I've said before that one of my goals for the Whiterock campaign was to support players and characters dropping in and out from week to week. Because real life sometimes gets in the way of gaming, and if you wait for everyone to be available, maybe you wait too long and your game dies.
I don't particularly like artificial moves like teleporting PCs around. And I'm not a big fan of turning PCs into NPCs ("sorry, your PC died last week while you weren't playing"). So how do we swap PCs around?
The primary plan to achieve that was to have a mostly safe place (the town of Cillamar) where all the PCs hang out between adventures, and then try to get them back there at the end of every session. Then if someone can't make it next time, their PC is safely back in town. And if someone new joins the party, the party met them in town.
So far, I'm zero for one at getting the PCs back to town between sessions. It took almost the whole first session for them to get to Castle Whiterock, the main adventure location, and then the rest to scout up to the gatehouse door, and they have the time pressure of a kidnapped apprentice to rescue. And it looks like one of the four players who played last week can't make it, and we have two new players who probably can. So, how to we pull the swap in the field without being too cheesy?
As long as the party has a clear path to the exit, pulling a PC out is pretty easy. In this case, the PC whose player can't make it had some intra-party conflict during the last adventure. So he might leave in a huff and go back to town alone. Or me might be given a time-out and sent to guard the party's rear.
Bringing in more PCs is more difficult, especially PCs that the current party hasn't even met (at least not in play). But in this case the party has a patron who asked them for help, and it's entirely possible he asked a couple more latecomers to join them. Maybe he sent them along with a note. Fortunately the PCs are right near the entrance, so it's plausible enough.
I have a plan that will work this time, but I worry that things will get silly if we have to keep swapping PCs outside of town. Fortunately players love shopping for new traits and new items, and town is (almost) the only way to do that, so I suspect that most of the time, it won't be hard to get them back to regroup.
GURPS / Dungeon Fantasy RPG campaign set in Castle Whiterock megadungeon
Getting the game to start and stop in town isn't trivial - as you can see, there is a lot pushing toward "stop in place and pick up from there next time."
ReplyDeleteAs for PCs meeting, just say they know each other somehow. They've met in the past, they were introduced by friends, they used to work together, they're married to twin siblings and met at family functions - whatever it takes. It saves a lot of hassle and completely prevents uncooperative players from declaring they don't trust the new guy.
There really is a lot of desire to not go back to town. I'm hoping the lure of "you can only spent points and money there" works.
ReplyDeleteIt's easy enough to say that all the PCs know each other -- I just didn't do that up front, so now it's roleplaying. In my experience, though, PCs all recognize other PCs and automatically mostly trust them.
Speaking ad one of your players, you might track supplies ruthlessly. I know we can make our own food and water, but consumables are bound to run down eventually.
ReplyDeleteAlso findign ways to limit the number of consumables we can stock up on will force us to return to town to replenish things like potions (once we can afford them),ammunition (oops, it broke!), bandages (-a lot to First Aid without them), repair weapons and armor (use heavy weapons and corrosive damage, and track breakag), and use advanced healing magic (restore lb, cure disease, the dreaded R spell, etc.).