Has anyone tried playing MH one on one?

9 thoughts on “Has anyone tried playing MH one on one?”

1. Might be worth brainstorming the campaign with her a little bit – if she plays ‘x’, who are the main personalities in her life? A small group of NPCs to get waist-deep into the String economy with her character.  Scene-frame ruthlessly to keep dropping her into scenes with them!  (Detention, extra-curricular activities, needing to babysit, called to the office, part-time job, etc.)

2. I was thinking about GMPCing some other playbooks to give her more detailed characters to interact with.

3. I wouldn’t run any GMPCs. My feeling is they would just distract from your MCing duties. Run MC characters as normal; as completely narrative constructs that don’t roll dice or have Skin moves.

4. I like at least 3 players. PCs balance each other out very well in MH; they’re more powerful than NPCs, better able to dole out and receive damage, manipulate others (as you have 3+ people scheming!) and intermingle.

   With solo play, you’ll play a LOT faster, with no time to think as the Fae disses the Werewolf’s outfit or the Vampire admits to being a bully.

5. It the faster play Adam Goldberg​ mentions that makes me say don’t play with fully started out GMPCs. Without multiple players interacting, you’re going to be constantly on your toes as MC.

6. I’ve been playing and running games for 20+ years so I’m not concerned with it being difficult. My worry is if there are any game mechanics that will suffer significantly for only having one player.

7. I don’t think any game mechanics will suffer from there being only a single player. The only thing I can think of is the player not getting to use Strings to affect other PCs; they’ll only ever get to use their Strings against NPCs.

8. I think the randomness is a big factor, when you couple it with the lack of control. Last session, I got the Cuckoo to talk to a boy on my account. The Cuckoo decided to repair our relationship…and then indirectly flirt with the crush. Which surprised EVERYONE and caused half a session of havoc.

9. I actually played a one-on-one play-by-post game with a friend while I was overseas… with us both playing a character and MCing for each other simultaneously. I’m not exactly sure how we made it work but it went great. Our characters didn’t interact much up until the grand finale when we were at each other’s throats, but I think all it took was a bit of maturity and an understanding from both of us that we weren’t competing to drive the story and letting it emerge naturally.

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