Two players, one GM - viable? Tweaks to make?

Forged in the Dark Band of Blades
#1

I’ve got a couple friends who are interested in Band of Blades via Roll20. I’ve played with them both for years in our little three-person group, and while we’ve grown adept at accommodating the fact that most games expect 3-5 players plus a GM, we also recognize that some games just aren’t going to work well for us, and Band of Blades explicitly calls out a need for at least four participants. Should we heed the warning and move on, or give BoB a go with two players and one GM? And if so, any suggestions for how to adapt to a smaller player count, like doubling up on legion roles?

Thanks in advance!

#2

Yo sky. The big problem isn’t sharing responsibility on being say the Commander, it’s the lack of stress during the mission phase (it’ll be way way hard). Your chars will burn out way faster which makes it hard to make it to skydagger.

If you’re looking for some math, having your initial crew of specialists start with a hardened trait may smooth stuff out a bit for 2p.

#3

Gotcha, and thanks for the math, that’s always appreciated! That makes sense, stress management was pretty rough on them in our BitD game as well, and they had much more leisure to deal with it in that context, relative to BoB at least. I’ll pass on the warning and see what they’re feeling - thanks! :smile:

#4

This happens to me on a semi regular basis with my current group.

I allow them to choose between either taking two PCs each, or ticking both Hardened boxes on the sheet for the duration of the mission (which gives them a total of 20 stress to spend, as opposed to the standard totals of 18-24 for base level characters with 3 or 4 players respectively).

#5

Interesting, thanks for the info! I’m curious, since you’re in the position of doing two-player play, do you have any thoughts on how it affects the rookie --> specialist pipeline? It didn’t occur to me until after I made the first post in this thread, but I realize now that if you’ve only got two players, you’re often not going to have any rookies along on a mission, which seems like it would have a whole bunch of adverse knock-on effects.

#6

Yeah that’s why I offer the option of running two PCs each instead. Which they sometimes choose, but usually they prefer one, with extra stress.