Troupe play is play with each player having more than one character, serving different roles. There are several ways to structure Troupe play - and each is best suited for a different play style. Here are some guidelines for setting up troupe play in any game:

The Mission Impossible Troupe

The players each have one character in play at any given time, but the group leader selects the particular characters, one from each player, used in this session or story arc from two to three characters offered from each player. The characters should be different types, but roughly equivalent skill level. The name comes from the old Mission Impossible TV show, where the MI leader - Mr. Phelps - would look through the currently available agents and select ones suited to the particular mission at hand. On the TV show, of course, the ones selected were almost always the same, but allowed for selection of particular guest stars. In principle, however, the method enabled the group leader to select an optimal selection of skill sets, and it is this principle that should be followed. it is best used where the PCs are all members of some larger organization, and are all specialists.

The Tri-level Troupe

The players each make three characters ‐ perhaps an older character with lots of skills, a mid‐level character with moderate skills, and a young character with few skills. Another form would be officers, NCOs, and grunts. Groups can be mixed ‐ with varying levels of competence ‐ or matched ‐ with everyone more or less equivalent. This form allows a more hierarchical model, with one or two main characters who lead the others, a couple secondary characters, and the balance as low level cannon fodder, which is great for side-quests, detached parties, and any other simultaneous play, where two things are happening at the same time.

The Teacher/Trainee Troupe

A player or the GM makes one older, experienced character, the Teacher. The rest of the troupe are Trainees, just learning their craft, whatever it is. The Teacher leads the groups in learning situations, which can be canned training courses a la the Danger Room, or low risk real life situations. Of course, risks can be deceptive, and a low risk situation can go bad fast. this is a great model for some supers groups - X-Men type supers schools, junior members of a Justice League or Legion of Supers organization, or even sidekicks. It also lends itself to a Harry Potter type wizard school.

The Classic Troupe

This is the form taken by Ars Magica, where PCs played a Wizard and a skilled warrior Companion each, and the relatively unskilled Grogs were played by whoever wanted to play them. The players make two characters each ‐ perhaps a spell‐casting type and a competent warrior type. They also make a group of less combat-skilled types, such as young trainee warriors. Each competent warrior is paired with a spell‐caster played by a different player, and the trainee warriors are miscellaneously played by anyone who wants to as an additional character. This can also be the setup for games where the different groups are different intelligent species, such as riders and dragons, or pilots and intelligent star fighters/mecha. The less-combat skilled types can be attending the dragons, or mechanics for the mecha.

The Battle Troupe

Each player makes a group commander, and the other players each make a character to serve under each leader. This is great for military games, where command is distributed, and small groups are working as parts of a larger whole - such as crews of small military starships, or tank crews, or the officers of a Submarine wolfpack. Each unit functions as a separate whole, yet working together with other units for a single mission or purpose.

I really like troupe play. Especially from the GM point of view. It frequently makes it easier to run a wide set of different kinds of adventures without a lot of sillyness to ensure each PC has a useful skill set and a reason to go along on any particular adventure.

The Mission Impossible Troupe we use a version of this for Call of Cthulhu. Though we tend to choose the characters by consensus out of game and with GM input, rather than by a leader in game.

The Tri-level Troupe we used this for playing Star Trek. It worked extremely well for the single ship mode of ST and TNG. Gradually the troupe expanded in size, but originally we started with one bridge officer, one security officer, and one science or medical officer per player. That provided a character both on the ship/bridge and on an away team mission.

Choices were either made out of game or in game.

Out of Game

• The GM says "You should have Martin on the away team because I have planned something for him." Or "be sure to bring a medical officer on the away team."  is something in this adventure for him.

• A player says, "I think it would be fun if Vash and Haldane were on this mission together."

In Game

• If there were no out of game reasons or suggestions, then the character in game who was in charge, e.g. Captain, First Officer, Away Team leader made the decision - which of course meant that in effect that character's player made the decision.

I've only played troupe style in one campaign, but it worked nicely.

It was a SciFi Trav-inspired game, and the GM had each of us make a military and a scientist character, to reflect the varying nature of the campaign he had in mind.

I took the unusual step of making my characters twin brothers. Heh.

As it turned out, the players seemed more into their military characters, so I'm not sure it worked as well as hoped.

But I had a blast.

Of all the troupe styles we have used the Classic troupe the least. It seems the least flexible, and my players were not real partial to the promiscuous nature of playing the grunts. They prefer to each play something they own.

As we play a lot of military games, the Tri-level Troupe is a favorite. It allows the mission commander to send out detachments for tasks, while the main group continues on a separate course.

The Mission Impossible Troupe is also a favorite, and is best suited for civilian exploration in serial play within a larger story-arc.

Perhaps one of our best and most exciting troupes was a Battle Troupe, though, where each player was captain of an American submarine in WWII, and each other player had an officer character on each sub. The play was amazing and exciting.

Don't forget "Stable Style", from early D&D and Tunnels & Trolls: multiple characters per player, sometimes in a single session, no fixed hierarchy; each player decides whether one of their characters is the leader and the other followers, or whether to play them all as equals, sort of like the DCC character funnel. The structure is not enforrced by the GM.

Done it as a player. Can be interesting depending on the set up. It can get a little hectic keeping track of who is doing what. One was an AD&D campaign with a DM who was REALLY into large adventuring groups. So I was handling 2 characters at once, with a 3rd immenent to join in, and another player was handling 4, with another immenent to join in, and the new gal in the group was handling 1 with interest in handling more if/once she got the hang of it.

Also done the alternating character style. Been doing that in a long running campaign now, switching back and fourth between two characters at appropriate moments and occasionally having them interact.

Its simmilar to having henchmen that are under the PCs control.

Haven't tried troupe style play but I might give it a shot. Not sure if it would mesh with my preferences but might be fun to try for a one shot.

Omega - yes! Playing Old School with henchmen is very much a type of troupe style.

talysman - Stable style? Never played that way. I've run PC+Henchman with D&D, but not quite like that. I would definitely include it as a type of troupe, though!

Isn't the express purpose of the DCC funnel to end up with one character by attrition? That's not really the goal of troupe style - don't know if I would include it.

I think there's another type of troupe play, which i'll call Horses for Courses.

It's part Mission Impossible in that those with the most suited skill-set are chosen, but each player chooses the character they wish to play in the coming adventure from 2 or 3 they control from a 'stable' of characters.

So, for exploration, Bob leaves his architect character at home, but readies his guide character. Suzy dusts off her Cartographer, but leaves her footpad at home.

Meanwhile, political trouble at home, means that Stuart brings out his bailiff character and puts his horseman away and Paul gets his politician out and rests his barbarian.

Quote from: flyingmice;813343Isn't the express purpose of the DCC funnel to end up with one character by attrition? That's not really the goal of troupe style - don't know if I would include it.

Yeah, the idea is that you'll make it out of the funnel with at least one... but it's likely some Players will need to pick up a spare to finish while others will finish with extra... and we've run it that the extras go into a Stable... as NPC resources or as alternate PCs. I haven't been thinking of it as Troupe play though.

I'd really love to do more with troupe play; we had that as a sort of backup arrangement in my historical ACKS game, should anything happen to the main PCs. It did in one instance, and the player used one of their PC's henchmen as their viewpoint character until he was better.

But for the most part my group are quite wedded to only playing one character at a time in any given premise/game.

Quote from: One Horse Town;813346I think there's another type of troupe play, which i'll call Horses for Courses.

It's part Mission Impossible in that those with the most suited skill-set are chosen, but each player chooses the character they wish to play in the coming adventure from 2 or 3 they control from a 'stable' of characters.

This is what we started with originally in OD&D, and it didn't even occur to us that there might be another approach (of course, a player could have played just one character, and some did). It was also a multiverse, with at least six DMs in the group (playing characters in other worlds).

One Horse Town & rawma - definitely a type of troupe play, and a good one!

rawma - did the multiverse thing decades ago, got the t-shirt. Now I'm the only GM, and thank God! I'm a terrible player.

Kiero - My players just don't like non-random games, so I can sympathize!

Simlasa - that's what I thought. It's basically a codified version of an Old School high lethality campaign designed to winnow out the unfit. Darwinian evolution of the character. Cool concept, but not really troupe play.

I wonder if something like Wield qualifies as troupe play... it has each Player running a magic weapon and a wielder... but not as a pair. Each Player runs the wielder of another Player's weapon (sounds smutty...). Thing is, the weapons are the main concern while wielders are secondary and somewhat ephemeral.

Troupe play always seemed like potentially a good way to run Star Trek or Rogue Trader... playing the big wigs on the bridge as well as various secondary PCs... possibly in the 'Mission Impossible' mode in order to form customized 'away teams'.  

I've liked the idea of troupe play since I first read about it but there seems to be a lot of resistance to it amongst people I've played with.

Quote from: Simlasa;813376I've liked the idea of troupe play since I first read about it but there seems to be a lot of resistance to it amongst people I've played with.

Knowing why they are resistant might allow you to come up with a version that would be more appealing (or less unappealing).

• Some players want to stay in the POV of a single character. So running multiple characters may detract from their experience.

• Some players don't want to split the experience points between multiple characters so doing that detracts from their experience.

• Some players really like one character and don't want to split the screen time between multiple characters.

• Some players just find the idea unfamiliar and dislike the unfamiliar.

I suppose there are other reasons I haven't thought of. Do you know what it is your players object to?