Series - Dungeons & Dragons

[List All Series] [List Series Full Text] [List Series Images] [List Series People] [List Series Subjects/Tags]

Language:	English
Publishers:	TSR -- United States Wizards of the Coast -- United States
Categories:	Complexity Level : Solitaire RPG (External Rules Required) Format : eBook Format : Paperback Genre : Fantasy Product Family : Dungeons & Dragons Target Age Group : Adults Target Age Group : Older Children Target Age Group : Teenagers Writing Style : Present Tense Writing Style : Second Person
Translated Into:	D&D Fantasy-Rollenspiele (German) Danjonzu & doragonzu [ダンジョンズ&ドラゴンズ] (Japanese) Dungeons & Dragons (Dutch) (Dutch) Dungeons & Dragons (Finnish) (Finnish) Dungeons & Dragons (Italian) (Italian) Dungeons & Dragons (Norwegian) (Norwegian) Dungeons & Dragons (Spanish) (Spanish) Dungeons & Dragons (Swedish) (Swedish)

This, the original fantasy role-playing game, was an obvious influence on the development of more complex gamebooks like Fighting Fantasy. Although Judges Guild put out the Survival of the Fittest module (playable by a group of characters without a Dungeon Master) in 1979, the game's publisher didn't produce an official solitaire adventure until 1983, when the red-boxed third edition Basic Set came out, complete with a brief, untitled solitaire adventure designed to introduce new players to mapping and fighting. The same year, two complete stand-alone adventures, the "M Series" of modules, were released. These adventures use an invisible ink pen to reveal their text one section at a time, and due to dried-up pens and the chemistry involved, are difficult to find in fully readable condition. Following the invisible ink modules, several more adventures were released, one using the "Magic Viewer" system in which a sheet of red plastic reveals text hidden behind splotches of red ink, others simply printing text in the normal fashion.

The 1991 release of the game ( "The New Easy to Master Dungeons & Dragons") includes a set of cards that act as a tutorial, alternating between introducing the basic rules and concepts of the game and having the reader play out episodes of a dungeon crawl introductory solo adventure. This adventure requires a tabletop map and miniatures (both included with the game) to play. The last D&D solo adventure released by TSR, Rage of the Rakasta, is barely a solo adventure at all; rather than giving a narrative in which the reader makes choices and turns to different sections of text, it instead features a map with all of the area descriptions from the module. Players read the description of a room, decide what to do, then turn to the appropriate section of the multiplayer adventure and act as their own Dungeon Masters. Years after all of these products were out of print, several were revived by Wizards of the Coast as eBooks sold through RPGNow.com.

Mini-Adventures

Dragon Cards
Solo Adventure

Role-Playing Games

Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rules (red box)
The New Easy to Master Dungeons & Dragons

Role-Playing Materials

Five Coins for a Kingdom

Solitaire Adventures

1. Blizzard Pass
2. Maze of the Riddling Minotaur
3. Ghost of Lion Castle
4. Lathan's Gold
5. Thunderdelve Mountain
6. Mystery of the Snow Pearls
7. Rage of the Rakasta
8. Knight of Newts

Bibliography of Items About "Dungeons & Dragons"

Articles

Bringing Back the Solo
Dungeons & Dragons

Mini-Adventures

The Djinni's Ring
Rogue Mage

User Comments

Reading several of these D&D solo modules, I've come to a few conclusions as to why they don't seem up to par.

For most gamers, they will have already played a live session of D&D, with the immersive experience of (hopefully) a colourful, descriptive dungeon master and interactions from other players. Also the seemingly limitless amount of choices that format suggests.

Whereas the solo modules are written more like gamebooks. Your choices become limited out of necessity and you lose the interactions. Now, this could have been counteracted with more colourful descriptive writings and interplay with creatures encountered, but none of the modules have taken this route so far. They are needlessly short Fighting Fantasy style entries, which are fine for that series, but when a player is more used to the immersive experience, it falls short.

--Kveto