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View Full Version : Keeping things interesting with homogeneous characters



valadil
2008-07-20, 07:23 PM
I'm not sure why but I have a fascination with groups that don't follow the standard tank, caster, healer, and skillmonkey approach. I really like groups composed of the same character type.

As such, one game I've been tossing around in my head lately is a Cryptonomicon inspired Mage game. It would be all about a group of hackers taking on the Technocracy in some fashion or another.

I mentioned this to some of my players and one of them raised the objection that mechanically speaking every character would be pretty similar and they'd all come from similar backgrounds. I hadn't really thought of that because I'd previously done a thieves guild game and that had plenty of variety.

Anyway, this player got me worried. The list of possible PCs isn't too high: academic coder, industry coder, script kiddie/gamer, evil hacker, government hacker, linux evangelist, and non-conformist who doesn't actually use a computer. There may be a couple more. All these characters will focus in mental skills, lack in social skills, and have maxed out ranks in computer skills. Their hobbies may be different, but those just don't come up enough in normal games. Without diving up computers into a dozen sub skills, how do I make things interesting for mechanically similar characters? I want players to feel their character has something unique to contribute to the party.

More importantly, how do I keep things interesting for characters with similar backgrounds and interests? My plan was just to go way deeper into the computer side of things, so even though the general public sees the group as extreme computer nerds, taken from their perspective they're each unique computer nerds. This seemed like a good idea until I realized it might entail in character debates over which is the ultimate linux distribution. I'm not sure any of my players would enjoy that.

Arros Winhadren
2008-07-20, 07:27 PM
Is this some sort of sly social critique?

Isomenes
2008-07-20, 07:41 PM
Anyway, this player got me worried. The list of possible PCs isn't too high: academic coder, industry coder, script kiddie/gamer, evil hacker, government hacker, linux evangelist, and non-conformist who doesn't actually use a computer. There may be a couple more. All these characters will focus in mental skills, lack in social skills, and have maxed out ranks in computer skills. Their hobbies may be different, but those just don't come up enough in normal games. Without diving up computers into a dozen sub skills, how do I make things interesting for mechanically similar characters? I want players to feel their character has something unique to contribute to the party.

This is flatly unrealistic. In the college UNIX shop I worked at for some years, one co-worker was routinely in off-road bicycling and fencing tournaments, another sailed (with a real sailboat) on the weekends and dabbled in psychotropic imagery/art performance, and a third was a mechanical refurbisher/tool junky who made recumbent bikes and other oddities. I was an active member in the school's SGA and student organizations, and I also spin fire (fireweaving/poi). Each of us had a wife/SO, and were not uniformly proficient at any given computer task. And that's just in my experience--I suspect you will find anecdotes like this all over.

Granted, your average twink will optimize for a hacker mentality, but you should encourage variation like this not only because it's realistic but also for the sake of game balance. Maybe reward reaching outside the "geek" box with a feat or something?

erikun
2008-07-20, 07:45 PM
Well, what do you want the players to do? What do you want to challange them with?

Once you know what you'll be throwing at them, you'll have a better idea of the different "builds" that they can use. Are you looking at hacking into a virtual international network, ie. Shadowrun nethacking or .Hack? Then you'll want to split up the computer skills into hacking, data retrieval, etc. Do you want them as computer geeks chased around by government agencies trying to track them down? Then more real-life skills (vehicles, stealth, combat) would come into play.

Yahzi
2008-07-20, 07:58 PM
I suspect you will find anecdotes like this all over.
Of the 4 software engineers in my office, 1 is a black belt and the other is a former marine armorer.

So basically that covers proficiency with unarmed combat and with every weapon known to man.

:smallbiggrin:

valadil
2008-07-20, 09:08 PM
Blarg. I think I rushed this post out the door and missed my point. Yes the hobbies will be varied. I'm not so sure that the characters' positions in the world will be. I'm also not sure that the groups hobby skills will come up often enough to make a huge difference.

I made this post more to discuss games with similarly built characters from similar backgrounds. I thought my upcoming game was a good example of that, but I guess I was wrong there. I'm much more interested in thoughts on homogeneous groups than on whether or not this potential game qualifies.

LoopyZebra
2008-07-21, 01:23 PM
Well, a mechanically similar group is a mechanically similar group. There's no way around that, except to make them mechanically dissimilar.

However, being mechanically similar does not mean that the characters are similar. There's plenty of room for variation in personalities and side-interests. If the group tends to roleplay alot, then I don't think there's a problem. Even if you have two characters who have the exact same computer skill set, they may have racial/cultural differences, religious differences, gender differences, class/economic differences, age differences, educational differences, differences in who they know, differences in how they act around other people, differences in appearance, differences in hobbies, and differences in just plain old personality. These can all lead to differences while roleplaying and lead to different adventure hooks.

So, I suppose it comes down to what your group wants. If your group is after a mechanical game, then a lack of mechanical differences may make the game boring. If the game is more roleplaying focused, then the mechanical similarity will matter much, much less.