I'm new to DMing, and am looking to run an adventure for my wife who is also new to rpg gaming. We currently have the Force & Destiny starter set, along with the core rule book. (Open to getting all the others if we can scale)

Is there any resource that would help scale the game to 1 player rather than 3-5?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!

28 minutes ago, Silhouette35 said:

I'm new to DMing, and am looking to run an adventure for my wife who is also new to rpg gaming. We currently have the Force & Destiny starter set, along with the core rule book. (Open to getting all the others if we can scale)

Is there any resource that would help scale the game to 1 player rather than 3-5?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!

What kind of character does she want to run? The best advice is start small and ramp up difficulty slowly. I wouldnt use the beginner game as is because it doesnt scale out of the box. It is a good starting point but you are going to have to tear it into pieces and only use parts of it. Anything that does not fit in your wifes characters wheel house is probably going to need to be modified or skipped entirely and that info she needs will have to be passed in some other fashion.

One possibility would be to give her a companion droid like an R2 or a Protocol droid. That will help cover some of her issues. I would probably also give her a ship and a holocron. If you do a mentor you need to tie them to a location so they cant go with her.

@KRKappel Hey I know you have experience in unusual GM sessions. Do you have any advice for the OP?

Look at characters in star wars who do things alone and consider what they do as an starting point.

If she is the only player then you would want to start her with with extra experience or give her higher than normal stats.

Like it was said previously you can give NPCs to help with some tasks like piloting, and mechanics stuff. That way it reduces what she needs to spread out and cover.

Another idea is to let her character use the nemesis rules, giving her main character two activations per round. Even doing this, I’d still give her at least one NPC ally.

I asked a similar question recently. Some good suggestions in that thread.

Also, check out the Fandible Soloshot podcast, they run a one on one game of Force and Destiny, and it's really great.

13 hours ago, AnomalousAuthor said:

Another idea is to let her character use the nemesis rules, giving her main character two activations per round. Even doing this, I’d still give her at least one NPC ally.

I like this. It's cinematic and puts her in the spotlight.

Sounds like fun. Some suggestions...

Be aware that most GMs can count on their "party" having a wide array of abilities suited to taking on many different kinds of tasks from combat to espionage to social encounters etc. I'd tailor the campaign very tightly around the expertise of your wife's character. As suggested above throw an NPC (droid?) in the group. IF you think your wife would enjoy being in charge of the group add in more NPCs (though this can be very daunting for player, much less new ones).

Be prepared for what happens next if Skill Checks or Encounters result in "failure". Star Wars is a great setting for this so GMs have a lot of examples to draw on but failing a roll or encounter should just set up the next challenge and not stop the game (PC gets captured, has to find a different way of accomplishing the task); failure means there's setbacks (narratively) that drive the story forward to the next task. In Star Wars movies this is look shooting the door controls to lock out the stormtroopers but also the controls that extend the bridge, Han failing to hotwire the doors on Endor then using another approach, Han, Leia, Chewy ending up in a garbage compactor, etc.

Lot of good advice so far (Knight-level start, NPC allies to supplement skill set, put up plot shifts and challenges due to failure not dead-ends or roadblocks), I've found this system to be great for low-player-count games. One of the big reasons why, IMO, is the flexibility of the Strain Threshold.

This health track allows you to make any sort of challenge as potentially dramatic and high stakes as combat, cuz anything that's challenging/worth a roll can reasonably cause Strain and can therefore "take the PC out" of the scene/challenge. Which doesn't have to mean they go unconscious, it just means that things become too much, they're overwhelmed, they can't meaningfully act anymore until they get a chance to recover. They can have "lost" the encounter, whatever it is: social, mechanical, exploration, whatever, but they can still maintain narrative control of their PC afterward. Unlike with combat, where if you exceed your Wounds, you're unconscious and at the mercy of the GM/the GM has to come up with some fiat why the one PC doesn't die.

So use lots of non-combat challenges, and use those to target Strain. Thereby putting the PC and their goals at stake, but not their life.

Also, use rolls sparingly. This system is highly exploitable, via the narrative symbols, when you allow the player to roll for things that shouldn't really be rolled for, AND/OR when you allow roll after roll to try to accomplish the same goal.

So: evaluate carefully whether any given situation actually warrants a roll (or if you should just allow whatever it is to succeed), and then only allow one roll. At which point the situation must change significantly before you let them roll again.

I think the main things I'd do, are

1.) Take one minion out of all minion groups. That should help with the general difficulty.

2.) If she's not a combat-focused character, really limit the combat encounters. Stick to adventure content that leans into her character concept and strengths.

3.) Give her a companion NPC that she can run (after a session or two when she's familiar with running her character). A droid, a love interest, someone. When you stat this character out, make sure it's balancing out what she's lacking, and adds some decent combat too. Between this an dropping a minion, you should be pretty good.

4.) If you're still seeing problems, you might consider dropping the soak of characters by 2 points to help her damage get through to eliminate enemies.

4 hours ago, KRKappel said:

I think the main things I'd do, are

1.) Take one minion out of all minion groups. That should help with the general difficulty.

2.) If she's not a combat-focused character, really limit the combat encounters. Stick to adventure content that leans into her character concept and strengths.

3.) Give her a companion NPC that she can run (after a session or two when she's familiar with running her character). A droid, a love interest, someone. When you stat this character out, make sure it's balancing out what she's lacking, and adds some decent combat too. Between this an dropping a minion, you should be pretty good.

4.) If you're still seeing problems, you might consider dropping the soak of characters by 2 points to help her damage get through to eliminate enemies.

Thank you @KRKappel . I knew you would have awesome tips.