One on one games

[Scuggs]

Are one player, one gamemaster games doable like they are in call of Cthulhu? Looking for modules and advice from someone with experience with this.

Thank you.

[Squaredeal Sten]

As far as I recall, the only modules meant to work One On One are things like the Soloquest classic collection, or the Starter set solo quest which is also on line from Chaosiumm.  They are really meant for solitaire play  But those will occupy you for a while.

A lot of modules are meant for parties of three or four.  You can try scaling the opposition in these. Fighting one wolf instead of the pack.  But when you reach the Big Bad, as written - then a lone starting  character adventurer is likely to get eaten. 

Also many are designed for Adventurers with a mix of skills.  You would lose that. Also the social flavor of play.  

So one adventurer adventures are certainly doable. But most that you can buy don't fit that.  If you are GMing the question is how fast can you write your own material.

[Joerg]

In one-on-one games, you can bring in a sidekick and possibly a companion/questgiver, not limiting the player to just one character's abilities (although the side characters might require some rolls in order to follow the player's desires).

I refereed the Cattle Raid scenario from the GM screen package for a single player accompanied by two NPCs. That worked reasonably well.

[Darius West]

On 8/25/2022 at 11:43 AM, Scuggs said:

Are one player, one gamemaster games doable like they are in call of Cthulhu? Looking for modules and advice from someone with experience with this.

Thank you.

Yes, absolutely, single player single GM games are doable in RQ.  You see, GMs play all the other characters and tell the story, just like happens normally, it's just that only one person is acting as a player.

[SaintMeerkat]

My friend and I use what I have called the "troupe" system where one of us runs the game and the other runs four PCs simultaneously. While I wouldn't recommend it for beginners, it has worked well for us running campaigns in a variety of games. In roleplay intensive games, we choose a "face" for the party that does most of the communication with the NPCs. Depending on how comfortable you are with the rules, you might want to give that a try.

Some of the other Pros of this method include fewer skipped game nights because you can't get everyone together and rescheduling is much simpler.

[Baron Wulfraed]

1 hour ago, SaintMeerkat said:

My friend and I use what I have called the "troupe" system where one of us runs the game and the other runs four PCs simultaneously. While I wouldn't recommend it for beginners, it has worked well for us running campaigns in a variety of games. In roleplay intensive games, we choose a "face" for the party that does most of the communication with the NPCs. Depending on how comfortable you are with the rules, you might want to give that a try.

Some of the other Pros of this method include fewer skipped game nights because you can't get everyone together and rescheduling is much simpler.

In my ancient active days, it was SOP for each player to run two characters. It made for larger parties (and commensurately larger encounters), and provided us with a character still in play if the other is killed. Can get confusing at times (I went an entire AD&D session with one of my "wizard" types [we tended to rotate between beginner, mid-level ~5-9, and higher "sets" of characters] and only realized I was playing the old critter as the OTHER "wizard"... apparently they got so old they couldn't remember if they were male or female 😱 ). Although: RQ's %ile system makes it more obvious which character is which vs AD&D levels that tend to flatten any differences in characters.

 

[Austin]

On 8/24/2022 at 8:43 PM, Scuggs said:

Looking for modules and advice from someone with experience with this.

I ran a playtest of one of my JC adventures one-on-one, with my player running two adventurers.

Combat-wise, my experience suggests you should focus on "heroic duels" rather than melee fights. Abstract bigger combats with Battle rolls. Maybe have a crew of "mooks" which tag along with the adventurer, then just assume "my mooks tangle with your mooks" while the Hero throws down with the Baddie.

One idea I've had, but never tried, is basically giving the adventurer a Passion or other ability for their NPC buddies. So something like, "Orlanthi Bodyguard 60%." So anything which makes sense that an Orlanth Adventurous bodyguard would do on the Ernaldan adventurer's behalf, he has a 60% at. Something like this could help make one non-fighty character still feel that fights are THEIR win, rather than their NPCs' win.

One-on-one play works well with more narrative, rules-lite stuff. Focusing on social conflict, over monster-fighting. Magical conflicts too, spirit stuff, flashy "look at me, I'm a powerful embodiment of my god" things roll well. One of the upsides to a one-on-one game is that you don't have to divide up the cool moments, so a game like that can work well with a single "I'm super amazing" adventurer. There aren't additional players to feel left out.

I think a few people who I see over on the Chaosium Discord have one-on-one (or two) games going, but can't recall which community members that is.

Modules...

From the GM Screen Pack, I'd try re-framing the Apple Lane adventure as a duel between the adventurer and Xiobalg for the fate of the village. "Cattle Raid" should be able to play more-or-less as written (emphasizing the social side of that conflict), but I think handling the boss in the third adventure would be hard solo.

I think the following adventures from The Pegasus Plateau & Other Stories could be fun one-on-one:

• The Pegasus Plateau
• the Grey Crane
• Crimson Petals
• The Pairing Stones

Each of those adventures has social (or social-ish) elements, or should be relatively easy to tweak for solo play. Reducing a group of baddies to two or three, teaming up with obvious NPC options, stuff like that (without getting into spoiler territory).

I wouldn't try running anything from The Smoking Ruins & Other Stories. The investigative adventure in the Starter Set could be fun, but the first and third adventures seem difficult to run for one player.

From the JC...

I'm not sure I can really recommend any of my own material. Diana Probst's Jallupel Goodwind (which I published, and edited) could be good story-wise, but the "monster" is a bad fit for solo fights unless tweaked. The Throat of Winter should be doable with a small down-tuning, if the adventurer has combat tools.

The adventures in Beer With Teeth's Dregs of Clearwine and Cups of Clearwine are flavorful, and not intensely fighty (if memory serves). They should work well, in addition to being plain good books.

As I think through things, I would actually consider looking at Company of the Dragon, too. Because the focus is on playing both adventurers and a community, I actually think that campaign has some real potential for one-on-one play. It would probably involve a bit of work tweaking moments, adventures, etc.

I'm sure there's other JC stuff which would play well one-on-one, but we're in this beautiful time where I can't actually remember every RQ adventure off the top of my head! So I'll call that a win for the JC, but maybe a loss for this post. 😄

Hope that gives you a few ideas and threads to go start with!

[Zit]

I think one of the Ducpak supplements in the JC is a one-to-one adventure.