Any solo campaign advice? It looks like I’ll be GMing a campaign with my wife as the only player, and while I can handle basically plots fairly easily, I’m trying for to figure out how best to use the team-based mechanics in a campaign with no team.
Any solo campaign advice?
Any solo campaign advice?
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To be honest, as dependent as the game is on the team dynamic I don’t think it’s a good choice for a solo game. Worlds in Peril would probably work better if you want a superhero game, as it places a lot of importance on downtime interactions with NPCs in your mundane life and doesn’t care about teamwork as much as Masks does.
But, since that’s not what you asked:
Having NPCs as part of the team has always felt weird to me, so I wouldn’t try it just for the sake of trying it; that’s just been my personal experience, though, you might have better luck with it. Regardless, the Team moves (triumph and vulnerability) can trigger with NPCs as well as PCs, so provide opportunities for her to have those moments with NPCs she cares about, and be on the lookout for when they happen in unexpected places, like letting a villain get under her skin. Most playbooks will hand you people to care about on a platter, but they might be in the background questions instead of the mechanics, so take plenty of notes.
The “when you go into battle” move will be mostly unusable, since you don’t have a leader or other teammates to mistrust or have differing agendas, or have influence over for that matter. You’d need to rewrite it for a solo focus, and might as well rename it since there’s no team. Maybe something like…
Add an Inspiration to the pool for each of the following that is true:
-Your purpose in the fight is in line with your heroic identity.
-You have no major doubts about your ability to prevail.
Subtract one from the pool for each of the following that is true:
-You’re ill prepared or taken by surprise.
-You’re seriously distracted by an unresolved personal issue.
When you spend Inspiration to be a Hero, tell us how your action places others first and take +1 to your roll. When you spend Inspiration to be a Vigilante, tell us how your actions place your personal agenda or ethics first and shift your labels accordingly. It otherwise works just like Team.
This is a quick and dirty hack, and the game’s reliance on a group dynamic goes a lot deeper than just these moves, so take this with a grain of salt. That said, best of luck, and if you do run it solo and get it to work I’d be intrigued to hear about it.
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I think I would encourage the player to pick a playbook which lends itself to lots of NPCs who matter — most obviously, the Protege, the Legacy, or the Janus.
You could up the stakes by making the lone PC hero the object of prophecy, like Harry Potter. Grown ups are trying to shift their Labels because they care intensely about how the PC is going to turn out — they want him/her to be a great warrior for good, or a scientific genius, or whatever.
You’re not going to capture the team dynamics, so you might as well immerse the character in a weird world of friends and enemies and frenemies. Less Teen Titans, more Books of Magic.
Mechanically, I suppose the character could have a “handler” who gives them advice through a headset and you could build some mechanics around how much the hero trusts and follows the advice of the handler. I’m thinking of the Melissa McCarthy character in Spy here. Might be a lot of work for the GM.