In Perseverance, the tales you tell are stories of survival, resilience, and transformation. But these stories are not just about individual heroes. They are about communities — settlements, outlaw bands, scavenger camps, or mining towns. In this world of shifting alliances and constant danger, the strength of a group often means more than the skills of any single person.

This is where the concept of Troupe Play comes into its own. In Perseverance, players don’t just create a single character. Instead, they build a pool of characters, all connected to a shared community. Each session, players choose which character to embody, while the others continue to live their lives in the background, impacted by the events of the story.

What Is Troupe Play?

Troupe Play is a collaborative storytelling style where players collectively create and maintain a group of characters instead of just one. This allows for dynamic storytelling, shifting perspectives, and a richer, more complex narrative experience. It also emphasizes that Perseverance is a world of collective struggle and survival, not just individual heroics.

Core Elements of Troupe Play in Perseverance

• Shared Character Pool: All players contribute characters to a shared pool, and these characters belong to the same community (a settlement, a gang, a mining crew, etc.).
• Community Focus: The story revolves around the challenges, victories, and evolution of the community these characters belong to.
• Rotating Character Roles: In each session or adventure, players can choose which character they will play. This can change from one tale to another.
• GM Rotation (Optional): In a fully troupe-style setup, the role of GM can rotate among players, each taking turns to guide the story.

Creating Your Community

The first step in Troupe Play is creating your community. This is a shared process, with all players contributing to the design of their settlement, organization, or crew.

Key Questions for Community Creation

• What kind of community is it? (Mining town, outlaw camp, scavenger crew, frontier settlement, etc.)
• What are its core values? (Survival, profit, honor, secrecy, independence?)
• Who leads the community, if anyone? (A council, a charismatic leader, a gang boss, a collective of equals?)
• What are its biggest strengths and vulnerabilities? (Rich resources but besieged by rivals, strong local ties but few defenses, etc.)

Community Keywords

Every community has a set of Keywords that define its nature, culture, and abilities. These Keywords can be used by the characters when they are acting on behalf of their community or when their background directly connects to its values.

Example Community Keywords

• Rustpoint Mining Camp: Endurance (20), Resourceful (17), Fractured Leadership (15)
• Sable Hollow Smuggler’s Den: Deception (18), Fast Skiffs (20), Hidden Tunnels (16)
• Old Forge Commune: Metalworking (19), Stubborn Defenders (18), Mutual Aid (17)

Character Creation in Troupe Play

In Troupe Play, character creation is a shared process. Each player contributes one or more characters to the pool, but these characters are all tied to the same community.

Guidelines for Troupe Characters

• Connect to the Community: Every character should have a reason to care about the community’s fate.
• Diverse Roles: Encourage players to create characters with different abilities and backgrounds, reflecting the range of challenges the community faces.
• Complex Relationships: Characters can have bonds of friendship, rivalry, loyalty, or even hidden grudges with each other.

Playing with Troupe Characters

In each session, players decide which characters they will play, depending on the story. If a character is not chosen, they continue to exist in the background, their actions guided by the GM or by collective player decisions.

Rotating Focus

One session might focus on a group of scouts braving the wilds to find a lost supply cache, while another follows the town’s defenders fending off a corporate raid. The community itself becomes the true protagonist of the story, with the cast of characters shifting depending on the situation.

Example: Rustpoint Mining Camp

• Community: Rustpoint, a struggling mining town trying to survive a corporate takeover.

• Keywords: Endurance (20), Resourceful (17), Fractured Leadership (15)

• Characters:

  • Gretta “Ironjaw” Spark, the town’s stubborn forewoman.
  • Jacob “Dustfoot” Rook, a scout who knows the canyons like the back of his hand.
  • Elara Sato, a medic who’s seen too many avoidable deaths.
  • Linus “Spark” Cross, an idealistic young technician who wants to save the town with innovation.
  • Deputy Yoann “Grim” Ross, the community’s grizzled security officer with a scarred face and a bitter outlook.
  • Old Jeb, a prospector who has seen too many mining towns fail, haunted by lost friends and ghost towns.
  • Mia “Dreamer” Hayes, a young idealist who dreams of escaping the mines and going to college at Fallpoint.
  • Harlan “Hammer” Graves, a hard-nosed mechanic and enforcer who keeps the town’s old machinery running and enforces local rules.

Conclusion

Troupe Play in Perseverance is a storytelling method that emphasizes community, shared responsibility, and the impact of collective action. It is a perfect fit for the themes of the setting — survival in a harsh, untamed world, where individuals can only thrive by standing together.

In the next post, we will explore these concepts in action with Ash and Iron, the third Perseverance Tale.