Review – The Wolves of Langston

The Wolves of Langston is a 5E adventure from Obvious Mimic, a website that sells D&D accessories, gear, and adventures that can be played solo or with a party. Their adventures can be downloaded directly as a PDF or purchased as soft or hardcover books. In this particular adventure, the player is drawn into a small town where a woman was recently killed in a most violent fashion, and the mayor asks you to investigate. So is it worth the price of a download, or are you better off doing something else if your D&D party cancels? Read on for the review!

Content Guide

As with most D&D or Pathfinder games, The Wolves of Langston (WoL hereafter) has combat, danger, monsters, magic, curses, undead, possibility of death or injury in-game, and math. The upside of a solo adventure is you don’t have to worry about the DM doing something weird and off-script, however.

Review

WoL starts in classic adventuring style – you’re the new one in town, and expendable, so the Mayor asks you to poke around and investigate so she’s insulated from any of your exploits. Players will follow the different prompts in the story, then make decisions based on either what they want to do next or if they passed the different dice roll prompts. Essentially it’s D&D mashed up with Choose Your Own Adventure, with the added bonus that you can click on the next prompt and it will take you straight there. 

The story plays out over 6 chapters plus a playable epilogue, and while you could easily sprint through it in one long sitting, I chose to spread it out over a week and then some. Each chapter should only take around 30 minutes to complete, depending on your reading speed and success with skill check rolls. On that – if I had to do it over again, I would definitely make a character with much higher Wisdom and Intelligence bonuses. I got a +1 from my character’s 13 in each of those, but many if not most of the skill checks fell under skills governed by Wisdom or Intelligence, with a rare few being asked of Dexterity or Strength. I don’t remember running into any checks involving Constitution or Charisma. On the plus side, some of the checks let you choose which skill to use between two options. Also, players are mercifully given the option to bank Inspiration points, which can then be used as a reroll of a failure. These are usually granted for doing something good or significant in the story. 

As WoL goes on, players get to know different significant NPCs in the town, from the Mayor to the Druid who lives outside of town and the Herbalist who was in love with the victim. You start to get a complete picture of who she was by the end of the story, but I have to admit that my accusation of the murderer was a little bit of a shot-in-the-dark. Had I succeeded on a few earlier skill checks, I would have obtained the necessary clues to make it less so. Out of curiosity I checked a few other paths in the story at that point, and the writing does a good job of pointing you down the correct path should you Scooby-Doo the wrong person. However your rewards will suffer (you get less gold) if you accuse someone innocent. 

Overall I was satisfied with my time in WoL and even though it is essentially an adventure on-rails, it doesn’t feel that way most of the time by letting the player choose the order in which they complete most events in a given chapter. Also, players are free to visit the General Store anytime they’re in town should they need to stock up or resupply. Giving the players the ability to explore, skip, or revisit places at their own pace makes it feel more like a fleshed out adventure, not just a book to be read from end to end. Briefly on that: if you decide to play it, do your best to only read the entry you’re supposed to, because you will spoil it for yourself if you let your eyes wander. All in all I was happy with my purchase of The Wolves of Langston, and would happily recommend it to anyone looking for a solo alternative. 

Digital files were purchased with the reviewer’s own funds from Obvious Mimic Press – https://obviousmimic.com