Quote from: Ted;1053816I am curious about another aspect of play--number of PCs, do you allow (or even encourage) a player to bring more than one character on an adventure?

Depends on the group. I've played with 2 PCs/player with some groups and everyone has a blast with the big party and make sure each PC is presented as unique. Other groups treat PCs like game pawns whether they had 1 PC or 2 PCs each. It was far more common back in the day for me to encounter groups with 2 PCs / player.

Many groups don't like multiple PCs or piles of henchmen. For them, I start games at higher levels.

My best answer is talk to your players and listen to their pros/cons and thoughts.

Quote from: Ted;1053816I am curious about another aspect of play--number of PCs, do you allow (or even encourage) a player to bring more than one character on an adventure?  I am predicting at least two deaths in the first 30 minutes tonight and don't want people to be twiddling their thumbs.

No, not much, but there are often NPCs with the group. Of the two OSR ruleset groups I'm currently GMing, one (S&W) is currently all PC (three PCs, all that fit on their flying carpet) and the other (OSRIC) is 4 PCs and one or two NPCs, with one player playing two PCs.

But I use death at -10 hp and max hp at 1st level.

After action report:  only two players could make it, so we all agreed that two PCs per player made sense . . . and . . . no deaths.  I could not believe it, but there you have it.  I think the two PC approach worked pretty well when you have a less than full complement.  As for hirelings/henchmen/followers, these guys are dirt poor they cannot even afford thieves tools, let alone hiring some farmer to hold the donkey.  But on the other hand, I haven't seen such inventive uses of a grappling hook (their big slurg) ever.  Good stuff.

Old-school modules typically assumed 8-10 PCs, so back in the day we ran with 2 PCs per player. As you mentioned, it's good for lethal dungeons as well - lose a PC and you're still in the game. Never had a problem with it using a D&D 2E or earlier system. It only gets unmanageable with more modern games that have much more complex PCs, or in games that are all about indepth roleplaying and story development (which doesn't sound like the case for you).

Quote from: Ted;1053816Thanks for the all the recommendations.  I've landed on LotFP and going to run the intro adventure Tower of the Stargazer.  Picked up Caverns of Thracia as well as other locations.  The plan is to sprinkle in various locations around the starter town.  I haven't read all of Yoon-Suin, but that is a really rich resource for ideas.

Sounds like a fun plan, enjoy Ted!

Quote from: Ted;1053816At the risk of going to the well once too often, I am curious about another aspect of play--number of PCs, do you allow (or even encourage) a player to bring more than one character on an adventure?  I am predicting at least two deaths in the first 30 minutes tonight and don't want people to be twiddling their thumbs.

When we have more than 5-6 players in an AD&D campaign, we usually limit PCs to one each.  With 4 or fewer players, we generally have each player running 1 or 2 PCs (with more occasionally, since sometimes folks don't show for a session, of course).  In other games (like a globe-trotting CoC game like Masks of Nyarlathotep), sometimes I've run multiple PCs per player but they weren't necessarily aware of each other or interacting---basically different groups of PCs working in parallel on different aspects the same campaign.

Quote from: Ted;1053894After action report:  only two players could make it, so we all agreed that two PCs per player made sense . . . and . . . no deaths.  I could not believe it, but there you have it.  I think the two PC approach worked pretty well when you have a less than full complement.  As for hirelings/henchmen/followers, these guys are dirt poor they cannot even afford thieves tools, let alone hiring some farmer to hold the donkey.  But on the other hand, I haven't seen such inventive uses of a grappling hook (their big slurg) ever.  Good stuff.

Where did they go/what did you run?

Allan.

Quote from: grodog;1053955Where did they go/what did you run?

Two players, four characters (dwarf, elf, two specialists (e.g., LofFP version of thieves)) journeyed to the Tower of the Stargazer.  They've explored four levels thus far and haven't died, but also only triggered one trap and no combat . . . yet.

I decided to make their starting town Tanelorn (see Moorcock's Eternal Champion), which will give me the ability to tranlocate the town around the various continents and even planes.  At first I am going to slightly alter the description of Tanelorn so that they don't notice, but over time the town will evolve after every dungeon dive.  I'm thinking that every time they succeed (whatever that means) at a challenging location that they interact with will become linked to Tanelorn, making that place travel as well.  Don't really have it sketched out, but I wanted to have a magic reason why new locations of interest keep cropping up.  Also the Tower of the Stargazer is a perfect reason to travel the cosmos as it were.  We'll see.

Quote from: Haffrung;1053918Old-school modules typically assumed 8-10 PCs, so back in the day we ran with 2 PCs per player. As you mentioned, it's good for lethal dungeons as well - lose a PC and you're still in the game. Never had a problem with it using a D&D 2E or earlier system. It only gets unmanageable with more modern games that have much more complex PCs, or in games that are all about indepth roleplaying and story development (which doesn't sound like the case for you).

Thanks, Haffrung. And you are correct, indepth roleplay/story development isn't the goal here.  We have in-person sessions for that, this is purely about doing something more fun/interactive/interesting than playing a MMORPG.  This is about dungeon delving, problem solving, crazy magic, high lethality and stories that emerge from play.

Tanelorn is an awesome choice.  I've used Modron (Judges Guild's first module) as a shifting city and the concept is very fun.

I did it once in Gamma World as well, but used a cruise ship after reading a cool article about Time Ship Titanic in an old issue of AEG's Shadis.