This week’s Game Wish is on Equality and Equivalence
The typical party of PCs appears to be composed of equals. They may have Nodwickian henchlings or distant authority figures, but in most of the games I’ve played, the PCs are equal with respect to each other.
Is this generalization true for you as well? What other group dynamics have showed up in campaigns you have played? What other group dynamics might be workable? What isn’t workable, and why?
While the vast majority of the games I’ve played with have been composed of equals, I can think of one significant exception, the long running Vikings in Space campaign:
This was an epic DnD Spelljammer game that started out with a conventional party of equal-powered PCs. The original PCs had got to something like 12th level and we’d accumulated a menagerie of supporting NPCs including a rakshasa, an androsphynx and a djinn who’s speciality was manufacturing soft furnishings (don’t ask!)
We reached a point where the plot called for the three original PCs to separate. What we did was form three parties, each consisting of one of the original PCs, and two lower-level henchmen played by the other two players, either by conventing existing supporting NPCs into PCs, or adding new ones. We rotated through the three parties session-by-session, so everybody had their turn at playing the high-level party leader.
It worked reasonably well. The lower-level PCs generally had special abilities that gave them enough spotlight time, and we solved the problem of keeping them alive in fights by the GM pitting against opponents with the same structure as the party; ensuring the biggest and nastiest monster always attacked the high-level PC, while the lower-level PCs mopped up the enemy redshirts.
The only other game I can think of with widely separated power levels is a Fudge game where the PCs were so diverse in abilities that power levels became academic. How do you compare a troll with a sentient dragonfly?