Would like to introduce my wife to the game, but prefer to do so in a one-on-one setting at first before doing it with a group. Plus, I'd be first-time DMing. Anybody have suggestions on any published content on DM's guild or otherwise that would make for a good one-shot with a single player? Would like something that is fun, quirky, and not too combat heavy since she'd likely be more into the roleplaying and exploration aspects and not so much combat.
Yes, the one-page dungeon adventure Tin Ear could be a fun exploration adventure for one player if handled a little softer that it wants. She might have to, at most fight some bugs or maybe go one on one with a mad bartender.
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"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
My wife and I started playing together and it can be tough trying to fit a game meant many players to fit with just two. It's not impossible though. I found a system that works really well for just the two of us and it offers versatility. Here's the link. https://koboldpress.com/howling-tower-cardtography/ What this does is randomize the map based on playing cards. In games we've played we use the card amounts to indicate how difficult the encounter is. We use hearts for monster encounters, clubs for doors or terrain encounters, diamonds for treasure and spades for traps. For monsters we have a premade list with higher numbers for higher monsters. For doors and traps I've used 5 plus the card number to set the DC. We've also used specific cards to represent objectives and specific encounters that fall into the story.
Since the map is random it frees up my time as a DM so I play my own character along side my wife's character. The hard part with a single player is a bad dice roll can make or break the game. An additional player helps counter this. This method has been a lot of fun for us. I hope it helps others trying to do two player D&D.
I got an email stating there was a message wondering what type of monsters I use but when I looked at my messages it wasn't there. Wierd its not there so I'll respond here. I like to use four monsters and a boss. So even clubs, odd clubs, even spades and odd spades are monsters. Diamonds are some sort of treasure. It's fun to throw in a puzzle for the treasure. Hearts are traps or environmental hazards. Then I do different dungeons based on elemental monsters.
Fire would have fire snakes, lesser fire elemental, magmins, a young pheonix and top it off with a red dragon wyrmling and you got a fun low level fire adventure.
Ice would have frost bitten skeletons, ice mephits, winter wolves, lesser ice elemental and a white dragon wyrmling.
Then mix and match settings. You could have a dessert, a cave, a jungle, ocean or forest. Just choose monsters in those settings and run with it.
-I'll probably be getting Strixhaven and have pledged for SFG's Adventures & Academia as we're also Harry Potter fans (despite what the Author is like )
I want to play, and if you can't tell from some of my sourcebooks I have, I like the animal and childlike wonderment elements.
If you are looking for child-like wonderment, the new Wild Beyond the Witchlight book starts in a very fun carnival atmosphere before transitioning into a very colorful and childish romp through the Feywild reminiscent of older movies like Labyrinth, Never-Ending Story, Pagemaster, etc.
Google “One Page Dungeon.” There are some real gems in those files that are super easy to scale for one player.
Without a better understanding of what you are looking for, the style of play you want, or what your player wants out of the game, it is sort of hard to make specific suggestions.
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"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
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Would like to introduce my wife to the game, but prefer to do so in a one-on-one setting at first before doing it with a group. Plus, I'd be first-time DMing. Anybody have suggestions on any published content on DM's guild or otherwise that would make for a good one-shot with a single player? Would like something that is fun, quirky, and not too combat heavy since she'd likely be more into the roleplaying and exploration aspects and not so much combat.
Yes, the one-page dungeon adventure Tin Ear could be a fun exploration adventure for one player if handled a little softer that it wants. She might have to, at most fight some bugs or maybe go one on one with a mad bartender.
My wife and I started playing together and it can be tough trying to fit a game meant many players to fit with just two. It's not impossible though. I found a system that works really well for just the two of us and it offers versatility. Here's the link. https://koboldpress.com/howling-tower-cardtography/ What this does is randomize the map based on playing cards. In games we've played we use the card amounts to indicate how difficult the encounter is. We use hearts for monster encounters, clubs for doors or terrain encounters, diamonds for treasure and spades for traps. For monsters we have a premade list with higher numbers for higher monsters. For doors and traps I've used 5 plus the card number to set the DC. We've also used specific cards to represent objectives and specific encounters that fall into the story.
Since the map is random it frees up my time as a DM so I play my own character along side my wife's character. The hard part with a single player is a bad dice roll can make or break the game. An additional player helps counter this. This method has been a lot of fun for us. I hope it helps others trying to do two player D&D.
I got an email stating there was a message wondering what type of monsters I use but when I looked at my messages it wasn't there. Wierd its not there so I'll respond here. I like to use four monsters and a boss. So even clubs, odd clubs, even spades and odd spades are monsters. Diamonds are some sort of treasure. It's fun to throw in a puzzle for the treasure. Hearts are traps or environmental hazards. Then I do different dungeons based on elemental monsters.
Fire would have fire snakes, lesser fire elemental, magmins, a young pheonix and top it off with a red dragon wyrmling and you got a fun low level fire adventure.
Ice would have frost bitten skeletons, ice mephits, winter wolves, lesser ice elemental and a white dragon wyrmling.
Then mix and match settings. You could have a dessert, a cave, a jungle, ocean or forest. Just choose monsters in those settings and run with it.
I'm kind of in the same boat.
If you are looking for child-like wonderment, the new Wild Beyond the Witchlight book starts in a very fun carnival atmosphere before transitioning into a very colorful and childish romp through the Feywild reminiscent of older movies like Labyrinth, Never-Ending Story, Pagemaster, etc.
Does it matter what level the player is? I'm just getting into DMing and I want to make sure I'm going in the right direction.
Not really. The adventure can scale to about any level. The monsters are mostly re-skinable to any level.
Does anyone have any updated information that might be relevant to this? - Now some time has passed.
I'm in the same boat as OP and looking for a short adventure to practice DMing with one player before scaling up.
TIA :)
Google “One Page Dungeon.” There are some real gems in those files that are super easy to scale for one player.
Without a better understanding of what you are looking for, the style of play you want, or what your player wants out of the game, it is sort of hard to make specific suggestions.