If you can find another player, give them each two characters.
Single player homebrew campaigns are possible for experienced players and GMs. If you are running a module though you will need alot of tweaks.
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Hey guys!
My wife and I just picked up the Beginner Box and finished running Blackfang's Lair with two pre-made characters. I've played a few different RPGs in the past, but none were too similar to D&D or Pathfinder, so this is a bit of a new experience to me.
So far, I played as GM but also took control of a (somewhat stupidly-acted) player character to help out my wife. I can definitely see it getting difficult to try and do both roles at once.
Have any of you had success with playing as GM and running a game with only one PC? I mean, I can have another PC to assist her still I guess, but it will behave like an NPC and not actively solve puzzles and the like.
Any advice is appreciated!
I would dump playing a character at all and concentrate on just the GMing part.
If you are using published adventure paths or modules, I would simply modify the encounters so that fewer party members can handle the challenge. For example, Have your wife pick a character that she likes, but, make sure that she only faces creatures one-on-one. The encounter may call for four goblin rangers, but, there is nothing that says all four goblins have to attack at once. Given the nature of goblins, they are just as likely to be wrapped up in some form of shenanigans to bring their full attention to your wife's character. However, not all encounters are combat-oriented. She will need a way to bypass other obstacles as well. This can be done with hirelings who's only purpose is to disable the trap on the crypt door before fading again into the background.
And there is literally TONS of advice on these boards and you can find specific advice for virtually every product (module, AP, Companion, etc.) that Paizo produces.
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I'm interested in this topic as well. I recently purchased the beginner box and plan to run the game for my wife and 10-year old daughter (hoping to instill a litlle imagination and critical thinking that seems lacking without some sort of mobile device nowadays). Thankfully, my wife gave me the grand quest for her character already; she is trying to track down her murdered or sister. My daughter is all about dwarves that smash things. Any adivce would be greatly appreciated.
A two-player party is even easier than the solo adventurer. You may still need to modify the encounters as I mentioned earlier, but, now you can teach your daughter some very basic tactics (like flanking enemies with your wife's character). And you always have the hold-out swiss army knife hireling that can fill in any gaps that your wife and daughter might be light on.
There is a series of adventures published specifically designed for single pcs called One-On-One Adventures
If anything it would give you wealth of ideas on how to create adventures for a single player.
the big thing is that you don't want many more monsters than you do PCs in encounters. most encounter difficulties in published games are based on a party of 4 characters, not 1 or 2. your players will be "out-actioned" by a huge margin if they fight too many monsters at once, which is alot harder than just fighting one tougher monster is.