RPG duets; one-on-one; GM and one player

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Agemegos

Agemegos

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I've made several attempts at running RPGs one-on-one, using ForeSight, HindSight, GURPS, James Bond 007, and Classified on various occasions. But I've never found it really satisfactory. And I don't think the problem is with the game mechanics — JB007 with a PC built on "00" points or Classified with a PC built on "Special Agent" points seem almost designed for duet play. One issue seems to be that I don't get enough time to think: there are never moments when the players are playing interactions or discussing implications and courses of action; so the player's focus is always on me, expecting me to say or listen to stuff. The other issue seems to be that a solo player more often reaches an impasse, stuck on a plan or analysis that won't work, or with no ideas at all and without anyone to bounce ideas off and point out errors and oversights. I don't want to play both sides of the table because that would leave the character-player without agency. But on the other hand I know that a lot of GMs out there make it work routinely.

What's your experience of duets, if any?

For those GMs out there who regularly run duets, what's your secret sauce? Do some formats work better than others? (For instance, do location-based dungeoncrawls and hexcrawls work better than mission-based adventures?) Do some genres work better than others? Do some rule sets work better than others? Do some character-players manage better than others? Or do you not have a secret sauce and find that your usual GMing approach works just fine for duets?

I am aware that Pelgrane Press publishes a few particular instances of Gumshoe One-2-One, as investigative games for the Cthulhu mythos setting and the Night's Black Agents campaign scheme ("Jason Bourne v. Vampires"). I haven't checked them out because I didn't care for the expendable skill points model in Trail of Cthulhu or Night's Black Agents or Gaean Reach or Dying Earth, and because I want a versatile investigation/heist core that does not include supernatural elements as integral. Have you tried Gumshoe One-2-One? How well did the solo rules work? Ought I to check it out for the purpose of adapting its duet mechanics to ForeSight and Classified games?
 
I've loved playing GURPS (and TFT) in one-player & GM games, both as part-time situations in larger campaigns that involve several other players at other times, and with PCs who pretty much always just get played by one player.

It was one of the most available play modes when I was a kid, so it's entirely normal to me, and I don't have any issues doing it. I don't have issues running for larger groups either, but I tend to find one-on-one a bit easier, particularly because it avoids multiple PCs both involved at action at the same time from different perspectives.

I usually have pretty pro-active players, and I'm also used to providing details, and/or prompting and pacing and/or altering detail level and/or time rate.

Also, PCs can talk to NPCs, and have NPC companions, join NPC parties, get NPC employers, etc.

Maybe the difference from what you mention has to do with when you wrote, "I don't want to play both sides of the table because that would leave the character-player without agency." - I don't know what you mean, but if you mean you avoid having NPCs be allowed to act as comrades/employers/companions/hirelings/etc who talk to the player about the situation and have their own agendas and opinions, then yeah, maybe you might think of that as a big part of "my secret sauce". I'm not sure why you'd think it was a problem, but it can be used to fill in just about any lack of player initiative, in the same way that other players do.

Running a programmed adventure is another technique that can work, since those also tend to fill in for players who lack initiative, by limiting choices to lists. A published railroad adventure might be usable in a similar way, but personally, ew. ;-)
 
I've ran and played duets in Exalted 2e, Mythras, Legends of the Wulin, Art of Wuxia, Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate, GURPS4e, Usagi Yojimbo, Witchcraft, Deimos/Phobos*, Fates Worse Than Death, Eclipse Phase 1e, Tianxia Fate, Savage Worlds, a hombrewed d6 system variation, and probably others I don't remember at the moment...:grin:

As you can guess from the list, my experience with them is absolutely positive:thumbsup:.

A key point, IME, is to make NPCs more active, and have/be a player who treats them as real people (i.e. as other PCs in a game that allows PvP...but with 0 guilt:shade:).

When there's a stop, you give the NPCs the analogue of Idea checks (1 in 6, in systems that don't have that) and see if anyone suggests something. Doesn't need to be a good idea, either, if an unlikely NPC comes up with it, you just want to keep the conversation up...:gooseshades:

And yes, avoid pauses, even more than other games duets live and die on keeping their own momentum::honkhonk:.
 
I mostly play one on one. Works fine. I usually give my player a sidekick/companion npc but they’re only there to help if the player gets completely stuck and then I’ll just hint at the best course of action. They’re also useful for plot hooks.

Different dynamic than group play of course. I would like more players more regularly (grown up life spoiling things again) but I do enjoy the ability to thoroughly explore the single character without having to share the spotlight.
 
I remember having fun doing it as a kid; but I've never had a satisfactory experience as an adult. I find it takes a lot more effort and produces an inferior result missing the interplay between PCs that I find one of the most enjoyable parts of the game.
 
It is really player dependent. I have had some really good experiences, most recently with Top Secret 1E, but you definitely need an active player as opposed to one that is used to letting other players or the GM do some of the heavy lifting idea wise.

The OP’s comment about not having time to think is true, the GM has to have their notes ready and be prepared, you don’t have the normal downtime when the players are talking amongst themselves. I find a two hour session is plenty long and you can actually get a lot done in an hour of duet play.
 
These days I only run duets. Players have either moved away or died (!) so my group is effectively my wife. We run games each week, turn and turn about -- and we have a great time. In fact I'd say duets have provided some of the best rpg sessions in 46 years or so of playing rpgs.

We run pulp games with rules light systems, usually BoL or Everywhen - so Barbarians of Lemuria mechanics. Actually it's often a mash-up of both; as BoL mechanics are so modular it's easy to mix and match to get just the sort of mechanics you need for a particular setting. But as some have indicated above, you don't need a rules light system to play duets.

I think the key points for a successful duet are:
  • Both GM and player have to be on the same page regarding playstyle and genre expectations.
  • The need for the GM to improvise is even more important than in a game with a group of players.
  • There is no player discussion, so rounded, detailed and helpful (as well as unhelpful) NPCs are a must.
  • Pictures of NPCs can really help fix NPCs in the player's mind -use pictures of bit player character actors if you can't find any drawings on the internet.
  • Games move faster without inter-player chatter, so expect games to be shorter and don't worry about that - 2 to 2.30 hours of good play is better than a 4 hour game that drags.
  • As we play pulp, the original source material (Conan, The Continental Op, James Bond, Indiana Jones) often worked alone or had just a sidekick or two - modern tv or films feature more of an ensemble cast. However, we have run spy games, science fiction, horror, and sword and sorcery with a PC and 2 to 3 allied NPCs and it worked fine.
  • I've just finished a run of sword and sorcery Mesoamerican games, while Alison has just finished a run of occult detective games set in 1930s LA. On Monday she's running a 1920s spy game for me.
  • And of course, as with any style of game, sometimes some things just don't work for you. Perhaps you just miss the group style much you just don't enjoy duets - no harm in that. (I've just crashed and burned running 7th edition Call of Cthulhu. I got back on the horse, but the crash was painful.)
 
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Agemegos said:
What's your experience of duets, if any?
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I've run duets over the years, primarily for my wife, and the biggest issue I've run into is time management. As a GM, I have never been able to time out a duet session correctly, mainly because a single player moves much faster than a group. Without the need for discussion or consultation and the opportunity to do intra-group roleplaying, duets sprint through events taking 15-20 minutes (or longer) with a whole group.

For this reason, I've ended up halving my time estimate for any given scenario, which can be unsatisfactory. Telling a decently structured story at a reasonable pace is part of the fun, but I feel pressured to put a lot of content into every session.
 
Rated Aargh said:
I've run duets over the years, primarily for my wife, and the biggest issue I've run into is time management. As a GM, I have never been able to time out a duet session correctly, mainly because a single player moves much faster than a group. Without the need for discussion or consultation and the opportunity to do intra-group roleplaying, duets sprint through events taking 15-20 minutes (or longer) with a whole group.

For this reason, I've ended up halving my time estimate for any given scenario, which can be unsatisfactory. Telling a decently structured story at a reasonable pace is part of the fun, but I feel pressured to put a lot of content into every session.
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Interesting. I think many things about how I GM were shaped by mainly playing one-on-one at first.

For example, I tend not to frame games as a single scenario I'm planning to complete in one session. I prep a mapped game world with the idea that PCs may choose to go and do unexpected things, and that play can proceed without any particular adventure happening. But also, I tend to prepare enough going on that I feel I could run more than one session's play, because players can/do do unpredictable things such as change direction/interest, kill NPCs, start new situations, transforms situations, bypass obstacles, figure things out faster than expected, leave/join parties, etc. So I'm expecting, preparing, and running a dynamic play more than planned situations, and the situations I do prep tend to offer lots and lots of potential action.

But if/when the situation changes and the GM feels unprepared to continue without doing more prep, the game can pause/stop until the GM is ready again. With only one player, that tends to be easier to arrange and less of an issue than if a session involves getting several people together at once.
 
I had a one-on-one D&D game in HS where I played the Sandahl Bergman version of Valeria AFTER she died: cruising through the planes doin' Valkyrie stuff. It was tons of fun. Obviously trust is required between the two parties, but it can be a nice (and comparatively quiet) alternative to group play.
 
I've ran quite a few "duet" games. As there is no intra-player interaction, it plays more focus on me as a GM. On the other hand, there is less headache with syncing the time-schedule of the game or the ingame one.

With only one player, I find I need a higher compatibility on gaming style with the player, while with a group each player doesn't have be as good of a match as long the entire group becomes a good match.

In the duet, it is a higher need of the player to be able to be pro-active, while in a group it is enough that some are.

So, I find them having different cons and pros, but both can be fun.
 
I love 1-on-1 games, or whatever term that you want to use.

I've found that my sweet spot is combining asynchronous and synchronous modalities to give me space to breathe but, really, I probably spent too much time with Amber DRPG so I'm used to pulling answers out of my derriere on the fly (even if it is not my preferred way of doing things).

The most important part of the process, for me, was figuring out the specific dynamic between the single player and the GM. Once that is put to bed things tend to settle down quickly and, well, just sing.
 
I run CoC7e here and there for a pal. The genre works great for a solo PC. I keep the violence fairly minimal, and not terribly lethal (e.g., the fight might end up with his PC simply getting knocked out). It also requires him to make use of lots of contacts to help fill in his character's skill set. Recommended.
 
A friend and I did this years ago with AD&D 2e, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. He ran a campaign for me (half-elf Fighter/Druid) and I for him (gnome illusionist/thief) and it was great. We used a shared homebrewed world as the setting with the campaigns geographically separate

As a GM, I found it easy to manage, since I only needed to know one PC's powers, capabilities, and motivations. I could devote more energy to the setting and creating interesting NPCs.

As players, my friend and I were both proactive, so we could push the adventures along without unbearable silence or grinding the games to a halt when something tripped us up. If the player and GM already have a good repartee it's golden.

I don't have much more to add save I would do it again in a heartbeat. I think it would be fun to do it as a hexcrawl with C&C or just go back to AD&D 2e. Now I'm jonesing.
 
As a kid a good friend of mine ran a game for me. It was somewhat similar to Shadowrun in a way (humans, orcs, and elves doing mercenary work in a futuristic setting), but the system was all homebrew. The game actually played more like a board game than a "proper" RPG. I manoeuvred my character through fairly large hand-drawn maps completing various missions. My first mission was launching an ICBM from Big Ben (!) at Brazil (?). I know I hated the one that resembled one of the MOHAA missions (the French town with the enemy snipers). I can't remember how many missions he ran for me, but the game went on for a few weeks for sure. Anyways, it was one of my best gaming experiences overall.
 
I ran a few one-on-one D&D sessions back in the day but most of my experience with them has been playing some Coc, later some Cthulhu Confidential and more experimental storygames specifically for duet play with my wife. She certainly preferred them to the group D&D sessions we played weekly for a year and a half which she (and I) found deathly boring.
 
I've run Savage Worlds for just one player a few times. I didn't specifically set out to run for just one person, but it was a public game and there were times when only one player showed up. Not my favorite way to play, but I still prefer it to not playing.
 
Back in the day, I ran Ars Magica Duet style, because only one of my friends was willing to invest the time coming to grips with the magic system. I used one of the provided Covenants, so he had a colorful cast of other Magi to interact with.

And, of course, I've run BEOWULF: Age of Heroes Duet style as well, although I have also run groups through the game as well.
 
Jacob Rodgers said:
Back in the day, I ran Ars Magica Duet style, because only one of my friends was willing to invest the time coming to grips with the magic system. I used one of the provided Covenants, so he had a colorful cast of other Magi to interact with.

And, of course, I've run BEOWULF: Age of Heroes Duet style as well, although I have also run groups through the game as well.
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Beowulf is a great adaptation of 5E, probably the only way I would 5E again honestly.
 
I’ve ran a few Savage Worlds Supers games as one-on-one sessions. I’ve done a campaign with the wife using Chronicles of Darkness, running a dark (but not supernatural) thriller campaign. I ran a Hârnmaster game for my younger son as a one-on-one until my older son wanted to join, so it’s got two players now.
 
The first campaign I ran was a one-on-one. Since it was TFT, it involved the PC finding and joining a party of NPC adventurers, so the party was (let's see if I can remember . . . I think so - one PC and 7 NPCs). How else are you going to have a "slightly above average" starting character survive an adventure into the depths of the Huldre Forest?
 
I've played a lot one one-on-one over the years and to be fair I've really enjoyed the experience. I'm not sure I can impart any recipe for success however. Mainly because thew guys that I gamed with had a very similar outlook and attitude to gaming. It also allowed me to grow the character in a way you can't really do with bigger groups and I felt the immersion was very good virtually all the time.

What worked for me was a very open ended game. Sure, the GM had a lose scenario but they'd adapt quickly to my actions as a player. And my character would also, during any lull, start pursuing his goals. Which gave the GM always something to work with.
 
sharps54 said:
Beowulf is a great adaptation of 5E, probably the only way I would 5E again honestly.
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Thank you for the kind words. It was, of course, a team effort, but I'm very proud of what we made (and are still making, KING BEOWULF in progress now, Trials of the Twin Seas available on the website, and the usual places, and more).
 
Kismet: I just had an email exchange an editor/publisher where we both agreed to shelve my Tunnels & Trolls/Monsters! Monsters! gamebook/solo dungeon mostly because it was simply too crunchy--and the crunch actually was integral making the narrative work. (After all, you can't reduce a dance-off with the BBEG on a flaming stage to a die roll or two...)

However, in a one-on-one GM adventure, not only are you dividing the bookkeeping, but the burden of decision making....hmmm, maybe I should run it play-by-post first before committing myself to the conversion....

(Hmmmm.... ellipses....)
 
sharps54 said:
Beowulf is a great adaptation of 5E, probably the only way I would 5E again honestly.
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Yes, I was really excited for a couple of moments when it was announced - then I noticed it's 5e, and instantly wrote it off:thumbsup:.
 
sharps54 said:
If you get a chance to play give it a shot, it really does evoke the source material quite well.
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It's still going to be 5e, though, so no:thumbsup:.

The amount of changes it would take to evoke the source material well enough to fit my criteria would basically preclude writing 5e on the cover::honkhonk:.
 
When I run duets, in general I do them in an asynchronous manner, i.e. pbem/play by google doc, for much the same reason as solo playing- it helps in immersion when you have limited people to interact with and gives more chance for creative expression untethered by the reality of who the amount of people you're playing with. It's also easier to schedule, and flows well. One other advantage is it's easier to get a game together for things that I might not want to continue to play, i.e. playtesting.
 
AsenRG said:
It's still going to be 5e, though, so no:thumbsup:.

The amount of changes it would take to evoke the source material well enough to fit my criteria would basically preclude writing 5e on the cover::honkhonk:.
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CW1: Thread Drift
CW2: Feigned shocked surprise to CW1

Curious as to the non-OGL/legal/whatever criteria used in putting 5E on the cover.

  • If you know 5E, you can skim or even skim large chunks of these rules. (Maybe analogous to 3rd edition/ D20 games of back when)
    or
  • You can swap characters from here to your 5E campaign and vice-versa with an absolute minimum of effort
    or
  • ????????
 
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Mosker said:
CW1: Thread Drift
CW2: Feigned shocked surprise to CW1

Curious as to the non-OGL/legal/whatever criteria used in putting 5E on the cover.

  • If you know 5E, you can skim or even skim large chunks of these rules. (Maybe analogous to 3rd edition/ D20 games of back when)
    or
  • You can swap characters from here to your 5E campaign and vice-versa with an absolute minimum of effort
    or
  • ????????
Click to expand...
Not sure what the CW1 and CW2 mean here...

But frankly, I'd expect it to mean at least something close to one of these two, yes.
 
Mosker said:
CW=Content Warning #FailedJoke
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Sorry, I only found Conventional Wisdom and some TV network...:grin:

Either way, my answer still stands, the above is about what I'd expect if you are putting 5e on the cover. Kinda like the OSR and TSR-era D&D, really, you should at least be able to use 5e creatures and other content with minimum conversion, even if it replaces some numbers' meaning by, say, switching what you do with the monsters' HD, or what dice you roll.

In practice, though, I can't think of any 5e game that does that, at least at the moment, so all examples of such deviations are 3e and OSR related:thumbsup:!
 
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