Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is a popular fantasy table-top roleplaying game usually played by four to seven people. However, guidelines have been created for how to play with only two people: a dungeon master and one player character. In this article, I will look at the suggestions for two-player Dungeons and Dragons offered by Matt Colville’s MCDM publications. Specifically, I will focus on Fifth Edition Dungeons and Dragons, which has historically been MCDM’s content focus.

Matt Colville is a well-respected long-time dungeon master who publishes third-party books for Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition through his production company MCDM. Through MCDM, he also operates Arcadia, a magazine devoted to optional rules, items, subclasses, and more. It is through both his YouTube channel and Arcadia that I came across rules for playing Two-Player D&D.

Playstyle Options

From what I’ve seen there are two recommended options: 1) Changing the Player, or 2) Changing the Encounters. In the first option, the player character is altered beyond the base rules of D&D to be more powerful. This option I will cover in depth later, as this is what I tried out. The second option is to stick to the base D&D rules but alter encounters to be accessible for one player. This can be accomplished in many ways. A common solution is to scale down combat and skill encounters to meet an accomplishable difficulty to one player character. Others like to introduce non-player characters operated by the dungeon master. Matt Colville has a really great video on what that can look like linked below.

For my own foray into Two-Player D&D, I tried out the Heroic Champions classes created by Will Doyle for Arcadia Issue 22. These classes take the first approach of allowing a player to start the game using alternative rules. In this case, players don’t choose traditional classes but instead a heroic one. At first-level, someone using a Heroic Champion class would have a similar power level to that of four first-level characters.

Within the outlined rules there are three Heroic Champion classes: Heroic Warrior, Spellcaster, and Trickster. Each borrows core elements from either martial, spellcasting, or utility classes respectively. They all gain additional hit points, opportunities for healing, and attacks as well.

The Player Experience

As a player, I had a lot of fun playing Two-Player D&D. Specifically, the experience was very intimate and high stakes. I’d never been emotional about what was happening in a Dungeons and Dragons game until I played in such a setting. Everything about the story was specifically tailored to be about my character and as such the outcome of every situation was directly on my shoulders.

I played the Heroic Warrior class, which was novel as I don’t often play martial classes. It was empowering to be able to cut down my enemies, especially as it fit an emotionally-charged narrative. Often I find in role-playing games that I want to start with a grand backstory of adventure-in-progress but feel limited by the mechanics of being a first-level character. This rules set fixes that idea by making your character truly feel extraordinary instead of just another person with some sword training. 

The Gamemaster Experience

My spouse served as the dungeon master during the experience. He also found the gameplay to be a lot of fun. As someone who loves to worldbuild, he found Two-Person D&D to be an awesome opportunity to collaboratively build out a hero of legend. It was also cool from a novel combat scenarios perspective and the ability to think creatively about enemy composition and tactics.

That being said, he also found it to be a lot of extra prep work in terms of combat and encounter preparation. Because everything moves faster with just two people, he needed to have a comprehensive plan for what I would fight, who I would talk to, and what would happen ahead of time in order to best suit the story and my needs as a player. This is in contrast to games with more people in which he felt like he could do more general prep as it aligned with general party goals versus prep specifically aligned with the thoughts, motivations, and backstory of a single individual. 

Conclusion

The Two-Player D&D experience was great, and I highly enjoyed the classes by Will Doyle. Matt Colville’s advice was also beneficial to prepare for the experience. I would highly recommend trying out Two-Player Dungeons and Dragons if you are struggling to get a group together or just want a more intimate role-playing experience. It could also be really fun as a private session zero to get to know all the characters in a party individually before introducing them to the larger group. (4.7 / 5)

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