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I remebered this thread and thought about bumping it too :D

By the way, if anyone is interested in solo online campaign in my homebrew setting, here's the link for the thread at enworld: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=215740

My epic game has degenerated, mainly due to the facts that:

• The druid is becoming one with the nature
  
• The dread necromancer lich is building an army elsewhere
  
• The sorceress is putting up a cult worshipping her, and her dragon.
  

And so on.
This combined with the players being busy and rarely at the same place at the same time ( we haven't learned the art of playing over internet yet. )

In any case, I've been running short hack & slash cases a lot. There's occasionally just a bit of plot and such, but challenges themselves are generally hack & slash, considering that the players can fly, change shape, etc. I do have an overarching plot concerning a fiend trying to collapse the material plane into Abyss, and the willingness to drop something Elder-evillike on the world at some point.

Maybe a pseudonatural paragon umbral blot. Hm.

In any case, while there's still some interest there, it's mostly simmered down. We usually play on 1-2 days every two weeks or so.

Basically, I now have an Epic Level solo game. 'Tis weird. I'm thinking of suggesting a quasi-deity quest to the druid player after his PC reaches lv 30.

Yes, a laid back player can be a major difficulty in a duet campaign, but it also seems in this case that the player is making a play style choice. He seems to be interested in an episodic style campaign rather than the grand quest style. Unfortunately, you kind of prefer the grand quest style. Thus a classic GM-player play style conflict.

Personally, I think you can have both while using Hercules as your model.

First, the interactivity you want will arise from NPCs. Give him an Aeolous as a sidekick and maybe some recurring sidekicks like you have from Hercules.

Second, start off with episodic adventures. This can be fun and it is a great chance to see what works with your player. You can run the classics like a Seven Samurai-style adventure, a murder mystery adventure, a rescue the princess adventure, a slay the evil beast adventure, and you can use Hercules-style adventures like stopping a war before it happens and so forth.

This can be fun. You can also reuse villages, villains, and etc. and build a mini-campaign setting. This can also fuel later adventures, such as a noble the PC helped before comes with a new problem.

Third episodic can be fun, but you can add in story arcs like they do in television, slowly sprinkle a story arc relating to a greater villain between the episodes. This is not quite the same as a grand quest, but it gives you more freedom to scrap things if they don't work out. Eventually, if your PC keeps the same problem being caused by the same villain he will take action, it just may take time.

Hope that helps!

Has anyone here had any experience with running solo in 4th edition? I understand from the books that you need all the four roles represented to have a balanced encounter. I figure however that with some careful planning you could make any solo campaign work... Thoughts?

I am in the process of starting a campaign with my girlfriend as the player. She wanted to play an Eladrin Wizard and the main focus is on letting her understand the game better as she was really not getting into the spirit from our group. She feels she is lagging behind and nobody is taking any time to let her uinderstand what is really going on. (she is a bit of a thinker so a solo campaign could give her the space she needs to really take it in).

Anyway on to the campaign itself.

We didn't really get around to making a personality and a background but from what I've heard, she wants to be a princess-like wizard that is very apt at surviving anywhere. We'll probably start from there and get her personality rolling.

I wanted to have her at her graduation project from the eladrin wizarding school in the floating city of Corellant, which is a three-part test. (This will happen after the mention of being top of her class and the headmaster calling her over to say that whe is ripe for graduation).

The first test would be setting her inside a room with four dire rats. she has a few spells that can deal damage to multiple targets so that would be ideal to get her into the swing of it.

The second test should be a test of intelligence as she is promptly teleported to a room with some strange features. On three walls are a four tiles (each) that represent the four elements, four gods and four lost eladrin cities respectively (she'll need to roll checks for arcana, history and religion for them to find out what they mean). On the fourth wall is a compass with slots that the aforementioned tiles obviously belong in. The task is finding out which tiles fit where.
She is helped by a magic tome titled 'encyclopedia' that springs a mouth when she gets close and answers specific questions she asks.

Finally she is put into a last chamber whereshe is pitted against one monster that she might find a bit harder to fight (I haven't decided which one but I'm thinking a stormclaw scorpion would be cool).

(if she fails during these tasks she is of course magically pulled out by the headmaster and given another chance)

When she kills the beast she receives her price. A magic staff (+1) that she can use from there on.

After her graduation (and the subsequent party) she is approached by her father and told about the tradition in her family of being sent to serve under 'lesser' species to learn the hard lessons of life.
I'm thinking about giving her the options of a dwarven city (that is geing attacked by drow) or a society of elves (which I susect would be her choice).

After that she would find out (eventually) about why the other ancient eladrin cities were destroyed (I have some cool things in the back of my mind) and probably a bunch of other stuff that I haven't thought of yet.

Any thoughts abaout this so far? About 4th edition solo campaigns in general?

Thanks for all the advice. I like your ideas for the building up a lot more. I'm definetely doing one combat encounter still because that's one of the things that I really want my girlfriend to get. But that doesn't mean of course that there couldn't be some bigger challenge involved. I'm going to scour Harry Potter for ideas today in any case.

As for the skill checks in the knowledge test I already thought about this. There is a lot in 4th edition about skill challenges and they are very clear about how those rolls should never be needed to finish it. I was thinking that the higher the rolls, the easier the challenge becomes. So if she rolls very poorly she is going to have to ask a few more questions to the encyclopedia.
She is however always getting enough information to eventually finish the test.

And you are right of course about the meta-gaming. In any case thanks a lot about all the ideas, I'll let you know how it turns out.

On to harry potter I guess