Yeah, that's me.OK, so it’s 1965. You’re working on a groundbreaking new TV series. You put together a pilot, and it’s well received by the network and the public, so you’re on for a full series. All is right with the world—except . . .
Except that doctor guy was really no good. And the physicist—well, he kind of duplicates the role of the science officer. And the folks playing the navigator and the yoeman aren’t really what you were looking for. And, while we’re at it, the uniforms need a little tweaking.
Well, what can you do? Nothing, right—I mean, the episode is done. You can’t go back and change these things in the pilot. And it wouldn’t make any sense to change them now.
On the other hand, who cares? If you need to make some changes for the show to work, why not make them? Change the physicist to a helmsman. Tweak the uniforms. Swap around characters—or actors—to get the doctor and navigator and yoeman you need. The show will come together, and the audience—if they even really notice—will forgive you.
OK, enough history. It’s today. You’re trying out a new game system. Or maybe a game you’ve played a lot, but it’s the start of a new campaign, a whole new direction. Everybody gets together, you make up some characters, and you play through a few encounters or plot points.
And . . . it turns out the fighter’s feat choices aren’t really lining up with the player’s approach to the character. And the cleric and wizard are just a little too close in personality and appearance. The rogue had no idea he was going to go down so easily, and wants to completely rebuild the character.
I play with something I call the “first session rule.” Like a director putting together a TV pilot, I assume things aren’t going to work out perfectly from the get-go. There will be character choices that weren’t exactly right for the setting or the chemistry of the group. A couple characters will seem to overlap too much, or some key base won’t be covered as well as the group would have liked. In some cases, a player might simply not like what he or she has come up with.
So here’s the first session rule: Go ahead and make the change. Whatever you want (within the context of the rules, of course). Keep the XP you’ve earned, and any items or info you’ve picked up along the way. And we’ll just ignore the changes and play as if things had always been that way.
It’s counter-intuitive. I mean, continuity matters, right? Yes, but I’ve used this rule for a couple decades, and I’ve never once regretted it. A few adventures down the road, who remembers what feats the fighter might or might not have had in those early sessions? Even when a character changes completely—race, class, build, name, whatever—it’s not generally what makes those first sessions memorable.
And I think this rule has even saved some campaigns that might have fizzled early. It only takes one or two unenthusiastic players to stall a campaign in its infancy.
Truthfully, I usually extend this rule through the entire first adventure. What do you think—what sort of changes should players be allowed to make, and for how long? And if you won’t allow it, what other steps would you take to save a campaign from weak chemistry or poor choices in the character creation process?
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Ironically, Star Trek is a flawed analogy for this topic—the pilot I describe above was actually the second one. The first was even more deeply flawed (at least in the eyes of the network), and so was scrapped and recommissioned. And sometimes you might have to do that with an RPG campaign—but that’s a blog post for another time.
In any event, that’s the analogy I’m going with, and it works as far as I went with it . . . .
Interesting idea. I think I’ll apply it next time I start a campaign. I think that people usually fall in love with their characters, so don’t really feel like changing them, despite how bonky they play with the campaign, and I usually try to get a lot of input from players before the game starts in order to get a good player-to-campaign fit. However, in my last campaign was cut short because some of the players weren’t happy with their choices and I didn’t allow the changes they proposed. Thanks for posting this, gives me somefood for thought about how to keep players happy.
As long as it is not changing something that has had a major impact on the game, I am fairly flexible about letting players tweak their characters between game session. Now, major changes require a bit more discussion and may be disallowed or moderated, but I try to work with my players to allow them to play the character they want in a campaign world that works with them.
First session, nothing. I’m willing to change characters no matter how far along in the story, sometimes drastically. But there needs to be a reason within the confines of the world that things changed.
For instance, I moved from D&D 3.0 to 3.5 rules in my last campaign. To make this happen within the world, I had the group uncover a plot by the Drow to remove magic from the surface dwellers. They found the ritual site and managed to stop the Ty-D-Bowl vortex of magic draining, but not before it changed magic across the entire world. In an instant, all the magical characters shuffled spells to fit with the 3.5 rules, but there was a logical in-world reason for that change.
One character had abandonment issues and befriended a psionicist. When the friend died, the character got the chance to learn psionics (and temporarily lose her cheese from being abandoned yet again, but that’s a different story). Eventually most of her class levels shifted over to Psion, at a one level shift per level gained rate. The transformation process was difficult to play at times since she didn’t really do anything very well (Wiz/Monk/Psion), but very rewarding when the chrysalis opened to reveal the more unified character. She could do things that nobody else in the party could. She became the mage-killer, armed with an amulet of anti-magic, psionic buffs, and Monk unarmed fighting. Many a big magical beast ended up with a waif of a girl securely grappled on its back preventing its magical powers from working. Good times.
If it fuels the story and makes the game richer for everyone, I’m all for any changes players want to make.
I think this is also great advice, but it differs a bit from what I’m saying. I would also allow this, but what I’m saying is that following the first session or so, you should allow changes =without= those concerns for continuity.
Truth to tell, I’ve retconned character backgrounds and abilities in games long after the first session as well. It’s a shared reality – what’s a little discontinuity among friends?
As I move onwards in life, I think rebuilding almost everything about a character later on so that it works better, regardless of the point in the campaign when it occurs, is worthwhile.
The fact is, strict continuity doesn’t matter that much in a RPG campaign. It does to a certain extent, most notably on the DM side of things (it’s a bit jarring to discover that the main villain wasn’t a human warlord, but a elf mage, when it’s just fiat that causes the change rather than some explanation behind it).
Once you get to PCs, I believe you most remember their players (who don’t change) rather than the minutae of their actions and abilities. That they did certain things is more important than how they did them!
It’s not like a TV show where you can go back and rewatch it.
Indeed, in the old days of making Doctor Who, the BBC didn’t replay episodes (I was lucky – it was replayed all the time in Australia when I was growing up). Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks believed that continuity shouldn’t get in the way of a good story. (There’s an interview with them on one of my DVDs where they say that, but I can’t remember which one at present. I’ll have to find it now). This isn’t to say that continuity isn’t important, but you can change little details here and there and ask long as what results is enjoyable, most people won’t mind – or even notice.
A lot of what’s acceptable also depends on the campaign you’re running, of course. I think it’s a lot more acceptable in a story-focussed or role-playing focussed game than a game which wants more than anything to “challenge” the characters. If you look at the early D&D game, there’s a real feeling you get (or at least I get) that it’s very much focussing on the characters & players overcoming the challenges thrown at them by the DM. You get great stories out of it, of course, but it’s something where the DM can be seen as a lot more adversarial, and there’s also competition between the players as well, so that changing your character really is against the spirit of the entire thing.
In my current Greyhawk game, I’m far more interested in the players having a good time and the ongoing story with the Tomb of Horrors, evil druids, traitor ex-PCs and the like. The means the PCs have to overcome the challenges are far less important than the challenges being faced and how it affects their personalities and the world around them.
Cheers,
Merric
Hi, Merric, great to hear from you!
Interesting point about not being able to go back to watch–continuity in an RPG is a different beast than in a TV or book series. There’s no permanent record.
Not that strict continuity matters to me at all anymore – but I always have players make at least 3 characters anyway – so that when one dies (which could be the one that doesn’t fit), there’s another in the wings to take over. I also to an XP sharing type thing. They label their characters in order from 1-3 (they can have more, but their benefit is different). 1 gets full XP, 2 gets 20% of the XP, and 3 gets 10% of the XP. They can re-arrange this each adventure. Now, if someone loses all three characters, I no longer make them start at the beginning again, but usually get 50% xp of the lowest main character in the party for their first….. Well, something like that anyway.
We play it as if the whole crew travels, with the none-prime characters just staying at a local Inn or camping. If a character is down and out for the scenario, but not dead – sometimes they can have their secondary character join the fray.
I just like to keep each player involved.