Running a game for Two Players - By Design and Unexpected

Running a role-playing game with a limited number of players has some challenging problems. If the game was designed from the outset to be played by just two players, then that is fine because the adventure will be keyed around the duo's personality, limitations and the playing style of both the GM and players, there may even be an element of rotation amongst the players and GM. Players need to be aware that with limited players it will require full input from everyone.

Of course if its an accident or bad timing that turns a six player group down to two, then this will also need to be discussed with the players too. have had experience of running games with reduced player numbers in the 7th Sea campaign setting, and in both instances the experience was different. Essentially the game can go one of two ways. (a) either one or both characters take the lead in creating their own story and entertain themselves with the GM acting as the 'bounce' or (b) where the GM entertains the players and has to be prepared to burn through tons of material each session. If found the best way is to announce to the remaining players of the situation and ask them what they wish to do. Carry on with the story (b) or (a) create their own little private adventure to laugh about while the other players have gone away. I find (a) can be very self indulgent and hard to bring to a satisfactory conclusion, but (b) whilst serving the story, prevents the other players from learning of the plot movement, but its the amount of written material this can get through. One way to avoid this is to slow the pace down and become more descriptive.
 

In a two player designed game, both the characters and adventure needs to be tailored to the players and GM, whereas an unexpected two player game will require careful amendment to the adventure to ensure they don't get caught out. I.e. a big fight suddenly becomes a sneak and hide session.

One final observation is when a small group of a DM and two players (especially those two who have decided to multi-class and thereby reduce the speed at which they progress their character) expands to a larger group, usually through invitation etc, suddenly these multi-classed characters will fall foul of the other players who rise rapidly through the levels and have the potential to overrun the main original two heroes.

There is a final 3rd variant to this, which I do not recommend, I have tried it once and it didnt really work (oddly I love Ars Magica for this very reason, and my own developed Dune game uses this a foundational point) which is whereby each player has 2 or more characters, either as part of the party of as secondary or supporting characters in other locations.

Back from the Med

After a 2 week jaunt throughout the island of Corfu, Im back, and pumped up with ideas for both my MERP campaign, and also a couple of other game ideas.

Firstly because it was just me and the wife, I was able to read a lot as well as undertake lots of reading too, which in part was the inspiration for the games, but also because I was without the usual distractions of TV, the Internet, and phones as well as work, I was able to focus on writing, and lots of it. Pen and paper, no word processing here.

Although the MERP campaign has already been written, I wrote in during my barren playing days in the early 90s, it was written in a vacuum, without play-testing. As I may have previously mentioned, this is the 4th time I have attempted to run this game, and so therefore the early parts of the game are "well-oiled". So far they have enjoyed the comfort of Bree, and gotten to know the surroundings and the people rather well. Every encounter revealing a little more of the dark plot ahead. Now I am moving onto what I would class as 2nd stage of the game, and has yet to be even play-tested, let alone proof-read. Still I am sure in the intervening years I have got better at running and winging games without the facade falling away.

The next stage is therefore the apparently simple journey to the ruins of Rivendell (this is the 4th age afterall) to see the wisdom of the few that remain, and get answers to why there are many factions of orcs roaming what used to be considered safe lands. As a stream of consciousness I wrote 12 pages of A4 notes in one sitting without pause. There was quite a bit on my mind.

The other material I began work on was the early stages of a Superhero game, but I want to "poll" my group and see what they would expect or want from a superpowered game.

The other major focus on my writing was Dune. No no no. Im not one of the lucky who bought a GenCon copy or each paid out over £ 150.



I am ashamed to say I have acquired a PDF copy of the book, and what little I have read, its rather bland and uninventive. Regardless I will use it as the basis for a Dune campaign. For me, I am sufficiently happy to use a simple home-brew system using coloured counters representing traits along with a "troupe" style of play. I also possess a "printers error" copy of the Dune Encyclopedia which is all the background material I need to run a game.

2 Role-Playing Game Projects

Just a quick update to tell you about 2 gaming projects that have been on the writing back-burner for longer than I can remember.

They are both role-playing games
1) Dune - a role-playing game based on Frank Herbert's wonderful books.
2) Lords of Midnight -a role-playing game based on Mike Singleton's epic computer wargame, role-playing game series that was released on the 8bit computers in the 1980's.

Why?
Well Dune because I feel the internet efforts to date have been poor, and not deserving of the awesome majesty of the epic series, and the Last Unicorn Games' version appeared literally minutes before D20 in the guise of DND3.0 arrived. It showed promise. It also has the honour of probably the most consistently sought after RPG book on Ebay. Ive even seen incorrectly bound copies of the book (the first 16 pages bound in unside down) selling for over £100.

And Lords of Midnight simply because it has never been attempted before, and ranks, I believe, with the epic J R R Tolkien and Terry Brooks' Sword of Shanara series. It was an incredibly involving game set in an Ice Wasteland, where elves, dwarves and trolls fought each other for the control of the landscape. Lords with armies at their fingertips hid behind old ancient castles. While armies of Midnight fought on the ice wastes, 4 lone heroes set out to defeat Doomdark and his army.

So Far?
Dune has been fleshed out using a simple variant of the Guardians of Order system, MIND, BODY, SOUL, but before this and all the way through the design concept, I have introduced a unique character bidding concept, which I am loathe to talk about to anyone at the moment but has wide-reaching implications for metagaming for Dune. It fits the genre perfectly and enables epic political games to be run by a group of players jointly with a series of Judges/Games Masters. I am a huge fan of the Dune boardgame, and I wanted to incorporate as many elements of that game too, and as such my idea, I think, works. All I need is someone to help me write it and develop it.

Lords of Midnight originally started out as a Rolemaster campaign, but I felt that the game would be lost under the complexity of Rolemaster's rules. The reason I went for RM was a) it was my system of choice when I first started writing LOM, and b) it had a fairly comprehensive spell list of Fire and Ice magics. So having said no to RM, I stripped the game back down and turned it almost into a Fighting Fantasy game, but instead of STRENGTH and STAMINA, I chose ICE FEAR and STAMINA. These are ideas I want to resurrect, but in the meantime I have used the D20 SRD as my basis for the system, while writing more on the background and setting. If you are interested in co-writing either or both projects, or taking one or both of the projects over or just want to discuss it, then please let me know. I would hate to have what I have written so far go to waste. Both projects I am excited about.