Second character questions

Two of the advanced moves (retiring a character, creating a 2nd character) involve creating a new character to play. I'm wondering how other groups have gone about this.

Is it generally considered cool to take an existing NPC and claim it as your new PC? How about if the PC is your Ally? Someone else's Ally?

Not sure why this posted to this thread, I was replying to another. Please ignore.

As far as I've seen, it's been brand new characters, not NPCs we've seen before. right now I can't think of a reason it couldn't be, but I might just be tired.

I PC-ified a member of my operator's crew once, and it was fun. There is no reason not to PC-ify a recurring NPC you like (unless there are! Check with your MC, he might need that NPC for something), and there is a reason to do it - if you're adding in new characters that late in the game, it might be better to get one that already has some kind of history with all of the rest of the PC cast.

Naturally enough, if it's another person's ally or crewmember, you check with that other person as well as the MC before you PC-ify it.

We have had someone take a new PC from an NPC holding, someone we may have seen before in dealing with that holding but who was not a key player prior. When I took a second character, he was a recent refugee and a relatively new Angel - basically he was part of a bike gang and when their medic died, he got stuck carrying the kit, and it turned out he had some vague sense as to how to use it. In the game I'm running now, one player's about to take a new character, and the groundwork has been in place for three sessions for that new PC to come back with them from a visit to the only neutral/friendly holding around. Not that we were planning on the new PC, but the player is seizing a good opportunity to introduce a new PC and have it make sense.

So sure, I'd say take new PCs from where-ever, so long as it makes sense in the fiction and you've cleared it with your MC.

Of the four new character entries in my face-to-face games, three of them were established PCs and one was not.  They all worked fine.

Thanks for your replies!

There is no reason not to PC-ify a recurring NPC you like (unless there are! Check with your MC, he might need that NPC for something)

Well, I'm the MC, for starters, so that's not an issue. I've been trying not to need specific NPCs for anything, especially as they can be turned into Allies at the drop of the dice.

I guess my question really had more to do with the nature of Allies. They're a kind of resource, right? My instincts are not to let one player make another player's PC's Allies into his/her new PC, but if a player wants to do it to his/her own PC's Ally, then that's okay. No NPCs have been made Allies of multiple PCs yet in this game, though I'm excited for that to start happening.

As a side note, I notice that the description of 'retire to safety' necessarily involves creating a new character. Does that imply that, once you're running multiple characters, you're gonna be running multiple characters for the rest of the game? My instincts say no, but I am trying hard to run with the rules as written.

edit - I suppose your characters can get killed off, so that can shrink your numbers.

Short of death or retirement, I think the expectation is that you'll run those characters for the rest of the game, yeah.

Holy cow. If you want to retire a character and not make a replacement, that's just fine. Go for it.

My group loves taking NPCs and making second characters if they retire or something. The MC usually makes them choose sides and that in itself can used as a threat. I haven't tried it because I like to see how long one character can live and eventually change playbooks over and over again.