Strong Foundations: Good games where PCs are v.similar

[Darcy Burgess]

I'm trauling for some ideas, sounds pretty theoretical to me.

I'm currently wrestling with finding a way to make a game "interesting" when all of the PCs are essentially identical -- they may have differing personalities, but in terms of what they can do, they're quite similar.

Mechanically, the game will be:
- task res
- "old skool" GM-mandated plot
- One Roll Engine (Godlike, etc)

The specific situation is:
- war
- pcs are soldiers
- they pilot giant Mecha

aka Robotech

So, what would you do to keep the game fresh in such a situation?

[GB Steve]

Kickers and Bangs.

The basic idea is finding something that the players/characters care about and then challenging it. A kicker is a bit like a player defined goal.

I suggest you read this thread: What the heck is a bang???.

[TonyLB]

Well, are the characters identical in terms of what the game is about?

Is the game about maneuvering for combat advantage (which the characters are all equal at) or about dealing with the horrors of war and trying to keep your humanity (which, because of their different personality, the characters all address differently)?

[timfire]

As a data point, characters in The Mountain Witch are essentially the same, so it can be done successfully. This works in tMW because it's basically a game about relationships. The effect this has in tMW is that it focuses play on character personalities and character interactions. In other words, it focus play on how characters act, not on the actions themselves... if that makes sense.

[Andrew Morris]

Just out of curiousity -- why use task resolution when players have identical skill sets? I'm assuming this means the characters have identical Effectiveness? Or is there something else that varies from player to player, mechanically?

[gsoylent]

Pendragon is an excellent RPG in which the players are pretty much identical. They are all knights, which means not only are they all "fighters", the also all live by the same code.

What Pendragon uses is a system of Traits and Passions.  Traits are a series of contrasting drives ie Lustful vs Chaste, Proud vs Modest.  Your actions can cause the balance of these oppsed traits to change, as one goes up, its opposite goes down by the same measure. As certain combinations of Traits result in additional bonuses, it is not just cosmetic.

Passions are more straightforward. Basically it is something your character cares 'passionately' about (ie Honour, Love (family), Loyalty (lord) ) and as you play you aquire new passions. In mechanics terms if something directly impacts a passion you can get a bouns for it, however if you fail, you become depressed.

Of course this works in Pendragon where the real point of the game is real to test the characters moral fibre.

I suppose these all fall under kicker and bang headling, but a concrete example never hurts.

[Jasper]

Similar to Pendragon, Trials of the Grail has nigh-identical "knights" (not literal knights necessarily). One thing that distinguishes them are their personalized Mysteries, which are basically medium-scale goals in the game, based around discovering something or having a question answered. In addition to providing goals, Mysteries say a lot about the characters, in terms of their priorities and values.

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

I'm taking it that the PCs are all very similar according to their skills and combat prowess.  If that's the case, what are the players to focus on when it comes to playing them?  You say their personalities can be different, so are you creating mechanics that encourage, reward, and stress personality mechanics?

Peace,

-Troy

[Darcy Burgess]

good questions one and all.

"what is the game about?" I don't jnow -- I think that may be one of the things that I'm trying to figure out.

What I _do_ know is that I want military conflict with giant robots to be a part of the game -- that stuff is cool, and others think so too.

My initial choice for task res was instinctive -- for a couple of reasons.  I've only recently began toying with conflict res (I think),  and I'm not completely comfortable with it.  I'm also not really sure where my play style falls in  the GNS spectrum, so I figured that I'd go with what I know.

Now, that raises an interesting side point -- for those of 0you who know the One Roll Engine, is it strictly a task res system, or can it be used to achieve conflict res?

In terms of "how are the characters similar" -- well, the individual characters will be different in many ways on a 0human scale, but on0ce they step into their mecha, those differences will be dramatically reduced.  That's one of the issues that I'm wrestling with.  The other is that I don't want to monkey too much with the robotech world -- it's pretty nostalgic for me (and for some of my players too), so I don't want to take liberties like "all the mecha are reflections of the characters and develop differently" etc.

They're friggin' veritech fighters.  Cool stuff to be sure, but still just machines.

Perhaps some of my problems will be solved by setting.  If I choose the Invid invasion as a setting, more options will be open, as the PCs can be guerilla fighters instead of military operatives.

Food for thought.

[timfire]

Just throwing out a thought -- I am not convinced that a game where all the characters are "the same" has to be about personality. (Though personality will likely be more significant than it would otherwise, since it will be the only way to distinguish characters from one another.) For example, I can imagine this type of set up working well for a game about combat strategy. In many boardgames (chess, checkers), the players start with the exact same "abilities".

Also, don't get caught up in the whole Task vs Conflict res thing right now. Either one will work fine. Besides, at this stage of development it's pretty much a non-issue. That type of decision cannot be made until a skeleton of a system is developed.

[Harlequin]

As a followup to Tim's thought... working off your target genre, it strikes me that the unique and distinguishing feature of characters in many examples of the genre is quite simply style.

I'm no anime junkie, but for instance there's one with four women in human-size battlesuits, each of which is slightly different in capabilities - one has a whip-thingy, one an exploding-knuckle punch, and so forth.  It's totally genre; there's no defensible reason for them each to have the one major shtick.  In terms of combat effectiveness they're arguably identical.  The thing that's catchy is basically the parallels between the out-of-combat personalities of the characters, and their in-combat style as expressed both in their tech-schtick attacks and also in their strategies and tactics.

In similar vein, one of my current games is a 7th Sea setting, TROS rules hybrid, where all the PCs and most of the major NPCs are professional duellists and members of the Swordsman's guild.  Think Kushner's Swordspoint, expanded.  And in many cases, what I find is that although SAs are in use and certainly matter, it is in a lot of ways more interesting to watch the different combat styles of nominally-identical combatants as they stack up against one another.  TROS kicks ass for this because the tactics are emergent, yet clear.  

For instance one of the PCs has a subordinate who was taught in the "Seychelles" school, which teaches that one can only lose a fight if one is on the defensive, and only win if one is on the offensive.  So they teach their students to press their attacks, one after the other, even if each one is individually weak; don't let your opponent even initiate an attack.  (This uses a house rule of mine about keeping the initiative even when the opponent succesfully defends.)  As a philosophy it sounds really good on paper but if it falters, you're screwed, and that tension is always there.  So despite her being statistically identical to another fencer - they both have equal pools, and equal access to the identical maneuvers, and an identical weapon - it's very interesting to see her face off against another style.

As with the anime mentioned above, this is an incredibly powerful way to bring her personality into play but uses zero "personality mechanics."  It's just the outcome of a complex and seriously nontrivial tactical space.

- Eric

[Darcy Burgess]

judging from some of the replies, I may have missed mentioning several key pieces of info:

1) not actually developing a new game here, just using the ORE to play in the Robotech world -- Godlike's talent system gives a way to generate mecha rather effectively

2) this is all in aid of what will likely be a one-shot session (so pregen characters are an option)

sorry if I misled

[Chad Sonderberg]

Hello all!  This is my first post here.

For instance one of the PCs has a subordinate who was taught in the "Seychelles" school, which teaches that one can only lose a fight if one is on the defensive, and only win if one is on the offensive.  So they teach their students to press their attacks, one after the other, even if each one is individually weak; don't let your opponent even initiate an attack.  (This uses a house rule of mine about keeping the initiative even when the opponent succesfully defends.)  As a philosophy it sounds really good on paper but if it falters, you're screwed, and that tension is always there.  So despite her being statistically identical to another fencer - they both have equal pools, and equal access to the identical maneuvers, and an identical weapon - it's very interesting to see her face off against another style.

I must comment upon this...  I'm a student of Historical Western Martial Arts (the German school of longsword originally taught by the 14th century Master Jonnas Liechtenauer) and my studies regarding swordsmanship have shown the "always on offensive" method to be historically correct.

My post is regarding this line:

As a philosophy it sounds really good on paper but if it falters, you're screwed, and that tension is always there.

Historically, it would be a simple matter of using a counterstrike to regain the initiative.  The definition of a counterstike is "a strike against ones opponent that renders their attack harmless, while at the same time striking them in a harmful manner."

An example of what this means:

Your opponent takes a swing at you from overhead (over the right shoulder).  To counterstrike (with a longsword), you would step out to your right side while swinging downwards from overhead at your opponent's wrists and forearms.  This will effectivelly place your sword blade between yourself and the oncoming sword while harming your opponent.

This could be implimented into your system, but may cause an inbalance due to the advantage this would give to a player using this school.  Just my $0.02...