What kind of party do you like leading most?

[Jim Cojones]

1. Whole party created by player - you click new game, make 4-8 new characters and lead them through game. Sometimes it may be possible to replace a dead character with a new one in a tavern. Sadly, almost no one produce such games anymore and even Voggel is abandoning the idea. Games like Might and Magic 7 fit this category too - while technically you can hire an NPC to follow you, he isn't a regular party member and only provide some boost to stats/experience.

2. Mostly player created characters plus some NPCs - like the above but on occasion an NPC can join you. Used to be extremely popular but nowadays is even less likely to be featured in a new game than the first option.

3. Player character plus broad choice of mercenaries - think JA2 or BG. You start with one character made by you and then you can choose from huge rooster of NPCs.

4. Player character plus limited choice of "deep" NPCs - similar to the previous option but sacrifices possibility to customise your party in favour of having followers with more detailed personality, loads of dialogue and party banter. Think PST or any BioWare game after the first Baldur's Gate.

For me it's a tough choice between 1 and 3. Creating your own characters is one of the most fun activities in RPGs but so is browsing AIM list, regretting that you can't afford all the guys you would like to see in your team. Second one looks like a decent compromise between these two but when I play games designed like that, I usually keep to my own characters and would prefer having bigger limit of characters to create instead.

 

[Kalin]

Very nice poll.

Creating your entire party all by yourself offers great freedom and flexibility, and in primarily combat-based role-playing games such as Icewind Dale, it works really well.

I often tend to favour interaction over combat, however, so my choice would quite naturally be number four. Of course, the characters in question would really have to be of a high quality. For example, a game such as Planescape: Torment has excellent characters, but Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn offers a rather bland selection that partially consists of some of my least favourite characters from Baldur's Gate. In that particular case I much prefer number three, since Baldur's Gate's characters are collectively more interesting and diverse, despite being, shall we say, less than talkative.

 

[racofer]

I like parties with naked whores and free blowjobs.

 

[King Crispy]

Always been partial to creating my whole party. Half the fun of a Gold Box game or ToEE, etc., is the build choices and the combinations where you're trying to enhance certain strengths or even introduce your own inherent weaknesses to add flavor and difficulty to the game. Sometimes a completely oddball party like all monks or something is fun to try.

Powergamers go for the most optimal setup, of course, and even though I hate that approach myself, I have learned to try to understand it and accept it as something people do enjoy.

 

[Serious_Business]

Depends on the kind of game. I don't think a game like Torment with a generated party would be a very good idea D:

I like parties with naked whores and free blowjobs.

i will kill you

smug little shit

 

[Jaesun]

Depends on the kind of game. I don't think a game like Torment with a generated party would be a very good idea D:

 

[octavius]

I think the Baldur's Gate games had the best kind of parties, and it also makes more sense that you can meet other people who have a "name" and join forces with them, either out of common goals or because you come to regard them as friends. It kind of makes the player character the character you role play and identify with, while in games where you create the whole party you're more like a football coach.

But I also like games where I create whole parties, or where you can a couple of extra NPCs.

What I don't like is when the game forces me to team up with characters I don't like and there is too much EMO talk and romances.

 

[zeitgeist]

Depends on the game type and the quality of the NPCs, but generally I like being able to customize more than one party character fully (equipment, skill set, stats, history, personality, look etc), and I don't mind NPCs joining the "core" party, so anything between 1 and 3 is fine by me.

If you look at 1.13, it actually has a combination of the first three options - you can have 6 IMP mercs (a "full party") if you want to, or just one IMP as the main player character, you can recruit all or most squad members from a list, and you can recruit some of them through quests in the gameworld (and some NPCs join you only briefly for escort quests).

I'm not really a fan of BG2-style NPCs, I'd rather see more party banter of the JA2 or Wiz8 variety.

 

[314159]

I prefer killing monsters by myself.

 

[JarlFrank]

Really depends on the type of RPG. In something that is more story-focused, or focused on playing a single character whose personality you can develop through dialogue, I prefer hirable NPCs. This way you identify more with your own character (as opposed to the party being completely made up of your own chars) and, if the hirables are well-written, it adds to story quality.

When it's a dungeon crawler, full player-created party all the way. If going through dungeons and doing combat and solving puzzle is the main meat of the game, I want to be able to experiment with party creation and do silly shit like going all-female all-spellcaster, or optimizing the party to work together. A dungeon crawler's quality is vastly improved by a good party creation.

 

[King Crispy]

Wasn't BG's and other games' notion of including pregenerated characters that join your party intended to simulate (pardon the naiveté here) a live rp'ing session in which those characters are controlled by other human players and the game itself is the world provided and narrated by the DM? So a single-player D&D simulator? That's the way I've always interpreted it, anyway.

My problem with that layout is that you're at the whim of the developers' creativity and imagination WITHOUT the potential social backlash (at the "table") of poor character design/concept, poor roleplaying, and a resulting poor overall party experience.

I realize that you can't control what the other players do during your PnP sessions, but you do tend to associate with people and friends contained within your own intelligence group and of at least similar styles and preferences, whereas with BioWare you have no choice and can't do anything about it other than not accept the characters you find annoying into your group, e.g. Imoen, Minsc, etc.

Come to think of it, that's precisely why I prefer IWD anything over BG anything.

P.S. Look where that design philosophy led BioWare to today.

 

[Undead Phoenix]

Somewhere in the middle of 3 and 4.

NPCs without some sort of characterisation are just so bland and dry to me.

 

[Nael]

For me it's a tough choice between 1 and 3.

Same here. I'm gonna go with 1 due to my fondness for the Might and Magic series. They were about the only party games where I wasn't tempted to play the game as a solo character instead. But I have played some games that resembled option 3 that I enjoyed as well but they tend to fall under the tactical gaming genre. Might and Magic also allowed for the hiring of mercenaries so perhaps this is why both options appealed to me.

 

[Gosling]

3. Player character plus broad choice of mercenaries.

"Deep NPCs" are rarely done well and kill replayability for me as I often end up hating them all.
I also hate emo NPCs with "deep" issues. I try to avoid such people in real life too.

 

[torpid]

One of the best thing about RPGs to me is creating a party, so obviously option 1 is what appeals to me the most. If the designers want to include NPCs with deeper characterization than the usual stock characters, they should have them be non-joinable NPCs you meet during your adventures rather than party members who recount their life story to you. The latter kind of kind of interaction is unnatural at best, dripping with sentimentality at worst.

 

[Mastermind]

wiz 8 style party creation + personality based on the voice you pick.

Should also note that the party type should depend on the type of RPG. RPGs greatly focused on one PC but who insist on having more party members should have gameplay that caters to that and party members should be resources to be exploited based on the character's skills and attributes. FO2 and NV did this fairly well.

 

[MetalCraze]

JA2 style

Gimme more flexibility in party choices, even if it means sacrificing "characters"

 

[Azrael the cat]

Depends on the kind of game. I don't think a game like Torment with a generated party would be a very good idea D:

 

[Crooked Bee]

Whole party creation for me, please.

 

[easychord]

Voted #2 but I would like a different formula.

Like, take the system from the game everyone is playing, The Last Remnant. It at first was designed to have hero characters leading squads with soldiers making up the ranks but they ended up with so many heroes that all the squads were full of them. I would like that sort of battle system, since it's my favourite recent innovation in combat. But I would like the squad leaders to all be player created. Along the way you might pick up some henchmen with personality and plot related characteristics and stuff with less customisation that you can use as corporals in a squad. But the ranks are filled with soldiers who get much less flashy advancement.

 

[JagreenLern]

A militant socialist party, hopefully leading to the creation of a true Fifth International.

Oh you mean in RPGs? Option 1 then.

 

[Azalin]

I like parties with naked whores and free blowjobs.

Ah,the Berlusconi style of partying


I was between 3 and 4 but voted 4 in the end,I guess I liked some of those "deep"npcs

 

[hoverdog]

3) for JA-like games (including action rpgs, dungeon crawlers&mondblutians, and every other game that's purely concentrated on battling)
4) for storyfag RPGs.

 

[Commissar Draco]

3 and 4 as well, those merceneries however shud not be free of charge and easy to obtain, more of quests and faction advancment rewards. But most fun I had with solo games like F01 and Bloodlines.
I f I want to meet some derp characters I wouid turn off computer and leave home.

 

[Phelot]

I voted 1st option, but now I'm not sure

I like examples from all the choices, but I suppose I still prefer 1 the most.