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Teapot Salty
2015-04-10, 11:09 PM
Hey guys, so I'm running an avatar D&D session set in a feudal Japan like world, and I thought struck me, what if they made multiple characters? There are several different factions and enough space that they could never run into each other. What do you guys think the pros and cons of this are? Thanks and as always, go nuts.

Karl Aegis
2015-04-11, 01:51 AM
If they base setting of your RPG isn't absolutely terrible you will inevitably have more than one character on the same world.

goto124
2015-04-11, 02:14 AM
There are plenty of systems based on trope play.

Did I spell that correctly?

Satinavian
2015-04-11, 02:51 AM
That usually works pretty well.

Of course it highlights the setting over individual characters or individual stories. But many people like that. It's even the standard way of handling it in many systems.


Of course you should only do it, if the players like the setting and you should avoid open ended "rescue the world"-plots.

Kid Jake
2015-04-11, 02:54 AM
I'm a big fan of letting players work against themselves, though it might not be for everyone. In my M&M game my players currently have two sets of very different characters. Their main set are the first known superhumans in the setting, a pair of anarchic a-holes united pretty much solely by their unwillingness to let other people tell them what to do. The government tells them they have to hide their powers? One of them wants to be the world's first costumed superhero, the other just wants to stare Uncle Sam right in the eye and dare him to do something.

Their other set are naturally a pair of DHS agents tasked with keeping superhumans under control.

The whole campaign takes place in a single city so they regularly cross paths, come into conflict or ruin each other's day. They've kidnapped their own best friend, tried to ruin/murder their own allies, attempted to kill their own characters and even briefly and grudgingly teamed up. They think it's a blast and I think the occasional perspective shift keeps the story interesting.

goto124
2015-04-11, 02:54 AM
Satinavian: It may seem obvious to you, but... why? For all the points you mentioned.

The Evil DM
2015-04-11, 03:31 AM
multiple characters has been used within some of the games I have seen as a means for characters to engage in long timescale activities with one character while others are actively adventuring.

Between quests a characters wizard might wish to hang out in a lab, researching custom magic and engaging in various crafts for a few months while a warrior might want to build himself a castle. While these activities are going on behind the scenes the two players rotate in other characters that have recently finished up some other activity these characters were engaged in. The composition of the group changes, and possibly the objectives, and the party rolls on.

Once player even had a character drop out for three months and keep himself drunk and surrounded by women every day until he was out of gold and needed to adventure again while an alternate played.

It can work, the big thing that can imbalance is when players use one character to meta perks for another. A character is a local lord and arranges for the alternate rogue to be released from prison and such and such.

goto124
2015-04-11, 05:17 AM
The last part isn't necessarily bad maybe? Especially if it's not overpowered?

In your example, the lord's going to have to jump through diplomantic hoops to get the thief out. Without trope play, the thief has to find his way out himself. It's just different ways of achieving a goal.

Yora
2015-04-11, 05:37 AM
Isn't this just running two different campaigns at the same time?

I personally would much rather play the same campaign every time the game is played and making good progress than playing each campaign only every second game. It's like reading two books at the same time. I see very little benefit in doing that.

Satinavian
2015-04-11, 06:11 AM
Satinavian: It may seem obvious to you, but... why? For all the points you mentioned.

-Of course it highlights the setting over individual characters or individual stories :

There will be a lot of things in the world that people recognize from otzer adventures in the same world. locations, customs, NPCs ... And even if something is not present where the other group of PCs is at the moment, every player knows, it is present somewhere in the world and one could try to interact with it. Even if it has nothing to do with the adventure at hand. Yes, you could get similar effects with a good and extensive setting description, but if the group has already played in the same world several times, they tend to be more emotionally attached to all these things. And can better remember them.

- Of course you should only do it, if the players like the setting and you should avoid open ended "rescue the world"-plots. :

If players don't like the setting, they most likely also don't like playing in it. Especcially not several campaigns. I don't know, what i should explain here. And rescue-the world-plots, well, if they go wrong, the world is gone, for all those other PCs too. Even those, whose story has not yet reached a conclusion. Also all the other PCs would probably realisticly do something about such a world shattering threat, but obviously they don't get a chance if it is the campaign of some other guys.

nedz
2015-04-11, 06:57 AM
Isn't this just running two different campaigns at the same time?

I personally would much rather play the same campaign every time the game is played and making good progress than playing each campaign only every second game. It's like reading two books at the same time. I see very little benefit in doing that.

this.

Your game will just bog down and the PCs will never achieve very much. I've run games where players had multiple characters in the same party but that only slowed combat down.

Also, if they have more than a couple of characters, then the players will become confused over which character knows what which will lead to important details being forgotten.

Furthermore the characters themselves will lack definition especially if you have some players who always play the same character type.

Maglubiyet
2015-04-11, 08:25 AM
Hey guys, so I'm running an avatar D&D session set in a feudal Japan like world, and I thought struck me, what if they made multiple characters? There are several different factions and enough space that they could never run into each other. What do you guys think the pros and cons of this are? Thanks and as always, go nuts.

In any longstanding campaign I've run this usually happens. People want to try something new or an old player wants to play with a new group and their standing character is too powerful or in a different location. Really it depends on the time you have.

I've also run lethal games where everyone starts with multiple low-level characters in one group. The body count is high and the characters that survive become treasured by the players by dint of their survival. I really recommend this technique. When death is a reality and not just an abstraction, it creates strong bonds in the ones that make it.

Palegreenpants
2015-04-11, 10:21 AM
This happens in my group all the time. Each of my players has two/four previously played characters still mucking around in the world. Its so bad that I have to work to prevent them from showing up too often.

Edit: Not that this has anything to do with playing multiple characters. We don't do that in my group, like, at all. It gets weird when players talk to themselves.

Tengu_temp
2015-04-11, 01:16 PM
Having each player control multiple characters works pretty well, if you're playing with mature people who don't metagame too much and mostly interact with other people's characters, not just with themselves. A player controlling a character and this character's sidekick(s) is something is the most common form of this.

But having multiple simultaneous parties in the same world that never meet? Like others said, that's just playing several games in the same setting at once.

GungHo
2015-04-13, 09:30 AM
We do this in my game. One side of the main continent is where I DM and the other guys play. The other side of the continent is where I play and one of the other guys DMs. The continent is essentially a supercontinent where multiple plates are pushing up against each other to create series of mountain ranges along the continental convergence (similar to what's happening with India and Eurasia, but along a "central spine"). They hear stories of each other's (mis)deeds, but a lot of the details are "telephone gamed", and a few times the goals have been interlinked without the party members (or even the players) being aware, and there are some spine-hopping NPCs, but these guys have never directly interacted (and if they did, they'd try to kill each other).

My game is more war-gamey and militaristic. The other guy's game is more political and magical... mostly because the other DM likes war games more than I do, so I entertain him; and vice versa. Depending on our mood (cracking skulls vs. talking people to death), we'll play either one side or the other.

The Grue
2015-04-14, 03:24 AM
Also done in my regular Eclipse Phase Game; every time we wrap up an arc and start a new one, we all usually roll new characters. Sometimes we'll bring one back from a previous adventure.

All our games exist in a single shared instance of the Eclipse Phase setting, which means once in a while repercussions from past games might affect characters who were never involved. We also do callbacks sometimes, like the time we needed some back-alley memory blocks and hired the psychosurgeon from the last adveture. It also presents an opportunity to build up to a grand, far-reaching conspiracy underpinning a series of otherwise unrelated events across the solar system. :smallwink:

Sometime soon, my players are going to start noticing trends and putting the pieces together. Hopefully it'll be after I've worked out what the grand conspiracy is.