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Consensus on Roster vs OC vs Mix
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A mystical lurker, I am curious about this topic and wasn’t finding any good conversation about it either way.
Context: Some games have done quite will with roster only (thinking of some Comic Mu* in the last five years and such), others bomb going this route (and this is probably due to something else other than a strict roster).
Question/Concern: What is the consensus or what would you as a player look for/appreciate when looking at a new place?
Focus of potential place: upper echelon would receive more staff attention (events/missions) and considering Roster for this level; lower echelon might receive directive/TPs/RP from the upper (a team under a roster). Specifically Houses Major/nobles and families defined, but room for lesser OC houses. Only curious during development.
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@SirKay said in Consensus on Roster vs OC vs Mix:
Focus of potential place: upper echelon would receive more staff attention (events/missions) and considering Roster for this level; lower echelon might receive directive/TPs/RP from the upper (a team under a roster).
I would be a lot more concerned about a system in which some players explicitly and by intent receive “more staff attention” than I would be about anything to do with rosters.
Good luck tho
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@Ashkuri Thanks for the very fair response. I am curious then, if all chars are roster in this or said system and all are equally allotted/given staff attention, does that opinion change?
As noted the response implies a negative view of a potential mixed roster/OC system versus constructive criticism (what would be better or could work versus how it was written) and only trying to further conversation and discussion by asking this follow-up.
As an aside, I’m guessing this is one reason there has been a really popular roster only comic mu in recent years.
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With your example of a Comics game, I think maybe you’re conflating “Roster vs OC” with “Featured Characters vs OC”.
Any game with FCs is going to have issues that are well-established at this point. Prestige/connections/resources/powers are not necessarily equal among all characters. If the FCs are from an established canon, people come into the game with pre-conceived notions about how characters should behave, what relationships should be canon, etc. It leads to competition over FCs, which is often tied to activity requirements, strict idle policies, etc. etc.
If you have a roster of entirely homegrown characters, all created on even footing, none of that exists.
Then it becomes largely a matter of taste. Some folks really like the draw of making a character their own. Others like the “grab it and go” aspect or pre-built relationships / RP connections inherent in a roster system.
Comic games are a special case because the established characters are the principal draw for many (if not most) players. Many don’t just want to play in Batman’s world, they want to be Batman. This used to be super common in Star Wars games as well, but I think less so these days.
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@SirKay if you don’t have the bandwidth to give game content to OCs, just don’t have OCs. Building second class players into your game design is asking for a headache.
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For me, I never play FCs/Roster characters. I just can’t get into them; they’re like ill-fitting suits. Always off, never comfortable. I need to play a character I create, even if said character is fitting a specific niche.
That said, I have no problem playing with FCs or Roster characters.
But as others have stated, if you’re just going to make OCs second-class characters, it’s probably better to go with Roster-only. Players will generally pick up on that attitude and you’ll slowly end up with a mostly or all Roster-only MU* anyway.
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There’s no way to have a consensus on this, because the answer is: it depends entirely on the game.
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@Faraday Thanks, this is very helpful.
I do recall the day of star wars and jedi by app.
That is a good distinction you made between FC and OC.
I’m curious if the roster and OCs were both FC, had plot, missions, info, events equally distributed.
@ all - the concept of bandwith/allowing only what staff will focus on is good. The only times I’ve seen it sort of work has been on WoD games, make PCs for the spheres with staff, but they allow mundane humans to play at own risk and on their own (ie, show up for monster de jour event and get splatted at ones own risk). I think Faraday was closer to my thoughts, ‘this is what we’re playing, adventurers, make the barmaid with no skills and you’re proverbially on your own’.
@Roz That makes sense. I’m curious in the context of rosters, what considerations should be made or what are some good ways to go about incorporating this if one chooses this route. Sorry if the consensus isn’t a good tool to collect the correct data.
ETA: Slightly seeing: Mixed can work, depending on implementation, including fairness of staff for including non-roster chars.
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@SirKay said in Consensus on Roster vs OC vs Mix:
I’m curious if the roster and OCs were both FC, had plot, missions, info, events equally distributed.
Like @Roz said, it’s really going to depend on the game.
If your FCs are canon characters, you can’t possibly balance OC/roster. Someone might personally prefer an OC, but an OC will never be on the same footing as a Han Solo or Captain America.
If you mean FCs in the sense of featured roles/positions/power levels, then maybe? Usually, some roles are going to be perceived as more important/desirable than others. But it’s theoretically possible to design a game where everybody’s a Navy SEAL, or everybody’s a similarly-skilled jedi. As long as your staff-built roster chars aren’t intrinsically better/cooler/etc than your OCs, it could work.
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I would personally never play a roster character*, but I would also never play in a game based on an existing canon universe (like superhero games), so that works out. My brain just can’t do it, I’d collapse into a heap trying to play them “right.”
As someone said above, I’m perfectly fine playing with roster characters, but it’s awkward when there’s a player swap and the character is inevitably different afterwards. That just comes with the territory, though.
(*I did actually pick up a roster character on Arx for like, a month, and then got overwhelmed trying to work out his past relationships, and never ended up playing him. That’s the closest I’ve gotten, I think.)
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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.
