Friday 28 September 2012

The Solo Dungeon: An Odd Specimin

What on earth is that adventurer doing!?
I found this little obscurity whilst doing some research into early gamebooks, which has now been made freely available by the author, Richard A. Bartle, here.

But why call it odd? Why call it an obscurity?

Well at the date of publication (1978) the only solitaire adventures I am aware of being out there (and I could be wrong) where designed to be run with the Tunnels and Trolls rule set, yet in the introduction the author states that this adventure was written for use with "the most widely used, Fantasy, Character Role-playing rules which most of you will be using". By which I assume he means Dungeons and Dragons.

So it's certainly odd and obscure in the sense that it would appear to be a one of it's kind at the time of publication with another Dungeons and Dragons solo not to follow it for another 5 years but, I also find it odd that it doesn't simply just mention the system by name.

Personally, I smell a licensing issue. He does sight the adventure as using "D&D Type Rules" at the bottom of the page here that links to the Online version now but, it does seem odd that he didn't say as much back in the day.

So, there you have it at any rate, a freely available solitaire adventure for old-school Dungeons and Dragons for your downloading pleasure.

3 comments:

  1. The reason it doesn't mention D&D by name is because back then TSR were suing people who sold add-ons for the game. I didn't want to be sued, so I didn't say it was meant for D&D.

    Richard

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  2. Thanks for clearing that up Richard. I thought it was probably something along those lines.

    Personally I think this is a crying shame as more solitaire products back then would have helped the product to much wider audiences.

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