Some solitaires for y’all this week! First up; XSOLO: Lathan’s Gold (1984). It’s written by Merle Rasmussen (Top Secret, Quagmire). Jim Roslof is on the cover (love those soon to be dead idiots), Jeff Easley is inside! Rollin’ out those big guns here.

If we’re going to reduce this module down to its barest, it’s all in the title: Lathan is sailing around the Sea of Dread in the Known World (this is tied to the Mentzer Expert Rules box set), looking for as much gold as he can find to pay a ransom for the return of his kidnapped betrothed. Straight forward, right? But then this thing decides to be like, incredibly innovative.

For one, Lathan has a time limit, which is pretty unusual for these sorts of books. Second, the adventure is divided into six distinct sections — three on land (Specularum, Urban, Island Exploration), three on the water (Coastal, Trade Routes, Voyages). Each have their own threads through their distinct sections, and ties to the others, which can be navigated in an unusually free form manner. There is also a section dedicated to random encounters, which is super unusual. Odd for D&D, the combat isn’t left to chance, but rather resolved via the consultation of a number of charts (this one I was excited for but ultimately found cumbersome). Then, in addition to Lathan, there are a bunch of other pregenerated characters with their own quests you can play as or add to your party, each with different goals and constraints. I recommend the dwarf, Elrem Nessumsar.

The interesting constructions and free form navigation are undercut a bit by the fact that there is not a ton of exciting stuff happening. Most of your choices are directional. The prose is pretty conservative, which hampers the storytelling. It’s a really interesting engine, but it doesn’t really…go places. Which is a bummer.