You're going through the mountain when suddenly you encounter orcs. You draw your sword and charge at them. The orcs stagger drunkenly, but you set upon them with your sword and make quick work of them regardless.

Chronicles of Arax is the sort of fast-paced adventure game where you can sit down and enjoy a game with enough depth to keep your brain working and enough simplicity to get done in a relatively short amount of time.

It's free, too, for crying out loud! The worst that can happen is that you wind up liking it and then buying some of the supplements, or don't and then you just ignore it.

Simple and practical. I like the original / less common ideas that go into the items, e.g. Infinity Amulet, and the slight twist when translated to game play, e.g. with Cheetah-skin Boots and Jarn's Map.

Solo gaming, as with Chronicles of Arax, can free the player from the complexities and limitations of single-classing technicalities.

Spotted minor error: S'spar: should read 'known for'.

After downloading and printing Chronicles of Arax, I read through the rules (a few pages). They seem pretty simple enough. The characteristics are dice based (d4, d6, d8, etc). The dice based characteristics remind me of Deadlands, etc (just a little). The PDF is approximately 17 pages long, and only a few pages for rules; the rest are the solo quest, equipment, etc. Apart from the odd typing error, it all looks well laid out.

Would definitely like to see a bestiary (zombies, skeletons, Dark Elves, etc). Also more character types as well.

Downloaded the character sheet as well. A little print heavy at the top, so I used a word processor to make my own (a print-lite version).

The Bloodfyre quest does remind me of Fighting Fantasy and similar quest books. But simple to play, doesn't take too long (10-15 minutes approximately).

Would really like to see more expansions, etc. The others look good, and are REALLY cheap ($1 or 62 pence: British money).

Weight system: 12 items. Not bad, but I know some people will argue about weights of items. Maybe a home rule based on the character's Strength dice value.

After playing RPGs for nigh-on 30 years, this is looking good. It does remind me a bit of the Fighting Fantasy books (a little), which isn't a bad thing as I thoroughly enjoyed them.

Keep up the good work Crystal Star. More supplements :-) Much needed.

This does the same for Artifacts and Relics as the expanded Equipment list did for equipment. That is, a must if you want to play the game. I only hope that they will make quest specific lists for powerful items so you can walk away from a quest with a unique item.

Another fun quest in two parts (2 x 20 paragraphs). The only thing I miss is a dedicated Artifacts and Relics table.

This product greatly expand on the equipment you can use in the game, so if intend to play more than the intro quest it is a must. I really liked the easy way it puts a limit on availability on different items. You have to roll over a certain number on a D10 (depending on the item) to find it in the shop, more potent items needing a higher roll.

This new character starts pretty weak but grows powerful as is standard in fantasy RPG. Both new characters are well thought out and have their own twists and play very differently. I can't wait till I see more of them.

This is a heavy melee fighter with some restrictions as he can't use any magic except weapons, armor and potions. Looslely based on the knightly orders of the Crusades he comes with a warhorse, usable in the latest quest. Good value at $1.

A standard character sheet that really should have been included in the core rules. But it is free (as is the core rules) so it is OK.

First my thanks to Crystal Star, for giving me the final nudge to discover the world of reviewing here, without which my avoidant procrastination would remain a powerful ward against my doing so.

I'm rating at 5 stars, since the range spans Bad to Good. (If the range was from Poor to Excellent, then 4 stars would be also correct.)

Spotted just one typo error, I think: at the top of page 4, I think the first characteristic at the top of the right column was meant to simply be 'REFLEXES', and not 'ENDURANCE REFLEXES'.

I welcome solo adventuring. Much of roleplaying is typically associated with group gaming, and loners like me often may not get more satisfaction. We actually prefer to enjoy studying the stories in the game adventures, campaigns and settings, over the grind of statistic blocks and game mechanics. A solo system like Chronicles of Arax actually feels more personal to me, since the focus of gaming material really is on that one player (oneself), instead of just one of many players whose characters are classified and categorised for further technical processing of details, i.e. skills, feats, equipment etc.

The unavoidable simplicity of catering to just one player also has the unexpected endearing effect of ordering more freedom of play. For example, abilities gained with advanced adventuring (Page 8, right column, bottom) do not seem confined exclusively to fighter/rogue/mage/priest types; one's character can happily be more generic jack-of-trades. Similarly with Special Skills, Equipment, and Artifacts and Relics.

Inevitably, comparisons are made to gamebook adventures, one of the most popular being Lone Wolf. This nostalgia returns once one starts perusing the Bloodfyre Mountain adventure contained therein. I like the meta-awareness in solo gaming, where as a player and character you know more information about every encounter entry, akin more to game master, than one of several in a party kept in the dark to the machinations of adventure plot. This awareness gives more satisfaction, I believe, towards completing the adventure. You know better what you're in for, why your character ends up that way, and you have, well, more fun.

But then again, the limitations of solo gaming: would simplicity become boring? Will it turn into slavish dependence on subsequent adventure products? Is there viable and effective scope for a solo player to do-it-yourself, doubling back on oneself in a game master role? That is the challenge whose outcome remains to be seen, with a system like Chronicles of Arax.

Tonight, I am mostly being beaten up by drunk goblins.

Nobody said going into Bloodfyre Mountain would be easy, but man, I'm hitting them, but their armour and general endurance means I'm not making much progress. Not to mention starving in the maze. Surviving the Great Orc in The Fighting Pit would have been nice had I not also been stripped of all of my possessions, but I didn't survive, so crawling naked to the next encounter was a humiliation forewent.

It's tough. I went in alone. It is a "solo" adventure, after all.

I went in three times tonight, each time that healing potion let me down. You really hope for more than a 1 or 2 points from a 1d6 healing potion.

How am I going to get to play The Dark Citadel if I can't get one warrior through the starter quest? How am I going to have the pleasure of buying new weapons and armour, ascend levels and gain new abilities, if I get clobbered by a drunk orc or poisoned by a shaman?

How? By playing it again. That's how.

I think I'm addicted. It's fun and fairly random and after a short while familiar encounters become really personal.

Because of the way the numbered sections are laid out, when you first look at text in the actual adventures in the Chronicles of Arax range, you'd be forgiven for thinking that you were looking at a solo gamebook or a linear list of encounters (okay I did, but I get a little blinded by the phrase "solo" these days, as I rediscover Fighting Fantasy, Lone Wolf and Fabled Lands...). It's neither. The experience of play is closer to an immersive, well written, random dungeon generator - without having to lay out any room tiles. A die is rolled - the result matches a text section- an area is explored or a beast is encountered, sometimes there's special treasure, but with each new exploratory die roll a number is added based of the number of successful encounters prior to that. This means that despite considerable randomness that progress towards the quest's goal or final area (Section "20") is inevitable. Unless, of course, you end up in the Maze of Goraz and the whole bleeding thing is reset to zero, grrr. grin I think I had a lot of unlucky rolls tonight, but in a way it feels like playing Doom (I) for the first time - easy to pick up and play so you don't mind restarting when you set off an arrow trap.

The game mechanics are beautifully simple. Opposing die rolls, ability checks, with simple modifiers for weapons and armour. Strengths and weakness are represented by different types of dice. Strength d6, Magic d4, Endurance d6, for example. After playing with the standard "Adventurer" template, I'm now itching to try out other character types, like the Knight of the Steel Fist. Surely, he starts with better armour? What's his "Fighting Skill" like?

The core rules and starter adventure are free, expanded material has a very small charge. In the Chronicles of Arax core rules you will get guaranteed playing time of many hours.

In many ways it reminded me of playing Warhammer Quest on my own (more so than playing a Fighting Fantasy gamebook for instance), or maybe even Talisman (but without the board, which I know is a very odd thing to say).

What's interesting about Chronicles of Arax is that technically you don't even need a table to play on, provided there's a corner you roll dice in and something to lean on to write on the character sheet.

Get yourself or a friend the free Core Rules (which includes a character and Bloodfyre Mountain), along with the character sheet and try it out. There's a very high possibility that you'll want to buy the supplemental material, but to be honest, you'd still be spending a lot less than on many other game systems - even if Crystal Star triples their current number of publications.

Format: clearly written and well presented in a two column format - it has a very professional polish, and I love some of the eroded fonts, which might be a tribute to earlier game systems.

I might have to say a few more things about this range as I work through them. :)

Right, let's get back in there ... Let's hunt some Orc!

Bb (Reproduced in parts at "Adventures and Shopping" http://bit.ly/rpgblog )

A very nice game you can play practically everywhere.

The quest is well done, and the mechanism of the codewords good. I'll love to see a personalized loot table for every adventure: finding a cool particular item can drive me to play one quest instead than another one. For the price, it deserves a solid 5/5.

This is a pretty fun adventure, it is composed of two different twenty part quest and both are pretty fun in how they are put together, I liked the first part a little better as it was more of an overland quest than anything. Neither seems to have a "lost all equipment" or "monster vastly superior to you sitting around to kill you" for you to land on either.

My only issue is that there wasn't any new artifacts to roll for on the adventure, what this means is that I kept rolling on items I had already received from the first adventure and when I got an encounter telling me to roll again I wasn't too excited about it.

This is an excellent entry-level product that is easy to learn and teach. Based around the common d6, you won't have to go buy a plethora of gaming dice just to play, and you won't need an entire evening to explain the rules. (It took me less than one commercial break to explain it to my husband.) As a starter game, you won't get the fancier aspects of role-playing games. There are no "prestige classes" or specialists, just a Knight, a Wizard, or an Adventurer (similiar to the Rogue class found in many RPGs). There is very little mechanically to customize your character, so one wizard will look like the next at this stage. However, remember that this is only a beginner kit. But if you just want a quick game on the spur of a moment, or else want something not overly complicated to introduce children (and hesitant adults) to cooperative story-telling or RPGs, you'll find all you need in this game.

Experienced DMs will have no problem taking this rules-light game and adding their own flavor and complexity, and some may even appreciate a game that doesn't test their ability to flip through tomes of rules, cross-reference charts, or memorize lengthy tables. Needless to say, gamers who favor a more complex system may find this to be very light. There is a promise, however, of an Advanced and Expert edition coming down the pipe, so stay tuned!

(PS: The cover art did not download for me, either. Maybe something in the settings?)

This is a very simple solo fighting game with a very elegant playing system. Just the right thing to play when you have a few minutes to spare.

You start with what is a pregenerated character (more are available separately) and play the intro adventure included in the rules. The rules themselves are just 5 pages long, the rest of the PDF are lists of equipment et al and the adventure.

The adventure consists of 20 paragrafs which encounter in a semirandomized manner that works very well.

I must say I like the game, because it is an simpel and very playable game.