As I've explained over at Lords of Hack Blog, my half year aversion to doing game "homework" in all forms is finally over. I've been going back to reading games, going to message boards, thinking about future plans etc.
First Thought: I will never, ever, ever, ever allow players to run totally simultaneous multiple PC's again. The practice is an absolute role-playing killer. Awesome as the role-playing was in our first Traveller game on Skull was with 1 PC each, the minute we had 3 at once the next game, there was a noticeable and precipitous drop. While everyone did a good job bringing 1-2 of their characters into sharp focus, nobody brought all 3 to full PC vividness. Having multiple PC's also just ended up with shuffling around characters to find the one with the easy solution, rather than making the PC's come up with a solution with the tools at hand.
Henchmen are always the better solution in so many ways. They're disposable, they're subordinate, they're limited in power, and they're not all meant to be vivid.
I don't mind multiple PC's, but they have to be separate and segregated. So, a player could run Malsquando the Mage one week, and if he is detained on magical research, Larry the thief the next. That's good, that's cool, that's even to be desired. But, never 3 guys at once, at the same place, doing the same thing, every session. Never again.
Last thing I want to do is deal with three PC's at once again!
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