Multiple Characters:
It’s implied in a few places that playing multiple characters is supported in BitD (the “lost” overindulgence) or having a communal character or pool of characters that can be played by anyone.
How does that apply to advancement? My first instinct was to say that characters advance for the sessions that they are played in. But one of my players asked me some difficult questions:
1. What about if you play two characters at different parts of the session?
2. What about the “personal training time” advancement option? The name implies that characters should get it even if they aren’t being played.
Interesting!
Surely if its a group pool of characters then the advancement is just a discussion between the players about what ‘ticks’ get chosen? If that is too rowdy then a simple turn order ‘one choice each’ would work too.
I was thinking that it would be whoever played the character most recently who would get to choose, but the real question to me is how often we should do advancement for characters that aren’t currently in play.
That makes sense.
Well…. ‘In play’ is the key. Are they in the scene? Are they effectively NPCs? If they have no screen time then no. Though I’d grant a downtime phase at the start of the next session when they are played to cater to their projects and whatnot.
For me only characters that have being played during the session should advance.
Advancement comes at the end of the session, so we have a clear idea which character got to play. If a player controlled more than one character on the same session both characters should advance, for sure.
The training time… dunno. I feel uncomfortable having unused characters advance on their own.
Given how focussed Blades‘ advancement is on on-screen activities, I can see it being awkward to advance characters who haven’t been played, but on the other hand, if they start to lag behind, they’ll be less and less appealing to take on, which is a bad spiral.
If say give the extra characters get their training time so they don’t lag too far, and that puts bonus interest in the crew training advancements.
Yeah, I say give other characters their training time so they don’t lag too far behind.
I’d say that if you don’t want characters lag behind, then you should play all of them more often!
But Duamn Figueroa? What if you can’t play them all more often?… That’s like saying, “I’d say that if you want to eat apples you should eat apples”. But sometimes you don’t have apples. Sometimes you have to resort to plan b (b as in bananas, of course).
If you wanna eat Leviathan meat, then you should eat Leviathan meat…
I cannot think of any way a player couldn’t play a character whenever he wants.
I mean imagine you have a whisper and a cutter. The score is about stealing some electroplasmic teslapunk device, so you take your whisper, the score ends and your roll entanglement, a friend asks you to break a contact of his from prison, so you take your cutter. There, you played (and advanced) two characters on the same session.
Maybe you couldn’t change characters mid score (maybe you could!), just wait for the next game session. Maybe your group can’t get together to play too often, but in-game time would be the same.
The thing is: if you don’t care about using both characters that’s ok, but in that case would’t be easier having just one character?
And why wouldn’t you go and eat more apples?
Damn apples! I’m saying if you didn’t have any apples! I’m saying if the players don’t come to the game. Not all players always come to all games. It’s good to not have their characters lag behind in capability, fits in easily with the mechanics, and makes narrative sense. Why not?
What about if you keep everyone evenly advanced, yet preserve the idea that each kind of character adds to advancement in their own way, by adapting the WFRP 3rd Ed approach to Fate Point distribution: Everyone does their own thing and generates ticks in their own ways, but they go into a central supply, rather than being character-specific, then when there’s a number of ticks in that supply equal to the number of players you had this session, then every character gets an advance.
Then it is incentive for the bad apples to show up. Give them the training bonus, but not the active “I’m working here” XP.
Personally I’m not worried about keeping advancement even. The current experience system suggests that in many circumstances people in the same session will advance unevenly. It is unlikely people will make the same number of desperate rolls, or hit the same requirements on their playbooks (for example.)
Adding 1 training advancement during each down time to crew members who are not currently in play is a small gesture. Whether it is worth the book keeping is up to the group, but I wouldn’t suggest it is about “balance” or “keeping up.”
I think in a format like this a starting character can run with a group of seasoned rogues and do just fine. The lack of a level system makes that easier. And, characters can help each other as needed; it is better to have some focus and bring a skill set than to be at the same “level” as everyone else.
What Andrew said. 🙂
I agree that is not for “balance” or “keeping up”… so why give it away?
You play, you advance.
Regardless I do like games that acknowledge player missing out (Torchbearer does it great, I think) but I think that advancement is not the way (again: advancement should go for the people who play). I would have something like a vice test, or a long term project test, something like that written on the rules.
In fact a rookie running with a bunch of hardened scoundrels is honest to the ‘rising star’ fictional source material too.