A family of heroes?

[STARP_JVP]

Hi folks. Yeah, I'm back. Nobody noticed I was gone, did they? (Sniff etc.)
Anyway, an interesting dynamic has developed in my current campaign. The PCs are trying to restore the heir to the throne (that old chestnut). One PC, the ranger, is an elf who basically was hanging around the castle when the prince's uncle seized power, and the court wizard basically handed him the sprog and said "take care of this" before scarpering, meaning he's been the boy's guardian for the past sixteen years. Another PC is a wizard, the aforementioned court wizard's apprentice, who was told by her mentor to seek out the kid and help with the quest to restore him, some ten years ago or so.
The practical upshot of this is that these two PCs fulfill the parenting role to the prince, who's now sixteen. They bicker like a married couple, too, though that's as far as it goes. There's another PC, the rogue, who is definitely the 'bad girl next door' who's corrupting the kid by teaching him things like lying, stealing, cheating and juggling that the 'parents' never taught him.
All this has raised an interesting question, and it's something I've discussed with my group. What's it like in a campaign where the PCs are actually related? I've never actually done that, and I think it might be interesting to have the whole family involved - each PC is a member of the same family - brothers, sisters, parents etc. I call it the "Lost in Space" gimmick. Has anybody here done that and did it work out? It sounds cool, but I'm curious if any problems developed with it.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

I played in a campaign once, lovingly referred to as the Balsache campaign, wherein all the players belonged to the Family Ravencroft, complete with a family curse, a mother who ran off to be with her vampire lover, and demented relatives of all sorts. One of the things that this did was to bring some of the OOC trash talk (that we were always doing anyway) into the game in an in character way. Somehow, since we were family, it became okay that we were constantly taking verbal pot shots at one another.

Even though we were always giving each other a hard time, and had a grand time doing it, character death really took on a new dimension (we were playing a semi-horror campaign, with lots of undead and no clerics or revivification magic of any kind). The death of a character meant that it was time for all sorts of character interaction with various (dememnted) family members during the ensuing funereal rights.

We were all siblings, rather than being a mother-father-son-daughter grouping, so we didn't get into much of the parent-child interaction between the PCs... But all in all, I'd say that the idea is totally doable.

Later
silver