paizo.com - Party of One -- The Maduban Saga, Book 1: Leda (OGL) PDF

Welcome to the Party of One: the most fun you can have by yourself! Party of One books are solo adventures where you make the important choices, roll the dice, and try to stay alive.

Leda is the first d20-based interactive novel.

The first book in the Maduban Saga, Leda centers on a young elven arcane apprentice in a human city who discovers adventure comes in many varieties. With the help of her friends and the reader's choices, she may succeed in staying alive, killing the bad guys, taking their treasure, and telling "stories" about how she was the heroine. You'll thoroughly enjoy the twists and turns in this 240-page novel, packed with reader choices.

Reading a Party of One book from cover to cover won't get you anywhere but confused. Start out at number 1 and then follow the instructions at the bottom of the paragraph, which informs you where to click next. For example:
>If Leda decides to go west, go to 123.
>If Leda decides to go east, go to 96.
When you click on "go to 123," you'll be sent to the page containing section 123. We make clicking fun, although somewhat hazardous.

If you're familiar with the d20 system, the resolution methods will be intuitive. If you're not, don't worry. You don't need to know how to play d20 games to enjoy a Party of One book. Simply roll the dice as indicated.

For d20 mechanic savvy readers, you'll occasionally be given a choice to run a combat yourself. Choosing to do so will take you to a combat appendix where creature stat blocks and a starting position map set up the action. All combat appendices end with options that bring you back into the story.

Author: Suzi Yee

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Choose Your Own Adventure!
Reviewer: Sect
Wed, Feb 13, 2008, 10:21 AM

Party of One is a series of... well, it appears one book, where you go on a solo adventure. If you've ever read a Choose Your Own Adventure style book, this is basically what it is.

Your character is a fledgling wizard, Leda, who embarks on an adventure with her mentor. At certain points, you have the chance to take differing actions, such as "go east", "go west", "attack the darkness", and so on and so forth. Depending on what you do, your first time through the book will be wildly different than the next read through.

What sets this book apart from all the CYOA books I read as a child, though, is how they encorporate the 3rd Edition rules into the book. Say, for example, you're asked to make a spot check; if your check is above the DC, you go to a different page than if you roll below the DC. Though Leda's character sheet is in the back of the book, they include the modifier in the text portion for ease of use. Also, when a battle occurs, you have the option of either doing the battle yourself, where you then go to one of the appendices that has all the information that you need, or you can just read along without participating yourself.

It's a decent adventure, and pretty entertaining. Well worth five dollars, in any case.