One of my players is interested in playing a secondary character. They don’t plan on playing both of them concurrently for scores, but I’m at a bit of a loss as to how to handle the character who has sit out the score. I don’t wan’t the player to dominate the playtime, but it doesn’t seem quite right for a character to be completely absent from downtime either. Give the character who sits out only one Downtime, perhaps?
One of my players is interested in playing a secondary character.
One of my players is interested in playing a secondary character.
When I had a secondary character (while my prime was “grounded”), she got downtimes for any job she participated in. And the prime did not.
If the other character is voluntarily sitting out, they must have a reason for doing so, so maybe that can guide the narrative? They’re looking for a new macguffin, so they can spend a Coin for a DTA to Acquire Asset?
In PbP we used to allow multiple characters. I used to give the players, not the characters, two Downtime actions to divide as they please. Lets them divide their focus if they want.
The way I ran it, if a character was out of the action for more than one session, they got a single downtime cycle to explain what they were up to.
Quite often we found however, that players running two characters wasn’t really an issue, as long as we split up the crew in such a way that their two PCs weren’t on a job together.
I really like Marcus’ approach.
I do downtime at the start of a session. So whichever character they intend to play this session gets 2 downtime to prepare for the score whilst the other is lost in their vice.
I’ve always looked at it as the crews’ completion of a score grants two DTAs, regardless of who participated.
Either 2 DTAs per player or only giving those who participated in the score DTAs seems like the best options to handle it. Additional DTAs can always be bought.
Side note, I assume crew members who sit out of a score do not receive a cut of the payment, right?
Honestly, in my experience a lot of these concerns tended to work themselves out, and all the stipulations and house rules I tentatively instituted ended up not being necessary.
As far as who gets paid vs. who particpated, I’d say that’s something that can be handled entirely IC. 🙂