NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8272205" data-attributes="member: 42582">I just gave my rant above about niche protection. In Prince Valiant it's just not a thing - every character is (by default) a knight, and if you depart from that default the focus of the action still defaults to the sorts of things knights errant do.The third PC in our game started as a squire but has since been knighted. He is a bit different from the other two - Brawn 3, Presence 4, and skills of Arms 2, Battle 1, Riding 2, Agility 2, Dexterity 2, Stealth 1, Courtesie 2, Fellowship 3, Glamourie 2, Poetry/Song 1, Lore 2.  But like them he still rides a warhorse, fights with a sword and has a suitable marriage (to Elizabeth, daughter of the Duke of York). The differences between the characters flow from their personalities (as played) and their place in the fiction - eg this third PC is the only one whose wife travels with him on his errantry.Having elaborated on that rant, I also want to say something about splitting the party, (I'll say something about hooks if asked or provoked.)In our Classic Traveller game, the PCs and entourage are (notionally, at least) a starship owner, his crew and other sundry hangers-on. They frequently separate: in a town, some might go and do X while others do Y; as I posted upthread about our "heist", when Imperial officers needed to be wined and dined for a week some did that, while others worked on the technical problem of deciphering the workings of an alien starship, and powering it up so it could be taken by the group; more recently the PCs were in three groups with some in orbit about Zinion on the alien vessel, others on the surface of Zinion exploring an alien installation, and another group travelling in their ship back to Novus and then undertaking various tasks there (which also involved splitting up). In our most recent session the various groups rendezvoused, but will no doubt split up again when it makes sense to do so. Even in our Alien session, when the PCs first explored the alien vessel, with no contrivance at all on either the player or GM side of things the PCs split up: different ones wanted to check out different parts of the vessel; one PC got left on guard duty where the Aliens were known to emerge while the others were doing technical work on the vessel's bridge; etc.I haven't yet GMed a campaign where the PCs are strangers to one another, but have done that in multiple one-offs (using Cthulhu Dark and Wuthering Heights). In one of the Cthulhu Dark sessions the two protagonists encountered one another only two or three times, but their actions were interwoven and the consequences overlapped.The party is in many circumstances a contrivance. In Prince Valiant we live with it, because otherwise the distances between the PCs are too great for communication or interaction or even interweaving to take place. In Traveller we approach it flexibly, with the vessel rather than the mission being its focus. But the idea that nothing interesting ever happens except when these five people are ready to confront it together like a many-headed hydra is another level of contrivance altogether!</blockquote>

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