This is more of a request for actual play experiences than a report of them; I hope that fits within the spirit of the guidelines.

Due to the busy schedules of the players in my gaming circle, it can prove tricky to fit a full group together and we quite often end up running one-on-one campaigns with a single GM and a single other player, as those sessions can be organised much more easily. So far I'm the player in an Amber campaign and a fledgling Nobilis game, and I'm GMing an Everway game and discussing character creation for a Sorcerer game. We had a game of Murderous Ghosts during its playtest phase, but I'm looking for something a bit longer-lasting. I've also been asked to run a short one-on-one game for someone else who's curious about RP and doesn't want to get involved with a full group game yet.

However, I'm not finding the format terribly conducive to Story Now play. The Amber game is great fun but does mostly involve me following plot hooks laid by the GM rather than following my character's drives. I'm finding similar things with Everway, and I'm struggling to keep that game moving as I don't want to be writing a load of plot hooks to be followed - I want the story to emerge from play in the way described by Story Now. Nobilis and Sorcerer are both too new to say as yet, but I imagine the same might be true for them when they get rolling.

As far as I can tell, it's simply quite difficult for the non-GM player in these games to have enough opposing forces to bounce off and therefore create story from. Certainly I get the impression from some Story Now game texts that a lot of the story potential is borne out of conflicts of interest between the players' characters - in Apocalypse World, for example, it's explicit in the form of "PC-NPC-PC triangles".

(Part of the problem may also be that I'm quite new to Story Now play and so don't have a lot of experience playing it or running it in any form, let alone one-on-one.)

Does anyone have any experience of running Story Now games in a one-on-one setup that they wouldn't mind sharing? Did it work? Do you have any recommendations of systems and/or techniques that helped the story emerge more smoothly despite the limited player numbers?

Thanks in advance,
Nick

Hi Nick!

Your use of "story Now" is.. problematic. I am not really sure you are using it the way it should be used (citing Amber is a yellow alert. Not Red yet, but...). It would be much better f you simply describe the kind of game experience you are searching for, using some of your past experiences as example (of what you are searching for or what you want to avoid)

This, by the way, will have the added benefit to make this thread compliant with the forum rules:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forge/index.php?topic=30748.0
.. that say that every single thread should start with some actual-play experience.

No need to write a lot, there is no need to describe an entire session or something like that. A few lines are enough, if they show what you mean (or what you don't mean). The important thing is that you should talk about what happen between what the platyers at the table did, too, not only about the fictional content.

There are really A LOT of games for two persons these days, all it's needed is a better idea about what you are really searching for.

Hi Moreno, thanks for your reply. Let me see if I can be a bit clearer about what I'm looking for.

Firstly I should clarify that I'm not holding the Amber game up as an example of Story Now - indeed, I specifically don't think it's providing what I'm looking for.

But yes, let me try and give some examples of what I mean - apologies for not providing this in the first place. Part of the problem, as I say, is that I simply don't have that much experience of the sort of play I'm talking about - I'm only just discovering it really - and so "what I'm looking for" is itself a little vague, and based mostly on what I infer from writings on the Forge and in various game texts. However, here's an example:

I'm running a WFRP campaign at the moment set in a fantasy world where the bad guys won, and the PCs are trying to survive in the harsh landscape that results. Sort of a fantasy take on a post-apocalyptic setting. It started out ok, the players seemed engaged by the campaign setup and I was enjoying showing them the world in broad brush strokes. However, I found my interest declining very quickly after the first couple of sessions - it felt very much like I was leading the players by the nose, churning out plot hooks and leading them down a pre-planned route. What I wanted was for them to take the initiative and engage with their characters / the setting, and produce their own story as a result rather than relying on quests that I threw at them.

In parallel to this, I was just discovering The Forge and a bunch of indie games, including Apocalypse World - and it struck me that several of the techniques from AW might help solve the problems I was seeing with WFRP. So I implemented a bunch of house rules based on the AW book (e.g. the three-tier success criteria - strong hit, weak hit, miss) and started using the AW move resolution mechanics to inspire my narration of the WFRP resolution rolls. Similarly, I'm trying to implement the guidance from the AW MCing chapter, and I've started prepping fronts for the various things that are getting in the PCs' way.

This has improved the game dramatically for me (largely by changing my GMing style to be better / preferable!); now when the characters try to solve a problem, it has interesting consequences whether they succeed or not. Examples...

1. The party need to get down to the shanty town at the base of the cliff as fast as possible, but they mostly fail their climb checks - all except one, who gets a weak hit. I offer him an ugly choice: "Ok - you can make it down, but you'll be sliding most of the way so you'll take some damage, and you'll be separated from the rest of the party who will have to go the long way round. Do you do it or do you go back?" He does it. (Don't ask me why.) So when he's picking himself up at the bottom of the cliff, the player looks at me expectantly - my turn to make a move, then. So I put him in a spot - I surround him with a few thugs who try to extort money from him. I invented these thugs on the fly, but after that encounter the players started interacting with them, and they've become one of the major threats in the setting - a large gang that owns the shanty town and controls the water supply. We're still waiting to see how far the party will go to liberate the town from the influence of the gang.

2. One member of the party is making his way across town alone. He looks at me expectantly so I put him in a spot - and the first thing that springs to mind is that he sees someone stealing the wood that's being used to rebuild the city walls. He goes over and tries to stop the thief. I can't remember off-hand if he used intimidation or more diplomatic persuasion, but anyway he got a strong hit so the guy starts sloping off, leaving the wood where it is. However, the player is concerned and sends his character after the thief to keep talking, and tries to Read Person during the conversation. He hits, and asks what the thief is intending to do next. I tell him (again, invented on the spot) that the guy is going to kill himself because he doesn't know how to support his ill wife and newborn child without resorting to thievery. This knocks the player for six, and eventually he talks the guy out of it, and that would-be-thief and his family have now become significant NPC allies and potentially quite an interesting part of the campaign - we're waiting to see whether they'll be useful allies or just a burden that the PCs have to support (and if so, whether they'll do so or simply turn them loose to fend for themselves).

I guess both examples raise a question something like "in a harsh world, you need to be harsh yourself to survive - but how far are you willing to take that?" It's quite early days for the AW-fied version of the campaign, so we have yet to see what the answer is in either case - but as the campaign progresses, we'll find out. (And there'll be plenty of other examples too, of course.)

In both cases I really enjoyed coming up with the stuff on the fly, prompted by the PCs' actions - and I'm really looking forward to seeing how the players decide to resolve the questions raised. From the feedback I got from the players, I think they're enjoying seeing the world respond, really change, as a result of their actions, and are also excited about deciding how to resolve the questions.

--

Is that any clearer? Hopefully you can see how in both those examples the events sprang reasonably naturally from the PCs' actions - and they set up interesting questions and potential conflicts that the players can choose to go and resolve. That's what I'm looking for.

Conclusion: Although the WFRP / AW blend has definitely shown me some techniques to move towards the kind of game I'm talking about, I'm not yet practised enough to apply them confidently - I don't want to be bullying an uncooperative game text into working the way I want. I'd much rather pick a system that's going to support it from the start - but one that suits two players well. I get the impression from the game text that AW works best with at least a couple of non-GM players to interact and get in each other's way.

Side note: I guess it's worth mentioning that I also want something that supports a variety of different situations - I've seen a few games that choose quite specific scenarios that might / do work well with two players (e.g. Murderous Ghosts), but I want something that supports a broader and longer-running campaign.

Hey, Nick!
Sounds like you've had some tremendous successes with your hack. Congrats!
I really enjoy the world of Warhammer, but I wasn't crazy about the mechanics in any edition. I think incorporating what you have, here, would help make it work for me. So, thanks!

Hi Nick!

Blackrat wrote:
it felt very much like I was leading the players by the nose, churning out plot hooks and leading them down a pre-planned route. What I wanted was for them to take the initiative and engage with their characters / the setting, and produce their own story as a result rather than relying on quests that I threw at them.

In both cases I really enjoyed coming up with the stuff on the fly, prompted by the PCs' actions - and I'm really looking forward to seeing how the players decide to resolve the questions raised. From the feedback I got from the players, I think they're enjoying seeing the world respond, really change, as a result of their actions, and are also excited about deciding how to resolve the questions.

--

Is that any clearer? Hopefully you can see how in both those examples the events sprang reasonably naturally from the PCs' actions - and they set up interesting questions and potential conflicts that the players can choose to go and resolve. That's what I'm looking for.

Conclusion: Although the WFRP / AW blend has definitely shown me some techniques to move towards the kind of game I'm talking about, I'm not yet practised enough to apply them confidently - I don't want to be bullying an uncooperative game text into working the way I want. I'd much rather pick a system that's going to support it from the start - but one that suits two players well. I get the impression from the game text that AW works best with at least a couple of non-GM players to interact and get in each other's way.

Side note: I guess it's worth mentioning that I also want something that supports a variety of different situations - I've seen a few games that choose quite specific scenarios that might / do work well with two players (e.g. Murderous Ghosts), but I want something that supports a broader and longer-running campaign.

Moreno wrote:
And I am not sure about one thing: do you need a game to play always with a single player, or a game that you can play even with a single player at a time of a bigger group? I mean, a game that is not really one-on-one but that can be played even if almost all the players are missing one evening.(for example a game where every PC is in a different adventure, like Trollbabe)

Moreno wrote:
The problem of this approach is that with a question like that, you risk to be swamped with a lot of names of games, with everyone who will reply listing his/her favorites

Blackrat wrote:
Does anyone have any experience of running Story Now games in a one-on-one setup that they wouldn't mind sharing? Did it work? Do you have any recommendations of systems and/or techniques that helped the story emerge more smoothly despite the limited player numbers?

Thanks Mel, that's really interesting and exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. So am I correct in inferring that this game lasted only a single session? Do you think Beast Hunters would work well for an ongoing campaign? (Not forever, but maybe lasting up to a dozen sessions.)

And yes, I'd be very interested to hear your experiences with Mars Colony.

Having looked into both games, they seem very interesting but they do seem like the scenarios are a little too specific to last more than one session, which is what I'd ideally like to set up. I'll give them both a try, though - one-shots are great fun too and a good way to get more ideas. Thanks!

- Nick

Nick,
Right--one session each.  Beast Hunters could probably be maintained over a longer period.  That's one of the reasons I want to change the setting to tune it to my interests.  Mars Colony is designed to be resolved after one or two nights of play--I can't see it going much longer. But, for the person you mentioned looking for a sample of roleplaying, either would be a good start. 
Mel

Mel - yes indeed. I'll propose them and see which she chooses! :-)

- Nick