In praise of Duet games

This week I want to talk about a way of playing TTRPGs that I learned to appreciate recently: duet games.

Technically it's also how I started playing role-playing games. When I started it was just me and a friend, we didn't have anyone else and knew almost nothing about the hobby (by then I had only watched a bit of VLDL's Adventures in Azerim campaign), so we made a character each (mine being a DMPC, the Dwarf Fighter Zodd Khazad), added a sidekick and started the Icespire Peak campaign that way, as I briefly mentioned in my first ever blog post.
But we immediately started looking for another player, because obviously that wasn't the way games are meant to be played. That's what we thought.
 
And in a way that is true, that's how the hobby started, with massive campaigns with many players, even more than the standard 4 players + DM that is famous now. But that's not the only way to play.
Solo games are a thing, a beautiful thing that I'm discovering mainly recently, and Game Master Emulators like Mythic GME let you play any game GMless, be it solo or with 2 players, as in me and my wife's Peace and Redemption campaign. I love all these different options, and I try my best to explore them as much as I can. And many people I follow on Bluesky, Youtube or on their blogs do the same.

Duet games, though, scratch a different itch, and I feel like they are less talked about. I'm not just talking about games specifically made for 1 GM and 1 player (mostly because I haven't had the chance of trying any of them yet), but also about playing a game normally tailored for a full party, but limited to 1 GM and 1 player, which is what me and my wife have been doing lately.


It first started last December, when my wife (who at the time had never GM'd a game before) decided to create an adventure to run for me on my birthday, since I'm usually a forever GM in the online games we have on the Discord server we're in and don't get many chances to just play a character. It was in D&D 5e, since that's all we had played until then. And it was a blast. A simple 3 rooms dungeon, where every completed room led to me getting a small birthday gift.
Fast forward to April, when my wife's birthday came around, and I decided to return the favor, as I detailed in another post.
 
After that we both wanted to play more duet games, and she wanted to gather more experience in running them in a "safer environment" with only me as a player, so I remembered that when I first started playing, since it was indeed just me and my friend, I had started following Beth and Jonathan Ball, who specialized in exactly that and provided adventures tailored for a single player (plus a sidekick or two when needed), so I found those adventures again, printed them...and the legend of my swashbuckling Bard, Vandor Lyndoran was born.
 
I am not going to post full recaps of these sessions here, because when I play them I am too focused on playing my character to take enough notes, and that's the point: I can get into character and enjoy the story to the fullest without fearing of hogging the spotlight from other players, because the spotlight is always on  me. That's the beauty of it. You can immerse yourself in the world, react to what happens, discover mysteries and make decisions without worrying about "main character syndrome" or feeling bad about it.

Now, I'm not trying to say that duet games are better than full parties, solo games or GMless experiences. What I'm saying is that all these modes of playing are valid and can offer different ways of enjoying this beautiful hobby that is Tabletop Roleplaying Games. If you can, try them all, see which one you like the most, and if you enjoy all or even just some of them, play them all! Have fun in all these different ways! Enjoy this hobby to the fullest!

Have you ever tried a Duet game? How did it go? I'm curious to hear your experiences.

This is all for this week, see you next Sunday for my next post!

May your dice never betray you,
Kirhon

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