Help make 1 player campaign.

[Chrone]

1 player character campaign. I DM, my wife plays the PC.

The plan is to play whenever we like short session in the evening. I don't want to use any ready adventure or to invest a lot into the story or world beforehand. Want to try something new, smth other then published adventure (I'm a relatively newbie DM)

So my plan is to randomize the hell out of dungeon crawl and try to make sense out of it.

• come up with the main story arc
• have a pool of environments to randomely draw from, preferably small rooms (1 player right?)
• have random tables for loot, monsters, and random effects of random items %)
• have some means to come up with the cool little encounters, puzzles and NPCs

I guess I have problems in every one of those points.

Main story arc
I see it either as Memento-like campaign or just to come up with stuff on the spot (amnesia, right). Never made anything like this though. It looks like I need to come up with some structure on top of that and I have no idea where to start.

Environments
Some kind of geomorphs (never used those) or just make up things. Maybe random generators? I need interesting places in this thing, not maps. Thinking about those Geomorphs A Character For Every Game or those plastic cubes mentioned in this forums. Ideas?

Random Tables
Got some random tables form Zack Sabbath and roll1d12 for those. Maybe need to make a list of Game Mastery items cards I have?

Puzzles, NPCs, etc.
So this is actually the main problem, aside story arc. I won't be able to come up on the fly with cool encounters. But I really want to present wierd awesome little things to my wife versus tactical battles, since it'a 1 player adventure. Like riddles, and puzzles, and wierd NPCs. I have NO IDEA where to pool those from. Where to steal from. And how to do it quickly. Is there an encounter generator of some kind for that?


My main question is: How to organize 1 player adventure, preferably sand-box or random, without rails and long preparations, so we both could really enjoy it and I could come up with encounters, monsters, puzzles and loots on the fly as fast as possible.


Thanks for any ideas, links and suggestions beforehand!

 

[Quickleaf]

Does system matter or are you looking for system-neutral story stuff?

 

[Chrone]

D&D 4ed. I have some essentials pregens of 5th level for my wife to choose from. Going to pull some stats from monster builder to compliment minis I have and scale to appropriate level. I'd say that battles are not a problem. But would be glad to hear advice for designing combat for 1 pc

I mostly have problems with an arc, cool noncombat encounters. Content and episodic narrative so to speak. Presumably old school silliness.

 

[Dr. NRG]

My main question is: How to organize 1 player adventure, preferably sand-box or random, without rails and long preparations, so we both could really enjoy it and I could come up with encounters, monsters, puzzles and loots on the fly as fast as possible.


Thanks for any ideas, links and suggestions beforehand!

Steal mysteries and plots from books she hasn't read. I once based an on-the-fly one-player campaign on Glen Cook's "Garrett, P.I." series. Both the player and I seemed to enjoy it.

NRG

 

[Chrone]

Steal mysteries and plots from books she hasn't read. I once based an on-the-fly one-player campaign on Glen Cook's "Garrett, P.I." series. Both the player and I seemed to enjoy it.

NRG

Well obviously. But imagine I have 1 day to prepare and no time to read books casually. What are the good sources to steal FAST?

 

[Quickleaf]

My go to book is the Ultimate Toolbox from AEG. Nothing tops that book for what you want to do, except for maybe the 1e DMG (and even then it's close).

Random loot tables are in MME and Mike Shea put one together: http://slyflourish.com/random_loot_tables.pdf. Shoot if you have 1e DMG or the B/X Rules Cyclopedia there are treasure tables in there.

You said that you wanted a source for riddles and puzzles, so let me point out a couple I use:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/297095-lets-write-some-riddles.html
Joe Wetzel wrote an article called "Improving Riddles & Puzzles in RPGs" for Mongoose's Signs & Portents (it's page 41 in the PDF): http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/pdf/sp43rpg.pdf
Matt Kauko put together a nice list of resources over here: Puzzles in Roleplaying Games Guide, Links and Resources | North of Nowhere.

For NPCs I have less to offer, though I've heard good things about "Masks", a ready made NPC supplement put out by the guys at Gnome Stew: Masks: 1,000 Memorable NPCs for Any Roleplaying Game Engine Publishing
If it's NPC stats you're after then you might try re-skinning the various factions in Monster Vault: Threats to Nentir Vale.

Hope you find something I've tossed out useful.

EDIT: I also have some PDFs I've assembled from Blog posts; if interested I can email you. I've got...
* Random terrain features of the natural world (by LostSoul)
* Magic items and charts (I can't remember who did this but it's great)
* My 4e DM Cheat Sheet (which is on the 4e forums)
* ...several others I can't recall right now

 

[Aramax]

I always thought a Thieves Guild would make a great solo game,give em' a small pool of npcs-then breaking and entering,assasination,raiding wizards towers,royal intregue,rival thieves guilds and or adventuring parties

 

[Water Bob]

One of the most fun times I've ever had gaming was my introduction to the Classic Traveller RPG. It was just me, playing a character, and my GM (my first D&D game was like that, too, a year and a half earlier--just me and a DM. We played through the infamous Keep on the Borderlands module).

Me and the GM sat down. I rolled up a character. As the character was generated, some broad details about the character were decided upon (background stuff). And, as soon as I got done rolling up the character, the GM just looked at me and said, "OK, you just stepped off the shuttle from the orbiting starship. You're on the planet X. What do you want to do?"

And that was it. The entire game was nothing but ad-libbed. Whatever I did, the GM played off it.

I remember I left the starport--the first encounter was with this customs agent. Annoying chick. And, on the take. I bribed her, finally, to get past the starport gates and into the city proper.

It was totall made up on the spot.

Then the GM described what I saw as I left the starport, and he looked at me and asked, "What is your character going to do?"

So....I found a pub. Got a drink. It was like, 10:00 AM local time, so that was funny. I popped into this pub and there are three bleary eyed patrons in there with a robot behind the bar.

The GM followed no script. He had no adventure module. He just described what he saw in his head when I told him what I was going to do.

Me and a patron got drunk. My character ended up staying in the bar all day. That night, the barkeep kicked me out. I made some dice throws (also made up on the spot with the loose Traveller system) and failed--sure enough, my character was blotto.

I don't know too much because the GM then started describing my character wake up the following day by some cops. I had been rolled! All my money was gone! I had nothing but the shirt on my back.

The street patrol put my character in jail for public intoxication and loitering.

And, that's where I met Francisco Praeda, who was "connected", so to speak.

I needed money. It was just an easy job...

And off we went, my character slid into a life of crime.

God that was a good game.




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?"

 

[S'mon]

My main question is: How to organize 1 player adventure, preferably sand-box or random, without rails and long preparations, so we both could really enjoy it and I could come up with encounters, monsters, puzzles and loots on the fly as fast as possible.

You (a) need some pre-existing material and (b) You should be riffing off your wife's PC and her expressed interests. I would tend to recommend strongly against a fully random approach, although good random tables are very useful for inspiration - the ones in Gygax's Yggsburgh are particularly excellent, IME.

I suggest a city-based campaign (again, like Yggsburgh) with lots of cool NPCs to roleplay with as well as fight; dungeons beneath and beyond the city, and maybe some wilderness in at least one direction.

This will (a) give you a lot of material to improvise from and (b) provide a support structure of contacts & resouces for your wife's solo PC.

Once you have a city sketched out/bought, make or acquire some random city encounter tables - most of which should not be immediate combat - and a default adventure structure; eg the PC is part of a faction, a Lord's company, an adventurer's guild, street gang etc - your wife should decide this, and it can change during play. This will provide a source of easy adventure hooks, allies, and foes. Have some small pre-sketched dungeons or geomorphs, building plans etc that you can reuse - Paizo flipmats are excellent. Again, make or buy random tables to help stock dungeons/adventure sites, and create a couple in advance. Keep them small, 1-2 session affairs, and easily reuseable if she skips one. Random treasure software is useful too; I'd recommend though you use the DMG2 Inherents system which takes a lot of pressure off the need for magic items.

 

[S'mon]

Well obviously. But imagine I have 1 day to prepare and no time to read books casually. What are the good sources to steal FAST?

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.