One-on-One

[GenreFiend]

Have any of y'all ever done a one-on-one campaign? Not a one-shot, or running one character from a group, but an entire campaign consisting of one player and the GM? How did it work for you? What "tricks", did you have to use to make it work? The reason I ask is because a friend of mine and I are considering trying this. He would run a Star Wars game for me, and I would run a D&D game for him. So, anyone out there done it? Was it a triumph or a tragedy, or something in between? Any feed-back is welcome. Thanks in advance.

[The Horror]

Two friends of mine did just that for a year while living in shitty town far away.

The one that has returned to our home town describes it as the most painful roleplaying experience/s of his life.


The Horror

[Nightshade]

I did this with my wife for about 6 months. I actually think that it worked (though it was in a far superior system than d20 :D ). The only thing about it is that when it is 1 to 1, you should base the entire game around only that character. DO NOT RUN MODULES. The were written assuming multiple capabilities that you simply will not have with a single character.

Make sure that you know what it is that the player wants. This is important all of the time, but when you have only one character, there can be no attrition. The only way to have fun is to make sure that you know exactly what it is that you both want. If you run a game that you and your friend like, but he runs a game that really sucks to you (but would be great for him), you'll end up playing your game all the time.

Hope this helps.

Nightshade

[Uncle Shecky]

I DM'd a one-on-one AD&D campaign for about 3 years. My friend and I couldn't drive yet and lived in the middle of nowhere, so we just had each other.

The game worked pretty well: he played multiple characters (as many as 5 at one point), so there was a lot of "group think" and no role playing between the PCs, but we did role play interactions with NPCs.

Most of the group games I've played in are of 2 types:
1. straight-ahead, get-through-the-module crawls
2. stories the DM/GM wrote and is now walking the PCs through

Our one-on-one campaign involved a lot more cooperation between player and DM. It was more of a story that we wrote together (which I guess is how most good campaigns are meant to be, but I've never had the privillege of playing in that kind of group game). My friend told me what he wanted for each of his characters (e.g. his nordic-themed ranger wanted to reclaim his family's throne) and what he wanted for the group in general (to work as agents of the ruler of a city state or kingdom). I then wrote out the adventures based on his goals, so the stories were about how the PCs accomplished (or didn't accomplish) their goals.

The set-up was loose enough that I could take them on just about any adventure I felt like doing ("the Lord High Mayor of Irongate wants you guys to help instigate a rebellion in Ratik") and he could introduce subquests that met his characters' personal goals between major adventures ("after we destroy the temple of Bhagtru, the ranger wants to visit his homeland. It's not too far away").

So, you've got to share a lot of ideas with each other. As GM, you loose some freedom, but the player gains a great deal, and that keeps him interested. Boredom is obviously the real killer of these campaigns: lose that 1 player and all your work is wasted.

Again, I've heard many group games have this same kind of cooperation between players and GM, but most in my experience don't. The GM sets up the story, the players play along. If they don't get to play the kind of adventure they want, they hope the next one is more to their liking, they quit the game, or they GM the next campaign and do things their way.

Nightshade mentioned running a one-on-one campaign with only 1 PC. I know many GMs won't allow players to run more than one character or just prefer to have 1 player for 1 character, but I think multiple characters kept my player interested longer. He would sometimes focus on one PC more than the others because this one had particularly intersting sub-plots going on or had gained great new abilities or items, but eventually his interest in that character would wane. Luckily, he had other characters in the same campaign that he could turn his attention to. YMMV.

[Polaris]

Very good points, Uncle Shecky.

I have been involved in both group games and 1-1 games (as both a player and a GM).

The group games usually would get into the dungeon crawl variety (first 30 minutes is 'move to contact'... then a few hours of fighting, running, fighting, looting, etc... then about 30 minutes of dividing up the spoils, and planning for where we are going to go fight next). Character development, if it happened, was largely flavor in the background.

The 1-1 would usually focus on character development. We would get more insight into the 'person behind the mask'... The Clark Kent or Peter Parker persona. The adventuring was flavor in the character's life (a favorite is to play the superhero that wants a normal college life, but occasionally has his/her life obstructed by needing to out to save someone).

Both have their strengths. I would agree that it is quite important that the GM and Player have a good idea of what the other wants in the story. The characters need to be 3 dimensional, and have the ability to grow and develop. Then, treating it as a 'collaborative storytelling' of sorts, as indicated above, is a huge plus.

As always, YMMV.

Have fun!
Polaris

[Vondy]

I have run extensive solo-games. If the player and GM prefer role playing and character driven plots, or detailed investigations it works really well.

The one drawback is that the player only has one head to work with, so the efflugence of insights and ideas a table of gamers would come up with isn't present.

As such the GM has to have good descriptive skills and be able to communicate their intent clearly. It doesn't hurt to be liberal with hints, too.

In addition, it helps for the player to have a basic knowledge of the skills their characters posses, and a clear understanding of the genre conventions in play.

Something else to consider is that characters have to be better rounded than they normally would be, but that gives the opportunity for players to play more powerful characters, or headline characters they ordinarily wouldn't be allowed to play in a game: Superman, Batman, James Bond, Dr. Strange, et al.

I've found that latter part to be the real appeal of solo-games...

[Curry Wolf]

I have been running, and playing in Solo games for as long as I have been gaming. About one third of my active games are solo games typically. Often a solo game will be a testing ground for a game I open to other players later when the game is better fleshed out, as is the case for my current Hero 5th game I call Metamorphosis, which is a modern Superhero game which started solo for the other player who reffs in my primary group. I let another player in after a bit, and it did notgo well, booted her, reworked the story a bit,and opened the game for all my regular players, leaving the original solo character as the primary character, and working the other players in as the created their characters. All my regulars are quite happy with this, and it started as a solo game.

I always run at least one solo game due to the work schedual of my best player, who is the most consistant person to ref games in my group after I do. He returns the compliment, and we get some good ideas for group games this way, and play out a few bad ones in short time, spairing the other players the bad ideas... usually.

Between us, we have six game slots per week, and five games for the moment, three slots for the group, and two for us to test our ideas on each other, ect. Whe have been following a patern like this through the last four years solid, excluding things like player composition changes, which happen about once every six months.

Solo games are both a good idea for spending time with friends on messed up scheduals, and places to field ideas, as well as being very cathartic on occasion.

I tried to gex my ex-wife to endulge in some solo gaming, but it never worked out.
On the other hand I am now setting up a Solo game for my roommate who has a graveyard work scheduel, and keeps the same hours on her days off, but it is often a toss-up between playing and caching up on video tapes accumulated over the week.

Of course if Solo gaming is all you ever get a chance to do, you risk loosing the ability to game with groups well, and the fun which that can bring.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Yup. I've got a solo Champions game that's been going for almost 3 years now. Admittedly it only gets played a few times a year (3 or 4) but when it does get played, we're talking marathon sessions of 10-12 hours at a time for 5 or 6 days in a row. (The player lives in a different state now so only gets to visit a few times a year.)

Overall it has worked really well. As others have said:

1) Base the campaign around that character/player

2) KNOW what that player wants and be prepared to give it to them

3) Be prepared with an alternate means of giving vital info to the character if the player hits a mental block, WITHOUT it seeming too much like GM ex Machina.

4) Be prepared to run a higher-powered campaign. Even if you have several (or lots) of high-powered NPCs around, a lone PC *needs* to be more high powered than usual.


In my case, the solo game is set in the Legion of Super-Heroes (DC Comics 30th century galaxy-spanning setting) so high-powered characters work really well, plus there's LOTS of interesting NPCs for the player to interact with.

[Robert Harrison]

I ran a one-on-one game one time. The character was one of the Kuei-Jin (Asian vampires) from White Wolf's Kindred of the East, converted to HERO.

Because the character was very tough and could regenerate damage, I didn't need to worry too much about him getting incapacitated during play. I had the player make a back-up character to run anyway.

The biggest problem I had was the rate at which I had to prepare material (plots, NPCs, maps, etc.). One player can go through a plot much faster than 3-6 players.

[tkdguy]

My experiences doing this were not so good. I ran a Castle Falkenstein with a power gamer who wanted to turn it into AD&D. I eventually got tired of all the bickering and him trying to get his way, so I just laid down the rules and refused to compromise. Other people came back to the game, so it wasn't a problem anymore, except when the power gamer decided to GM. All our characters almost always seemed to end up dead when he did.

[zornwil]

I've done it. In each case there were Followers or NPCs to give the player a little extra help. I would say the games went pretty well and we all had fun. Oh, well, my wife and I did some 1-on-1 HERO but she really did it as a pity move since we had moved to a city where we both knew no one; that went well although not so well she was interested to continue when a group got involved (well, that's not entirely true, I was a little more anal about her character and her learning the rules, setting an unfairly higher bar for her than was realistic).

Anyway, I'm just adding here that like some others on this thread it went well. I agree with much of their comments, particularly re being liberal with hints and ensuring it's all about them, not worrying about whether they have an undue impact on the world, since in the context they are the only one you have to worry about, it's going no further than they alone can execute, as opposed to a team where letting them go too far gets much crazier.

[Uncle Shecky]

Originally posted by Robert Harrison
... The biggest problem I had was the rate at which I had to prepare material (plots, NPCs, maps, etc.). One player can go through a plot much faster than 3-6 players.

I forgot about that, but I had the same experience. One player who knows what he wants will move through your material so much faster than a group. I had to prepare well in advance.

The upside is, once you know what the player likes (e.g. NPC intrigue, bar fights, looting mini-adventures), you can plug in simple ad lib scenarios when you need to. I eventually learned that my player loved little heist stories, so whenever he got ahead of my campaign plans, I let him know there was a wizard's tower nearby. He always went for it, and I avoided having to ad lib significant aspects of the main campaign storyline.