Two characters each

[duelt]

I very much like Jon’s current Dark Heresy game. Up until now I haven’t quite been able to put my finger on why I like it so much, until I realised that it may well be because each of the players has two characters. It seems to me that it has several advantages over having just one character:

1. It allows the player to concentrate on two things. In a normal game half of the party might concentrate on combat and the other half on social skills, but when the player has two characters, it allows them to contribute to and excel at multiple things, so a non-combat session won’t leave the person who made the lunatic combatant feeling left out, as they have another character to fill the role.
2. When the player has to come up with two different character concepts, they have to think more carefully about how they roleplay both of them. The ways the two characters are played have to be quite distinct, so that it is clear who is speaking. This may well force a player to create characters he may not normally create, in order to do this. None of the characters that I have played in the game I would have played in the same way had they been my only character.
3. Further, I’ve noticed that Tom and I in particular are playing characters (Nicholai and Crisis) that may not be much fun to play in a game where they were our only characters. At least, I think, we would probably be playing them differently.

It may not be the case in other game systems though. I can’t imagine a 4e DnD game with two characters each being anything other than a disaster, for example. Dark Heresy is probably a good system in which to do this because it is quite difficult for most careers to become good all-rounders.

Hmm, at the start I was sure I had more than this, but still, I think that in my next game, if it’s Dark Heresy, each player will have two characters.