Military Campaigns and Multiple Characters

[hogarth]

Maybe it works better in practice (as I noted, I've never played Ars Magica). But in general I wouldn't always trust my fellow players to create PCs ("grog" or "non-grog") that I'm interested in playing, in terms of personality, motivation, etc. So that means I sometimes get stuck playing Ensign Ro according to someone else's idea of what an interesting PC is, even though I'd be happier if she just jumped off a cliff or ran away, never to be seen or heard from again.

It does work pretty well in Ars Magica (much better than the thrice bedamned magic system in that fucking game). I think the thing you're not getting is that the Grogs are in fact about as complicated as AD&D characters. They don't have pages of backstory provided for them or long lists of interests and skills. You get a short stat line and a couple proficiencies. It's a rather basic role playing prompt. Ensign Ro has a decent enough stat line, but her Discipline score is markedly bad. Also she's a Bajoran. And you can take that role playing prompt in whatever direction you want.

Frank, I didn't say anything about not liking a character because of its stat line. I said I might not like a character where someone else came up with the personality, motivations, etc.

For instance, if Alice's main PC is Captain Picard and she also comes up with the "grog" Ensign Soo whose personality and motivation is that she loves Captain Picard and likes to do anything he says and whenever he isn't around she's always asking "where's Captain Picard, my sweet baboo?", then forcing me to play that character sucks ass.

[talozin]

Maybe it works better in practice (as I noted, I've never played Ars Magica). But in general I wouldn't always trust my fellow players to create PCs ("grog" or "non-grog") that I'm interested in playing, in terms of personality, motivation, etc. So that means I sometimes get stuck playing Ensign Ro according to someone else's idea of what an interesting PC is, even though I'd be happier if she just jumped off a cliff or ran away, never to be seen or heard from again.

In my experience there's two ways to handle this; one of them is that you just don't worry too much about consistency of characterization between adventures. So when you're playing Ensign Ro she's whatever you think is interesting about the (usually fairly basic, as Frank says -- although even a basic Ars Magica character is complex compared to AD&D) character, and when someone else is playing her she's what they think is interesting about the character, and you and the rest of the group either try to explain that in a satisfying manner, or don't worry about it, depending on your individual and collective preferences.

The other is that everyone writes up grogs that they think are interesting to them, and people by and large play the characters they wrote up, and not those of other people.

But the key here is that in any given session you are either playing a main character, OR you are playing at least one (sometimes more) of your grogs -- never both. If your "main" character is Sisko and Ro is one of your grogs, and you want to have Sisko and Ro get it on during downtime, there's nothing to stop you from doing that, but when DS9 sends an expedition to the Cardassian homeworld, it will not have both Sisko and Ro on it.

So what do you do if you want Sisko and Ro hooking up to get some screen time during play? If you can't convince someone else in the group that that's interesting to roleplay, you're out of luck. That sounds kind of harsh, but if you can't convince at least one other person in the group that what you want to roleplay is interesting, you probably shouldn't be getting screen time for it.

(edit: typos and clarification on number of grogs in play)

[hogarth]

So what do you do if you want Sisko and Ro hooking up to get some screen time during play? If you can't convince someone else in the group that that's interesting to roleplay, you're out of luck. That sounds kind of harsh, but if you can't convince at least one other person in the group that what you want to roleplay is interesting, you probably shouldn't be getting screen time for it.

That's my attitude towards it too, but in my experience that's easier said than done. People are squeamish about telling a player "fuck you, you're playing the game wrong".

[talozin]

That's my attitude towards it too, but in my experience that's easier said than done. People are squeamish about telling a player "fuck you, you're playing the game wrong".

How does this differ from the base case where everyone's playing a single character, though? If Andrew wants his character to enter into a romance with one of the other PCs, but neither Bob, Chris, or Denise are interested in playing that, I'm not sure I see how Andrew's going to have any better luck in that case.

Unless you're going the other way -- thinking that Bob, Chris, or Denise might feel pressured to conform to Andrew's characterization of Ro. That is a potential problem if characters are community property, but not if players each have their own grog turbs (the ArM collective noun for grogs).

[DSMatticus]

Frank, I didn't say anything about not liking a character because of its stat line. I said I might not like a character where someone else came up with the personality, motivations, etc.

I don't think you really read the response. The point was that grogs are supposed to be basic and their statline and 2-3 keywords might be your only roleplaying prompts. You don't get to write detailed or even inflexible motivations for them. A much more real danger is that two players play the same grog differently, resulting in a bipolar Soo who alternatingly hates and loves Picard. But ideally, you should have more than one grog to choose from at a time, I think, so if the general theme of one grog doesn't really do it for you, you have backups.

[K]

There are two core assumptions here that I don't think pan out:

1. Grogs have an interesting enough life that anyone would want to play them.

2. People can invest in any character that gets time-shared.

Honestly, I can't imagine caring about any character who I don't control AND whose life is making rolls to repair servomotors or something.

[Hicks]

In a game where characters can actually die, a support crew of red shirts beaming down with the landing party allows the player of throaway grogs to play more aggressively because they are expected to die to prove the situation is serious and protect the main characters. "Grogs" should get the ability to sacrifice themselves in liew of another character, and main characters should give passive morale bonuses to grogs. BAM! Disposable characters are used to protect Main Characters, and Main Characters have a reasons to be protected by glorified mobile meet shields.

[Username17]

There are two core assumptions here that I don't think pan out:

1. Grogs have an interesting enough life that anyone would want to play them.

2. People can invest in any character that gets time-shared.

Honestly, I can't imagine caring about any character who I don't control AND whose life is making rolls to repair servomotors or something.

And yet, people including you have had a good enough time playing games like Arkham Horror, Runebound, or Kingmaker. If you can only manage enough give-a-shit about Engineer Thomas to make some repair rolls and engage in some low comedy that is OK.

-Username17

[K]

There are two core assumptions here that I don't think pan out:

1. Grogs have an interesting enough life that anyone would want to play them.

2. People can invest in any character that gets time-shared.

Honestly, I can't imagine caring about any character who I don't control AND whose life is making rolls to repair servomotors or something.

And yet, people including you have had a good enough time playing games like Arkham Horror, Runebound, or Kingmaker. If you can only manage enough give-a-shit about Engineer Thomas to make some repair rolls and engage in some low comedy that is OK.

-Username17

I don't do any RPGing in the Arkham Horror boardgame, and the difference between a "fighting" character and a "special ability" character in that game is a few random rolls for equipment.

Asking me to RPG a random mechanic's love affair with some PC's main character is just not my idea of fun. By the same token, I'm more than willing to just handwave my mecha being repaired by my mechanic and my horse getting brushed by my stableman.

Even in a military game, I'd much rather play a genius scientist/warrior/spy with an alien backstory rather than skipping between a couple of rolls for the captain, the engineer, and Random Red Shirt #7. I'd even be a little happy if the engineer died in a plasma fire.

[Username17]

Asking me to RPG a random mechanic's love affair with some PC's main character is just not my idea of fun.

Inter- and Intra- Player romance is always fraught and will never be everyone's cup of tea. Some people play Blue Rose, but most people do not. The fact that most people would reject roleplaying romances among their bros at a TTRPG is not a relevant complaint against expanded cast games as a whole.

Even in a military game, I'd much rather play a genius scientist/warrior/spy with an alien backstory rather than skipping between a couple of rolls for the captain, the engineer, and Random Red Shirt #7. I'd even be a little happy if the engineer died in a plasma fire.

That's fine. But someone has to actually move the engineer's token around and make the rolls for the cutscene where the engineer dies in a plasma fire to make any sense.

-Username17

[K]

Even in a military game, I'd much rather play a genius scientist/warrior/spy with an alien backstory rather than skipping between a couple of rolls for the captain, the engineer, and Random Red Shirt #7. I'd even be a little happy if the engineer died in a plasma fire.

That's fine. But someone has to actually move the engineer's token around and make the rolls for the cutscene where the engineer dies in a plasma fire to make any sense.

-Username17

That's the thing: why move his token or let him have rolls at all? Where is the benefit other than slowing the game down and drawing focus from the PCs?

Rather than playing out the boring bits, just assuming that this stuff gets done seems the best way to maximize fun even if you can't have a Xander character around to make jokes and be worthless.

[Hicks]

In another thread, it was said that nothing details a military campaign more than one player ordering around the others. The captain and his XO should be NPCs while the Main PCs are department heads of the command staff. The PCs main source of agency is to brainstorm with each other and their commander and play a mini-game where the best and most convincing course of action is the one the commander will do to solve the plot problem of the session. During away missions, the caption stays on the ship and the XO is the commander. Players of Main PCs that are not present with the landing party get the consolation character of a throw-away red shirt grog.

[Koumei]

When my group played Ars Magica, everyone had a Wizzard, and also eventually a Companion (better than Grogs, but not Wizards), with the stipulation that the Companion you play has to "belong to" someone else's Wizard, and any number of Grogs were there to also be played.

So the chef ended up being similar to Swedish Chef, in a constant fight against the lobsters. The maid was hired for her looks but was great at cleaning, especially at getting spunk out of hair shame she was a werewolf. The guards were mostly interested in finding a dry place to sit down and have a smoke, etc.

But the important thing was we always had a bunch of Grogs around for "My Mage is not in the spotlight" to be occupied with, and everyone did actually have their own Mage to be a main character. I was surprised to learn that apparently that's not how it's supposed to work.

[Fuchs]

Even in a military game, I'd much rather play a genius scientist/warrior/spy with an alien backstory rather than skipping between a couple of rolls for the captain, the engineer, and Random Red Shirt #7. I'd even be a little happy if the engineer died in a plasma fire.

That's fine. But someone has to actually move the engineer's token around and make the rolls for the cutscene where the engineer dies in a plasma fire to make any sense.

-Username17

That's the thing: why move his token or let him have rolls at all? Where is the benefit other than slowing the game down and drawing focus from the PCs?

Rather than playing out the boring bits, just assuming that this stuff gets done seems the best way to maximize fun even if you can't have a Xander character around to make jokes and be worthless.

I agree with K. There's a GM to handle the NPCs if there's a roll needed. If you can roll for the bad guys you can roll for the good guys' staff as well. There is no need at all for a player to play NPCs. If he really wants to he can - if it doesn't hold up the game and doesn't give him way more screen time than the other players.

[Red_Rob]

The people complaining that they just want to play their character all the time and not be "forced" to play a "lesser role" should remember that this system was proposed for games in which it stretches SoD to have the main group together for every major scene. The point isn't to make people stop playing their character, it's to give players the chance to play when their character would logically not be present rather than trying to shoehorn them in. As a bonus it allows minor characters who may have useful input on the scene to be played by a player, who can devote more time and effort to giving them a personality than the GM.

For D&D or other games about a self sufficient group in a hostile environment, the whole "don't split the party" rule renders this redundant, but in plenty of other scenarios I think this idea works fine.

[Maxus]

I was in a Dragonmech game that sort of ran with this.

There was the mech team and then the ground team, for a bunch of dungeon crawls. The mech team would secure the area while the ground team went in. Everyone had two characters, one for each.

And it's nice to be able to try out two character ideas more-or-less at once.

[Username17]

When my group played Ars Magica, everyone had a Wizzard, and also eventually a Companion (better than Grogs, but not Wizards), with the stipulation that the Companion you play has to "belong to" someone else's Wizard, and any number of Grogs were there to also be played.

So the chef ended up being similar to Swedish Chef, in a constant fight against the lobsters. The maid was hired for her looks but was great at cleaning, especially at getting spunk out of hair shame she was a werewolf. The guards were mostly interested in finding a dry place to sit down and have a smoke, etc.

But the important thing was we always had a bunch of Grogs around for "My Mage is not in the spotlight" to be occupied with, and everyone did actually have their own Mage to be a main character. I was surprised to learn that apparently that's not how it's supposed to work.

That's a completely standard way to play Ars Magica. Who told you it wasn't how things were supposed to work?

I agree with K. There's a GM to handle the NPCs if there's a roll needed. If you can roll for the bad guys you can roll for the good guys' staff as well. There is no need at all for a player to play NPCs. If he really wants to he can - if it doesn't hold up the game and doesn't give him way more screen time than the other players.

But now we're stuck in the D&D format and can't ever escape from it. Which means that we can't ever play a modern/future campaign that isn't structured like Shadowrun. And that's disappointing, because there are really a lot of stories that cannot (or at least should not) be told that way. As alluded to in the first post, games like CthulhuTech and MechWarrior do not work. And the reason they don't work is because the action necessarily jumps from reference frame to reference frame and individual characters cannot plausibly contribute to all of them. In order to tell those sorts of stories, an expanded cast is required.

By throwing your hat in the ring as refusing to consider players having a wider purview than the actions of a single POV character, you're essentially throwing in the towel as far as ever having a decent mech-based RPG. Which is a valid viewpoint I suppose, but basically amounts to thread crapping. This is a thread brainstorming how to make such games work, and you're popping in to say that you don't want to play in such a game. While fascinating, I don't see how you think you are contributing to this thread in the slightest.

-Username17

[ckafrica]

When I had dreams of running a Conspiracy X (an inside the X-files conspiracy style game) campaign, I had planned on having each player make and investigator, a scientist and a grunt (the 3 core aspects of the game). That way they could cycle through them based on what each aspect of the mission required. Never got past design stage so I couldnt say how it would have turned out though.

[hogarth]

Unless you're going the other way -- thinking that Bob, Chris, or Denise might feel pressured to conform to Andrew's characterization of Ro.

Yes, that's what I meant.

[hyzmarca]

By throwing your hat in the ring as refusing to consider players having a wider purview than the actions of a single POV character, you're essentially throwing in the towel as far as ever having a decent mech-based RPG. Which is a valid viewpoint I suppose, but basically amounts to thread crapping. This is a thread brainstorming how to make such games work, and you're popping in to say that you don't want to play in such a game. While fascinating, I don't see how you think you are contributing to this thread in the slightest.

-Username17

All Koumei is saying is that you can just delegate to the NPC grogs and then hang out in the rec room and do stuff off base or just timeskip while your mech is being repaired or upgraded. You can have a decent mech-based RPG, but mech repair isn't a PC skill.

Where you lose out is combined arms. You can't have mechs, tanks, infantry, artillery, and air support together in a single battle without having multiple characters or omnidisciplinarian characters.

Obviously, it's a bit unrealistic for Alice to be a Navy SEAL and a bomber pilot and a tank commander and an artilleryman and a submarine captain. That's just insane, and that's where single-character games are most limited. Combined arms happens, but there is no guarantee that every battle would have the same forces.

But at the same time, the mech repair mini-game is unlikely to be a large and interesting part of your play.

[talozin]

Unless you're going the other way -- thinking that Bob, Chris, or Denise might feel pressured to conform to Andrew's characterization of Ro.

Yes, that's what I meant.

If that's a thing you worry about, you can have players maintain separate groups of grogs. Or none of the other players can choose to actually play Ro, so, while technically still community property, in practice she's more like Andrew's exclusive grog. Those are both kind of passive-aggressive ways to deal with the problem, so the better course is for people to just flat out say they don't want to play that and it makes them uncomfortable and go on from there, in much the same way we would hope they would say the same thing if Andrew's one character decided to spend a lot of time hitting on Denise (or Chris, or Bob)'s one character.

It's blind optimism to expect gamers to always handle this kind of thing in a mature way, and it's totally possible that Andrew will rage out and quit however it's dealt with. Or Denise might quit because she's unwilling to speak up. There're ways it can go wrong and it's good to be aware of them, in much the same way you wouldn't try to play ... shit, I can't remember what it's called any more, that meta-roleplaying thing from the '90s where after your hack-and-slash session you investigated the ethical and moral implications of your characters' actions. Whatever it was called, you wouldn't try to play that without confidence in your group, either.

[sabs]

What if you have players who absolutely want to play A Mech Engineer? Or A science officer. Or Kaylee? Scotty, LeForge, the Doctor in Firefly

They are viable characters.

[talozin]

What if you have players who absolutely want to play A Mech Engineer? Or A science officer. Or Kaylee? Scotty, LeForge, the Doctor in Firefly

They are viable characters.

Kaylee and Simon aren't really what this scheme is meant to deal with. Firefly is much, much more like a D&D adventuring party than a military unit. The gang pretty much goes everywhere together, and when they occasionally don't it's usually because there's some sort of complex plan happening that has something for everybody to do. Except Inara is kind of the odd person out. Maybe Inara's played by MC's girlfriend who plays only once in a while. Whatever, it's not important.

The same to a somewhat lesser extent is true for Scotty and LaForge. Chief Engineer is one of the positions on a Star Trek style ship that should really be filled by a main character, or at least a companion, rather than a grog. Maybe the Chief Engineer and the Helmsman are played by the same guy, one as a main and one as a companion, so he has something to do in bridge scenes without needing to have Mr Scott away from the engine room all the time.

The problem with the Mech Engineer as a character is that the character needs something to do while the rest of the gang goes off and fights in mechs, and the rest of the group needs something to do while you're fixing stuff. It's sort of like being the one Matrix character in Shadowrun.

If the scale was small enough, you could do it. If you had like a Bubblegum Crisis style setup where everyone is a battlesuit pilot AND something else, it would be fine to have one person play Sylea. It's just that the Mechwarrior setting and similar things like the Black Company or, well, Ars Magica don't work as well for this. Mechwarrior enforces a serious distinction between giant robot pilot and giant robot repair, and both of these are full-time jobs. You could have one guy who used to be a technician before he got a Mech and still helps out with the repairs sometimes (in fact, for small mercenary units you pretty much help with the repairs whether you used to be a technician or not) but it's implausible in setting for you to be your own support staff. You need some guys waiting back at base with welders and cutting torches.

[DSMatticus]

All Koumei is saying...

That was Fuchs, by the way. Not Koumei. The second quote in Frank's post is from Fuchs.

[violence in the media]

Speaking from personal experience here for a moment, but games I've played in that revolved around being the crew of a specific vessel, or mech pilots, or whatever have always been somewhat disappointing. Specifically because repairing the mainmast, getting the LRM ammo loaded in time, or keeping the warp core online seems to be less about player agency and more about dramatic necessity.

For example, if you're playing a game where everyone is a crew member on Serenity, then the ship has to mostly work almost all of the time. Nobody really wants to play the "Out of Gas" episode where Mal has an mini adventure on the ship and everyone else fucks off in the lifeboats. And aside from the occasional "We need a [thingajig]" plot point, whether or not people do (or can do) appropriate maintenance and repair is irrelevant. Whether somebody makes a kickass Engineer character is irrelevant--there's really no measurable benefit to someone electing to play Kaylee the PC as opposed to leaving all engineering tasks to Bester's NPC handwavium. Whatever skills people actually have on their sheets usually wind up being sufficient; but games like this really seem like they should have a statement to the effect of "have these abilities in the party, or spend a lot of time stuck." It should matter that the Engineer, and not the Soldier, got injured during the space combat. That should be an "Oh fuck!" moment for the rest of the party.

Another thing is that when you have some party members that are helicopter pilots or mech jockeys or whatever, it becomes a personal affront whenever their particular character-point-sink is unavailable. Maybe they've been roped into going to the Governor's Ball, and an Atlas is inappropriate attire. Maybe the fact that nobody has the parts or the skills to fix their shit out in the middle of nowhere, and the pilot has to hoof it back through hostile terrain with the rest of the grunts. Or, worse yet, still complete the fucking mission! It just feels that if the only parts of the game your character is built for and that you're interested in is the piloting part, I have to wonder why you're just not playing the closest attendant wargame?

Again, and this might just be from personal experience, but a Firefly adventure (assuming you're doing a normal one player, one special snowflake setup) with 5 PCs should play out differently depending on which characters the players select to play. Electing to play Zoe instead of Kaylee or Simon instead of Wash should have a noticeable impact.