Dungeon Master: Games for 2

Over the course of my time running tabletop role-playing games, I've run groups of many sizes. I've even talked about running games for small groups before. However, today I'd like to focus on running games with 2 people including the Dungeon Master. It's quite a difficult kind of game to run and keep interesting. It also has challenges that are unique to it. While some of these will sound similar to my article on small groups, the problems are magnified further since there isn't a group anymore. It also becomes much easier to accidentally outshine the players and make it a game where you, the Dungeon Master, are just playing alone with occasional input.

Why?

Sometimes, you'll find that getting a bigger group isn't feasible but your player still wants to play a tabletop role-playing game such as D&D. Most often, it's a couple playing or a younger child with an older sibling or a parent. In these situations, playing with only 1 player can still be preferable to not playing at all. I would avoid doing this because the rest of the group failed to show. A single player wouldn't be able to realistically face the threat in that kind of situation and you don't want to cut out important plot occurrences for other players. I've seen cases where a game was run and a benefit to the campaign was provided, but it was not major and didn't involve the main plot. The best way to describe it is a side quest that happened during the party's downtime.

The Dungeon Master Filling In

Arguably the most straightforward way of running a D&D game for a single player this is to have the Dungeon Master fill in for the other 3 players in the party. I've done this before and seen it done. It's hard to keep track of everything, to role-play 3 major characters as well as doing the background stuff. There is also a bigger problem. The Dungeon Master will have knowledge about what is coming in the future, since they run the game, but also has to play the main characters. This means that you run the risk of having moments of the Dungeon Master party members looking completely useless or out shinning the one player.

I'd personally not recommend doing it the above way. Instead, have the single player hire specialists and body guards. This way, the one player can still do the majority of talking, interactions and furthering the plot. The hired NPCs may even be quite a few levels below the player. The Dungeon Master can still use the player rules to make the hired characters, but take special care to make sure the player isn't out shown. It also means that since they are hired, they won't have as close of a connection to the story and plot points. The result is that it is far more believable that the Dungeon Master controlled characters won't know what to do and defer to their leader. The Dungeon Master will still need to role-play a lot, but I find it's a lot less taxing this way. Doing this, however, still doesn't fix the added strain on the Dungeon Master in Combat since they have to play both sides.

The One Player Controls the Entire Party

If the single player controls an entire party, we have the reverse problem. 4 characters or more are a lot to control as a player and talking to yourself is even more awkward as a player. However, it does solve the conflict the Dungeon Master is in between being a player and running the game.

Combine the Above

Finally, we arrive to the most stable solution in my opinion. You let the player control the party by giving orders in combat and other situations but you, as the Dungeon Master, role-play them. It also lets you occasionally be defiant, have realistic conflict within the party and gives many other options. The role-play situation is solved since being hired help and more distant from the conflict as well as less knowledgeable, the rest of the party will be in a worse position to interact. If they are lower level as well, it gives more opportunity for the player to shine.

The down side is that it results in a rather limiting situation. It only makes sense when hired people make sense. If something is super-secret, you wouldn't want some random people you hired off the street. It also doesn't work with some kinds of characters, such as the solitary character forced into a group by circumstance. It works really well for a noble character who often hires body guards, court magicians and similar personnel. It also often works for a soldier character who can call up old army buddies. In these cases, there are often times where a clever Dungeon Master can think of something (help provided from the local church of a god since interests align) but in some cases it will be awkward. If the NPCs need to be paid (the help from the Church may not need to be paid), money may need to come more readily to the player in order to afford the new expense. Having a single share of the loot may be enough to hire everyone else or a sharing scheme can be worked out (if the player is higher level, they'll probably get a bigger cut).

Level the Player Accordingly

Of course, the situation can be handles by leveling the character higher as mentioned in my previous article about small groups of player characters. It can also be handled by reducing the challenge to a level their character can handle (can be a lot less impressive in combat at low levels, and makes running officially published adventures harder, but works reasonably well for role-play heavy games) or letting the player have more than one class at once. All of these methods are mentioned in the previous article. It also has the added result of making the player feel more awesome. It can be combined with the above, but the people hired will need to be significantly weaker than the player. In those cases, the hired party members are there to make things more exciting since they allow even more enemies can be added in combat. However, they play a lesser role than in the above situations.