Solo Campaign: Awkward or Awesome?

[messy]

with only one player you don't need to worry too much about class balance.

 

[Eltab]

So maybe a follow-up question should be "What sorts of challenges or adventure structure lend themselves particular well to a duet game?"

Something that you would send James Bond to do, not the Marines.
Or "I have a unique skill set..." scenario

I see solo adventurers working well when …
- You have to be quiet and discrete (break into castle and steal / replace XYZ), a group would give itself away.
- The group was separated in the last session, bring in each part to do their thing until they get back to The Rendezvous Point.
- Jailbreak scenarios
- Lawrence of Arabia moves from place to place and visits different groups to set up local plans
- Side quest that is interesting to one player but not the others. Ex: Ranger will search for the Wizard's spell component roots & herbs in the forest
- Political juggling inspired by Cardinal Richelieu (Three Musketeers) -or- the Versailles court of King Louis XIV
- Player for whatever reason wants a combat-lite experience, more exploration and social interaction
- Personal revenge for previous slight / wrong. Need not be fatal; could be attack against reputation

 

[Richards]

I've DMed a couple of solo D&D adventures for my little brother back in the AD&D 1st Edition days. I also ran a series of short Gamma World adventures for him. The only solo campaign I ever ran was a Champions one for my son, but superheroes inherently work well for solo campaigning.

It's a nice change of pace once in a while, but I think overall I prefer the standard group.

Johnathan

 

[Fluerdemal]

I've plenty of solo games and even a couple of campaigns and they can be fun - with the right player/DM. When they work well it's for pretty much all the reasons people have listed, when it goes poorly, it's often for the "burnout" that a couple of people have mentioned or because the player just gets completely stuck and neither they nor the DM knows how to get unstuck.

D.

 

[Li Shenron]

Some of the games I've been wanting to run lately are based on a one-player or solo-protagonist type of story, specifically, Metroid and Skyrim. However, I've never run a solo game/campaign, and the idea just seems awkward to me. Am I being unfair to the solo-campaign?

Nah, to me a solo campaign is nearly worthless. The whole point of a RPG for me is cooperative teamplay. No team, no game.

CRPG are another matter, in fact I normally don't even consider them RPG in the first place.

 

[Retreater]

My gf and I just recently started a solo adventure through Tomb of Annihilation, though she's controlling a whole party (though just role-playing one character). It's been pretty good so far, and moving at a fast pace.