Party creation instead of character creation?

[Jeremy757]

My next campaign will have all the PCs being members of a semi-military organization, similar to the Black Brotherhood in GRRM's A Game of Thrones. This will tie them together for a plot reason and give them a reason to stay together, and gives me huge opportunities to draw them into politics and conspiracies. Even better, because the organization is a neutral force that typically draws from exiles, prisoners and inconvenient bastard children, I can have PCs from any socioeconomic background they want.

And that lets me give them enemies within their organization as well as without...

I'm seeing a plot arc where the PCs find out the the ostensible purpose of the oprganization is not its real purpose, which is much more important than anyone had thought.

This is the method we used in the last Eberron campaign. Our players were all members of a mercenary company that fought for Breland in the Last War. Its a pretty good way to start.

The way I used in the current game I'm DMing was to say all the characters are from the same town. Each character had to know at least one other character, professionally or socially, which created a kind of six-degrees of seperation chain.

 

[el-remmen]

If you are interested in a mechanical way of having the party created together you might consider a stat draft.

I have the rules I used posted here, and you can see the thread where the idea developed and we ran a trial stat draft here.

Also, a recap of the actual draft I used for my "Second Son of a Second Son" campaign can be found here.

 

[Hypersmurf]

We had one of those, the Guild of Bakers, but it turned out that they were the catspaw of a monastary-based assassin's guild run by the Grand Master of Flour.

A pun like that is guaranteed to baguette disaster...

-Hyp.

 

[hopeless]

Reg: This idea

I've tried to do this in the past, with limited success. The only time it really worked well is when I had a group of characters that all started out at 0-level (this was waaay back in 2E). They were all from the same small town, and so sort of HAD to know each other. I didn't try to limit their personalities or motivations, other than limiting their P-O-V to that of a small town, so the party was okay with it. It still left gaps in the party skill set, as no one developed their character into anything even remotely thief-like.

I have been toying with an idea like this for a super-hero campaign, in which not only the player characters, but in fact all of the super-powered beings on the planet, are given their powers by the same localized event. The PC's are guards, scientists, administrators, even visitors at a huge super-prison where the government has okayed special top-secret experiments, using prisoner volunteers (in exchange for reduced sentences or even full parole). SOMETHING happens (not sure what yet, but who cares) that gives everyone in the complex superpowers of some sort or another (again, not sure of the pseudo-scientific explanation I want to use). The closer you are to the event, the more powerful you are.

Because the bulk of the population of a prison is criminals, I have a ready-made (and logical) source of career super-villains. The mental ward of the super-prison provides my psychos, and the top-secret CIA-run political vault gives me super-terrorists or world conquerors. The PC's are all witness to (and recipients of) the event, and take it upon themselves to join the fight to bring these proven criminals back to justice.

It isn't quite a 'party creation', but it is a shared origin that has built-in mechanics for the all of the party's abilities and a shared ethos (capturing freed criminals).

Or turn this on its head and reveal that one of the guards was responsible for causing the incident and that one of the most wanted criminals in the place is actually innocent and has been given "Superman" class powers and is doing "The Fugitive" with your heroes chasing after him not realising one of their own is working for the truly major bad guy and by that i mean the equivalent of "Lex Luthor"...
(Never watched it but Prison Break still gave me that idea)

 

[Gort]

I like this, I might steal it for my next campaign. Whenever I DM, I usually make sure the players make their characters in concert with each other so we get a balanced and plausible party - otherwise you end up with parties like "a drow wizard, a pixie rogue, and a changeling ranger" which to me seem pretty silly in all but the most contrived and temporary arrangements.

Conflict can be fun, I suppose, but at the end of the day the players are constrained by the fact that they are forced to play together, while the characters are not. If people are having to ignore all role-playing to stay in the same party, any conflict will be very artificial.

 

[EyeontheMountain]

I think a party has to be built togetehr for optimal adventuring. In my face to face, we have a 3 player game, and use gestalt, so someone has to be of each archetype (though we skip arcane sometiems) so we end up negotiating one half of the gestalt, and hten when that is decided the otehr half is up to each player

Online is harder, as the DM(me) has to negotiate and be the central point of negotiating with 5-6 or even a dozen people. It's really challenging to get a good group together that way, as it is so hard to know who has a great idea but wil never send you another email, or the other four guys who all jsut want to playthe same class, no changes accepted.

But yes, i think parties need to be planned out, though as far as meeting goes, I tend to prefer in-game. And tend to require peopel to join the group.

 

[Doghead Thirteen]

Inevitably. I (and our other GM) always make sure the players have a clear idea of what sort of campaign we're going into - and we almost always generate with the expectation that the characters know each other. We started doing this because of how often we had players going through 7, 8 characters before hitting on a combination that worked - that business is boring as all get-out for everyone concerned.

 

[Doghead Thirteen]

I thought I posted this already but.....
The party is a 3 dimentional representaion of a 4 dimentioanal concept.In reallity the party is GAKL or Greater Adventuring Karmic line.When they first meet they are instantly drawn together,very similar to love at first sight,they realize that they are ment to be together for a higher purpose.In the 4th dimention they are one being (sort of like an anti-body)that works rfor the Vivvar or Life Plane.

Thus it is the parties job to rid the life pLane of threats.The benifits of being GAKL are:
The party is almost never seperated,They could split up anywhere and within a day they will all wander back together
They have full acsess to the kharmic memories of their prior characters.
And of course they feel like they belong

Wow. I just end up with the most frightening buddy movie on Earth - sort of Band of Brothers meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

 

[Slife]

That's a... very meta-gaming way to explain it. And yet, I find that it makes the most sense, at least given how things in gaming normally occur.

Didn't Moorcock use that technique as well?

 

[Luthien Greyspear]

Or turn this on its head and reveal that one of the guards was responsible for causing the incident and that one of the most wanted criminals in the place is actually innocent and has been given "Superman" class powers and is doing "The Fugitive" with your heroes chasing after him not realising one of their own is working for the truly major bad guy and by that i mean the equivalent of "Lex Luthor"...
(Never watched it but Prison Break still gave me that idea)

Like I said, I have no solid plan for exactly HOW the big reality-altering accident happens, just that it happens. A corrupt guard with access to the big exploding science room would be just peachy, IMHO.