{"id":7092,"date":"2023-05-08T04:00:14","date_gmt":"2023-05-08T08:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/?p=7092"},"modified":"2023-04-21T10:24:05","modified_gmt":"2023-04-21T14:24:05","slug":"crashs-course-ep-12-rerolling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/2023\/05\/crashs-course-ep-12-rerolling\/","title":{"rendered":"Crash&#8217;s Course Ep 12: Rerolling"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"powerpress_player\" id=\"powerpress_player_2110\"><audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-7092-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/cogwheelgaming\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/CrashsCourse_Ep_12_Rerolling.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/cogwheelgaming\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/CrashsCourse_Ep_12_Rerolling.mp3\">https:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/cogwheelgaming\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/CrashsCourse_Ep_12_Rerolling.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_links_mp3\" style=\"margin-bottom: 1px !important;\">Podcast: <a href=\"https:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/cogwheelgaming\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/CrashsCourse_Ep_12_Rerolling.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_pinw\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Play in new window\" onclick=\"return powerpress_pinw('https:\/\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/?powerpress_pinw=7092-podcast');\" rel=\"nofollow\">Play in new window<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/cogwheelgaming\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/CrashsCourse_Ep_12_Rerolling.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_d\" title=\"Download\" rel=\"nofollow\" download=\"CrashsCourse_Ep_12_Rerolling.mp3\">Download<\/a><\/p><p><a href=\"https:\/\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/CrashsCourse.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-4404\" src=\"https:\/\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/CrashsCourse-300x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/CrashsCourse-300x300.png 300w, https:\/\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/CrashsCourse-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/CrashsCourse-768x768.png 768w, https:\/\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/CrashsCourse-1024x1024.png 1024w, https:\/\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/CrashsCourse.png 1400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 85vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Hello and welcome to Crash\u2019s Course, a short form podcast where I share my thoughts and advice on playing and running tabletop role playing games in roughly about 5 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Today I want to talk a little about rerolling. OK, not every TTRPG requires players to <i>roll<\/i> anything when creating a character, but whatever. I\u2019m talking about those moments in a longer campaign when one of your players decides they want to try a different character.<\/p>\n<p>There can be a lot of reasons for this.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the player decided that after a certain plot development, it didn\u2019t make sense for their character to decide to stick around. This could be because they felt betrayed, because they\u2019d finally found a place that felt like home, or something else entirely.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the player felt inspired to create a new character, and didn\u2019t want to have to wait for the next campaign to try it out.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps they\u2019ve decided that character they made looked neat on paper but they\u2019re just not getting the emotional attachment they wanted or expected.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps they\u2019re just bored.<\/p>\n<p>And \u2026 perhaps the character died in a spectacular fashion.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve had players come to me with all of these reasons and more, and they\u2019re all valid.<\/p>\n<p>Look, TTRPGs are supposed to be fun. If something gets in the way of that fun, that\u2019s a bad implementation, and you should change things. I won\u2019t say I\u2019m the perfect GM, but at this point when designing a campaign I try to also think about how new characters can be added without breaking the established plot.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, even in the all-kobold game where they crash landed on a planet without kobolds. The ship was full of more than just the party, and the escape pods worked for everyone but the NPC captain (R.I.P. Sniv Stonetail). Any new character could just be assumed to be a survivor whose pod landed somewhere else.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s mixed schools of thought on what the power level of the new character should be. I\u2019m of the opinion that it should be comparable to the rest of the party (yes, even if the new character didn\u2019t \u201cearn\u201d those levels \u2013 the player earned them on another character), so if the rest of the party\u2019s level 3, Joe McNewcharacter should also be level 3. If they\u2019ve acquired a few magic items along the way, I\u2019m likely to allow McNewcharacter to pick something off a list.<\/p>\n<p>In Cypher System it can be a bit trickier, because even if you award XP evenly throughout, players can spend it on long or short term benefits. I have a situation like this that I\u2019ll be resolving on Monday, and in this case some of the players have spent enough XP to get halfway to Tier 2 so I\u2019ll be letting the player of the new character check off two boxes on their character sheet (their choice which) but have them otherwise start with no XP.<\/p>\n<p>In my games, that\u2019s a state that won\u2019t last long.<\/p>\n<p>One last thing: Just because a character\u2019s leaving the active party does not mean they\u2019ve left the campaign setting. One of my favorite things is when the plot provides a reason for that character to make a return, either as an NPC or, better yet, with the original player reprising the role with an appropriately leveled older and wiser PC.<\/p>\n<p>Bonus points if they end up playing the old and new characters at the same time, but try to not force them into a situation where they have to have a too long conversation with themself.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s all for this episode, subscribe to just this podcast on Mastodon at <a href=\"https:\/\/is.aaronbsmith.com\/@CrashsCourse\">is.aaronbsmith.com\/@crashscourse<\/a> or subscribe to all my TTRPG podcasts at <a href=\"https:\/\/is.aaronbsmith.com\/@cogwheel\">is.aaronbsmith.com\/@cogwheel<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Music is <a href=\"http:\/\/modarchive.org\/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&amp;query=169788\">Deadly Windmills by JAM from modarchive.org<\/a>, used with permission, as it\u2019s public domain.<\/p>\n<p>This podcast is distributed under a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/4.0\/\">CC-BY-NC-ND<\/a> license.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Follow this series on\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#x25b6; Patreon: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/cogwheelgaming\">https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/cogwheelgaming<\/a><\/li>\n<li>&#x25b6; RSS: <a href=\"https:\/\/is.aaronbsmith.com\/@CrashsCourse.rss\">https:\/\/is.aaronbsmith.com\/@CrashsCourse.rss<\/a><\/li>\n<li>&#x25b6; Google Podcasts: <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.google.com\/feed\/aHR0cHM6Ly9hYXJvbmJzbWl0aC5jb20vY29nd2hlZWwvZmVlZC8\">https:\/\/podcasts.google.com\/feed\/aHR0cHM6Ly9hYXJvbmJzbWl0aC5jb20vY29nd2hlZWwvZmVlZC8<\/a><\/li>\n<li>&#x25b6; Apple Podcasts: <a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/cogwheel-gaming\/id1291681389\">https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/cogwheel-gaming\/id1291681389<\/a><\/li>\n<li>&#x25b6; Mastodon (Just this podcast): <a href=\"https:\/\/is.aaronbsmith.com\/@CrashsCourse\">https:\/\/is.aaronbsmith.com\/@CrashsCourse<\/a><\/li>\n<li>&#x25b6; Mastodon (All podcasts): <a href=\"https:\/\/is.aaronbsmith.com\/@cogwheel\">https:\/\/is.aaronbsmith.com\/@cogwheel<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>MP3 Download: <a href=\"https:\/\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/CrashsCourse_Ep_12_Rerolling.mp3\">Crash&#8217;s Course Ep 12: Rerolling<\/a><\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignnone\"><figcaption><a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/bePatron?u=6006674\">Keep us ad free by supporting us on Patreon!<\/a><br \/>\nThanks to our current Patreon Patrons (as of this upload&#8230;): Chris, Cindy<span class=\"sc-AxirZ bmNQcS\" data-tag=\"user-details-full-name\"> (Patron Emeritus)<\/span>, Ellie, Erik<span class=\"sc-AxirZ bmNQcS\" data-tag=\"user-details-full-name\">, ShanShen, and Walter!<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hello and welcome to Crash\u2019s Course, a short form podcast where I share my thoughts and advice on playing and running tabletop role playing games in roughly about 5 minutes. Today I want to talk a little about rerolling. OK, not every TTRPG requires players to roll anything when creating a character, but whatever. I\u2019m &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/2023\/05\/crashs-course-ep-12-rerolling\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Crash&#8217;s Course Ep 12: Rerolling&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[312,293],"tags":[362,364,318,295],"class_list":["post-7092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-podcast","category-ttrpg","tag-crashscourse","tag-cypher-system","tag-dnd","tag-dungeons-and-dragons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7092"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7095,"href":"https:\/\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7092\/revisions\/7095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaronbsmith.com\/cogwheel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}