One-on-One Games

Yesterday we played an hour of a one-on-one D&D 5e game. You can see the recaps here although I probably should put them up on our GamemastersDK channel. Might do that some time soon.

Past Experience
I've played one-on-one games before and my general experience is that it doesn't always end well. One-on-one games are very different from standard group games for two reasons.

1. You only have one player to solve the mysteries and puzzles, and if they don't get it the first time then don't expect to get it at all. This also applies to combat encounters. You only have one player to fight, which means if things go south, there's nobody to help him.
2. Adventures go a lot faster since there's no internal group dialogue, no decision making, and only one player to go through rounds of combat and skill checks.

 If you know about these two facts, you can easily create an adventure suited for a single player, but be warned: don't think you can play a group game with a one-on-one party or a one-on-one adventure with a group. You'll need to modify the adventure in order to do so.

Hero's Quest
The adventure I created is based on the Quest for Glory computer game. I created the first adventure and checked with the creators of the game about publishing it, but due to copyright issues, I was unable to get permission to do so. So the adventure stays in my personal collection and is only played by GamemastersDK.

The first game is called "So, you want to be a hero?" and takes place in a valley called Spielburg where the player has to discover the mystery of the missing baron and baronesse, the children of the ruling nobleman. A standard adventure with a number of shorter side quests.

Last Game
We've played two games, and yesterday we played the third game. In the second game, the player encountered the faeries in search of fairy dust for the dispel magic potion. The choices made by the player would have left the character dead in the real game, but in D&D I gave the player a chance to survive, and the character did indeed wake up the next day in the forest with 2 levels of exhaustion from dancing so much. The character returned to town and went to the Hero's Tale Inn to rest, which is where the game yesterday began.

The player came into the Hero's Tale Inn where I had changed the katta out with an elf. The character got a room and rested for the night, reducing the level of exhaustion to 1, which meant that a whole day of rest lay before the player, which covered the game that we played. We combined the game with levelling up to become an arcane trickster, by having the player go to the Magic Shop and learn magic from the half-elf Zara, who taught the player Firebolt and Mage Hand. The character also bought a scroll of Knock before returning to the Hero's Tale Inn where the character met Abdulla Doo, a merchant who had been robbed by the brigands in the valley.

The player now had two new quests. First of all, Zara had told that anyone who could solve the mystery of Erana's Peace would gain a new spell. Secondly, Abdulla said that if the character could retrieve his Flying Carpet, he would bring the character south to a magical land that also needed a hero. The player spent the evening talking with Abdulla before retiring to her own room and get more rest. This is where the game ended.

Future Games 
The idea is to finish the entire game and hopefully continue through the whole Quest for Glory series. The next game will probably cover recovering green fur from the Meeps in the western part of the valley, or investigating the mysteries of Erana's Peace in search of that new spell.

Tomorrow 
Tomorrow, however, we'll be playing our first Gamemaster game where one of us will be the first GM and then in a few months we'll switch to a new GM. Three of us already have adventures in mind, but three of us are also missing characters, so we'll spend some time creating characters tomorrow before starting the game.

This is my last blog this year. My next blog will be in 2016, so Happy New Years.