Duets
Now that said, there are some tricks to making most RPGs work more smoothly for duets and I'm going to hit a few of them now:
The Group Dynamic
Most RPGs encourage the strategy that every PC has a different role with different abilities from the other PCs. Together they can combine their abilities to succeed. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find a RPG that doesn't embrace this concept in some fashion. There are three simple ways to address the problems the group dynamic poses for duets:
1. NPC Allies: This is perhaps the simplest solution. You create a 'party' for the campaign. The PC has a central position in regards to story and authority but is surrounded by NPCs to fill in gaps to the PC's abilities. This can work very well, but it does add some complexity for the GM to manage. However, you can streamline things by just guesstimating how the NPCs function in combat, crises, and the like. You also might have the player manager the NPCs' abilities, but the more bookkeeping the more likely things will get bogged down. On the other hand, a 'party' also promotes roleplaying and interactions between the PC and NPCs, which is always a positive.
2. Boost the PC: You can always increase the abilities of a PC to cover more roles and to make the PC more powerful. We'll discuss this more a little later but this can be useful for making a duet more successful.
3. Tailor the Campaign: You can also excise some roles from adventures to make things more focused on the PC. For example, if the PC has a more roguish bent then cut down on combat and other aspects normally found in an adventure. Remember with a group adventure there is an assumption that the adventure has to entertain everyone, but with a duet you just have one PC to engage -- so put your focus there and don't worry about 'well-rounded' adventures.
Tipping the Scales
As mentioned earlier, you can augment the abilities of a PC. Remember -- balance is not important for duets. Balance is a design strategy to promote party harmony and consistency; personally, I think it has become overemphasized by many RPGs, but with duets it really isn't important at all and can be ignored. So what if the PC is the king of a kingdom? Does it really matter if the PC is both gifted in magic and combat? Who cares if the PC's mecha is among the most advanced in the world? None of this matters as long as you can still create challenges for the PC, which isn't that hard with a little imagination. The PC must also have room for growth. So always keep this in mind when using a RPG for a duet -- if the RPG has a strong assumption for balance and party dynamics, then boosting the PC's abilities is probably a good idea.
Change the Game
I recently ran a Mechwarrior duet that had the PC reclaim her family's title to a dominion that encompassed a continent of a world. The campaign changed from battletech and more traditional Mechwarrior adventures to a situation where the PC was dealing with politics, arranging marriages, intrigue, and solving crises related to her new responsibilities. With this sort of campaign it's almost entirely roleplaying and as long as you can come up with new challenges and adjudicate things reasonably enough it works great. I have run duets where you don't even roll dice for sessions as it is mostly roleplaying and decisions to be made rather than enemies to overcome. In many ways this is the transition from tactical gaming to political gaming. Going back and forth between the two can create a pretty much perfect campaign but you have to be flexible and be prepared to go down different roads. Maybe it's not politics but commanding a ship, running a business, scientific research, or who knows what. Be creative and take the unexpected path and you might be surprised at the fun you will have.
Fudge
When you are running a duet you may need to fudge results from time to time to keep things going. You have only one player and whereas in a group if one player has a streak of bad luck or makes a poor decision it probably isn't catastrophic, with a duet everything comes down to one player. An off night could be the end of a campaign. Don't let this happen. Related to this is to avoid situations where everything comes down to a single die roll. This is great drama in a group campaign when the fate of a PC comes down to a single roll but with a duet the risk is greater than the reward.
Okay there you go -- some basic ideas for making any RPG work for a duet. As always if you have a question, suggestion for a future column, or anything else then post it in the thread for this column in the forums.
