Now I haven't seen the last three movies but I have read all the Harry Potter books and the series is not a bad model for a duet campaign. If you look at Harry Potter as a duet campaign it sort of hits on a lot of the points made in this column. You have one PC (Harry) who is the focus of the campaign and is not a balanced character. Harry Potter has a lot of gifts from speaking with snakes to the fact that people like to give him artifacts. The campaign makes it very clear that Harry is the hero of destiny. Harry also has a cadre of NPCs. Hermione is a tool for the GM to give the PC and player necessary background information and ideas. Whenever the PC gets stuck, the GM can use Hermione to help show the way. Ronald is the sidekick and comedic relief. Give the PC an owl familiar and you're good to go. In creating the setting, you begin with the PC ignorant and isolated from the magical world so the GM can slowly develop it. You make the focus of the campaign a relatively small location, in this case a school, Hogwarts. You can slowly explore the rest of the magical world as the campaign progresses but you begin with a rather tight environment. You then set up rivals, a system of competitions the PC can engage in, and an epic villain in the background. The GM in this case doesn't want the villain to die easily so comes up with a seven-fold lich and a host of villains and monsters to torment our hero. This is a pretty solid and straightforward duet. However, let's break down a few of the problem areas from Harry Potter that parallel a lot of duet campaigns I have run and seen. There is a difference between what works in fiction and in a duet.

1. Voldemort is the type of villain loved by GMs but really annoying to players. It's one of the staples of roleplaying campaigns and fiction ñ the immortal villain who while repeatedly defeated by the hero is guaranteed to show up again. GMs and authors love these sorts of villains because you get to recycle a character you have created, but players dislike this because they feel cheated. Basically, GMs use this type of character so that they can put off the death of the villain until the climax of the campaign. Now players don't mind too much if a villain escapes with good reason but when a villain is ensured to survive by GM fiat it can rightly anger and frustrated players. The Harry Potter series does this a lot with villains and if you were playing Harry you would by book 3 or 4 be ready to quit the campaign. I have said this many times in many places but if you can come up with one good villain you can come up with another one just as easily. Don't trap yourself in a corner with a villain who may fall flat with the player.

2. Players dislike constraints. Harry Potter is loaded with constraints on what Harry can do from the law to his teachers to his friends to his morals. This is great for fiction but players don't like to feel confined. Structure and order is welcomed by most players but confinement is despised. It's a delicate balance, but Harry is set up to be trapped in the books. He has no supportive family. He has powerful enemies. His only home is Hogwarts and to leave there not only would jeopardize his happiness but also his life. This is the sort of situation that players are very uncomfortable with. Now players like troubles and challenges to overcome but in a duet it needs to be a choice for them to overcome those troubles and challenges. In fact, it's having a choice that makes the situation more heroic and empowering for players.

3. Mysteries are hard. I keep putting off a column about duets and mysteries, because mysteries are the hardest type of duets to run. Harry has a lot of mysteries in it and that's rough in a duet. Tactical, moral, and political challenges are a lot easier to design and run as a GM and just as rewarding for a player. Mysteries have a lot of execution challenges and caveats. In Harry Potter a lot of times Harry pursues a mystery and then at the very end the answer is revealed in a twist that shows all the earlier clues had been misleading. Once again this is great in fiction as it gives the reader a surprise, but in a duet you just invalidated the PC's efforts and possibly made the player feel you 'cheated' as the GM. Mysteries are also a lot of work, well, good mysteries are a lot of work, to design and execute. Still mysteries can be fun and very engaging, but the goal isn't to trick the PC but to make the PC think and pursue answers. That can be very difficult in a duet. I really need to tackle mysteries in full at some point though it is one area where I'll admit my track record isn't the best.

4. Harry Potter does very well at creating situations where life and limb are on the line, but be very careful with this in a duet campaign. If you require a roll then you have to live with the results. "Oh, a 1, wow, okay I guess you didn't avert your eyes from the basilisk's, ah, well, you're turned to stone--ah, don't worry Dumbledore returned and defeated Tom Riddle, killed the basilisk, and used the blood to restore you to life!" Still one good thing about Harry Potter is that most challenges are overcome by knowledge not necessarily skill, though initiative and one's speed in using a wand is pretty decisive a lot of the time, which is why at character creation Harry was given big bonuses to his agility. Still Harry Potter has a lot of situations that are sort of save-or-die situations and in duets these are very dangerous. Yes, drama is important but you don't want to put the campaign on the line and then when the PC fails and dies you step in to save the day. That totally undermines the drama of the campaign. Basically, the GM is generally bluffing about trying to kill the PC but you never want that bluff to be called.

Okay that's all for this entry. I think next month I'm going to talk about duets and play-by-post. If you have any ideas, suggestions, tips, or questions about that topic then post it in the discussion thread for this article. Of course, if you also want to discuss this article you can do that too.