Solo RPG Test with Roll20, LotFP, and Qelong

I’ve been thinking about running Qelong for a long time. The blurb goes like this:

Qelong is Kenneth Hite’s hellish southeast Asian setting inspired by fantasy quest drama and war stories like Valhalla Rising, Apocalypse Now, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Suitable for character levels 4-6, usable with Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing and other traditional role-playing games.

As a way to test out the Qelong setting and my Roll20 VTT chops, I thought it would be fun to run a mock campaign solo with four Level 4 adventurers, who’ve come by sea, seeking fortune and glory. Cue Apocalypse Now soundtrack.

How’s this game setup?

The PCs are passengers aboard “Ukko’s Witness”, a cog (maritime ship) that’s sailed from “Europe” (cue hand-waving) to Qampong Bay.

The PCs heard there’s some mystical war near Qelong region, which has suffered fallout from its proximity to the actual battle between two extremely powerful elder beings. The ongoing war has been a constant source of nervousness for the peoples back in Europe.

The ship’s captain has brought fresh food and water to sell to Qampong, who he (correctly) assumed would be in dire need of. Then, he’ll take on passengers back to “Europe” – those with the most treasure that is! The oracles told me that Cap’n Travis Startoe has a code and will keep his word.

The PCs heard there are mines deeper inland, named “The Mines of the Elephant“. So called because they needed elephants to haul all the precious stones within! This is the driving goal of the party. This may change as characters die.

The Captain has agreed to wait in the bay for one month (May) for the PCs to return. At the cost of 10% of their treasure he will guarantee passage back to Europe.

There may be other adventurers on the ship, this is left hazy on purpose (to help replace dead PCs).

Rules and tools

Books in play:

• Lamentations of the Flame Princess – Rules & Magic. RAW for the most part
• Qelong – the main content and campaign details
• Scarlet Heroes – solo gaming tables like oracles, weather, actors. Adventure tags, maps etc.
• Yoon Suin – more tables and crazy shit to plunder
• The Peridot Issue 1 – Eshnunna could be dropped into a hex in Qelong
• Lorn Song of the Bachelor – will set this adventure somewhere upriver at some point in Qelong
• Fever Swamp – another good adventure site on a hex
• Carcosa – for Xam hexes

Tools:

• https://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/name/ and https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/ for name generators
• https://donjon.bin.sh/d20/weather/ for more random weather options
• https://character.totalpartykill.ca/lotfp/ character generator for LotFP
• https://perchance.org/lotfp-spellbook to generate level 4 magic-user spell books
• Roll20 with the LotFP character sheet

Character creation checklist

1. https://character.totalpartykill.ca/lotfp/ – reload until you get the class you want with a positive bonus in the primary stat for the class. Accept whatever shortcomings exist elsewhere.
2. Copy stats over to a Roll20 sheet
3. Every PC starts with 9k XP, enough for level 4 in every class
4. Enter saves by class for level 4. Adjust saves by Wis, Int bonuses.
5. Copy HP/Max over. Add extra HP for levels 2, 3, 4 (class HD+CON)
6. Adjust base skills (int = languages, str = open doors)
7. Class based stuff
   1. Magic-Users – add extra spells: level 1, level 2, level 2.
   2. Specialists – 10 skill points at level 4 to spend
8. Roll starting money for level 4: /r 180+(9d6*10)
9. Copy starting equipment over from the random generated character
10. Buy/sell gear using cheapest city/rural prices (prior to departure, as per RAW)
11. Calculate encumbrance using LotFP core rules
12. Buy any extra Qelong rumours for 20sp each

What’s my party like?

We have four Level 4 PCs:

• Cleric – Gylan, 39M – the oldest and most responsible and therefore de-facto leader
• Fighter – Beara, 19F – hot-headed, athletic, pretends not to give a shit
• Magic-User – Vido, 28M – young with that scumbag sense of self-entitlement
• Specialist – Rosla, 32F – seasoned professional. Knows Qelong’s going to be a huge risk

How does it look in Roll20?

Here’s an example of how I’ve set things up a this early stage:

Key features of Roll20

• Am writing all my notes in “handouts” in the game, other than what I post here in summary.
  • Be careful of hitting Escape key before saving your changes to handouts – you’ll lose your work!
• I setup the map first to my liking, resized the grid to scale then turned it off, then I added fog of war and configured the GM opacity to 94%, so I basically can no longer see anything.
• Advanced hotkeys are great https://help.roll20.net/hc/en-us/articles/360039178974-Advanced-Hotkeys
• Change mouse-wheel to zoom.
• Writing red text on the map to remember details at a glance, like how far the party can see from different hex types.

First impressions of solo play

Rather than playing (and writing) the game in a prosaic style, I’ll go for bullet points and closed questions. The “Q&A” format works nicely to create a dialogue with myself. Asking closed questions helps me use the oracle table from Scarlet Heroes.

It’s been pretty fun and easy to get setup – with Roll20 and my PDFs, I’ve got everything I need to continue play.