One Player, One Character

Though I'm pretty sure that almost no roleplaying game actually states this in its text, it's nevertheless a fairly common idea that each player has only one character. On the surface, it makes sense. If playing a RPG is about, on some level, experiencing an imaginary world through the eyes of an equally imaginary persona, then I can see the argument that allowing a player to have more than one character at the same time would hamper or at least dilute that experience. In general, this seems to have been the default approach – one character per player – I've encountered while playing roleplaying games over the years. It's not universal, mind you, but it's very common.

There are probably a number of explanations for the prevalence of this approach. A significant one, I believe, is the way that, as the hobby expanded to include more players who'd never previously been involved in wargaming like myself, the frame of reference changed. Roleplaying was no longer viewed by reference to military campaigning but instead became analogized to novel series or television series, with the player characters being its protagonists. I'm sure others can find even earlier examples, but I always recall that, in his foreword to his 1981 revision of Dungeons & Dragons, Tom Moldvay states, "Sometimes I forget that D&D® Fantasy Adventure Game is a game and not a novel I'm reading or a movie I'm watching."

We can argue about whether this approach is the "right" one or not – honestly, I don't really care one way or the other. However, as I said, I think it's a pretty widespread approach and has been for a long time. In some of the campaigns of my youth, this was the assumption, while in others, it was not. For example, I've never run or played in a Traveller campaign where any player had multiple characters. Meanwhile, it's been quite common in the D&D campaigns in which I participated. In my old Emaindor campagn, nearly every player had at least two characters, one high-level and one mid or low-level. This practice grew out of necessity rather than any principle. Sometimes, a character would die and be replaced or sometimes players wouldn't show up as often to sessions and, therefore, their characters would lag in experience. To deal with this, we had "multi-level" campaigns. They all took place within the same setting, but there were different parties or groupings of PCs, all adventuring and sometimes crossing paths with one another.

Because my House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign has been ongoing for just shy of a decade now, it has a very expansive cast of characters. The main group all belong to the House of Worms clan, but, as the years have worn on, additional characters have come into their orbit, becoming new player characters in the process. During their many years governing the Tsolyáni colony of Linyaró, some of the characters remained in the colony to handle administrative matters while the others explored the wilds of the Achgé Peninsula. During that time, new characters were created to replace those who stayed behind. Likewise, the wives, retainers, and slaves of certain characters were added into the mix as secondary characters. What was happening in the campaign determined which characters were played.

In the Barrett's Raiders Twilight: 2000 campaign, the group of characters was initially small – only seven, one for each player. In time, though, the group picked up a stable of secondary characters, too. The largest group of them joined while the PCs were in Kraków. Because of the overabundance of sergeants, we decided as a group that we needed to introduce some enlisted personnel to fill out the roster. That's how Aquaman, Bedford, Oddball, Rocket Man, and others entered the campaign. Later, Dumont, Landry, and Walker of the 8th Canadian Hussars and Walker of the US 3rd Cavalry entered as NPCs but served as occasional secondary characters, when needed. 

I could probably go on with other examples, but I think I've made my point. In thinking about this, I'm starting to think that secondary (or "back up") characters are more common, though not exclusive, to long campaigns, those that last more than a couple of years. They make much more sense in the context of a large, freewheeling campaign that's gone to a lot of places and done a lot of things. Shorter, more focused campaigns tend to be much more like Tom Moldvay's analogy of a novel or TV show. That's because long campaigns eventually start to be about the campaign itself rather than about the characters. The setting and its events looms large and, while it may not take the spotlight completely away from the "main" characters, it does diminish their importance somewhat. If my past and recent experiences are any indication, it can be a lot of fun.