WISH: Equality
From Ginger: The typical party of PCs appears to be composed of equals. They may have Nodwickian henchlings or distant authority figures, but in most of the games I've played, the PCs are equal with respect to each other. Is this generalization true for you as well? What other group dynamics have shown up in campaigns you have played? What other group dynamics might be workable? What isn't workable, and why?

I used to think that it was very important that player characters be equals. They each have their spheres of influences, but in the end each character is equally effective. Then something changed. I realized that it doesn't always work that way in fiction and it certainly doesn't have to be that way in games.

The important thing is that each character is important and gets equal air time, not that they are equal. Since I realized that, I've played some rather incompetent characters because I've decided to trust the GM to allow my character to shine at some point.

In Champions, characters are point-based and all PCs are built on the same amount of points but that doesn't make them equal in power. I have one character (Chango) in the Champions game I'm in that the GM tried talking me out of how I was spending my character points. "You realize that you have almost no defenses or skills, don't you?" I had spent tons of points on a really cool attack power and left it at that. "Yeah, that's what I want. Someone with lots of power but he's still really incompetent." "Are you sure." "Yeah."

Playing Chango has been a blast and with experience points he has become an extremely effective character but when the game started he was knocked out every other adventure. He was really good at causing damage but half the time he would knock himself out with his own attacks.

He was the comedy character of the group. He was the Xander. He was (and is) a lot of fun.

Now, I'm GMing a game set in White Wolf's World of Darkness (or something close to it) that mixes several supernaturals. In today's adventure the PCs were a Were-raven, two Sidhe (Fae), three vampires, a mummy and a Demon Hunter. In WW's games the different supernaturals are anything but equal. However, each of the characters are equally important to the story. They each will have important things to do and mysteries to solve.

I guess that my answer to this question is that all PCs should be equally important. Sure, there will be times that certain characters will get the spotlight over other but they should all have their moment in the sun. This doesn't mean they have to be equal in powers or abilities. It can be interesting to see how characters of varying power levels can still interact and be involved in the plot. It may take some skillful manipulation on the part of the GM but it can be done. When it is done properly you can have far more interesting group dynamics than may have been possible if all of the characters met as equals.

Roleplaying is not about competition. Noone should be keeping score of who defeats the most bad guys. It should be about telling a good story together and if having a character in the group who is less capable than others makes a plot more interesting than the player that plays that "Zeppo" has been succesfull even if he/she wasn't able to defeat a single bad guy and other characters had to save him/her.