Players, Characters, Habits, and Choices

 

With a new campaign kicking off, particularly a D&D campaign and the associated character generation I got to thinking about my players and their characters and the mix we have had over the years. Some of them are remarkably consistent. Some of them change it up and never seem completely satisfied with any character. I find that often this applies regardless of the rules or genre.

One of my players in D&D terms is almost always either a Paladin or a Fighter. This habit/preference/tradition goes back to at least 2nd Edition AD&D because that's how long we've been playing together. In superhero games he tends towards a Superman-style Brick. In Deadlands he's always been a straight-up gunfighter, even when there are supernatural options available.  Now he has surprised me a few times - mainly when we ran multiple characters per player in a given campaign - by branching out and trying out a wizard or a sorcerer but it's always in addition to a fighter type, not instead of one. I know when I propose a new game that he will likely be playing a martial character of some type so that role will be covered by at least one player. 

In the new campaign he's playing a Paladin so the tradition continues and I am just fine with that.

In contrast I have another long-time friend who is the one who never seems quite settled in to whatever character he has chosen and he is the one most likely to switch out his character partway through the game. When 3rd Edition D&D was new he started out as a Halfling Wizard, later changed that out to a Fighter who was focused on breaking weapons and knocking people down, and then ended up as something completely different by the end of the campaign. In Mutants and Masterminds he tried to play a Batman-type but was repeatedly frustrated with how it played and what he saw as  its ineffectiveness and if the campaign had continued he probably would have asked for a change. He is unpredictable from campaign to campaign, which is not that unusual I think, really, but that restlessness even within the same campaign keeps things interesting. This often springs from some encounter early on, usually a fight, where he determines that his character is just not that effective. Now I often disagree with him and make him work through it a while longer because he has done this as quickly as the first session of a campaign and I'd like a little more stability than that! 

That said I have let him swap out characters multiple times over the years and not necessarily due to a character death - though that is an obvious opportunity if he wants to. Sometimes it's just not being happy with how a character works and wanting to try something different. In Deadlands he chose a Chinese martial artist - we've never really had a dedicated Kung-Fu character in our DL games before so I was looking forward to trying out those options - and he might have made it to Session 3 before declaring that the melee focus was not working in a world full of guns but I pointed out that a) you knew it was an Old West game when we started and b) there are defensive powers and movement powers as well as the punchy stuff. He stuck with it and after acquiring some XP and applying it to the problem he quickly became a very dangerous combatant who was fairly tough and stupid fast so he was quite capable of getting into hand-to-hand range and doing terrible terrible things to his opponent when he did and I would say he was pretty happy with things for most of that campaign. 

In the new campaign he's chosen to play a Cleric (of a war god) and we will see how that flows for him.

My son has been playing for almost 15 years now - still a strange thing to hear yourself say - and when we started with old school Moldvay Basic D&D it was "Elf" and then usually "Fighter" when we had a second character in play. Later when we had more options it was Elf-something, usually Ranger.  In both 4th and 5th edition the Bladesinger class was tailor-made for him. though in the last 5E campaign I ran he went with a Cleric and "Sacred Flamed" anything that came in range.

 Outside of D&D type games though he has not been all that consistent. In superhero games he likes his battlesuit guys/PAGs. In Deadlands he chose to play an Indian Shaman and had a lot of fun with that. In Star Wars he's a Jedi (even a barely-trained-wannabee Jedi) or he's a lot less interested in playing.

In the new campaign he's going full Wizard so  this will be interesting.

My other long-time friend in the game does have a recognizable pattern in that he likes to be "the ranged guy". He's usually inclined towards a fighter type character in D&D terms and from early on in 3E I don't remember a real tendency other than big melee weapons. By 4th Edition though that had changed as he discovered the power of the 4E Ranger which could participate in combat from an  entirely different table with all of the Bow power he could put together. In Deadlands he went for a rifleman approach moving into full-on sniper as the game went on. It has definitely become a theme for him.

In the new campaign he's playing a Mechanist, one of the new ToV classes, and maybe he's stepping away from the ranged thing this time - or maybe he's just looking for a new way to do it. We shall see.

It's funny to  call him one of my "newer" friends when I've been playing games with him for six years but my other regular kind of falls into that compared to the others. He may be the only other one that's been doing this as long as I have and it's a lot of fun because he gets my obscure RPG references and vice versa. He has played and run a ton of other games and is the most active "other DM" in the group. He is the one most into the "role-playing" part and will come up with interesting backgrounds for whatever kind of character he ends up playing and that's another key - he is unpredictable in that he could play any kind of character buuuuut he doesn't change his mind once he's committed. he is also very open to "what does the party need?" kinds of discussions with the rest of the group when a game is starting up. To him I would say it's less about playing a particular type of character than it is about just playing. He's also an asset to have aboard because I know if I propose trying out a less well-known game he will likely be the first to jump on board. In Deadlands he played a Mad Scientist. In our Marvel Multiverse tryout he played Beast. In our 50 Fathoms campaign he played the sailing expert and duelist and that character might be his archetype in my experience - a "sharp-tongued swashbuckler" that is capable in both social and combat situations.

In the new campaign he is playing a bard because ... that's the kind of player he is - give him something with some flexibility, that's not locked into one role in the party, and he will shine. I just don't see him ever playing a basic-style sword and board fighter - not because of a power issue but because other types of characters let him flex the muscles he enjoys the most. 

For me, "playing" has been far less common than "running" for at least the past 25 years. I'd say I had a fairly even mix of both through the 80's and 90's because I was fortunate enough to have another committed DM in my main group and we traded off for 20+ years. Starting with 3E D&D I really shifted over into running the games far more than playing. Some of this was less time with kids and spouse and career all eating into game time but I stuck with it and that's the side I chose - if you want to make sure there is a game then you'd better be prepared to run them. 

I'd say for 2E  mostly ran Clerics, with some Druid and a little Paladin sprinkled in. For 3E I played a little Wizard, some Barbarian, and some more Cleric and Druid when I had the chance. For 4th I played very little but I went with Fighter to fit a concept I wanted to try out. For Pathfinder I ended up with one of my longest-running characters played for years and up to about 11th level which was a cavalier of all things - originally just to try something new and then because I really liked his schtick and the campaign (Kingmaker) was not dungeon-heavy at all in my opinion. I've played very little 5E so no strong opinions there. In 50 Fathoms I played a Kraken Water Mage who could also fight so maybe my tendency is "some kind of spellcaster" given the chance but with the cavalier leading for actual time in the saddle in the last ten years who knows? 

A few other general observations:

• We used to get a lot more non-humans in D&D but that has really dropped off over the course of 5E. I think they ended up making it too obvious of a "power" choice as it seems like there's a lot of effort being made to strip away the things that made each race mechanically unique and this left Human as the default best choice mechanically speaking. Not a real fan of this approach but I'm going to take it as it is for this run.
• We didn't see a lot of Rogues, Sorcerers, Monks, or Warlocks in the last few editions. I'd say we don't see Bards or Artificers either but I have a Bard and a Mechanist (close enough) in this game so I can't really say that for now. Even Druids have been pretty sparse around here for a long time and I thought they were one of the stronger classes this edition according to online opinion. Barbarian is another surprise given the regularity here of Fighters/Paladins/Rangers  - they were popular in older editions but I haven't seen one played long-term since 4E 10+ years ago.
• Another quirk is that we do not see a lot of duplicate character types in the party. Even into 2nd Edition AD&D we would have multiple fighters and even multiple clerics (of different deities - in 2E a specialty priest of Mystra and a specialty priest of Tempus play very differently) in a party at times. Now I don't really see that. We do have more classes now but we also have more subclass options as a way to differentiate two of the same class but I just never see it.

Well that's a lot of idle thoughts and observations but sometimes the inspiration strikes. More on the campaign down the road.