The Thews of Verulia

The Thews of Verulia is an adventure for a solo game system that does not yet exist! This was something that was stewing in the back of my mind for a while and the Appendix N Jam of 2026 gave me the space to get it out. As opposed to Tolkien-esque fantasy, which focuses on a "fellowship", sword and sorcery has always had a solo vibe to me. One desperate swordsman faces off against unfathomable odds, surviving only by their sword arm and their wits. Sure, Conan had allies from time to time, but we all know how the real star was. The System In case someone reallllyyy wanted to try and bash something together to place this, here are my COMPLETELY UNEDITED system notes. Stats M - Move: How far a figure can move in a turn. A - Melee Attack: How many dice a figure rolls to attacks. Rolls of 4+ are considered hits. R - Ranged Attack: Same as Attack above, but for hitting figures that aren't adjacent. H - Health: Come on. You know. D - Defense: For each hit suffered, roll a dice. For every result that equals or exceeds this number, a hit is blocked. N - Negotiation: Here. Have a social stat. (PCC only.) S - Sorcery: Look, I have no idea how this works. Just like attacking, you'll roll this many dice to cast a spell with 5+ being successes. I just don't know what it means to succeed or fail in magic yet. I believe this will also be how many spells one can cast before taking another long rest.(PCC only). CS - Control Scheme: This tells you what an enemy does on their turn. See below. GC - Gold Coins. The money. Supply - Food, water, rope, whatever. You must spend one supply per Hero to draw a new card. (Each creature has a dice associated with it, as seen at the very beginning of their stats. Bigger, badder creatures roll bigger, badder dice.) Setting Up Combat Each encounter comes with a map. This is meant to be played with miniatures on a grid, like a skirmish game. I suggest getting one you can draw on for reasons of terrain. The letters correspond to the stat blocks listed in the entry. Blocks surrounded by a solid red line block line of sight and can not be moved through. Blocks with a dashed red line take twice as much movement to move through as normal blocks. For each block a ranged shot goes through, the target gets an additional defense dice. Blocks surrounded by a dotted red line take twice as movement to move through as normal blocks. Heroes start anywhere within the shaded yellow area. A hero starts combat. Next, an enemy of the players choice goes. It goes back and forth until everyone has had a turn. Control Schemes 1 Moves straight toward the closest PCC, attacks if able. 2 Moves toward the closest unengaged PCC, attacks if able. 3 Targets the closest hero with ranged attacks, only moving as little as possible to establish line of sight. 4 Attacks anyone adjacent. If no one is adjacent, uses any special power or does nothing, unless targeted by a ranged attack within the last round. If so targeted, will move towards the hero who made the attack. 5 If not engaged, moves toward the PC with the most HP, attacking if able. If engaged, attacks the PC with the most HP within range. Items Each hero has 5 inventory boxes. Eight supply can fit in one box. You can make it look like a pie chart and mark each slice as you use it. Shield - negate one attack. Supply Healing Ointment - restore 1d4 health. Healer - also restore 1d4 health. Spells - I haven't made these yet, but a spell scroll to cast a spell takes up an inventory slot. Spells I don't have these fleshed out yet. As for ones mentioned in the adventure: I think "Mind Master" will let the caster control an NPC for a round. The difficulty will be affected by the dice size of the target. Abyssal Visions will torment the target with terrible visions, causing them to miss a turn. Easier to cast than Mind Master. Fire the Blood is a buff spell. It changes hits to be 3+ for the rest of a combat. Spirit Guidance can be used once per adventure to skip a non-spade card. Plague of Flies is a debuff. Flies are annoying. Hits are now on a 5+ for the target. If anyone actually makes up enough glue to make this work and play it through, hit me up! Or if anyone just has thoughts, I'm interested. Info@CrumblingKeep.com.