One-on-One D&D, Running The Game

Someone on the subreddit made a template for Retainers based on Jason's art! www.reddit.com/r/mattcolville/comments/ga6eou/i_ma…

“Sometimes in life the only trick is working hard at something for hours and hours.” Words to live by.

I love doing one-on-one sessions. I've mostly used them as one-shots to add more moving pieces and characters into my world. I've had each of the players in my big game do one-on-one sessions as new characters as a way to tell contained stories, and then they are always excited when those characters show up as NPCs in the campaign. It is a fun way to keep things fresh and add get players invested in certain stakes that aren't directly tied to their main PC.

I would echo Matt’s video of the solo adventures. Once I ran with my friend Steve’s Knight an adventure to save the town from A horrible fiend. It was a doppelgänger, it was tense, dramatic and heroic. Wuz always claimed it was the best adventure ever. Right on Matt!

Just started a onevone game with my wife. She's really loving it and so am I. She wanted to let you know Matt that she can never remember what your name is so calls you 'Dude with the good hair'. So it's been the running joke in our house.

THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I NEEDED RIGHT NOW

Matt, 3 years ago: I don't put ads on my videos. Me: That's cool with me Matt now: Imma monitize my content. Me: That's cool with me

Just gonna add that I’ve been running a 1:1 campaign for my gf on and off for about about four years, and she runs a party of four and it’s great. We did add the new characters so we could have bigger combats, but each character is now a fully fleshed out pc and we are invested in all of them. We started with a solo character and added the others over time, so the increase in complexity was gradual. I recommend this.

Just thought I'd write this here as a therapeutic exercise. Hi, Matt. When everything got weird, my friend invited me to play D&D for the first time over Discord with him and his brothers. We've played three times a week since March. I ran across your videos - I love your content, I love your attitude, I love your inclusiveness and your willingness to teach and have fun. I'm 33 years old and I've just discovered "table top" D&D for the first time. On Sunday, I'm DMing my first campaign for more friends using your videos as tutelage. Thank you so much for being a positive thing in a weird time and to helping me find this hobby, for allowing for escapism, for introducing me to something normalizing. Keep on doing your thing - I'm rooting for you, and it looks like many, many people are, too. Thank you.

I was literally about to work on a one on one that I am doing in an hour, and wanted to know if Matt Colville had anything to say about it. Then, number 1 on my feed, posted 4 hours ago is this video. Praise Bahumat

"Now, yes, we chewed through an entire dungeon in a few hours. It would have taken the party a lot longer to kill their way through that and that meant my prepped content didn't last as long. That's bad. But Wallace later said it was the most fun he'd ever had playing D&D. That's good. " The frogurt is also cursed. That's bad. It's all I could think about at that point. Great video!

Just gonna throw this out here in case anyone is interested: Seth Skorkowsky has an excellent video on running mysteries.

Multiple asynchronous solo games that are encouraged to intertwine? That's a god-damned brilliant idea. I'm taking that shit now.

My thought process here: "Yay! Monday morning MCDM!" "Wait .... is today Wednesday?" "What even is time anymore?"

Cap: “Tony Stark? I’m Captain America.” Tony: “Hang on, what is this? I met you thinking you were an NPC.” Ah yes, exactly how I remember it.

Hi Mr. Colville. Love your videos. I'm a subscriber. I share your work with my friends. I have been running D&D solo, online (through text--no cams/mic) since I was 13 years old. My circumstances growing up and playing D&D were unique in that owing to a conservative household and social milieu, I had no one to play with--but I had the books and I loved roleplaying. I'm always the DM and I always, always run for a single solo player, and the experience is so satisfying for both of us. It feels less like traditional D&D and more like a shared narrative experience. After nearly two decades of playing this way, I like to think I've developed a lot of confidence in my style. A lifetime of playing D&D solo actually helped me land my job, which involves writing for video games. Thank you so much for making this video. It's so rare to see someone recognize this style of playing D&D, because it's the style I grew up with and the style I practice. Thank you also for continuing to be a welcoming, open-hearted role model for D&D enthusiasts and soon-to-be enthusiasts. I respect and admire your role in helping us curate this game that we love.

When u catch a Matt Colville's video still hot from the oven! :3

i liked Matt Mercers one-on-one shot with Stephen Colbert. a great example of it working well and exciting someone who hasn't played since childhood.

I was planning to do 1-on-1 with each of my players as a session 0, or 0.1, or whatever. Then I suddenly had four more players than I was planning on, and had to scrap it in favor of actually getting to play the game.

One of my first games was with my brother as the DM and I still remember it almost perfectly. Partially because it was just me, and partially because of all the crazy crap I pulled that made it so memorable. For example, at the very beginning, I was fighting a grizzly bear near a river. I realized I was losing, grabbed the bear around the neck and drowned it in the river. Shortly afterwards, I fought off a group of blights that were attacking a town for a solid in-game minute, winning mostly through weird gimmicks such as lighting one on fire, then throwing it into the rest, killing dozens. Another time, I found a young green dragon in its lair and convinced it to join me. My younger sister joined shortly afterwards as the dragon (And she still asks if she can play a dragon in my games) and when we fought a hydra, we came up with the idea of turning her poison breath into fire breath by holding a torch next to her mouth and lighting the poison on fire. We stopped playing not too long afterwards because I lost my character sheet, but I'm not sure I've ever had that much fun since.