RPG: Single Character / Multiple Characters

Most of the party based RPGs will give you the option of starting with a variable number of starting characters, so there's nothing stopping people play with a party of one. Solo runs are quite common in games like Baldur's Gate. But I'm not sure if that's what you mean.

Neverwinter Nights and Fallout allowed you to hire mercanaries or pick up companions. Unlike with party based RPGs you had only a limited control over your teammates, so it felt like you only were controlling a single character, just that you had friends to help you. But as you say, you usually can't choose the options provided to you and strategy is frequently limited.

I think the game becomes very different once you need to control more than one character. With one character you can design the game like a third person action adventure, where it's all about the hero. With multiple characters, it's now a strategy game. The player needs to be more detatched to move multiple elements simultaneously. Pausing the game is almost certainly required. It turns the game into a diffrerent genre.

Unless someone suggests some solution I haven't thought of, I think you'll need to make the choice about what sort of game you want. Either it's all about one character with A.I. companions (even if it's just one character at a time if you allow the player to toggle who is active), or it's a squad based game.

I think the biggest problem is creating a game that makes the most of both single character and multi character combat.

If I had the choice it would depend on how I control them. If I had direct control like a tactics or RTS interface I would take a party since it opens up more strategy but if they were AI controlled I would just dump all the points into one character since 95% of the time NPC allies are a liability.

Baldur's Gate (and its kin) actually allowed you to start with (up to) 6 characters if you started a multiplayer game and then started with only yourself. Certainly the way I preferred to play it.


In general though, I think that's one of those decisions that falls along the line of allowing the character to be customized. If you allow the customization, the plot then has to be really general to accommodate the anonymous hero. If you don't, then you've got more flexibility to place the hero within your own story.

Thinking about it now, Bioware/Black Isle was actually very good about finding a middle ground. Baldur's Gate, Planescape, and Knights of the Old Republic did a great job of allowing you to customize your main character while keeping them firmly within the plot.

Still, most games (see: Oblivion) go the 'anonymous hero' route that makes for a muddy plot or the set hero route (see: Final Fantasy) that makes for better plots, but sometimes you're stuck playing a whiney little girl.

I am talking about a multiplayer game (8 players max), but I think for your purpose it is equivalent. One way you could set up the trade off, is that when you have more party members the experience gets divided. This would force the player to make the party members specialized because there aren't many spare xp points to toy around. But overall it has the same effect as what you described. You don't get enough xp or enough money in the adventure to give everyone in the party the best stuff available. So you have to think about which character could afford to be naked, or just swing a chair leg instead of a sword.

Hrmmm the difference in development is that you have more time and ability to add in details for that one specific character in back story and often in costumes as well as stats and such...while with more characters you have less time for back story, character development, other various things that would need to be spread between characters...

Action based games you control one character at a time anyways even if you have a whole cast of others so you aren't really losing anything other than developing stuff for all characters as you want...

So developmentally there is somewhat a clash of interests which keeps people from doing this...

On the player side...games that draw me in more, like MMOs I prefer single character, but at the same time i like having pets and such even if i can't really control them...but generally with RPGs I prefer multiple characters as it gives me more options. I can cast a spell while smacking them with a sword while doing a dance while making a jar... I like being able to do that.

That all being said... I haven't found any RPG with only 1 player controlled character to be interesting enough for me to get over any peeves I may have with it. The whole point that most people make about having less characters a lot of times is that you can customize that single character more, but the customization options end up being variations of the party dynamic or simply don't matter or are sooo poorly executed I find that I don't even think of using most of the stuff developed. Fable II for instance has something like 30 or 40 sets of armor and they are all either ugly, slightly off, or just plain useless. Same with it's weapons. Star Ocean 4 which is a game I like I am at the end of my first play through and I've found I haven't even come across 50% of all the monsters in the game...wtf? Rogue Galaxy, another game that boasts weapon customization has something like 1000 weapons and more than likely you will only see maybe if you care a few of them. Oblivion and the other game in the series both have a theoretically cool way to customize but in the end t just limits the player not too mention the story is boring and so is walking over a half hour just to be told to go somewhere else. KotOR, every time I thought I found something cool I found I couldn't use it or it was too weak, which essentially means the same thing. Fallout 3 I found myself saying "that's cool i should be able to do...nope" which essentially happened with every single thing I saw in the game.

The trade offs to me seem to be a lie, and frankly story wise it's better to have a group to play off than it is to have a single character...

Now if you're talking about play mechanics...people play with a single character largely to challenge themselves...but I bet most people like the option to have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc characters on a team whenever they want. It allows for strategy and challenge and you get the better story to have the team.. there is no reason to build in an extra mechanic to have to select to be able to play with one or more characters n the beginning, but it would be nice to be able to get rd of excess character in a better way than having to kill them like people have to in so many games.

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Original post by Wai I am talking about a multiplayer game (8 players max), but I think for your purpose it is equivalent. One way you could set up the trade off, is that when you have more party members the experience gets divided. This would force the player to make the party members specialized because there aren't many spare xp points to toy around. But overall it has the same effect as what you described. You don't get enough xp or enough money in the adventure to give everyone in the party the best stuff available. So you have to think about which character could afford to be naked, or just swing a chair leg instead of a sword.

if you were to do that as a MP game you would end up with players playing through in SP and not grouping...

Reason: your penalising group play by decreasing the reward relative to the number of players in the group.

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Yes, but that was how it worked. It was a tradeoff because you can't cram all of the skills in a single character. The sequel of the same game made it such that when you have a party member, more enemies are spawned on the screen, so you get more xp and more money. But in both cases, I would still play single character for the following reason...

I only enjoy playing multiple characters at once if I could consistently see all controlled characters on the screen at the same time and that they don't block my view to see important things. In a turn-based RPG this has been always true. In 3D RPG I prefer to control a single character. I tend to ignore the rest if they are offscreen, or find them blocking my view if they are on screen.

I find having multiple characters much more interesting. Instead of having a all-around character, you can have characters which are all specialized, and combine their actions toward victory.

Also, in japanese RPGs, such as the Final Fantasy series, you always control a party of people. So it's not like it's something rare.

I've a game idea with the same problem. My original idea and planning went in with the thought of having a four man team. This continued along until I though about playing this game through variants, such as planing Final Fantasy 1 with a team of White Mages or a single White Mage.

After a long time, I realized it might just be better to structure the game rewards (money and xp wise) around four characters but still give the option in the beginning to have 1-4 team members.

In the time it takes for a team of four to gain a couple of levels, they should be able to afford decent equipment for each person. In that same amount of time, a single character may gain three or even four levels and have more than enough to get the best equipment around (for a starting area). Now those extra levels don't help all that much when a lot of enemies are attacking the loner at once.

That is the trade off when a single character faces challenges that were intended for a group: though they get more experience quicker, the character has no back up. All attacks are aimed at it and no one can help them if they get some sort of stasis effect that renders them inert, such as being paralyzed or sleeping.

You can give the player the choice of a variable number of party members, but warn them that such a choice will make the game extremely hard.

WOuld it be possible to have the party be a single combat unit for all intents and putposes? I'm thinking here of RTS games where you can build "A squad of riflemen" or "a jeep" and both count as one nit in the game, since you just click and command them, but the riflemen look like four little guys.

To continue the RTS analogy, what if you got to choose between making two marines, two medics and a firebat or making Kerrigan, Queen of Blades? The first one is a complementary group of units that can handle a variety of situations through teamwork, and the second one is a raging solo badass unit.

I think it could work, if the challenges you face are the sort that allow you to handle them with either deployment format. My main concern would be story and character development. If there's any sort of significant dialogue or major character-based plot events, you'll struggle to put a platoon in the conversation.

So how about just having one character, but including "minions" in the design? You can create a cyberninja, who just runs around killing people with his super brain powers and laser sword, or you can choose a squad-commanding unit, and then recruit or summon backup that allows you to achieve your goals. Instead of "eyeball laser" you have a skill for "marksmanship command" which gives a bonus to members of your team using long-range weapons. Managing team morale, speed of movement, care and feeding and equipping them would take the place of finding arcane tomes to study or tapping into the powergrid to repair your exosuit or whatever it is that the solo pwnmobile characters would have to contend with, but when the mayor asks for a favor, there's no doubt which specific character he's talking to.

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Original post by Trapper Zoid Solo runs are quite common in games like Baldur's Gate. But I'm not sure if that's what you mean.

You have me laughing here. I didn't play much BG, but I did play Icewind Dale to the end. I always assumed you HAD to have a party to start the game. I just NEVER thought about going solo. [grin]

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I think the game becomes very different once you need to control more than one character. With one character you can design the game like a third person action adventure, where it's all about the hero. With multiple characters, it's now a strategy game.

Good point. This extends right down to the game design, of course. Take something as basic as healing. As soon as you introduce potions that heal, any healer in the party becomes less important (even useless, depending on how easy the potions are to get).

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Original post by Kaze If I had direct control like a tactics or RTS interface I would take a party since it opens up more strategy but if they were AI controlled I would just dump all the points into one character since 95% of the time NPC allies are a liability.

Your point about making the most of combat as either single or multiple individuals is spot on. Would it matter at all if the gameplay was a tradeoff between tactical flexibility and raw power?

I'm thinking of the old Steve Jackson game Ogre, which pitted one super tank against a bunch of weaker armed trucks and jeeps. The idea in that game was that if you were not the Ogre, you spread your forces out to make the most of your environment. If you were, you drew your enemies into traps and concentrated your firepower.

I wonder about creating an enemy that would respond to you via either strategy based on what you were. If you were a party, you could field more firepower from different angles, for instance. If you were a single character, maybe you could move faster (as an abstraction).

So if I create enemies that require attacks from multiple sides or bait & lure tactics where speed works well, would that make for a good trade off in choosing party or single character?

My point is that I don't want either choice to be superior.

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Original post by Wai One way you could set up the trade off, is that when you have more party members the experience gets divided. This would force the player to make the party members specialized because there aren't many spare xp points to toy around.

This sounds very interesting! As a party you wouldn't level up as fast, but you'd be able to apply N times the amount of firepower in combat.

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Original post by loufoque I find having multiple characters much more interesting. Instead of having a all-around character, you can have characters which are all specialized, and combine their actions toward victory.

Yes, this is the biggest draw for me. I like the thought of retrying with different mixes, especially imbalanced mixes (like all magic users or thieves).

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Original post by Durakken Hrmmm the difference in development is that you have more time and ability to add in details for that one specific character in back story and often in costumes as well as stats and such...while with more characters you have less time for back story, character development, other various things that would need to be spread between characters...

Good point. I know that the "nameless hero" thing is often complained about, but my thoughts are that the world's story is far more important than an individual's story. I think any rich personal stories are going to need to come from the NPCs.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage To continue the RTS analogy, what if you got to choose between making two marines, two medics and a firebat or making Kerrigan, Queen of Blades? The first one is a complementary group of units that can handle a variety of situations through teamwork, and the second one is a raging solo badass unit.

Yeah, this is along the lines of what I was thinking. I was even thinking of making it a difference in racial pick or character type, or maybe even some sort of character creation kit where you spend character points to make each character special. I might impose a sort of rule that the points have to be balanced across any characters you create, but even that may not be necessary. What if you want to run around not with Kerrigan, Queen of Blades but the slightly less awesome Jim Raynor and two marines?

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I think it could work, if the challenges you face are the sort that allow you to handle them with either deployment format.

Taking Starcraft to mind, I noticed that they didn't have to work all that hard to give her parity. She had greater HP, stealth and area of effect attacks IIRC, which were abilities spread out among weaker individual units.

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My main concern would be story and character development. If there's any sort of significant dialogue or major character-based plot events, you'll struggle to put a platoon in the conversation.

That may not be a problem. I don't have much love for the PCs I create to be deeply laden with story, probably because they're my creations.

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So how about just having one character, but including "minions" in the design?

This may work as well and may make any story considerations much easier.