X-plorers solo game

This weekend I wanted to give X-plorers a try, but alas aside from my girlfriend noone was around to play, so we decided to run the mission in the back of the book as solo game.

My girlfriend rolled up a Scientist and I used the pregenerated characters as NPCs. But in order not to let all the NPCs do all the work, she was pretty much in charge of the group of X-plorers. After I have read the rules thoroughly, I never had to look at the rules again. This was very relaxing and allowed me to focus entirely on running the game and playing the various NPCs. Combat was pretty fast and deadly (my girlfriend’s character almost died in the first fight), but it seemed appropriate for the setting. It took us about two hours to create a character and play through the entire mission.

From that game I discovered two things:

1. X-plorers is easy to run and to play and it’s a hell lot of fun! The introductory mission was a bit clichéd, but both me and my girlfriend enjoyed it tremendously. When time permits I will definitely give X-plorers another chance with a larger group.
2. Solo games are fun. I have to admit it was the first time we tried something like this. We didn’t have that much roleplaying and social interaction as in normal games, but this may be at least partly because of the mission. But running a solo game is fun and I am pretty sure you can have a lot of roleplaying with an adventure more focussed on that.

We won’t probably start an X-plorers solo campaign, because my girlfriend prefers fantasy or horror games, but even she enjoyed the old-school style of X-plorers. I think we might give Swords & Wizardry a try for our next solo game.