Two-player games?

By Ludlov Thadwin of Sevenpiecks, in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

I've been wondering... Does anyone ever play a two-player RPG session? Just the GM and one PC? It would sure make it much easier for me to play a campaign with just my girlfriend as a single PC instead of getting all my friends together (most of whom are just beginning to start families and therefore don't have much time). I know we'd be missing out on the options the career sheet offers. I just wonder how well it would work. Has anyone tried it before?

I used to do it all the time. I GM'd a buddy playing a thief. She was a jewel thief and a 2nd story (wo)man. We spent many nights casing places and planning elaborate heists. There used to be a quarterly (?) publication called 'Thieves Guild'. Many of our scenarios came from there.

Night of Mystery...converted to 2nd edition...

jh

It's certainly viable. I'd actually argue WFRP isn't the best system for it - but it's fixable. The main problem is a one-person WFRP party is going to die when a back of villians turn up just from being overwhelmed, but you can just have a bunch of NPCs in the party.

Promethean is a system that I think works incredibly well 2-players, incidentally

Sounds like a good idea to me. You could also use it to playtest and develop scenarios. A sort WFRP jam session happy.gif

And after all I think Jay owes us a session demo video gran_risa.gif

phobiandarkmoon said:

Promethean is a system that I think works incredibly well 2-players, incidentally

QFT.

They can be a lot of fun. As GM, you just have to remember that the campaign is all about one character. You need to have a good sense of what that character is good at, and what they're not so good at. For best results, you should tailor your adventures so that they're specifically about that character. Don't show up with a big plan for what they should do and how they should do it, but do present that character with situations they can succeed in. Once you know the character's career, you should be able to put them in situations where they'll have memorable adventures.

Don't rely on helpful NPCs to make up for the PC's difficulties. Let the one and only PC be the focus of your campaign. If the PC is a city-dweller and they need a guide through the forest, that's fine. Just avoid having NPCs that are only there to fill out a party of adventurers. Your campaign shouldn't be about a adventuring party; it should be about a lone adventurer.

For inspiration, think about heroic loners. They usually have some NPC helpers for a few episodes, but they always go back to working solo. Mad Max is one of those. So is Indiana Jones, Caine from Kung Fu or the Bride from Kill Bill, Pee-Wee Herman...

The one bit of plotting advice that has carried me through lots of campaigns is this: Everybody has a drunk cousin. What I mean is, everybody has a family member or someone that they would not want to be associated with but they're family, and if they need your help, you're bound to do something about it. Some other possibilites are: brother in jail, ailing mother who needs medicine, sister who's betrothed to a scoundrel, a son who keeps stealing from the neighbors, a daughter who ran away... Make sure your PC has somebody like this in their life, and you'll probably find that the adventures write themselves.

Good luck!

Thanks for your replies guys, and especially DagobahDave for your intriguing suggestions...

And what about one player controlling two or three characters? It would be harder to roleplay but organisationally I think WFRP3 would be quite fit to do the job thanks to the skill cards etc.

Perhaps a single character would die so many times it wouldn't be funny anymore (or it would be, but for the wrong reasons ;) )

Ludlov Thadwin of Sevenpiecks said:

And what about one player controlling two or three characters? It would be harder to roleplay but organisationally I think WFRP3 would be quite fit to do the job thanks to the skill cards etc.

Perhaps a single character would die so many times it wouldn't be funny anymore (or it would be, but for the wrong reasons ;) )

This works as an alternative, but beware the player losing immersion (i.e. they might end up thinking about the various character's abilities and approaching the game as a tactical simulation rather than just getting into character). On the other hand, it makes plans that would be boring with a normal group interesting - like a Mission Impossible style operation, where you focus on one group doing their part of the overall plan at once

Perhaps you might want to consider having a permanent NPC (side kick whatever) run by yourself, allowing you to then use the new party sheets but this kind of thing is also useful to help push the PC in the right direction when the player is at a loss as what to do next and hasn't got other players to bounce ideas off.

Interesting ideas, both the Mission Impossible thing and the NPC sidekick. I assume it all depends on the nature of the campaign, which I plan to write myself anyway. The last and only pre-written campaign I ever ran was The Thousand Thrones and I got bored of all the constraints that such a big book puts on you.