The Big Barston Bakersfield Chronicles Recap, Part 1 (Advanced Fighting Fantasy+)
I think now is as good of a time as any to discuss the kind of odd origins of the campaign that took me from a long time dabbler in solo roleplay and made me into a solo-first roleplayer, from a person with a couple of solo/oracle type books to someone with a massive shelf of books and tools dedicated to the hobby.
This is the story of a book printer turned warlock hunter Barston Bakersfield, whose story started out as an absolutely bog standard adventure romp: avenge his uncle's death and kill an evil wizard. But first, we go back a whole generation.
-- Harper's Quest 2 Era & Shellyton Bakersfield --
In August, 2023, I launched a Harper's Quest 2 game after watching The Lone Adventurer play through it on his channel. It sounded fun, the price was right (just $2.50 for the pdf although I did get a physical copy later on), and I wanted to expand out a bit after being on a bit of a Fighting Fantasy kick (about once every two or three years I tend to deep dive through several of the old FF books).
We had my hero above. Shellyton Bakersfield. He had been driven from his home, the town/city/place called Humb, years ago by the Mayor/Elder - Malakar Brite - after Brite pulled an Obed Marsh and trafficked in powers beyond the human sphere. 30+ years later, Shellyton was ready to get revenge and set out through the Forest Ick to battle Red Warlocks, Zombies, Demons, and more to get to Humb where he could battle Blue Warlocks, Skeletons, Mutant Minotaurs, and...eventually, Malakar Brite himself: The Gray Warlock.
Shellyton. Malakar. Ick. Humb. Where did any of these names come from? No clue. I think I just syllable-spewed the first bits that came to mind. I know "Brite" was an odd reference to Reginald Bright from Endeavour. The idea was a somewhat unassuming, unthreatening older man who was actually a major threat.
He set off through Ick. I took my time. I would roll on HQ2's oracles to generate a scene and then would either generate or search for artwork that matched and use that as some additional inspiration. There were some fights but it was partially just about getting used to solo playing NPCs and solo playing the aesthetic experience of hex/dungeon/wilderness-crawling.
And then outside a red warlock outpost, Shellyton went kaput. Terrible dice rolls stacked up back to back. No problem, HQ2 has a "generation" system that is probably meant to be taken a little less literally than I did but still: enter our new hero, Shelltyon's more practical and less fanatical nephew - Barston. He wants to know what happened to his uncle. He was raised hearing about "Crazy Uncle Shell's" revenge stories. Once Shellyton disappeared, Barston took on the quest to finish off Brite and to bring Shellyton's stuff back to the "town in the valley".
Still, there's another twist in Doug's machinations...
-- How Two Things Were Coming together to Become Something Else --
While playing through HQ2, the itch had started. I wanted more and more solo play experience. I had started cooking up an idea for far-too-expansive Troika solo campaign fueled by some fantasy books I had been reading (e.g., The Books of the New Sun). A massive world with seven huge islands surrounding a continent that was also a city that was also two cities. One island was the gothic horror world. One was a Victorian magic school kind of world. One was more Mad Max post-apocalyptic. Another more mythical fantasy. Another more Lovecraftian horror. One more science-fiction-y. You get the idea. Each island was the personal domain of some ancient long-dead wizard who had structured reality to their own personal taste. No matter what sort of story I wanted to tell I could pick an "island" and drop characters into it. There were more minor islands I could make if I wanted to do something more one-shot-y. Over time, I could swap back and forth, have characters criss-cross in funny ways.
I was already planning on using a few Advanced Fighting Fantasy modules and books and had an idea for a more traditional fantasy world being one of the islands. You can maybe figure out where this is going.
What if the fantasy island/sphere/world was the same one that Shellyton had lived and died on? What if the "Harper's Quest" land was just a gateway to this more expansive forever-and-a-day Troika campaign, slightly channeled through an Advanced Fighting Fantasy lens? What if Barston (or, some two or three generations of Bakersfields later) might complete the quest and then get transported into this broad campaign? It tickled my creative juices.
It just was not quite meant to be...sort of...
-- Barston Finds Humb and It All Changes --
One thing I wanted to do to prep for the above campaign was to introduce Mythic Game Master Emulator 2nd Edition into my HQ2 game. For practice. I made a rule that every rough scene needed to have at least two oracle questions: one to determine what had changed in the 10-year-gap between Shellyton and Barston. Another about whatever felt most appropriate. This will be important in just a minute.
I had even more fun as Barston. He fought better, more smartly. I had gotten better and journaling and building in details. Battles were more tactical. Barston back-tracked, planned ahead. I pushed my comfort zone and had more detailed NPC interactions. I built in intrigues - two heroes of the land, a fighter of reknown and one of the great wizards - were entangled in this whole Evil Warlock business, a mystery Barston was trying to solve.
One of the descriptions I got was that there was giant footprints found in the forest. I took that a step further and made them GIANT footsteps. In fact, this whole HQ2 realm was not only an island in that upcoming-but-never-happened campaign but its founding wizard was a wargamer: he had made a world full of fantasy miniatures that he played out scenarios with, living miniatures that had been long abandoned and founded entire histories in his absence. Sometimes full sized people from one of the islands comes across the island and they appear as mountain sized giants. Fun, right?
The important change came right at the end of these sessions of track and backtracking through Ick. Barston finally finds Humb and before I roll on some dice to start generating that, I do a Meaning Table: City Descriptors and I get "Bustling" and "Commerce" and I wonder... "Wait, is Humb currently a bustling city full of people going about various merchant shops and such?" and get an Exceptional Yes result.
Suddenly, I decide to drop HQ2 and to effectively drop Troika because I realized what I wanted to do...
Barston Bakersfield got translated into an Advanced Fighting Fantasy character and Humb became a city under siege by at least two warring clans of Warlocks: each thinking they were the true followers of the legendary Malakar Brite.
-- From One Random Oracle Result Came an Entire Year --
Could I have handled that one question differently? Sure. Humb could have once been a market town and now be just a random collection of ruins. No problem. However, that one question and my needing to stop and retool my whole scope was such a good thing. I "dropped" the immense, slightly pre-plotted conception of the mega-meta-campaign, technically. I worked on honing all the skills I could dealing with oracles, on-the-fly rulings, dungeon and landscape design, adventure tweaks, villain crafting, and detailed NPC interactions. I got a lot better at just playing to the table, ignoring tables when it was time to take the helm, and having lots of fun just doing my thing.
To put it into perspective, a world that essentially started out with three points - a still not really fleshed out "town from the valley," a forest, and a city from generations ago - has turned into, well, this...
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