Hidden traps, weird monsters, and a magical journal that gives you clues on how to survive a lethal dungeon – this was my incredibly fun experience playing the old-school Dungeon and Dragons module BSOLO: The Ghost of Lion Castle.
I’ll be reviewing my experience with this solo journaling RPG module in this post. Importantly, this review is completely spoiler free! So go ahead, read on, and find out if this is something you’re interested in playing.
Module Overview
The Ghost of Lion Castle was published in 1984 by TSR, and written by Merle M. Rasmussen as a solo RPG module. If you aren’t sure what a Solo RPG is or how to play, you can find out more here.
This module runs on the Basic Dungeon and Dragons rules, but includes rules within the module that are specific to solo play.
Included with the module are:
- A foldout series of maps (5 castle levels, castle dungeon, top view, and side view)
- Quick-access tables for saving throws, abbreviations, THACO rolls, monster hit rolls, weapon damage and a combat checklist
- 32 total pages
- 5 pages of rules
- 25 pages of gameplay (room entries, art, etc.)
- 2 pages of pre-rolled characters
In this module, you’ll be creating a magic-user character, creating a magic journal, and adventuring into Lion Castle in search of fame and fortune. The best part is – once your character dies, the magic journal reappears, ready for your next character to read and learn from as they enter Lion Castle Next!
The Magic Journal
The most important (and most fun) gameplay element to the Ghost of Lion Castle is the journal.
On the far margin of each page within this module, is a column labeled “Magic Journal.” Within this column, you’ll be taking notes, and recording the outcome of your character’s journey as they discover what lies within the walls of Lion Castle.
The most fun part of this entire experience, is that once your character dies (low level magic-users are very squishy), the magic journal provides you and your next character with a running record of what to expect within the castle, and maybe even how to survive.
If you end up playing with the PDF, or don’t want to mark up your physical copy like me, you can create your own journal. I found this extremely helpful, because I ended up writing way more than the space in the margin allowed for.
Not only does this magic journal allow you to keep track of threats, encounters, and ways to stay alive within the castle – it also ends up being a written record of your experience playing through this module.
Ghost of Lion Castle Rules
The Ghost of Lion Castle assumes that you have some working knowledge of basic Dungeons and Dragons. In fact, the rules section states that you’ll need the Basic Rules set to play this module. However, if you have a working understanding of OSR games or old school D&D, you’ll likely be able to play this module with little additional information.
The Ghost of Lion Castle comes with 19 different rules statements on how to play through the module solo. Important rules include mapping, the magic journal, combat, wandering monsters, the ever-important monster morale stat, how magic works differently within the castle, healing and resting, and what happens if your character becomes defeated.
I found the rules for this module quite easy to follow.
While the game is lethal and a bit stubborn, the morale checks for the monsters balance things out pretty well. I never felt there was a part of the adventure that was completely unfair – but there were points that seemed restrictive when I wanted my character to try something. I’ll talk about how I got around this further down when I talk about tips for playing this module.
It is worth noting that this module is designed for your character to die multiple times. This turned out to be really fun for me, because of the magic journal mechanic. I greatly enjoyed sending my new character into the castle, with a journal in-hand, and watching them succeed where my previous character failed.
It’s also important to note, that all previously perished characters still have all their gear. So, if a past character started with an awesome item, or found one in the castle, your current character can find them and pick the item up. In other words, your dead characters and all their gear is persistent.
Ghost of Lion Castle Gameplay
The module works similar to a choose-your-own adventure book, or solo RPG gamebook. You’ll read the prompts, refer to the map, and decide what to do or where to go next. Then you’ll go to the next entry, read what is happening in the story, resolve any traps, monsters, or other encounters. If your character is still alive, you’ll do it all over again.
Honestly, the gameplay is pretty fun and quick to get through from entry to entry. There are about 25 pages of gameplay, and I found it relatively easy to flip between pages, reading the entries as my character pushed deeper and deeper into the castle. Flipping pages really didn’t seem like a chore in this one.
I did create extra copies of the maps, and had loose-leaf paper for my magic journal. I didn’t want to mark up my physical copy of the game.
As I’ve mentioned above, the best part of the game is the magic journal. I found that i started having a lot more fun playing, when I spent more time journaling about my current character’s experience.
My Tips for Playing the Ghost of Lion Castle
This module is incredibly fun to play solo. However, there are a few adjustments I made to tune the gameplay to my liking. I suggest checking them out below, to get a good idea if these will work for you!
Character Creation
I created a simple workflow to make creating characters for this module easier. I also tuned it to my difficulty preferences. For example, I eventually started generating characters with a random magical item from the Dungeon Master’s Guide.
You can download my Lion Castle Character Workflow here!
I reference two additional books in the workflow above – the Player’s Handbook, and the Dungeon Master’s Guide. As an alternative to using my character creation workflow, the module comes with 6 pre-generated magic user characters. You can start playing with one of those and avoid character creation completely.
I would encourage you to roll for character proficiencies as well. I found these really useful when playing, especially when using common sense (see below).
Common Sense
There are some entries within the module that won’t let your character complete an action unless you have a specific item or spell. Think in terms of allowing an action if your character can fly, but not if they have the “jump” spell – or allowing your character to climb a surface if they have the magical Rope of Climbing, but not if they have a rope with a grappling hook.
In cases like these, I just decided to use common sense and allow my character to do the action if they had a reasonably similar item in their inventory. I gave advantage on anything my character was proficient in. This expanded the creativity I could use when playing the game. Otherwise, it felt a bit too much like those point and click adventure games, which is too restrictive for my taste in a tabletop RPG.
Advantage on Certain Checks
I added one more rule for my characters after my failed second playthrough.
If there are encounters, obstacles, or saving throws that a previous character had written about in the magic journal, I gave my current character advantage (roll twice, keep the highest result) for these dice rolls.
This isn’t part of the rules within the module, but it made sense to me. If my character is aware of a trap via the magic journal, why shouldn’t they have advantage related to avoiding or disarming the trap? This not only made the castle a bit easier to explore, but it also put more emphasis on recording my character experience accurately in the magic journal.
The one area I didn’t do this, was any monster or creature related encounters. For me, this made the castle-crawl feel more dynamic, and less static.
Overall Thoughts
I loved playing through B:SOLO The Ghost of Lion Castle. For me, it was absolutely worth the $25 I spent on the physical copy a few years back.
If you’re interested in playing, I’d highly suggest you check it out here at DriveThruRPG – currently only $5.
The fact that I was able to play a rogue-like, journaling, solo RPG that was designed 41 years ago is absolutely amazing. There are times the module shows its age, but my tips above help avoid those pitfalls.
If you like old school Dungeons and Dragons, if you’ve wanted to try old school Dungeons and Dragons but don’t have a group, or if you like solo or journaling RPGs that use D&D rules, you’ll love The Ghost of Lion Castle.
My Experience
By the way – if you want to follow my experience of playing The Ghost of Lion Castle, you can do so in the second half of my video below (it’s marked as SPOILERS).
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