Haxen

This is I guess the third of my not-review reviews, in combination with a play report.

Haxen is an interesting solo game. Most solo games tend to follow a handful of mechanics, or get fairly complicated; this one is mechanically simple and pretty unique.

I play a lot of solo games when travelling alone. This one is pretty great for that as it is a slim 8 pages including the cover; it plays quickly, and it needs nothing aside from a pencil, eraser and maybe some additional paper. No dice and no cards.

I didn't play this for a while because I was a bit sceptical of a diceless solo game. Dice or other forms of randomness in solo games tend to play the pretty important role of adding in some external contributions to the game; for keeping it from being just a matter of writing a story (which is fine, just not what I'm trying to do.)

What it does instead is have you mark off runes on a matrix; the next result is the next rune but in some cases you can jump ahead and mark any rune. The runes correspond roughly to a full success, a partial success and a failure; full successes are rare. Everything is done by marking a rune, the matrix is relatively small, and if it fills up, you die, making it a fast, tense game. There are limited ways to clear used runes while on an expedition, and on returning safely, there are a lot more ways to do so.

I also have generally had trouble playing more mechanical, delve-y types of games solo, I have found they tend to feel overly mechanical, and not really capture my imagination or really make me care about the stakes. I've generally preferred playing systems not intended to be played solo in those cases, or solo journaling games. I did really enjoy this one though - probably due to the mechanics adding to the tension more effectively.

I played two rounds of expeditions. An interesting side effect of the ability to erase runes between exploration sessions is that your chances of success will go way up the second time, because you are probably clearing the good runes. However, you have much fewer runes - and probably a few scars - and so you have even less time to succeed. My second expedition ended up feeling like effectively an epilogue to the first.

Between expeditions, anything not named (which takes runes) disappears. I wasn't the biggest fan of that mechanic. Especially given how short each expedition was, and the fact that naming things literally shortens your life.

As a side note this is described as being based on blades in the dark, which I find funny, because it is so much its own unique thing.

Thoughts on hacks

Some things I might try doing to hack this in the future/make it more campaign oriented:

• Have a separate rune matrix that can only be used for names and for anchors (forms of inspiration, like a spark table)
  • or maybe split things into a GM and a PC matrix. The GM one would also have lore, weather, locations, encounters and prophecy. This would mean that the more unique events are not competing against the player's chance of success - as it is, if you encounter more interesting things, you will probably fail at dealing with them.
• Have a bigger set of runes, and the ability to clear more marked runes between expeditions
• Nothing is cleared between expeditions but you can enter at any part of the map

At some point here I am basically proposing another game I guess - but I think this rune mechanic is interesting enough that it is worth doing. This game leaves me with a strong desire to play around with these mechanics more. Are there other games that use these? I guess it is creative commons so I could hack it. I think.

The story

The ranger Lazen, equipped with Rope and Bone, sets off into the Requiem to follow a bird with blood-red markings.

It flies through skyscrapers. Lazen chases it, seeing glimpses of its plumage on the broken blue shards in the sky. It isn't until stumbling out of the expanse of skyscrapers that she notices a deep gash on her arm, the same red as the bird.

She has lost sight of the bird, so she bandages it as best she can, and looks around at where she is - a river of crumbling black rock stretching in each direction, a flat scar on the land. A broken green sign says "Orsi".

A large machine sits on it, saying "Ark" on the side. Lazen climbs up and fiddles with it and it starts ponderously moving down the black river.

It travels for a while, and then in the middle of the asphalt is a giant humming obsidian spear coming out of the ground, giving Lazen a horrible headache. She tries to get off the vehicle as it moves closer, but it's picked up speed now.

She notices it's headed straight towards a pit, a giant hole in the ground around the monolith. She tries to jump out and falls. She grabs onto something - a lever - and the machine shudders to a halt - but the lever snaps and she falls, out of the vehicle and into the pit.

The pit crackles with electricity. She sees a red bird, the red bird from before, and sees a way out, grabbing a strange object as she goes that fits in the palm of her hand. Did the bird guide her out?

She follows it, but the air is full of lightning too, and a storm picks up. It has lead her to a crater, which perhaps is safer from the lighting? And in the crater is a tablet, saying - "Find Gant, the sorcerer. He can help."

After waiting out the storm, she heads back. This must be what the bird was to lead her to.

Part 2

She returns in triumph, but wounded. She thinks she can maybe at most take one more trip into the Requium, but she must find Gant.

Some time passes and there is a new prophecy. He is among a field of flowers.

She heads off in a direction where she has heard rumours of flowers. It is desert, however. She travels as fast as she can but finds herself weak and dizzy from the heat, from not enough water. Drained deeply, she knows she can't go much farther. And yet just beyond the deserts she sees a building. A church? A group of people there, who worship the sorcerer, Gant. She stumbles to their door and they look at her impassively.

Eventually a man appears in robes. She asks if he is Gant, she says she hears he can help. (memetic hazard, a bit vague on how this applies) But he just raises his arms and says something, and somehow the world is reversed in some way. The crowd is gone, she is back in the desert, with a handful of flowers. She doesn't remember why she is there.

She stumbles back home. She is greeted as though she returned triumphantly but she has no idea why. She says she walked through the desert and found flowers and they are talking about how they will send a group to go treat with Gant but she has no idea who Gant is. But when she says that it is as though they don't hear her.