Hi all,
tomorrow is my second game of BitD as GM and (unplanned but now kind of inevitable – §$&% you, real life) it will be a *1-on-1 session* with only 1 player.
In a game focused on a gang of people I wonder if this can work at all. Any tips, ideas thoughts? I’d love to have some guidance or inspiration…
(First session with 3 players went fine overall (the troubles I had I already read a lot about here – like one task-two rolls etc). I’m confident I can improve my job here.)
It works just fine one-on-one Bastian!
You will need to assess your clocks somewhat, or a least talk through the situation(s) with the player prior to establishing dangers since it may be hard for them to complete complex or difficult heists without the teamwork rules. They can still be part of a gang if that’s what the player wants, but mechanically they are all on their lonesome.
My advice? Re-incorporate like crazy! Ask lots of provocative questions during charge and play and use those answers over and over. Make the PCs listed friends key players in the game. Flesh out the crew mooks too. Give them names and one motivation each.
Make failure fun! Since statistically full successes are rarer with just one player, do lots of ‘you get what you want but….’
on partial successes. Play up the stress too. Being stressed is kinda exciting, and trauma can lead to very revealing scenes with the character.
If the player is gushy about failing lots, then use the flashback mechanic for all its worth – so if the player thinks, ‘man there is no WAY I can do what I want here…’ then talk about something they may have set up in the past to help them succeed and ‘retcon’ the failure via the flashback mechanic. It can be very cinematic.
Have a great game! Don’t play for more than a few hours, 1-on-1 can get exhausting 🙂
EDIT: Hah! Got it.
http://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/30woms/at_the_table_the_chase/
Looks like I was fuzzy on some details from my write-up below, but whatever. The above reddit post is a good read.
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I’m trying to find a really cool Reddit thread for this, but I’m failing. Here’s an alternative that looks interesting at first glance: http://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/2xxlvj/1_pc_dd_5e_campaign_suggestions/
Anyways, the thread I was looking for talked about a similar situation: 1 player, 1 GM. The GM set up a chase turned escape session. The PC was cruising through the streets one night, unable to sleep, looking like a bad dude and saw someone who owed him money or something. The chase is on. Lots of rolls for ‘encounters’ (sometimes physical obstacles, sometimes NPCs) and the chase ended when the player caught the target. Unfortunately, the target wasn’t aimlessly running, he led the PC straight into the turf of the gang of which the target belonged. Enter tough guys. Small fight, outnumbered, fun combat. He wins, or loses, but he has to leave the turf. Now it’s an escape.
Gets back to the hotel where his party was still asleep, crashes into the bed beaten, bloody, and smiling. End session.
http://www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/31hjm2/anatomy_of_a_chase/
This is another fantastic post in the theme of what I posted above.
Thanks for the great advice!
By the way … it went great. We both had a blast. I went a bit more loosely on the rules than in my first try (and so I was able to keep the game fluid and avoid frustration) and we made several breaks to discuss whats working, whats not, whats exiting, why happened stuff the way it did.
We will continue.
(sorry for not writing a full report)