Really enjoying the rulebook and everything else I’m reading about BitD; I can’t wait to get a group together to play. In the meantime, I’d like to try a solo game with my wife – does anyone have any suggestions on how to make the game work well for a single player? Thanks in advance!
Really enjoying the rulebook and everything else I’m reading about BitD; I can’t wait to get a group together to…
Really enjoying the rulebook and everything else I’m reading about BitD; I can’t wait to get a group together to…
I’ve never run for just one person, but in my experience running our group with varying numbers each session, the game scales down pretty well (at least down to 2 people). It’s never really a matter of having ENOUGH people to do the operation, it’s trying to ensure that the operation doesn’t spiral too insanely out of control. That means adequately distributing stress, doing flashbacks, maintaining position. It’s going to be hard, IMO, to preserve the flow of the game when just only one crew member is shouldering that burden, because when things start going bad for an individual, they go real bad real quick.
If I had to run a single player game today, I would simply give that player two characters.
Barring that, I’d just say… be generous with flashback costs. Consider starting the crew with a gang if they don’t already have one, and try not to push every roll down to desperate.
Anyhow, good luck. That’s my two cents.
I would second the above. Blades is all about cooperation (group actions, setup actions, assistance etc) and it costs more stress to do something on your own with any sort of effect. With only one player the stress pool is small and a few bad rolls can get out of hand quickly. Also in downtime there are only 2 free downtime actions to not only do personal stuff but reduce heat from the crew.
Saying that, it is possible to power game the rules to help somewhat:
Pick one of the crews that starts with cohorts (Breakers with Thugs, or Cultists with Adepts) and then take the Elite Thugs/Adept box. This gives you a cohort with 2d6 in their areas of expertise and can also suck up harm.
Also build the character to Resist well. With a dot in 6 actions 2 each in Insight, Prowess and Resolve gives 2d6 to Resist any consequence and by adding “Forged in Fire” from the Breakers crew that becomes 3d6. With that pool a lot can be resisted with the PC taking little stress. Also the PC gets 2d6 in downtime to clear stress. By cherry picking special ablilities you can provide even more resilience to a single PC.
All this being said you don’t want to Min/Max the system so that it is no longer fun. Blades is all about storytelling and with a single player you could quite happily run a game with a small time crock doing small time scores with little risk and just making ends meet without advancing and that’s a fine way to play the game.
I’m in the same situation and to keep consistency, I’ll be softer on consequences and how many of them can be fully resisted. Flasbacks will, Zeke mentioned, will also be cheaper.
In my limited experience, Blades seems to have a ‘minimum’ team size, because scoundrel-ing around Doskvol is a team sport, and that mininum size is three…but at least part of that was me and my two players not quite getting part of the rules down right. (grin) For a solo game, my first impulse would be to grab something completely different and then keep an eye on the GM and Player Advice to do something Blades-like.
That said, I’m noting all the suggestions above and rethinking my stance.
The more I think about it, the more I think that playing a low level crook hitting low level targets most of the time could be fun. A shadows crew with a cohort of street kids pickpocketing other tier 0 people for example. It’s low on Rep, Coin and XP but not very risky and would attract little Heat or Stress. Once in a while the gang could try something bigger before ducking under the radar again and the GM can always dangle a tempting carrot from time to time to make things more interesting.
Taking “Leadership” from the Cutter playbook and building up to several cohorts with differing abilities over time could produce a strong combination with the crew able to take a fair bit of harm.
Thanks a lot, everyone, these suggestions were really helpful. I’ll play it by ear and adjust on the fly as needed.