One-Player Campaigns

ourchair · Dec 21, 2009

I'm thinking of running a one player campaign in order to help me and a fellow player maximize our understanding of the rules, so that both of us -- the only ones with a more active investment in 4e than the rest of our gaming group -- can DM and play better.

My question is, has anybody had any experience doing this? I don't mean in 3.5 or GURPs or TSR-MSH or any other system, but 4e itself as a single player game.

I don't really want to delegate my player with multiple characters, but rather use NPCs and roleplay them as if they were hirelings from Jagged Alliance 2 or Mech Commander, with unique personalities whose combat abilities are run by me, with some intervention by my player.

I don't intend to run this as a pure combat game, either, but a serious campaign with the story hooks revolving around the player's central character. I guess it would probably resemble a CRPG like Planescape: Torment... but without the computer.

ValhallaGH · Dec 21, 2009

What changes you'll need to make, if any, will depend upon how many and what sort of NPCs you want to include.
If you have limited, or no, NPC involvement, budget your encounters for the one player, and I'd aim for "easy" encounters to avoid some of the swinginess of a d20 roll.

I will note that, with you running all of his allies and all of his enemies, he's likely to get very bored between his turns.

Good luck to both of you.

Doctor Proctor · Dec 21, 2009

ValhallaGH said:
I will note that, with you running all of his allies and all of his enemies, he's likely to get very bored between his turns.

I'll second that. You might want to give the player full control over the NPC's, otherwise it's just you playing and talking to yourself 90% of the time (Imagine if you only controlled one monster on the board, and your player controlled all the NPC's and all the rest of your monsters, for example). Back in the old 2e version of Dark Sun my friend and I ran some of the prepackaged adventures with only one player, and then the player running the NPC companions as well. It worked pretty good.

Additionally, there's rules in the DMG for how to balance encounters and loot for larger or smaller parties. I wouldn't necessarily say to go with a full 5 man party, nor a one man party, though. The former is just gonna be a lot of busy work as he plays multiple characters, and the latter won't really give you all that great of a feel for the rules (If he's a Defender, for example, you'll have never have a lot of use for the cover mechanics, or a lot of the skills in the game).

Personally, I would stick to 2 or 3 NPC's in addition to your PC. This way, you can either go Leader, Defender, Striker; or Leader, Defender, Striker, Controller. Either way, you should get a good look at all the mechanics of the game, and the DM will have the freedom to design monster encounters just about however he wants since the party has pretty much all the roles covered.

Good luck!

Tallifer · Dec 21, 2009

Aye. A dungeon master once had one player, yours truly, run a party of six characters through a couple modules. It worked well. Roleplaying was limited to the occasional interaction between one of my favourite characters in the party and a non-player character, but the dungeon master and I had fun exploring the modules and fighting the fights.

It was a slow summer with most of other friends off in far places, and it was a great occasion for me to try several classes I would never get to try in the course of one normal campaign with one character per player.

sfedi · Dec 21, 2009

I ran 4e adventures in the past for one and two players.

Things to consider:

- as mentioned above, beware the amount of NPCs and who control them
- 4E classes are heavily designed to work well in the concert with other clases
The only classes that don't loose much working alone are Strikers and a little behind, Controllers. Defenders are boring and Leaders are useless (unless heavy NPC presence)
- focus on the story, unlike typical campaigns, combat, even if it's frequent, will take much less time on the session, so you'd better be ready for some good story/decision making between encounters

Since the high variability of d20s is extremely influential in a solo adventure, I suggest you to reskin the dying and dead conditions.

Examples:

Dying: cowering (prone, unarmed, etc)
Dead: fleeing (pick your stuff and get out of the combat)

Dying: on the limit of unconsiousness
Dead: unconscious

And think clearly on what outcome each encounter should have in case the PC loose and reskin appropiately.

This way, you can have a stable campaign which won't end abruptly just because of some bad rolls.

This is something I'm using on a normal campaign.

Blackbrrd · Dec 21, 2009

I would run 4e with three characters and a DM. The player controls all the characters. Go with a defender, leader and striker. For instance:
Battlevigor Dwarf Fighter (can generate his own hp)
Resourceful Dragonborn Warlord (can get high defences)
Sorcerer (chosen because of the aoe powers)

Alternatively, I would exchange the leader with a controller or striker, all depending on how the encounters are set up.

Mengu · Dec 21, 2009

I'll throw my hat in for giving access to an NPC for the player. It's fun to play yourself, and your lackey. And you could also have a rotating array of NPC's for different adventures. This would give you both a better understanding in multiple roles, and multiple combinations.

I'd even go so far as to have your player make two PC's. They could be in contact, on separate missions. He could play both. Occasionally they might come together. And if one of them gets captured, your NPC might get away to get the other PC, and you would have a rescue mission. Then maybe all three get captured, and you have a break out of jail adventure. You even have the flexibility of splitting the party whenever you want without worrying about a player getting bored.

A solo player controlling multiple characters can give you incredible flexibility in story and adventure design, things you simply cannot do with a real group. I'd try to take advantage of that flexibility.

Create 2 PC's, 3 or so companion NPC's. Use them in different combinations (should typically be 1 PC, and 1 companion). Let the play create the PC's, you create the NPC's (based on roles each PC might need), the player handles the rest, and as DM, you can just focus on the enemies, and story.

sfedi · Dec 21, 2009

Amazing advice from Mengu.

Made me rethink about Solo adventures and all the possibilities it has.

Thanks!

Blackbrrd · Dec 21, 2009

For sneaky missions it's great to only have one PC.
For combat I think you need 2-3 to have some dynamic battles.

Mengu's suggestion of varying the number of characters used dynamically sounds very good.

Nytmare · Dec 21, 2009

Here's another recent thread where we were talking about this: http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4t...ow-build-d-d-4th-edition-solo-adventures.html

I've been running an on and off solo game for my 10 year old son for the past year or so.

We've gotten away with him having 1 PC, and there being a rotating cast of NPCs, statted up like monsters, that shuffle in and out of the story. In general he's usually only paired up with one of the NPCs at a time, who I control, but we've had one arc with no NPCs, and one with 3 with no noticeable problems.

In general, instead of messing with the numbers on the creature stats end of things, I just started the fights off well under what he should be able to handle, and then ramped up slowly so that I could gauge what he'd be able to handle so undergunned.

I'd say that, as the game stands, things aren't set up for small fights with a single player on a side. Things are more interesting when there are a lot of people on a team and a lot of space for them to move around in.

[EDIT] Now that I've broken free of the tangent my brain was set on and reread the thread, if your primary interest is in getting a handle on the rules I'd actually suggest throwing the idea of a campaign out the window and just treat it as a rotating schedule of "One of us comes up with an Xth level party of Y adventurers, the other one comes up with a bunch of maps and a series of suitable challenges for a day's worth of fighting, and we bash our way through so that we figure out how the game works."