Withered Kingdom

Prepare your sheet, make plot decisions, roll the dice, fight, equip, imagine what will happen, consult the oracle… because now you are the protagonist. If you are reading this paragraph, it means that you have decided to enter Black Sphynx, a collection of books designed for solo roleplaying.

This full-color book is a visual oracle whose main purpose is to give you the opportunity to live an incredibly ‘replayable’ adventure. As such, it will be in some ways unlike anything you’ve seen before. In short, what distinguishes this oracle from many others is its ability to create a very visual story. As a result, you will travel through a world that will always be different, set against the backdrop of a goal-based adventure.

So, from a starting point, you will shape the game universe by going through different pages.

As you progress, you will discover images that will present you with a variety of challenges. These may be physical, mental, social or resource-related. Successfully overcoming one of these challenges can earn you Action Points, so that you can progress from one act to the next until you reach the final challenge and end the adventure.

If you are already used to using an oracle, you will find that this one will guide you quite a lot, giving you the necessary guidelines to enter the world presented to you and live your story. To play this book, you will also need the first volume of the Black Sphynx collection, entitled The Sibyl’s Scrolls. This is an extensive collection of oracles, easy and quick to use, which will be very useful as you move through the game universe.

In this way, we will use The Sibyl’s Scrolls to provide narrative, description, additional information and answers to the events of your adventure. Don’t worry if you have any questions about this now, as they will be answered throughout the rules. On the other hand, if you have never used an oracle for solo roleplaying before, the next few lines will give you the basic information you need to create a great story.

What is an oracle?

According to the dictionary, an oracle is an answer given by a deity to a question asked through an intermediary in a sacred place. This was especially true in Greco-Roman antiquity, through the so-called sibyls. Hence the title of the first volume of the collection. On this basis, we could say that the oracle would be very similar for us, since it will answer our questions, so that whatever it tells us will become ‘real’ in the game.

This is because, as explained above, the oracle is presented in The Sibyl’s Scrolls, a piece that acts like a narrator or director in a group role-play. Thanks to this, the oracle will reveal what is happening, offer a lot of information and tell us whether something is true or not. To get an answer, you must first ask a question, which in multiplayer roleplaying would be answered by the narrator. You should note, however, that there are different types of question, which we will divide into two large blocks. The first are questions that can only be answered with ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. Rolling 1d100 at the oracle (100-sided dice or two 10-sided dice), as explained in the introduction to The Sibyl’s Scrolls, will give you the answer, which you must interpret and complete. The reason for this is that the oracle can answer with different options, among which you will find examples like these: ‘No, but…’, ‘Yes, but not now’, ‘Perhaps’, and so on.

Please note that any questions you ask the oracle, although they can be of any nature, must be within the logic of the game. Here are some examples: Is that stranger looking for me? Is it cold? Does it smell of smoke? You then roll 1d100 in The Sibyl’s Scrolls and, depending on the result, you get one or the other answer. As explained above, we can also ask questions of other characters we meet, but they must be able to answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ in the same way. Are you OK? Are you hungry? Are you following me?

In a second block, we will find other types of questions that offer very different information, such as a name, an action, a description… A detailed explanation can be found in the introduction to The Sibyl’s Scrolls.

Character sheet:

Download the character sheet

Icons

Throughout the book, you will find everything explained using icons, which are associated with pictures. You will understand everything better if you read the rules, where you will find different icons representing different features, sections, points, etc. When you reach the end of the rules, you will find a list of all the icons. You will also be able to download this information from the author’s website so that you can print it together with the character sheet. In this way, you will have a list of the icons at your fingertips, so that you can consult their meaning at any time.