Besides, I remind them that everybody has hit points that are just aching to be pared away. High-profile PCs are far more likely to raise the ire of a BBEG.

If however, you use other characters as neutralizers, this problem is solved. In my current DnD 4E campaign, I have Der, a character who lost his powers and gathered a group of persons to aid him in the search of an artefact, he is guided by a godess who also grants hi; a few new pozers. Everywhere they go, will resolve around this artifact. Then there’s Akiasah, an evil wizard with a lust for power, he simply wants more. Bregwin, a rogue who urgently needs money, no matter what it takes, such an artifact could be interesting for him. There’s also Mal, a devil who due to a ritual got sucked into a silly apprentice of a wizard. He lost nearly all of his powers and thus, acting as if he’s a warlock with a devillish pact, he goes after this artifact.

The last character is a bit of an outsider. He wants to rescue a friend who got kidnapped by a bunch of undeath. While attempting this, he meets the above group and he feels that if he follows them, he might see his friend back. His future is still shrouded, for himself. The rest has an agenda, but this player gave me full control over where his character should go, by playing out cards like the boss telling him thatt he’s moved and other similar plans.

Each character is marqee in regards to the story. If the stories all have a certain omg-effect, no character can’t be marqee…

In my upcoming 4e campaign dragonborn are very rare, and the ones that exist are outcasts. One of my players really wanted to be a dragonborn, mostly for this reason. His plan was to turn all of the party’s successes into reasons why dragonborn should be accepted, and eventually found a race of dragonborn that cooperate with the other civilized races. Needless to say, he was planning spend a lot of social encounters trying to overcome prejudices.

I didn’t want the rest of the party to fall into the shadow of this, or to just ignore it, but I wasn’t sure what to do. Then another player said he wanted to play a dragonborn. We worked it out so that his character, a cleric, is always entirely concealed by heavy cloaks. He claims it is for religious reasons, but the real reason is to hide the fact that his god has changed him from a human into a dragonborn. He used to be accepted in the community, and in his new guise, he still is; and he really doesn’t want to lose that. He could help the other dragonborn character become accepted by revealing himself, but he also risks losing all he’s worked for.

The other dragonborn’s quest for acceptance now directly involves at least one other character, and will very likely be a source of tension between them as soon as he finds out what the cleric really is. If another party member finds out first, they’ll have to choose whether to keep the cleric’s secret, or tell the other dragonborn. It’s not something either of the characters involved will kill over, so I think it’ll be a fun source of non-violent party tension that will get everyone involved in the quest to gain acceptance for the dragonborn… whether they like it or not.

If you’re going to use a Marquee (Marquis?) character, I’d say that it really depends on the players. There are a few I wouldn’t trust with a Marquee, and others that would do fine with it.

I’m partial to the NPC/Removal method, with a twist: make the NPC a pain in the ass. Captain Picard never shoots anyone (well, hardly ever), but he creates all kinds of situations for his team to deal with. Captain Malcolm Reynolds is an active participant, but he’s no better than anyone else at anything, and his stubbornness also creates all kinds of stress for his crew.

The only complaint I can see against Removal is the “necessary to the genre” example (no Jedi in Star Wars). The simple answer is to either adopt rules that allow for it to work (Saga rules apparently do this well), or to just allow everyone to be one (a Jedi Academy game).

My problem is the “unexpected Marquee character”. I use a character’s background in a plot, and then the player stops showing up, the character dies, or some such event. Other than not weaving player background into the plot (which is not an option), does anyone have any ideas for this?

One terrific thing about Saga Edition Star Wars is that all of the classes have talents that make them unique. The characters were able to combine their abilities in order to take on challenges and overcome situations that they might not have managed by themselves. It has been a good team effort.

The biggest challenge in spotlight sharing that I have seen, as a GM, is when you have a player that is shy about taking the spotlight. One has to push the shy player onto the stage sometimes. It is challenging because I want the player to want his PC to have their turn in the spotlight, but I don’t want to make it seem as though I am picking on them specifically in order to have that happen.

One thing about Spirit of the Century (there is that game again) that I really like is the mechanic of compelling aspects. When a GM feels that a player needs some more screen time, he can go to their aspects and compell one of them to enhance the story. At least he can reward the player/character with a Fate point when he pushes them into that light. The GM gets to help the shy player by doing that and he is rewarding the PC from a mechanical standpoint. It is Win-Win.

I’m currently playing in two games and was recently running one. One of the games I play in now has a marquee character — not mine — and I love it. It takes a lot of pressure off of me, since my character is basically backup for his. While I certainly wouldn’t want that in every game, it’s a nice break now and then.

I’ve definitely played with people who didn’t like the spotlight. They enjoyed coming out, hanging out with their friends, and rolling some dice. Having someone else be the center of attention is A-OK as far as they’re concerned.

As with all things, you need to gauge your players and do what’s right for them.

Also, having to register to comment is annoying. I highly recommend the Akismet anti-spam plugin if you haven’t tried it.

Equal stats rarely works; often you’re buying spotlight with character points, which doesn’t work at all. It’s very hard to make the tradeoffs work in a similar spotlight tradeoff way– instead, the flaws to pay for the rank/coolness often drive even more attention to the character.

Group Fate sounds interesting– I don’t think I’ve really done it before.

Neutralizers often make things worse– they amplify the spotlight for the key PC. “No one else could do X, but Fred,” is a great line once, but not consistently. (Plus you get metagame considerations, where the PC could start the fight by slaughtering the small fry in the first round, but doesn’t so everyone will have something to fight. Sometimes players don’t pick up on that– sometimes you’ll have the smallfry try to mob the neutralizer with painful results.)

Support sounds like it amplifies the problems of PCs who don’t interact with the others– you’ve extended it even further. At that point, if they aren’t going to share scenes, why pretend they are in the same campaign?

In the end, any of them can work– but more than “equality” of any specific kind, most people want equality of spotlight. As mentioned by DNAphil, turn the spotlight from one star to another to another, and most players will be happy. If they doubt they’ll ever get their chance at the spotlight, then you’ve got a bucket of trouble.

Think of Star Wars – sure, Luke is the star who ends up with overwhelming power, but everyone has great moments and their own scenes. Han becomes the true ace (IE, they start with the same ranks in Pilot, but Luke multiclasses to jedi while Han stays a scoundrel), Chewie gets to smash around and even ends the campaign with a crazy Tarzan move and stealing the walker. Even C3P0 gets to earn the alliance of the ewoks with his storytelling.

In the final battle, Luke might be the one who seems to have his own encounter, but that’s not really true. In fact, every PC is doing his own thing in the final fight, whether that’s stealing the walker, cracking open the door to the shield generator, beating on storm troopers, or dicing Vader.

I’d then rotate the Time Lords between adventures, giving each player a chance to shine. As a twist, I’d have each Time Lord PC be a different incarnation of the same Time Lord. If one of the Time Lord PCs ever “died,” he’d simply regenerate into one of the others (instant regeneration story).

An example. In a Vampire campaign that I was running, one of the players really stood out, and through the course of the game slowly evolved into the Marquee character. At that point, when I realized that he would be key to the major story arc, I planned out the adventures such that, the only way the Marquee could advance to the final scene, was through the successful completion of a number of side tasks that the rest of the group needed to complete.

Thus, each player played a very important role for the Marquee character, and each player got his time in the spotlight. When the time came for the Marquee character to reach the climax of the arc, the other players knew he got there, because of their help. No one felt slighted about the experience, since every player was invested in its success.

The other thing you can do is to shift the Marquee character in the middle of the campaign. In my current Iron Heroes campaign, the early arcs of the campaign focused around the lost heir of the King, and his rise to power, and founding of a new nation to lead a war on the demons that occupied their lands. But in the middle of his arc, I began to seed hints that one of the other characters, the one with the mysterious religious past, would be key in the eventual defeat of the Demon King. As the game progressed, the King’s story arc began to wind down, as the Vessel’s (as he is known) began to heat up. It was totally obvious to the players, in fact the King said to the Vessel on day, “In time history will not say that the Vessel road with the King, but rather the King road with the Vessel.”

In this way, two of my three players, have gotten to be the Marquee player. The third, who I talked to at length, was fine being a supporting character for both Marquee’s.

I don’t think you have to fear the Marquee, especially if you work it into the social contract, that a there will be a Marquee character. I also think it works best, if you rotate the Marquee character, as well, giving each player a shining moment in the game.