High Point

Compatible With Apotheosis

Once upon a time, I made my own 0D&D hack with the working title of Brave Adventurers & Rogish Fools, or BARF for short. Probably the only interesting part of the game was junking hit points and using a skill point pool that enemy attacks would burn through. This represented dodging, parrying, and diving for cover etc.

When I saw Apotheosis’s EP that did essentially the same thing I was instantly on board. I also liked that they abandoned the 2d6 ability scores and simply used the stat modifier instead. Obviously, there is more to Apotheosis than just those two mods, but we were starting out with the designers, Ian Tassin and Chris Nelson, going in the same direction that I would have taken.

Using mechanical points to earn narrative control puts the player in control, and combats become much more dynamic than a simple hit-point grind.

GAMES & GAMES

I get to play a lot of games. My face to face group contains five players, four of whom are GMs. It used to be five from five, but one suspects he is suffering from the early signs of Alzheimer’s. He just cannot remember what happened from one session to another any more, nor can he remember game rules clearly, or how our VTT [Fantasy Grounds] works. Our current raft of ongoing games includes Ghost Ops, Rolemaster, D&D 5e, and Call of Cthulhu 6e. Because of our group dynamics, running games with deep stories or longer campaigns is becoming harder. Inevitably we move towards hack and slash and strings of what would be one-shot adventures joined back to back.

Solo playing gives me the opportunity to do more, to play new games and run complicated mysteries or political intrigues.

This is one of the unique selling points of solo playing. You get to play what you want and when you want. You can have multiple games on the go at once and pick up the game that fits your mood. I play games in different genres, so I can use subtle magics one day and fire heavy weapons the next.

Soloists often gravitate towards simpler games. If you are doing all the work, it makes sense to reduce that workload by picking games that have a single universal mechanic that is applied to every situation.

I don’t know what game Apotheosis feels like. It obviously has D&D genes, but it isn’t 5e; there are no skills, and no advantage/disadvantage rules. It doesn’t feel like 0D&D or AD&D. I have no experience of D&D between AD&D and 5e; those editions passed me by. It feels a little like Fantasy AGE, but there is no stunt die, and no one would remove stunts from the AGE system, that would be a crime. The abilities feel a little like Dungeon Crawl Classics feats of might.

What this speculation really means is that Apotheosis is its own thing. It doesn’t have to prove itself as a better version of anything. This is just as well for a game with a name like Apotheosis.

SOLO PLAYING

Most of my little books are aimed at people new to solo playing. That is equally true of this book. It is worth then for me to explain what I mean by solo playing, and how I like to play. The two qualities that make solo playing for me is that one person plays both player and GM roles. That may sound obvious, but you can expand that statement and it implies a lot.