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jtanzer
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 01 Mar 2023
Posts: 118
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 Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2023 10:30 am Post subject: |
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| Whill wrote: | | jtanzer wrote: | | If you want to play an alien (especially in a classic Rebel campaign), you're going to have to unlock it. How exactly that occurs is a different story. |
OK, how do you "unlock" playing an alien? Do players have to start with a human PC and then meet some requirement during the campaign to trade in the character for another? |
TLDR; Forcing players to unlock alternate races both gives the players agency in how they want to proceed, while simultaneously forcing them to engage with the setting outside the campaign. Extending the same logic to loot, gear, and ships means that the players have a greater opportunity and incentive to actively engage with the setting.
As I said, the method depends on the campaign. In a a classic Rebel campaign, the species in question might be 'unlocked' by convincing the govenrment/enclave/appropriate social division to support the Alliance. In a Merchant or Pirate campaign, the PCs might have to build up good relations with that species. What matters isn't the how - that's negotiable (but not easy), what matters is that the players work for their reward.
I apply the same methodology to strongholds and custom ships/gear/'magic items'. If the players want it badly enough, if they think it's valuable enough, they'll put the work in to get it. The only exception is consumables. Those I can hand out like party favors without disrupting things too much. After all, the bad guys can get ahold of and use the same items. So when stormtroopers/mercenaries/BGotW (Bad Guy of the Week) starts chucking grenades or using medkits, the players will be reminded that the enemy is consuming their (i.e. the PC's) loot, and they'll go crazy.
Sources:
Ptolus: Running the Campaign – NPC Spellbooks - Not exactly SW, but the concept still fits.
Ptolus: Running the Campaign – Looting Consumables
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 10434
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2023 1:37 am Post subject: |
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The premise to this thread is that some GMs have a list of allowable species to choose from before the campaign begins, or maybe an "all but" disallowed list of forbidden species before the campaign begins.
jtanzer, you have brought a whole new concept into game of "unlocking species". You have stated in what situations you do that and why you do it that way, but I'm still missing something. I get that its a reward for player success, but how would that work mechanically in play?
Do players only unlock species for future campaigns?
For future PCs the players make in the same campaign? Such as new players being added, thus benefiting from the group previously "unlocking" it for them? Or for replacement characters due to PC death?
Or can PCs actually change species once they are unlocked??
There are some species that will be important to the story of future campaigns and I will not add them to my allowable PC species list until the story plays out. These are mostly species that haven't been discovered by the galaxy at large yet. But this type of addition of species to my playable list only has any impact on future campaigns. I do not consider them to be "unlocked" species because the fact that will become playable species has no impact on the campaign currently in progress. When added, the new playable species may possibly be played by players who weren't even in the campaign the species was discovered in. It's just that by that point, the story of their discovery (part of their capsule) will have already been told.
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jtanzer
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 01 Mar 2023
Posts: 118
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| Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2023 4:27 am Post subject: |
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| Whill wrote: | jtanzer, you have brought a whole new concept into game of "unlocking species". You have stated in what situations you do that and why you do it that way, but I'm still missing something. I get that its a reward for player success, but how would that work mechanically in play?
Do players only unlock species for future campaigns?
For future PCs the players make in the same campaign? Such as new players being added, thus benefiting from the group previously "unlocking" it for them? Or for replacement characters due to PC death?
Or can PCs actually change species once they are unlocked?? |
Yes. 
In practice it would depend. A player who uses his downtime to create or expand relations with a species would get the ability to create characters using that template, however his fellow players wouldn't. Conversely, if it's unlocked as a group, and then a new player joins, than that entire group - except for the new player - get to share the reward. However, if the new player loses his PC, or wants to try something else, then he would get to play that species.
| Whill wrote: | | There are some species that will be important to the story of future campaigns and I will not add them to my allowable PC species list until the story plays out. These are mostly species that haven't been discovered by the galaxy at large yet. But this type of addition of species to my playable list only has any impact on future campaigns. I do not consider them to be "unlocked" species because the fact that will become playable species has no impact on the campaign currently in progress. When added, the new playable species may possibly be played by players who weren't even in the campaign the species was discovered in. It's just that by that point, the story of their discovery (part of their capsule) will have already been told. |
This is actually how I envision the unlock process going. The players have to make an active effort to recruit the species, and then can play characters belonging to that species, if they want to. Ideally they also have a stronghold or a base where they can 'store' characters who currently aren't being played, thus allowing for something resembling an open table.
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garhkal
Sovereign Protector
Joined: 17 Jul 2005
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Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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| Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2023 3:41 pm Post subject: |
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Interesting way of having 'unlocked' races. Sort of working up to "prestige" classes, like dnd3.0 did.
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
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Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2023 8:25 pm Post subject: |
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| jtanzer wrote: | | ...The players have to make an active effort to recruit the species, and then can play characters belonging to that species, if they want to. Ideally they also have a stronghold or a base where they can 'store' characters who currently aren't being played, thus allowing for something resembling an open table. |
So you run campaigns where each player can have multiple characters to possibly run, and they can choose at any time to switch between them or make new ones? I don't do that. But it sounds like you may run sandbox style campaigns. I don't.
For my first campaign in '88, I wanted six PCs but only started with three players. So we decided that they would each run two PCs. And I'm talking two characters each simultaneously in the same adventure. They managed. But one of my players had unexpectedly brought his younger brother with him to the first adventure and asked if he could play too, so we grabbed the gambler template and made the group's 7th PC. As it turned out, the younger brother was the best roleplayer of them all, so we eventually added a second PC for him. After two PCs died (of two different players) only two adventures apart, we decided to write two of the other PCs out of the campaign and retire them to NPC status, so from that point on I had four players who each ran one fairly advanced PC.
I never again had players regularly run multiple PCs in a campaign, not even going back and forth for separate adventures. Only in sequential cases where PCs had to be replaced due to character death. There have been a handful of cases over the years where a player can't make it to the session, is late, or has to leave early, but at the current point in the story the PC can't easily be written out, so another player has stepped in to temporarily run his co-player's PC. As GM I have stepped and ran a PC so a player doesn't have to run two, but it is not my preference to do that (or even run NPCs that are a part of the adventuring group). Sometimes I let a player run his PC and a droid sidekick too, but we all consider the droid to still have "NPC" status.
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