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June 19, 2004
Single-Player Play
Jeff gets down and dirty and analyzes his GMing in a single-player game he ran a while ago. A lot of the issues he talks about are very familiar to me; I ran a single-player loose-ruled D&D game for a while back in California and yeah. Lack of structure can really be a problem.
I wound up not so much scripting as providing a lot of powerful impetuses for the PC to go somewhere else than where she was at any given moment. The best hook of all was "you are the avatar of one of the four elemental gods and if you don't fulfill your destiny the orc you hate so much is going to take over your role." I didn't really have any doubt that the orc was going to lose, but it still worked very well as a method of creating suspense.
I also had the problem that first level D&D characters are exceedingly fragile but the player wanted the experience of leveling up from first. That's why the rules wound up being used somewhat loosely. It all worked out in the end.
However, I never even thought about the prediscussion of story arc idea he came up with, and I love it. I'm totally going to do that if I ever run for a single person again. Framing it as a formal "next issue box" creates an elegant sense of ritual and I'm big on ritual.
What single-player techniques have you used, as a GM? Or for that matter, as a player?
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Comments
The trick with single player games is actually involving the player when figuring out where they'd like the plot to go. By allowing the player to provide suggestions during game play (stuff like: "that NPC sounds like she's the right sort for my character, so I'd like to have a subplot where we form a relationship") lets the GM know what's important to the player, and let's the player ensure that the game is going to continue to be interesting.
(I think the GNS people call this Author & Director stances if you subscribe to those particular theories).
An MURPG campaign I've been playing online has had elements of this during gameplay, and I've thoroughly enjoyed it.
Posted by: Geoff Skellams at Jun 19, 2004 1:26:37 PM
