Help with a solo game?

[rubycona]

Hey, all.

I was playing this game with one other guy, and things didn't work out between him and I. Nearly violently. So, the DM and I are going to try to continue the game solo, because of how awesome the game itself was.

While I'm absolutely ecstatic about this, he's wary - he's never run a solo, 1 on 1 game before. We'll be trying a few practice, scenes from a hat (literally, drawn from a silly pimp hat we got at some birthday party) type games, just him and me, to try to get the hang of it.

Still, I was wondering if any other DMs out there have done solo games, and if there's any helpful hints you might provide? Or just any suggestions in general.

Thanks so much!

[NOhara24]

Now that you're the only player in the game, he has more time to focus on your character and backstory should you choose to create one. The way I looked at it was that less characters in a party allowed for more character development per player.

[Cor1]

For a solo game, make sure you're prepared for all situations, or at least always have a way to exit them.

I've DMed, in the same sort of haphazard one-shots, a friend who's been my group's ForeverDM for six years, we made him an Elf variant* Cleric/Ranger with Domains : Celerity, Travel and (Trickery? Can't remember).

As he dislikes using magic, but DnD is really not survivable without it, what we did was basically 1) he took Spontaneous Domain Casting, replacing spontaneous Cure spells casting, and 2) He filled all his prepared slots with Cure spells.

Yeah, sort of doing it backwards... but, by the Elf Gods was it awesome.

I had him discover a dungeon, he solved the enigma that gained him a plot-point prophecy, but through a wrong way. It was so cool to see him interpret it exactly right, but by a reasoning that differed from mine, and was not as solid. (Because of what he doesn't know, which he didn't deduce since he went at it otherwise.)

I will DM that one again. He's an old Elf-clone... In that world, the Elfs reasoned that, since their perpetual problem is that they're not numerous enough, they should make Elf-clones grow on trees underground, so they'd have armies and people to conquer and colonize the world. (Yeah, that kind of Elfs.)

But the clones were called Fëalossë, which means Soulless, because when they're ripe and descend from the Trees, already formatted with a few class levels, they have no souls.

But some years later, we saw that it was an error. Their experiences imbued them with a soul. We should have called them Budding Souls. (No, I don't know how to translate that into Quenya.)

And there are many ways to incarnate a soul... So many lost ones, after an Epic Thief stole Death, and the Elfs carry Soul Gems : a contingent spell-chain that basically captures their souls on the point of death, and teleport back to the Fealosse trees so as to be soon reincarnated.

The Elfs live in the perpetual sun. They live in a flying continent above the nuclear-winter-like cover of clouds resulting from a Drow manipulating an Epic Spell that was intended to teleport an Egg of Tiamat onto our twin plane, making the Tiamat Invasion story arc Somebody Else's Problem.

Then the Drow rose and conquered part of the surface world. And the perpetual night resulted in an epidemic of Vampires. And...


"Yeah, I think you need spells."

[danzibr]

Solo games can be a lot of fun for some of the reasons already mentioned. You can focus on the story of the character a lot.

I would suggest giving your player some sort of companion. When I was DMing for just my wife, I homebrewed up a cheopard, taking the best aspects of cheetah and leopard. She found it as a kitten (if that's the word), and as she leveled it grew stronger. Really, it was like a free Wild Cohort.

The campaign never got this far, but I also planned on making her two buddies, a rogue and a psion (she was a cleric). She'd control them in combat but I'd do the bookkeeping on them. To be honest, I'm not sure it would be the best idea, but it sounded good. If we ever pick the campaign back up I'll let you know if it works out well or not. My guess is the cleric-cheopard combo would be just fine, though throwing in a skill-monkey and caster (as rival love interests, they're the last known humans) would be interesting.

[rubycona]

Thanks for your discussion so far :)

We played that test game, scenes from a hat, last night. He's pulling in 2 NPCs from the "real" game, and I made a playtest character - my real one is so incredibly immersed in the world, she actually can't transfer over to another one, haha.

It was a lot of fun. I loooooove RP, it's my favorite part of D&D, and all we actually managed to accomplish was go shopping. I got a magic weapon, and he rolled for an intelligent weapon XD He had second thoughts about allowing it, but let it in for the fun of it. Now there's basically 3 major NPCs.

I think it's working great, and I hope he feels the same. I'm trying to give him as much grace and leeway as possible... I know I can be a handful sometimes. I can't wait till he's comfortable enough with the process to DM the real game again! Wooo!

[Story Time]

I'm trying to give him as much grace and leeway as possible...

This is the best course of action. A wary GameMaster will be put at ease by professionalism, punctuality, and deference. If necessary, I recommend the use of a timer to limit game session duration. If you personally are sincere about abiding by rules that are mutually agreed on, time and experience will display that and the GameMaster will make a decision accordingly.

As...an admonishment I'll just add: Don't forget that you're there for the game and the plot. Role-play is fun, and loving it is nice, but make sure to focus on accomplishing things important to your character. Accomplishing goals validates the GameMaster's purpose at the table.