Same Character, New Sexiness

[I'm A Banana]

So, there's a little problem that I think a lot of people have had.

You've had the same character for months, and you've loved him, and you still love him. Maybe you're playing a game where the character is somehow very important. The BBEG is your brother, or you have a long history in the town under siege, or whatever. You want to keep your character -- his history, his events, his story, his personality, his style -- in play.

But you've become bored with your class.

Or with your race.

Or with your particular party niche or combat role.

Or you've become excited about the newest book, or this hot new Dragon article, and you want to try it out.

So I'm looking for ways you can keep your character in play, but completely overhaul all aspects of him.

I'm looking at this from a DM's angle. I'll be running a game with pretty consistent characters (a narrative-focused game), but I don't want to pigeonhole players into playing the same bloody thing for two years or even for six months.

I'm not especially looking for rules per se -- I know about things like retraining, but I'm talking about a more drastic alteration. I want a way where a character can go to bed one night a human rogue and wake up the next morning a bugbear shaman (mechanically), and still be the same character.

I'm more looking for a way to make sense of this, to extend verisimilitude to it, to make this sort of drastic, overnight change a tool that the players can use to swap around their character's abilities, and to take advantage of brand new material, without changing who they've been for the last few months.

The best idea I have right now is a "squad system" where the party is more than just the current PC's -- it's an extended network of PC-potential creatures, of the players just choose one per player to use on the current mission -- but that system has a bit of trouble retaining history, motive, and personality across the characters. It also means that a player doesn't own his own character so much as trot it out and ride it around for a few sessions before returning it to a stable. Not sure that's a positive effect...

I'm sure the collective braintrust of ENWorld can come up with ideas that are at least as good!

 

[LostSoul]

a narrative-focused game

What does that mean? Story Now, or something else?

edit: If you want to know what Story Now means, a google search turns up this as its first hit:

The Forge :: Narrativism: Story Now 29 Jan 2004 ...

Story Now requires that at least one engaging issue or problematic feature of human existence be addressed in the process of role-playing. ...

www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/25/

 

[Amadeus Windfall]

The characters could be stuck in a cycle of reincarnation into different forms for inexplicable reasons (i.e. not just when they die); discovering how and why could work into the plot somehow.

 

[TheNovaLord]

a campaign is a game of longish term committment

on reading your post if after 6 months youd think it was gonna get pigeonholey and repettive then dont play 4th ed....(it sounds like thats what your doing) as thats all about a specific role. (striker, defender etc)

maybe not even anykind of D&D

must be lots games out there where you can play the same 'mentality' of a character buts its physicality 'changes'

or maybe something like 'the characters are all dragonshards' and when they are picked up by an enitity they control it? for a duration...keep memories et al but different body

 

[Plane Sailing]

Perhaps all the PCs are actually members of "The Great Race", and they are projecting their minds through time and space to inhabit different bodies in order to complete a number of significant tasks to prevent the destruction of the world. The necessity to perform missions in places separated in space and time necessitates the occasional swapping of host bodies (especially in the unfortunate circumstances where a host dies... but the mission must carry on!)

Cheers

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Some ideas:

• Run a Dollhouse type game. Where the PCs get implanted with new memories and abilities for each specific engagement. Lots of fun can be had with this, with malfunctions, them trying to uncover their original self, etc. You can lengthen and shorten the time spent with each type per-desired by the type of mission. To keep the character, you can have the original memories deep inside and effect the views, approaches, of the new mind.
• Parallel Realities. The PCs through technology, eldritch-knowledge, etc. inhabit various parallel reality versions of themselves, depending on how divergent the reality it can run the whole gambit from just class, feats, etc. to even races (if really divergent).
• Each PC is actually simply part of a Hive Mind and can choose which body to focus on for the long-term goals. Either each PC is its own Hive Mind or all the PCs are part of the same one.

 

[mevers]

How about if the PCs are only the personality. They are some form of bodyless entitiy that needs to take possession of a corporeal creature to actually be able to accomplish anything. When they take over a body, they are limited to the skills and abilities that that body has, while they retain their own personality, memories and motivations etc.

The hardest thing may be coming up with enough high level hosts for them to inhabit. I mean, how many 25th level deva barbarians do you think there are running around? To overcome that limitation, how about the PCs don't just take over the abilities of their host body, but also enhance them, so their hosts are now capable of much more than they would be otherwise. Whereas the host on their own is a lowly 1st level wizard, when the Pc possesses them, they are a paragon / epic / whatever level wizard instead. Although they are still a wizard (or rogue, or warlock etc).

 

[SkidAce]

Have a witch curse him and have him slowly turn into the bugbear. Then he can start learning new abilities and losing others over the course of a session. I know you said "overnight" but stretching it out a session or two could be fun.

"What is wrong with my face...I have a snout??????" as the character awakes in the morning.

"Hey whered this tail come from" ....dude I'm just rofl at the possibilties.

 

[Merkuri]

I like Plane Sailing's idea. The characters are entities of some sort that can inhabit other bodies. You could take a page from the Stargate book and say that the characters are parasites/symbionts that inhabit humanoid bodies and need to skip from body to body sometimes (particularly in the event of host death).

To make it more interesting, you could rule that the PCs don't realize what they are, at first. They think they're ordinary humanoids until something happens and they instinctively find a new body. Maybe all of their parasites have some sort of amnesia from being in the same host too long and they think they ARE the host.

When the game starts you can tell the players that they're allowed to rebuild their PCs any time they want, but you won't tell them what actually happens to the character until one of them actually chooses to change. Then when one of them decides to try something new you describe the change and let them try to figure out what happened.

If you decide that the PCs are actually some sort of physical parasite (as opposed to Plane Sailing's astral-projection-type idea) and a PC dies somewhere that other potential hosts aren't around (like deep in a dungeon) you could have the other PCs roleplay taking the parasite out of the old host and finding a new host for it. Maybe in an attempt to keep the parasite alive they have to choose an unusual host for it... like their packhorse. Then the player gets to be silly and play a sentient packhorse for a little while. Or you could have the PCs share hosts for a little bit... not sure how the mechanics of that one would work, but it would probably be entertaining for one session or so.

 

[jbear]

How about the geas of a capricious god/dess;

The handsome charasmatic rogue is transformed into a hideous beast until he has fulfilled the deity's bidding;

Once fulfilled he is marked with a new form and a new task.