Solo games

I've recently been entertaining the thought of running a game with one person running it and one person playing. This could be a one shot or a campaign depending on how well it went.
I'm curious what systems would work with this?
What systems would not work well with this?
And of course why.

I've had the same thought and I was thinking something like Pathfinder or Numenera. I've run 1 person campaigns in both and the seem to go well. Though the GM has to tailor the combat more in pathfinder since everything is set up for a group of 4

Dungeon World is flexible enough that I imagine it would handle a solo adventure really well.

I think /any/ system probably can be single player to some level. That said, I'd vote for 'The One Ring' as being particularly bad for it. There's a lot of mechanics around the Fellowship (specific jobs in journeys, fellowship points, etc.) that really require more than one player for it to work well. So don't do that one (and as a result, probably not AiME since it's by the same people, just using OGL).

There is a game called Murderous Ghosts...it is specifically designed for one player and one GM. Not sure if you wanted a new game to try but...its a very good story game if you wanted to try.

Might be more complicated on PbP because each person is suposed to read certain pages, but it works like a choose your own adventure book. The GM gives a choice to the player and the players response tells you what page to go to next. And so on.

Thanks for all the great suggestions! I was thinking Cypher System might work, but figured Pathfinder and D&D wouldn't.
I'm not familiar with Dungeon World. Is there an online srd or something to learn the basics?

There are certain games where "game balance" overrides all common sense. I'm thinking D&D here, especially 4e. I would avoid those as, as you say, there would be too much tweaking. But a superhero system, or a more generic system like Fate or Cypher, would probably work really well.

I've been meaning to try Hillfolk here - story games might be tricky for one person, though, if the game is meant for group dynamics.

Unless you're planning on dungeon crawl type adventures, then I would suggest www.blizzard.com haha.

Lol good one Qralloq. I don't know Fate either. Maybe I should experiment with these.

I've got a few systems in mind as I've been looking into this subject a lot lately, as it seems to be the only way for me to get to play in person any more (and to try to get the GF interested!). Some that I've come across from various Reddit threads and forum posts: Scarlet Heroes (probably the most suggested by far), Tiny Dungeon/Tiny Frontiers (my opinion that they'd be a good fit), and Risus. I've currently been looking into both Dungeon World and FATE as possibilities as well.

FWIW I've tried running a one on one game, on this very site, and it was fine. The system I used was Pathfinder, and I tried to make sure that I kept everything scaled for one character, and minimized NPCs. The campaign was literally 1 PC and 2 NPCs in a support role, and then whatever they got into.

Tiny Dungeon/Tiny Frontiers sounds familiar. I think it was brought up on a podcast recently.
I'm thinking a one-on-one game may be more cinematic, like that PC is the star.

Can I suggest looking at the party of one podcast. I think you'll find something useful there

I'll search that out. Thank you

If you're looking for specific games designed for two, here is an excellent list. I'd particularly recommend Scarlet Heroes, as a traditional D&D experience designed specifically for one player and one GM, with a number of cool rules hacks to suit that style of play. The author, Kevin Crawford, also released a free rules supplement to add the Scarlet Heroes 1-on-1 rules to Stars Without Number, if you prefer Sci-Fi.

I'd also agree with the comment that most games, even if they're not designed for two, will work with two. Some will require some degree of hacking, particularly around social mechanics (Dungeon World's Bonds become tricky when you don't have two PCs, for instance), but you can make them work, usually.

Cypher/Numenera works tremendously with one PC. One small hack though, to my previous point, is thinking about how XP works. As written, the GM is handing out 2 XP for an intrusion--a huge bonus if the PC has no one to pass that second XP to. So, I'd suggest either limiting it to 1 XP per intrusion, or giving 1 XP and a boon (almost like saying "you get 2 XP but must spend one right now") instead.

Some other games off the top of my head that work well: Fantasy Flight Star Wars; D&D 5E (surprisingly well, in fact--the encounter balance tools allow you to specifically tailor an encounter to one PC); any of the GUMSHOE games (The Esoterrorists, Fear Itself, Trail of Cthulhu, etc.); World of Darkness games.

There sure is! Dungeon World SRD
Good point! But yes, that can be worked around.

How about one player having several PCs? Because 'solo' refers to the number of players, not the PCs. And in that case it 'game balance' wouldn't really be so important, as the one player is always in focus, regardless of which PC takes the stage.

I'd be definitely interested in that, I actually have a swamp-based lizardman + elf Pathfinder party of five created a while ago.

That's not really what I'm going after. I mean solo as in single PC. I think game balance will only matter for combat, which I suppose is the whole reason for this thread. RP, story, and setting can all be done without regard to the number of players or the system. I believe D&D - and probably other games - have their monster challenge rating calculated for a party of 4. A party of 4 level 1 PCs have the same challenge against a Harpy (CR1 a la 5e) as one level 1 PC would have against a _________?

Mars Colony is for two people, I've been wanting to play it... as soon as I buy it... which I will do after I read and play the other 10 games in my backlog.

http://www.tckroleplaying.com/marscolony/

Reflections is for 2 players (no GM) but the setup is very specific, and might not be what you’re looking for.

There is actually a group currently playing here.

I listened to One Shot Podcast and RPG Academy play that. Fun for what it is, but not something I'm really into.

Technically there is math that can be done in D&D 5e that is intended to give you a balanced encounter for any number of PCs. A single 1st level PC is going to be fighting lots of rats and maybe a lone wolf. Or at least that's what I remember...animals are the primary creature the MM has that works for a single PC. A Bandit would be a difficult challenge if my memory serves...but that makes sense that a one-on-one deadly fight with another demi-human should be taxing.

What Maskcot said works with Pathfinder as well to by making use of the CR (challenge ratings) for encounters. A Level 1 Fighter who has a CR rating of one would be equivalent to something like 4 Kobolds, for example. It can be a bit clunky, but it's an effective system.

I've made gestalt rules for 5e to support a solo game (for each character level the player has, they get 3 class levels and must have 3 distinct classes; basically it's three characters rolled into one body. Proficiency bonus is based on character level, and the PC gets two initiative slots). It worked fine, basically makes 1 character approximate a party of 3, but there was a bit of learning to get it going.

@Candi, would Legends of Ilvaria support solo play? :-)

It's based on Wushu, and is story-driven (the dicing is meant to be story-guiding more than determining), so it certainly would be fine at solo play.

Pathfinder has challenge ratings down to 1/10th so anything on the 1/4 scale would be doable for a 1st level character alone. Here is a link:

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/-bestiary-by-challenge-rating/-bestiary-cr-1

Oh...I just remembered QAGS. It has been years since I read the book, but from what I remember it was fun and quick and the GM could literally skew things on the fly. You had a few stats and rolled under them on a d20 and that was it. You could play literally any game genre.

I ran a game based on the Simpson's Treehouse of Horror story where a witch turned everyone into the costume they were wearing...at a zombie survival run. My friends knew we were playing an RPG, but I started a conversation about what costume they themselves would dress up in if money were no object. So when I handed them character sheets and told them to stat their costumes...they were pretty thrilled. So the PCs were runners dressed as not-zombies and gained super powers based how they chose to dress. The zombie hoard tried to eat their brains, they killed the evil witch, a good time was had by all.

That game could have been a single player game. and QAGS stands for Quick Ass Gaming System, so you can look it up.

First, to answer the question, it's between CR 1/8 and 1/4. 1/8 will be on the easier side, 1/4 on the harder side. Which is a lot of animals, into demonspawn like Dretches, as well as some low-level inhumans like Kuo-Toa and Troglodytes.

5E makes this really easy to figure out, which is something I discovered recently and love. If you look at the "Designing Encounters" section in the DMG, and look at the XP budget thresholds, it tells you how many XP you can spend to generate an easy/medium/hard/deadly encounter for your party, broken down by character level. The way they suggest you use it is adding together all your characters' levels and running the numbers from there--but if you only have one PC, then you can just use the numbers they give you on that table, keeping in mind a 1.5X multiplier for a small party.

So, for instance, it says for every level 1 PC in your group, you can spend 25 XP to generate an Easy encounter, 50 XP for a medium, or 75 XP for a hard. That means you can throw 50XP at a level 1 PC for something that's harder (as it multiplies out to 75XP), or 25XP for something on the Easy-Medium side.

I really like 5E for Duet games, I think it's (somewhat unexpectedly) a great game for them.

Thanks for that @jeffstormer!
@JoHoover if I ever decide to run Pathfinder, that is a great resource.
@Maskot QAGS sounds like a lot of fun.

There's a podcast called Discern Realities that discusses Dungeon World and at the end does a "comic strip" Actual Play, by which they mean a 10ish minute segment of gameplay where the one host runs the game and the other plays. It's been interesting, both for examples of player narrative authority and playing 1-to-1.

I've been looking for some more solo advice, I'm very intimately familiar with The Cypher System, and that's what the other player wanted to play, but I haven't played much one on one with it and am thankful for all the advice here.

I used to have a website that had weekly advice on solo games, but I lost the link. Does anyone have any interesting mechanics they have used for solo play?

You might be interested in this... RPGBot.

Saw your post and got the game to play at home with my brother. I can confirm its good. The player doesn't have complete freedom, but I don't think they are supposed to. I feel like it's supposed to be like a nightmare or dream. Where they can influence things slight, yet their fears and stuff guide the story. It was spooky in the right atmosphere. Dimmed lights, ambient scary music, physical pictures of unsettling places. I'd do some prep before playing for a better experience. Works well for a short one shot.