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I know there are a bunch of people playing 1-on-1 campaigns, and I'd love to hear about your experiences. What worked, what didn't, what would you try differently?
My wife and I started our 1-on-1 campaign yesterday. Honestly, we’ve been talking about playing for ages, but things finally fell into place. I knew I didn’t want to go rules heavy, even though my wife is an experienced player (her PFS character is at least a level above mine). So, for our first session, we didn’t even touch the dice. I’m hoping this also means we can quickly pick up the game at any time, just using the apps I have on my phone.
We started out with a Q&A. What did her character do? Did she have any family? How old was she? What was she good at, what was she bad at? Did she have friends? What about enemies? This built up the backstory, but it also helped us stat up her character. Taking a huge departure from the norm, we decided I’d keep her character sheet; she’d be playing blind, according to what she thought her character was good at, not what’s on the paper.
The questions quickly developed into a story. When my wife couldn’t quite decide on a name for her character, I said “Well, that’s because the day of your naming quest is fast approaching, upon which your name shall be decided.” Spiced with the sudden revelation of an unknown sister who had vanished during her own naming quest and the guilt of parents who had kept this a secret for so long and BANG, we had several plot hooks.
NPCs and pivotal monsters were also developed in the same way, all becoming firmly linked to the characters life and the story we’re telling.
It also rescued “mistakes”. At one point I introduced a character, Rujio, who it was later discovered would be taking his naming quest on the same day as my wife’s character.
“But if he’s taking the naming quest, why does he have a name?”
“Well, um? Drat!”
But we turned it into a big part of the story. Rujio was an upstart, a nonconformist who was a load of trouble; he’d even given himself a name, a practice unheard of in society.
This process made the whole game much more collaborative, so we’re both deeply invested in it after only a few hours of what was essentially character creation.
I think you are very much on the ball.
Note that because a character in a 1:1 campaign is running solo, you need to have a relatively lenient world, and a relatively competent character. You might care to use the Gestalt stuff (basically 2 character classes at once) for her character, or make sure that any trap or doo-dad that requires magic can be gotten around (perhaps with greater difficulty) in a mundane fashion, or vice-versa. I would also recommend - highly - that the campaign be less a Conan the Librarian adventuring campaign and more akin to a spy thriller, at least at the lower levels. One-man assignments, 'find out for me where X goes during the day,' 'deliver this message to Joe Piscopo in Nujoisè,' things like that. Be part of a guild or a city guard, get involved in politics or a scouting mission that goes horribly wrong and the character has to get back to the city with news of the coming invasion, etc. etc.
Good luck, though. :)
I've never done a 1-on-1 game but I've done a fair share of 1-on-1 roleplaying with a friend, so I'm curious as to how people are doing with actual campaigns in that style.
In other words, dot =)
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I feed on my players' group interaction, curiosity, and speculation for variety and momentum far too much to drive my game. I have tried many times to do 1:1 games with my wife, and I just get bored... perhaps that has as much to do with her playing a druid every single time, but I'd like to pretend I'm not tied down by her decisions, stagnant as getting to know Bear-Lover #358 might be...
Having a single PC in a story makes for a very intensely personal campaign. You only have one person to entertain, and the plots tend to be very highly tailored to that character's interests.
One huge problem is that the death of one PC means a TPK. In a normal, four PC campaign, a character death means the rest of the party can choose to either resurrect a PC or find a replacement in their ranks.
It can be done, I have accomplished it with superhero RPGs before, yet it tends to mean you have to work harder to learn what motivates a single player. It was also far easier with a hero RPG as defeat does not always means death. The trope of "captured hero placed in a deathtrap", or the criminal that is a thief and not a murderer means I could more easily let a defeated hero live and not break the narrative of a story.
Starting a 1-on-1 campaign with my S.O. soon, so DOT.
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Our second session happened a few weeks ago. My wife's character started on her naming quest, only to gain an unlikely ally (Rugio, a well known troublemaker) and encounter the ghost of her long dead sister.
Exploring a dark cave system, Rugio suddenly disappeared just before my wife's character was attacked by a monster. The battle was going badly before Rugio struck from the dark, a sneak attack saving the day. Rugio had been pretty annoying up till that point for her, but he's developing into an important support character with a deep backstory.
Again, we used no minis or maps. Actually, I pretty much only looked up the monsters stats and the only tool we used was the Star Wars Dice app from Fantasy Flight. We didn't even use a character sheet!
I think that's one of the nicest things about roleplaying; you can get by with very little.
Don't get me wrong, I've got a huge collection of minis, maps, books, dice, props, everything a GM could need, but it was nice to simply play. I don't think I could GM at this level without a deep understanding of the rules though.