in this series (and counting), all based on the same rules but with variations to make them distinct. One is set in a forest where you have to gather relics to defeat a sorceress, another has you traversing a desert wasteland and working with shady caravanners, the most recent incorporates dungeon crawling, so you can physically explore caves across the land, and a blood magic plague crawling across the land.
And all of them have expansions and additional card decks you can buy, so you can have a CRAZY number of classes and races to play, plus new ability systems to stack onto the game, tons more quests, enemies, etc. They are all about adding MORE.
Honestly, though, just the base game seems like it will provide more than enough for me (though I did get games #2 and 3, too, because I love the themes and I have a sickness). I may get add-on decks at some point, but the expansions seem mostly focused on races and classes, and there are PLENTY included in the base box. I’d rather have more lands to explore (along with more quests and world events).
The Valley of the Dead King is a bit of an investment at $90-100, but the second game, The Forest of Adrimon, is an easier-to-swallow $70. I started with Valley because by all accounts it’s the easier to learn, but I also got Forest because who doesn’t love exploring deadly forests? And then I found the third game, The Sands of Shurax, for a really good price, and the idea of a vast and dangerous desert sounds great, so … yeah. I guess I’ll need to get that fourth game now, too!
I’m still looking for that perfect open world solo RPG that does not involve journaling. I’m eying up Barbarian Prince, but you have to assemble it yourself and that seems like a chore. Here’s a good video overview. Tell me it doesn’t look awesome. I have no idea how I missed this back in the ’80s:
I tried Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, because it comes so highly recommended and it’s just $35 despite being PACKED with content, but it’s more purely focused on combat, isn’t a free-roaming adventure, and you’re locked into playing a lengthy campaign of about 15-20 scenarios to finish the game. That’s 15-20 game sessions, not 15-20 encounters. That’s how many times you have to play to “finish” it, whereas with the Hexplore It game, one game session = one full, finished adventure.
There are lots of other options on my “maybe one day” list, but for the moment, the Hexplore It games might be just what the doctor ordered.
If my first awesome adventure is any indication, I may become a Hexplore It fanboy.
For some of my musings on board games (mostly war games), check out this video playlist, and for some old school RPG chats in the attic, try this playlist.
(Please note that several of the links in this post are Amazon Affiliate links. This is NOT a sponsored post; I purchased the games myself. But I think I’m legally required to disclose those links.)
