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Consensus on Roster vs OC vs Mix
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I like the idea of rosters, because they come pre-baked with connections and stuff. But OCs can also join rosters… as long as you know if you idle out, your OC goes up on the roster and anyone else can grab them, per normal rules and junk.
And you can open up OCs in waves, as staff and game capacity allow for proper attention to be given to the new folks.
Also keep in mind chargen is a collaborative process, so new arrivals can fit into existent hooks.
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Whether I want to play a roster varies - as one would expect - from game to game and how they’re being used. I used to only want to play my super special creations, but I’ve picked up some I’ve quite enjoyed and increasingly think they’re an important option for various reasons (quick entry into a game, one avenue of theme enforcement, and so on).
I’d never play whatever the ‘you don’t have access to staff events’ character is, whatever it was, which seems like a separate question to which the answer is mostly ‘no.’
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@Third-Eye said in Consensus on Roster vs OC vs Mix:
I’d never play whatever the ‘you don’t have access to staff events’ character is, whatever it was, which seems like a separate question to which the answer is mostly ‘no.’
Yeah I mean… I’ve done that before. Mortal in a WoD game, nurse in a war game, civilian on a military game. If someone really wants to play outside the box, is fully aware of the consequences, and is fine to generate their own fun, it can sometimes work. But that has nothing to do with roster vs OC. Intentionally steering someone into a dead-end character is lame.
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I agree with @Roz that you’ll never get a consensus, and that preferences for some (myself included) will vary by game.
I actually like the idea of roster-only (or all-FCs-are-rosters-but-OCs-are-allowed) for a comic book game. I think this is a good way to ensure that every sheet/BG fits staff’s interpretation of the character (which I think is more important than fitting every player’s interpretation).
I wouldn’t have a problem with a Lords & Ladies game where all the house heads and heirs were roster characters, but everyone else was an OC. I think that would be a good way of ensuring that the most emblematic characters for each house fit what staff wanted from them and reinforced thematic connections between houses.
But in general, I agree with the concern of “echelons” of characters where some get more staff attention. I don’t know, maybe a better way to say what you’re looking for is that some characters would have larger levers to effect game events? Because that’s certainly true of house heads and heirs in most L&L games, even if they don’t actually get any more of staff’s attention.
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For me personally, I could never take on a previously played roster character simply because of the whole “ill fitting suit” concept that @STD mentioned. It just wouldn’t feel right to me, and I know that regardless of how well I understood the character’s history, I could never play the character the same way, or even try to take the character in the originally intended direction, story-wise.
That said, if it was a roster character that had never seen previous play, I could play that. I’ve been to enough conventions and played in enough tabletop one shots that being handed a pre-generated character isn’t a foreign concept to me. That said, I may take said pregen and run in entirely a different direction from what staff might have had for it.
It’s usually original characters for me, or at worst, concepts worked out with staff prior to chargen. I do have a habit of asking staff what kinds of characters would add to the game when I first scope out a new place to play, so sometimes my characters aren’t exactly original, but aren’t rosters either.
I have honestly never given a superhero game a try, but if I were to play a roster character there, all of the characters I could think to play would probably not be on the available list, such as Mr. Immortal, Danger Man, or Bloodline.
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Thanks for these responses they’ve been very helpful.
I was curious about roster, I’ve never taken time to build one properly for some of the reasons listed.
When I play, I go the route @Faraday has sometimes, further from FC - commoners, non-important staff on a ship, etc. I did try a prior played roster for the first time on Concordia and was surprised with the results.
I imagine staff focus and allowing folks to app outside of the focus would indeed be its own conversation.
Mixed route may be best with equal focus on the roster and OC as both being applicable FC with equity in staff attentinon.
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I love rosters but I prefer to write my own characters.
And everyone else’s characters, apparently. Because I have a problem.
let it be a challenge to you
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I had an idea for an alternative to Rosters vs OC vs Mix, and I was curious if there was ever a game that did it:
Players come to the game with ideas they want to fold into their character, and concepts they are hard against, and the staff writes the character / builds the sheet /etc. This way the player gets what they want out of it, and it also ensures that the character is formulated in a way that will mesh with the game as it already exists.
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@MisterBoring Not sure how close it was to what you’re saying, but ye olde Horror Mu* had players come up with a general concept (like strong character, academic character) and they played non-related arcs, but the same concept? I never played and could be off base, but that was my understanding.
Champions games have used the staff builders to help players get what they wanted out of the mechanics, which is sort of close I believe.
As an aside, I like the idea of collaboration between player/staff to get what both want mutually.
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@sao said in Consensus on Roster vs OC vs Mix:
I love rosters but I prefer to write my own characters.
And everyone else’s characters, apparently. Because I have a problem.
I LOOOVE the characters you create
The depth and nuances - just beyond.That said, I’ve pretty much been roster-only for many years. I hate making characters for myself and find it super interesting to take up a character/role to play on a game. It makes it easier for me to find direction and such.
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I have toyed with an idea much like the ‘echelons.’
But my thought was more about players than characters.
Say, you can set your character-type as “main” “supporting” or “extra.” Each player gets one main character. Plots center on main characters. Your other characters are supporting cast or local colour. You can switch their roles, but not all the time or often.
I often like to play those ‘supporting cast’ parts. But I hate being shoved into the background if I want and have expressed a desire for some main-character action.
And it really annoys me when there’s MU full of people pleading for GM attention and it turns out Player Bob is not only playing Snake, the BIG STAR of the Motorcycle Gang Faction, he’s also playing Kyle, the BIG STAR of the Rodeo Cowboys Faction, and Roscoe, the BIG STAR of the Cops Faction…
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I sort of want to see a game that daringly chooses to eschew both rosters and OCs and go for a new alternative: purely random generation.
The character sheet and background are generated at random. There would be some level of staff review to ensure that the sheet and background made sense, but other than that it’s push a button and off to the races.
While I have seen plenty of games with random sheet generation, I can’t say I’ve seen one do backgrounds and concepts at random.
Proud Member of the Pro-Mummy Alliance
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@MisterBoring I’m down with it. That would work really well for my ‘Call of Cthulhu on a Cruise Ship’ idea…
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I never thought I’d be interested in playing a rostered OC character, but a little while ago, I joined a game where I wasn’t quite grasping the theme. I felt a bit nervous about creating my own character, but they had several roster slots for original characters that players could take over. These were simple, low-level, everyday-type characters that allowed me to jump right into the roleplay. It helped me immerse myself in the game, understand the theme, and build up the confidence to eventually create my own character. I thought it worked really well.
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@Raistlin I think a lot of games could benefit from having something like that. Grab-and-go PCs.
I dunno if it comes up now, but people used to say that an effort-intensive process to create an OC or claim a roster would improve player-retention – the player had to be invested in the game to do all that.
My experience was that in reality, people are just as likely to drop the game after doing five hours of work chargenning as those who spent twenty minutes, and the real key to getting them to connect again is to get them into a fun scene as soon as you possibly can. Ask B.F. Skinner about it.
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@Gashlycrumb said in Consensus on Roster vs OC vs Mix:
Ask B.F. Skinner about it.
He’ll just go on, and on, and on, and on about pigeons…
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
BE AN ADULT -
@Pavel Naw, he’d just take three minutes to train a pigeon to kick your ass.
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@Pavel said in Consensus on Roster vs OC vs Mix:
@Gashlycrumb said in Consensus on Roster vs OC vs Mix:
Ask B.F. Skinner about it.
He’ll just go on, and on, and on, and on about pigeons…
In college, my dad attended a guest lecture by Skinner in which he talked about Behaviorism. At the end he did a demonstration with one of the trained pigeons.
It didn’t perform as it was trained.
Skinner was clearly annoyed and embarrassed. My dad thought it was one of the funniest things he’d ever seen.
Even in psychology the old adage applies: never work with children or animals.
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@STD One of my favourite stories about this is the one where students learning about Skinner’s work in a lecture class applied it to the professor. Their reenforcer was to look attentive. It didn’t take them very long to have the professor consistently lecture from the location the students had chosen and in a pose they’d chosen. The funny bit is that the professor was enormously pissed off when they told him they’d done this, rather than delighted.
When I was young and hot I used to shape behavior in aquaintances, like the foul-tempered bus driver on the route I had to take, by smiling at them.
Edited to add: Karen Pryor is much more fun to read than Skinner. Don’t Shoot the Dog is a dumb title, but it’s a great book. The thing where you do clickerr-training on other humans as a parlour game is hilarious fun. And the whole business is good for your head, because you end up having to constatantly look for and attend to behaviors you want, you’re always focused on positive shit.
