09-10-2026, 04:38 AM
When I think of troupe play I go immediately to Ars Magica. Is that where the terminology is coming from? It explicitly defines something it also calls "Troupe Style Roleplaying". This stems from the fact that the "main" characters are mages in a world where that means most adventuring type problems aren't challenges for them. The game expects the players to have at least two characters, one of which isn't a magus, as well as sometimes play as a group of shared hireling/servant characters. It also features a central location and group identity in the form of a covenant - essentially a monastery for wizards, as well as a very well developed suite of downtime activities. In my opinion the most notable feature of its downtime system is that it's also the advancement system. You can only improve your skills and magical arts by studying, and this takes full seasons of game time and is greatly aided by good teachers and books to learn from. I've been trying to adapt something similar to less hardcore games as I really appreciate that it's fully diegetic and removes the external mechanical incentives of e.g. XP. I would highly suggest anyone interested in troupe play to check it out.
That said its definition of troupe play also extends to different players taking on the GM role at different times, which doesn't appear to be discussed here. If we're excluding that from out definition of troupe play here, people may confuse it with this pre-existing terminology.
If we're trying to establish new terms instead, how is troupe play in this context different than an open table? Is it just a matter of different characters rather than different players? I think Misha is onto something in the distinction.
I have personal experience with troupe play - most of my time as a GM has been chasing large scale sandbox games with a lot of players acting independently of one another. Initially I experimented with 1-to-1 time but this has since proved unsustainable. It did do a good job of pushing players towards troupe play though, as if the actions of the previous session included traveling for two weeks, for example, their characters would not be available to play until two real weeks had passed. So at the next week's session they would need to play different characters. I had decided that any new characters would enter the game at the inn the game started at, or anywhere a player at that night's table had a character. I'm still fond of that idea. This did actually happen in practice and we had an A and a B party, though the players were mostly the same core group. I had also been considering a system of unlockable character types based on factions other characters had befriended - character classes or races which couldn't be chosen otherwise.
My second attempt also had one to one time, but the scope of the campaign world was such that it didn't really come up. That game had three separate parties of players which shifted around a bit but ultimately stabilized. There was also not multiple characters, but there was a downtime system which gave each character a downtime action per week. The actions were handled on discord between sessions, and I strongly recommend this over doing downtime at the end of a session or in a session. It really sings the best when its allowing players to do things that wouldn't be a good use of session time, like crafting.
I had a list of actions to pick from but enough players were doing things off-list that it became a huge drain on my time but I also had a free-form advancement system where players were proposing their own perks so it's hard to distinguish the time cost of the two in retrospect. My takeaway was that any sort of downtime actions need to be primarily mechanical and have minimal GM interaction, so that they can be primarily self-serve over discord. Ideally the players would simply make a post to a downtime channel saying what they did and be able to completely resolve it themselves. I can't recommend enough using discord or some other organized non-session communication for larger scale games. In my next attempt I am also planning on having shopping lists available players can just buy or sell by posting to a market channel between sessions.
I will also say that downtime systems tending to focus on individuals will bring conflict between characters as they bump into each other and develop goals which start to conflict. This is a feature for me, but I understand it isn't everyone's thing and I strongly believe the expectation of conflict needs to be communicated to prospective players.
Something I didn't expect with the three-party game was that players ultimately sorted themselves by playstyle preferences such that one group was very combat and dungeon focused, one was doing deeper character roleplaying, and one was just kind of vibing and pursuing other character goals. But the reality is that most people are content with a range of playstyles, so that could be a potential incentive to have multiple characters.
That said its definition of troupe play also extends to different players taking on the GM role at different times, which doesn't appear to be discussed here. If we're excluding that from out definition of troupe play here, people may confuse it with this pre-existing terminology.
If we're trying to establish new terms instead, how is troupe play in this context different than an open table? Is it just a matter of different characters rather than different players? I think Misha is onto something in the distinction.
I have personal experience with troupe play - most of my time as a GM has been chasing large scale sandbox games with a lot of players acting independently of one another. Initially I experimented with 1-to-1 time but this has since proved unsustainable. It did do a good job of pushing players towards troupe play though, as if the actions of the previous session included traveling for two weeks, for example, their characters would not be available to play until two real weeks had passed. So at the next week's session they would need to play different characters. I had decided that any new characters would enter the game at the inn the game started at, or anywhere a player at that night's table had a character. I'm still fond of that idea. This did actually happen in practice and we had an A and a B party, though the players were mostly the same core group. I had also been considering a system of unlockable character types based on factions other characters had befriended - character classes or races which couldn't be chosen otherwise.
My second attempt also had one to one time, but the scope of the campaign world was such that it didn't really come up. That game had three separate parties of players which shifted around a bit but ultimately stabilized. There was also not multiple characters, but there was a downtime system which gave each character a downtime action per week. The actions were handled on discord between sessions, and I strongly recommend this over doing downtime at the end of a session or in a session. It really sings the best when its allowing players to do things that wouldn't be a good use of session time, like crafting.
I had a list of actions to pick from but enough players were doing things off-list that it became a huge drain on my time but I also had a free-form advancement system where players were proposing their own perks so it's hard to distinguish the time cost of the two in retrospect. My takeaway was that any sort of downtime actions need to be primarily mechanical and have minimal GM interaction, so that they can be primarily self-serve over discord. Ideally the players would simply make a post to a downtime channel saying what they did and be able to completely resolve it themselves. I can't recommend enough using discord or some other organized non-session communication for larger scale games. In my next attempt I am also planning on having shopping lists available players can just buy or sell by posting to a market channel between sessions.
I will also say that downtime systems tending to focus on individuals will bring conflict between characters as they bump into each other and develop goals which start to conflict. This is a feature for me, but I understand it isn't everyone's thing and I strongly believe the expectation of conflict needs to be communicated to prospective players.
Something I didn't expect with the three-party game was that players ultimately sorted themselves by playstyle preferences such that one group was very combat and dungeon focused, one was doing deeper character roleplaying, and one was just kind of vibing and pursuing other character goals. But the reality is that most people are content with a range of playstyles, so that could be a potential incentive to have multiple characters.