Has anyone run a DFRPG campaign "a la Ars Magica" -- multi-PC / player?

[g33k]

In case anyone doesn't know it, Ars Magica (ArM) suggests each player have (at least) TWO player-characters:  one "magus" and one "companion" (there are also "Grog" pc's, a pool of low-level grunt/mook/comicrelief PC's (also lotsa fun to play!)).  Many of the tropes in ArM are similar to DFRPG in many ways, including that magi are notably more-powerful, but suffer inescapable "issues" with moving through larger society (in DF, it's mostly the tech-hex; in ArM, it's social penalties for their "creepy" magical Gift; both suffer from "so much magic-focus that in other spheres of action they're rather naive, only moderately competent, etc).  In any play-session / story-arc, ArM players will pick EITHER their mage or their companion for play, with typically only one (or a few) magi, and mostly Companions (supposedly; I know many Troupes regularly have 50%-or-more magi) on their expeditions.  Certainly the source novels focus on Harry + non-Wizards (with occasional exceptional scenes e.g. with Elaine, Ramirez, etc) in this way, and from reading online it *seems* that many (not all!) DFRPG groups follow the "one-or-few full Wizards / preponderance of other types" schema.

It has struck me that the similarities between ArM and DFRPG are strong enough that many elements from one game would "play well" in the other game, including ArM's "Magus/Companion" (and even "Grog") tropes in DFRPG.

So... has anyone done this?  Run a DFRPG campaign with 2+ PC's per player, with the specific PC's coming up per-story as seems most-fun / most-appropriate?

[Ulfgeir]

Well what we have done, is that we had some side-stories from the main campaign.

First we, wanted to try the Fate Core-system, so the GM specially-made 4 characters (14-year old kids on a school trip, to Boston, where the main campaign was). Those characters ended up seeing some of the events in the other campaign from a spectator view and was horrified. A large pack of wolves running around the city, many people dead or injured. Then a building blew up, dead mercenaries and a helicopter that was hexxed to crash, and there was much talk about Mexican Muslim Terrorists...  Don't ask, that one is just too weird. Those character then got taken to Nevernever and introduced to a faerie queen (i.e. the evil nasty kind that everyone thinks Mab is, but maybe even more powerful), and sort of becoming her champions.  In the main campaign these charactes later turned up as 16-year olds on the same powerlevelss the rest of the chars. They have been involved in various things. Some of them not so nice.

Then, we had a sidetrack where the group split off doing various things, and as a way to introduce a new character as that players previous character got himself written out of the story (still alive, but in a witness protection program) due to the choices he had done, three of us got to play the henchmen of the new one. We were sent from mythical China to Bosotn to investigate and form alliances with other supernaturals.

So characters from both of these tracks has been used as temporary replacement-characters when the normal ones were missing. For the "normal" ones  we had an emmissary of power who turned into a dragon and though he could fly. Let's just say that gravity proved him wrong, so he then in human form ended up lying in a hospital with basically every bone in his body broken, and we also had a genie whose lamp was stolen from a bankvault, and some wizards put her through the metaphysical wringer and mucking around with her. The replacement chars in these cases were a teenager who was a faerie knight with a hell of a lot of oumph, and a ninja who used some ectoplasmic flesh mask to disguise herself.

/Ulfgeir