Character Tree [Archive] - Wizards Community

Character Tree [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Woas
05-12-04, 12:31 PM I've some questions, comments and ideas on "In-Game Downtime" that I'd like to run past the kind people of the boards here.

Firstly to make sure everyones on the right page, In-Game Downtime as I understand it is time in a campaign where the PCs generally stay in one area, usually for a large periods of time determined by the DM (2 months, 2 years, 10 years, etc.) and in general is when the PCs get to use their craft skills/item creation feats most effectively.

I've been in a small handful of D&D games since I've started playing about a year ago now and In-Game Downtime seems to be as unique a part of each game as any other aspect in a Homebrew setting would be. Some games have In-Game Downtime measured in hours (relatively none) and we as the PCs are on the move non-stop. While some have had it in years (relatively a lot.) This brings me to my first question, how do all of your handle your In-Game Downtime? Do most of you consider opportunities for lengthy bits of Downtime as a neccesary? Or are they perhaps more, organic, sprinking about when the PCs have finished a major adventure and you need an extra week to prepare? Furthermore, what happends during your Downtime? Are 2 years pronounced past, the PCs change the Age on their character sheets and allowed to take 20s on their items? Do you allow the PCs to take certain actions and roleplay during the time? Or course it would be mind-blowing to roleplay each day of those 2 years, but do you allow them to roleplay special key parts?

The title of the subject is something I was thinking of doing for my next campaign or maybe even the current. I'm not sure where exactly the idea came from, probably from Ars Magic since I had recently read through it... but regardless, the idea was to allow the PCs to create more than one character. I thought the title "NPC Farming" was kinda cute and I picture a farm with characters sprouting from it.
Anway, the players are allowed to create several characters. There could be a limit, maybe lossely based off Reputation and Contact varients in Unearthed Arcana, there could be no limit, there could be a set limit. Either way, the players would create more than one character. Not all at the same time per se, but eventually. So what does this all have to do with Downtime and stuff?
Well the idea is that the players would be able to switch their characters around when they want some downtime with a certain character. A players characters could be all friends who have moved on with their lives and live in different villages. Maybe they are all vassals or subordinates of the main character and such. Or even members of the same guild or organization. Whichever it is, when a player feels that some downtime is needed, then they can announce that their current character is going to settle down for some time, and to go seek out his/her buddy, sibling, apprentice, whatever. While that character sits out, they can create items, gain contacts in their town, act as NPCs for the party and what not... hence the idea of NPC Farming.
What this does is give players the oppurtinity to have downtime with characters, but also keep on playing with another without having "2 years go by."
The problem however is that when you switch one character for another, you are in theory "roleplaying each day of those 2 years" like I mentioned above. But this is only a problem if you plan to have a character sit out for those periods of time. Basically a player would have their "main" PC, and then some "second string" characters that can fill in for the downtime.

Anyway, it was just an idea I had. The main part of this post was asking you guys/gals on how you all worked with Downtime.
Autosponge
05-12-04, 09:02 PM I don't allow what you're proposing until a PC has a cohort (or followers). He gets to RP the cohort while the "main PC" is slaving away on his crafts or studies.

Otherwise, at times deceided by the PCs and at lengths determined by the PCs, I will fast-forward a campaign so they can study, craft, or whatever. They must remain in a safe location (like a major city with no catasrophes on the horizon). They can gain XP during this time by making successful checks (I've written whole threads on this by now). All the storylines will progress as normal (like if they haven't saved the princess yet, she's dead now and her father the baron committed suicide, his land was given back to the high mage and blah blah blah).
Loftower
05-12-04, 09:43 PM I allow a player to make up a replacement character when his or her other character is out of action. This happens very rarely for the reasons Autosponge posted: the world turns. No one wants to be left out, and since I don’t give experience for doing non-heroic things, they fall behind.

If enough players want their characters to take a break then I will fast forward time, i.e.: “We spend the rainy season in the house at Wazikama.” I try never to push fast forward as DM because I can’t know what the players might want to do with that time.
Sucineri
05-12-04, 10:03 PM No one wants to be left out, and since I don’t give experience for doing non-heroic things, they fall behind.

What about a monk or fighter who wants to teach at a training school in town for fighting? Over that time he is still honing his own skills while helping others out as well..and then maybe a couple times he gets students that are so good they challenge the teacher? I wouldn't give the teacher FULL exps for beating down the encounters because the CR would probably be lower than the teacher's level..but beating down a cocky student isn't exactly "heroic"..yet it is still a learning experience.
MoogleEmpMog
05-12-04, 11:50 PM I like the character tree concept far more than forcing a player to play a cohort who, barring the Dragon Cohort feat, will invariably be a level or more lower than his PC.

I also like the idea character tree because it allows players to try out a different character concept now and then without doing something silly (like killing off the existing PC) or permanent (like having his Monk retire to found a monastery).

Good work, Woas! :D
Autosponge
05-13-04, 07:21 AM The problem with the character tree is two-fold:

1. Players will invariably have more to do that concerns their other character(s) when they play each character. For instance, keeping magic items that the other character will like/use for when they meet.

2. Players will invariably use meta-game and knowledge from other characters to form opinions about the game.

However, if you use the cohort method it all makes sense. These characters are tied at the hip. They share info, magic item, etc. Additionally, the more characters you allow in a tree, the less attached the player will be to each character and possibly the more confused they'll become over what happened to whom (escpecially in large busy campaigns). However, because of the strong link between main and cohort, these two characters don't need to be separated--they are for all intensive purposes part of the same "main" character. In fact, you don't even need to create a new adventuring party, they've already been introduced by the main character and because of the secondary character's committment to the main character, everyone trusts him. Lastly, if the secondary character(s) was not a level or two lower than the main, they might be tempted to just leave the main locked away in a monestary or whatever and play the secondary character--this breaks campaign continuity.

You might like the tree better but its practical applications have far too many limitations for me to ever allow it in a game. You get one main character till death. Any companions, followers, or cohorts may be run by you parrallel to your main character and leveling a follower or cohort does not effect their status with regard to the main character's leadership score (meaning they aren't going to leave the main character and do their own thing just because they leveled).
Winsome
05-13-04, 10:09 AM Oddly I though NPC Farming would be something about manipulation people to make you money, or perhaps Organ Harvesting in villages the party passes thorugh.

Anyway

I skip through downtime, if a mage wants time to create some items then everyone else gets to say what they're doing (if anything) and time passes. Any rolls are made and the game continues.
Woas
05-13-04, 01:11 PM Certainly a multi-character game isn't for every campaign and doesn't always fit. But I think there are quite a few Pros that MoogleEmpMog started to hint on. Of course meta-gaming can be a problem if your players are not mature about it... any aspect of D&D can be a problem when Meta-gaming is involved.

- Character death can still be as severe a "a problem" to a player as normal. But the move to a new character can become much smoother as the transaction between characters are not totaly strangers. There have been several times where I have been a player in a party who has had a compatriot die, and being at low levels or being low on funds has permitted us from bringing that character back. This has lead the party into "find the next players character" quests. Which seem very railroady, and out of place. Even though as players we understand that its neccesary. As a GM I try to avoid those situations as best I can, but it has happend.

- It's true that the party would have many resources to draw upon. Not having a rogue or a cleric in parties have always made the players think around their situations. With multiple characters, those gaps wouldn't neccesarily go away. The extra characters would not follow the main party around. So if the party is traveling without a rogue, then they cannot just *poof* switch it in for their current character... The party would have to strategize much like a Wizard does for spell preperation for an upcomming adventure. Whether asking the Bard to join this one, or the cleric.

- Players could take turns sharing the roles. I've played my share of Clerics. Sometimes it just gets so boring being the team "Med-Kit." During a game, I would like to try other characters. Maybe take the front line sometime... or be the sneaky ranger scout. Not the Cleric the whole game. With character trees (I like this term Moogle ;) Should I change the title of the thread to that maybe? NPC farming is a little misleading :cool: ) a player can do this.

- This is a fairly specific Pro, but it comes up in my group and I've seen other posters here complain about it... and that is the situation where you only have a few of your players show up for a session. Friends party hard last night and to hungover to play the next day? Got called into work last minute? Only got 3 of 5 players show up and they are on the 6th level of a dungeon? Well, with character trees, if this happens, you can put that dungeon crawl on the back burner, and have some mini-adventures with the othe characters in the mean time.
The Fury
05-13-04, 01:40 PM I let every PC with leadership take 1 cohort and things have been going great. They decide who's going on what adventure whenever something comes up, and I give them the option of using the exp that they get between them and their cohort as they see fit. It's actually pretty funny. These guys beam when they say what their cohorts are doing. I enforce that they can't get higher then the leadership score can allow, and I let them hold back levels so the cohort can use the exp on item creation. It's a breath of fresh air when they get tired of their characters for them to focus on their cohorts.

Followers are useful too, for manpower. I also say that followers and cohorts will never betray a PC, so that alleviates that worry.
MoogleEmpMog
05-13-04, 03:11 PM I would change the title to character trees, yes; I think it comes from Dark Sun 2e, when it was assumed that PCs would die left and right so it paid to have backup :D

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Woas 05-12-04, 12:31 PM	I've some questions, comments and ideas on "In-Game Downtime" that I'd like to run past the kind people of the boards here. Firstly to make sure everyones on the right page, In-Game Downtime as I understand it is time in a campaign where the PCs generally stay in one area, usually for a large periods of time determined by the DM (2 months, 2 years, 10 years, etc.) and in general is when the PCs get to use their craft skills/item creation feats most effectively. I've been in a small handful of D&D games since I've started playing about a year ago now and In-Game Downtime seems to be as unique a part of each game as any other aspect in a Homebrew setting would be. Some games have In-Game Downtime measured in hours (relatively none) and we as the PCs are on the move non-stop. While some have had it in years (relatively a lot.) This brings me to my first question, how do all of your handle your In-Game Downtime? Do most of you consider opportunities for lengthy bits of Downtime as a neccesary? Or are they perhaps more, organic, sprinking about when the PCs have finished a major adventure and you need an extra week to prepare? Furthermore, what happends during your Downtime? Are 2 years pronounced past, the PCs change the Age on their character sheets and allowed to take 20s on their items? Do you allow the PCs to take certain actions and roleplay during the time? Or course it would be mind-blowing to roleplay each day of those 2 years, but do you allow them to roleplay special key parts? The title of the subject is something I was thinking of doing for my next campaign or maybe even the current. I'm not sure where exactly the idea came from, probably from Ars Magic since I had recently read through it... but regardless, the idea was to allow the PCs to create more than one character. I thought the title "NPC Farming" was kinda cute and I picture a farm with characters sprouting from it. Anway, the players are allowed to create several characters. There could be a limit, maybe lossely based off Reputation and Contact varients in Unearthed Arcana, there could be no limit, there could be a set limit. Either way, the players would create more than one character. Not all at the same time per se, but eventually. So what does this all have to do with Downtime and stuff? Well the idea is that the players would be able to switch their characters around when they want some downtime with a certain character. A players characters could be all friends who have moved on with their lives and live in different villages. Maybe they are all vassals or subordinates of the main character and such. Or even members of the same guild or organization. Whichever it is, when a player feels that some downtime is needed, then they can announce that their current character is going to settle down for some time, and to go seek out his/her buddy, sibling, apprentice, whatever. While that character sits out, they can create items, gain contacts in their town, act as NPCs for the party and what not... hence the idea of NPC Farming. What this does is give players the oppurtinity to have downtime with characters, but also keep on playing with another without having "2 years go by." The problem however is that when you switch one character for another, you are in theory "roleplaying each day of those 2 years" like I mentioned above. But this is only a problem if you plan to have a character sit out for those periods of time. Basically a player would have their "main" PC, and then some "second string" characters that can fill in for the downtime. Anyway, it was just an idea I had. The main part of this post was asking you guys/gals on how you all worked with Downtime.
Autosponge 05-12-04, 09:02 PM	I don't allow what you're proposing until a PC has a cohort (or followers). He gets to RP the cohort while the "main PC" is slaving away on his crafts or studies. Otherwise, at times deceided by the PCs and at lengths determined by the PCs, I will fast-forward a campaign so they can study, craft, or whatever. They must remain in a safe location (like a major city with no catasrophes on the horizon). They can gain XP during this time by making successful checks (I've written whole threads on this by now). All the storylines will progress as normal (like if they haven't saved the princess yet, she's dead now and her father the baron committed suicide, his land was given back to the high mage and blah blah blah).
Loftower 05-12-04, 09:43 PM	I allow a player to make up a replacement character when his or her other character is out of action. This happens very rarely for the reasons Autosponge posted: the world turns. No one wants to be left out, and since I don’t give experience for doing non-heroic things, they fall behind. If enough players want their characters to take a break then I will fast forward time, i.e.: “We spend the rainy season in the house at Wazikama.” I try never to push fast forward as DM because I can’t know what the players might want to do with that time.
Sucineri 05-12-04, 10:03 PM	No one wants to be left out, and since I don’t give experience for doing non-heroic things, they fall behind. What about a monk or fighter who wants to teach at a training school in town for fighting? Over that time he is still honing his own skills while helping others out as well..and then maybe a couple times he gets students that are so good they challenge the teacher? I wouldn't give the teacher FULL exps for beating down the encounters because the CR would probably be lower than the teacher's level..but beating down a cocky student isn't exactly "heroic"..yet it is still a learning experience.
MoogleEmpMog 05-12-04, 11:50 PM	I like the character tree concept far more than forcing a player to play a cohort who, barring the Dragon Cohort feat, will invariably be a level or more lower than his PC. I also like the idea character tree because it allows players to try out a different character concept now and then without doing something silly (like killing off the existing PC) or permanent (like having his Monk retire to found a monastery). Good work, Woas! :D
Autosponge 05-13-04, 07:21 AM	The problem with the character tree is two-fold: 1. Players will invariably have more to do that concerns their other character(s) when they play each character. For instance, keeping magic items that the other character will like/use for when they meet. 2. Players will invariably use meta-game and knowledge from other characters to form opinions about the game. However, if you use the cohort method it all makes sense. These characters are tied at the hip. They share info, magic item, etc. Additionally, the more characters you allow in a tree, the less attached the player will be to each character and possibly the more confused they'll become over what happened to whom (escpecially in large busy campaigns). However, because of the strong link between main and cohort, these two characters don't need to be separated--they are for all intensive purposes part of the same "main" character. In fact, you don't even need to create a new adventuring party, they've already been introduced by the main character and because of the secondary character's committment to the main character, everyone trusts him. Lastly, if the secondary character(s) was not a level or two lower than the main, they might be tempted to just leave the main locked away in a monestary or whatever and play the secondary character--this breaks campaign continuity. You might like the tree better but its practical applications have far too many limitations for me to ever allow it in a game. You get one main character till death. Any companions, followers, or cohorts may be run by you parrallel to your main character and leveling a follower or cohort does not effect their status with regard to the main character's leadership score (meaning they aren't going to leave the main character and do their own thing just because they leveled).
Winsome 05-13-04, 10:09 AM	Oddly I though NPC Farming would be something about manipulation people to make you money, or perhaps Organ Harvesting in villages the party passes thorugh. Anyway I skip through downtime, if a mage wants time to create some items then everyone else gets to say what they're doing (if anything) and time passes. Any rolls are made and the game continues.
Woas 05-13-04, 01:11 PM	Certainly a multi-character game isn't for every campaign and doesn't always fit. But I think there are quite a few Pros that MoogleEmpMog started to hint on. Of course meta-gaming can be a problem if your players are not mature about it... any aspect of D&D can be a problem when Meta-gaming is involved. - Character death can still be as severe a "a problem" to a player as normal. But the move to a new character can become much smoother as the transaction between characters are not totaly strangers. There have been several times where I have been a player in a party who has had a compatriot die, and being at low levels or being low on funds has permitted us from bringing that character back. This has lead the party into "find the next players character" quests. Which seem very railroady, and out of place. Even though as players we understand that its neccesary. As a GM I try to avoid those situations as best I can, but it has happend. - It's true that the party would have many resources to draw upon. Not having a rogue or a cleric in parties have always made the players think around their situations. With multiple characters, those gaps wouldn't neccesarily go away. The extra characters would not follow the main party around. So if the party is traveling without a rogue, then they cannot just poof switch it in for their current character... The party would have to strategize much like a Wizard does for spell preperation for an upcomming adventure. Whether asking the Bard to join this one, or the cleric. - Players could take turns sharing the roles. I've played my share of Clerics. Sometimes it just gets so boring being the team "Med-Kit." During a game, I would like to try other characters. Maybe take the front line sometime... or be the sneaky ranger scout. Not the Cleric the whole game. With character trees (I like this term Moogle ;) Should I change the title of the thread to that maybe? NPC farming is a little misleading :cool: ) a player can do this. - This is a fairly specific Pro, but it comes up in my group and I've seen other posters here complain about it... and that is the situation where you only have a few of your players show up for a session. Friends party hard last night and to hungover to play the next day? Got called into work last minute? Only got 3 of 5 players show up and they are on the 6th level of a dungeon? Well, with character trees, if this happens, you can put that dungeon crawl on the back burner, and have some mini-adventures with the othe characters in the mean time.
The Fury 05-13-04, 01:40 PM	I let every PC with leadership take 1 cohort and things have been going great. They decide who's going on what adventure whenever something comes up, and I give them the option of using the exp that they get between them and their cohort as they see fit. It's actually pretty funny. These guys beam when they say what their cohorts are doing. I enforce that they can't get higher then the leadership score can allow, and I let them hold back levels so the cohort can use the exp on item creation. It's a breath of fresh air when they get tired of their characters for them to focus on their cohorts. Followers are useful too, for manpower. I also say that followers and cohorts will never betray a PC, so that alleviates that worry.
MoogleEmpMog 05-13-04, 03:11 PM	I would change the title to character trees, yes; I think it comes from Dark Sun 2e, when it was assumed that PCs would die left and right so it paid to have backup :D