Character Rosters

[lordbelh]

I like having rosters on a game. I'll often pick one off the roster list if I find one that looks semi-interesting, and I can't be bothered to go through the grueling effort to build a character from scratch on a game I don't yet know if I'm all that invested in. When I play a roster character, its always my first character, and later characters inevitably are OCs. That said, since I don't often play more than character at a time, that first roster character can last the whole time I play on the game.

I do like my roster character to not be some useless throw-away. Because while I pick them up for the ease of introduction into the game, and the premade hooks and tie-ins to other characters, once I play them I'll start to invest, and its hard to do that if there's no real progress to be made.

[mietze]

Maybe I'm weird. (Well okay, yes, I am.) But regardless of whether I make up some 20 page detailed as fuck background (Don't worry @surreality I would never and have never included detailed descriptions of my PC's orgasms for some poor staff bastard to get stuck reading) or nothing...they actually aren't fully living or even settled until /I start playing them/. Sometimes I prefer the less intense than your every shit for the last 150 years backgrounds precisely because as I understand more about the PC it allows me to more easily adapt and slot other people in or build connections with people. As long as you have the guideposts in I do not think a huge florid background detailing everything enriches RP and may detract from it. (A lot of people are so wrapped up in themselves by that point they can't really go with the flow and then are stuck on a place that once they start playing isn't like what it seemed like on chan--not in a bad way--but now they've turned themselves unchangably into something that can't interact well with anyone else).

I think where rosters fail is when they attempt to be both pre-gen and overly detailed in background/contacts. I do think having a list of PCs 1-6 with a line or two about what they're statted for (Roster #1 is a PC who isn't great for physical combat but is statted for wheeling and dealing. Roster #2 is a PC who is a magic user who is heavily focused on the fartcrafting sphere of magic. Roster #3 is a PC who is suitably statted to be a tourney champion in the making but s/he still has some room to improve. Roster #3 is a seasoned decker, top of their game in skill related to decking but they've sustained some injuries in the meantime which greatly hinder their physical abilities in the meatworld.). Just the basics explaining to people what the build of the PC can do. (WHen people get scared of CG I've found it's because they dont know how to build what they want to build yet if it's new to them). Let them have the statted skeleton, and then let THEM decide gender, name, background (detailed or not), ect.

I feel this would probably more accomplish what people actually seem to want out of rosters. You could add in PC hooks too, I like that idea in principle but because of turnover I don't know how realistic that ever is.

[Deviante]

@mietze said in Character Rosters:

(Don't worry @surreality I would never and have never included detailed descriptions of my PC's orgasms for some poor staff bastard to get stuck reading)

Whoa... What?! Moments like this I'm glad I was never a staffer anywhere.

[surreality]

@Deviante It's a running joke. Someone actually did this to poor @mietze back on TR. I was her admin (though not at that time) so when an app came in that made me go, "...uhhhhhhhhhh..." and I referred it up the chain to her, that tale of OMGWTF emerged. (No names attached.)

It is not terribly uncommon for people to include some pretty graphic details of this kind of thing in backgrounds, involving everything from rape to sexual slavery to prostitution to 'why is this even here' line by line depictions of someone's first time, stuff that essentially runs the gamut from a porn variant of Hostel to Brazen: The Life and Times of a Woman Ahead of Her Time and Every Single One of the Men Who Loved Her. It's common enough that a number of games include something like 'if you have graphic sexual experiences in your character's history, do not go into graphic detail in your background' in policy.

Lord knows I do.

[Deviante]

@surreality The things you endure as staff. This surely makes my backgrounds ultra boring and not memorable at all.

[deadculture]

Someone touched on character rosters, and throwaway characters: I think the lower level rosters should only and yes, only be used when you want to try and accomplish something (as long as it's a game that lets you accomplish something and not, for instance, Firan) that you'd lose too much in doing with your main character.

Say, your main is a big wig noble with psychic powers and some combat skills, but you want to try a guy that has an evidently short life but with the ability to accomplish some great things in the meantime. You find a character in the roster that lines up with that. You go ahead and play him and spin that plotline you want, knowing you're probably not gonna succeed in the end game but you still do something cool, even if it's just to use the character's faction motives to try and attempt to assassinate the Emperor or something.

[surreality]

@Deviante For which staffers everywhere doubtless love you more than you will ever know! (Though I doubt they're boring. I've rarely seen a boring one from anyone, honestly.)

[BetterJudgment]

@Pandora said in Character Rosters:

... there's nothing quite like a character with no plot hooks or ties to other characters or organizations to cause a new player to never log back in again. There are obviously going to be exceptions to this rule because people are individuals, but by and large, you want to draw new people in, not set them adrift on an open sea and hope they wash up on the shore of an uncharted island of exciting RP.

Pandora's entire post goes to what @icanbeyourmuse said in the OP was the goal of roster characters and why they won't work without other systems backing them up, but this final paragraph is one that needs to be made into a sticker and slapped on the mirror of anyone running a game.

Here's a left-field suggestion: have rostered "starting" characters, but ask those who take them to post a public player biography. Most of us realize that we're playing with other people and that it's the other people that make the character fun and interesting. I've never LARPed, but I would guess that someone (as @DnvnQuinn described) who showed up and took a rostered character would be introduced to the group--"Everybody, this is Donna's friend Amber, and she's taking The Archaeologist. Make sure to welcome her and help her character get involved." I think you could encourage the same sort of thing on a MU*. It's hard for me to see any downside to encouraging people to think, "I am no my character, and Amber isn't her character, either."

[Saulot]

@surreality That was actually a Changeling background, and I remember how "grossed out" some staffer were while a few of us laughed.

[mietze]

Yep it was a Ling one. I was bad and offered to let a new ling admin who wanted to learn how to do apps take it on with my supervision, and then took on the task of explaining the issues with that bg (it wasn't the orgasms) and +sheet since it was pretty complicated.

However, that BG remains my favorite one that I've ever processed as a staffer, and to be honest with you? It was more coherent, grammatically correct, imaginative, and well-written than most of the stuff I saw.

[Packrat]

For some reason that reminds me of a particular person who kept plaguing Fading Suns games (I think she also played Shadowrun Denver?) years ago.

She wrote amazing character applications, really really good applications which were in the form of full length novellas that were well enough written to be a pleasure to read along with demonstrating a great feel for the theme. In play? Her poses were great, she had clever ideas, but if anything did not go her way she would go absolutely ballistic and screech endlessly about it. She would occasionally throw out some weird pose mid scene where she did four or five things that should each be a full action then would argue endlessly if she failed rolls or was not allowed to say... Jump onto a horse, ride a hundred yards through a crowd, block a sword blow, then attack somebody, before the other person could hit somebody standing in front of them with a sword.

She also had kinky sex with everything that had a pulse, which is fine, but if this caused any kind of blow back (Say, somebody found out IC that she was cheating on them with six other people and were unhappy) then she would also lose it OOCly.

[mietze]

Maybe, dunno. Personally, as I've said, I don't give a crap about sex pcs. If that keeps people happy and occupied more power to them. At least this PC was not violating the age policy.

There were a lot of people who felt they should get to do 5 actions in every pose or who would totally flip their shit and ooc tantrum if they rolled poorly on SC, but I will say that while I am sure there were a lot of sexual shenanigans, I can't think of anyone where that impeded their other RP. But having to pose failure or not wanting to roll with it? There were quite a few. It was a little mindboggling, because failure with whatever dice system they were using was a regular thing even for skilled pcs. I damn near killed someone on a healing roll a few times, and I had one of the higher stats in the game for that eventually. So after the first few gut punches you'd think that people would get used to it.

[Packrat]

This was on Fading Suns MUSH/Vargo years before Star Crusade, which if anything makes it more mind boggling given that used a 1d20 system where the most skilled PCs failed somewhere around 20% of the time.

[deadculture]

@mietze said in Character Rosters:

Maybe, dunno. Personally, as I've said, I don't give a crap about sex pcs. If that keeps people happy and occupied more power to them. At least this PC was not violating the age policy.

There were a lot of people who felt they should get to do 5 actions in every pose or who would totally flip their shit and ooc tantrum if they rolled poorly on SC, but I will say that while I am sure there were a lot of sexual shenanigans, I can't think of anyone where that impeded their other RP. But having to pose failure or not wanting to roll with it? There were quite a few. It was a little mindboggling, because failure with whatever dice system they were using was a regular thing even for skilled pcs. I damn near killed someone on a healing roll a few times, and I had one of the higher stats in the game for that eventually. So after the first few gut punches you'd think that people would get used to it.

I was one of the people who consistently went with the rolls whichever way they went, and I had both characters burning Wyrd like there was no tomorrow. Sans was fucked from the onset in that battle when Momoko got gaslighted into leaving, and Julien had some problems fighting off a gang of psychics who thought he'd gone too far.

Also I don't think that person played Star Crusade, no. The pattern doesn't check out with anyone I knew. I did like mostly enjoy playing with people who weren't Amber or Custodius. I even came around to enjoying Caelwyn in the end, because he was in the same boat as everyone else after a fashion... just with a lot more tanks. Li Halans were seriously lacking in the game, and I think it could've used a Portuguese noble or five.

Note: Li Halans took after Portuguese, Chinese and Japanese nobility.

[Packrat]

Regarding Caelwyn, from what I remember the reason he had so many troops (and he did not really have that many, I think he had about as many as a particularly dangerous baron?) Was that he was a Count and had gone into MegaDebt to fund his crusading. Like, all of his land belonged to Space Loan Sharks.

[deadculture]

@Packrat He had enough to provide a substantial reinforcement to the Leonese troops when they tried to hit southern uh... whatever was south of the Hazat lands. Was it Tyre?

[Packrat]

I just checked, he had four companies of troops. Admittedly they were all very mobile troops thanks to being armour and mechanized infantry, which was cool, but I think all companies were basically the same in combat power, good troops with a slight edge.

Some baronies could field six companies of troops, Karl had like, 14 companies.

[deadculture]

@Packrat Karl was a Marquis though. I mean.