How do you deal with a setting where the pc's are basically all the same, for example mega city street judges - characters who are little more than badges and uniforms (though it needn't be the police).
Quote from: signoftheserpentHow do you deal with a setting where the pc's are basically all the same, for example mega city street judges - characters who are little more than badges and uniforms (though it needn't be the police).
This is where personality, characterization and all those other naughty terms come into play :rimshot:
Regards,
David R
Yeah ... what David said. My experience is that players will often set up roles for themselves that don't have anything to do with their abilities.
Like ... The Powerpuff Girls. Pretty much the same power-set, yes? Okay, okay, Blossom has Ice-Breath, and Bubbles has that wierd chirpy-sonic-thing that she sometimes does. But the differences are overshadowed by the similarities. But they're very different characters, with distinct roles relative to each other.
Plus, I love the Powerpuff Girls, so any place where I get to use them as an example makes me happy :D
Me? I've never bought the idea of niche protection as mandatory anyway. Of course, I went to GURPS right after D&D, so maybe I'm biased.
Anyway: Provided you aren't trying to pull this off in one of those highly regimented 'class based' games that is designed to prevent 'all one class' sort of parties, typically each member of the team should have their own little sub area they do when they aren't being 'judges'.
You'll have, say, your Demo guy, your investigation guy,a nd your big dumb lug that can take bullets better than anyone else on the team, and return fire even better than the other, not so bad themselves, players.
Primary than secondary areas of specialization. In your case, they share primaries...
Personalization via characterization would be a good starting point.
Crunch-wise I'd look for specialities, a bit as in Police Academy - Sgt. O'Melee, Sgt. Voice-Acting, Sgt. O'Commando, Sgt. O'Investigation, Sgt. McGyver, Dirty Sgt. Harry O'Bigbertha... You get the picture.
In today's blog I'm talking about my Pendragon game; in that game, everyone is a "knight" and nothing else. But we found that the vast differences in skills and personalities led to each player having a very different PC even if their "career" was all the same.
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