One-Player Campaigns

[ourchair]

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.

I agree.

I'm probably the one guy in my gaming group who is so heavily invested into the understanding of 4e's mechanics. Our DM emphasizes role-playing, skill challenges and character interaction and defers to me on how to apply some of the rules so that she can learn the mechanics in an applied context rather than try to study them in advance.

So, obviously a single player campaign strips away the tactical goodness of a regular ensemble of players, but I don't want to resort to "The Lone Rogue" adventures, which seems to be the prevalent advice I've read elsewhere -- to some extent based on running non-4e games.

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."

Yes but no.

I do want to master the rules -- I'm pretty good at it already -- but I also want to refine my improvisational skills before running a game for some of the grognards in our group. My girlfriend is the DM in our other game, so I want to meld refining my improv abilities with her learning more about the mechanics.

I think it should be pretty obvious that I know what I want to do -- which begs the question, "Why are you asking this on a forum if you already know what you want to do?" I just wonder if anyone has any advice in trying to maximize the properties of 4e in a one-player context, without sacrificing role-playing flavor. You obviously do:

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.

And that's what I want.

I'm thinking that the non-party characters will be more than just NPCs statistically, to be run in combat by her, but from a roleplaying perspective they'll still be run by me. As in, they exist to fill party role ranks, but cannot be asked to do things contrary to their interests or treated like puppets or pack mules.

I think analogously, they could be comparable to characters from a videogame, where either they are actively controlled by the player but locked down by the narrative (Planescape: Torment, Final Fantasy 7) or they are mostly controlled by the DM but can be given tactical requests by the player (Star Wars: KOTOR)

 

[aco175]

I like the idea of having lots of NPCs around, and only a couple go adventuring. This way the player can be the star of the party, I was going to say leader but didn't want to confuse things. He can build the party to go with him based on the mission.

Got a mission to sneak into the temple, I should get a few strikers and my leader friend. Maybe make one of the party members stay under your control as a regular member of the party, sort as a sidekick.

I'm picturing Frodo and Samwise going on an adventure and at every smaller part of the adventure they are assisted by more NPC's that come and go, while some have a more reoccuring role.