a single player

[punkorange]

I am curious if anyone has had any success with running a single player. I don't mean a single character, I mean one player running a group of four standard pre-generated characters. Almost treating the adventure like a skirmish game played between player and DM. I'm almost considering this out of desperation for a group. Anyone have any tips or advice?

 

[jdrakeh]

I am curious if anyone has had any success with running a single player. I don't mean a single character, I mean one player running a group of four standard pre-generated characters. Almost treating the adventure like a skirmish game played between player and DM. I'm almost considering this out of desperation for a group. Anyone have any tips or advice?

There have been times in the past when I had to default to 1:1 player to DM ration due to lack of players. The three things that made it really easy for me:

1. Keep plots simple. You might want to look at this collection of 5 Room Dungeons based on the concept by JohnnFour. The fewer plot points you have to keep straight in your head, the more of your attention you can dedicate to action on the tabletop.

2. Limit the physical scope of the campaign geographically, then layer it. Rather than planning a world-spanning campaign, for example, consider a city-based campaign where the city is built on top of numerous ancient catacombs and surrounded by dungeons. Or maybe another site-based campaign (Welcome to the Valley of Tombs!). This will allow you to add depth (no pun intended) to your camapign as you go without having to define or research all new geographic/overland areas.

3. Be cliche! Watch as many 'B' fantasy and sci-fi movies as you can. Read as many cut-rate fantasy and sci-fi novels as you can. Soak up the cliches and pay close attention to how authors and directors make them work on paper and film. Soon, you'll figure out how to make those same cliches work for you on the tabletop which, which will allow you to keep thing entertaining without requiring you to do exhaustive amounts of prep work.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

My first time playing 3.0 and one of earliest D&D games overall was also my friend's first trial at DMing. I was the only player he had, he wanted to start a group after he knew the rules better, but he wanted to learn things a bit with me first. I didn't use pre-gens, though. I made all 4 of my characters, including personalities. I talk to myself anyway, so controlling 4 people wasn't much of a stretch. And they were so awesomely disfunctional!

The barbarian guy ("Max Power," thank you, Simpsons, for that idea ) was dating the bard, but he had a drinking problem (he'd break down and cry about how much of a failure he was when drunk), was kinda clueless, and had a wandering eye. The bard, to be fair, dressed more provacatively than he liked and enjoyed casual flirting.

The cleric was very quiet and devout, and decided to take a vow of celibacy. The paladin he shared a tent with was a "pimping paladin,"* very informal and fun-loving. And I mean that. I eventually made up pimping rules as a cha-based profession, he wore a flashy cape, big hat (+2 bonus on pmp checks) and pounded a shiny rock into a stick to be his pimping cane, which he frequently used to finish off enemies in combat (treated as a club). They would purposely antagonize each other in many ways. For example, the paladin would play his lute late into the night. He had no perform ranks. The cleric would be sure to loudly chant his prayers at the crack of dawn in retaliation.

It worked out fairly well, we only had a few sessions, but it could have lasted for a long time if we wanted. And some of my favorite personal D&D-isms and "personal rules" for future characters came from that short time. For one example...the group encountered an air elemental that was friendly, but no one knew Auran and we couldn't speak to it. Since then, any character I make, if he has a positive int score and has Auran as a bonus language choice, will learn Auran. And since then it's taken on greater meanings. In one game, my character and his unrequited love were forced apart and into hiding by a powerful dragonmarked household. Auran was the "secret language" they'd use for what rare communications they could have, often in the form of notes left where it was figured only their counterpart would think to look.

*1) I was a teenager back then, obviously I wasn't very mature. Not that I am now, either...
2) He still held ot the letter of the law of the paladin code and was as good and lawful as any other paladin.
3) I'm pretty sure this pre-dates Shilsen's much more awesome and thoroughly thought-out Sir Cedric, and even if it didn't, I wasn't aware of Cedric back then.

 

[Qualidar]

I am curious if anyone has had any success with running a single player. I don't mean a single character, I mean one player running a group of four standard pre-generated characters. Almost treating the adventure like a skirmish game played between player and DM. I'm almost considering this out of desperation for a group. Anyone have any tips or advice?

If I were to do it, I'd have the player play just 2 characters, perhaps a main character and a henchman. That way they cover some of the bases that need covering, but they get to focus on the characters enough so the game might be a bit more than a skirmish game (unless that's specifically what you're looking for).

 

[kitsune9]

I am curious if anyone has had any success with running a single player. I don't mean a single character, I mean one player running a group of four standard pre-generated characters. Almost treating the adventure like a skirmish game played between player and DM. I'm almost considering this out of desperation for a group. Anyone have any tips or advice?

Sorry that you feel that you have to run that in order to play, but those days are long gone for me. I won't run any games that has less than 3 players in it as I no longer feel it would be worth my time and effort to put in a game.

Happy Gaming!

 

[knightemplar]

I had done this before, but with the player there was no actual role playing. The player just treated the characters as objects with powers.

I finally had him choose the one he liked the best, and moved the rest of them to NPC status in which brought out the role playing more.

 

[Richards]

I DMed a campaign for awhile with one player playing two PCs while I ran the party NPC (the healer, naturally). We did it that way for several months before our second player was able to rejoin the game.

Johnathan

 

[kenmarable]

Back when our 2nd kid was born and we had to drop out of our regular group, my wife and I started the first of (soon to be) 4 campaigns with a single player. For the 3 that I DMed, we balanced it out by having me play a couple DM PCs so she played 2-3 PCs. In the one campaign she DMed, I played 4 PCs myself.

It really wasn't much trouble. Unfortunately, she didn't DM for long, so I don't know how playing 4 PCs would have panned out, but it started off going just fine. More roleplaying with NPCs than between PCs obviously, but still plenty of it and not just all combat with no personality. But when she plays 2 and I play, that has worked out great.

Yeah, it doesn't have the same feel as a full group, but it can still be fun and much better than no gaming at all.

Come to think of it, 1 player/1 DM is how I was introduced to the game back in the 80's and played that way for the first 4 or 5 years. Again, we used both player PCs and DM PCs.

My suggestions are:
Have one of them becomes a primary spokesperson. Also, having a DM PC or two does offer the opportunity for roleplaying between PCs as well.

Mysteries and puzzles are very problematic when there is only 1 brain trying to solve them, so I would steer clear of those. It leads to frustration. But there's still plenty of roleplaying opportunities without puzzles and mysteries.

Consider fewer PCs than a full 4. If it is 3.5, consider the gestalt rules, or with 4e look at the hybrid rules to cover bases better. Or you can get a long ways by being overly generous with magic items that compensate for any missing roles (especially healing). Although we have done 3 or 4 PCs for the player, 2 works better.


But I say definitely go for it. It's a different experience but is still far better than not gaming at all.

 

[freyar]

Like some of the others above, I DM a 1-player campaign for my wife. She runs 2 PCs, and I run two support-type DMPCs. We don't play often, but that's just because of business of life. It works pretty well; any subpar sessions seem to be lack of prep and planning on my part.