Some Initial Impressions of Duet Play
Solo roleplaying has been a hot topic in RPG circles over the past few years, particularly since the pandemic, and while I may give it a shot at some point it isn't exactly a high priority to me. On the other hand, since reading Weird Writer's post on Duet Gaming a while back the concept has held immense appeal to me. One of the reasons is a matter of practicality: as a new dad, my free time is limited and unpredictable, but I know of at least one other person who will usually be available at the same time as me! But beyond that, the intensity WW mentions, the highly personal and collaborative nature (even by RPG standards) appeals to my inner romantic.
Emily and I have now played two duet games of Call of Cthulhu, her running Paper Chase by John Sullivan and myself running Sandy Petersen's classic The Haunting. Paper Chase was Emily's first time running a game, and it's a surprisingly cute little scenario, but it's been a few weeks so I don't have much to comment on publicly as a player. Instead, I'm going to primarily look at my experience running the Haunting as a duet.
First, the obvious: duet play seems well suited to horror of almost any kind. Lovecraft in particular usually centers a single protagonist rather than the cast of characters who ideally get an equal amount of time that you get in a typical RPG group. Furthermore, from a gameplay perspective, should the PC die, as must be a meaningful threat in horror, there isn't any waiting around for an opportunity to introduce a new PC for that player -- either they can take over the "Watson," if there is one, or the GM and the player can workshop together a way for a new PC to pick up where the original one left off. Adding a new PC becomes part of the narrative and part of the game in a way where no one is sidelined.
That being said, I do think some care should be exercised in how the PC may die. I reread the scenario to re-familiarize myself with it before running it, of course, but I didn't really make any tweaks to account for there only being one PC and a backup. For the most part, I think this worked out fine; even though the infamous bed didn't kill anyone (minimum damage after falling out the window!), I think it would have been perfectly alright if it had. The one thing I think I should have removed was the stairs. One issue of running something pre-written for a group is you may run into some things that are there more for attrition than anything else (whether or not this is poor scenario writing is a different conversation). Would it have been funny if the PC had died simply from falling down the stairs? Yeah, probably. Would it have been thematically resonant in the way that the PC being knocked out the window by the haunted bed, stabbed by the floating knife, or clawed by Mr. Walter Corbitt's nasty nails would be? Probably not. Thankfully the stair event wasn't fatal (it very well could have been, especially after falling out a window earlier), but I think in the future for a horror duet especially I'd rather axe any attrition-type hazards in order to increase the odds of the PC being done in by a Big Spooky Thing.
Backtracking a bit, depending on the game care for the genre might dictate how much randomization is present in character generation. We generated Emily's PC and the supporting character I (mostly) controlled by the book, that is via randomized rolls to determine characteristics. In Call of Cthulhu and similar investigatory games, however, I think this can lead to issues with the baked-in niche protection the genre has -- the branded term for CoC PCs is "investigator," after all. In our case we ended up with Michael Morris, a private investigator, and his brother Thomas, recently released from prison and working with his brother as he was attempting to get his life back together. While this is more or less the "obvious" Holmes/Watson equivalent for CoC, the interesting wrinkle was that Thomas was Emily's PC, and Michael the "Watson." As such I let Emily make some of Michael's rolls during the investigation prior to getting to the house itself. This is less of an issue when making something from whole cloth, where you can play to the primary PC's strengths and weaknesses, but most published scenarios will favor certain skills by virtue of the genre (there's the long running joke about Library Use being the most important skill in CoC) and so I believe it makes more sense for the PC to generally tailored toward such assumptions at least a bit.
Neither Thomas nor Michael made it, though I think everything ended well narratively. After tumbling down the steps to Corbitt's basement, Thomas was stabbed through the eye and into his brain by the floating dagger while breaking down the wall to Corbitt's secret burial place, after which Emily took control of Michael. Michael then charged through the hollow between the walls to get away from the dagger and was confronted with Corbitt's not-quite-corpse. To Michael's credit, he bravely attempted to lay Corbitt to rest with his trusty switchblade, only to have his throat ripped out by the nasty old freak. Good stuff. In a way I think this is the ideal arc for a CoC scenario, especially for a one-shot; the player gets more or less to "the end," and then it's up to the Old Ones whether they survive that or not.
It was a very fun time, and definitely different from my previous RPG experiences. Right now Emily is preparing the second scenario in the Starter Set, Edge of Darkness, which I've heard good things about and am looking forward to experience as an investigator. After that we may continue trading back and forth, though I may use the format to explore other systems and settings such RuneQuest/Glorantha. After all, this is as good as an excuse as any to actually run some of the games I've left sitting on my shelf unplayed for years!