It may not seem sensible to write a review of a game that was published ten years ago, but this game seems to have missed out on the bandwagon of solo RPGs following the Covid pandemic and some of the many people who started playing solo RPGs during lockdown may not have tried it.
The full game is available is available at drivethru and there is also a quickstart edition currently FREE as a PDF.
I've started a first campaign with Scarlet Heroes and played enough to share some impressions for others who may be considering it or may be looking for a solo game to play.
In general, to play a RPG on your own you will need:
- a set of RPG rules
- a campaign setting (unless the rules include one)
- some way of doing all the work that the Game Master (GM) would do in a social game
Scarlet Heroes provides a set of rules that are very close to first edition D&D, which should be immediately familiar to anyone who has played that game. This is different from Ironsworn, for example, which is Powered by the Apocalypse and needs the player to think about their character's actions as "moves" to be chosen from a playbook, which may be new approaches for the player to learn at the same time as everything else.
In addition to my list of the necessities of solo roleplay, Scarlet Heroes modifies the D&D rules to allow a single character to survive and succeed instead of the usual party of adventurers. This saves the solo player from thinking about the actions of a handful of characters each turn. The player's character does more damage to the monsters (each hit point takes out roughly a hit die) and receives less damage in return (each successful hit costs a hit point or two).
The default setting for Scarlet Heroes is the Sunset Isles, an oriental setting, although the player can always re-write that. This doesn't work well for me. Whether the Ninefold Celestial Empire is based on China (as I suspect) or Japan or is a complete invention, it leaves me uncomfortable about my ignorance of the original. In a few years time I may have learned something, perhaps even read Journey to the West (in translation), and then I can open the notebook with one of my Scarlet Heroes games and cringe at how badly I misunderstood everything about the culture, religion, society and attitudes. I would prefer something more familiar (perhaps based on Tolkien or Howard's Hyboria) or a complete invention. But that's just personal taste. The game has everything the player needs, with descriptions for each nation in the Isles, tables to randomly generate names for their citizens, and a page of notes on laws, religion and customs.
Where Scarlet Heroes really shines is in the procedures to generate adventures. There are three separate procedures for urban, wilderness and dungeon adventures. Wilderness adventures are hexcrawl explorations, with the player moving around a hexagonal grid to discover what is in the next hex, generate random encounters and special events. Dungeon adventures are more like a pointcrawl, with the player moving from location to location within the dungeon by choosing one of the exits from the current location, generating encounters, traps, treasure and so on.
Urban adventures pit the player against an opponent (another character or organisation). The adventure is played in scenes, which can be investigation (pass a kind of skill check to gain a Clue), action (spend a Clue to act against the opponent, for example by breaking into their premises to cause damage) or conflict (set the opponent's plans back). Sometimes the skill checks give way to fighting. Both the player and the opponent score points for scenes they win, and the first to reach 10 points has probably won the adventure. The many random tables turn these generic scenes into a specific story of intrigue that feels surprisingly satisfying.
The opponent's master plan is determined from a random list, for example they are scheming to steal something from a target person (so roll up the details of the target on some random tables). When the player's character is ambushed in a dark alley by three thugs, the reason is because they work for the opponent and the player has been interfering with the oppnent's plan. This works better for me than trying to interpret an oracle of two random words as used in some solo RPGs; the thugs attacked the player because "water servant" and the player has to somehow explain what that means.
There is no suggestion about recurring characters, which surprised me. Perhaps the villains are not expected to survive, but for my own game I've kept a list of all the supporting characters in each place, so that the next time the game randomly generates a ruthless moneylender in Nordheim, the expectation will be that it is Uncle Ching yet again.
That's a long ramble about what's included, what I liked and didn't like. For a future post I'll write up my first campaign, which should make it much clearer.
Until next time, health & happiness to you all.
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