Understudies

[Catullus64]

Fair warning, I haven't actually tried this yet, though I hope to have the chance to soon.

If you're like me, you like running fairly high-lethality games, where it is very likely that PCs will die, especially if they don't use their wits. But high lethality can wreak havoc on more narratively-minded games which are driven by a strong central plot. When a PC dies under these circumstances, you often get the awkward phenomenon of having some johnny-come-lately show up to the party, suspiciously the same level, who is then expected to slot immediately into the existing story. It's often clunky, and harmful to verisimilitude. Hence, high lethality, in my opinion, tends to work better in a more sandbox format, or for very short campaigns.

Understudies are my attempt to bridge that divide, and make high lethality more viable in more linear campaigns. They are similar to traditional backup characters; the difference is how they are seeded in the narrative.

At character creation, you make your main PC. Starting at 2nd level, or system equivalent, you make another character called an Understudy. Then you hand your GM the Understudy's sheet, and give the GM a brief idea of who they are as a person. The Understudies become NPCs in the game world; they won't go with you on adventures, and you don't have direct control over them, though you can speak up when the GM is having them act out of character. While your PCs are away, Understudies have their own adventures (less exciting ones; they're not the main characters yet, after all) and level up. While the GM makes up most of the particulars of these offscreen adventures, the controlling player is expected to be consulted about any major choices the Understudy might have made. Whenever the players return to town, their paths cross with the Understudies, and they can swap tales. This has the dual effect of keeping up a relationship between the PCs and the Understudies, and of keeping the Understudies caught up in-character on the major events of the plot.

Should a PC die or need to be retired for some reason, the Understudy steps from the wings and into center stage. Hey presto! You've got a new PC of appropriate level, but one whose presence in the world and relationship to the plot and the other characters has been well-established. At this point, you can make a new Understudy. I personally recommend having Understudies always be 1 level lower than the PC they're replacing, so there are still some serious teeth behind death, but that part's according to taste.

[Darth Credence]

I get what you're doing, and for a particular table that wants it, sure, why not? Basically, if the players like having a story told to them about other characters, and like the idea of playing those characters someday, then it's a good idea.

But for a general table, this seems like a lot of work for little benefit. If your character never dies, then all of the time for the DM to write detailed stories about the other characters, and the time the player has to confirm the DM's choices, means nothing. If someone plays for a few levels and starts to dislike their backup, then do they start a new backup, or are they forced to end up with whatever they have? I would think they could switch, which would make all the time building up the understudy worthless.

Ultimately, if the players are not specifically looking to have the DM tell them a story about other non-player characters, this seems like taking up a lot of time when the exact same end result can be had without the prep. Start the campaign with, "OK, everyone, this campaign has a high death rate. Your characters have a pretty high likelihood of not making it through." (When someone asks about being raised from the dead here, something would need to be answered, and if it is as common as in most games, then the game's lethality would drop quite a bit.) "So to have it make more sense if you don't make it through, back at home base there are other adventurers, also doing their thing. You all sit around and talk about your adventures when you are in town, so you would all be up to date on most of what you do. If you die and aren't brought back, your new character should be one of them, so they can simply be added when you return to town."

Again, I want to say that I don't think the idea is bad, just table-specific. I have a couple of players who would love this idea, but they are the ones who read every bit of lore and every session update and talk about them later. I also have a few players who would find this annoying, would do the bare minimum of keeping up the understudy, and could very well decide they didn't want to play the understudy when it came time.

Finally, to show that I really do think this is a good idea with the right table, I'll share my next campaign set up. We are doing a follow-up to the current one, where the players will be setting out in Starjammer ships to hunt down and destroy the Emperor that tried to destroy the planet in the current campaign (assuming they win this one, of course). The campaign will have a clear story - searching the universe for the Emperor's wandering planet and figuring out a way to bring him and the Empire down for good. On the way, they will have access to scores of planets, each with different level ranges. I'm going to have them each have several characters, leveling up independently, that they can select for any given mission. If one dies, they die, and the person has another character they have been building up, ready to go. Not exactly the same as yours, as they will be playing the characters to level them up, but similar with the idea of backups ready to go and part of the story if anything happens.

Please update once you try this out. I'd love to see how it shakes out in play, and only partially because it might have some bearing on how mine could go.

[JNAProductions]

I'll echo Darth Credence. It's a nifty idea, but not for all tables. I don't think I'd use it for most of my games, but it's a good idea for games that are more meatgrindery than my norm.

As always when trying something new like this, talk to your players and gauge their interest. Ultimately, their opinions and feelings are what matter-not random forum goers' opinions.

[Unoriginal]

I would be interested in a campaign with a "If your PC dies, you choose one of the NPCs the party has met so far and they become your PC" principle.

[KorvinStarmast]

I would be interested in a campaign with a "If your PC dies, you choose one of the NPCs the party has met so far and they become your PC" principle.

We used to do that with some frequency in the auld days...

For the OP:
Mothership is a space/horror game that is unapologetic about fairly high lethality. It's also easy to whip up a new character. Our group has been together for a while now, a couple of dead, some new blood, and we got a ship.
If we ever get a next session, we are about to go all in on "will we survive" and "how many will survive" since we are in a bit of a race against time to get at the alien artifacts before the rivals get there.

It's also a "roll under" dice format which all of us appreciate.

[Darth Credence]

I would be interested in a campaign with a "If your PC dies, you choose one of the NPCs the party has met so far and they become your PC" principle.

Oh, no. I'd currently be DMing a campaign with "I...am Sancho", Dobra the Taxman, Guy Krueger the sorcerer who prefers punching people, and an awakened panda.

I use those characters because I get to be the goofball with them, not so the players can torture me. I have now learned that DMing my NPCs would be my own personal hell, so thanks, I guess.

[gbaji]

Just have 5 clones on standby...

We actually do something similar, but it's not really an understudy concept. Players are encouraged to create multiple characters in the setting. We tend to not just run a single idenitical party through a series of adventures. Each adventure is separate. Players pick which characters they want to run for that adventure (and we swap out GMs as well), and then we run that. Then, in the next adventure, the players may run different characters. There's tons of overlap.

And yeah. Sometimes, if one group of characters are on a long adventure going on somewhere, one of the GMs will run a shorter adventure, running over the same time period in the game, but with different characters (those not on the other one). But this is mostly in RQ where there are rules for gaining skills over time, even when not adventuring. Heck. For some characters, taking time off from adventuring is actually necessary (mostly the sorcerers, since some of their skills are "research only", and can only go up by spending time training/researching when not adventuring).

The biggest gains occur while actually adventuring, of course (magic loot is huge and you don't get that staying at home), but we find that this method allows for the ability to bring a character "up to current day", even if they haven't been played in a while. Some systems don't handle this as well, though.

But yeah. I might suggest developing something like this for a game, if you want the ability to slot in new characters. Obviously, this isn't much help in a high lethality game while PCs are actually on the adventure (but then, I'm not sure how your proposal works either, unless all adventures are quite close geographically). But why have NPC understudies, when you can have actual PCs, and just run them in other adventures as you wish?

[King of Nowhere]

I would be interested in a campaign with a "If your PC dies, you choose one of the NPCs the party has met so far and they become your PC" principle.

i'm in this camp too. campaigns at my table tend to involve enough npcs that would be peers or near peers of the party, they could be included in the party with less narrative fuss.

however, the main issue is whether a player actually wants to play them. we never had to replace a character due to death - in d&d there are all those nifty resurrection spells for this. but we do occasionally have to replace a character because the player got tired of his and wanted to play something else. in which case, both an "understudy" or a preexhisting npc won't work; the player will just want to play whatever new concept he came up with.
in which case, the table just find ways and excuses to introduce the new character.

[Vahnavoi]

@Catullus64: congratulations, you've reinvented retainers and henchmen. What you describe is a pretty common way to play old-school games. I'll explain how I've done it for longer campaigns afger a few comments.

If you're like me, you like running fairly high-lethality games, where it is very likely that PCs will die, especially if they don't use their wits. But high lethality can wreak havoc on more narratively-minded games which are driven by a strong central plot.

Plots that hinge on continued existence of individual characters are not strong. They are fragile. An actual strong central plot wraps around a theme that can be looked at from multiple angles and hence can continue even if every initial player character dies.

A simple example of a theme that can do this: war. It is easy to establish reason for war as something transcending the individual and individual lifespans, so that even if the current set of focus characters die, they have comrades-in-arms who would pick up the fight for them or even because of them. Victories and losses both can be worked into a narrative of the respective large-scale participants of that war.

When a PC dies under these circumstances, you often get the awkward phenomenon of having some johnny-come-lately show up to the party, suspiciously the same level, who is then expected to slot immediately into the existing story. It's often clunky, and harmful to verisimilitude. Hence, high lethality, in my opinion, tends to work better in a more sandbox format, or for very short campaigns.

That's a stereotype of how replacing characters works, yes. But it doesn't really have to be awkward or complicated. A lot of assumptions, unstated here, have to be in place before any awkwardness happens.

The first is that "the party" is a closed group, rather than open organization. Again, war serves as simple example of how easy this is to avert: a mercenary company or an infantry platoon of conscripts has people coming and going for reasons directly related to the activity. When people die, get injured or desert, new reinforcements have to be brought to the front or the group will be destroyed. The dungeon-dwelling paradigm of classic D&D can be used to similar end, with expeditions planned case-by-case. That way, there's a natural reason to change group composition both in response to character injury or loss as well as specific needs of a dungeon. In true open table play, each character could be played by a different character, but there isn't an actual problem with a player playing multiple characters and changing based on need.

---

Anyways, how I do it in my games:

Lamentations of the Flame Princess (or other old-school D&D-type game): money allowing, player characters are allowed to hire retainers from level 1. These are level 0 NPCs generated by the game master and default to game master control. If a player character dies mid-session, a player has option to take over a retainer, at which point that retainer is promoted to level 1 of suitable class. After reaching level 2, they can also hire a henchman. A henchman starts as proper level 1 character and receives half share of treasure, advancing at half the rate of their master. A henchman must stay one level below their master or they'll leave to do things on their own. I, as the game master, usually generate a selection of characters to serve as henchmen. Henchmen default to game master control, but in practice I've had no problems giving them to player control - at most, it means a player has two turns in a round. If a player character dies mid-session, the player immediately resumes play as the henchman.

Praedor: each session begins in media res, at the border of Borvaria (the great big adventure area of the setting). If there are more characters than players ready at hand, the leftover characters are left to wait at the border camp as the others venture deeper. Upon death or return to the camp, a player has option to switch to or choose to continue as any of the leftover characters. This continues as long as there are excess characters at the camp. Characters can be created and played by anyone, though in practice so far, I as the game master have made them all.

So on and so forth. I'm in process of writing a third take of the system for a brand new campaign. It's a development on the Praedor model, fitted for classic dungeon crawling and fortress building. In that model, a certain area (namely the dungeon and its immediate surroundings) is the stage. Characters are followed when they are on that stage and cease to be followed when away. Some amount of retainers, henchmen etc. are expected to wait at the camp just outside and are available as reinforcements or replacements when earlier characters are injured, killed or leave for some other reason. Continuity of campaign is based on what happens in that area, rather than what happens to individual people.

[LibraryOgre]

I can think of two systems that have done similar things.

Dark Sun had Character Trees... you made 4 characters, and could switch them out between adventures. If the active character got a level, so did another character in the tree (with some special rules with regards to 2e multiclassing/dual classing systems).

Hackmaster has Proteges, which are much as you describe. However, a PC with a protege must give the protege XP, from their own earned XP, for the protege to advance. No protege? Start over with a 1st level character.

[Catullus64]

Plots that hinge on continued existence of individual characters are not strong. They are fragile. An actual strong central plot wraps around a theme that can be looked at from multiple angles and hence can continue even if every initial player character dies.

A simple example of a theme that can do this: war. It is easy to establish reason for war as something transcending the individual and individual lifespans, so that even if the current set of focus characters die, they have comrades-in-arms who would pick up the fight for them or even because of them. Victories and losses both can be worked into a narrative of the respective large-scale participants of that war.

Maybe strong vs. weak isn't the right way to look at this. Having to have plots that aren't injured by the deaths of any of the protagonists is at the very least limiting in a way I don't always appreciate.

I think it's also worth making a distinction between story and plot. What you describe, in terms of a theme that can persist even across multiple sets of characters, seems to have more to do with the former than the latter.

That's a stereotype of how replacing characters works, yes. But it doesn't really have to be awkward or complicated. A lot of assumptions, unstated here, have to be in place before any awkwardness happens.

The first is that "the party" is a closed group, rather than open organization. Again, war serves as simple example of how easy this is to avert: a mercenary company or an infantry platoon of conscripts has people coming and going for reasons directly related to the activity. When people die, get injured or desert, new reinforcements have to be brought to the front or the group will be destroyed. The dungeon-dwelling paradigm of classic D&D can be used to similar end, with expeditions planned case-by-case. That way, there's a natural reason to change group composition both in response to character injury or loss as well as specific needs of a dungeon. In true open table play, each character could be played by a different character, but there isn't an actual problem with a player playing multiple characters and changing based on need.

Again, the fact that you keep bringing it back to the fairly specific genre of war stories suggests the limitations of character replacement. When I talk about a narratively-focused campaign, I suppose what I mean by that is a campaign where the player characters have highly personal reasons to pursue the adventure in question, and the nature of those particular reasons drives the plot. Having different dungeon expeditions planned on a case-by-case basis, or having PCs belong to some professional organization like a military unit is very different from that.

Anyways, how I do it in my games:

Lamentations of the Flame Princess (or other old-school D&D-type game): money allowing, player characters are allowed to hire retainers from level 1. These are level 0 NPCs generated by the game master and default to game master control. If a player character dies mid-session, a player has option to take over a retainer, at which point that retainer is promoted to level 1 of suitable class. After reaching level 2, they can also hire a henchman. A henchman starts as proper level 1 character and receives half share of treasure, advancing at half the rate of their master. A henchman must stay one level below their master or they'll leave to do things on their own. I, as the game master, usually generate a selection of characters to serve as henchmen. Henchmen default to game master control, but in practice I've had no problems giving them to player control - at most, it means a player has two turns in a round. If a player character dies mid-session, the player immediately resumes play as the henchman.

Praedor: each session begins in media res, at the border of Borvaria (the great big adventure area of the setting). If there are more characters than players ready at hand, the leftover characters are left to wait at the border camp as the others venture deeper. Upon death or return to the camp, a player has option to switch to or choose to continue as any of the leftover characters. This continues as long as there are excess characters at the camp. Characters can be created and played by anyone, though in practice so far, I as the game master have made them all.

So on and so forth. I'm in process of writing a third take of the system for a brand new campaign. It's a development on the Praedor model, fitted for classic dungeon crawling and fortress building. In that model, a certain area (namely the dungeon and its immediate surroundings) is the stage. Characters are followed when they are on that stage and cease to be followed when away. Some amount of retainers, henchmen etc. are expected to wait at the camp just outside and are available as reinforcements or replacements when earlier characters are injured, killed or leave for some other reason. Continuity of campaign is based on what happens in that area, rather than what happens to individual people.

Don't know much about Praedor, but I have enjoyed LotFP before, and it's one of a few systems I'm contemplating using this model for (the others being Basic Fantasy and The Black Hack 1e.) It's worth considering having them simply work as henchmen a-la AD&D, with the proviso that they form the backup pool.

[Easy e]

Perhaps the players should just control the understudy as well? That also allows you to "split the party" at some points and still have Players able to participate in all scenes. If the main character dies or Understudy dies than the Player is not completely out for the scene either.


Dune (and probably other Modiphius 2d20) allows you to create a character in just about any scene you want to be in. They are lesser characters than your main one, but sometimes it doesn't make sense for your main character to be in every scene due to time, location, situation and space limitations.

[gbaji]

Maybe strong vs. weak isn't the right way to look at this. Having to have plots that aren't injured by the deaths of any of the protagonists is at the very least limiting in a way I don't always appreciate.

That depends on how linked the plot is to any one specific PC in the game. And honestly, I don't think that's very limiting at all. The vast majority of "plots" in a RPG are going to be "things that are happening around us that the party collectively has to find a way to deal with". This is the game that the entire group of players sitting at the table are playing.

Now, within that, there may absolutely be specific sub plots that are specific to one PC, but to be honest I prefer to restrict those anyway (at least in terms of "how central this is to the entire adventure we're on"). If an adventure revolves so much around one character that the rest of the PCs have no purpose or reason to be there if that one character is removed, then it's probably not terribly interesting or fulfilling for the players of those other characters either.

If the adventure is "Joe, the fighter, has found the map to the ancient city of <wherever> and we've all agreed to go with him to find an ancient family heirloom that he seeks", that's great. Even if Joe dies, the rest of the group maybe has a reason to continue (there's likely other treasures there too), if even just to finish what poor Joe, the now deceased fighter, wished (and maybe bring said heirloom to his family, or a younger sibling who maybe becomes a future character, or whatever).

On the other hand, if the adventure is "Joe, the fighter, has a personal vendetta against <some NPC> and we're all following him around, while he goes and does various things that help him carry out his own personal scheme, that none of the rest of us care about, nor have any stake in at all", then yeah, if Joe dies then the reason for the adventure dies with him. But then... is that actually a problem? It should die at that point, since the adventure was only about Joe.

To me, this is a self correcting problem. Adventures can be safely dropped to the exact degree to which the characters remaining in the party actually care about completing the adventure. The alternative is the GM forcing them to complete an adventure that no one cares about. Which wil likely end exactly as well as one might think. A better approach (IMPO of course) is to create adventures that all of the PCs have some sort of vested stake in , and then you avoid this problem entirely. So Joe may seek a specific family item, but the same ancient city holds a key object that is needed to help defeat the evil overlord that's been causing problems for everyone. Now, you have a reason for the party to go there *and* a personal side quest for one of the characters as well. IMO, that's always a better approach.

I think it's also worth making a distinction between story and plot. What you describe, in terms of a theme that can persist even across multiple sets of characters, seems to have more to do with the former than the latter.

Right. But I think the premise of the OP kinda assumes a longer campaign over multiple adventures. Unless we really are somehow managing to replace active PCs with understudies right in the middle of an adventure. Which begs the question: Where was the understudy this whole time? Which then dovetails us into "we're not a small group of adventurers, but a large horde traveling along with a dozen or so extra NPCs as well", which often doesn't fit well into most game settings (though it can I suppose). I'm kinda assuming that "replacement characters" show up when next the party is in a location where such things can happen (which is generally not "in the middle of a deep dungeon", or "out in the distant hostile wilderness", where the environment is so dangerous that a member of a full sized party just lost a member, so the idea that a lone replacmeent would just happen to be wandering by somewhat strains credulity.

Again, the fact that you keep bringing it back to the fairly specific genre of war stories suggests the limitations of character replacement. When I talk about a narratively-focused campaign, I suppose what I mean by that is a campaign where the player characters have highly personal reasons to pursue the adventure in question, and the nature of those particular reasons drives the plot. Having different dungeon expeditions planned on a case-by-case basis, or having PCs belong to some professional organization like a military unit is very different from that.

Again though, unless these are very close and local adventures we're talking about, the OP kinda assumes this sort of dynamic.

And to kinda repeat what I said above, if the PCs have "highly personal reasons" to pursue the adventure in question, and one of them dies, then that one PCs "highly personal reasons" die with them. This fact is not changed by use of some kind of understudy anyway, so that's a completely moot point. If we assume that the replacement is a new/different character, that character is not going to have the exact same "highly personal reasons" that the PC they are replacing had.

What you are suggesting only really works if we do just assume these replacements are clones of the original. Which, outside of Paranoia, isn't actually a thing. Well, unless the players are not really roleplaying separate characters, but just playing themselves, sleeved into a new body in the form of a character each time they play .I get that some people do play that way, but to me that defeats the purpose of roleplaying in the first place.

The understudy is "Frank, the fighter", who is a completeliy different person than Joe, and has different reasons for being a fighter and wanting to go adventuring. He's going to care about the recently deceased Joe's personal quests just about exactly as much as any other random member of the party does (probably less in fact). So he's either just fine swapping in as a replacement because the entire party has other reasons for continuing the adventure (and so does he), or he's not fine to swap in unless he's a mental and emotional clone of Joe, which IMO, creates a whole slew of other problems (as I talked about above).

A new character is a new character. Not just a clone of the previous one. If your game can't withstand that, then either dial down the lethality to as close to zero as possible, or make some other adjustments so that it can withstand that.

[Slipjig]

I would be interested in a campaign with a "If your PC dies, you choose one of the NPCs the party has met so far and they become your PC" principle.

I'm planning on doing that with a campaign I'm putting together. One of the main thrusts of the campaign is gathering allied organizations to take into the final battle, so if a character dies, drawing a replacement from one of those allied groups will hopefully be a natural fit.

I'm debating the whole "one level lower" thing. I WOULD like there to be some consequences for death, but I worry that an under-leveled character is more likely to die again, leading to a vicious cycle.

[icefractal]

I have mixed feelings on this. In concept it sounds like a good way to introduce new PCs, and the "growing the larger organization" part could be interesting. That's from a "god's eye view" of the whole campaign.

But when I consider it from the perspective of being an individual player? In most TTRPGs, the GM controls a lot, especially in a setup like "you're at war" where the PCs have things they need to deal with, not purely choosing their own objectives.

And that's generally fine, but - I want to 100% decide my own PC. Like, don't take it as an insult, but you decided the setting, you decided the campaign premise, you're deciding on the NPCs, and (depending on the campaign) you may be deciding on most of the events too. So yes, I want to decide my PC's mechanics and their background and their personality, from scratch, not from a set of existing NPCs or in the form of a hireling / protege who has off-screen development decided by the GM.

[Errorname]

And that's generally fine, but - I want to 100% decide my own PC. Like, don't take it as an insult, but you decided the setting, you decided the campaign premise, you're deciding on the NPCs, and (depending on the campaign) you may be deciding on most of the events too. So yes, I want to decide my PC's mechanics and their background and their personality, from scratch, not from a set of existing NPCs or in the form of a hireling / protege who has off-screen development decided by the GM.

Honestly giving the understudy their own offscreen adventures seems unnecessary. If you expect a campaign to have a high turnover rate and your players to have already prepared backup characters doing a brief introduction could be cool, but I don't think you need to detail everything these characters are doing on the bench.

[Pauly]

Having played/GMed some campaigns with similar "understudy to replace the PC" type concepts.

1) they work better in skill based systems than class/level systems. Mainly because in skill based games you have fewer designated roles for party members (tank, healer, skill monkey) so slotting in a different character with different skills is easier on party balance.

2) I found that detailed off screen jaunts are mostly unnecessary. What worked best at our table was the main party saying we will tackle Plot A, and send the B team on [side quest]. Success or failure of the B team is handled by a simple die roll with success by [N] gets a bonus.

3) It's very important not to get too specific about equipment/rewards the B team has earned. Players will try to siphon any good gear awarded to their B team character onto their A team character.

4) I enjoyed playing in 'roll your character' systems (Traveller mainly) where I'd roll up 3 or 4 characters then pick which one was the A character and which was the B. As a rule of thumb if we'd roll up one more character than necessary and then assign the A, B and C and allow players to discard 1.

[Vahnavoi]

Maybe strong vs. weak isn't the right way to look at this. Having to have plots that aren't injured by the deaths of any of the protagonists is at the very least limiting in a way I don't always appreciate.

I've found it to be less limiting in practice. I'll try to explain after clarifying a few bits:

I think it's also worth making a distinction between story and plot. What you describe, in terms of a theme that can persist even across multiple sets of characters, seems to have more to do with the former than the latter.

No, the point is very much about the latter. There are a few different ways to use these words when it comes to building narratives, but when it comes to plot, that's about sequence of events. A plot is a plan of what is going to happen, when it's going to happen, etc.. A theme is important to a plot too because it's what ties the sequence of events together.

A fragile plot is one that presumes too much. When it comes to lethality, the chief presumption is that characters will live and players will continue to play without actually checking the odds of that happening. A robust plot counts the odds and then has an answer to "what happens if this character dies?" that isn't "the game crashes and burns because I never considered this".

Outside of death, the same principle extends to all single points of error. Classic problems for linear plot, such as railroading, stem from the plotter presuming a very long and specific set of actions, without considering alternatives that could lead to the same goal - and then they have to force the issue.

Again, the fact that you keep bringing it back to the fairly specific genre of war stories suggests the limitations of character replacement. When I talk about a narratively-focused campaign, I suppose what I mean by that is a campaign where the player characters have highly personal reasons to pursue the adventure in question, and the nature of those particular reasons drives the plot. Having different dungeon expeditions planned on a case-by-case basis, or having PCs belong to some professional organization like a military unit is very different from that.

War is an example. I could've just as well picked a political party, a musical band, or a construction project. The key concept is, again, open organization around an activity which naturally involves multiple people and has reasons for people to come and go. That's not limited to a particular genre.

What you are thinking of as "narrative focus" is clearly just individual focus, as opposed to group focus described, above. Yes, group focus is narratively different, but you may be overestimating how much. Firstly, group focus is not perfectly mutually exclusive with personal goals of characters driving a plot - instead, it means the game starts following those characters when their personal goals align with the group's, and ceases to follow them when this no longer the case. Secondly, going back to the topic of themes, larger scale narratives about groups, locations etc. naturally suggest personal goals - f.ex. the existence of war raises the question of who do you personally want to win. That, in turn, informs what to do on the individual level. The important part is that the same question can be asked again of another character, and even get the same answer. This is contrast to purely individual level conflict, where there genuinely might not be a reason for anyone else to be concerned over the outcome.

---

I have mixed feelings on this. In concept it sounds like a good way to introduce new PCs, and the "growing the larger organization" part could be interesting. That's from a "god's eye view" of the whole campaign.

But when I consider it from the perspective of being an individual player? In most TTRPGs, the GM controls a lot, especially in a setup like "you're at war" where the PCs have things they need to deal with, not purely choosing their own objectives.

And that's generally fine, but - I want to 100% decide my own PC. Like, don't take it as an insult, but you decided the setting, you decided the campaign premise, you're deciding on the NPCs, and (depending on the campaign) you may be deciding on most of the events too. So yes, I want to decide my PC's mechanics and their background and their personality, from scratch, not from a set of existing NPCs or in the form of a hireling / protege who has off-screen development decided by the GM.

Focusing on how much the game master controls is a red herring. It's not a contest and even if it was, it's not a contest a player can win without becoming a game master of their own game.

The valid aspect is desire for self-expression. Still, that's one game aesthetic out of several. For that reason alone, who creates the characters doesn't have all that much to do with how much freedom a player has during play or how interesting a game will be.

Another observation I've made is that many players, especially new players, are not particularly original when it comes to making characters. They already lean toward making copies of characters they already like from sources external to themselves. A game master with a hint of savviness is capable of providing that - and a game master with more than a hint is perfectly capable of generating new characters that have similar appeal. It's hardly impossible to make characters that would be appealing for other people to play. For this reason, I don't take proclamations such as "I want to 100% decide my own PC" seriously. I understand why you might feel like that. But it's not plausible as a prediction.

[icefractal]

Not plausible as a prediction for who? For a random given player? Well it's certainly not guaranteed; honestly IDK where the percentage would fall. But I don't think it's some niche case either. For me? I'm pretty sure it's an accurate prediction.

So yes, of course you need to weigh the pros and cons. I just think that the pros are somewhat subtle and the cons are potentially significant.

[Vahnavoi]

Even limited to you specifically, I still question it. It's equivalent to saying there is no other person, in the whole wide world, who could make a character you'd like to play. It might be you can't imagine such person at the moment, but it's still an extremely strong claim to make. Consider making the same sort of claim about food, or music, or literature, or anything else. It genuinely is more likely that there is someone else who can make the thing in a way that would appeal to you - even if you insist doing it yourself is the point, that doesn't exclude the possibility of an appealing offer that would make you reconsider for some context.

This has been your daily reminder that people's stated preferences of what they like, more often than not are just inductive predictions of what they will like, and subject to all the same criticisms and empirical scrutiny as all other forms of inductive reasoning.

[King of Nowhere]

Even limited to you specifically, I still question it. It's equivalent to saying there is no other person, in the whole wide world, who could make a character you'd like to play.

Interjecting into this argument to say it's a matter of principle. I want to make my own character because I want to make my own character. It's mine, something I create, I don't want to use something someone else created. For the same reason I wouldn't dm a game in a standard world, because I don't want to dm a world someone else made. And yes, many people do it and are fine with it, but they are not me.
In a similar light, I would not like to wear someone else's underpants, not because I can't find one of my size - of course there are many other people of my size - but because I don't want to share underpants with other people and I'm more comfortable with my own.
Adapting my character concept to the campaign world is fine; I need some compromise to play it. but I like my personal character to be as personal as possible. I could play someone else's character if required, but it would not be the same thing.

Another observation I've made is that many players, especially new players, are not particularly original when it comes to making characters. They already lean toward making copies of characters they already like from sources external to themselves.

Your observation is completely at odds with my observation. I have seen a dozen new players making new characters, and not a single one was like "I want to play a legolas copycat". taking inspiration from other sources, yes. incorporating elements. scientists say 99% of human creativity is taking stuff you already saw and rearranging it anyway. some characters started with elaborate backstories and goals, some started as a build and a blank slate and developed personality gradually during play. But I've never seen a non-original character brought to a table.

[KorvinStarmast]

A theme is important to a plot too because it's what ties the sequence of events together.

I have found that not all DM's appreciate the distinction.

War is an example. I could've just as well picked a political party, a musical band, or a construction project.

I can offer an example of a construction project that illustrates your point quite well. The construction of the cathedral, rectory, and tower in Florence, Italy. It took a bit over a hundred years. There were people working on that project who were the grandchildren of the people who began it.

What you are thinking of as "narrative focus" is clearly just individual focus, as opposed to group focus described, above.

I find that many players do not appreciate that distinction.
It informs why I trot out, now and again, the point that the basic unit in D&D is the party...and we have found that point to be doubly true in the following non D&D games:

• The Crew in Blades in the Dark. (which has its own character sheet!)
• The crew/team/Contractors in Mothership
• The crew and the ship in Star Trek RPG.

That last game has the explicit framework of having primary and secondary characters, which we have explored (and IMO overdone). Now that we own our ship we can make up "the away team" of 4-6 PCs from a dozen primary and secondary characters.

Spoiler: You don't have to be in Star Fleet to Play this game ...

Show

(We are a non Star Fleet group, which condition I established as the Captain in about session 1. The rest of the players took a while to understand why I did that, but they got on board with the program, mostly).

---

The valid aspect is desire for self-expression.
Still, that's one game aesthetic out of several. For that reason alone, who creates the characters doesn't have all that much to do with how much freedom a player has during play or how interesting a game will be.

I know a few players who grasp this, and enjoy it (as I do, since I play for others when they can't make it with some frequency) but there are players I play with who still don't get this. Or maybe they just don't like it.

I don't take proclamations such as "I want to 100% decide my own PC" seriously. I understand why you might feel like that. But it's not plausible as a prediction.

I've played with pregens a lot. Heck, the D&D 5e Starter Set has pregens for any new player to use. Great idea. (So too did one of my favorite AD&D modules, the Sinister Secret of Salt Marsh).

For King of Nowhere:

it's a matter of principle. I want to make my own character because I want to make my own character. It's mine, something I create, I don't want to use something someone else created. For the same reason I wouldn't dm a game in a standard world, because I don't want to dm a world someone else made.

While I understand where you are coming from, and I love to embrace the PC as an alter ego, it is my experience that over self-identification with the created character has some problems with it, or rather, it can have. Seen it. Dealt with it.

One of my first posts in GitP some time back pointed this out and the reaction - well, the over reaction - I got was a bit of a shock to me. I was under the impression that people who knew this game form well were aware of some of the hazards or potential problem areas.

Among the players I played with early on, a few got overly attached to their characters and became emotional to the point of being disruptive to the group of players when the PC died. (Which wasn't uncommon. .I lost my share and rolled up new ones). Most players did not respond like that. One who did got banned from our college RPG group (of which I was not a leader, merely one of the members). (Yeah, his issues ran deep).

Fast forward some years later when I was DMing for teens and pre teens.
I had a couple of players (but most didn't have this issue) who manifested the same overattachment and the same over reaction.

I realize that this is a separate topic well worth its own thread. I'd just like to point out that the very strong point you presented us with reminds me of the risks of over-identifying with the imaginary alter ego that is the PC.

Again, some people handle it well - going in deep and coming out - and some people handle it badly.

On the DM side: I quite agree with you on that.
Whether it was Tekumel or the World of Greyhawk, I'll DM in a setting but it's still my version of it and I establish the lore/history/unique bits of it. I take ownership of it, though I also usually solicit inputs from the creative players who are interested in contributing.

I also have my original "world" from decades ago in a bunch of notebooks that someday, maybe, I will transpose into another form.

[gbaji]

3) It's very important not to get too specific about equipment/rewards the B team has earned. Players will try to siphon any good gear awarded to their B team character onto their A team character.

This raises, more specifically, a point I somewhat grazed across earlier. Having played many RPGs (especially early editions of D&D), with a wide assortment of age ranges (which, you know, includes my own age ranging over time), quite possibly the most abused game concept I've run across is the "henchman/hireling" one. Used as cheap cannon fodder if relegated to "generic guys following us around", to item siphons if you actively update/maintain them. And a host of strange things done in between.

I've never been a fan of the concept. I actively oppose it in my games. This does not mean that high power characters wont have folks who support/follow them, but they're all going to be NPCs, off somewhere (back in town, at the keep, working at the guild, whatever) and *not* physically following the adventuring group around. Also, the focus is always going to be on the characters being played by the players at the table, at the time, in the adventure we're running. If success/failure is based more on masses of NPCs doing things, then it's kinda like the whole "why doesn't the OotS just call in <powerful NPCs> to solve the problem" arguments that sometimes come up on this forum. Um... Becuase they aren't the main characters in this story.

And yes. This does create a bit of a contrivance sometimes. But it's a contrivance that we're all here to play in the first place. Leave the NPC stuff as background. Put the PCs in the foreground.

Why this is relevant is that any sort of use of NPC "understudies" runs the risk of heading in this direction. What are they doing prior to being a playable character? Why can't you utilize them directly then? I would much rather that the player actually just rolls up other characters (the "stable" concept), and they can be played later if needed in an adventure to replace a fallen character. And if the direct adventure you are running literally requires more bodies than there are PCs, then do what my game group has done for like 30+ years: Have the players run two PCs. Then, you have a second charcter, right there, involved in the adventure, gaining their own loot (and whom you're not going to treat as a siphon).


Honestly, the "play multiple character" approach also tend to solve the problem of players over associating with their characters as well. When you are playing two different characters in the same adventure it actually forces you to role play them. You can't just play yourself, and self identify with the character(s) because there are two (or more) of them in play. It forces you to ask "what would Joe the fighter do here?" and "what would Wanda the mage do here" at the same time. And players will naturally find themselves coming up with different answers to those questions, initially just because the abilities of the characters are different, but then over time because they have actually created different personalities for them as well.

This is not something to do in every adventure, of course. However, if you are ever even considering having a group of NPCs wandering around with the party, helping them out for some reason, and it's not just some temporary escort mission type thing, but because the party needs the extra bodies to deal with things in the adventure, maybe consider this approach. I'd much rather my players each run two characters in an adventure, than have each play one, and I kinda "play" an equal number of NPC hirelings/henchmen who are helping them out. The former method, the players are invested in the outcomes of both characters. The latter? The NPCs become abuse magnets in the game.

And yeah. Expanding this to the idea of players rolling up and running mutliple characters in the game setting itself, and then picking which one(s) they want to play on any given adventure, is a model we've used for decades and works very very well. It ensures that players always have "backups" available (assuming they're in the area, of course). And it also allows for players to come up with "interesting things" that PCs they aren't actively playing on the adventure at hand, are doing back in town. So while Joe is off on an adventure, Wanda has decided to spend time making friends with the local knowledge gods followers, to see if she can get access to their library and do some research on the history of that odd ring the hobbit in their last adventure found, which seems to make him invisible while worn (honestly, in my experience, it's a good idea to do some serious research into any even vaguely odd item that a hobbit finds on any adventure. Best to be safe!). Meanwhile, Sarah the soldier is spending time in service to a local Earl, helping to set a new keep in the border regions, and Gurash the Orc is spending time hanging out in the Orc settlement to see if there are any new rummors of this alledged "dark master rising from ancient times" that they've heard rummors about.

By doing this, you can allow players to drive new plots and adventures, and make the game setting feel a lot more real and dynamic at the same time. IMO, this is much better than just having "generic NPCs off doing stuff for their own, and then suddenly they become PCs when needed". Let the players play these people all the time. Run shorter adventures, but run many of them. Allow mixing and matching of characters. I've seen a lot of campaigns that just run a series of adventures designed specifically to go from "starting level" to "some higher end point level". And yeah, lots of published stuff is designed this way. And those are great for new GMs, or to drop elements from into a game. But, if you are a GM running your own world, this is really not the right way to do things IMO. If you do this, you are limiting your world to "one party, one linear series of adventures, then we're done". My way? We can run any adventure, at any level, in any order. The players will almost always have appropriate leveled characters to play. And there will be a boatload of "things going on" all the time, that serve as tie ins or inspiration for new adventures (and the players will come to you with ideas as well).


As a side note, we've also found that the "play two characters" model works very well for longer adventures, especially when there is travel involved (so replacements may not be so readily available). It allows for greater flexibility. You can have the party split up while in town, doing different things, that perhaps focus on different skill sets, and still keep most or all of the players engaged. You can send a sub set of the party forward to scout, and (again) keep more of the players engaged. It also encourages much greater PC diversity, since you can hit the "core classes" needed, and then have plenty of room for other things as well. It also really encourages players to try running utility characters. I'm not a huge fan of playing a healing focused character, if that's the one thing I'm going to be doing the whole adventure. But I'm fine with doing that if I'm also playing a combat focused, or offensive spell caster, or rogue, or whatever, as well.

And I've generally had no problems managing party size doing this. There will be some portions of the adventure where I might literally say "ok. you guys have decided to do <something>, but if you bring the whole party, it'll probably draw too much attention, so pick which one you are bringing on this portion". No one bats an eye at this. So you can have a "large party for big battles in the bbeg's lair", while also managing "sneaking into the local lords home and stealing his secret papers", and "lounging around in the local gang's favorite bar, waiting for their leader to show up" type things as well, all with the same adventuring party. And again, no hard railroading here. If they actually want to have 12 people all tromp off to the local gem merchant's store to ask him about something, they can. Probably will get some odd locks (and half of them spilling out into the street), but... they can do that if they want. I've honestly found that my players really lean into this and make use of "now we can do more things with smaller sets of our characters" rather than "now we have massive overwhelming force for everything we do".

Not for everyone, I suppose. But it works very well for us.

[King of Nowhere]

For King of Nowhere:

While I understand where you are coming from, and I love to embrace the PC as an alter ego, it is my experience that over self-identification with the created character has some problems with it, or rather, it can have. Seen it. Dealt with it.

One of my first posts in GitP some time back pointed this out and the reaction - well, the over reaction - I got was a bit of a shock to me. I was under the impression that people who knew this game form well were aware of some of the hazards or potential problem areas.

Among the players I played with early on, a few got overly attached to their characters and became emotional to the point of being disruptive to the group of players when the PC died. (Which wasn't uncommon. .I lost my share and rolled up new ones). Most players did not respond like that. One who did got banned from our college RPG group (of which I was not a leader, merely one of the members). (Yeah, his issues ran deep).

Fast forward some years later when I was DMing for teens and pre teens.
I had a couple of players (but most didn't have this issue) who manifested the same overattachment and the same over reaction.

I realize that this is a separate topic well worth its own thread. I'd just like to point out that the very strong point you presented us with reminds me of the risks of over-identifying with the imaginary alter ego that is the PC.

Again, some people handle it well - going in deep and coming out - and some people handle it badly.

On the DM side: I quite agree with you on that.
Whether it was Tekumel or the World of Greyhawk, I'll DM in a setting but it's still my version of it and I establish the lore/history/unique bits of it. I take ownership of it, though I also usually solicit inputs from the creative players who are interested in contributing.

I also have my original "world" from decades ago in a bunch of notebooks that someday, maybe, I will transpose into another form.

do not confuse wanting your own pc with overidentifying with it and getting emotional and potentially problematic. Hell, my main pc is an adrenaline junkie with a firm belief that putting sandpaper in his underwear will make him stronger, i certainly would not want to identify with him too much
It's simply a preference for playing with something you yourself made rather than something someone else made. If nothing else, it's more akin to makers culture: doing something yourself has implicit value. true, i have no problems getting handed-downs in anything except roleplaying.
but you do seem to feel the same when it comes to dming a world.

EDIT: actually, if we want to get overly analytical with this, could it be a matter of appropriation? i would not play a movie character, because if i did, and i came to a point and said "and now indiana jones does that", it would feel fake. indiana jones is the product of someone else's fantasy, my character is not the real one, whatever decision i make is not necessarily what the real character would make; i would feel uncomfortable playing a fake character. similarly if i inserted my own characters and plots into forgotten realm or faerun. and so, if i got handed down my character, it would not be really my character, it would be a fake pretending to be that character. maybe that's the reason, or maybe i'm just trying to rationalize something irrational

[Razgriez]

The One Ring 2e and its 5e compatible Adaptation The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying systems from Free League both have this built into the game with the the "Raise an Heir" Fellowship (Downtime) activity. It lets you spend time and resources to prepare an Heir to take over for your current character should the character retire or unfortunate events should pass. This in turn translates into Starting XP/Levels, and allows the Heir to inherit up to three Magical Items from the previous PC.

[Vahnavoi]

@King of Nowhere: you can make a principle out of only playing your own characters, yes. But principles are not predictions, and I question practicality of such principles. Or, rather, in my personal hierarchy of principles, "make my own characters" is nowhere near the top. A thing can be self-important without being the only important or the most important thing to consider.

Your observation is completely at odds with my observation. I have seen a dozen new players making new characters, and not a single one was like "I want to play a legolas copycat". taking inspiration from other sources, yes. incorporating elements. scientists say 99% of human creativity is taking stuff you already saw and rearranging it anyway. some characters started with elaborate backstories and goals, some started as a build and a blank slate and developed personality gradually during play. But I've never seen a non-original character brought to a table.

Have you considered you've simply observed less than I have? I've been a convention game master for over a decade, I have a folder of over a hundred player generated sheets. Expies and pop culture references make up roughly 20% of those characters, and that's just the ones I recognize. There's Saruman, Captain Jack Sparrow, Captain Jack Harness, Gollum, the Doctor (from Doctor Who) and several riffs on Bilbo Baggins, just to name a few. None of this is surprising when you consider majority of gamers are also consumers of speculative fiction and there is overlap (in both motive and practice) between roleplayers and fanfiction writers.

I do the same. Approximately one in six characters I've made are conscious riffs on pre-existing ones. For my LotFP campaign, one recurring player characters is Morpheus (from the Matrix) and a recurring non-player character is "Long" John Silver (from Treasure Island). For my Praedor campaign, one of the player characters is directly taken from the main Praedor comics.

Now, as for your theory for why some people dislike doing this? Namely the part about appropriation? Yes, that is, on an emotional level, the reason. I've had people explain to me using those exact words. Ditto for being fake or "not being the real thing". There are both psychological and cultural reasons behind these sentiments. But just as well there are psychological and cultural reasons that create the opposite sentiments, sometimes even in the same person. It is, in fact, quite common for a person to both want to play, say, Indiana Jones, while simultaneously thinking they shouldn't play Indiana Jones. On one hand, they are fan of the character and want to experience a story from viewpoint of that character. On the other, they are not Harrison Ford and feel like they can't live up to the standard set by Harrison Ford. None of this is restricted to tabletop roleplaying, equivalent exists for all acting and quite possibly all performance arts.

The sad truth is, though, that quite often all this boils down to is nerds fearing judgement from other nerds. The only flaw to playing Indiana Jones, is that other fans won't forgive you for not being Harrison Ford. Indiana Jones in particular is a funny example because there are official licensed products - board games, computer games and quite likely a tabletop roleplaying game or two - that just let you do this.

[gbaji]

For the record, I actually agree with the "players should create their own characters" concept. Doubly so when the proposal is to have players "Promote an NPC" to PC status and run them as their own.

On the flip side though, I will point out that I have run many tourney and one-shot game sessions, where the players were handed fully filled out character sheets, including character bio (often including tidbits specifically aimed at the scenario at hand), and then were expected to roleplay those characters in the game. Most players have no problem doing this (some much better than others though).

Sure. I'm not expecting them to take these characters home with them and continue to run them from that point on (though I have actually seen players do just that). I guess my point is that, if we're accepting the premise of "promote an NPC to a playable character" (which I'm personally opposed to, for the record), then expecting the player to be able to take on this character and roleplay them is not out of bounds. Certainly, if that's the only option to use while in the middle of an adventure, and the alternative is "player sits there with nothing to do and no character to play", then this may be preferrable.

I would not expect the player to treat that character as anything other than a temporary thing they're playing for the shortish duration of time until they are able to roll up and introduce their own actual character. Which, as I (and a couple others) have posted above, creates potential problems. But yeah, the expectation is that players should get to create their own characters, based on their own wants, subject only to the basic restrictions placed on them by the GM and the setting. This is why I prefer methods to deal with PC fatalities that allow the players to directly go to "a new PC I've created" rather than having some sort of odd "promote an existing NPC" step in there somewhere. The latter just opens up a whole set of additional problems for the game.

[Slipjig]

See, this is why Session Zero is so important. Players who came to the hobby via video games and many Actual Plays may not be used to the idea that a PC even *CAN* die (or can't die without player consent, when it's narratively satisfying). If this is going to be a campaign where dying is a real (if unlikely) possibility in every fight, it's important that everybody at the table understands that going in.

[King of Nowhere]

Have you considered you've simply observed less than I have? I've been a convention game master for over a decade, I have a folder of over a hundred player generated sheets. Expies and pop culture references make up roughly 20% of those characters

I have observed different environments than you have. fast one-shots made at conventions are different from people crafting a unique snowflake character they want to play for years. i have nothing against getting handed a character at one such event, but i would not want it for a long campaign.
still, 20% isn't huge. it means 80% of characters are original.
anyway, regardless of what conclusions you can draw on a large number of players, every individual will have his preferences

[Vahnavoi]

Sure, a different environment can explain your difference in observation. But remember what I said about roleplayers overlapping with fanfiction writers? My character records aren't limited to one shots. I also have records of campaigns and long-term freeform play-by-posts. Some of them explicitly fanfiction related and involving players playing established characters for years. Game length isn't determinant, interest in the role of a given character is. I know people who are equivalent to someone who really loves Indiana Jones and would play Indiana Jones in every game if just allowed. Tell them they can't, and they'll make Windiana Bones, totally original character, do not steal, and play that.

The practical angle here, for ideas like what Catullus64 is thinking of trying, is that a game master doesn't just have to wait and see if this happens. If you know a player loves Indiana Jones and is liable to create to create totally-not-Indiana-Jones, you can just do it for them.

Note that the same applies even if, instead of an established pop culture icon, the player has fallen in love with some initially original character idea they made. If you've played long enough with a player to notice they have a type or habit for making characters, you might be capable of copying that type or habit.