Bill and I were discussing the concept last night of a team of NERO characters designed to use the new yellow packet archery system to its fullest. Four characters, all with archery. Two earth scholars, one celestial templar and one fighter. The fighter and templar carry shields with stands that can act as portable packet cover. The fighter shoots big damage, the scholars are full on cantrip healers. The fighter and templar can both also fight sword and board but their profs are centralized on the bow. Command words are pre arranged for concentrated firing and defensive formations. People often gave a negative opinion of those of us who like the numbers behind the game, but seeing a group fight like this with matching costumes, you have to admit that would be pretty awesome.
I enjoy the idea of coming up with character groups that play together. I like considering the tactics that would be necessary to make them successful. Have any of you ever come up with a cool character group, numbers based or role play based?
Tim, I completely agree. I'd love to see more people (and be more involved myself) in purpose built PC teams. I know we've all talked about it in the past, but we really need to get off our asses and make it happen.
ReplyDeleteTeam-based LARPing is the standard in the NorthEast. Obviously not everyone is part of a team, but often times when a LARP starts up, people consider team formation a critical part of planning to play a new game. And, of course, in various NERO chapters you often have noble courts and commoner teams. I have not PCed a character who was not part of at least some sort of team in a LONG LONG time.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, my team in Madrigal is designed around setting/RP elements where we are all good guy white court followers (a couple of exceptions were allowed early on re: faith) on a formally commissioned company to go seek out a particular NPC group that had gone missing in the game's history. In Madrigal, priests are healers for the most part and we have a lot of them so our team, tactically, Never. Stops. Healing. On the flip side, we're ~15 people at any given event and there is a lot going on so we rarely actually all fight together as one cohesive whole so you wind up with a lot of combos that form, unform, and recombine, etc.
I'm on two NERO teams. One is my baronial court, which is selected based on being a good person IG(sense a theme in my RP tastes? ;) ). we're dwindled down to just a few of us, but for awhile we were half healers plus some fighting and celestial. Tactically, in almost every game I LARP, I think having half the team be healers is the realy deciding factor of your ability to be highly competitive. My other NERO team was formed in a different chapter on the basis of being friends with the founder(s). It's had a lot of internecine strife and I think part of the reason is that it doesn't have a core concept to it so it's a lot more ephemeral.
My team at Endgame was probably the most hilarious. We were a group of Detroit street gangbangers. Seriously, a group of nerdy white kids walking around pretending to be badass. Tons of fun and extremely unified.
There are more, but this is getting way way too long. One thing I have never done, though have certainly daydreamed, is actually form a team based on tactics first.
Roz originally started as part of a team for Exiles with Josh, Andy and Andy's wife Tazzy. We had one each of the personas at the time and we were going to try to get a firing line going with me reloading behind cover for them as they fired. Lol Roz is the only one still living from that group.
ReplyDeleteI'm a dinosaur, so I prefer the term "party", but the same applies for me...I like the group approach.
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