Solo Games, would you beef up the PC at all?

[Shadeling]

I was curious with anyone out there running just one TROS player, if you boost the priorities at all...

[Brian Leybourne]

Why would you?

TROS is all about decisions and intelligent choices right? Just because a party of four can run through 3 opponents and one can't (say) doesn't mean you should beef up the one, hopefully they're intelligent enough to work another way around the problem.

This holds true in non-combat situations too.. TROS characters are plenty good, especially when you consider SA's and the speed at which you can build up a character. One, four or ten there's no reason to beef them up, although you probably wouldn't throw the same challenges at a solo character as you would a party of ten.

Actually, this is an area where TROS outshines many other games. Try doing a DND game with a single character, it just doesn't work. Ditto many other games.

Brian.

[Shadeling]

Well I was just curious what people thought. See the game Nobilis had me thinking about it, where, when you run one PC they recommend giving the PC more points to build their chancel (if you are familiar with Nobilis at all) a very important thing to the core of the game.

At any rate, I wasn't going to beef up the PC at all, but just wanted to feel the waters on what others were doing.

PS: I have actually ran a solo D&D game without beefing up the PC...always ran D&D where actual roleplaying gave you more XP than slaying beasties.

[Jake Norwood]

I've read Nobilis.

As for extra points in TROS, I think it comes from your own goals with the game. You could give his *less* points if you were running a Bilbo Baggins story where the growth of the character "from zero to hero" was a big deal. Alternatively you could give him 3 "A" slots on the priority chart and have some kind of walking army (or whatever). What kind of story do you want?

Jake

[Shadeling]

Let's see, well the game premise is as follows:

A month ago, a noble sent some men to survey and excavate in a small natural cavern. This area is fairly close to a small town under the noble's dominion. The men found nothing of value (the noble was told there may be silver there, but alas there wasn't).

Well, for the last month the townsfolk have been plagued with horrible nightmares, every night. Again, this has happened every night for the month. Townsfolk have been trying to stay awake, but it is taking its toll. Now, after a month, a few townsfolk have died. The townsfolk do not know what to do.

A traveller comes into town (the PC), and of course notices the crazed townsfolk. The traveller will then be pulled into the events, and pulled into investigating, and so on.

[Jake Norwood]

Interesting.

That helps, but it still doesn't tell us what we need to know.

*Maybe* the best way to do this is to make the character as the player sees him, ignoring priorities, etc. right out. If you two trust each other, that is.

I've done that several times with solo games, and it seems to always work (although my characters do tend to get a little tougher than maybe they should...it's my inner gamist.

Jake

[Shadeling]

The player, my wife, wants the make a Fey Halfling-Kyhmmerian huntress type, who has tried to hide her true nature all her life. I think that works fine, as such a character would be just as much about exploring her surroundings as exploring her inner self.

[toli]

I don't think beefing up a PC is important per se.  What is important is to make the challenges that the PCs face challenging but attainable.  I think this applies to starting abilities (priorities in TROS) and the rate of advancement.  If players want an extra A priority...just give the bad guys one too...or tell them that that is what you will do and don't give it to them.

I think it also depends on your players.  I've found that younger players like to start stronger...they want to be adults not children.  Older players are often more interested in the development of their characters...(or perhaps reliving lost youth..who knows).  It is easy enought to adjust the power of the opposition to keep the game intersting.  I think this is especially true of a game like TROS where you can't end up with 4000 hit points.....NT