Using Titles

So, what's the point of a Title? Won't all your Issues take place in the same Title, making it a moot point? Not necessarily.

Titles are used to set the mood of the game. By having different Titles, you can have different moods and foci. For one Title, the stories can be moody and dark, focusing on the underworld, while for another, the main villains are world-threatening Omegas, and for a third, the focus is the politics of Venicia, with very few, if any, Omegas (besides the players' characters) showing up. By dividing things up this way, associating them with distinct Titles, you can instantly convey the mood of the evening just by announcing the Title. Also, with the open-ended nature of most roleplaying, the Title can help to narrow the scope -- the players know, because of the Title, that they should focus their efforts on the burglary, and the questionable politician is just color.

The most effective way to do this is to have one Title for all of the characters, and then a series of Titles focused on one or two of the characters. This means that, some of the time, some of the players won't have a Main character in the Title. There are two ways to deal with this. First, they can play their usual characters, who will now be Guest characters Crossing Over into the Title. In terms of the game mechanics, this only means that they can not use the Storypath cards in the Title. But it should also have non-mechanical impacts on the game. Guest characters should be secondary to the Main characters, but only in the focus of the story, not their overall importance. That is, the story should revolve around the Main characters, but the Guest characters should have things to do. It's all right if the Guest characters contribute less, or get less spotlight time, but they should still have a significant contribution, something that the Main characters couldn't have accomplished on their own -- after all, if they weren't needed, the Crossover wouldn't have been written.

Or, they can play a different character for the Issue, usually a Diceless character that is a regular part of the Title. In this case, they should have more to do, but it should be less important. Since they are a regular part of the Title, they should have frequent contributions, but they will often be minor or offscreen ones -- running a message, consulting with the local Don, preparing the trap, acting as bait or decoy.

The disadvantage of both of these techniques is that some of the players (those not playing Main characters) may feel left out. If this is, in and of itself, a problem for your Troupe, you should probably avoid it. Instead, either stay with one Title, or come up with multiple alternate Titles that focus around the same group. The Hall of Justice, for example, could easily have 3 or 4 Titles that focus on its members in different ways, much like the distinctions suggested above.

But for many players, it's not inherently not fun to play a secondary character, done right and in moderation. Exactly what that entails will take a bit of experimentation with your Troupe. Generally, the dissatisfaction comes from one of three things: lack of screen time, lack of spotlight time, or lack of "fairness". The last is the easiest to address. Many players won't have a problem playing the sidekick one week, so long as they know that the next week they got to be the Main character and the other person has to be the sidekick. So balancing the rotation of Titles, spending an equal number of Issues on each Main character's personal Title, and interspersing with Issues in which all of the players play Main characters, should fix that. Lack of screen time is similarly fairly easy to address. Some players don't need to be the center of attention much, or even at all, so long as they are part of the action, and have something to contribute. For this sort of player, make sure that there is always something for their character to do. At least some of the time, their character should be the only one who can do it, or at least the best choice, even if it's just because they are the only one without superpowers and can't fight the villain, so they are the best choice to get the warning message to town. The hardest issue to address is players who feel left out if they don't get equal spotlight time, since the primary point of different Titles is to shift the balance of spotlight time, making it unequal. For this sort of player, playing a Diceless character rather than a Guest (their usual character) may actually be a better solution. That way, they don't feel like their personal character (whom they almost certainly are more invested in) is getting short shrift. They can more easily accept a secondary role by playing a perpetually-secondary character (on an occaisional basis) than by temporarily "demoting" their usual character. If someone shows resistance to having their character do a Guest character shot in someone else's Title, suggest this possibility, and see if it works better.

Of course, there is one more "level" of participant in the game: the Storyguide. You should rotate Storyguides, as well as Titles, though a given person need not always Storyguide the same Title. For some players, both those who value spotlight time and those who value fairness, taking a shot as Storyguide can easily offset an Issue of not being a Main character.

Finally, don't ignore the possibility that you may have different needs. You may have one spotlight hog in the group, who can't stand playing a secondary role. However, if everyone else is content so long as they get their share of screen time (and not very concerned with fairness), this needn't be a problem. You can still rotate through multiple Titles and Storyguides, with the spotlight hog always playing a Main character, sometimes in her own Title with the others Crossing Over, sometimes in the Main Title with everyone a Main character, and sometimes in another Title where some of the characters (including hers) are Main and some are Guest.