This post is kind of spoiler-heavy, so you might want to stop reading here. I am going to tell you what happens to the party in the future. I am already 3 sessions ahead of the Chapel, although you can't know that.
While this is a solo playthrough, "solo" is not 100% accurate. I often point this out within individual posts.
First, I have been using AI to assist me in tracking the whereabouts of the party when it splits up. This helps me track time and locations. I don't use AI for grammar checking because it gets excited about dashes, dash-em, commas, and semicolons. AI cannot assess sentence complexity very well and will suggest these bits of punctuation far too often. It will also battle with my built-in Chrome spellchecker, which is crazy. It also cheats if asked to roll dice or "randomly" select an option. We'll see that happen again shortly.
Second, I often ask my children to throw dice and select character actions. They don't really want to sit and play, but occasionally they help me with this series by helping roll through large combats or throwing plot twists at me.
I also use my copy of OSR Solo, an old-school oracle book for solo play to generate ideas, which I guess is a third modifier in this less-than-solo adventure.
Let's get to the second big oops of this series. Pizzalla, Solvo, and Thomas have all died. Alexei has been turned insubstantial. Alexei's items are just as insubstantial as he is. But Solvo's backpack contained a bag of holding, were both were transferred to another character's bag of holding in a second backpack. Technically speaking, I lost track of those supplies, and the party did, too.
After the Battle of the Chapel, the party will discover their mistake and Parker and Warren will be properly provisioned as fighters, complete with bows and arrows, plus some other kit.
Next item. I should have tracked the keys. I had forgotten that the party needed 3 keys. Here are their locations as of now:
3. Study (In Gabby's possession.)
18. Fountain of Death (The Rakshasa took it)
27. Consultation Room (We are almost there)
52. Bobbing for a Key
The module does suggest reducing the number of keys depending on how the party is doing. Essentially, I have hard-coded a reduction of one key by allowing the Rakshasa to take one from the fountain. I figured they would either die and the party would loot the key from the corpses, or the Rakshasa would make it to the gate and the party would find one key already there.
First, I asked AI if the Rakshasa should enter Averoigne. I asked it to ignore mechanics, the module, and just give me a yes-or-no answer. It said yes and backed it up with all kinds of mechanics and hallucinated details about the module, Clark Ashton Smith's writings, and D&D in general.
Sigh. AI, you kind of suck.
I was going to roll a die and consult my copy of OSR Solo but then decided that Rakshasa in Averoigne would be fun. No random die rolls, no AI. It's fun. I am doing it.
Why? Because I want to introduce a new NPC to Averoigne, a person named Madeline. She is a chef. She was created using my very own ruleset for NPCs called Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners.
However, this set of rules isn't the one that has been downloaded hundreds of times.
No, this is a complete rewrite specifically meant for Old School Essentials and I will use their Open Game Content license. I hope to have this done by Christmas, and it will be my first non-PWYW title. I will not take the old edition down. It will continue to be PWYW.
I plan on 2, maybe 3 booklets in this new edition. The first is the rules, and the second booklet will be a helper PDF and zip file so that others can build content off of it. I have to comply with their OGL, and I plan on being as helpful as possible to other creators. I haven't decided if a 3rd booklet is necessary.
In order to assist with this project, I have created an OSE character generator. Critical to this project is the ability to generate characters using average dice, which this generator does. I AM using AI to create this generator, BUT as a crutch for the coding skills I have lost. As time goes on, I am recovering my coding skills and my reliance on AI is dropping.
I hope you stick with me in these year-end endeavors and stay for what is to come in 2027. In the next post, we will see how the party fares in the Chapel and possibly beyond.
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