Dual Role Games

[doctorbadwolf]

I had a thought recently that a way tomake different campaigns with the same game feel different would be to give a second role to every PC, with sets of roles being set up in thematic groups.

So you might choose to play in my game Crossroads' [name tbd] future era, which is science fantasy futurism. You would have a list of spaceship roles, for campaigns set out in the dark, and some futuristic social/utility ones for campaigns set in the high tech cities. thiswould also contribute to the group character creation ideas of the game.

Im wondering if anyone has played games with this soet of split.

Star Wars 5e is one, with its ship roles alongside your classes .

Basically imagine if every Daggerheart Campaign Frame had a set of secondary roles that pushed the focus of every character into some part of that Frame.

 

[500 Toads]

A lot of systems that have a broad set of skills could do this. It'd mostly be weird in something like D&D or Pathfinder where all player characters are expected to be in a specific mold, i.e. adventurers, and you'd have to go well out of your way to build something different (like, uh, you could build a Pathfinder character who starts out as... a Thaumaturge who ignores all regular class feats in lieu of taking knowlege-y archetypes such as Loremaster and Herbalist, maybe going further afield like taking Celebrity or Dandy, but that's really not what the system normally expects you to do, nor would most campaigns, I think).

For Traveller, you could certainly have players running starship crew in addition to players running a separate ground team who handles exploration etc. For something like Delta Green, you might have the players running one team that specializes in things like research, signals intelligence, working with or around bureaucracies, running various illegal schemes to raise money to finance blacker-than-black operations, etc; and another team that specializes in fieldcraft like infiltration, combat, searching for evidence, that sort of thing.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

A lot of systems that have a broad set of skills could do this. It'd mostly be weird in something like D&D or Pathfinder where all player characters are expected to be in a specific mold, i.e. adventurers, and you'd have to go well out of your way to build something different (like, uh, you could build a Pathfinder character who starts out as... a Thaumaturge who ignores all regular class feats in lieu of taking knowlege-y archetypes such as Loremaster and Herbalist, maybe going further afield like taking Celebrity or Dandy, but that's really not what the system normally expects you to do, nor would most campaigns, I think).

Wait, no, if this were ported to dnd you would have an additional layer of features that aren't about dungeons and combat. You don't ignore combat, you just use a separate set of character building resources for it and for social challenges/downtime.

For Traveller, you could certainly have players running starship crew in addition to players running a separate ground team who handles exploration etc. For something like Delta Green, you might have the players running one team that specializes in things like research, signals intelligence, working with or around bureaucracies, running various illegal schemes to raise money to finance blacker-than-black operations, etc; and another team that specializes in fieldcraft like infiltration, combat, searching for evidence, that sort of thing.

Again, not one or the other. The whole point is to have a second role, alongside your "class".

 

[Lanefan]

Wait, no, if this were ported to dnd you would have an additional layer of features that aren't about dungeons and combat. You don't ignore combat, you just use a separate set of character building resources for it and for social challenges/downtime.

Seems like a good idea in principle but in the D&D-sphere I can't offhand see any way of it not adding a whole bunch of new complexity to a) character generation and b) ongoing play; both of which are already more than complex enough.

 

[Smackpixi]

This has been done in DnD. The oft forgot Aquisitions Incorporated book gives you a party/franchise role with mechanical benefits.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

This has been done in DnD. The oft forgot Aquisitions Incorporated book gives you a party/franchise role with mechanical benefits.

Thats a good example of how it can lean into a theme without costing normal character resources.

And a way to add back to dnd somwthing it has lost, which is features with weight that hook strongly into the world and the story.

 

[dbm]

GURPS does this with templates and lenses. Templates are recipes / pre-spent points to create a certain type of characters, while lenses are similar but smaller in scope (fewer points) and intended to be added to a template. So the mix of template and lens helps quickly create characters with a mix of skills and abilities.

Considering your premise, you could create a number of lenses for e.g. star ship crew to apply over templates for things like scientist, diplomat, security officer and so on.

It certainly works for GURPS, I am sure you could apply a similar concept in a class and level context.

ETA: specific to D&D, 3.5 Unearthed Arcana had gestalt characters where every character had two classes at the same time. Might be worth checking that out?