Has anyone ever played or ran a game with only a single player? I've been kicking the idea around for a while now and I find it very interesting. Part of the fun is tailoring the challenges to what the PC can do, which can be a bit tricky if they don't have access to healing.
What do you guys think? What kind of plots/encounters are good for solo adventurers? Any stories?
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I'm playing an arcane trickster in a game. I want to do some thievery, so the dm is going to run a solo side quest.
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I've run many, many one-on-one campaigns, and almost all of them went like this: The player played 2 or 3 PCs, and I played 2 or 3 "GMPC"s, thus forming a 4- or 5-member party. Many of those campaigns were very successful.
But for adventures for only 1 PC, you may want to look at Expeditious Retreat Press' "1 on 1 Adventures" line. There's a bunch of them for PFRPG here. Originally, that series started for 3.5, and you can find that line here. (In fact, 11 of those written for 3.5 later got converted to PFRPG and compiled into the One on One Adventures Compendium.)
Use the 4th editions minions idea. Cr= 1/4, so you could have 4 minions (let's say rogues) of >/= your hero lvl try to assassinate you hero (paladin). They represent a significant threat to your character, but sconce they only have 1 HP, it's nothing too terribly hard for you character. Sub bosses could have 1/2 HP, and bosses could have full HP.
I usually have someone play multiple characters.
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What do you guys think? What kind of plots/encounters are good for solo adventurers? Any stories?
If you're running a game with not just one player but one PC, I think it really depends on the PC. Like you said, part of the fun is tailoring the challenges and adventures in general to the PC. A bard, rogue, or ninja would probably enjoy infiltration missions and heists, while a ranger or druid would probably prefer to defend the wild from some outside threat. Some characters might enjoy being given a small squad of slightly lower-level NPCs to lead - put the 5th level paladin in charge of a unit with two 3rd level fighters and a 3rd level cleric.
Backstory might matter, too - with only one character it's a lot easier to work with a player to design a campaign tailored to that character's goals. If you have four PCs and one of them is the "chosen one" the other three might feel like the backup dancers, but if you have only one PC you can pull it off no problem.
To answer your questions in reverse order... ROLEPLAYING encounters are the best. because it's more on the player than on the class mechanics. All other types mean that you have to address the twin chimeras of Battle and Recovery. You can come up with answers to this for any class, it just means that you need finesse and creativity on your part as the DM.
This is a very good point. The biggest issue I can see with one PC is that one failed save against an incapacitating attack (ex: hold person, sleep) could end an encounter. So it might be safer to give your player 2-3 PCs or a few NPC/GMPC allies or followers. And at that point you and the player can decide whether you'll treat it like a standard adventuring party or whether one of the PCs is going to be the "main character."
I've run many, many one-on-one campaigns, and almost all of them went like this: The player played 2 or 3 PCs, and I played 2 or 3 "GMPC"s, thus forming a 4- or 5-member party. Many of those campaigns were very successful.
I'm currently running a game of two people; i do the GMing and run three PCs, my player run the other three (party of six), homebrew world and campaign.
We thought this was going to be a short experiment, but it is closing to one year of life and all of the chars are lvl 8 now,so we do our best to keep it going.
I've run a few one-person games, and played one. In my experience, the greatest strengths of solo campaigns come from plots tailored to the main character, and great relationships with NPCs.
I prefer an urban setting for solo adventures, and a rural setting for groups.
Solo - A solo character out in the woods doesn't have anyone to interact with, making the time between challenges potentially quite boring. On the other hand, a solo character in a city has lots of NPCs to interact with, and no fellow party members at the table to get annoyed while they do so!
With one player in a city, there's no reason not to wait around for natural healing. "Rest up for a few days" doesn't have to kill the adventure, and actually feels quite natural for a single character. For more extreme injuries, "The Healer" could be the friendly acolyte at the local temple, who is supposed to charge for his healing services, but sometimes does a little healing on the side while he's out with his friend. . .
A few times. I much prefer having a full group. I enjoy the group experience and find that beating encounters, solving puzzles and getting loot isn't nearly as much fun when I'm by myself.
I played with a GM that would start a game and run each character solo for the first few sessions. So 4 player game would be 2 solo session for each for 4 players. In those session 2 plays would meet and it was 2 gaming session and the next the two pairs met and the party formed.
This worked exceptionally well. By the time the party met we had role-played out a real connection the setting. You can do this in a normal game but you just don't have the time to explore on that level with each player.
[url=http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2pgi0?Wiz3rog3at2-planning-some-larceny-How-would#1]this[\url] is where I'm Preping for a solo
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This is a very good point. The biggest issue I can see with one PC is that one failed save against an incapacitating attack (ex: hold person, sleep) could end an encounter. So it might be safer to give your player 2-3 PCs or a few NPC/GMPC allies or followers. And at that point you and the player can decide whether you'll treat it like a standard adventuring party or whether one of the PCs is going to be the "main character."Having a PC knocked out or captured is not necessarily a bad thing. It's one way to move a story along. What you need to do as a DM is thing a few moves ahead.
That's fine if you're OK with being prepared to end any encounter with the PC being captured if that's how the dice fall. But if your PC is fighting a ghoul and fails his save vs paralysis, that ghoul is probably inclined to CdG the PC and bury his corpse somewhere to let it marinate. It might be possible to have something like another adventurer or a bigger monster to scare the ghoul off, but if that happens too often it feels unrealistic, and a similar situation could arise with pretty much any minimally intelligent monster that mostly sees humanoids as lunch. You could still plan around it, but you'd probably want to use more encounters that would prefer to capture rather than kill the PC, or encounters in which an unconscious PC would reasonably be left for dead rather than finished off.