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Human Paragon 3
2011-02-25, 04:44 PM
Back from the dead! This is part 8 of a not-so-weekly series of DM theory threads.

Juris's DMing Series Master TOC Thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=8392687#post8392687)

This "week's" topic is DMing solo campaigns - that is to say, one DM and one player. D&D, and most other RPGs, are built with a party of players in mind. Encounters are balanced for a party and each character type brings something different to the table.

As a DM, being able to focus 100% of your efforts on just one player opens up some serious RPing options. You can cater the story and encounters specifically to their taste, allow the player/character to enthusiastically go after their goals, put the player in the driver's seat, etc. However, running a game for one player is a unique challenge. Do you make your player play an "all-rounder" self-reliant character? Give them a large cast of NPCs to back them up? Or let them have it and see where the chips fall?


As always with these threads, you are encouraged to share anecdotes, thoughts, and practical advice. I'll be here to guide it along.

Thrawn183
2011-02-25, 05:04 PM
Well, I did DM a short campaign for a non-gestalt duo. I found that the most important thing was to make options available to the PC's in their surrounding campaign world. I made a secondary monetary system which was favors from other adventurers. If the PC's found themselves unable to complete a mission, I generally had the consequence that they had to find some other character that had what they needed, but that they would owe them a favor in the future.

It supported the idea of the players stopping and thinking about how their fairly limited characters would try and and actually accomplish a fairly diverse set of tasks. It also made for some real hilarity when each player owed their life to two separate (and different) organizations and really had to stop to think about who their character owed the most loyalty to/what they would do in a particular situation.

Edit: Long story short, it becomes fairly obvious quite quickly what foes a character can solo and which they can't. What you're looking for is how a character handles running into a diverse set of challenges.

TinselCat
2011-02-25, 05:12 PM
I just ran into this challenge myself. In fact, I had to cobble together a solution very recently. I ended up with this:

I allowed the player to create two characters. It allows for flanking bonuses, spreading out attackers between two people, and a wider variety of character types. He went with a fighter for melee and ranger for distance, and rolled really well stats for both of them (not a single negative modifier - the dice loved him). They specialize in different skills as well, with some overlap like spot and listen. This also allows him, like a more normal party, the ability to multitask.

Since it would be so hard to keep OOC and IC knowledge separated between the two characters, I invented an empathetic link between them. That way if they walk into separate rooms and one gets attacked, I won't have to forbid the player from having his other character run to the rescue. That would have been difficult and frustrating to deal with.

Since this was the first session, and it wasn't long, I didn't give him any NPC backup. I might fit someone into the party later, but as a purely background role. He's interested in multiclassing at later levels, so I'll see what he wants to do before adding a NPC for a specific role. It'll probably be a caster, though.

Combat was messy but survivable (he started at level one and went all the way to two in one sitting), and I was happy with the results.

However, this is the first time I've ever tried something like this. It worked once, but I'm interested to see what others have done and what to look for in the future.

Land Outcast
2011-02-25, 05:13 PM
Well, I typically improvise wholesale, so for starters I'll point out problems in there:improvisation is quite hard to pull off as a DM for mainly two reasons:

The player doesn't have any other player to discuss tactics/opinions with, therefore the game will move faster (a fast game is good, but for me 2-3 players is fast, 1 is too fast). This causes a shortage of DM buffering time (typically allowed by internal roleplay/disagreements in any group of 3+ players).

Excepting the all-rounder the likes of Solomon Kane, Elminster, Simbad, Ulysses, etc... you have to come up with varied challenges for a specialized character, which is difficult. (That's why I'd prefer DMing a dual classed character with high powered point buy).

------------

Now, there's another problem which comes to mind, but it is of purely theorethical nature to a good DM: what if the player just misses the three leads you gave? what if he doesn't think of trying to capture a giant ram to get off the mountains?
Well, hell... Perhaps I'm being too full of myself, but I think I'm a good DM: If the player comes with any half-plausible option I might just let him run with it.

Just some thoughts there...

boomwolf
2011-02-25, 05:20 PM
I find it amusing to see a character that clearly CANT solve everything alone struggles to do exactly that.

Naturally it requires to often underpower the opposition because some threats are not in the spectrum of things your player is built to deal with...

Akal Saris
2011-02-25, 05:46 PM
Back when I started DMing, I used to ONLY DM single player games, in the same shared world, so that the things one PC did would have an effect on another PC's action. Periodically when schedules matched, some of the PCs would play a session together before returning to separate games.

I think I was running 4 separate games simultaneously at the height of this period, and even though all 4 were D&D 2E, it was very interesting how different each game was. One PC (straight fighter) was very focused on setting up and running his own castle and kingdom. Another was a wandering paladin who attracted a bizarre cast of NPC allies and traveled from city to city, looking for evil to smite in simple "do-good" quests. Another was a ftr/mage who reveled in leading an army against the main campaign villains, and spent most of his time doing a semi-war game. And the last played a human mage/thief who worked as a sort of freedom-fighter, liberating slaves and fighting against evil despots and the like.

The wonderful advantage of 2-person games is that the PCs get very into their characters and the gaming world. There's less group-chat about the latest movie that came out or whatever, and a single 6-hour session can involve a huge number of events. I ran those games 10 years ago, but when I meet up with any of those friends, it's something that comes up nearly every time we meet. It's really incredible how deep those games have remained in their memories. It's an in-joke between me and several of them that when I say "OK, now where were we?" they go into D&D mode, since that was always my cue for the game to start.

I've moved away from 2-player games since 3E came out, since more and more people were interested in playing D&D at the time. I think now my favorite sized group is 2-3 players, since you have almost as fast a game speed as with 1 player, but the small group dynamics takes some pressure off the DM and can create some very memorable RPing.

I do think that for friends that want to play D&D long-distance, however, 1 DM and 1 Player is a perfectly fine size for a play-by-post game. I've been running one for a PF game, though eventually I expanded it to 3 players.

Human Paragon 3
2011-02-26, 05:33 PM
Are there any tricks or techniques out there for designing a solo combat encounter? The strongest attribute of a party is its action economy, after all.

TinselCat
2011-02-26, 10:27 PM
Well, from my experience I've two ideas, one designed to limit the number of actions the enemy can take, one trying to increase what the player can achieve.

The first is to lower the number of enemy combatants. Rather than facing a hoard of low-level monsters, he might face one or two that are individually more of a challenge. With large numbers of monsters all invariably targeting one PC, the sheer number of actions the enemy can take can affect the battle as a whole. (This goes doubly so for monsters with intelligence to use tactics and are able to quickly manipulate the field to their advantage)

The other is to design encounters in an environment which is available for the smart PC to use to his advantage. There might be chokepoints he can make a stand in so he can't be flanked or overwhelmed, walls or rubble for cover, or manufacture 'traps' that can affect a number of enemies, like collapsing a structure. This allows the PC to have more effect on the battle during his limited actions. All of this, however, depends on how tactically-minded the player is. In a solo campaign I for one believe this mentality is absolutely necessary.

In addition, healing and buffing is an issue for the solo player. For healing, fast healing and similar abilities would be ideal. For buffing, the issue could also be combated with magic items that are constantly in effect, or by starting spot checks far enough away that the PC has time to prepare, back to the tactics idea.

What I've experienced so far (a limited amount, I will admit) seems to show me that the best solo campaign works well with a smart player who knows what he can and can't handle, and can use things beyond his own written skills/abilities. I'd like to see what conclusions other DMs have reached after doing some observation and experimentation of their own.

Fuzzie Fuzz
2011-02-26, 11:54 PM
First of all, I feel obliged to point out that 'mano a mano' does not mean 'man-to-man,' as is commonly assumed, but 'hand-to-hand', as in hand-to-hand combat.

Anyways, this thread is relevant to my interests, as I have a one-PC campaign planned for some time in the indefinite future. I'm planning on having the PC be a class that can survive on its own, such as a paladin or ranger. One has high defenses and HP, and decent self-healing, and the other has some of the highest damage outputs possible, with decent defenses and HP.

Based on the player's decisions, she may pick up other allies along the way to help fill in whatever gaps in her abilities she might have, but I won't go out of my way to present any NPC allies.

As for combat, I'm planning on just having small battles with a few opponents at a time, or using minions if I must have a horde of foes.