Troupe Play in GURPS

[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.)

[ULFGARD]

The main consideration is how often the "party" -- by which I now mean "main characters" -- will be split up. Another important consideration is how long you expect the campaign to last. Some examples from this thread:

The post-DS9 campaign offers something most of us are familiar with, where multiple threads of an adventure and campaign take place in parallel. This suits long term development of multiple characters rather well, with the "main characters" being department heads and the "secondary" characters being their subordinates. Pool points work well here and are more of a reward to the player than anything else. But since other characters DO have tasks off screen but in (time) sequence, and often in the context of the same adventure, this doesn't seem even slightly objectionable.

Bill tends to run shorter term campaigns. Because of this, splitting parties and having secondary characters seems like it would work well. In general in a short-term campaign, bonus points used for development don't unbalance things the way they can over a longer period of play.

Finally an example from a campaign I'm playing in. Our party got split up. We ended up playing our characters or NPCs handed to us as GM control sheets. In other words, we were supporting cast (or even extras). We received bonus XP for good roleplaying as usual (if we did something good), or just straight XP for our characters. Since this was roughly equal, it didn't alter the course of character development. And since it allowed the other players to do something interesting and be involved in the "subplot" (of COURSE it's a subplot -- MY character isn't involved!), I think it worked well.

All of this depends on the model of the game. I've done it successfully by requiring the players to have 2 characters -- one 150 point, one 100 point -- in a more sedentary game. One player ended up playing his "secondary" character FAR more, but dumped bonus points into his main character. That worked out just fine.

This is a long way of saying that, while you're going a step further than I have, I think that this model works well so long as the players are up for it. Be prepared with NPCs. You might even pregenerate the secondary characters! But most of all: have fun!

[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.

[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).

[johndallman]

I think the frequency with which sessions happen is going to have an effect on this. If you're playing weekly, it would be fine. If sessions are a month or more apart, you're going to be a lot keener to have your core character involved.

Another approach is just to have multiple PCs per player. The players form teams for adventures from the characters who seem to be relevant, or who would be interested. This feels fairly natural in practice, IME.

[mearrin69]

Originally Posted by ULFGARD

The post-DS9 campaign offers something most of us are familiar with, where multiple threads of an adventure and campaign take place in parallel. This suits long term development of multiple characters rather well, with the "main characters" being department heads and the "secondary" characters being their subordinates. Pool points work well here and are more of a reward to the player than anything else. But since other characters DO have tasks off screen but in (time) sequence, and often in the context of the same adventure, this doesn't seem even slightly objectionable.

A note on this one. I do award 'pool' CP to the players themselves, to spend however they want, based on their portrayal of NPCs they take on. I give one point per session for taking the Captain off of my hands...more if they do something really great with him. Rewards for playing other NPCs are on an ad hoc basic, based on how much they added to the game. Other CP are awarded to the individual PCs based on their contributions.

One of my players is very interested in role-playing and character development while the other enjoys building up and using skills. I try to spread the points around as best I can but the RP player tends to get more. The 'skills player' tends to get bonus points for coming up with good ideas for workarounds to problems...rather than just rolling under his pretty high skill values. As you might imagine, he plays the Chief Engineer and a skilled flight officer (pilot). His lowest-point character is a Bajoran junior security officer and she's the most interesting, best-developed character he runs. The rest mostly push buttons.
M

[Gef]

I'm with Sir Pudding. I've tried troupe style many times over the years, and the problem isn't with GURPS, it's with groups. Some players like it, some get it, and some don't.

Here's what I like to do instead, and even with this I've had iffy results. Players can contribute to the game for extra points. A fully-designed character sheet with a page of backstory for a significant, recurring NPC, is worth a point. Roleplaying the character in those recurring scenes will also be worth a point when it happens. (Write-ups of organizations and governments, artwork like maps and minis are also worth points.) The problem with this approach is that equal effort from different players does not produce equally useable results, and also that some players go hogwild with this idea and get way more points than their peers, which can lead to resentment. The solution to the second problem is to cap the bonus, but I don't know a solution to the first, especially with contributors who think an NPC needs thousands of points in order to be interesting, or conversely one who thinks he needs to experience every crisis ever depicted in General Hospital and All My Children in order to be interesting.

GEF

[ULFGARD]

Originally Posted by mearrin69

A note on this one. I do award 'pool' CP to the players themselves, to spend however they want, based on their portrayal of NPCs they take on. I give one point per session for taking the Captain off of my hands...more if they do something really great with him. Rewards for playing other NPCs are on an ad hoc basic, based on how much they added to the game. Other CP are awarded to the individual PCs based on their contributions.

One of my players is very interested in role-playing and character development while the other enjoys building up and using skills. I try to spread the points around as best I can but the RP player tends to get more. The 'skills player' tends to get bonus points for coming up with good ideas for workarounds to problems...rather than just rolling under his pretty high skill values. As you might imagine, he plays the Chief Engineer and a skilled flight officer (pilot). His lowest-point character is a Bajoran junior security officer and she's the most interesting, best-developed character he runs. The rest mostly push buttons.
M

Sounds fun to me! This also works best with smaller groups, I would think. Yeah, I would think that the button pushers would be less fun for me to play unless they could get right into the action and DO something impactful, even if the mechanism wasn't written on my character sheet. But that's my play style -- I don't like secondary characters (except for jack-of-all trades types who may be secondary, but they are ALWAYS involved).

There are reasons for somewhat troupe-like play even in itinerant murdering games/genres. In my recent DF game, I had 3 players: Barbarian, Bard, Swashbuckler. I didn't want to restrict anyone, so I told them that we (i.e., me as a GM and them as PCs) would find whatever roles need filling in game. In practice, though, they ended up with some other delvers of lower caliber. At one point, they recruited a thief (who lived in spite of being built on 75 points -- lucky rolls!), and they were about to recruit a wizard before I suspended the campaign due to RL issues. With extra NPCs running around, I tended to hand them out in combat so that everyone had something to do more than once a turn, and so that I didn't end up running half of the physical bodies in the party by fiat or bogging everyone down while I adjudicated NPC vs. NPC moves. It ended up working out well.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Gef

I'm with Sir Pudding. I've tried troupe style many times over the years, and the problem isn't with GURPS, it's with groups. Some players like it, some get it, and some don't.

As I recall you were one of the players in my sad little tale...

Although in fairness you came in after the prospectus.

[ULFGARD]

Originally Posted by Gef

I'm with Sir Pudding. I've tried troupe style many times over the years, and the problem isn't with GURPS, it's with groups. Some players like it, some get it, and some don't.

Quite right. I had a PC go into the underworld for a session. In order to keep things interesting, I had the other players run characters who had died. They weren't really into it because I don't think I had properly prepared them. Fortunately, it was a one-time thing. That same group (minus one player, who wasn't even the problem) did just fine in a similar troupe situation, but the campaign was set up that way.