GM Style: Add More Characters

So I was reading a blog post over at my favorite gaming blog, Gnome Stew, that was talking about how long people should wait to introduce new characters. Reading through some of the comments, as I occasionally do, I started seeing some very intriguing possibilities for the major game I run, Roguelife. The idea is that they have a ship full of characters, but I've been saying for some time now that the ship itself is understaffed - it's a pretty large ship, but the group doesn't really have the cash to allow a large number of crew on-board (though with some recent windfalls, I'm sure that could change). But the problem still remains: they're still running on a skeleton crew, and that is going to start biting them pretty soon, once they start to realize *spoilers*.

Anyhow, this got me thinking about how we could add more named NPCs to the roster while maintaining a good connection for the party. I've discussed with my players several times that it doesn't make sense for them to have certain PCs going on the 'away missions' - the talker is not a very good shooter, for one thing, and the mechanic is very good at very nearly getting herself killed at every turn. So I asked a couple of my players a question to get the ball rolling: How would they feel if I randomly handed them character sheets with a paragraph of description at the bottom and said "here, play this character"?

To my surprise, the two I was talking with openly embraced the idea, which gives me hope that the others will see it this way as well - and if they aren't, nothing is stopping their characters from participating. But this method will help to enforce the harsh idea that yes, they *could* die at any given time, and at least this way, if they do bite the big one, it will make it a lot easier for them to pick up another character, since they'll probably have a favorite secondary they could use instead, should, god forbid, their main character die.

This makes things very interesting in another way, though: it also makes it possible for us to start using other scenarios, such as "Dave got critically injured during the last mission, and can no longer participate... you're going to need to take someone else with you this time to fill his place." I think this makes for a very interesting scenario, and gives the players some breathing room - especially in a game where healing is something that only occurs naturally.

So, if you are thinking about trying to shake up your game a little bit, tend to use a mission-based structure for your game, and are in an environment where you are utilizing a large group mechanic (such as on a spaceship of sorts or military organization, etc), or are playing in a high-stakes game, maybe you can consider this approach.

I think I'll refer to this method as the 108 Stars approach, of Suikoden fame. Because really, that was one of the ideas I had in my head when I initially gave my players access to a functional spaceship all those sessions back. Allowing the players to control multiple PCs just makes that 108 stars dream that much easier.

As a tangent, I could force the players to create additional PCs - albeit at a much lower level - and force them to 'level' these side characters. Everyone should still gain some amount of inherent XP gain over time - but participating in the missions grants them a much larger amount of XP.

The other great thing about this method is that I can finally do away with the whole individual rewards system - and instead the entire ship as a whole gains the rewards, to be split not fairly, but to be used purely for the ship itself, and any equipment the group may wish to maintain. This has many benefits associated with it, I believe, such as being able to reward themselves with special equipment upgrades on occasion. After all, right now most of the PCs money tends to just get funneled back into the ship anyways (where it should be, really). It just seems like the next logical step to me.

I like to imagine that, much like some NPCs I had planned, that these additional characters would have price tags associated with them as well, allowing for some great amount of variability. PCs pay themselves a certain amount for participating in the missions - everything else goes towards the ship fund (which is kind of how it works right now already). For lower-risk missions, they could go send out some lower-level NPCs instead of their mains, who are probably busy with doing administrative bullshit, or working on far more important things.

It also makes it very easy to segue into a separate side-game temporarily in case the main group is on a mission that requires a specific player who is currently not present.

Lots of great ideas from this, and hopefully someone else manages to think of some others. Personally, I am excited by this prospect, and I hope that it will spread to my players as well. I have a lot of awesome things I'd like to do in the next act, so this will just make it even easier for me to make the stakes that much higher while not worrying too much if someone might die.

Of course, I'll also need to make some NPCs of my own, but I'm looking forward to that a little bit. There's something nice to be said about giving yourself strict limitations you cannot work around, or being able to craft character sheets that have a little something unique about them for the players to enjoy as well, on occasion.

Like allowing one of the players to control the military-grade assassination droid that they re-purposed.

It's the little things in life which give me the most joy, I think.

Try Something New

Sorry for the long break. (Who am I saying sorry to? The Internet itself? Myself? The blog? Perhaps all of that.) Being sick took more time to recover mentally than anticipated, but I need to force myself back into the swing of things, so here we go.

Sometimes, you just need to get out and try something new. I've started coming to this realization that my life is getting to be a bit too samey. While samey can be kind of nice, when it starts to fall back on the exact same kind of samey, it gets irritating - understandably so, since it means that you aren't growing.

It can be something as simple as going out someplace public you haven't been to in awhile - for me, it was the flea market I used to go to a few years back. Still pretty nice out there, and man was there all kinds of fantastic junk to be found (the best part of flea markets, really!). It really started to get the gears a little oiled, and kind of helped me shift perspective a little.

The mind is a funny tool, because it can put things together in very odd ways that don't always seem to make sense at first. I guess it's because the brain works on the substitutive property or something like that. Basically, it sees something and analyzes it in many different ways - it's like finding out you've got a round hole, and then taking every single square peg and trying to mash it in there any way it can, until it gets something that kind of works. Eventually, something clicks - maybe because it just happened to be the right sort of peg, or maybe because your brain found a way to actually smash that sonofabitch in there.

Don't mind me, because this is where I probably ramble on a little bit before I get back to my point. Anyways, on occasion your brain will consciously re-analyze these things and ask itself, why does this thing work? Or if you're real fortunate, what else can I apply this particular thought to?

The thought this lead me to was that a lot of people do things like run flea market stalls probably because they love what they do very much. After all, I can't see a lot of those places making a ton of money. One particular place that caught my eye, though, was a fairly large showroom of paintings a man had done himself. He had so many of them that they were also placed out in the hallway itself in a long row outside the shop. I imagine he likely didn't sell very many of those paintings... but why have a shop if you can't sell something?

Probably it's just one of those things where the money doesn't matter - it's the act of doing something you enjoy and then letting other people take it in that matters most. It makes me wonder what *I* enjoy doing that I can share with other people.

Which leads me to the whole point of this post: doing something different can yield some very interesting results. People tend to be noticed if they are doing something that most other people aren't doing - or by doing something particularly well. Even moreso if they are doing both at the same time. So I'm thinking to myself, what is the one thing I love doing at any given time? That leads me back to a thought I had earlier in the week, which is that I seem to feel a lot better if I take some time to just hum to myself. Sing, almost. I get these amazing pieces stuck in my head sometimes, and it just wants to flow out, yet I tend to deny myself these urges because it's... well, weird, to be frank.

But maybe that's just my brain trying to tell me something. Maybe I need to make some music again. There's nothing wrong with making a bit of noise once in awhile - particularly if that noise turns out to be something.

So I'm finding myself going back to try to teach myself some things I tried to learn many years ago, long before college. I've got this whole 3D thing figured out, maybe I ought to take some time to learn this music thing. If the songs in my head are so inspiring to me, then maybe it would do me a world of good to try to digitize them, slap them on repeat, and see what my brain can churn out then.

Sometimes, doing something different can yield some very interesting results. So go out and try something different, and see if something new occurs to you.

As a side note: Sweet Genius is a pretty good show, and has also started to shift my thought process some. Not because I'm a cook mind you (I'm not all that good at it), but it does get the creative gears going, as the main goal of the show is "Take these ingredients, get inspired by this object, and make something amazing."

If your mind is open to it, interesting new ideas can pop up many places. So go out and inspire yourself, and see what happens.

I'm going to try to start updating this thing three times a week again. Since I plan on doing some organizational things soon, perhaps a post or two about finding new ways to organize might be in order or something. Who knows, I might just find it useful again someday.

And just because, a quote from a commercial that also seemed to strike a chord with me: "What if someone had told Beethoven 'that symphony should have been done weeks ago?'"

Great things take time, so learn to take your time... and best utilize it, I suppose.