D&D 5E Official material to help character motivation/party cohesion

[Voi_D_ragon]

I was planning the beninning of the next campaign I'm going to run the other day and started asking myself how I was going to believably bring the characters together at the start and how to make a hook that was easily tied to a fixed feature of their backgrounds (for this Eberron campaign, I'm requiring that all PCs were present at the Cyre border on the Day of Mourning - which still gives huge leeway as to why or how they got there, as well as what happened after). Anyway, I began looking for inspiration, first in the DMG and then in published adventures. I was pretty disappointed by what I found:

• DMG: two paragraphs with the barest indications and a couple of vague questions to tie the beginning of the campaign, but no indication on tying the wider story to their backstory to create believable motivation.
• ToA (hands down the worst offender imo): a powerful archmage, who has received info through the Harpers (who received it by a lich!) of a soul-devouring artifact that threatens her life and possibly all life, is the only entity to organize any sort of response (apart from the Red Wizards): send a bunch of random 1st level adventurers alone through one of the world's deadliest jungles to stop this danger, and offers the reward of 1 rare or uncommon magic item if they succeed. The table based on PC backgrounds is cute, but only really makes sense if you insert the party into a much larger expedition, which is mentioned multiple times.
• WBtWL (absolutely loved the first of these):
  • Each PC saw the Witchlight Carnival as a child, but lost an integral part of their personality during the visit. Upon its return, they enter, planning to retake what was lost. Awesome. Doesn't flesh out why the PCs should work together or properly meet at all though.
  • A random warlock asks some randos to find out what happened to his patron, who has stopped being responsive. This assumes the party is made of established adventurers and is already ready to work together.
• Icewind Dale: gives a table of reasons for PCs to be in Ten Towns, but no real reason to accept the quests in the first chapter or work together with the other PCs.
• CoS: party is hired offscreen and/or is directly kidnapped by the mists. After that, no real indication on how to make the party care for Barovians or really hate Strahd, which would be the main two reasons to finally confront him.
• Wildemount has 4 mini adventures, which are pretty good with hooks tbh:
  • Characters are all in the same location for some r&r, don't know each other. The place gets attacked and everyone needs to work together to get out of there. Afterwards, they're picked up by a third party and offered a chance at retribution. Pretty good, assuming PCs aren't the types to forget a slight, want to run away from a fight, or leave a threat to innocents unchecked (which is usually pretty unlikely).
  • Players are all in the same location, but pursuing separate goals, then they get attacked. Similar, but slightly harder to believe everyone was in the same place despite different goals.
  • Players are in the same village, and being adventurers, are hired by the mayor despite not knowing each other. It's alright. Believable that the mayor would turn to freelancers to solve a small local problem. Still no reason the PCs should accept.
  • Basically same as above.
• Call of the Netherdeep: assumes the players are already an established adventuring party, using one of Wildemount's adventures. The hook for the main campaign is nice though: the party meets their rivals during friendly competition that gradually gets more serious.
• DiA: less info on this as I'm a player, but the party meets in the context of their Dark Secret (which has some half-decent motivation as to they should have carried it out in the first place). Then all the PCs are separetely called to meet the same guard captain for a job, when most of the Dark Secrets above would have them avoid the law as much as possible, and with no indication of how it's known that they are established adventurers.
• OotA: PCs are kidnapped and look for a way out of the Underdark. On the way out, they meet some demons, but there's no real feeling of spreading danger as far as I can tell by playing 6 levels in it. There's separate places with separate pwoblems, but there's no sense that each of these is corrupting the vicinity or that there will be danger once the party reaches the overworld, so why warn anybody?

In summary, I think WotC should put more effort into giving DMs resources to help their players determine why they are present at the start of an adventure and why their character would embark and stay engaged in it. Counting on the fact that the players want to play and will just go with a story is, indeed, functional, but it's pretty cheap and they should give a hand to people who want deeper and more believable characters.

This could be a series of tables with varying degrees of depth in the DMG (after all, not all tables will want the same depth, and not all DMs/players will have the experience to actually work on certain levels of backstory engagement) with generic settings to start an adventure in and reasons why a PC would be there and be engaged by the hook thrown, as well as ways to forge bonds between PCs right from the onset. I'll give a quick example I hope will work when this campaign finally gets going:

The PCs were all touched by the Mourning, finding themselves on the border of Cyre when it happened. Each PC should determine why they were there and work with the DM to understand how the scene played out. After this, all PCs moved to find themselves in Sharn (a huge hub with tons of possibilities, including just disappearing into a crowd). The adventure starts when the PCs all go to Morgrave University to be subjects in a study of Mourning Survivors. Why should they agree to the study?

1. Ever since the Mourning, you've been feeling off, perhaps manifesing powers you didn't have before. You hope the study sheds some light on your condition.
2. You really need the money being offered to those who volunteer as case studies.
3. You want to get close to a particular faculty member to ask them something on their area of expertise.
4. You are considering joining Morgrave and want to have a close up look at its inner workings.
5. You want to do what you can to help find a solution to the Mourning.
6. You want to take the opportunity to explore the wonderful camous of Morgrave and discover some of its secrets.
7. You're hoping to gain a favor from the university rather than payment: perhaps access to their laboratories for an experiment or to a restricted section of their library for research.
8. Ever since the Mourning, you've been shunned for fear of having a curse, perhaps by your community or loved ones. You're hoping to disprove that, scientifically.

After this, their future patron gives them a quick guide of the campus, and while in an enclosed laboratory space, with nowhere to run and noone to call, an experiment goes wrong, causing a fight to break out with some Mephits. This gives the patron a view of the party's skills and brings him to proposition them for a job. The PCs can gain more than just money from this, as they might have a vested interest in gaining the favor of the university for the reasons above: perhaps volunteering to be a guinea pig won't be enough, but helping the university on a dangerous quest probably will.

Anyway, I think that's quite enough from me, any thoughts?

 

[DEFCON 1]

The fact that you are doing your own charts and reasonings to bring the party together is much better and will ultimately prove more fruitful than anything WotC might've put in the DMG. So in the long run I think you're going to end up finding yourself better off than if you just relied on any generic WotC random table about why the PCs are together. Good work!

I mean it's like all the Bonds/Ideals/Flaws/Traits tables WotC makes for the Backgrounds. Sure, they are all fine for generic ideas... but none of them have any specificity towards what a person's PC is really going to know/have/experience in the campaign setting their DM is running. So none of those charts really end up being that useful, and you could say almost a waste of page and wordcount. A player making up their own BIFTs specific to the game they will be in will always be better.

Maybe it's just me... but every time someone wishes WotC would include something in the game so that they wouldn't have to do it themselves, I can't help but think that's really not true. Because making it up yourself will actually give you what you need, rather than some default idea by WotC that has to try to be everything for everyone, but ends up being nothing for no one.

I think you have made the right choice by creating your own. Here's hoping it works well for you!

 

[not-so-newguy]

Yeah, this trope has bothered me for a long time: "After meeting for the first time, you all decide to trust each other with your lives and become lifelong roommates." Or some variation of this.

I agree with @DEFCON 1 that this is something that has to come from DM. I'd add that this is something that the Players should be collaborating with you too, if possible.

You might want to check DM's Guild or DrivethruRPG. Somebody may have created the supplement that you're looking for.

 

[payn]

Do they do campaign players guides for 5E stuff? I'd recommend that if its a thing.

 

[Scott Christian]

I think meeting for the first time and trusting works fine if you have players that think in those terms. Trust will come with time, and it is a nice character arc that plays out. It even allows the PCs to tell their story to the others, and it can be gripping at times. But again, it is the players mixing with DM finesse. Which leads to...
Many players starting a new campaign often come with backstories where one knows the other well: sisters, brothers, cousins, lifelong friends, etc. But DM prep makes almost any situation work. Once the DM knows the group (both players and PCs), they can add subtle things, interesting encounters that require skill building, and narrate as such to make it a point.
DM: The lighthouse window is open but way to high up for you to reach.
Player 1: Can I climb?
DM: You are unsure why, but the walls are actually secreting an oily substance. It seems very odd.
Player 2: Can I throw player 1 up there?
DM: You can try.
They try.
DM: As you go in the window, you can see player 2 watching carefully. It looks like they are worried or wondering if they have to catch you if you miss.
That last bit of narration, done by the DM or the player, is a small building block of cohesion. It's subtle. A few words. But added up, it really does work. Watch PCs that use the word "we" instead of "I" and you will see cohesion build.

In the end, it is the DM's job. It takes time. It also takes a willingness to focus on cohesion, which inevitably, takes from something else. But if it is important to the group, then they should be doing it.

And then there are groups that will never be cohesive; be it outside differences, players not wanting to play with someone in the group, etc. Real life has an effect too.

 

[J.Quondam]

A big bucket of Sovereign Glue is also an option to maximize party cohesion.

 

[not-so-newguy]

A big bucket of Sovereign Glue is also an option to maximize party cohesion.

the ol' human centipede campaign. A classic.

 

[Voi_D_ragon]

Do they do campaign players guides for 5E stuff? I'd recommend that if its a thing.

Most modules have a "how did your PC end up here" table or section, usually based on the PHB backgrounds, but it ain't much.

 

[el-remmen]

Have you considered asking the players to come up with the reason(s) collectively or individually (depending on how you're starting) within the parameters you set for the beginning of the campaign?

For example, in my "Out of the Frying Pan" campaign, I asked players to come up with characters with these two criteria:
1. A reason to not want to go fight in this big war that is raging that lots of people are being conscripted for.
2. A reason to visit/live in X city in one of the warring nations.

I then took their meeting and the circumstances and why they were thrown together from there, helped by player desire to play along and want a reason to work together (even if in a meta-way).

In my "Second Son of a Second Son" campaign, the premise was all the PCs are the scions of low-birth rank nobles seeking to build the wealth and glory of their houses (and thus their position in it) by joining forces with other young adventurers doing the same. Some of them really believed in this mission, some were pressured by family politics, and others wanted to exploit it somehow.

In my current 5E "Ghosts of Saltmarsh+" game, I went even simpler and told the players that their characters meet and get to know each other on a long ship's journey into exile from another part of the world they will never return to. So the game started with them not only knowing each other, but being the only people they even kinda know in this new part of the world they've all arrived at for their own reasons.

Hope that helps.

I think any "official" and most published material is going to err towards the generic side because everyone's game and meta-motivations are different, so coming up with some details as a group is best.

 

[GMMichael]

XP for effort. But D&D (or the wider DRPG hobby) can't do anything solid for @Plutancatty's problem due to two major issues in bonding PCs:

1) The GM creates a campaign that could include anything.
2) The PCs create characters who can be anyone.

Any motivations you try to apply on top of this are going to feel forced and/or cheesy.