It’s been quite a while since I looked at the topic of the one-player campaign, also known as the solo campaign. The last time was back in May of 2010 in an Ask The GMs article, “Ask The GMs: How to GM solo PCs (especially in combat), and because the question was specifically about a D&D 3.5 Eberron Campaign, much of the advice is very D&D-centric. Since I’ve recently started an occasional Dr Who solo campaign for one of the players in my Zenith-3 campaign (both of us were at loose ends and I had a campaign idea… – the latter should come as no surprise to anyone!), I thought the time was right to revisit the topic in a more general sense.

This is particularly the case because, when I looked at that earlier article, I found that there was an awful lot of ground within the subject which wasn’t well-covered, if at all. So much so that by the time I finished outlining this article, I found that what I had was a four-BIG-post series, way too big to be covered in one gulp.

While some of the material may cover the same ground as that earlier article, I’m going to do my best not to refer to it at all, making this an entirely fresh take on the subject. That means that there may well be additional tips in the original article, and even some contradictory advice representing options for you to choose between.

Since prep and planning should always be driven by the needs of the game, I’m going to look at other aspects of solo games first, then work backwards. The broader subject has been divided into four parts, as I mentioned a moment ago, each of which has been further subdivided.

The place to start is with a table of contents:

Table Of Contents   Part 1: Me, Myself, and Him: Combat & Characters in one-player games Combat Opponents Danger Allies The Benefits Of Allies Limits To Allies The Importance Of Motivation Battlemaps & Miniatures Characterization Focus In Play Characterization Requirements   Part 2: A Singular Performance: Roleplay & General Principles in one-player games Tone Imparting Tone The Tonal Dissonance Problem The Hand-wave Solution Game Pace Intensity of Play Rest Downtime Roleplay The Dice Do More Talking The Dice Do Less Talking Controlling The Pace Puzzles & Mysteries   Part 3: The Solitary Thread, Frayed: Plots in one-player games Heading Due North Multi-prong Plot Vectoring Critical Path Redundancy Accommodating The Compass Needle Global Plot Thinking The Complexity Conflict Knocking down the Straw Man The Hollywood Analogy Do as I say, Not as I say Adventure Length Optional Complications Optional Clarification Scenes Optional Adventure Shortcuts Set a Kickoff deadline Adventure Milestones Plot Over-complication Plot Oversimplification “Nothing in my left hand” “…what’s this, in my Right?” The Persuasion Effect The Clarity Minefield Script Divergence Trimming The Fat for a faster resolution Secret shortcuts to success Serendipity is your Secret Weapon Additional Padding with Idle Conversation Typical adventure length   Part 4: The Crochet Masterpiece: One-player games as Campaigns The Fragility Of Memory Mnemonic Reminders The Carry-forward What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate Resets Logic Breakers Rationality Bombs Placement Concealment Assembling The Big Picture Campaign-level Plot Needs Continuity And The Single Player Clarity & Confusion Flexibility Recuperation Campaign Emphasis The GMing Challenge The Value Of Success

(See what I mean about it being too much for one article?)

I’m not going to repeat this entire introduction or the ToC for each subsequent post. In fact, I’m going to keep introductory text for subsequent parts of the series to a minimum – so that if you compile the print-friendly versions of the posts (look for the button near the bottom of each article) they will combine almost seamlessly into an e-book. IF I can find the time between now and then, I’ll do that for you, offering a download of the entire series as a single PDF as a freebie accompanying the final part – but the odds are stacked against that happening, so don’t count on it.

And, of course, the longer I waffle on here in this introduction, the less time there will be for writing the text in question. So let’s get going!

One-player games can be the best games for a GM to run, the most challenging, the most educational, the most rewarding. They can also be a nightmare that skids completely out of control at the slightest hint of a provocation. But that problem only occurs when the campaign structure and content are not designed to suit this particular situation, because GMing a solo game can be very different to GMing a group. My mission, over the next four parts of this series, is to take the danger out of running a solo game, to give every reader the tools, techniques, and know-how they need in order to reach for these most dizzying of RPG heights. We start with the subjects of Combat and Characters…

Combat in the single-player game

For reasons that should become obvious once you’ve read what’s below, Combat in general should be de-emphasized in single-player table-top RPGs. When it is necessary that the character engages in battle, take advantage of the one-on-one metagame situation to hand-wave as much as possible into dramatic narrative back and forth, punch and counter-punch, without worrying about game mechanics too much.

The simple fact is that game mechanics are inherently boring in actual usage. When you have a group of players, the interaction between them and their respective application of game mechanics keeps this boredom from becoming overwhelming, but when it’s just one player, that safety blanket gets removed. The level of interaction between GM and players narrows in focus to interaction with – by definition – just one player.

So the normal sort of interplay, when you don’t deemphasize combat, runs something along the lines of: GM – game mechanics – die roll – game mechanics – player – game mechanics – die roll – game mechanics – GM – game mechanics – GM-player interaction – repeat a dozen times or more.

What’s more, because there’s only one PC doing the work of what would normally be several, and he or she can only be in one place at once, combat takes four or five times as long as you would normally expect. So multiply the preceding at least three-fold, and the true scale of the problem begins to reveal itself.

– An alternative –

Here’s an alternative mechanism that I have employed to good effect: Single Die Rolls – for the entire combat.

The player rolls one normal die roll, whatever is required according to the game system (R). I take an average result (M) as a second input, and the average of the two (A) as a third – and I’m not actually interested in the results per se, just in the relative result compared to what the other side has generated.

On the player’s side, the sequence runs A – R – M – A – M.
On the GM’s side, I use the sequence A – M – R – A – M.

So I use A(pc) vs A(npc), R(pc) vs M(npc), M(pc) vs R(npc), A vs A again, and M vs M again. This is inherently fair in terms of die roll emphasis, biased according to the relative capabilities, but one side and then the other gets the better of the random element. The longer the battle runs on, however, the more it will trend to the overall outcome that is somewhere in between the roll and the flat-neutral result.

What then happens is that the player describes what their PC is attempting, and the GM then interprets the comparative “virtual roll” to determine the outcome of that attempt, what the NPCs will attempt in response, and how well that will work, then delivers all of that as a small block of narrative. The player then responds, and the process repeats.

This puts the roleplay back into combat and turns the weakness of the single-player game into an asset.

– Some Numbers –

I realize that the preceding would be far more meaningful with some actual numbers to serve as an example. So let’s say that the player needs 14 on d20 to hit and gets +3 in bonuses, and that the NPC needs 9 to hit but only gets +1 in bonuses; that the PCs strikes, when they do occur, are about twice as damaging as those of the NPC in terms of typical damage inflicted; and that the die roll results are 15+3=18 for the PC and 12+1=13 for the NPC.

• Average result for the PC (M) is 13.5, which rounds to 13 half the time and 14 the other half, which is the difference between hitting and missing.
• Average result for the NPC (M) is 11.5, which rounds to either 11 or 12, both of which hit.
• The mean result for the PC (A) – and yes, I know those are back to front, but it makes the Mnemonic ARMAM AMRAM work – is 1/2 x (18+13.5) = 31.5/2 = 15.75 which rounds to 16.
• The mean result for the NPC (A) is 1/2 x (13+11.5) = 24.5/2 = 12.25, which rounds to 12.

Finally, assume that the quality of the hit (i.e. the damage done) is proportionate to the degree of success of the hit, rather than rolling separately.

• R(pc) succeeds by 4, quite a bit, so damage will be close to maximum possible. Let’s call that 12 for argument’s sake.
• R(npc) also succeeds by 4, so damage is also close to maximum – which is about half what the PC does at such times, so 6.
• M(pc) succeeds about half the time, and does very close to the average damage result when it happens – 6 points.
• M(npc) succeeds every time by 2 or 3, so better than average damage – call it 4 points alternating with 5 pts.
• A(pc) succeeds by 2, which isn’t all that much, so just above average – call it 7 points.
• A(npc) succeeds by 3, which is a solid amount – again, 4 alternating with 5 points.

• A(pc) vs A(npc): The PC hits half the time, doing 7 points when he does. The NPC hits every time, doing 4 and then 5 points, alternately.
• R(pc) vs M(npc): The PC hits very solidly, doing 12 points when he does. The NPC hits every time, doing 4 and then 5 points, alternately.
• M(pc) vs R(npc): The PC hits half the time, doing 6 points when he does. The NPC hits solidly every time, doing 6 points.
• M(pc) vs M(npc): The PC hits half the time, doing 6 points when he does. The NPC hits every time, doing 4 and then 5 points, alternately.

It’s when these results are used as a guideline to the effectiveness of combat tactics and other actions that things get really interesting.

• A(pc) vs A(npc): PC actions that are reasonable and sensible will succeed; more risky or flamboyant actions will fail. NPC actions, unless they are really difficult, will succeed, often by a narrow margin, but may not be as effective as he would hope. Advantage to the PC.
• R(pc) vs M(npc): PC actions will succeed, no matter how risky or flamboyant. Sensible NPC actions will succeed, and more risky moves will also succeed but often not by much. Advantage to the PC.
• M(pc) vs R(npc): PC actions that are reasonable and sensible will succeed; more risky or flamboyant actions will fail. NPC actions will usually succeed, no matter how flamboyant or risky, but will not be as spectacular as the PC’s flamboyant actions previously were. Advantage to the NPC.
• M(pc) vs M(npc): PC actions that are reasonable and sensible will succeed; more risky or flamboyant actions will fail. NPC actions will usually succeed, no matter how flamboyant or risky. Advantage to the NPC.

You can have two or three “combat rounds” of back-and-forth between PC and NPC in each phase. I usually use the attempt to do something critical or decisive as the flag-points, the culmination of each stage of the battle. Some battles will end after just one or two phases, others will end after a longer back and forth.

In the case of the example battle, the ARMAM AMRAM pattern means that the battle will swing: from

• even, with a slight advantage to the PC, to:
• a strong advantage to the PC, to:
• a slight advantage to the NPC, to:
• even, with a slight advantage to the PC, to:
• a strong advantage to the NPC;
• and repeat.

The PC has the edge in three of five battle stages, but most of the time, spectacular end-the-battle moves will fail, giving a tactical advantage to the NPC. The NPC is steadier, and the longer the fight goes on, risks grinding the PC down.

It took quite a lot of work, shown above, to reach that overall “shape of events” determination – but that’s because I took the time to measure out and describe each individual step. In reality, a snap assessment takes only five or ten seconds and can be done by comparing the die rolls on each side with what they need in order to succeed, and then on with the show!

Opponents

The de-emphasis of game mechanics in favor of freeform roleplay means that one of the simpler differentiators between opponents also goes by the wayside. The results may be more opportunity for roleplay differentiation, but that won’t happen without conscious effort on the part of the GM.

– Variety Of Threat –

Since re-skinning doesn’t work without game mechanics to be re-skinned, the emphasis has to be placed on a genuine variety in threat forms. In the first session of the Dr Who “Legacies Of Lovecraft” campaign, the villain dismissed the Doctor as an irrelevance, no different from any other Gallifrean. This obviously did not work out well for him, and he was very quickly beaten. In the second, the villain spent half his time setting and baiting a trap for the Doctor while the rest of his efforts went into accomplishing his goal. The Doctor took the bait, was trapped, and was only able to escape through the foresight of having friends and allies working alongside him, especially the current Companion, a Tibetan monk. The trap, it should be noted, was not especially lethal – more a case of being confined indefinitely in a manufactured pseudo-dimension. In the third, the villain deliberately attacked the interfering Time Lord, with an even more insidious trap – and a backup trap beyond that, and a tertiary trap in case the first two didn’t work – and succeeded in luring the Doctor to a seemingly-inevitable destruction. It took a lot of Bill-and-Ted bootstrapping, a touch of genius, a lot of outside assistance from friends and allies, and the combination of two incarnations of the Doctor, to solve that one.

Each time, the threat posed has been different in nature, pushing the Doctor’s knowledge of temporal physics to the limits and even a little beyond – the first time, the threat was posed by the imminent success of the villains’ objectives (releasing the Lovecraftian Old Ones from their confinement, stealing their powers in process if possible); the second, “stealing” one of the Doctor’s spacial dimensions and replacing his temporal dimension with it, effectively turning the passage of time into the walls of the ‘cell’ within which he was trapped; and in the third, it was a Gallifrean Terror Weapon created, banned, and subsequently deployed during the time war (as were most of their forbidden arsenal), or an unreasonable facsimile thereof.

Next time, the encounter will take place during a Dalek invasion and attempted conquest of Earth. What that means for the Doctor remains to be seen (I’m only getting glimmers of the shape of the plotline at this point), but the threat will be a markedly different one to those encountered by the PC to date, simply because the backdrop and available tools will be radically different.

– Variable Difficulty –

Combat becomes something more akin to a puzzle-solving exercise, in which the correct combination of tactics, correctly applied, solves “the problem” posed by the opponent. Since the goal is always to involve the player in “a cracking good story” in which genuine danger lurks, it’s important to have the flexibility and nous to set a level of threat commensurate with the circumstances. If everything is going the PCs way at the time, the threat needs to be one that is very difficult to overcome; if the PC has already experienced a number of setbacks, and the circumstances are arrayed against them, the difficulty required to pose the same degree of danger is far lower.

Plot needs outweigh game-mechanical consistency, in other words, and you need to build the required flexibility of opposition challenge into your encounters that you are able to match threat with circumstance. In the first three episodes of the Dr Who campaign, the primary threat was posed by the villain, one way or another. In the next, the environment will be inherently hazardous, so the villain needs to pose less of a direct threat in order to achieve the same level of danger and tension – i.e. just enough to make it entertaining for the player. If that player scores a quick success early on in the confrontation, the danger levels from one of the two threats to be encountered – the enemies and the Dalek invaders – will need to increase in order to keep tension high and leave the ultimate outcome up in the air until the very last minute.

This is actually more easily accomplished than you might at first think, simply by having the PCs enemies be enemies of each other as well – so any weakness on the part of one foe (as a result of clever PC action) automatically increases the strength and threat posed by the other. That’s not the only way to arrange circumstances, of course – which is why I’m happy to point out the general principle. (Another consideration is that the villain has had things entirely too much his own way so far, and it’s time that he encountered a few difficulties to be overcome – while I use the Daleks to keep the PC busy).

I’ve talked about the general solution in a different context and a different way on a previous occasion, when discussing the roleplaying of Masterminds (Making a Great Villain Part 1 of 3 – The Mastermind). It’s simply this – the more effective the player is, up until the final point of the confrontation, the more effective you let the villain’s preparations be, determined retrospectively.

– Opponent Selection –

Turning to the application of these principles to the more general case, such as a fantasy game or a superhero game or whatever, it doesn’t take very much thought to determine that opponent selection is more difficult and needs to be more precise in a solo campaign because combat is all about objectives and the flavor that the opponent brings to the plot than what they are capable of in a game-mechanics sense.

For years, I’ve emphasized the importance of flavor text in even my more traditional group games. In a single-player game, everything else is stripped away, replaced with narrative and variable difficulty; only that flavor text remains. It follows that choosing the right flavor text is even more important.

In a traditional game, you can retroactively re-skin your flavor text as necessary by first varying, and then focusing on, the game mechanics that makes this example of the general Orc or Elf or whatever, different. This is a tool that is not in your kit in a solo game. This requires you to do something that you should be doing anyway – which is, assessing how the different game-mechanical abilities presented should shape the personalities and attitudes of the creatures they are applied to.

Consider the example of the Green Dragon. In traditional D&D, the Green Dragon has a noxious gas as a breath weapon, usually chlorine. In 3.x, this became an acid cloud. If you have an encounter planned with a unique Green Dragon whose breath reanimates the dead as minions under its control, how does that change of abilities alter the way that the Dragon thinks, the way he acts, the places he’s likely to choose as battlefields, etc?

While this is important every time, it’s absolutely critical to the solo player campaign, because interaction and narrative are more important and more present in game-play than the game mechanics are. Everything gets amplified – including any logic gaps or false notes in your creature creation. In a traditional game, you could probably get away with simply specifying the game mechanic and letting the difference reveal itself in play through the dynamic of the encounter. Simply changing the game mechanic might not be enough to get a gold star as a GM, but it’s enough to skate by on. In the solo game, if that’s the only way that the difference between this Dragon and any other gets displayed, it may never even be on show, and if it does appear, it can easily seem tacked on and inconsistent with the personality that has been put on display; the only solution is to spend time on the ramifications and consequences of the change. Express the difference through dialog and narrative, because those might be all you have to work with in-play.

A major implication of this phenomenon is this: solo play places a greater emphasis on the depth of understanding of the game systems by the GM, especially NPCs and Monsters, than group play ever does. The better you understand the nuances, consequences, and implications of each entry in your Monster Manual (or equivalent), the better you can GM a solo game.

Danger

In fact, danger levels in general need far greater consideration in a solo game. There are two primary reasons for this; one is a direct consequence of the differences between solo and group play, and the other is a secondary effect of the deemphasis of game mechanics.

– Solo Vs Group Play –

In a group, one PC can fall and be rescued by other PCs. In solo play, if the only PC falls, he can only be rescued by NPCs. The difference is profound.

I once raised the question, for each GM out there to answer for themselves, of whether or not their campaign was an Ensemble or a Star Vehicle. This question has no real relevance to a solo campaign, because there is only one PC – which should make them automatically the star of the show, and the campaign therefore automatically becomes a wagon hitched to that star.

It’s in battle that this difference is most keenly felt. No matter what the perceived danger levels might be, the actual danger levels can never risk taking the PC out of the game outright. Use Red Shirts as necessary to emphasize the lethality and then never permit the full force to impact the PC.

Of course, your objective has to be to keep this transparent from the player (even though he or she may be intellectually aware of what you are doing). They should still have to sweat for the answers, and never be handed victory on a silver platter. This is a very delicate balancing act, and one of the unique challenges of solo gameplay. My answer to that challenge lies in the variable difficulty levels described earlier, and the deemphasis on the mindless application of game mechanics.

– Consequence: De-emphasis of Game Mechanics –

In group game-play, if you get the lethality wrong, you can fudge die rolls as necessary to get your out of the situation. You can retroactively limit the number of charges that a particular effect has, or shorten its duration. You can adjust the encounter’s parameters to suit the situation – because no matter how thrilling a TPK might be for the GM, it’s not actually all that good for the ongoing campaign. In fact, it usually kills that campaign just as dead as the PCs, unless the GM can get very clever. Some game systems strive to accommodate this problem, for example protégées in Hackmaster.

Most of these remedial actions are glaringly obvious in their inconsistency when not hidden behind the wall of game mechanics that is traditional combat. There needs to be much greater emphasis placed on getting it right the first time, rather than handing out what appear to be “free gifts” to the PCs that make any subsequent victory seem hollow and unearned.

– Traps –

As a general principle, there should be a greater emphasis on non-lethal traps, for the same reasons. No matter how deadly a trap might appear to be, there always has to be a way out for the sole PC.

One of the changes over time has been a deemphasis on the lethality of traps, anyway. In the AD&D days of old, the following would be completely acceptable:

“There is a tunnel about a foot tall, which you can crawl along. It appears to be a ventilation shaft leading directly to the heart of the Dungeon. You can’t see the end of it; it swallows the light from your torches as a starving peasant might devour a free meal.” In fact, the tunnel is cloaked in a permanent Darkness spell. Twenty feet in, body heat from anyone crawling into the tunnel will trigger a hidden portcullis ten feet from the entrance, STR 40 to open. Note that characters on their backs can only exert 10% of their normal strength, and there isn’t room to stand up within the tunnel. Sixty Feet from the entrance, the tunnel ends in a Sphere Of Annihilation that silently disintegrates anyone who touches it. Anyone trapped within the tunnel after the sphere is discovered have the choice of starving to death or a quick end from the Sphere, there is no escape.

The most rudimentary of old-school dungeon death-traps, this feature has no purpose other than to kill one or more party members, either quickly or slowly, their choice.

In some ways, this sort of trap makes perfect sense – it’s designed to kill an intruder, not hold their hand. It’s like a 10′ pit that fills with acid over the next three rounds after someone falls in, another golden oldie. In others, it makes no sense at all – that’s easily 20,000GPs cost to create, and their are lots of cheaper ways to kill people. And what’s holding the sphere in place? Goodwill?

But setting all that aside, the trap that’s designed to kill one or more PCs assumes a whole different significance when all you have is one PC. And while you can occasionally let that PC be rescued by an NPC brought along for the purpose, it’s not exactly heroic to have it happen – not without providing some mechanism of logic by which the PC plays an active role in the rescue.

– The danger to verisimilitude

So traps, and combat encounters in general, need to look lethal, but never actually be lethal, to the PC. It’s a battle of wits between the player and the GM, and one in which the GM is secretly dealing winning hands to the PC under the table; but this should never be obvious to the player. That, in itself, is a difficult challenge for any GM.

Worse still, it carries baggage that has to be overcome in the medium- to long-term. After a while it will become harder to ignore the fact that the GM is going soft on the PC, no matter how well he hides it from day-to-day. This produces a direct challenge to the verisimilitude of the campaign, one that can undermine the credibility of anything the GM can throw at the game.

Inevitably, to counter this threat, the GM needs to gradually move toward placing the PC in genuine risk. As a result, solo games are far harder to operate as an ongoing, open-ended, campaign. They are far more suited to campaigns that have a definite end-point, a built-in terminus in which an all-or-nothing confrontation occurs.

That sort of thing rarely comes about by accident – and even more rarely works well when it is accidental. It should be built into the campaign design from day one.

Allies

Allies can be all-important. They give the GM another “voice” to use in communications with the player, filling out the world around his character. They can ask leading questions that get the player to expound his thoughts, preparing the GM to handle the decisions that will result from that thinking. They can dispute what the player is thinking when it is dangerously misleading (in terms of the campaign), by speaking to the PC who is effectively “hard-wired” to the player, or when the player’s capabilities and those of his character are mismatched, and so producing an error in logic or environmental processing that the PC should be experiencing.

They can transform the PC into a multi-sensory organ, able to see and hear many different things in many different places at the same time.

They bring areas of expertise and skills and perspectives to the player that his PC alone cannot supply. That makes it easier for the player to make sense of the game world and the events that surround the PC, enabling a correct and reasonable interaction with that game world.

This is useful in a multiplayer game, but it’s essential in a single-player campaign. That is because one of the key mechanisms available to a PC in a multiplayer game is the interaction with other players, each of whom has a different impression and a different understanding of events; no one needs to be completely right because a gestalt world view evolves through intra-party conversation about the situation and the environment, filling in gaps and making corrections to misinterpretations.

When there’s only one player, there is no such conversation, and it’s up to the GM to plug that gap.

In combat, they act as meat barriers and chess pieces that can be manipulated by the player to effectively enable his character to be in many places at once.

They are “Clayton’s PCs” – the PCs that you have when you don’t have a PC.

All of which is very good news. But that’s not the end of the story…

– Limits to Allies –

Of course, the more useful an NPC is, the greater the danger that he – and through him, the GM – will commit the cardinal sin of overshadowing the PC. In a multiplayer environment, this risk is minimized because there are multiple PCs to carry the load; in a single-player campaign, there is that much more focus on the NPCs.

The bottom line is that you can’t completely make up for the absence of PCs with NPCs; you have to find ways of enabling the PC to do more. The hardest time to do that is in combat, another reason why it’s so important to get the opposition strength and numbers exactly right.

– The Importance of Motivation, or Characterization to the Rescue –

NPC allies can sometimes get away with breaking these guidelines if it’s as a consequence of their personalities. Their motivations in acting can excuse a momentary overshadowing of the PC; after all, the player is only too aware that they are on their own and that their PC needs all the help he can get!

Here are a few specifications for an ally that can serve as the GM’s secret weapon in making the game playable for a lone PC:

• The ally needs to be dependent on the PC in some way;
• The ally needs to be treated as an extension of the PC. Actions need to be what another PC would do if it were a dependent of the PC;
• The ally needs to be differentiated from the PC in some way;
• The ally needs a strong characterization that can shine through with minimal attention from the GM;
• The ally needs a complex characterization that can sustain interaction with the PC;

– Reconciling the Irreconcilable Difference –

It won’t have escaped anyone’s attention that some of the above advice is contradictory at best, especially the last two points. The solution is to embrace the irreconcilable difference. Give the NPC ally two contradictory attributes, one of which reflects the contribution that the ally is expected to make to the PC’s endeavors. A man of peace who is a skilled fighter. A scientist who is fascinated by horoscopes and superstition. A soldier who suffers from attacks of nerves. By making the contradiction the central focus of the personality, you deliver a complex personality with minimal effort in play.

Battlemaps & Minis

There’s very little about gaming that isn’t affected by the solo-player vs group-game transformation, and the utility of Maps and Miniatures is just another in a very long list.

The primary purpose these serve is not that of providing eye candy; they serve to provide a representation of the battle scene that enables everyone to be on the same page as to what is happening, with less capacity for the confusion that can result from multiple interpretations of even a relatively straightforward narrative, and that can quite literally cut thousands of words of such narrative back to the features of interest.

In a non-miniatures game, you need to describe the interesting and important, and you need to furnish dimensions, and you need to “dress” the environment enough that the players can conjure up an imaginary reality, visualize the situation and plan their tactics. More than half this workload gets cut directly when you employ miniatures; dimensions become reasonably obvious right away, eliminating a huge amount of boring technicality. You no longer need to “dress” the environment to the same extent, providing just enough targeted narrative to bridge the gap from representation to imagined environment, which not only reduces the required verbiage but permits greater “bang for your buck” on the narrative that you do need to provide.

Against these benefits you have to set the set-up time required, which can be anything from a few seconds (one tile laid down and the participants positioned on it) to half an hour for a complex set-up covering a large area. Because of the potential reduction in player confusion and error, making the choice is not as simple as comparing the time required for set-up with the time saved in writing and delivering verbiage.

My personal impression is that for one player, the equilibrium point is slightly more than 1:1. Call it set-up time vs 1.1 x narrative savings.. In other words, if set-up time is anything below 110% of the estimated narrative savings, you’re justified in using miniatures. With each additional player, you can add a fraction to the ratio: 1.1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 + 1/5 + 1/6, and so on. This gives ratios of 1.6, 1.93, 2.18, 2.38, 2.55, 2.69, and 2.82, for 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 players respectively. I use these diminishing fractions because each time, the gains that can be expected overlap more and more with those already factored in.

But, in the solo-player campaign, you also have to factor in the deemphasis on combat, and subsequent devaluation of miniature representations, and the reality that one player is having to process the entire situation – both “x-factors” that apply to different sides of the equation, respectively. The old standards simply don’t apply as neatly as before.

I have identified four impacts on the value for further consideration.

– Battlemaps & Minis: Can be more useful –

I mentioned this item in the previous paragraph. One player is having to process the entire combat situation; in a group-player game, this workload is shared to some extent. This is so significant that my first inclination would be to equate each NPC as a “virtual” player at the table. Depreciating this inclination is the relative singularity of purpose that comes from having only one ringmaster on the PC-and-allies side of the table, with the GM taking most of the workload of running the allies, Maybe every 2 Allies are the equivalent of an additional PC in the value equation, maybe that underrates the workload and it should be 1.5 allies to a PC; the exact numbers don’t matter, but the principle that the number of allies involved increases the value of using battlemaps and miniatures is what needs to be taken from this consideration.

– Battlemaps & Minis: Can be more confusing –

This is the other side of the same coin. There’s now only one player trying to keep track of who everyone is on the Battlemap, instead of one player to each figure plus the enemy. However, it would be very dangerous to assume that this simply cancels out the first effect; for one thing, this is NOT depreciated by the GM handling the workload, if anything, it could be exacerbated; the constant handling of each miniature would provide a mnemonic foundation by which the player has a better chance of identifying each ally. It follows that if the GM is to control the allies, as would normally be the case, the principle is that the number of allies involved reduces the value of using battlemaps and miniatures to an unknown degree. However, if the GM is able to cede partial control of the allies to the player, this factor is diminished and so battlemaps and miniatures are more likely to be useful in any given encounter.

– Battlemaps & Minis: Can be more work –

At least, they can be proportionately more work relative to their value to the game. In a group game, a single player takes charge of each PC. With four PCs, players can be responsible for as much as 80% of the movement of figures, depending on how many enemy figures there are to be controlled – four PCs and one enemy. In a single player game, the equivalent is one PC and three allies plus one enemy – and instead of players doing 80% of the work, it’s the GM. That means that the workload has effectively quadrupled.

Again, if some of this workload can be offloaded onto the shoulders of the player, this can be offset somewhat, but it’s worth remembering that the player already has as big a workload, or more, as they would normally have; there’s no-one helping him keep track of the battle, the objectives, the bigger picture, who’s who, who’s vulnerable, who’s low on hit points… At best, this is only a partial cure for the problem.

It’s worth noting that this 4x factor is easily bigger than even the 8-PC factor identified earlier. That’s how significant it is.

– Battlemaps & Minis: Can be a distraction –

And the downsides don’t stop there. Because the one player is trying to do everything, as explained in the above discussion, even the task of keeping track of who’s who can be a huge distraction from the bigger picture elements of the encounter – things like why it’s happening and what the objective is and why, and what his character’s personality is, and so on.

Offloading any part of the workload of running the battle onto the player only makes this worse, potentially negating any advantage gained by doing so, and ensuring that every battlemap encounter is automatically a worst-case situation in terms of game management, or close to it.

– The basis of judgment: when to use Battlemaps & Minis –

As a result of all these considerations, the rule of thumb has to be that the use of Battlemaps and Minis is usually more trouble than they are worth, and that other approaches are more likely to yield useful gameplay. Find a photo that’s close enough to the scene. Lay out battlemap tiles to explain the scene to the player, but don’t use miniatures. Draw a 90-second sketch or diagram on a whiteboard. Give the player the actual map.

Of course, set-up narrative isn’t the only thing that can get abbreviated or simplified by the use of Battlemaps and Minis; descriptions of actions and subsequent situations are also eased. In a group-player situation, this is relatively negligible as a contribution, compared to everything else; in a single-player situation it becomes the decisive difference in answering the question of whether or not to employ these game aids at all.

Is the degree of confusion that is likely to result from not using miniatures anywhere close to the potential confusion that is likely to result from using them? That is the question that I always ask myself, and if the answer is ‘yes’ then miniatures are the better choice; if not, then use one of the alternatives listed above, and narrative.

In three adventures within the Dr Who campaign, containing a total of ten encounters, I have used miniatures and battlemaps exactly once. That was an encounter with three allies, the current companion, and the PC, against three waves of enemies, one of which was disguised as the objective of the battle, and which took place on multiple levels at the top of the Eiffel Tower, with several significant sub-locations within the overall encounter. I judged that the relative levels of confusion were less using the miniatures than trying to keep who was where straight through narrative alone. It worked, but there were still a few moments of confusion along the way, and enough to convince me that this standard was the right one to employ.

It’s also worth noting that in previous solo campaigns, miniatures were also only used on rare occasions, and I ran two entire solo campaigns with none whatsoever.

Characterization Focus

With an increase in roleplaying vs game mechanics and combat capabilities comes the need for a greater focus on the characterizations involved. This requirement on the part of the PC is the responsibility of the player, who should be warned of the need if necessary – use your own judgment on this point; but the responsibility for everyone else in the universe falls on the shoulders of the GM, and that’s the subject of this section.

In Play

The easiest way to derive functional requirements is to work backwards from expected use. It might seem like putting the cart before the horse, but it saves a lot of time backtracking from the flaws in a theoretical basis. I’ve identified three key elements of the performance “window” that character design has to achieve, and a fourth that bridges the gap between performance and design, but there are many others of lesser importance that will get mentioned along the way.

One of the major items that doesn’t rate “official” attention but deserves some mention is Game System. In a nutshell, this should not get in the way; the best system for solo game play is one that has been simplified and streamlined, and then streamlined and simplified again. With just one player, the GM can focus his attention on that one PC, requiring fewer support mechanics and formalized processes to deal with interactions between others, and emphasizing a more dynamic seat-of-the-pants approach. If you view the NPC “allies” as part of the game environment, the GM already has far more input and control over the game in a solo campaign; the last thing you need is to be hamstrung by intrusive mechanics.

– Less stimulus, more inventivity –

A normal game has a number of players interacting with any given NPC at a time, creating a variety of stimulus to which the NPC can respond in many different ways. With the other side of the table reduced to a single voice, there’s far less variation in discussion. Where you might have had one player asking a question on one topic, and another looking at a different (but related) issue entirely, you now have only the one conversation. If NPCs are to present themselves as rounded individuals, the GM needs to get more creative and adept at presenting nuance designed to hint at the depths of the characterization. It’s also much easier for the one PC to get sidetracked, so the NPC will need to steer the conversation without making it obvious that they are steering the conversation. This also places greater demands on the GM’s ability to roleplay, and the more of that workload that he can manage through inventivity in characterization and larger-than-life expressive personality, the easier the game will be from his side of the table. Finally, the fact that the GM has (usually) only one voice to offer for all the NPCs makes it easier for NPCs to be more one-note and less distinctive; this needs to be countered with deliberate efforts on the GM’s part. Spur-of-the-moment is the weakest and least effective approach to solving these problems; advance planning is by far a better solution.

– Fewer opportunities for variety in relationships –

NPC A talks to the PC. Then NPC B talks to the PC. Then NPC A talks to the PC again. Do you see the problem? No matter what the relationship is, on paper, it all comes across as GM talks to the PC.

Actually, the description of this problem offered in the heading is a bit of a misnomer. There is, in fact, more opportunity for variety in relationships because there is no need to compromise with the relationships to any other PC. For example, if you have four PCs, each of whom has an NPC with whom they have some sort of relationship, the relationships of those NPCs with PC#5 are likely to all fall into the category of “friend of a friend”, because the relationship between the NPCs and PC#5 are all secondary to the primary relevance of the NPC to the campaign. When there is only one PC, every relationship with that PC is the most important one within the campaign, by definition.

The problem actually is that there are fewer opportunities for variety of display of relationships.

The look-and-feel of the interactions that result from the relationship is therefore more important, as a distinguishing element of each NPC, than the substance of the relationship itself. It follows that choosing the relationships and their foundations such that they permit a more distinct mode of expression is one of the most important aspects of character creation. And that goes for incidental NPCs and enemies at least as much as it does for allies.

No matter how deep the characterization might be, all personalities in the single-player game will either be ‘flat’ or ‘over the top’ – unless you take deliberate steps in the NPC design process to create a platform for some middle ground.

The two most important NPC personalities in the Dr Who campaign are the enemy, who changes bodies with almost every encounter, and the Doctor’s Companion, who acts as foil, sounding board, occasional inspiration, and occasional muscle or warm body to be positioned on the metaphoric game board as surrogate for the PC.

The villain started by possessing the body of a Tibetan Monk from the 1840s, and it’s real name has never been revealed. It’s even possible that it doesn’t think in those terms. As a result, even though that body burned out long ago and was replaced with another of completely different race, he is still known by the name of that original host: Inchen. I have always portrayed this character as arrogant, condescending, and irritated by the Doctor. It views the PC as a lower life form, no matter how much respect it might develop for the PC’s interference and capabilities. Any defeats or setbacks are always it’s own fault, and not due to unsuspected capability on the part of the PC. This, of course, is completely the opposite of the persona of most arrogant villains, who blame anyone and everyone except themselves, and this dichotomy puts an edge on any words the protagonist and antagonist exchange. He is also at least as technologically adept, if not superior, to the PC. Remember my earlier advice about embracing the irreconcilable difference?

The Companion is also a Tibetan Monk, named Jangshen, from the 1840s. An older man with a calm and placid air, inclined to be philosophical, and to apply his philosophy in strange ways to strange situations (such as understanding how technology works), which often leads to incorrect choices on the mundane level – that are unusually frequently correct on a higher level, or in a broader context. He’s a big-picture thinker, who keeps the world at arm’s length – but at the same time, he has a soft and generous heart, is generally sympathetic and helpful towards the troubles of others, and is quite skilled at martial arts when necessary. Because he doesn’t understand a lot of it, he is not so distracted by the day-to-day world. His manner of expression is extremely humble and self-effacing. He doesn’t find answers or devise solutions; the universe “leads him to an understanding of [insert distant metaphor for the situation here]”. “The movement of leaves in the wind”, for example, or “the ripples of the pond”, or “the awareness of clouds”. He has a very poetic turn of phrase at times, but one that always turns out to be relevant if examined closely enough. Finally, thought and action are one with him; understanding a situation demands that he take the place within that situation that the universe has prepared for him. This can make him a little unpredictable and occasionally prone to seemingly-impulsive action. Again, this character definitely embraces the irreconcilable difference!

– Melodramatic Collapse and the Descent into Soap Opera –

There’s a natural trend toward overacting and a collapse of roleplaying into melodrama as a result of efforts to avoid the “flat” portrayal of characters, as suggested above. This is bad enough in and of itself, but it can trigger the campaign’s descent into Soap Opera.

There are two possible solutions: a genre that naturally lends itself to Melodrama and Soap Opera – Superhero games, for example, or Space Opera – or otherwise embracing the trend and making it an asset to the campaign; or finding ways to avoid this danger. And, since the proximate trigger is the characterization of the NPCs and their relationships with the sole PC, the best way to avoid the danger is to design a leavening agent into the primary NPCs from the very beginning.

The combination of arrogance and self-blame for setbacks on the part of the villain leads any “arch-villain” pronouncements to sound out-of-character. There is an almost British understatement to his versions of these – “Goodbye, meddling Gallifrean” (or perhaps it was “Farewell, meddling Time Lord”) are about the most extreme offerings that he has made thus far. And the self-effacement and tendency to speak in philosophic sound-bites (that are nevertheless relevant) keeps the Companion at arm’s-length from Melodrama – most of the time.

Three significant “guest” characters appeared in the last adventure (amongst others): Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, a leader who did not understand what was going on, and so had to be defensive and tentative except where the PC provided an opportunity for direct action towards a solution; River Song, who understood completely what was going on, and what the PC would want to do about it, and what he would need to enable that to happen (unless it was a mistaken choice of action), but who couldn’t reveal what she knew because it would damage time – so she could only act in seemingly-inexplicable ways that turned out to lay groundwork for the problem after next, giving the PC the chance to solve the problem; and the third incarnation of the Doctor, who saw the world very differently to the PC and responded accordingly, in particular being far more inclined to dive in and solve problems as they arose, and had the confidence, brashness, and yes, arrogance of youth – that he could solve any problem he encountered. This made him almost the complete opposite of the PC, despite the number of traits that they had in common – making it all the more ironic that a number of characters were able to remark, “he hasn’t changed at all, has he?” in the course of the adventure.

Again, each of these characters has something that is holding them back (or pushing them forward with inadequate preparation), and that avoids the descent into Soap Opera.

– Character Fuzziness –

Finally, given that the GM’s workload is going to be considerably higher in a one-player campaign, there is far less tolerance for fuzziness in personality than is usually the case. In a group game, the NPCs are expected to react to several players, and a little softness in the definition is only to be expected. With a single player game, not only does the GM need to work harder to distinguish each of the characters because he no longer has their responses to the other PCs to embellish them, but he has to be able to switch from one NPC to another with facility – both argue in favor of cleaner, more sharply delineated, characterizations.

This is an important requirement because so many other elements of the situation mandate a broader, more general, more “fuzzy” approach. You need to be able to comprehend the main personality points with little more than a glance, and that usually means painting with a broad brush.

At first glance, these objectives appear to be mutually exclusive. It’s very difficult to be both precise and far-reaching in your descriptive character attributes at the same time, and even harder to do so without resorting to cliché and the other enemies of genuine characterization.

Compatibility can be achieved, however, by considering the defined characteristics that summarize the personality for quick consumption as exemplars, the mole-hill sized tips of very large mountains, and further, by describing those definitions as much as possible with single words. For the Companion, I need only three words and a short phrase: “Humble, Philosophic, Abstract, Thought leads immediately to deed.” That lot I can take in with little more than a glance, and so long as I’m aware that this is not all that there is to the character, and have some notion of what’s been left out – adeptness at martial arts, for example – this is enough for me to roleplay the character. Ultimately – and very quickly – these become just the keywords used to index the personality in my mind, ensuring that the character has depth and can step beyond these boundaries as circumstances dictate.

Characterization Requirements

The section above, on character fuzziness, bridges the divide between in-play requirements defining character construction requirements and delivering solutions to those functional requirements, simply because I thought it might be confusing to have a section on “Character Fuzziness” followed by one on “Characterization Precision”, or some such combination. That required putting the solution in the same section as the problem, and so neatly brings me to the other requirements of a suitable characterization for use in a solo game, and how to satisfy them.

– A British approach –

There’s a fundamental difference between the British approach to characterization in media (TV and movies, especially) and the American approach. The latter is (generally) brash, direct, and straightforward; the latter is more restrained, more understated. Placed in its correct context, the American portrayal of a typical Texan works fine; the same performance, in a British show or movie, seems exaggerated to the point of being comic-book, using that term in it’s most pejorative sense.

The more over-the-top the role, the more it needs to be tempered with restraint. The question was raised on an episode of Top Gear (the BBC version) when Tom Hiddleston was the guest, “Why do British actors make such popular villains in American movies?” – something that’s been a noticeable trend (for me) ever since Alan Rickman’s performance in Die Hard – where he played a German, ironically – and, before that in the contrast between Jean Luc Picard (played by the very English Patrick Stewart) and his recurring adversary Q, played by the American John deLancie. deLancie has stated a couple of times in interviews that his secret to the role was to always be the opposite of Picard – if Picard was meditative or calm, Q was flamboyant and excited, if Picard was up, Q was down, if Picard was still, Q was bouncing around the set, and so on.

The British approach is understated, and in that fact, I think the answer to the question may be found – understatement is more, or even “less is more”. More powerful, more authoritative, more menacing, more grim, more serious, more dangerous. A single raised eyebrow can be just as effective as a shouted “Are you kidding me?” or “You’re not serious!” Underplaying the supporting cast and the antagonist gives room enough for the most flamboyant performances from your player, enabling him to “fill the room” with his PC when he wants to – and saving the GM a lot of effort in the meantime.

But it doesn’t come automatically. It takes practice on the part of the GM, sensitization on the part of the player, and intelligent character design on the part of the GM.

The Companion character in the Dr Who campaign is a naturally reserved personality, so I will seize any opportunity to have him behave a little flamboyantly – practicing his martial arts discipline in the control room, etc – but the more important what he is saying in a conversation might be, the more understated and humble I will make the delivery. The contrast accentuates the unique points of the character.

The Antagonist, on the other hand, is naturally flamboyant and arrogant, so I will both underplay his spoken performances and his behavior in encounters. His sole action “on screen” in the last adventure was to push a button, release another, and deliver three words of dialogue. Yet, his presence and past actions threw a shadow over everything else that occurred in the adventure. “He doesn’t need to advertise – he’s the real deal” is the unstated subtext.

In a standard game, this approach can lead to characters being drowned out by an overabundance of exuberance by PCs, so it needs to be used with care. In a single-player game, intensity is more important than volume.

– A unique manifestation of relationship –

Every NPC will have, or will develop, a relationship with the lone PC. In a group game, it’s enough that this relationship be unique with respect to one individual PC; in a solo campaign, uniqueness is not enough, there needs to be some unique mode of expression of the relationship. Because several different relationships can have the same mode of expression, this more tightly confines the personalities and roles of the NPCs with whom the PC is surrounded at any given time. If you want to bring in a new character with the same manifestation of relationship as an existing NPC, the latter needs to be shuffled off to the sidelines somehow.

It follows that in character creation, you have to be actively thinking about how you are going to play the character, and changing the design or dominant concerns of that character in order to achieve a unique mode of expression – or noting that X and Y should never appear together.

This was not something that I had fully appreciated until part-way through the second adventure of the Dr Who campaign, when I discovered that one of the guest characters – quiet, confident – had the same manifestation of personality as the Companion. I had to compensate quickly by accentuating secondary aspects of the guest character – a schoolgirl giddiness and excitability – simply to enable the two to contrast in their few scenes together.

– Simpler characters given depth –

If you accept the premise that abbreviated personality descriptions can be employed as guidelines and signposts without completely specifying the personality in question, as suggested earlier, then it becomes clear that your character designs for secondary roles can start off as simple constructs who will evolve additional depth as interaction with the campaign continues. That means that the characters you design can actually be a lot simpler than those you would normally create for a multiplayer game. Take advantage of this to give you the design and prep time you need to focus on more important things.

– The power of contradiction –

This is a lesson that I’ve repeated and echoed a number of times in this article, and it bears one more repetition. Build a contradiction into your characterization from the point of creation, then utilize the inherent contradiction to give your characters depth beyond the superficial.

The more important the character is, the more important it is that this technique be employed.

Don’t neglect the possibility that this behavior is not the usual mode of operation of the NPC in question, but is the one that manifests as a result of the situation in which they find themselves. Where this is the case, any opportunity to revert to more “normal” behavior will be seized by the character, adding a third layer of depth to the role. Making the creation of those opportunities dependent on the PC keeps them at the forefront of the action, even if their role in the action is much quieter and restrained than the role adopted as a consequence. The PC might be a scientist, or a scholar, and the NPC a man of action who nevertheless cannot act until released and pointed at a particular problem by the PC – which effectively makes the NPC a weapon under the PC’s control.

– Beware stereotypes and one-note characters

This is always good advice, but it’s even more important when relying on simplified characters, as has been recommended above. If any word or phrase in your shorthand summation of a character is in any way stock or clichéd or suggestive of stereotype, cross it out. If any word is the exact opposite of the stereotype, cross that out too – because that’s going to be almost as clichéd.

A good scientist might read, “Passionate, Artistic, Myopic” – because none of those are things that you would normally associate with a scientists’ role. “Myopic” is right on the borderline, but is tolerable. “Studious” or “Scholarly” or anything of that sort should be rejected out of hand – save those for a soldier, or a garbageman, or a slumlord.

As you can see, we’ve started edging into the territory of Roleplay in one-player games. That, and general campaign and adventure design principles, are the featured subjects in part two of this series…