Secondary Characters

[Eric.Brennan]

Hello all, after the wonderful advice I got for my Vampire game I've decided to come back for a second helping.

I'm running a very fun Exalted game at the moment as my regular Saturday game.   Exalted includes rules for "Followers," essentially 1-100 loyal Followers of a PC.

The assumption the PCs have been working under is that I'm running these followers, but given the epic nature of the game, we've currently got 201 of them to deal with--a pirate crew, a mercenary company, and an apprentice monk.  That's far too many for me to keep track of, to my mind, in addition to my chores of keeping track of the massive crew of PCs (7), NPCs (innumerable) and world facts, like history, names, dates, and rules.  Before anyone asks, I do have a smaller group for every-other-Thursday and once-a-month Friday games, but the regular crew is 7 or so.

So--I'd like to hear other opinions on these secondary PCs.  Should I run them?  Is there a way for the players to run them and still make them effective foils?  I find I'm not having as much trouble with the mercs and piratical cut-throats as I am the single monk apprentice--whose player, I think, expects more because she's only got 1 follower, and I do feel bad for letting her down.  In the midst of a massive crowd scene tonight she asked me what her apprentice is doing, and honest to God I had forgotten all about the apprentice even existing.  

--Eric "Flummoxed" Brennan

[lumpley]

This is kind of a pet peeve of mine, so if I'm not helpful just ignore me.

If you decide to have your players take on some of the followers, don't make anybody play their own.  It can only lead to heartache, grief, and shattered dreams.  Or that thing where you have to have a conversation with yourself.

-Vincent

[Eric.Brennan]

Or that thing where you have to have a conversation with yourself.

-Vincent

That is one of my big fears.  Last night, before going to bed, I stumbled onto the idea to have other players play /key/ followers (the lieutenant in charge of the mercenary company, the first mates and navigators of pirate vessel, as well as the apprentice) in a manner similar to the way WW handled the Shadow in Wraith.  This way you don't have the "talking to yourself" problem, you do get a different personality, and it adds more options for players to be involved even when their PCs don't have the focus.

Or is that another recipe for disaster?

--Eric

[lumpley]

No disaster as far as I'm concerned.  Practically every long-term game I've played since, oh, 1990 we've given the PC-support NPCs to the players to run.

Comes from playing mostly Ars Magica, I suppose.

Starting with the key followers is a great idea.

-Vincent

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

I suggest having the players tell you what the followers are doing, but you actually play the followers' rolls and words if and when necessary.

So most of the time, the player just says the apprentice follows her around looking pious, and once in a while, you say, "Just doing my beads, la la, meditating, yup, this is me, the apprentice monk."

But then more interesting stuff might go like this.

That player with the apprentice monk: "I call down the fires of the sun and make my play to dominate the congregation. Meanwhile, Apprentice Nob is ransacking the poor-box."

A bit later, you say something like this: [roll roll; PC succeeds with oratory & funky-shit magic, apprentice fails with stealth] "OK, the congregation cheers enthusiastically and falls silent to hear your next words, and into that silence fall the words, from right around the wings, 'Yeah, baby, what a haul!'"

I'm aware that the characters I've described probably don't correspond with your actual play group, but maybe I've conveyed the idea.

Best,
Ron

[Bankuei]

I'm currently working on Forgotten Fist, a derivitive from my Persona system, and one of the interesting things I'm working with is giving player control to multiple characters.  Each player has their main character, but through spending story points can build up a cast of supporting characters.  

These supporting characters are under their control but can be "loaned" out to other players to play if the player doesn't want to play crowd control.  Of course, the only way players receive story points is through their main character, so it becomes important to make sure they keep track of who keeps the spotlight.

The other major factor that keeps the extras interesting is that story points are only awarded for expressing the personality of your main character, so the major point of the supporting cast becomes tools to create subplots to demonstrate your character's personality, not healing batteries/hitpoint shields.  Because of this, you actually want to give them personality.

In the case of Exalted, I could see some fun things coming about with the Wraith/Shadow style of managing npcs.  Otherwise, take a look at some of the more narrativist games for inspiration about how to encourage players to properly use the extra control they get.

Chris

[Eric.Brennan]

I spent all week fretting over this, obviously, but the game was last night.  Taking Ron's advice, and inspired by the Ars Magica reference made by lumpley, and based on an understanding that I really have two types of players with different goals, I came up with this stopgap response:

There have been two kinds of NPCs in our games, Named and Unnamed (Extras.)  It's actually become a running joke, because the minute somebody gets a name, they become that much tougher as they stop using the Extra rules.  (One PC kept asking opponents for their names before he killed them, and was always surprised how tough mere thugs were before he twigged to what was going on.  We thought it was in-genre for the kind of game we were looking for.)

So with that in mind, there are three kinds of PC supporting characters right now--there are sidekicks, supporting cast, and unnamed folks.  The sidekicks get resolved by me, as Ron suggested, but their actions get dictated by the player in question.  

The supporting cast are all of those guys who have names but aren't important enough to be sidekicks--the doctor on the pirate ship, for example.  All of their character sheets go into the "pool" in the center of the table and a Player pulls it out when he needs that guy--any player can play any supporting cast member, a la Ars Magica.

Finally, there are the unnamed folks--as one player noted, "The guys like "Crossbowman #3."  They get resolved en-masse unless one of them strikes his PC as notable, at which point he ceases to be unnamed and become Supporting cast or a sidekick.

Does that make sense?  The players seemed very excited about the possibilities.

And Bankuei, I'm very interested in hearing more about your multiple characters as expressions of PC personality idea--it sounds neat.

Thanks again,
--Eric

[Bankuei]

The idea is rather simple.  You have your main character, which is your only means of gaining story points, through the expression of their Values.  You can use these story points to add elements, such as Items, Locations, Scenes, or Characters into the story.  

If you choose to add new Characters, you can choose to also play them, you can choose to let someone else play them, or if you later tire of your main character, you can take one of them on as the main character instead.  The characters are "owned" by you, so cannot be permanently altered, killed, or removed from play without your will, or someone buying them off of your for a story point.  Likewise your main character doesn't die until you give the ok, so there's no need for npc "hit point shields" running around.

Since you are only rewarded for expressing your main character's Values, it doesn't matter if you succeed, fail or what have you, if you do not express the Values.  Also story points follow the Player, not the Character, so if you switch characters or have your main character die, you still keep your story points.

Because of the unique reward system, I can pull this off and encourage it.  In your case, you have two problems...First being logistics of dealing with the mob of extras, second being that Exalted really encourages "survival"mode and serious overprotection of your character(as do many rpgs out there).  

Since your character is a repository of experience, you typically are willing to do anything not to part with them.  In this case, followers easily end up in the classic npc hireling role of old D&D, aka "extra spears and hitpoint shields", and it becomes hard to care about them or give them actual personality or not reduce them to pawns to protect the "king".  

I'd say your current choice is a good one, although I don't know if I'd want to make an entire character sheet for each extra who gets a name...  Let me know how your choice turns out over the next few games.

Chris

[Joe Murphy (Broin)]

Hey, Eric.

I played in a great Star Trek game (using Gurps, yuck, didn't work) where each player had a say in what their 'department' was like. I played the security chief, so I wrote up short details on a dozen security staff. When missions came up, I'd pick and choose from the list... maybe the green guy so he'd get some experience, maybe the vulcan as we needed a cool head, or whatever. You could very easily stat up a few of your important followers. I'd agree with lumpley (and others) that getting other players to play the followers is a good idea. Otherwise you get a lot of talkative weakling PCs with incredibly tough zombie-personality sidekicks. Etc.

For your unnamed followers, I had a neat idea on how to represent them. Your group'll probably accept this, too. Whee.

Why not write them up as a character, using the Exalted rules? Give the group a Nature, assign them attributes and abilities, backgrounds, even charms (to represent their abilities as a group, eg, cavalry get speed-related charms) etc. Or you could divide up the entire group into two or three sub-factions. This would allow other players to get a handle on the followers and roleplay them quite easily.

For example, the pirate crew might concentrate on Physical and Social attributes, with a lot of Melee and Sail. The Mercenaries might go for Physical/Mental, with less Melee and more Stealth, or whatever.

Theoretically... if you divided your followers into small groups of 50 individuals, you could then run battles versus similarly sized rival groups, using the usual combat rules.

(in a twisted sort of way, this is how D&D evolved, in reverse)

Joe.