Monday's Pitch: Many Campaigns, One Character

Given that identity is just a set of Cogitoes Summing it up, a tenuous set of contiguous, self-aware thoughts, why not use that as a vehicle for self-aware roleplaying within self-aware roleplaying. The players’ characters are consciousnesses with some character and general faculty at fashioning ‘skins’ and operating them. The physical world is a mystery to them. Or rather, the physical worlds. The sum skills and talents of corporeal beings are no more than simple data that can be transmuted from one kind into another between skins.

They create skins that enable them to interact with various, lesser planes of physicality, either for exploration, curiosity, or even as part of a larger plan set in motion by some equally non-physical enemies. The more they act in the physical plane, the better they get at manipulating its ins and outs.

This is a setup for an adult roleplaying game. Not “nip-slips and beer” adult, “I can’t make it this Sunday because I have a baby” adult. The deal is that the characters are nothing more than personalities tied to a meta-experience level. Whenever the players make a character for another short-lived campaign, they convert that meta-experience into game experience for their characters. (For example, Dungeons and Dragons has a scale that goes up to 30 levels. If the characters are one third of the way up the meta-experience scale, their characters for a new DnD campaign would be Level 10. Alternatively, you could do it by experience points, which would make him one third of one million, so 300,000 XP and Level 23). Their characters are only vaguely aware of the setting, matching the general unfamiliarity of the players with a new setting. As time goes on, each will become more familiar with it (or the campaign will be canceled and they’ll start a new one).

This lets players play and level the same character across many different game systems and settings without having to worry too much about whether they’re going to be playing the same game next week or not.

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