Bringing PCs together when starting a new campaign

[The Red King]

I have used the "You wake up in a room, chained to the wall with (x) other people. All of your posessions are gone" kidnaping schtick. They are in an unknown land or underground and going to be sold as slaves or as food to the mind flayers....

 

[steenan]

Why can't the players themselves decide what ties their characters together?

In my experience, the best way of creating a cohesive party is to sit together and decide on characters' backgrounds in cooperation. Players discuss who they want to play, why they work together, what goals and principles they share etc.

Instead of creating characters separately and then struggling to bring them together, the group creates the party as a whole and then move to detailing the individual characters within the already discussed bounds.

It not only helps with putting the party together - it also allows players to share creative thoughts during character creation and build upon each other's ideas.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Why can't the players themselves decide what ties their characters together?

In my experience, the best way of creating a cohesive party is to sit together and decide on characters' backgrounds in cooperation. Players discuss who they want to play, why they work together, what goals and principles they share etc.

That's how FATE does it.

In my group, we only meet at game sessions. Usually we have our characters ready by that point, and lack of communication means we need a fast way to introduce the characters once the game has started. "You all know each other" works wonders there. FATE forces character generation to occur "at the table", although in practice that can be resolved via email. It requires enough Storyteller intervention though that it's usually done at the table.

 

[halfjack]

Providing group cohesion is a priority for all our game designs at VSCA though each game goes about it differently. Some of these methods are very portable to existing games, so lets have a look:

In Diaspora it's implied (and in future revisions will probably be more explicit) -- the characters are somehow bound to a single space craft (as crew, passengers, whatever) and so the state of the craft is a group interest from the get go. It helps that outside the ship is the hostile environment of space, so ship troubles matter to everyone.

In Hollowpoint it's an explicitly state premise of the game: characters are all members of the same team on a particilar mission. There is no motivation to act alone and, even if a scene is narrates with some characters acting alone, mechanically the scene remains the same so there is no hardship in it. This is harder to transplant to another game,

In No Contact (unfinished) characters begin as mmbers of a lost fire team in Vietnam and have selected specific roles in the team. Because military units have roles that are interdependent, explixitly pointing out the role of each chqracter (the radio guy is the contact to home, the heavy weapons security carries the ammo and watches the hwo's back, &c.) creates a natural cohesion without specific mechanisms for it.

So there's three ways: a common interest, mechanical cohesion, and interdpendency,

 

[Cor Azer]

My last several games have all been set in Westeros using ASoIaF RPG, so the first step has always been that the players define their House first, and then everyone comes up with their relationship with the house - blood, retainer, sworn sword, etc.

In short - make the players do the work.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

My last several games have all been set in Westeros using ASoIaF RPG, so the first step has always been that the players define their House first, and then everyone comes up with their relationship with the house - blood, retainer, sworn sword, etc.

In short - make the players do the work.

When we did our own (short-live) ASoIaF campaign, we were all members of the same House. (Only one of us was a member of the house, in fact, but everyone was sworn to the house.) Incidentally, I wasn't the DM/Storyteller, but it seems to have solved a bunch of issues.

 

[Ringlerun]

In the last game i ran i used an invitation to a guild meeting and then poisoned everyone. Only people to survive were the players who had to work together to find the culprit and get the antidote

 

[Elf Witch]

I am in the camp that either PCs know each other or they have common goals. I am so over you meet in a tavern or get ship wrecked. The reason for this is because we tend to play long running campaigns and we have different levels of role playing going on.

So what usually happens if we do the strangers of different races and alignments is that after awhile the question of why is this group still together arises and tensions starts building at the table.

So now when I DM I either come up with a reason like my current game they were all called by Bahmut to save their world. I told them they could play any race allowed and any class allowed but they all had to have good in the descriptor of the alignment. They are bound together in the service of Bahmut and the whole campaign is dealing with saving their world so it is working out fine.

Or I tell the players to get together and figure out how they know each other I put the ball, in their court. And that seems to work well too.

In the Age of Worms game I play in most of the PCs are from Diamond Lake and grew up together two of us are from Grayhawk. We knew each other and one was a friend of one of the people in Diamond Lake so there were connections.

I was looking at some of the ideas here and there are some real creative ones.

I was thinking how they would work for my groups. The one where a woman comes into a pub and dies and the PCs are standing around the body and the guard is coming is a good example of why this would not work for my group. If they were allowed to just make any character you would end up with the lawful ones arguing to stay and trust in the law, the chaotic would be all over from staying to running. It would end up be a very frustrating first session for us.

I think the whole strangers thrown together work great for one shots and short campaigns or for groups who are just interested in the can we get into the adventure now and can hand wave away things easily.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Why can't the players themselves decide what ties their characters together?

In my experience, the best way of creating a cohesive party is to sit together and decide on characters' backgrounds in cooperation. Players discuss who they want to play, why they work together, what goals and principles they share etc.

Instead of creating characters separately and then struggling to bring them together, the group creates the party as a whole and then move to detailing the individual characters within the already discussed bounds.

It not only helps with putting the party together - it also allows players to share creative thoughts during character creation and build upon each other's ideas.

I use something similar. I let the players figure out how they are connected to each other. Every PC must be connected to 2 other PC's and there can't be 2 central PC's that everyone is connected to. Otherwise if those players have to leave the group for real life reasons you could end up with a disconnected group.

I don't care how the PC's are connected, that's up for the players to figure out. I will help with suggestions if they ask though. It saves spending a session doing the whole "you are sitting in a bar when...". That gets old after a while.

Sometimes I will give them some requirements. For example, for our Age of Worms campaign that just started, they all had to be in Diamond Lake, the starting town, for one reason or another, but have a desire to leave it.

So, in short, make the players do the work. The DM has enough to worry about.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Itessar]

I´m in the very very early planning stage of a new campaign.

I didn't want my players to make chracters in advance rather I want them slowly flesh out a lvl 1 character during the first session of play, therefore they will start out playing 4 minions each.

The setting:
The PCs will begin in a small town plagued by failing crops high taxes and a cruel and unforgiving lord, civil war is just around the corner in the kingdom. The townspeople is just about ready to take up arms against the local lord.

The idea:
Players will each get to pick a set of 4 townspeople, each set is of people is based of a single character class. For example Bob picks Cleric and gets 4 premade minions, Aurora the local high priest, Ben the priest, John the monk, Will the altar boy. Together the PCs will have 32 minions to bring about the rebellion and overthrow the tyrannical lord.

I have yet to flesh out the secific rules to make this work. But here are some general ideas.

Every minion vill have some relation/connection to other minions. Every minion will have an objective which when fullfilled will earn the player "heropoints". Every minion starts with 1 hero point.

Heropoints can be used to "save" the minion from death and when the rebellion is over any heropoints the player have left or have earned can be used to enhance the players character allowing them to get better stats/saves/additional feat/ etc.

Using skills under certain situations during the first adventure will make that skill trained for the character.

When the rebellion is over each player will get to pick 1 of his/hers 4 minions to become a PC and hopefully by then the players will have a fleshed out lvl 1 character.

As you can see I have yet to nail down the specifics so its abit fuzzy still.