From the latest Rise of the Separatists article, "Worlds at War:"

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2018/11/27/worlds-at-war/

There will be rules for troupe-style play. I have to admit, I'm very intrigued. One of the features of Star Trek Adventures is the "lower decks" NPCs, one usually controlled by the GM but which can be "occupied" by a player if it doesn't make sense for their PC to be a part of the scene. (E.g., the captain shouldn't be on the away mission, so that player takes control of a security or engineering officer... and, in my experience, usually gets them killed.)

Does anyone have any insights on how well or poorly that might work in SWRPG? My guess is that it'll work very well, but I only just started playing STA, so I don't know about potential pitfalls.

1 hour ago, CaptainRaspberry said:

Does anyone have any insights on how well or poorly that might work in SWRPG? My guess is that it'll work very well, but I only just started playing STA, so I don't know about potential pitfalls.

I'm doubting it's much beyond "have each player make multiple characters of different types and switch between them when dramatically important" along with some very loose guidelines for the GM.

1 hour ago, HappyDaze said:

I'm doubting it's much beyond "have each player make multiple characters of different types and switch between them when dramatically important" along with some very loose guidelines for the GM.

This is the impression I got when I read the recent update.

I'm interested to see what FFG proposes.

I've been running the Darkstryder Campaign and we resolved that by allowing players to have 3 character each (a high XP "command crewer" a mid XP "support crewer" and a slightly better than Starter XP "redshirt") with each player being able to select from any available/appropriate character, and XP being shared among them, with of course the big caveat being that the GM isn't going to pull punches to keep player characters alive. So dump all your XP into one dude at your own risk.

It's worked fine so far, but l also confess that my group running that campaign has enough people with the right personalities to handle that sort of thing.

I'm thinking that troupe-play of those things that can apply well to specific groups and campaigns, but probably isn't appropriate for your typical campaign and group.

Yeah, I imagine this won't be a very crunchy section. The one thing I wonder about is how they'll advocate XP awards should work. As Ghostofman suggests, will they recommend one pool that all of a player's PCs can draw from? Or if PC A gets 15 XP, maybe the other two get 15 as well? Or unplayed characters get a reduced amount? These are important considerations, but I imagine that's as much into the weeds as they'll get.

I'm thinking there will probably be some kind of minimal character sheets for the additional characters, something like an NPC stat block that can be shared among the players depending on who plays (for example) Clone Sergeant Kreb in a given scene. They might not even have XP rules, just a reminder for the GM to occasionally update their skills and add a talent or two. Or else they might work with the apprentice rules from Knights of Fate , where a PC has to spend XP to upgrade their effectiveness.

Of course, if a main PC dies and that player wants to "promote" one of the shared characters to their main, they might just suggest re-statting them as a PC.

40 minutes ago, SavageBob said:

Yeah, I imagine this won't be a very crunchy section. The one thing I wonder about is how they'll advocate XP awards should work. As Ghostofman suggests, will they recommend one pool that all of a player's PCs can draw from? Or if PC A gets 15 XP, maybe the other two get 15 as well? Or unplayed characters get a reduced amount? These are important considerations, but I imagine that's as much into the weeds as they'll get.

This is a big question for me too.

In mine I kick a little more XP than usual (like 20-25) and the players decide which characters spend how much on what. The thing that made me go with that is the campaign design doesn't see a big ramp in difficulty across it's 3 seasons and closeout made-for-tv movie. It's pretty much flatline with just a couple spikes and a huge battle at the end. So really you can go the whole campaign without investing a single XP and still make it out the other side if you so desire. So it's not vital that all a players character's see a big jump in capability.

But that's one specific campaign, I've done others that did see significant ramp-ups, and I'm not sure how I'd handle that...

7 hours ago, CaptainRaspberry said:

Does anyone have any insights on how well or poorly that might work in SWRPG? My guess is that it'll work very well, but I only just started playing STA, so I don't know about potential pitfalls.

Well, we won't know for certain until the book gets released and folks are able to read the rules in question. The STA approach with a couple of players using "starring role" PCs while the rest are using "lower decks" characters is a likely approach, possibly to mimic the series itself which tended to revolve around Anakin, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, and Rex, with other characters rotating in and out as needed (or got ganked in the case of supporting clone troopers).

Oddly enough, my own experiences with STA and how it handles "lower decks" characters has been rather different, mostly as those "lower deck" characters aren't really that much less capable than a "starring role" character who are themselves pretty darn capable. Then again, our group tends not to think of characters, especially those on our ship (U.S.S. Kennedy, a Miranda-class) as being "disposable," with my Commander PC having gone out of his way a few times to ensure the safety of the ensigns and other 'lower deck' crew members under his command.

But the Miranda-class is already made of Exploldium! The whole hull should be painted red!