Help make 1 player campaign.

[Herobizkit]

With only one PC, you have the rare ability to create a story with one player as the hero. The best way to accomplish this is thus:

a) create a 'sidekick' for your player. Someone else to pull her out of the fire if things get rough, or an extra swordarm, or maybe just someone to document her exploits. If your wife is into talking animals, this is an excellent opportunity for you and she to create some bizarre stories... and if the animal ally is capable in its own right, she has a cohort and you're still free to have a sidekick for three. Not too shabby.

b) If you're just looking to drop her into a dungeon and let the dice fall where they may, don't, unless that's the kind of game she's into. If you still want to randomize the dungeon, try not to make it larger than five rooms. Have a trap, a guardian to get in, a "big boss", maybe a random fantastic location, and maybe some kind of skill challenge.

c) In 4e, players have many options to keep themselves going during/after a fight, and first-level characters are much hardier than previous editions. Play to those strenghts and let your hero shine.

I'll also echo [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] above and add that NPCs (or supporting cast and extras, if you will) make the story. You can do so much more than a beer n pretzels game; keep this in mind when you design stuff for your PC to do.

 

[Chrone]

Thank you!

My go to book is the Ultimate Toolbox from AEG...

...Random loot tables are in MME and Mike Shea put one together...

...You said that you wanted a source for riddles and puzzles, so let me point out a couple I use...

Hey, Quickleaf! Thank you very much. This is exactly what I needed! The funny thing about random tables, is that I'm not using them directly, another words I don't roll in game, cause it slows me down and my player is bored. But some of them just pure cool ideas you can steal from! Especially http://roll1d12.blogspot.com/ and http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2011/08/attempt-to-list-employ-all-random.html Thank you again!

You need a framing device, such as "The dungeons under the city". You can get by with a random online dungeon generator, encounter generator, & treasure generator, but only use bits you like, and adapt to fit. The main thing to think about is People - NPCs, both friend & foe.

Exactly! My framing device is 'Cube'-like maze with 'Dark City' spin on top of it. It means the rooms are moving\changing and there are some people (mind flayers?) that do that. Dark creepy architects or smth. And basically this is the toy for some evil god, who put people to the test, make them kill each other and feed of their emotions.

This is also an excuse to make a very abstract dungeon with a lot of weird stuff in it. Nobody remembers how they get there. I guess she will gain her memory slowly in the future, will have a goal to get out and maybe kick this god's ass.

This is also how I presented adventure to her. "You're naked on the floor. Naked male drow is moaning across the room. In it's center there's an obsidian cube, sword sticks out of it. Suddenly drow get's up, looks at you, at the sword and after a moment of hesitation jumps towards the weapon..."

First she had only basic stats and skills. After trying to do smth or acquiring weapons or armor I give her that power card and stats to use.

The thing about my wife play style: she's not proactive in storytelling. She's totally OK with random dungeon crawl. And for me it's a good limittations to try to invent things\rooms\encounters by myself for the first time. Let's see how far can we go, until it becomes boring or too generic and random.

The only problem I had is that I needed to come up with suff FAST. Or she was bored in a minute. Our first try was like that, when I was trying to invent ALL things on the fly and it was a disaster. So now I have a plan and not random but generic encounters\rooms to use during the next sessions. Thanks god our second try was very successful! If you like to know more details about this session, I can specify.

With only one PC, you have the rare ability to create a story with one player as the hero. The best way to accomplish this is thus:

a) create a 'sidekick' for your player...

b) If you're just looking to drop her into a dungeon and let the dice fall where they may, don't, unless that's the kind of game she's into...

c) In 4e, players have many options to keep themselves going during/after a fight... ...Play to those strenghts and let your hero shine.

I'll also echo [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] above and add that NPCs (or supporting cast and extras, if you will) make the story.

Exactly! My plan is to add either ghost companion or Splug %) And I'm gonna keep it dynamic, they will die and new friends will appear. Tough choices presented, She already killed some suffering prisoner...

Also it looks like my wife is OK with generic dungeons and just wants to know, what's next. Once again, let's see how far can we go with that, while I'll try to put cool story\mystery on top of that (see above).

And to design encounters to compliment her powers and skills is always a good idea, thank you.


THANK YOU everybody! It is very helpful. Please give more advice

 

[Chrone]

I don't see any reason why you couldn't do something like that with D&D. Roll up a character. The Woman With No Name.

She walks into a town....

You, the DM, look at her. "Honey, what do you want to do?"

First of all great story! Second, I couldn't come up with this kind of stuff on the fly. I stutter and choke. I've tried random rooms with random monsters, tried to stat them out on the fly, to look into random tables in game, and it was very slow and my wife got bored. It was a disaster that affected my mood during several next days %)

I mean I'm very imaginative, I'm an artist, but I'm slow %) I need to prepare a bit to be able to run something. Well I've just started something like this, we'll see, maybe I develop

Our 2nd session was a success! I've come up with a back story for random dungeon, draw 4 small rooms with monsters\npcs in it and stat them out beforehand. It helped.

 

[S'mon]

I'm glad it's working for you!

 

[Herobizkit]

Regarding your wife being REactive versus PROactive... that kind of playstyle can be taught, if it's something you and she are interested in.

The easiest way to do this is start offering multiple options for things to do outside of "which door do I take next?"

Your Drow beginning was pretty cool. Now expand on that. Picture the same scene with a third person in it (her as yet unknown sidekick) and imagine that there are two swords, and both NPCs get a sword before her. While it's still reactive, now she has choices... help one or the other, or wait until one of them dies, or try and convince both to work together with her, or kill them both to prevent any possible betrayals.

IIRC, the Cube had a team of people who all had to work together in order to survive. But in her game, she's the star - so do with that what you will.

 

[Chrone]

Regarding your wife being REactive versus PROactive... that kind of playstyle can be taught, if it's something you and she are interested in.

The easiest way to do this is start offering multiple options for things to do outside of "which door do I take next?"

Your Drow beginning was pretty cool. Now expand on that. Picture the same scene with a third person in it (her as yet unknown sidekick) and imagine that there are two swords, and both NPCs get a sword before her. While it's still reactive, now she has choices... help one or the other, or wait until one of them dies, or try and convince both to work together with her, or kill them both to prevent any possible betrayals.

IIRC, the Cube had a team of people who all had to work together in order to survive. But in her game, she's the star - so do with that what you will.

First of all thanks!

Well, it's not like we're not enjoying storytelling or cool background or that passive. It's just we're both not experienced with it. Usually she's just 'floating down the river'. And I've learned to DM through PA PvP podcasts and never played myself. In our country it's a notion. So my wife doesn't demand backgrounds or complicated plot or a lot of world details (unlike my co-workers game developers). That's why this simplistic environment helps us both to learn this thing.

I'm already planning to add some tough choices, make friends and watch them die, orcish children maybe? mauhahaha

Thanks for advice!