Troupe Play in GURPS

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by Michael Cule

1) Core characters.

I see no problem here, but depending on your campaign there may not be specific characters you can point at as being "core".

Originally Posted by Michael Cule

2) Pool characters.

I would be wary about letting multiple people play the same character - I have seen conflict with this sort of thing in the past. I would permanently assign those characters as they are used, and make sure that you have back-ups - "Well, Tim isn't here this week and Dr. Carstairs is his... let's say he is at a conference and got Dr. Wiglet to cover for him - John can play him."

Originally Posted by Michael Cule

3) Experience points.

Might work, although I am personally wary of allowing players to used CP earned on character to improve another. I would treat each one separately.

Originally Posted by Michael Cule

4) Designing characters bit by bit.

This really is a challenge in GURPS, and is ripe for abuse. I think it will fall on the GM to plan this out in advance so that the appropriate characters are ready for each session. Rather than giving them some block of points to be allocated as needed, I would simply be more lenient in allowing the characters to allocate earned CP to reflect that the characters were not yet well-defined.

Still, some level of this will probably be necessary.

Originally Posted by Michael Cule

A) NPCs have a budget of points just like any other character.
B) They also have a limit of Disadvantages and five quirks which are undefined until someone comes up with a nice bit of characterisation.
C) Nothing put on the character sheet may contradict what has been said in game.
D) Any skill or advantage that fits the character may be claimed at any time but you had best pay the points right there.

Agreed so far.

Originally Posted by Michael Cule

If you need a disadvantage to pay for it and the limit hasn't been reached you can put in a place holder ("I need a -5 disad... Let's not hold up the game...") but you cannot hand the character back to the GM without having established what the disadvantage is. That should encourage players to come up with stuff that is entertaining and adds to the story. ("Giant spiders? I think Rodney the Randy had best roll to control his arachnophobia that he's never told anyone about...")

Sounds good provided it really doesn't contradict anything that has already happened - realistically this means on-the-spot disadvantages will need to be pretty small.

Originally Posted by Michael Cule

5) Each session should probably end with a few moments spent planning what the next meeting's stories should be about and which characters will be featured.

It does not have to be on the spot, and might not realistically happen at all - part of the advantage of this style of play is the flexibility it provide during the session to explore plans or ideas that the GM had not thought of. Likewise, the results of a session may lead the GM in new directions that will need some thought, and the GM may want to keep the players in the dark about what is going to happen.

[Walrus]

Some GURPS supplements consider this as well. I can remember Black Ops, though it's 3ed and MA: Gladiators.

So, all is in your hands. For creation speed use appropriate templates, they help a lot even for unusual characters.

[Michael Cule]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

I see no problem here, but depending on your campaign there may not be specific characters you can point at as being "core".

I think you can normally say which are 'featured roles' from the set-up. More importantly this rule allows me to give each player a character that is his/hers and that was designed according to their taste and interests. If a character proves less interesting than originally thought (Tasha Yar anyone?) then a pool character could be reassigned.

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

I would be wary about letting multiple people play the same character - I have seen conflict with this sort of thing in the past. I would permanently assign those characters as they are used, and make sure that you have back-ups - "Well, Tim isn't here this week and Dr. Carstairs is his... let's say he is at a conference and got Dr. Wiglet to cover for him - John can play him."

And I would be wary of creating unnecessary new characters. Not all setups allow us to bring in unlimited fresh characters and I think (hope!) that my players would be mature enough to accept that characters of this level get played by whoever is there. In ARS MAGICA (which is the game with most support for troupe style play) the players have the second level characters (companions) as individual property and the third level and least powerful (grogs) as troupe property. I'm just pushing the idea a bit further.

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

Might work, although I am personally wary of allowing players to used CP earned on character to improve another. I would treat each one separately.

If I'm going to have pool characters at all then I'm going to have to do some slightly unusual things. There's absolutely no reason to say that character points earned by a player belong to a particular character of theirs. It's a convention.

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

This really is a challenge in GURPS, and is ripe for abuse. I think it will fall on the GM to plan this out in advance so that the appropriate characters are ready for each session. Rather than giving them some block of points to be allocated as needed, I would simply be more lenient in allowing the characters to allocate earned CP to reflect that the characters were not yet well-defined.

And that is something that makes more work for the GM and gives less power to the players. Honestly, that's the opposite of the direction I hoped this would take me. I might well just give a player a character sheet with a partly completed template based character and say: "Here, use this as a basis."

(Parenthetically, life would be easier if I could afford a better laptop and a portable printer. Or if all my players had devices they brought to the table instead of just some or if there was a version of GCA for the IPad. Or some combination of the above....)

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

It does not have to be on the spot, and might not realistically happen at all - part of the advantage of this style of play is the flexibility it provide during the session to explore plans or ideas that the GM had not thought of. Likewise, the results of a session may lead the GM in new directions that will need some thought, and the GM may want to keep the players in the dark about what is going to happen.

If I had some idea of where the players wanted to go, my life would be easier. It could probably be done via e-mail though.

Thing is this sort of thing is easier in systems other than GURPS. But the problem is that I like the way GURPS works better than them. So I'm struggling a bit. I think it can be done but it requires some new ways of thought.

Yes, I've split parties in the past (and will do so in the future) but there have been times when I've tried the patience of my players. I reallly couldn't have run my current campaign with scenes cutting back and forth across the Atlantic for six months game time and yet people were getting bored with so much of the focus not being on their core characters.

[sir_pudding]

I've had terrible luck with troupe style play in the past, including one game where the players basically refused to make their second characters and later claimed that I never said they had to (even though the prospectus said it was troupe-style). A lot of people seem very resistant to it. I remember even playing Living Steel twenty years or so ago, which like Ars Magica is expressly supposed to be played troupe style, nobody but me wanted to make the non-supersoldier characters that you were supposed to also be playing and the GM didn't really seem to care either.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

A lot of people seem very resistant to it. I remember even playing Living Steel twenty years or so ago, which like Ars Magica is expressly supposed to be played troupe style, nobody but me wanted to make the non-super soldier characters that you were supposed to also be playing and the GM didn't really seem to care either.

I loved the Living Steel setting, but the Alphas never really worked for us, either.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I've had terrible luck with troupe style play in the past, including one game where the players basically refused to make their second characters and later claimed that I never said they had to (even though the prospectus said it was troupe-style). A lot of people seem very resistant to it. I remember even playing Living Steel twenty years or so ago, which like Ars Magica is expressly supposed to be played troupe style, nobody but me wanted to make the non-supersoldier characters that you were supposed to also be playing and the GM didn't really seem to care either.

I have one player who hates having two characters and has now learned to give low ratings to campaigns that call for it. On the other hand, I ran one campaign where everyone had four characters and did just fine.

I manage to diminish problems with "you never said I had to" by holding a separate pre-session where everyone creates characters. If someone only created one character, I would spot that between the pre-session and the game, and tell them that they had to create a second character if they wanted to play. If a bunch of people resisted, I would be delaying the first session till they complied.

Of course, I do tell them in advance how many characters per player, so I feel justified in saying, "You agreed to this when you asked to play in this campaign." But then, I would say you would have been equally justified.

[aesir23]

One of my all time favorite articles from the Pyramid (vol.2? Online but not PDF) concerned doing this with a league of superheroes.

Each player has a superhero in their own town, but has characters who are sidekicks or allies to the other player's superheros. The only time everyone plays their most powerful character is when the league gets together with the fate of the world in the balance.

So you could play Batman, but when the adventure's happening in Metropolis, you play Jimmy Olsen -- you know that you're time to shine will come when the scene shifts over to Gotham.

I never have gotten a group on board with it though (I'm the only one in my group who likes making characters enough that I'd want to make 5 of them.)

[somecallmetim]

Originally Posted by aesir23

One of my all time favorite articles from the Pyramid (vol.2? Online but not PDF) concerned doing this with a league of superheroes.

Each player has a superhero in their own town, but has characters who are sidekicks or allies to the other player's superheros. The only time everyone plays their most powerful character is when the league gets together with the fate of the world in the balance.

That's one of my favorite Pyramid articles.

[Michael Cule]

Originally Posted by aesir23

One of my all time favorite articles from the Pyramid (vol.2? Online but not PDF) concerned doing this with a league of superheroes.

Each player has a superhero in their own town, but has characters who are sidekicks or allies to the other player's superheros. The only time everyone plays their most powerful character is when the league gets together with the fate of the world in the balance.

So you could play Batman, but when the adventure's happening in Metropolis, you play Jimmy Olsen -- you know that you're time to shine will come when the scene shifts over to Gotham.

I never have gotten a group on board with it though (I'm the only one in my group who likes making characters enough that I'd want to make 5 of them.)

That's very, very neat. I've also seen the suggestion that each player in a supers campaign should also create and play a supervillain. Which leads to an instant Rogues Gallery!

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I manage to diminish problems with "you never said I had to" by holding a separate pre-session where everyone creates characters. If someone only created one character, I would spot that between the pre-session and the game, and tell them that they had to create a second character if they wanted to play. If a bunch of people resisted, I would be delaying the first session till they complied.

I did that. However the first character making session took so long that there wasn't anymore time, so I decided to run a session with the primary characters on the way the pick up the secondary characters, with the intention of making the secondary characters later as I felt back to back character making sessions would likely lose their interest.

Of course, I do tell them in advance how many characters per player, so I feel justified in saying, "You agreed to this when you asked to play in this campaign." But then, I would say you would have been equally justified.

So when I wanted to run the session to make the secondary characters, they basically unanimously balked. At which point I did say, "But you agreed to play multiple characters when you asked to play in this game." They basically said, "Uh, no we didn't." So I showed them the prospectus (which honestly by the time I'm actually starting the chosen game, I find they've basically forgotten about anyway). At which point I discovered that none of them were familiar with what "troupe style" means. So I asked them if they really would rather those secondary characters be NPCs, to which they said "Yes". Which I reluctantly agreed to. Which basically helped doom that game (which is probably one of my most spectacular failures as it was basically a cascade of self-reinforcing failure loops).