I was just curious how easy it was to run a solo game? (1PC and 1 GM)
(I moved this to a new post as you’d added to the welcome thread.)
Interesting question.
From a setting point of view it should all work fine. In some ways better. As you are usually the elite agents of a House, in this case you would be THE elite agent of a House. You’d be looking at a more James Bond style lone agent, which could be a lot of fun.
Problem-wise you are looking at some of the usual ones. While you are good, your agent won’t be good at everything. So you’ll need to focus the adventure on things they can do. Having said that characters are quite well rounded, but even so they are not each good at everything.
The thing to watch will be Momentum. Its designed to be spent, but with more players there is often someone else to fill the pool before it gets to your turn. A run of bad rolls might drain it very quickly, and start building the threat. But you should find the game will work pretty well as a one on one. Its a great way to really focus on a single character and Dune should reward that as well as any other game.
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I see. Thanks so much for the reply. I’m a massive Dune fan and pre-ordered this the second I could. But my wife and I tend to game together and we just moved so I don’t know when I’ll get a group again (especially with covid) So I was hoping solo play wouldn’t feel too weird. Thanks again.
Would it make sense to create a sidekick NPC to help with Momentum issue?
Something like Duncan Idaho’s mission to scout ahead and make contact with the Fremen is a prime example of a great solo scenario or mini-campaign.
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I had a really good one on one session at Gen Con that is worth sharing.
I had a player who wanted to look at espionage, so I started creating an espionage map and he used agent and architect play to investigate and uncover the map (which I gradually added to as he succeeded in information gathering missions).
It was pretty easy to improvise as we went and it was a great head-to-head game as we discussed ways he might investigate each zone of the espionage map.
If you are on your own, not even a GM and player, you might gradually develop maps of your own making tests to see if you can reveal areas you create and making links to develop a map as you play.
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I do quite a bit of Solo play to playtest scenarios, and just for fun. I often write web pages with tools to help. Recently put together AMBER ACCELERATED with tools to give GM Decisions and easy access to lots of Ironsworn Oracle tables for generating inspiration. It should work fine for Dune too. The trick I use for settings with more intrigue or mystery is to develop the Apparent plot and Apparent enemy, then later make a roll to see if there is some other plot/enemy. It works for GM-less co-op play as well as solo.
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