In a recent edition of Mark Shallow’s Adventurers (1) , one of the main characters is fuming about the fact that he’s been switched out of the active party(2) to cool his heels in the Reject Room. The bard and the obligatory cute mascot, who have been spending more or less the entire adventure there, give him a look utterly devoid of sympathy. Adventurers pokes fun at many of the RPG conventions we hold dear, and the concept of the Reject Room—a place in the ether where party members wait to be called to duty—is funny because it’s not only implied in most games, but because it’s simply so ludicrous.

See, there’s no reason for it. Having a set number of people allowed to be in the active party—generally three (the Final Fantasy VII standard) or occasionally four—is an outdated tradition. I dread the very first Moment of Choice.

By Moment of Choice, I of course mean the first time you have to decide who’s going to be in your active party and who’s going to be switched out. See, very few games nowadays give you a complete party at the start—Wild Arms 3 being the only one I’ve played in the past year that I can think of—and the model generally involves a lone hero who meets companions and has his party set by the end of Disc 2. So you always start off with less than the maximum number of active party participants. Once you hit four or five party members, however, you must select who’s going to go into battle with you. Oftentimes, a character will make a comment to the effect of, “There’s too many of us to fight! Who’s going to go into battle?” And I always cringe.

Because, let’s think about this logically. A group of fiends or gnosis or bandits or just generic monsters are about to attempt to chew you up and spit out your bones. It would be an asset to have all five or six or forty of you go on and attack them. You’d be saving your own lives a bit more easily. And it’s not like the monsters are playing fair. Some parties of monsters have more members than your party’s. They certainly aren’t limited by the rules.

The repetitive button-pushing was one of the many, many complaints with Unlimited SaGa (3). It takes at least twenty taps of the action button per round of battle. If you’re selecting multiple characters and attacks, then it’ll take even more. It’s tedious, I’ll admit. However, US eliminates the concept of an active party(4). You can have up to seven people in your party at a time. You are allowed to pick five actions per turn, no matter how many people are with you. So if you’re going solo, your character has five chances to attack; if there are more you can divide them up however you want. Whatever characters you haven’t picked will duck out for the duration of the round, and you can immediately pick them again next battle.

One of the quirkier bits about Unlimited SaGa is the fact that you only make level gains AFTER each adventure(5). Characters gain levels more or less equally—ones who fight more gain more hit points, but otherwise they make similar gains. But normally, the system of the active party and the Reject Room creates a very interesting catch-22.

See, I think just about everyone hates Final Fantasy VII’s Cait Sith. He’s not too strong, he doesn’t have a particularly good magic level, he’s not especially fast—in short, when you get him he’s a mediocre character at best. Now I could theoretically level him and get him to become a better character…but why? I hate him, both personality-wise and stat-wise, so he’s not going to get much time in my active party—I’ll just be wasting the phoenix downs. And in most RPGs, characters not in the active party don’t gain any experience. They stagnate. To summarize: He’s a terrible character, so he doesn’t get much play in my party. He doesn’t get much play in my party because he’s a terrible character. You see the problem?

Now, it’s been a little while since I’ve played VII, but I can’t remember any times where you’re forced to use the King of Cats. However, there are many games where you’ll be ignoring the crummy character, and suddenly you’ll find yourself in a dungeon that lame character has, for one reason or another, decide to brave alone. So you’re too underlevelled to make it through the dungeon, and you keep dying, and if you’re me, you take out the sledgehammer and go to town on the CD.

Like Xenosaga. I was shocked to find people actually liked MOMO. “Dude, she’s, like, good at magic and stuff!” people said. Remember, though, that I rarely use magic; when I play games I prefer the stupid beefy guys that hit stuff with swords. And I found the spells (“Ethers”) in Xenosaga to be even more useless than normal(6). So I kept her as far away from the battles as possible, until I got to the Encephalon. The party splits up into two groups of three, and guess what? MOMO’s got to be used now.

Now MOMO at least had a useable amount of HP because characters do level outside of the party—albeit much more slowly than active members. However, you don’t get the points necessary to gain spells or special attacks. MOMO might be a good character for spells, but if she doesn’t have any, then all she is is a possible decoy.

We’ll all agree that RPGs have progressed since their earlier incarnations, but in this aspect, they’ve regressed. In Dragon Warrior IV—published eleven years ago—characters out of the active party level up as quickly as those who are in. So Brey, the weak magic-user who I set at the very last position in the party, doesn’t have to worry about being stuck at level 5. Additionally, when the active party is defeated, your other members jump into the fray.

Which brings me, naturally, to Final Fantasy X’s active party system. You can switch members in and out of your party at any time—even during battle. So we can assume that the non-active members are standing on the sidelines, filing their nails or reading Summoner Monthly or whatever. But if all three of your active party members are defeated in battle, it’s game over. Ludicrous, right? Do the remaining members give up? Have simultaneous heart attacks? Figure, “Oh, well, if Tidus was killed, I certainly have no chance?”

But then again, Dragon Warrior IV was more difficult. Final Fantasy X, comparatively, was a cakewalk. Would that the active party be able to be replaced, there would probably be no threat of death. Also keep in mind that revival is more difficult in the Dragon Warrior series—certain high-cost spells can revive with only a certain percentage of success, and you can only carry one revival token at a time. Final Fantasy has Phoenix Downs literally everywhere, and revival spells always work.

I also wonder how the non-active party feels during the final boss fight. Think about it: You’ve got your group of rebels bred from the slums, each with their own reason to go on the adventure. Killing Sephiroth, Kefka, Lavos, Zoma, the Sinistrals—that’s the motivation behind each character’s journey. The goal of the defeat of the Ultimate Bad Guy/Girl is the climax of a character’s life. It will solve everyone’s problems.

Pity if you started a resistance organization to do so and you’re stuck at home decorating for the welcome back party.

If we’re hell-bent on keeping the ridiculous notion of the active party system and the limited number of battle participants, then we ought to have it make a bit more sense. So your active party is dead. Don’t make the non-active party into a bunch of selfish cowards who aren’t going to rush in and fight. And trim the fat. We don’t need a dozen characters. Otherwise, we’re going to have a whole lot of bards, mascots, perky little girls, and guys who fight with staffs that are going to be planning a rebellion from deep within the Reject Room.

Of course, they’re bards. They can’t do that much damage. Especially if they’re underlevelled.

Footnotes

1)http://adventurers.keenspace.com/

2) Active Party (n): The group, in an RPG, who actually fights the battles, as opposed to the schmoes who are going along with your saving-the-world journey but not seeing any excitement.

4) Arguably, it also eliminated plot, characterization, exploration, and coherency.

5) To be technical, Unlimited SaGa does not have level gains as we know them. The system is too complicated to explain here; just trust that you get stronger.

6) Most are support effects; I managed to finish the game just fine without them.