Quote:
That's a stereotype of how replacing characters works, yes. But it doesn't really have to be awkward or complicated. A lot of assumptions, unstated here, have to be in place before any awkwardness happens.
The first is that "the party" is a closed group, rather than open organization. Again, war serves as simple example of how easy this is to avert: a mercenary company or an infantry platoon of conscripts has people coming and going for reasons directly related to the activity. When people die, get injured or desert, new reinforcements have to be brought to the front or the group will be destroyed. The dungeon-dwelling paradigm of classic D&D can be used to similar end, with expeditions planned case-by-case. That way, there's a natural reason to change group composition both in response to character injury or loss as well as specific needs of a dungeon. In true open table play, each character could be played by a different character, but there isn't an actual problem with a player playing multiple characters and changing based on need.
Again, the fact that you keep bringing it back to the fairly specific genre of war stories suggests the limitations of character replacement. When I talk about a narratively-focused campaign, I suppose what I mean by that is a campaign where the player characters have highly personal reasons to pursue the adventure in question, and the nature of those particular reasons drives the plot. Having different dungeon expeditions planned on a case-by-case basis, or having PCs belong to some professional organization like a military unit is very different from that.
Quote:
Anyways, how I do it in my games:
Lamentations of the Flame Princess (or other old-school D&D-type game): money allowing, player characters are allowed to hire retainers from level 1. These are level 0 NPCs generated by the game master and default to game master control. If a player character dies mid-session, a player has option to take over a retainer, at which point that retainer is promoted to level 1 of suitable class. After reaching level 2, they can also hire a henchman. A henchman starts as proper level 1 character and receives half share of treasure, advancing at half the rate of their master. A henchman must stay one level below their master or they'll leave to do things on their own. I, as the game master, usually generate a selection of characters to serve as henchmen. Henchmen default to game master control, but in practice I've had no problems giving them to player control - at most, it means a player has two turns in a round. If a player character dies mid-session, the player immediately resumes play as the henchman.
Praedor: each session begins in media res, at the border of Borvaria (the great big adventure area of the setting). If there are more characters than players ready at hand, the leftover characters are left to wait at the border camp as the others venture deeper. Upon death or return to the camp, a player has option to switch to or choose to continue as any of the leftover characters. This continues as long as there are excess characters at the camp. Characters can be created and played by anyone, though in practice so far, I as the game master have made them all.
So on and so forth. I'm in process of writing a third take of the system for a brand new campaign. It's a development on the Praedor model, fitted for classic dungeon crawling and fortress building. In that model, a certain area (namely the dungeon and its immediate surroundings) is the stage. Characters are followed when they are on that stage and cease to be followed when away. Some amount of retainers, henchmen etc. are expected to wait at the camp just outside and are available as reinforcements or replacements when earlier characters are injured, killed or leave for some other reason. Continuity of campaign is based on what happens in that area, rather than what happens to individual people.
Don't know much about Praedor, but I have enjoyed LotFP before, and it's one of a few systems I'm contemplating using this model for (the others being Basic Fantasy and The Black Hack 1e.) It's worth considering having them simply work as henchmen a-la AD&D, with the proviso that they form the backup pool.