Every few days in June I’m picking a TTRPG book that’s been languishing on my shelf or hard drive, reading it, and writing a review. I don’t believe in attempting a full critique of game content I haven’t run or played, so my focus will be on discussing the work’s best ideas and keeping criticisms to text-level quibbles.
Today I read Coincackler Well, a two-page ‘Pamphlet Adventure’ by John Lopez (SoloRPG). It's a location for 2–4 level 2 characters to explore, aligned for the Basic Fantasy system, but as the author points out, pretty readily convertible to most old-school ‘D&D-like’ rule sets.
The site is an ancient wishing well, neglected for centuries. Clearly something’s up, given that it hasn’t filled in with detritus or collapsed!
Here's what's up: giant bees, kobold cowboys, wish-sniffing frog princes, and a crazed brownie. Love it!
As any professional writer knows, writing cohesive compressed content is harder than just writing. (See e.g. “I had not the time to make it shorter”, variously attributed but apparently originating from the pen of 17th Century philosopher Blaise Pascal.) Writing just two pages is a big task, so let's see how this adventure manages it!
Trying my hand at GM-less play
I’ve not dabbled much in solo TTRPG and/or journaling play, so I’m not sure how much you're meant to approach this with more of a story-telling, flexible mindset, and how much you're meant to use the actual game/simulation rules from the full TTRPG system (Basic Fantasy) that it has stats for. I’m in particular not clear on whether the player is meant to read ahead in order to perform the GM's role.
The guidance Coincackler Well provides in place of a ruleset and referee is the 'Micro GM Emulator'. It's pretty aspirational, a set of random tables with basic open-ended instructions for interpreting the results ‘within the context of the adventure’. The result feels like a creative exercise (or looking for auguries in stochastic patterns).
I tested it out with the first location in the five-room dungeon, the Old Wishing Well.
A rusty bucket hangs over the stone well suspended on a tattered rope. Buzzing sounds echo up from the well shaft. A dead body lies curled up in a slimy puddle.We make a What Happens roll for at least one key word per room. Let's take 'rusty bucket'. I got the result ‘foreshadow an event or find a clue’. The fact that this is a result makes me think I am meant to be reading ahead. Otherwise you're going to need to tie whatever you decide back in, and it'll all be murky.
I re-rolled it because I wasn't sure, and got ‘resolve a circumstance’, which is tricky for the start of the adventure. Let’s say I decide to ‘resolve’ the buzzing sounds mentioned in the initial description. I could simply have them stop, but again, it goes to the question of whether to read ahead: do I know if the buzzing is something that can or should stop? What are the repercussions?
I did read ahead, and then decided to use the Micro GM Emulator tool to answer ‘a more complex GM question’ about how to resolve the buzzing sounds the characters hear. I don’t think we need Action, so I roll four dice to get a couple of Theme Descriptors, getting one ‘power’ and ‘lies’. Interpreting that, maybe the characters get the false impression that the source of the buzzing is a swarm of relatively powerless normal-sized bees, their buzzing amplified by the well. This solution of course depends on partitioning of knowledge, which is trickier at the TTRPG table than it is for a story-telling game.
Reading further, there's a twisted wish-brownie at the end of the dungeon, whose ‘ability to hear wishes has been corrupted by his madness. Therefore, he will use an already fulfilled wish from the past as a reward, after retrieving the corresponding coin’. The text gives d6 past wishes, but this actually seems like the kind of thing that would be an interesting test for the Micro GM Emulator. I decided to roll What Happens, How did it go, two Action Descriptors, and two Theme Descriptors.
What Happens: Change a circumstance
How did it go? Distastrously [sic] bad
Action Descriptor: Control
Theme Descriptor: Enemy
Interpreting that, let's say someone in the past wished to draw some powerful monster out of hiding to themselves. So now that’s what the characters unexpectedly get. I'm happy with that.
The dungeon itself
I like the strong theming of Coincackler Well, which has a touch of the ‘Gygaxian dungeon ecosystem’. Colonies of wild bees do take up residence in enclosed spaces, and I can imagine giant bees being tempted by a well. Kobolds are one of those monsters without a single central niche, and this adventure's use of them as giant bee ranchers works well. Perhaps ranchers isn't the right word; the text makes clear that they are more parasitic raiders than symbiotic pastoralists.
- I like that ‘honey-smeared combat’ can attract more bees.
- It’s interesting that the well shaft ends up smeared in wax and honey; I’m unclear on whether that’s intended to be natural distribution, or a deliberate trap set up by the kobold bee riders. I guess that’s a question for the Micro GM Emulator!
- It’s also interesting that the kobolds are overtly harvesting the honey ‘for trade’. It’s a very OSR type approach of creatures doing their own semi-peaceable thing, compared to many games which would make them automatically ‘the bad guys’.
It would be useful to have the total numbers of all creatures, which are separated out into a random encounter table, chance-based rolls for creatures at locations, fixed numbers at other locations, chance for reinforcements to join combat, etc. The dungeon is just five rooms, the kind of thing that could be ‘cleared’ incidentally through play, and I know as a GM I would need to know the actual numbers; I have to imagine that GM-less play is also going to need them. In particular, the characters might run into anywhere from zero to sixty or more giant bees. ‘All remaining giant bees are found [in the hive]’. Maybe I'm missing a Number Appearing entry from Basic Fantasy? Or maybe the details existed but were pruned during the difficult process of writing short content?
Minor text quibbles:
- Just one typo I spotted, plus I’m not sure where I stand on the word ‘Gmless’.
My favourite bit:
Interplanar fey frog princes have been attracted by the wishing well’s 2000+ unused wishing coins! ‘A portal to their weird realm exists at the bottom for as long as the coins remain.’ The pool itself has been corrupted by faerie magic, too. Great stuff.
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