Hi all new DM here, I'm looking for some help with scaling everything down to be able to successfully run a one on one (one DM, one player) campaign. My girlfriend is very interested in playing but has a few social anxieties and would like to play with me first before we find others to join. Has anyone run a one on one campaign or adventure and if so how successful was it? Any tips to keep it interesting for the player and keep the encounters interesting? I'm worried that if I just assume the roles of the other players I will end up talking to myself and it will detract from the game experience.
If it helps I have all 3 core rule books and the Lost Mines of Phandelver adventure.
This is one of those rare circumstances where I recommend mastering the art of the responsible DMPC. I've done one on two with DMPC before, and that works fairly well. What you want to do is keep your character's role to a minimum--I'd actually even rotate the DMPC out fairly often, so there's a good reason why the DM's character doesn't really actively participate or talk first. Pretty much the role of the DMPC is to just provide some combat padding--let your girlfriend's character be the 'face' of the party, do all the talking, puzzle solving, etc.
Help her make a character, preferably 3rd level or higher. Figure out with her what that character is doing, then run that game. If the character is 3rd or 4th level, a CR 2 monster is a deadly foe. Be careful not to accidentally kill the character. Avoid NPCs that travel with the party, for the reason you mentioned and because you run the risk of making fights boring for the player if you control the majority of creatures on both sides.
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"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
For some silly reason I never considered having her start at a higher level, but that would give me a lot more options to make combat interesting. Thanks for the help!
I like the idea of having a one on two much better than one on one as well. I just need to find a two...
Something Matt Colville (His videos on running the game are great) talked about was when he was doing some one on one Dming was he made the NPC a coward/unsure. This meant that the NPC would almost never act before seeing or talking with the player to figure out what the plan was. I am paraphrasing a bit but that might also be something you can use.
He talked about his friend trying to get information out of the NPC but because of the way Matt was playing him young/inexperienced and scared it was easy to step out of the way and let the PC be the spotlight.
I've run numerous 1-on-1 games over the years successfully. The qualities that the successful ones shared were simple: The character needs to be the players' first choice - it's more important that they find the character interesting than that it seems like the character is 'tough enough for solo play' or anything like that. Giving the character a few more levels for survivability, rather than assigning them companion NPCs, and heavily tailoring the challenges to the characters' capabilities works better than other methods. NPCs should not be swooping in to save the character, leading them around, or even following them around and helping out, without the player explicitly desiring those things and working in-character to make them happen (otherwise you make the 1 player in the game feel like their character isn't a "main character" of the story that is unfolding through play).
I think I unconsciously followed the advice of having her make a character she really finds interesting rather than make the most "efficient" build possible (she wants to play as a high elf sorcerer with bronze dragon background...). I had created a wood elf ranger NPC that would sort of act as a patron/quest giver and follow the PC in the shadows only to help in the most dire situations (think mysterious stranger from the Fallout series). I definitely want to make sure that her character is always in charge. I think i will also check out those videos by Matt to get some inspiration as well thanks for the tip!
You could give her a few minion creatures that she can control in combat to make things a bit more dynamic. Just some simple creatures like an animal or two, some bronze dragon worshipping kobolds, some hired body guards. That's if she's into tactical battle and wants to get a feel for how her main character can team up with other units in combat. Nothing very intelligent so the minions can be otherwise useless for any other task, so it remains the dragon sorcerer show.
The Ranger NPC that is giving the quest hooks is a beastmaster and has a wolf companion, I thought about having the Ranger send the wolf companion with the PC until the quest is complete. I thought this might be an easy way to make a side quest too, once the wolf is returned the PC will probably want to have a companion/minion of her own so she could go on an expedition to find an appropriate one.
Hi all new DM here, I'm looking for some help with scaling everything down to be able to successfully run a one on one (one DM, one player) campaign. My girlfriend is very interested in playing but has a few social anxieties and would like to play with me first before we find others to join. Has anyone run a one on one campaign or adventure and if so how successful was it? Any tips to keep it interesting for the player and keep the encounters interesting? I'm worried that if I just assume the roles of the other players I will end up talking to myself and it will detract from the game experience.
If it helps I have all 3 core rule books and the Lost Mines of Phandelver adventure.
Hello there! I think I can help you out on this front. For the last 26 years or so, I and my wife have been playing one on one games in a vast variety of genres and systems. D&D is really no harder than the rest of them when it comes to "scaling down" the threat. In fact with the proper mindset you don't even need to scale "down" at all. All you need to do is make certain that you ensure that some measure of *in combat* healing exists for her to use in my experience. Even if the choice might not be optimal. I have had my wife comment to me in game that her bard healing was prolly not going to be enough to keep the fighter up given the amount of damage the Flind was doing, this caused her to think strategically about her actions. Second, although it is an optional rule, allow multiclassing of characters. This will obviously give them a wider base of abilities to fall back on. Third, someone somewhere on the Web stated that the deadliness of the encounter dramatically shifts based on the number of opponents a character faces. This the basis of the Action Economy. Usually it hoses the monsters, since they get ganged up on by the PCs, but in low player games the tables are easily turned. I find that instead of 5 trolls menacing the group as they transverse the bog, 2-3 is a more reasonable number. Twenty kobolds!?! Play them right and even your wife's 6th level character should be trying to run away. Fourth, in my experience, allow for all sorts of magical items. True, 5e has this pesky little thing called Attunement, but a large number of items do not require it. And even if they do by canon, you as the DM can change that. For me, just because I can I dislike wands requiring Attunement I nixed that. Regardless, by granting the use of a large number of magical items you can make your wife's character and any NPCs she adventures with more capable. Lastly, Published adventures are likely not going to work, unless you use a Troupe style play where you and your wife have a large number of NPCs filling out the roles. Modules are designed to be played with a balanced group. I suggest taking what is good about the module and running your own ideas off of it. That way you don't have the problem of needing a full healer class, or a Rogue to open doors/disable traps if your wife is uninterested in playing one of those characters. Oh! I almost forgot in this long winded post. You are absolutely right about the "talking to yourself" part. Make certain that your wife's character is the Face of the party. Either, and this will be controversial to the Standard Array/Point buy die-hards out there, nudge her into playing a CHA heavy class or wait for it...bump up her CHA score so that she can be a competent Face even if her character doesn't naturally favor CHA, like a Wizard.
For further detail, my wife and I have been playing an update to an older 3.0-3.5 Forgotten Realms campaign we abandoned about 10 years ago. (Same region of the Realms - moved the PC/NPCs to logical ends that sort of stuff) In our new game she plays a home-brewed 1/4 Gith 3/4 Human named Mayza. We started at 2nd level so she could have one level of Sorcerer to mimic psionic abilities and one level of Revised Ranger. I paired her of with a GMNPC (GMPC whatever) initially, but by 4th level we were juggling 4-5 "heroes" in combat. She had sheets for the other characters and would decide actions and roll for the GMNPCs. I would of course do most of the characterization of these GMNPCs so that she could banter off of them. When encountering NPCs, like talking to Brandolbaris of Crimor in Amn, my wife's character had to do the talking. Shortly after reaching 6th level or so, she stated to me OOC that she didn't want to keep using the troupe style play that we had been using to this point, so I found a likely spot in the game and most the other characters left the party for one reason or another. I didn't just kill them off by feeding them to a Red Dragon! Mayza knows roughly where they are in the world and going back to them for help in future remains open. Now at 11th level, it is just her character and one other GMPC. So far, with the magic items she has, and the build she has (no FEATS allowed!) her little group has done quite well.
BTW: I totally get the social anxiety part, gaming can be a very vulnerable experience. Even with the growing popularity of the hobby, it is still pretty niche, and telling people what you plan on doing on Saturday night still garners eyebrow raising I find. That said FLGS are where I find you can go to get more acceptance. Just avoid those that still cater to the Magic the Gathering crowd! ;) Just Kidding!
THANK YOU! Great help and I'm glad to see others finding success with this variety of play. I was getting a little discouraged when I realized virtually ALL published adventures are for groups of 4+. I have been having some success coming up with a campaign keeping everyone's advice in mind. I think to really flesh it out i need to add a few magic items to balance out her character since she has zero healing ability and just throwing 10 potions at her feels cheap and uninteresting. Luckily she rolled well above average for her stats... but I like the idea of padding CHA. I have also begun attempting to write in ways to make 1 or 2 enemy encounters more interesting. I worry that if she is constantly only having 1 or 2 enemy encounters it will become predictable and "un-fun". Since this is her intro to tabletop RPG (and any RPG for that matter) I want her to have an experience that piques her interest and allows her to come out of her shell a bit. Luckily we have lived together for 5 years now and are comfortable with each other, but I think that once she experiences the role play she will end up wanting more.
Oh and as far as the FLGS that cater to the MTG crowd, she is SUPER into MTG lol :)
Hi all new DM here, I'm looking for some help with scaling everything down to be able to successfully run a one on one (one DM, one player) campaign. My girlfriend is very interested in playing but has a few social anxieties and would like to play with me first before we find others to join. Has anyone run a one on one campaign or adventure and if so how successful was it? Any tips to keep it interesting for the player and keep the encounters interesting? I'm worried that if I just assume the roles of the other players I will end up talking to myself and it will detract from the game experience.
If it helps I have all 3 core rule books and the Lost Mines of Phandelver adventure.
This is one of those rare circumstances where I recommend mastering the art of the responsible DMPC. I've done one on two with DMPC before, and that works fairly well. What you want to do is keep your character's role to a minimum--I'd actually even rotate the DMPC out fairly often, so there's a good reason why the DM's character doesn't really actively participate or talk first. Pretty much the role of the DMPC is to just provide some combat padding--let your girlfriend's character be the 'face' of the party, do all the talking, puzzle solving, etc.
Help her make a character, preferably 3rd level or higher. Figure out with her what that character is doing, then run that game. If the character is 3rd or 4th level, a CR 2 monster is a deadly foe. Be careful not to accidentally kill the character. Avoid NPCs that travel with the party, for the reason you mentioned and because you run the risk of making fights boring for the player if you control the majority of creatures on both sides.
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
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For some silly reason I never considered having her start at a higher level, but that would give me a lot more options to make combat interesting. Thanks for the help!
I like the idea of having a one on two much better than one on one as well. I just need to find a two...
Something Matt Colville (His videos on running the game are great) talked about was when he was doing some one on one Dming was he made the NPC a coward/unsure. This meant that the NPC would almost never act before seeing or talking with the player to figure out what the plan was. I am paraphrasing a bit but that might also be something you can use.
He talked about his friend trying to get information out of the NPC but because of the way Matt was playing him young/inexperienced and scared it was easy to step out of the way and let the PC be the spotlight.
I'm going to second Matthias' advice.
I've run numerous 1-on-1 games over the years successfully. The qualities that the successful ones shared were simple: The character needs to be the players' first choice - it's more important that they find the character interesting than that it seems like the character is 'tough enough for solo play' or anything like that. Giving the character a few more levels for survivability, rather than assigning them companion NPCs, and heavily tailoring the challenges to the characters' capabilities works better than other methods. NPCs should not be swooping in to save the character, leading them around, or even following them around and helping out, without the player explicitly desiring those things and working in-character to make them happen (otherwise you make the 1 player in the game feel like their character isn't a "main character" of the story that is unfolding through play).
Thanks for the help guys I appreciate it,
I think I unconsciously followed the advice of having her make a character she really finds interesting rather than make the most "efficient" build possible (she wants to play as a high elf sorcerer with bronze dragon background...). I had created a wood elf ranger NPC that would sort of act as a patron/quest giver and follow the PC in the shadows only to help in the most dire situations (think mysterious stranger from the Fallout series). I definitely want to make sure that her character is always in charge. I think i will also check out those videos by Matt to get some inspiration as well thanks for the tip!
You could give her a few minion creatures that she can control in combat to make things a bit more dynamic. Just some simple creatures like an animal or two, some bronze dragon worshipping kobolds, some hired body guards. That's if she's into tactical battle and wants to get a feel for how her main character can team up with other units in combat. Nothing very intelligent so the minions can be otherwise useless for any other task, so it remains the dragon sorcerer show.
The Ranger NPC that is giving the quest hooks is a beastmaster and has a wolf companion, I thought about having the Ranger send the wolf companion with the PC until the quest is complete. I thought this might be an easy way to make a side quest too, once the wolf is returned the PC will probably want to have a companion/minion of her own so she could go on an expedition to find an appropriate one.
You could use shapeshifting druid
Hawksmoor,
THANK YOU! Great help and I'm glad to see others finding success with this variety of play. I was getting a little discouraged when I realized virtually ALL published adventures are for groups of 4+. I have been having some success coming up with a campaign keeping everyone's advice in mind. I think to really flesh it out i need to add a few magic items to balance out her character since she has zero healing ability and just throwing 10 potions at her feels cheap and uninteresting. Luckily she rolled well above average for her stats... but I like the idea of padding CHA. I have also begun attempting to write in ways to make 1 or 2 enemy encounters more interesting. I worry that if she is constantly only having 1 or 2 enemy encounters it will become predictable and "un-fun". Since this is her intro to tabletop RPG (and any RPG for that matter) I want her to have an experience that piques her interest and allows her to come out of her shell a bit. Luckily we have lived together for 5 years now and are comfortable with each other, but I think that once she experiences the role play she will end up wanting more.
Oh and as far as the FLGS that cater to the MTG crowd, she is SUPER into MTG lol :)
I have created two campaigns that are designed for two new players, levels 1-4.
Clam Island: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/By3s5Uqqf
Frostglade Tundra: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/SyZ_4eEyKE
FAQs for One-on-One D&D (dndduet.com)