Characters

Character creation and management is a little different in an Incarnations campaign. First, you are not making one character, but a general concept that can be played off of over and over again. PC's should be archetypes, the swashbuckling rogue, the smart guy, or the brick, that sort of thing. The individual personality traits that define the characters need to be sketched out, after all the soul is the heart of the being, and if the soul keeps coming back, there should be some consistency as to its nature. These core traits may alter over time, and as the campaign progresses they certainly will.

Begin by having each player write down a list of personality traits his reincarnated soul will have each time. You will only need three to five of these, and if the soul is expected to evolve over the incarnations, at least two of them should be something that can be changed. Next, the group should decide the general roles and relationships the characters will have each incarnation. These need not be exact, but something along the lines of X and Y are rivals, or Y and Z are love each other. Remember that these relationships may vary or change over the many incarnations they will be taking.

Once you have the general idea of what each soul will be, the GM needs to decide if all the characters need to be made now, or as the incarnations come into play. There are benefits to both approaches, and you should choose the one that best fits your group and play style. If at the start of an incarnations campaign the list of possible incarnations is already determined (I like to ask the players what eras they wish to visit), then you can make all the incarnations right away. This allows for the PCs for the whole campaign to be ready at a moment's notice, quite helpful if an entire party is wiped out. The downside is that it requires a fair amount of planning on the party of your group, and makes it difficult to alter either the eras or characters. This level of determinism in an incarnations campaign is not to everyone's liking. If you choose to make the characters as you go, you need to decide if you want to have the GM make them, or have the individual players make their characters. Again, this depends on the nature of your group. Having a character creation sessions every five or so games can become a real drag, but is what you should expect if not all the players have the rule books or time to meet with those who do between games. When I have run incarnations games, I made the characters for each incarnation with input from the players as to general outline or specific features.

Bringing the party together each incarnation can be troublesome, but it helps if certain parameters of their relationship were be established during character creation. How the souls feel about each other in a vague, but easily determined, way is crucial to this. Each incarnation should feel like a continuation of a core set of relationships under slightly different conditions. However, it should be stressed that these relationships can change and in fact will change and evolve through game play. In game, this can easily be interpreted in the backgrounds of each incarnation, setting up reasons why two PCs are in love, or are bitter rivals.

Each incarnation needs to be a new character in the sense that he or she has different stats, skills, hopes, dreams, ambitions, and backgrounds. The trick is to make each incarnation stick to the archetypes, yet maintain some continuity. The player whose character is a doctor in the Old West, doesn’t need to be a doctor in WWII or the 1960's. He does need to stick close to his soul's archetype, however. In this example, perhaps the archetype is a cerebral, educated person. The Old West doctor could be a scientist working on Enigma in WWII, a hippie-philosopher-chemist roaming 1960's America seeking enlightenment, and was before a 12th-Century monk and student of the occult, or even a pre-historic shaman. Looking at the same eras and the same character as a healer, the Old West doctor could be a medic or nurse during WWII, a paramedic in 1960's San Francisco cleaning up the messes of overdosed hippies, and a12th Century Monk who practices faith healing and is on his way to sainthood.

Another consideration is how you approach the supernatural and other 'powers'. If some incarnations are going to have them, there is no need for every one to. Feel free to vary the incarnation's knowledge of the supernatural, though this may require some strong role-playing on the part of the players. For example, say one PC has psionic powers in an incarnation, but the next is a confirmed skeptic of all things supernatural. This presents a problem, as the player knows these things exist and that his character has the potential to use them, but the character does not. This is perfectly fine, and facing a role-playing challenge makes us better role-players. Another way to work this out is for the skeptic to develop psionic powers during the course of play, and playing a skeptic who can now see the past and future would be a lot of fun.

A further thing to consider is character development, at least stats wise if nothing else (emotional and relationship development should evolve naturally during the course of play). Many people like to play characters that develop better skills, attributes, or cool toys, and these players should be rewarded. Likewise, no one wants to play the zero to hero over and over again (unless you do, in which case go right ahead). One-way to do this is to progress each incarnation according to how your system advances characters. If it uses levels and experience point, keep track of each soul's total of experience points and use that as a measure for creating the next incarnation. Lie wise, if character points, experience point pools, build points, or what have you are handed out in play, allow them to carry over from incarnation to incarnation. It is feasible to not have the characters advance like this, and just set a power level for each incarnation and run with that, but make sure the players are happy with that sort of set up.

The characters should also gain on their central problem as the campaign progresses, perhaps curing some of the damage to their soul, getting closer to healing or saving their companion, or learning a part of the demon's True Name. Also, PCs are prone to work towards goals they set for themselves, and acquiring loot and toys motivates some players. For these players it would be helpful if there were some continuity in their character's efforts to get rich and powerful. They needn't get to keep their toys all the time, but occasionally this should be done in order to make the game more fulfilling for them.

You should be prepared for a change in the composition of your players. Not every role-playing group is stable, and some have players come and go with great frequency. If the number of players does not change, new players should be able to come in at the start of an incarnation and take over an existing soul. Should your number of players shrink, then a soul needs to be retired for a little bit, but can always come back in a later incarnation (unless you really want to have it destroyed, but this should be a major event). Adding players can be difficult, some people don’t like the idea of hand waiving away that there are now five souls on a multi-incarnation mission where there were once three. One way to handle this is to keep a few attached souls that reappear with some regularity but are not part of the core group. Although normally NPCs, these can be brought in if needed as PCs. True, it means that in some sense the new players are going to be second-string characters in the overall arc, but they needn't be second-string as far as power level.

Finally, for those groups that like troupe style play or are willing to try something different, incarnations campaigns allow for a player to step into another's PC, at least for a few sessions. The GM should allow for characters to 'trade souls' from time to time, but should not force this as not everyone is happy with the idea of someone else running their character. Trading souls does allow for some interesting role-playing, and since it is guaranteed that souls in the hands of different players will not act the same, this adds some verisimilitude to the incarnations model.

I hope you have enjoyed this month's A Bit of History, and I expect to see you next month for the second annual I Want Games for Christmas review column. January will see part three of Incarnations where we will look at a few examples of incarnations to play.