I am sure I remember something like this in Nobilis, and I've rather Japanized the best note from one of the posts in Indie Game Design. It's a bit of a bastardization of the Unisystem, mostly to make the post easier on myself.

I know a lot of folks who don't like the limelight. They are not gaming for the spotlight or the attention; they are there to help out when needed, and when they get scenes to themselves they're great players, they just don't want too many scenes to themselves. They'd rather chill and drink some beer, eat some pretzles and roll dice.

So why not let them have, at the expense of spotlight time, an extra character? Were we to take a Hero Character and give them points as follows:

Attributes: 20
Skills: 30
Advantages/Disadvantages: 10/Up to 10
Metaphysics: 20
Drama Points: 20

A player taking on two characters would have exactly half as many points in each character

Attributes: 10
Skills: 15
Advantages/Disadvantages: 5/Up to 5
Metaphysics: 10
Drama Points: 10

In an adventuring group, should the group only have three players, and the Protagonist is going to be the Heroic Paladin, the two other players could each play either a White Hat, or play two Secondary Characters, filling a couple of extra niches. A group of three players could then look something like: Heroic Paladin, White Hat Priest, Secondary Theif, Secondary Magician, making the group more agile by covering all the bases, and allowing spotlight hogs and hermits their own niches.

Thoughts?

Kris
"Secondary Forge Poster"

I like the motivation behind this, but I don't know about the application. It seems to me that having two characters would tend to imply spotlight time for that player, moreso even than having one souped-up character. Because to me, if you're playing two characters, you're doing twice the work (all else being equal) in terms of decision making and speaking in voice and so on. So you might actually want to do it the other way around.

I think we might need to clarify a little what's meant by spotlight time though. Is it just "acting" or is it any kind of participation (i.e. interaction with the other players)? If the latter, then I might question whether you really want to support that behavior, since it basically comes down to not wanting to play. I mean, I can imagine a player (who "dislikes limelight") thinking he'd like a more minimal role...but would that be fun in the end? Not playing = fun?


Getting away from the above issue: I do something a little like this in Trials of the Grail, in terms of supporting different player styles/goals. One player is always the "lead," as in film or whatnot. The lead character ("questor") starts off with little effectiveness but rapidly gains more. This (a) focuses play on the his development and (b) in the end makes the lead more effective than the other characters. However, note that I didn't say that this makes the lead character's player more effective than the other players: as the supporting characters' effectiveness diminishes in relation to that of the lead, they take on a more supporting role. But their players always have additional effectiveness through the meta-mechanic of "Narrative Points," which basically allows them to grab some director stance at will.

Thus, playing a supporting role might be good for someone who doesn't so much like the limelight of in-character acting, if that's something the group generally goes for (though I'm a firm believer that it's not necessary) -- that in-character spotlight gets traded in for some out-of-character director stance spotlight.

You've got two incredibly cool issues included here. I'm going to break them out and treat them separately... if you get nothing from the separation then feel free to ignore it.

Spotlight Time

One player may only want to strut their character about in a story all about them and how cool they are. Another player may only want to fine-tune the stories that other players are starring in... give the villain just the right threat to really put the hero on the spot, or have the love interest show up at exactly the wrong moment.

Both of those players are (IMHO) seeking spotlight time. They naturally support each other. But they will seek radically different support from the game system in pursuing their agenda.

The first will want to spend whatever in-game or meta-game resources they have on buffing his primary character. Giving this guy control over an ensemble of multiple characters would either frustrate him or just be seen as another resource to buff his primary ("Sure, you can have my magic sword! What are friends for?")

The second desperately needs an ensemble. They need characters for every situation, and by preference should be able to take over any NPC at any time. Giving this guy the ability to buff a character would be mostly wasted... though he might use it on villains to provide a more meaningful challenge.

And finally, of course, these are not really different players. They're different, often unrelated, drives in the same player. Sometimes you want to make your personal avatar cool, and sometimes it's more interesting to manipulate the story around you.

A resource system (as in, Slurpee mentions, Nobilis) lets players express these different priorities in a way that is both intuitive and satisfying for them. You can (if you choose) restrict this allocation of resources to character creation, making players choose their balance once and live with it forever after. Or you can have a constant flow of in-game resources which they can use for either aiding a character or gaining more ensemble-rights and director-authority. I like the latter, because it lets people feel their way to the appropriate balance for them, but it does require some more careful planning when designing the system.


Fairness

Now let me take a few pot-shots at a sacred cow. Why should a player who is playing two characters be expected to play weaker characters?

I think that, for many people, the answer is that it's not fair to give a player a huge advantage over others in pursuing their own individual agenda. But that's really two answers. You could mean either:

• Players should be on a level playing field, though exceptional (or even "moderately better") play can result in one player getting much more of what they want than another, or....
• Players should always get the same amount of power and authority to pursue their own individual agenda, whether they play well or poorly

I would argue that the second of those is dysfunctional. It removes the most powerful incentive for players... the ability to gain more of what they came to the game to enjoy. They're going to get as much spotlight time as they get. Playing well won't change that, and neither will playing horribly.

When you remove that incentive you cripple the players ability to learn how to be better players in the game. Without any positive or negative reinforcement they have only the vaguest idea of whether they did well or poorly. Some incentives remain, of course, like praise from fellow players. But they're socially based and very subjective. Objective, consistent rewards do a better job for reinforcing behavior.

I recommend enshrining constant, intense competition for spotlight time into the basic mechanics of the game system. Decide, for your particular game, what will be good behavior and what will be bad behavior. Make sure that good behavior objectively gains the player more spotlight time, while bad behavior doesn't. Sit back and watch as the players game the system.

This is a major design goal of Capes. In Capes, enticing other players into emotionally investing in a Conflict, making the Conflict very challenging, but letting them win in the end is defined as good behavior. It is objectively and clearly rewarded. When players do it right they are handed poker chips. The result, in practice, is that players horribly rules-lawyer and munchkin the situation by doing such things as:

• Portraying compelling situations and villains
• Paying attention to the stories other players are interested in and supporting those players as they push the story forward
• Figuring out Bangs and ways to spike other players' Kickers.

Oh, the cheesy, selfish, competitive things players will do! They're shameless, I tell you!

Maybe my situation is just hyper unusual. Right from the beginning my players were always focused on team play. In the very first game one of them rolled up an extra character because it was obvious that three characters were not enough for what had to be done in the game, and so he ran two. One was killed, so at the second session two more were introduced, and two of the three players ran two characters.

Since then it's always been my policy in most games that any player who easily handles one character and is reliable in showing up for games can run a second. Those who are most effective and reliable will eventually run three. All these are full characters created under the game system rules.

The spotlight time problem doesn't arise because this is team play. Everyone knows that the quarterback has to carry the ball sometimes, but sometimes has to throw it to the end, or the halfback, or some other player. Everyone knows that the center is vitally important in protecting the quarterback, but probably isn't going to carry the ball in his entire career. When the party comes upon a problem or situation, the spotlight falls on that character who can best address it.

They also make a point of spreading the load. I think in part this was because I used the grading system in OAD&D--you were rated one to four on your performance in the adventure, based on whether you acted appropriately for class, alignment, and race. These ratings were averaged when it was time to advance a level, and the higher the result the longer it took for you to reach the next level and the more it cost to do so. The result of this was that the upper level characters were always making sure that the lower level characters had every opportunity to use their class abilities. A low level thief who went along for the ride got a bad grade; if the party made sure he opened locks, or scouted ahead, or did other thievish things, he could easily get a high grade. That meant less down time for the party, and more spotlight time for low level characters, which often translated to new players. The in-game excuse for this (and for the impact of grades) was that it gave them the opportunity to practice their skills in the field, and so had them better prepared for their next training and tests. However, having set that pattern in D&D, we easily translated it to other games, where we made sure we had redundancy in skills and gave characters the opportunities to use these.

It would appear to me that you're trying to address a problem in social contract by preventing any player from having two strong characters. I think there are better ways to address that kind of problem, and am not at all certain what advantage there is to having two completely inept characters as opposed to one highly skilled one (or even why the highly skilled character would travel with two inept ones). Then again, I don't know how far that many points go in such games, as I don't play point-based character generation systems.

--M. J. Young

This also sounds alot like troupe style play, ala Ars Magica. In Ars Magica, every player has their own uber-powerful Mage, but only one Mage can be played at a time. So the players take turns playing their Mage, and in the mean time the rest of players play characters out of some pool of communally-owned, lower-powered characters.

At least that's what I hear. I've never actually played Ars Magica (though I have the book on PDF) or any other game with this style of play.