Another RPG thought...

[athelind]

You know something I miss about The Old Days, back when gaming was new and D&D had a freshly-minted "A" in front of it?

Characters that weren't anchored to specific campaigns, and conversely, campaigns in which the players all played multiple characters.

Back In The Day, a goodly chunk of my gaming was done at conventions. I had a group of friends scattered across three counties of Southern California, and the only times we could really get together to play were at cons. Our characters were mostly "based" in my friend Kurt's world -- though my main character had actually started in another campaign entirely, and outlived it. The notion that I had to give up Lados, Erbec, or Drakewynne because I wasn't playing in that DM's game anymore never occurred to me -- or to anyone, in those days.

Kurt would usually run a long, multi-part session in his world, where we'd band together against some ancient evil that posed a threat to the world/the universe/us personally. Kurt had an uncanny ability to handle a table full of a dozen players, many of them running two characters, more smoothly than other GMs can manage five or six. As a result, those games would almost always have "guest stars", other convention-goers who would bring their characters in for the adventure. It was fun to see new faces and new ideas.

We'd do the same ourselves, finding other open games and sitting in. It was standard procedure, back when. We each had a stable of characters of assorted power levels, and could usually find someone appropriate for the adventure. Again, it was fun, seeing how other GMs handled things, and showing off to a new audience.

Between conventions, our characters still had lives of their own. Kurt ran a weekly game with his locals, as did I; we had long-running PBM exchanges; two or three different campaigns would intertwine and feed back in and around each other. Then, every two or three months, we'd all get together and Battle Some Cosmic Menace. It didn't resemble your classic fantasy quite so much as it did the comics. We were the Justice League of Corongond, by golly -- each of us anchored our own book, and when we got together as a team, you knew something big was in the offing.

The common wisdom is that the modern approach, where characters live and die within a single campaign, where they're an integral part of their world and shaped by it, where players are expected to focus on One And Only One Player Character In A Game, is more "sophisticated", is "better role-playing", leads to "more developed and fully-realized characters".

I'm not sure about that.

I can remember more distinctive, interesting, well-developed characters from those four or five years of cheerful chaos than I can from the two decades that followed.

---

EDIT: In a curious bit of synchronicity, shortly after I made this post, anonymous sources pointed out an eBay auction of the Very First Player's Handbook Sold. The characters I mention above actually predate this relic (by almost a year, I think), though most of their careers were spent using this rules set.

Comments

[rikoshi.livejournal.com]

Ah, Drakewynne. I think she's my favorite out of your characters about whom I've been regaled.

Out of curiosity, how would you describe my player/PC-manging skills as a GM? Also, in terms of my Ironclaw campaign, specifically, do you think that characters like Nikulai or Tybalt could ever be picked up and transposed into another story in another GM's setting that was not my own?

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

That's funny -- I could've sworn you'd asked the Serpent to stop flattering you ^_^

Speaking as an outsider, I'm not sure why Nik wouldn't be transplantable. Granted, other GMs might have less diplomacy-intensive campaigns, but that's the sort of risk any transplanted character runs.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

You have a very intense Hosting style that would not adapt at all well to the mobs of people that used to sit down to Kurt's games.

This is not to say that one or the other of you is "better" or "worse" at GMing. You have very different styles -- actually, KURT may have a very different style than he once did. I haven't gamed with him in almost 20 years. You're two of my three favorite GMs, EVER.

As for Nik and Tybalt... I could see, possibly, their adventures continuing in the SAME setting with a different GM, but they're both so closely tied to Calabrese politics AND to the specific events of your game that it would be difficult.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Maybe you just need to go to more conventions! ;)

-TG

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Everyone remembers their first time. :)

No one has games as fun or memorable as they ones they played when they were 14.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

That could be a part of it.

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

"I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?"

[shavastak.livejournal.com]

You might consider getting in on a living campaign.

You can't play multiple characters at once, and the character stays in the same campaign world, but you can play under multiple GMs, play adventures written by many different people, and play with all kinds of different groups.

On a related note, how do you like Albedo's way of letting you play multiple characters? I personally haven't had a chance to see the mooks played in a non-tactical setting but there's certainly room for it, and most of my players have given their mooks names and at least the beginnings of personalities.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

On a related note, how do you like Albedo's way of letting you play multiple characters?

Heh. It was my idea, originally. Raffy made it work, but the idea that one's abilities encompass those of one's subordinates, and that the subordinates appear on the sheet as part of one's abilities -- that was my suggestion.

Haven't had a chance to play it yet, unfortunately.

Still, it's not quite the same thing.

[shavastak.livejournal.com]

If I ever meet you at a convention I promise to run some Albedo. I've gotten some decent ideas for scenarios while running it...at some point I'll go post 'em on the email list.

[lynn-onyx.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I always hated that idea, and the first thing I did as an early AD&D DM was impose a consistent world for my players to adventure in.

We switched off DMs more than we switched off players.

Note that 3.0/3.5 actually makes it easier, BTW, to allow characters in from different campaigns. The biggest mechanical advantage to this is that it has a set power level for magic items owned by characters. The worst problem with "imported" characters was always that someone would show up with a +5 Holy Avenger of Defending or whatever.

Now, though, you can know (by adding up gp value) whether a character's equipment is appropriate for the campaign or not.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

...yay, more accounting.

[shavastak.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there's a LOT of that in 3.5. They have an accounting way to (supposedly) balance monster encounters to your players.

It doesn't always work. It's a decent enough guide once you know how to use it, but I've found it takes about as much time to get used to 3.5's balancing methods and how they relate to player levels and so on, as it does to learn to balance encounters in Ironclaw. (shrug) At least they thought about it. Presumably D&D 4 will do it better.

Will I still be playing it? I'm hoping Ironclaw will be so big then that I won't need to. :D

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Yay!

[lynn-onyx.livejournal.com]

Accounting's a tool for making it easier to move characters around.

Unless you've got another way of saying, "No, just because you found a +5 sword at 2nd level in your brother's game, that doesn't mean you can have it here," beyond just DM arbitrariness.

Sure, that works to an extent, but it's useful to have the tools as well. Character sheets are all about accounting anyway; if you hate it so much, why play any system with stats?

[lynn-onyx.livejournal.com]

BTW, on that note, check out FATE if you haven't.

[paka.livejournal.com]

Hm. I hate the idea of someone playing more characters in exactly the same area and all the time, but what I do like is the idea of having more than one character in interrelated bits of campaign, sort of like in Ars Magica; the wizards go do wizardly stuff, but the grogs can be off with mundane humanity and can have totally different personalities, and occasionally the two or three chunks of adventure bang back together in a climactic session - something like that. I have no idea how I'd ever administrate something like that though.

As for the Jirris...

[jirris-midvale.livejournal.com]

The gaming group I 'learned the ropes' with I met early on in high school. I gamed a bit before then, but nothing too much before then. Some 'magic: the addiction' and a bit of AD&D.

Now, my group originally had people who played 'revolving characters'. They'd play a character for an adventure or two, then that character would leave and be replaced by another. A few people played muliple characters, like my friend Victor who played a maried duo of a sorceress and an Assassin (palladium FRP).

Characters would disappear and come back now and then as needed. We've never had any 'game hopping' until recently and that has mostly been vetoed except for a character or two since the 'game hoppers' tend to be awful powergamers.

[stalbon.livejournal.com]

I can understand why people would like to play multiple characters in a game: it gives them more choices than just being a tank, or just being the magic-user in the back. And I'm impressed that your old game runner could handle a dozen people with that many characters. I've been in a game with about 7 people, and that was way too many for me. Given how, if I want to run a campaign, I'm going to focus intimately with each character and player, taking the time to do that with each of 8 or 9 players would be horrendously long. At times it's really fun (and funny) with so many people, but I prefer a core of 4 to 5 people. It keeps things simpler, and there's more of a flow to games than getting bogged down in rolls and equations.