Zakkarii Aarlen

Disclaimer: I was fortunate to be a playtester of the pre-alpha version of the game. Any rules and mechanics seen here are not final. I'm also not sponsored or anything.

First, to address the elephant in the room...yes, I am posting this on Christmas Day. Shhh, don't look, I promise I'm resting. Anyway, here's a brief play report on my first complete solo game with Legends of Akeroth. I greatly enjoyed it, and I'm eagerly waiting to sit and play my much longer game.

For this game, I decided to play a "prequel" of sorts. My "main" game is going to follow a character named Kadlen, who joins a guild that I've already created a few details for, as well as the guildmaster. The guildmaster has a rescued Vatahim, which is an owl-shark hybrid, an enemy that was in the LoA rulebook. I decided I'd play a brief adventure with the guildmaster as my character, and this would be where they'd rescue the baby Vatahim. This meant there would be two necessary outcomes: the guildmaster lives (so they could later go on to start the guild) and acquire a baby Vatahim. I also knew I wanted to utilize the shrine generator in the rulebook. There were no other details, the rest of the story happened organically through play.

I used my character design deck to determine some more details about my guildmaster, who's name became Dizen Fellclaw (they/them). They're a Drakari, a level 4 Warrior, and uses a sword and shield combo. I started the day in a little fishing hamlet and rolled a scene spark to see how I'd come about a shrine. A villager girl named Sadda was born; she approached Dizen and told them that a sealed entrance was no longer sealed, and Dizen, wanting to make sure there was nothing foul afoot, agreed to check it out. Sadda became a Waymate, because by this point I had decided I wanted a dungeon, not a shrine, and I wasn't sure if Dizen could solo a dungeon despite being level 4.

Waymates are LoA's way of creating companions from PCs who's players can't make it to the game but still want to be involved, or to help solo or small tables tackle challenges that would need a bigger party. While Dizen couldn't die, Sadda could, and it would crush Dizen if anything happened to her. Since she was a fisherfolk by trade, I made her a level 2 Warrior and gave her a spear for a weapon, but no armor. Her move table also consisted of just stabbing with her spear, but I gave her the perk of her spear having a range of 2. This proved quite handy while Dizen acted as a tank during combat.

Away they went, on a short Journey with a 3-segment clock. I rolled for events that included fighting a Vatahim, which was interestingly relevant to my desired outcome, and saw large boulders that were overturned recently. When they arrived, they investigated the area and determined that the intruders had used some kind of large beast to bust open the sealed passage, which turned out to be the dungeon.

Using LoA's dungeon generator, I explored rooms with traps, perils, and even met a new NPC that I could reference in my "main" game. When we came upon the boss room, I used the random enemy generator in the rulebook to craft my boss: an earth elemental, left behind by the intruders. Dizen almost went down, but with a surprise crit during a critical move, they took it down. (Sadda also helped.)

The pair explored a couple other rooms, finding...no one. None of the intruders were still around. I had decided that I would leave this as a mystery, because this game needed to be brief and completed, and I had other things going on in my life that limited play time. I can reference this adventure in the future. Perhaps my Big Bad Villain had some business here, maybe another faction did instead. I didn't finish exploring the dungeon; instead, Dizen decided to call in a couple of friends to come by and look, since they were quite winded and only had Sadda with them.

After leaving the dungeon, Dizen heard a soft peeping noise. They discover a baby Vatahim hatchling, who's nest was destroyed when a nearby boulder was overturned by the intruders. Dizen realizes this is why they were attacked by a very aggressive Vatahim earlier, and regrets killing it. They pick up the hatchling just in time for Sadda to appear and tell them that Vatahim imprint, so they're a new parent!

For an epilogue, I wrote Dizen's return to the hamlet, where they tell Sadda they're retiring from most active adventuring duty and forming a guild. The Vatahim, who's name became Kiki, is also doing well, but is still pretty young. Sadda gleefully volunteers to be Dizen's first member of the Band of Owls, and the curtain falls.

Overall, I enjoyed playing the game a great deal. Most of my challenges and hang-ups were on combat, which is mostly due to my inexperience with crunchy games and playing solo, and organization of my most-accessed rules. I was using a .pdf reader and haven't yet transferred any resources to my Obsidian vault. I think that for my next game, I'll print it out, so I can put bookmark tabs and flip back and forth more easily. This will cut down my time spent on looking for tables and rules, and spare me confusion or frustration.

Legends of Akeroth begins funding in early 2026. If you follow the campaign, you can download a free solo demo and a free group play demo. Both give you a great idea of how the gameplay works. I definitely look forward to having the final physical book in hand myself.