Multiple Characters

[adamlumina93]

Has anyone every played or GMed a game where players got to have more than one character? I already know that a true power gamer would take advantage of this but is it ever practical for it to be done for a small group.

[Esoomian]

Technically I'm playing a character like that in one of the PBeM games on this board.

My character is a Bomar Monk (IE brain in a jar) and so I play two character level entities. The brain and the droid that carries it.

I do worry about the powergaming potential of such a character but if you trust the players they can pull it off. I've seen it done well several times in other (non Star Wars) settings. It's great when one player has to hold an argument with himself.
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[Ankhanu]

Likewise, I've seen it done, but don't really like it, for much the same reasons Vong doesn't. Even good gamers don't tend to get into their characters (either character) as much as they would an individual and the game breaks down into working for mechanical advantages rather than character play.
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[Orgaloth]

It can be done, but it shouldn't be done by all the players. If you need to flesh out the party you can always add npcs. Just don't let them take over the party, just have them as fillers.
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[ifurin]

i have to agree, i've both played in games where we had multiple characters and i've gmd games that had multiple characters. it's not really all that fun, and it's hard to do. unless you plan to kill off characters quick.

[Golbez]

Im involved in a Call of Cthulhu game at the moment where we have a running Character Bank. Since the plot line has us as a group of Paranormal Psychologists, the GM has allowed us to have multiple characters, but ONLY play one at a time.

This is working well for the most part, but, some of the other players seem to have difficulty switching back and forth constantly.

ALSO, character progression is a lot slower using this method.

[Ray]

My group was able to make it work, mostly. Keep the PCs away from each other, save for good RPers.

I was able to have a few in the same room quite often. A few times, in the same battle.

Very hilarious when Crunch tried to use LE-DO as a battering ram!

[l0mathon]

I've let my players use multiple characters a couple of times. It went really well twice, and poorly to really poorly the rest of the times (power gaming, using lesser characters as cannon fodder, etc.).

The two times it went well were one of my players had a character with two personalities that had totally different goals. The player did a good job of having each personality's actions stick to the goals of that single personality, even if it screwed over the other one.

The other time it worked out well is when one of my players made two characters that both looked they would be fun to be/had good potential to grow and develop. He couldn't decide which one to play so I let him play both for the first couple of game sessions with the promise that one would fade away by the end of the 4th night. Halfway through the third game session, he had one excuse himself from the table the group was at, leave the room, walk back in with a shotgun and blow the head off his other character, then sit back down and say, "Sorry, I was having an identity crisis."
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[schnarre]

I've seen it done successfully, & I've done so myself. It works best with smaller groups, & with players who can definitely portray characters well.
It can be done in PBP effectively enough though!

[Sith'Ari Lizanthrin]

I have seen it done successfully with two characters, particularly and most importantly if those two are in separate tangents of the storyline. The less contact, the more separation in my eyes the better.

I am doing this right now in a 1 on 1 game, buy the characters are all very distinct, in very different situations, and with very different skillsets. They do occasionally end up in the same area, but by now I have their individual mindsets down to the point where a change of character changes how I hold myself, how I fiddle with or don't with my hands, my voice etc. So it is very distinct. I still try to keep Echo (my spouse and GM in the one on one) from putting them together for too long as I strive to keep them seperated.


Alexis
*smiles*

[vong]

This is when I do things differently. for smaller groups that characters need to cover more skill sets, I just make their starting characters more powerful (more starting dice). This way their one character can cover all the situations required.
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[Whill]

When planning my first campaign in 1988, I only had 3 players and didn't think of starting the PCs with more skill dice, so I decided to allow them to each make two characters. For first session of the first adventure, one of my players surprised us by bringing his younger brother, asking if he could play too. The 6 original PCs had a pretty good skill set and the original 3 players were all hyped to play both of their PCs, but since we didn't have too many good Perception skills we whipped up a Gambler and let him play the 7th character.

The younger brother ended up being the best role-player, but he didn't get into the Gambler character I had picked for him. So we added a 2nd character for him to play too, this one a student to the first Force character in the party. Over the course of the campaign two characters were killed and two became NPCs, and once the the party whittled down to one character for each player and it worked much better.

So I think that it takes a very good player to successfully pull off playing two characters well. But I also think it takes a very good GM to play GCs that are a part of the party. I personally don't like doing it so I try not to, except for occasional minor characters like droids and such.

I think that scaling the character skill dice based on the skill set needed and the # of players works best in most situations.
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Star Wars D6 Damage

[masque]

I actually almost always have a character as part of the party when I GM, if only to fill holes. In the Star Wars campaign we finished up a while ago, I had a smuggler who owned a ship, since none of my other players owned one yet. They ended up acquiring one of their own towards the end of my tenure as GM, so when I retired and became a player (with a different character), the guy whose character ended up with the ship took over as GM (not because of the ship, just because he's a good GM).

Currently, I'm running a HARP campaign, and since no one else decided to play one, I'm running a dwarven cleric, although he's a much less active character than my Star Wars smuggler, basically just healing or buffing people, or joining combat when he needs to.

The only tricky part to having a GM character is making sure that you don't overshadow the players, and I've been doing it long enough that it's not a problem.
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[Gry Sarth]

I also tend to include one NPC in the party, just to have an easier time managing the group. I always make it a sidekick character, with no chance of overshadowing the players. It usually has stats lower than heroic characters and they can't really rely on him much to save their buttts. He's there just so it's easier to insert a suggestion where needed, it's an organic device to gently guide the group in a better direction.
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