Central PCs in Campaigns

Came across a blog post that I mostly liked today. It presents the idea that a RPG campaign doesn't have to be peer focused thing- but can mirror classic source material. Things like Doc Savage perhaps, with one main character and the supporting casts.

I liked the blog article because it's really something of a match to how I always run my campaigns. Sort of a match, because I don't agree with everything there.

For example, I think most who have dug into Middle Earth consider Sam and not Frodo the main character of Lord of the Rings. Or one could say that no single character is, instead claiming that it is a collection of individual stories that make up the history of the War of the Ring and that Frodo and Sam only got the most screen time because they were closest to the Ring. In much the same way, one could claim that Luke wasn't the main character in Story Wars- that taken as a whole it's Vader. But all that is nitpicking as certainly there are story arcs that feature a main character with a supporting cast.

The major point that I disagree with is that in order to recreate this the GM and players must actually work at it- i.e. put story concerns first. And that just isn't true.

IME it's very common for one player to for whatever reason stand out at a gaming table. And they become the focus for the story as much as say Sam (or Frodo depending upon your POV I guess) in Lord of the Rings did.

Sometimes it's because that player is the best at the table. More often IME it's because the other players are very interested in that one character themselves for some reason. I've seen players twice decide to have their characters die to save specific characters that they themselves decided were the most important in the campaign, not with respect to story- but purely as a element of their character.

GMs react to this, and storylines start to revolve around these characters. This doesn't mean that the spotlight is always on them, any more than it's always on a single character in Lord of Rings or Star Wars. In a large and long running campaign there is room for everyone to shine somewhere.

So I think these types of campaigns can grow naturally without effort in a gaming group that avoids trust issues. Indeed, I think a campaign of equals is actually difficult to enforce as a playing style, and if attempted likely the cause of any number of harms along the way.