I've done a lot of 1-on-1 or duet gaming over the years. OD&D, AD&D, Runeqeust, Call of Cthulhu, Star Wars, and Honor+Intrigue amoung others.

The system doesn't matter.

The style of play needs to adjust. Typically NPCs become more important since there is not PC-PC interaction. And as others have mentioned the game can focus on whatever aspects the player and GM are interested in. For many that is interacting more with NPCs, but it can also include exploring, kingdom building, or a greater rules and tactics focus,

Quote from: jhkim;798242I've barely done any one-on-one role-playing, but I'm wondering about what the better systems are for this. I was just talking with my son about whether he would be interested.

Someone earlier suggested James Bond 007, which is one of my favorite systems anyway and sounds like a good idea.

I know that the Ghost Dog RPG is designed for one-on-one role-playing, but I've never tried it.

Offhand, I would tend towards slightly more crunchy games, because it's easier to deal with crunch when you only have one player, and tends to give more options for the player to fiddle with. But that's a blind idea.

James bond is ideal. The PC is proficient across the board, there is a good chunk of plot protection hardbaked, and solo adventures reflect the genre.

Depending on the age of your son you might want to tweak the seduction rules.

I actually don't think solo games are any different to normal games except that depending on the player the game might drag if they are rather passive, so you need to ensure you drive the adventure. Of course if the PC is very proactive the game moves much faster as there is way less time discussing tactics

If anything party based games are less reflective of most source fiction from James Bond to Amber to Conan to Tarl Cabbot to John Carter. The party to me seem like a LotR inheritance that fitted the game paradigm really well as you had a reason to have a "party". Traveller is another genre where a crew of ragtag misfits actually makes sense.
I really struggled in say WoD stuff to work out how the party came together especially if the PCs have radically different backgrounds.

I agree with Bren -- the system really doesn't matter for this.  There's nothing about one-on-one gaming so very different from any other number-on-one that requires different rules.

Honestly, most of this is just improv.  Princess Elaina, managing her country estate, talks with people.  A lot.  I use reaction rolls where necessary, and appropriate skill rolls -- what the reeve knows about the next estate over, how much cider the pressers produce -- but this is about talking, and I can't think of a system that prohibits you from doing that.

Insulting things by calling them "gay" is just pathetic.  The only thing more juvenile and sad than that is defending the use of the term when called out on it.  I honestly thought the Pundit was better than that.  Pity.

But to the actual spirit of the question, I'll lend my voice to the "no" side.  Solo games can be a lot of fun and are much easier to schedule, especially in the adult world where people often have many more things to compete with their time.

Granted, I prefer games where there are more people, but sometimes the rest of the Justice League has to be someplace else and hey, if the GM and the Batman aren't doing anything anyway, why not go for a patrol in Gotham?

I've regularly run games for my wife on the off weekends when our group doesn't meet for our regular game (our group meets 2x a month on average). We've been playing games like this for about 15 years now.

I've used quite a few rulesets for our duet games and haven't run into any yet that didn't work (at least not because of not having enough players involved).

Right now, we're playing DWAITAS which is a great game for a solo PC conceptually and works very well.

Quote from: Doctor Jest;798829I've regularly run games for my wife on the off weekends when our group doesn't meet for our regular game.

Honey Hellfire!

The weird thing is, Ettin and others were combing Pundit's online history for homophobic remarks, yet he gets taken to task for saying something stupid like "isn't that gay" 5 years ago more on this site then others. :hmm:

Quote from: Tamelorn;309231I like bunnies.  What was that one-player game thingie with bunnies?

Little Bunny Foo-Foo?

Think it's subtitle might have been "...vs the Good Fairy"


- Ed C.

Quote from: Koltar;798864Little Bunny Foo-Foo?

Think it's subtitle might have been "...vs the Good Fairy"


- Ed C.

Nah it was bunnies and burrows, 1977.

Well ahead of the curve I think the first RPG system with a full skills system and a logarithmic combat model so you could have a fair fight between 2 rabbits or 2 dogs but a rabbit versus a dog well...
They put out a GURPS conversion for it as well.

Quote from: CRKrueger;798854The weird thing is, Ettin and others were combing Pundit's online history for homophobic remarks, yet he gets taken to task for saying something stupid like "isn't that gay" 5 years ago more on this site then others. :hmm:

that is quite wierd but it also gives us hope seeing how incompetent he is that he will be defeted soon

So this is something I said five years ago. I wouldn't use the term in that way (as in gay=lame) today.

I'll also note that as far back as eight years ago, I was writing blog entries in defense of gay rights, like one I wrote back around 2005 about Zach Stark, a kid who had been forcibly sent to a 'gay-reparation' pseudo-psychiatric institution against his will.  Back around that time, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were against gay marriage, while I was for it.  I've also welcomed LGBT people into my gaming groups for the last 20 years or so.

So yeah, language evolves and people change in their use of it over time.

And with that, this attempt to somehow stir controversy by meticulously pointing out tiny snippets of literally hundreds of thousands of things I've written over 10 years of punditing as if that proves something is closed.

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