Basic Fantasy: single character

[xBlackWolfx]

I posted about this once long long ago, but I can't find the post now (my profile only shows my most recent thread for some reason).

I have the basic fantasy pdf, and would love to try and run it, but problem is I only have one person that would be willing (or even interested) in playing it with me. I wouldn't mind trying to DM the thing, but looking through the book I don't see any way that I could run a game with a single character without some heavy modifications.

I'm used to playing NWN, which is based off of 3rd edition rules, and in that even a level 1 character can easily handle a few goblins. But in this game, a goblin would be an equal match for a level 1 character! I mean, the stats of a goblin look a lot like that of a level 1 character in the game.

I don't see anyway the game could work as is. I mean, she would be lucky just to survive her first combat! I've seen some solutions scattered around the internet, though I'm not so sure about most of them.

I heard about some variant rules that you can apply to pretty much any retro-clone, which does stuff like treat monster's hit points as being equal to their HD, but sadly the rules for this don't appear to be online anymore.

The other two options were to just have her start off at a higher level (though looking at the book, it looks like I'd have to start her off at like level 10 for it to make any noticeable difference), or have an npc follow her around. The latter is the most appealing to me since she's never played a tabletop rpg before, so it would probably be the good idea to have a character follow her around that has enough sense to not jump into an obviously hopeless battle, or casually walk through a dungeon expecting there to be no traps, and perhaps as some knowledge on how tough certain opponents would be. Likely his class will be based off of whatever I think would benefit her the most. Cleric being the most likely.

But I wouldn't mind some other suggestions, perhaps ones that don't require me to control an npc and basically be a character in the game I'm DMing for....

[paddyfool]

I don't know Basic Fantasy, but you could consider the following options:
- Give her some arbitrary extra stuff/abilities/high stats.
- Be liberal with loot, especially healing potions etc.
- Encourage prep-work for each combat so she gets the drop on these evenly-matched threats.
- Suggest she controls two characters, and roleplays interaction between them.
- Give her a pet with handy abilities, and control over said pet.
- Fudge a die roll here and there so she doesn't get a sucky death ;-)
- Tone down the NPCs.

[xBlackWolfx]

Character creation works by having you roll 3d6 for each stat, it doesn't offer any alternate ways of generating the numbers. I wouldn't mind going with the 4d6-keep-3 approach in this circumstance, though.

Wish I could find an actual play of this game, see how it works before I try to run a game with it...

[paddyfool]

Here you go.

[xBlackWolfx]

Here you go.

Nice find, but you do realize the last post in that forum was in May, and its a sub-forum of a section called 'dormant games', which has 3 other sub-forums that have their last reply dated in July.

And here, the guy who was running the campaign posted that he was closing the campaign.

I did think about taking part in a play-by-post here...but I didn't do it for some reason. Can't remember why...perhaps it was because I couldn't find anyone who wanted to play basic fantasy, mostly all you see in the play-by-post section here is some official edition of D&D or pathfinder.

Well, actually while looking through the forum, I did find him running some games on using roll20, and the last one was scheduled 3 days ago! Its obviously not play-by-post, but perhaps I can get into that...

[paddyfool]

Cool, I had thought you could simply skim through that old adventure to see how the system runs / see some character builds, but it sounds like you actually may have a game to take part in out of it :-)

[rredmond]

I DM and play on Unseen Servant, but there aren't any BFRPG games there right now that I can see... which is weird because we have bunches of old school PbPs there.

But there are a few at the Basic Fanstasy site too: http://www.basicfantasy.org/forums/index.php

They might help for you to see how to get it up and running.

Good luck!
--Ron--