Collaborative Campaign Preparation Ideas

[Doghead Thirteen]

Re relationships between the characters; we've done it both ways. We've had games where the GM basically went 'OK, all your characters have to know each other, why is up to you' and we've had the 'group of strangers meet in a pub' and we've had the 'showing up for first day at work'.

They all work. It depends on the campaign. I find characters are normally pretty vague at the commencement of play, making it fairly tough for players to roleplay the characters knowing each other perfectly, whereas in a group that's been gaming together for years it's likewise difficult to roleplay not knowing each other at all.

The best balance seems to be characters who are passing acquaintances - maybe they're on-and-off regulars at the same bar - but there's a lot they don't know about each other.

 

[Alnag]

Doghead Thirteen: Right you are, that it is pretty uneasy to make relations between vague shaped characters. But luckily it is not the case. I am sure supplied description will be the highest available standard. That on the other hand create the problem with the group cohesion, because everybody wants to follow their own pre-written goals (as in the last campaign) and that's why I look for some techniques to improve the character cooperation (player cooperation is good, but they don't like the meta-game thinking - we must cooperate because we are PCs).

 

[Doghead Thirteen]

I guess my group's influenced by the fact we're all best friends, we've known each other for upwards of 10 years in some cases, and we're all intimately familiar with each other's playing styles. It's not easy getting new players out in Nowheresville, Scotland.

As to the vague half-formed characters, we find they work best and make for the most memorable characters, because they're in play for the most important events of their lives and the player has the most chance to model that character.
Instead of spending 1 or 2 hours of character generation modelling the character, they spend twenty minutes, end up with some numbers, a name and a three-word concept, then launch headlong into the gameworld where all the actual character development takes place. We don't usually write backgrounds until 3 - 4 sessions in, by which time the character's developed a personality that we'll build the background around.

As I often say, it's not very technical but it works for us. We're not a very technical crew.

Group cohesion just doesn't seem to be a problem for us. We tend to play very 'wide-open' campaigns with the GM basically reacting to the players, but keeping a Big Plot (TM) rattling away in the background whether the players are involved in it or not. After two or three miserable attempts in our early days to split the group, we gave up on it as a bad job, so we tend to make characters who work as a team, and if they don't it's time for some contrived character development.

It's never been as much as a house rule - that's just the way things end up happening.

We normally game in the same gameworld; this gameworld has evolved a lot over the years, but it's got a history. Old characters will frequently turn up as NPC's in later campaigns, or get referenced in NPC names. Some locations and tech are there as a direct effect of player activities in previous campaigns. It's very self-referential, but we enjoy it that way.

One player (my brother) designed a character three years ago who suffers from repeated bouts of amnesia; that character has taken part in three different campaigns, each time with his earliest memory being the moment we commenced play.

Another has played the illegitemate daughter of two prior characters.

It's getting so that, once you've taken part in a couple of our campaigns, your character probably has legitemate reasons to know the rest of the cast.