I’d like to play this with my wife, largely by chat when she’s away. It would be our first RPG. I’d GM and she would be the only player. Is this reasonable? Any advice?
I’d like to play this with my wife, largely by chat when she’s away.
I’d like to play this with my wife, largely by chat when she’s away.
You’ll need to focus on smaller heists, as her Stress track will be the only pressure valve for chaos, as opposed to the two to four+ Stress tracks of a full crew.
And probably best to make sure the crew starts with at least one cohort – that way, even with one PC, there’ll be a few scoundrels available.
Not sure this would work well with only one player. There’s a fair amount of game mechanics/economy with helping and cooperation.
Teamwork stuff would need to be reworked into something that maintains the pacing and momentum of the game. An easy way would be successes giving a +1D to the next action or giving the player some token they can use to give a +1D, +1 Effect or improve position on a future roll within a scenario or score.
That way playing solo still encourages an avenue of options and keeps the player daring.
She can play more than one character. nbd 🙂
What is nbd?
I honestly hadn’t thought of her playing two characters. Would that have any big disadvantages?
No big deal. We’ve had players with multiple characters for months.
Two other things :
1. I’m also considering Scarlet Heroes. It’s designed for two. Would that
be a better option?
2. Any suggestions for the best way to pitch it to her? She’s into
mechanics over theme. Maybe one of the videos?
Everything Kevin Crawford makes is great, so yeah, Scarlet Heroes would probably be good, too. But you know her better than I do. 🙂
Halve the requirements for pushing and resisting. That single character will have roughly the same amount of chances to push and resist as two-separate characters without the mental overhead of well, playing two separate characters…
Will that work well? Disadvantages?
Michael Bacon
Disadvantage is a second character can’t pass on a +1d to a roll from “Assist”
Put there is “pushing yourself” and devils bargain to boost die rolls so I don’t think it’s a huge issue.
I wouldn’t change any rules unless you run in to problems. Don’t pile on game design challenges along with GMing if you can help it. 🙂
And playing multiple characters isn’t tough. GMs do it all the time.
Playing multiple player characters is not “tough”.
Completely different animal from running GM NPCs though.
Some people enjoy multi-tasking and are even good at it. Some. I’ve never seen a game limit how many Player Characters a person could individually run, which is good, to each their own. Also haven’t seen many games where most players opted to run multiple PCs simultaneously either (as opposed to swapping out and giving one character a rest).
Yes, I’m aware of those things, actually. And yet I still said what I said. What a world. 🙂
Thanks for the advice! I’ll definitely try it with her. Now I just have to decide if I’ll start with this or Scarlet Heroes. This is much more appealing thematically and mechanically, but SH’S apparent ease of use may win out for a first game.
Best of luck, Michael. Hope your game goes well, whatever it is.
My wife GMs a game where I am the only player. I play two PCs and it works out just fine. Blades PCs aren’t really that complicated mechanically and the sheets are easy to read.
I also GM the game a fair amount so I have a decent amount of systems mastery, so your mileage may vary, but I heartily recommend it.
This is a week old, but here is my thoughts anyways…
Your wife may like to make 3 or 4 characters, but only play one at a time. Each time she swaps characters, the previous one gets a free chance to heal their stress through vice, so even with the increased reliance on pushing herself to make up for the lack of help, characters can take time off to recover.
Also remember you can trade position for effect, something my players did expertly last session.
Why not two at once? Just thinking overhead?
Michael Bacon
Even two characters is going to play differently than four. You will still need to make adjustments.
The stress and free downtime actions economies do not scale in Blades. 4 PCs have a better opportunity to evenly distribute stress use, harm, and heat mitigation in a way smaller groups of PCs can’t match.
I’ve been re-reading the core book and it’s evident to me now, that there are sufficient mechanics to handle the issues a smaller group of PCs have.