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View Full Version : DM Help Solo campaigns, do they work?



Resileaf
2018-07-04, 10:26 AM
Good day, everyone. In my constant quest to play an unealthy amount of Pathfinder, I've taken to start GMing solo campaigns with computer friends as a way to spend time together. Due to outside circumstances (very much time circumstances making long play impossible), they haven't really picked up further than two or three sessions, although they,re all still in the plans for when schedules align better.

From what little I've managed to do, I've realized that there are some problems related to such campaigns, and I'd rather address them early before we've fully dived into the deep end.

What constitutes appropriate challenge for a solo player, especially if they're not going to be optimizers (this is very much all done just for fun, not some big challenging thing)? How can you account for the lack of two or three other players adding their abilities and ideas to the campaign?

Related to other players, would it be good for me, as the GM, to control separate party members to accompany the player? Would it be better to let the other player control them all? A mix of the two where I control them outside of combat, and when battle begins, the player controls the entire party?

Is a solo campaign viable at all? In essence, it's really just normal roleplay between two people with dice rolls, so is it really just making roleplay complicated by adding extra steps and rules?

Thanks in advance for the answers, sorry as usual if that's rambling a bit or unclear.

Darth Ultron
2018-07-04, 11:12 AM
Solo games work great and can be a lot of fun.

Solo games can provide a bit of a slower pace then a normal game as the focus is just on one player. This can be nice as it allows for a lot of non-combat actions and role playing. So if you keep the focus on more role playing, you don't need to worry about combat all that much.

Letting the player control more characters is really up to the player. Some like doing it, and some hate it. Often it works best if the player has a single character, but also controls an animal or other such creature.

Though the DM should also have a companion with the character, someone for the character to talk to and interact with. Though, it's often a good idea to make this companion less then helpful.

When you do get to combat, all you really need to do is make everything 'average' and reduce the number of foes. In general, keep fights against one foe.

For a solo game, combat works much better if it's complicated. Use all the rules like disarm, sunder, trip and so forth. Often group games are just kill, kill, kill and you want to avoid that.

You want a charterer that trips a foe, dis arms another foe, then spins around to kill a foe. Then disarms the next one, and trips the next one. Then spins back for a kill. Then another trip, and final kill.

You want to avoid the video game like 'character approaches three foes and swings weapon' and 'foes approach and swing weapons' and everyone stands there until they loose all their hit points and die (character needs food baddy Aggh!).

Resileaf
2018-07-04, 11:21 AM
For a solo game, combat works much better if it's complicated. Use all the rules like disarm, sunder, trip and so forth. Often group games are just kill, kill, kill and you want to avoid that.

You want a charterer that trips a foe, dis arms another foe, then spins around to kill a foe. Then disarms the next one, and trips the next one. Then spins back for a kill. Then another trip, and final kill.

You want to avoid the video game like 'character approaches three foes and swings weapon' and 'foes approach and swing weapons' and everyone stands there until they loose all their hit points and die (character needs food baddy Aggh!).

Turning my game into Batman: Arkham Asylum, eh? Yes, I approve of this.

MrSandman
2018-07-04, 12:14 PM
A solo campaign (as in one game master and one other player) can work. I've done it and got to epic levels with it. The way we did it, the game master had one character as well, which worked fine. One thing that you may want to consider is allowing the player to make a gestalt character. The biggest issue in solo campaigns (in my experience) with D&D is the inability to cover all the roles that a regular party needs to cover. Gestalt works pretty well to fix that.

Resileaf
2018-07-04, 12:23 PM
Googles what gestalt means
I have the feeling that psychology is not what you are refering to with that word and that there is another definition I don't know about.

Thrudd
2018-07-04, 12:39 PM
Googles what gestalt means
I have the feeling that psychology is not what you are refering to with that word and that there is another definition I don't know about.
It was an option from the 3e Unearthed Arcana, for multiclassing more like the AD&D style- a character advances in 2 or more classes simultaneously.

MrSandman
2018-07-04, 12:44 PM
Googles what gestalt means
I have the feeling that psychology is not what you are refering to with that word and that there is another definition I don't know about.

Here's how it works: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/gestaltCharacters.htm

Resileaf
2018-07-04, 12:47 PM
It was an option from the 3e Unearthed Arcana, for multiclassing more like the AD&D style- a character advances in 2 or more classes simultaneously.

Ah-ha, I see. I did that in one of my previous campaigns, when my players gained a power boost by earning a free upgrade to a second class.

I was also thinking of making it so that the companion would give specific bonuses depending on their class. So a fighter giving the player character combat lessons to be better in melee battle, a spellcaster giving them minor spellcasting abilities, etc.

Darth Ultron
2018-07-04, 02:11 PM
Googles what gestalt means


It can work, but it has a couple pit falls.

'Gestalt' is mostly for the mindless combat types to optimize and win the game, so if your target power level is more 'normal', it won't work.

Gestalt is all about mechanical roll play, so again, it depends on how your game is played.

If done by the rules, you do need to gestalt the world.

Gestalt also has the problem of giving a player too much to handle. Often, instead of giving a player ''more'' to do, it has the opposite effect of paralyzing them.

WindStruck
2018-07-04, 03:18 PM
I find solo games can actually move very quickly, provided both player and gm are active. As you probably know, more players mean more people have to get involved to make their move per turn. Or get their say in RP situations. And more people means more variance in time zones and life schedules.

Gestalt isn't necessary. It can always be possible to find hirelings or other npc allies to help you in case you really need one niche task done.

But even difficult problems that involve overcoming your character's weaknesses can be pulled off with much satisfaction, if only some preparation or creativity is involved.

Sajiri
2018-07-04, 04:01 PM
The majority of my campaigns right now are one-player, one-gm games. Our longest one (which is on hiatus at the moment) has had 213 sessions that ranged anywhere from 2-6 hours long. The one we're focusing on at the moment will be having the 70th session this week sometime.

The beauty of these games are the one player can be the total centre of the spotlight without the worry of upsetting any other players, and depending on the relationship between the player and DM, you can do a lot of different things in them you might otherwise hold off on if there were more people.

We used to use Pathfinder, but we ended up creating our own system for it that works between with only 2 people. While we still use a lot of PF/3.5 monsters, feats, spells etc, we convert them into our much more simplified system as too many rules just bogs it down. We often have NPC party members, but the player will pretty much always call the shots, have some influence over NPC actions, and/or have some kind of abilities unique to them. You can use NPCs to fill in the gaps of whatever the PC cant do, but I would suggest finding ways to let the PC have special features for big things (for example, if you are going to have a lot of combat, make sure the PC is perfectly capable of taking part in said combat. If they want to play a more supportive role like a bard or a healer, give them some critical abilities where it feels like the NPCs wouldnt win without them or let them be more like the tactical commander of the group).

Also, since solo campaigns can have a much higher focus on roleplay, I'd take PC death out of the equation (unless they do something really, really stupid). Find ways to give them some kind of consequences for losing a fight still. You can even turn these into roleplay plots. Some examples from a game I play in- we had a big subplot which involved tracking down my character's kidnapped daughter. I lost in the fight to save her, I didnt die but got some bad injuries and, obviously, failed to get back my daughter (got her back later though). Much later on, through self sacrifice, my character got caught in a holy explosion after leading the enemies away from her children and an island's worth of civilians. The result probably should have been death, but instead was burns to half her body, a mutilated arm and blindness. The 'reward' for roleplaying like that for a while was that I eventually got a magic power that let me cheese a way to see (which later got upgraded with dragon powers to full sight) and a cool robot/warforged arm to replace the mutilated one.

Florian
2018-07-05, 06:23 AM
It depends on how the stance on game mechanics is and how the difference between "role-play" and "roll-play" comes into it.

One-on-one games have the marked benefit that they can really be character-driven and focus on the single protagonist of the ongoing action, allowing the gm to really tailor the story to fit.
That said, group- or system-based rules systems like Pathfinder, or procedure-based systems like, for example, Ryuutama, are not really the best approach to take, not is the traditional site-based mode of game mastering.

Personally, I think that using a game system with task resolution mechanics or a high level of abstraction, combined with putting the player character front and center work better for this approach, then systems that are based on direct action and tactical combat. If you know old solo game books like Lone Wolf, you'll know what I mean.