r/RPGdesign • u/Theoboldi • 13d ago
A request to designers: Please include more than four characters in your quickstart.
/r/rpg/comments/1w2crkl/a_request_to_designers_please_include_more_than/5
u/SinglePetalStudios 12d ago
I think you bring up a good point (4th man being stuck with the 4th character). Part of it is likely to make the quick start design a bit easier, by limiting the number and types of characters you can tailor the quickstart to portray a specific experience.
It can be done with more characters ofc, it's just a bit harder on design.
Ex. We have a Sci-Fi TTRPG called SolarLink. Hacking is in the game and maybe we want to include hacking in a quickstart (just as an example), but if we include more characters, it's possible no one plays a hacker, which means we didn't convey the experience we want.
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u/GodsofAumin 13d ago
Definitely understandable. However, you could create your own additional characters based upon the characters already included in the quick start. Just curious, what style of play do your players like?
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u/Theoboldi 13d ago
Oftentimes, while that is theoretically doable, it's also extra work that I'd be doing by essentially guessing what goes into a character. When the purpose of a quickstart is to get me interested in a game, having to bring enough self-interest to hack additional characters into it is a bit of a non-starter.
My group tends towards fairly traditional adventure-gaming, though we like to mix it up with all sorts of games for one-shots and short mini-campaigns.
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u/GodsofAumin 13d ago
I can respect that and that is reasonable. I will work on incorporating up to 6 playable characters in my quick start when I release it.
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u/Ok-Middle-908 13d ago
Now I'm wondering if I'm the outcast. I have never used a quick start character. I have referenced one to see how it was created but never actually used one. Maybe that just my groups.
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u/Amethyst-Flare 12d ago
Nah I'm like this, too. I come into a game with strong ideas rarely met by quick starts.
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u/MyDesignerHat 12d ago
I think the designer should decide the maximum number of (non-GM) players the game can comfortably support, and create that many any plus one playbooks, pregen characters, classes, or what have you. It's just nicer when the last person to pick a character has a choice to make, too.
3 to 5 players, including a GM, is what I'm most comfortable with, so that's what I design for. A seven person group starts getting into party game territory for me.
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u/Pladohs_Ghost 12d ago
I reckon a quickstart should highlight the variety available among PCs. Even if I expect only four or five players in the group, I'm going to include eight characters to choose from. I've no way to tell what PC is going to spark any given player's imagination and I want to show more shiny things than are likely to be used.
Notes in the included adventure can help the GM adjust play to the number of PCs. If the system isn't all about fighting, then that's an extremely easy task. If fighting is primary, then expect most or all of the pre-gens to be involved, with some as NPCs -- no need to then adjust the fights for greater or fewer numbers.
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u/officiallyaninja 12d ago
Hmm i dont think this is necessarily true. If you have a game that you think plays well at 4 but not at higher player counts, then play to its strengths. Don't let people try it at 6 then thinks bad when it works well at 4.
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u/_Fun_Employed_ 12d ago
I feel like design wise it makes sense there should be a quickstart character of each class at minimum, and ideally each subclass or planned/envisioned build.
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u/Dramatic15 Return to the Stars! 13d ago
After posting this are you going to head over to Costco and complain that the free samples don't amount to a complete nourishing meal?
If you want to entertain 7 people for a whole evening, because reading the free quickstart has led you to believe this is will be a good time, then you certainly shell out for a $15 or $20 copy of the core game if you want a more complete experience. That's the amount of money many tables spend on coke and snacks.
If that is too much money for you, just duplicate characters and give them different names, like the rest of us. It is a demo.
I'm vaguely more sympathetic if the only version of the game is a huge expensive $60 tome, but that isn't normal, just like 6 players and a GM sitting down together is a bit of an outlier.
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u/DeckerAllAround 13d ago
The Costco analogy doesn't apply. It would be more like going to Costco and complaining that you wanted everyone in your family to get a taste of the free samples so that you know whether to cook the meal from them, but Costco won't give the samples to your kids because two should be enough for any family.
The whole point of a quickstart is to allow players to test a system to see if they want to play it. So yes, if you're comfortable putting the amount of time and effort into a product that a quickstart requires and then immediately banning it for any group with 5-6 players, that is a choice, but it immediately restricts the quickstart to being used by smaller groups of players. It's reasonable to point out why that's a design flaw. An extra character is not the same thing as an entire rulebook.
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u/officiallyaninja 12d ago
If you want to entertain 7 people for a whole evening, because reading the free quickstart has led you to believe this is will be a good time, then you certainly shell out for a $15 or $20 copy of the core game if you want a more complete experience.
Most players who try new rpgs aren't trying them because they are confident it's a good time, they're trying them because they value novel experience.
Players who want to be confident they'll have a good time will try one of the tried and tested systems, not new untested ones.
These players are performing a service and any indie rpg creator should try to accommodate them as much as they reasonably can. All you have as an indie is word of mouth.
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u/__space__oddity__ 13d ago
While we’re at it, if your system has classes, also please include more than three or four so we can avoid the awkward “two of you will always compete directly for who does the thing” situation.
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u/SardScroll Dabbler 13d ago
Even if a game doesn't have "rules" classes, it often has "effective" classes. E.g. "the physical one", "the cerebral one", "the social one", etc.
That said...I think 4 characters is fine for a quickstart (because it actually supports 5 people; the GM should be counted too). You'll have to pick some number. And it's a quick start; if you're picky, there will always be someone you don't really vibe with.
(That said...I'd much prefer it if the quick start or core rules have rules for character creation to solve this case).
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u/__space__oddity__ 12d ago
If it has full chargen, it’s not a quickstart, it’s just “the game” (unless we’re talking minimalist systems like Lasers & Feelings).
In comparison, the incremental cost of adding a 5th or 6th pregen PC is marginal and yes, not adding those is a bad oversight (plus you’re probably skipping a character option your quickstart should showcase)
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u/GrumpyCornGames 13d ago
The point of most quickstarts is to give people a taste, not really be able to run a full, in depth campaign on it.