1 Person?

[Lt Cmdr Matt]

Say I have one player that is interested in Star Trek gaming, what types of Campaign would work well for him/her, and not have me, the narrator, having to play seven NPC stars as you will....

[Ensign Arrgh]

A courrier campaign, based on a fast shuttle...?

The NPCs are likely to change very often, depending on where the character ends up being sent, and you can mix up some Diplomatic and Intelligence aspects to it...

[qerlin]

An intelligence campaign would be good. I don't think you would have a problem with a ship-based standard Trek game, though; and it would allow new players, as they come along, to get involved.

[Lt Cmdr Matt]

I have only one player and will have only one player! No one else around here....

[Kosst Amojan]

I love solo games. I think they are the most intimate games ever, and allow the ultimate in role playing. Of course the problem is, what sort of adventure makes a good solo one?

My current campaign started out with a Betazoid Councilor. However, playing a ship's crew for a councilor didn't seem very appealing to me. I created a planet for mentally disturbed patients/prisoners and made her a councilor there. It may sound strange, but it made for some good gaming.

However, that was just the jumping off point for the real thrust for the campaign as the councilor was recruited for Starfleet Intelligence. Somebody mentioned it already, and I think intel is a great solo game. In fact, it is one of the few settings that lends itself better to solo play than most others.

Remember, it's better to have a game with one excellent player than one with a group of mediocre or poor ones. For some reason, none of my players were excited about Star Trek...except one. We play, and take turns running games. It's turned into one of my best games ever.

[Ineti]

I think, for a solo player, an intelligence/espionage type story would work best. That'll keep you from having to create and run a ship full of NPCs.

I like the courier idea too....

[nocac]

I tried one player controlling the captain and all department heads and it wasn't so much roleplaying as logistics: "A does this, and B tries that."

'm going to try to fix that by focusing future episodes of the same game on one character at a time, like the episodes did.

Also, I'm running a different game with just one player playing one character and it is MUCH better. I run all the NPC's and it seems to work out much better. We get a lot more roleplaying, social type interactions along with combat and skill use. I really like the game a lot and can tailor episodes to exactly what the player enjoys.

So my advice: one player, one character. And you be a lot of NPC's for him/her to talk to.

[tmccollum]

I am one of the few people that thinks one on one gaming can work.

At Gen Con last year I was the only person to show up for a Decipher demo. But they ran it anyway. I had fun.

If you think about it every person on a starship has a lot going on in his life besides just whats on the bridge. Geordie and Data had experiments going on all the time away from the rest of the action. Some of them even turned into their own adventures.

This is especially easy to simulate on a Galaxy class ship or a Star Base. According to the technical manuals the Ops Officer has to coordinate use of resources on the ship. Determine who gets what energy. Determin which science labs use which set of sensors. This gives me the sense that there are a lot of other activities going on in a ship that just what the show was focused on that week.

Let the players be a part of the bigge picture. It can be even more challenging, when your research, is getting interuppted by the bridge who keeps taking away your sensor privlages so it can scan some Ferengi ship. And then leaving you to recalibrate the system when they are done.

Another option for one on one is a troupe style of play. Get together with the gamemaster and create a crew that both of you would like to play. Then player plays one of those characters per session while the GM plays the rest. The GM can custom an adventure around letting the character of the week shine. Then the actions that player makes as a character has an affect on the other characters whose shoes he will be walking in later. The player has an investment in the whole setting. Not just one person. This only works if the player is running one character at a time though. And the player has to be able to let go of the other crewmen enough to let the GM use and abuse them as needed for the story that week.

Roleplaying by its nature is very flexible. Those who say it can't be done with just one person just need to streatch their creativity a bit.

tmc

[Dan Stack]

One on one can work - I've done it with Trek before. My experience has been however that it works best with something close to a loner PC - others have mentioned the idea of courier, something I think would work well.

Another possibility, to combine the best of both worlds, would be to assign a character to something like DS9, with occasional expeditions on Runabouts (like DS9 sending runabouts through the wormhole in the 1st two seasons of DS9). This allows the PC to be accompanied by perhaps 1-2 NPCs, reducing narrator overload. And you still have the home base for times you want lots of NPCs.

I think this would also work well for a group with players who can't always make it.