When you take a system that you love, and play for years,
you have to try new things and new rules. I love Warhammer 3rd
edition, and while I must confess that I have not tried a ton of systems,
Warhammer and I are BFFs. That being said, Jason is always offering options,
and I like trying them out.
Recently, in our Monday night Warhammer game, Jason offered
the option of allowing us a pool of three characters that would all gain equal
experience points as we played through them. I have been known in the group to
stick to characters like a stubborn dwarf, so I committed to switching
characters and playing through all three. Then, tragedy struck, and my first
character, an agent, got killed during the fourth game. Jason gave me a chance
to bring in another character, so I did.
Petra is a sixteen year old orphan who is trying to earn
money for her family. Starlily is a Halfling roadwarden, and Belle is a poor
noble turned gambler, turned land baron. The only problem with Belle is she
feels a bit tied to her bit of land. That left me with two characters I loved
playing and getting to know – Starlily and Petra.
Then last game, a few things happened that separated Starlily
from the group, and the guys revealed they didn’t really trust her… and
something happened with Petra that will also make it challenging to bring her
back to the group for adventuring purposes. With Belle tied to the land, I
either need to figure out a way to make it easier for her to adventure, or I
need to get a new character.
In this process I decided that there are great things about
having a stable of characters, and there are bad things. The good things is
that it is dynamic and exciting to have new characters to rotate in and out.
You have more characters to get to know, three times as many characters to ‘level
up’ and help grow, and three times as much love. The downside is that I am the only
player to bring in four characters. In the process two of our players have only
switched once, and another character switched once, for a few months. By
bringing in new characters, I don’t think that I have given they guys a chance
to get to know them extremely well. The advantage in this is they also don’t
see them as ‘Madelyn’ but the downside is then they can treat them a tiny
amount like NPCs from time to time.
That being said, I love the multiple character system. I
think two or three characters are ideal within campaigns. I love it, love it,
love it. If you hit a place where you and your character need time away, you
can bring in a new one. If there is a storyline that your character is very ill
suited for, switch. All this needs to be worked out with your DM and while I
think it would drive most DMs crazy, for others it can give them room to play
as well.
So all that being said, now I just need to figure out who to
play next week…
Ironically, I've seen rules systems that encourage this sort of thing for some settings.
ReplyDeleteSkull & Bones, a Golden Age of Piracy setting for d20/OGL 3.5 encourages troupe play in a manner very similar to this. Specifically, it encourages each player to build 7th, 4th, and 1st Level characters, with the idea that the command character (one of the level 7 ones) will each lead missions with the lower level characters as the leader's undering for the mission.
Our Star Wars game, about to start its fourth episode (I tend to run campaigns episodically), has the players running two groups. One is built around a Jedi in the last year before the Clone Wars, investigating the illegal flow of funds from a secret Republic account. The other group is built around Suzette's character from earlier episodes, who is now a Senator in the Old Republic. That group is going to be involved in a nest of corruption on Coruscant. Ironically, my plan, if it works out, is to have the outcome of events for one group affect the other.
I'm curious to learn if long term you will feel that you aren't getting enough time with each of them. As you say, it would also be an admistrative nightmare for a GM, but frankly, most long running campaigns are anyway.