Two player adventures?

[Charlatan]

I have done very little stuff with two players, certainly nothing long term, however I do remember two good sessions:

He was a fighter, she was a thief. The idea was they were criminals that escaped while the king was being assassinated in a rebel uprising, their mission, to escape the city guard and avoid the warring in the streets, eventually leading to them getting out of the city altogether! Sadly the fighter got an arrow to the brain while he gave the thief time to escape, but still, a really fun, badass night.

The second was my good self as a dwarf with a pal as, again, a fighter. All I really remember is shouting a lot of Conan parody phrases like, "FOR YOUR DEATH AND MY GLORY!" and "I WILL MAIM YOU IN HELL!". We both survived and got the loot.

I would say a few of the worst undead are out of the question with only two, but who uses wights anyway?

[Lord Kilgore]

For one or two PCs or one PC and one NPC you have to adjust your expectations of what the adventures are going to like. Just scale down dungeons. Smaller dungeons with smaller levels with smaller populations.

Use lots of what would normally be considered "side dungeons" or even just monster lairs. For example, we never played large (and rarley even medium, really) sized dungeons back then, and the population levels were not so high. More tricks and traps (especially non-death traps) and puzzles, fewer mobs of hobgoblins. Things need to be designed so that there are options to confronting large groups or powerful monsters. For instance, if there's a dragon in dungeon, neither the DM nor the player should have the expectation that it's going to be fought normally. Maybe there's some magic weapon or something, or maybe it's negotiation, or maybe you need to trick the dragon into leaving and then grab what you can and get out. But since you can't possibly beat a big dragon with 2 PCs, don't even bother trying. Shift your thinking about how to do things.

Wilderness is okay for certain kinds of quest-type missions. Being a spy or scout is always good one. Random encounters should usually be avoided, not fought.

We also played lots of city-type adventures where the emphasis was as much on character and story as on combat. We played whole sessions where we never rolled the dice. Though I wouldn't really choose to go back to that style of play, I do remember it fondly. Story-centric, whether by DM design or player decision, will provide lots of gaming with fewer chances for the PCs to die because of bad dice rolling.

I got my RPG-playing start with Traveller, so those sort of patron-keyed adventures seemed natural. Look at Traveller material and do a similar sort of thing in Labyrinth Lord. You may need to use an alternative method of determining XP awards, but if the focus of the campaign is different than the expectation that PCs are going to amass huge piles of loot, that's the right thing to do anyway.

There is a sort of assumption that the game is centered around large well-balanced parties of adventurers, probably with at least a few hirelings and/or henchmen. Dismiss that assumption. Though you won't just build full-page dungeons and stock them according to the random tables in the books, there's no reason not to build dungeons and exciting campaigns.

Like I said earlier, 1 or 2 PC adventurers *do* limit a lot of the traditional things games are expected to contain. But the game is infinite. Even a small percentage of infinity is infinite.

[Charlatan]

Oh and I'd like to add that making monsters, especially if no one is going to be critiquing them, is quite easy. You could make a whole host of weaker monsters, and your PCs wouldn't even have to know. Consider the mangy orclings and the majestic orange dragon.

[elf23]

Hey everyone, thanks for all the great responses!

It seems that there are two possibilities really, with a small group -- either you bulk up the party by some means (either with henchmen or multiple PCs per player) enough so that they can take on a "normal" dungeon adventure, or you design adventures specifically for 2 or 3 players. It's interesting to see that the prototypical D&D adventure really does assume probably at least 4 PCs, if not more, and that they quickly get very tricky if less PCs are available.

Regarding multiple PCs per player, we've tried that in the past, but some of the players don't like it, which I can understand. They felt that they couldn't really get immersed in the game in the way that they're used to, with their attention being split between two characters. We're thinking of giving henchmen a go in the future instead, but I sort of have a similar dislike of lots of henchmen, from the point of view of the LL -- I mostly prefer to focus on playing the monsters / enemies / environment, as opposed to having to also roleplay a gaggle of 6 assorted helpers!

Lord Kilgore, I really like the sound of what you described, with just running smaller dungeons where the assumption is clearly that the PCs won't be able to "win" just by pure force alone. It's a concept I'm often trying to promote in the games anyway (which not all of the players have really grokked yet), so that sounds like a really good opportunity! Throw them up against something that's really obviously too powerful, and see what creative ways they find to circumvent it and to still get the loot (or whatever they're after).

I was also leaning towards the idea of more city-based adventures for small groups of PCs, so it's good to hear that thought echoed by what others have experienced.

Oh and I'd like to add that making monsters, especially if no one is going to be critiquing them, is quite easy. You could make a whole host of weaker monsters, and your PCs wouldn't even have to know. Consider the mangy orclings and the majestic orange dragon.

That's a really good point as well Charlatan. Have them fighting gangs of mini-monsters doing 1 or perhaps 1d2 hp damage.

This has all been very inspiring actually! I'm all fired up to make some mini-adventures now, thanks everyone!

So I think I'll try to come up with a few backup mini-adventures that should last one session, suitable for 2 or perhaps 3 PCs, and have an obvious structure (in terms of a quickly identified mission and a few ways to achieve it). I think patron-keyed adventures (as you put it Lord Kilgore) are also a really good idea for these situations -- it's a very easy way to start off a one-shot adventure "you've been hired by X to do Y".

Black Wyvern, I'd definitely be up for making another adventure of some kind on the forum! It was a lot of fun. (I've not got my group into the Keebler ruins yet -- I've planted the hook but they've not bitten yet. )

I also just remembered the old TSR 'Fighter's challenge', 'Thief's challenge' etc adventures. I never read them but I remember hearing about them back in the AD&D 2e days -- adventures designed for a single 1st level character of the specified class. They should be easily usable for 2 PCs as well. Anyone ever played them?

[Dyson Logos]

I've run a bunch of two-player games. The trick unfortunately is to tailor the adventures directly to the characters involved. A lot less traps (or more tricky ones at least) with no thief, more undead if there's a cleric, etc. With fewer players, social role-playing also becomes easier to run, so I have them doing investigations, getting caught up in local intrigue, etc.

I also particularly emphasize urban environments, where help is never too far away. Two characters does not a dungeoncrawl make.