Coordinated char backgrounds vs save the world....again!
- Thread starter DispelAkimbo
- Start date
ForceUser
Explorer
Parties stay together because they are friends; some become friends through adventuring together, but sometimes a group might agree that everyone is friends at the start of a campaign. When you have a group of players with disparate goals and motivations its hard to keep them working together, and tempers can flare.
Bearing all that in mind, I decided to pregenerate all characters myself this time around. I spent a week designing the PCs and writing up cover sheets with samples of character backgrounds, motivations, and personalities. I did this with two unifying themes - one, that all characters would be inherently germane to the new setting, and two, that all characters would have personalities or backgrounds that predisposed them to working together.
As a result, my new player group consists of two characters that are long-time traveling companions, two characters that are colleagues, and one character that is a friendly foriegner on an important mission. As a DM, it's like a cool breeze at the table - with much less rationalizing by me the player group should come together and have good reasons to be friends.
I don't recommend pre-gen characters for all groups, but looking back both of my most successful campaigns (IE, the ones that my players still fondly reminisce about) started with pre-generated characters. Even if you don't use this method, getting together with the group beforehand and encouraging them to link their backgrounds could save you headaches down the road.
Bearing all that in mind, I decided to pregenerate all characters myself this time around. I spent a week designing the PCs and writing up cover sheets with samples of character backgrounds, motivations, and personalities. I did this with two unifying themes - one, that all characters would be inherently germane to the new setting, and two, that all characters would have personalities or backgrounds that predisposed them to working together.
As a result, my new player group consists of two characters that are long-time traveling companions, two characters that are colleagues, and one character that is a friendly foriegner on an important mission. As a DM, it's like a cool breeze at the table - with much less rationalizing by me the player group should come together and have good reasons to be friends.
I don't recommend pre-gen characters for all groups, but looking back both of my most successful campaigns (IE, the ones that my players still fondly reminisce about) started with pre-generated characters. Even if you don't use this method, getting together with the group beforehand and encouraging them to link their backgrounds could save you headaches down the road.
Mark
CreativeMountainGames.com
DispelAkimbo said:
Skip the backgrounds. Write a handful of notes about what the players happen to know, based on a handful of roleplaying scenarios that you have designed. Have the players pick them out of a hat and run their characters as a team to work through the roleplaying scenarios. Backgrounds are things that have already happened that place characters in the position of carrying baggage that they feel needs to influence their actions. In some campaigns that may be OK, but it looks like your players need to feel that each session is fresh and new. $0.02 only...
Desdichado
Hero
Y'know what I like to do when I DM? Have a joint chargen session where everyone sits down and generates their character together. I generally give them at least one point to hang their background on; something they must at least all have in common (all of them have some interest in the city they live in, for example, or all of them work for a common employer or patron, etc.)
I don't necessarily ask for detailed backgrounds and motivations up front, because I find that few players really have a good handle on that at chargen, and it works better to develop those gradually over the first few sessions.
I don't necessarily ask for detailed backgrounds and motivations up front, because I find that few players really have a good handle on that at chargen, and it works better to develop those gradually over the first few sessions.
You should also try having the players come up with ways that their characters are linked to the other characters. This can help define relationships and build unity amoungst the players.
It greatly helps if all the players are united for a task or organization. Examples would include working for the same merchant group doing caravans, crewmen aboard the same ship, guards of the same city, or members of the same guild.
Then get the players to really think about what that means. What sort of talents are needed and whom is going to carry out those duties. Get the group to work together to make sure they cover the major roles/stations. You may want to have an NPC in certain roles, some players hate having to take orders from another character. This varies quite a bit depending on players, campaign, and other factors.
It greatly helps if all the players are united for a task or organization. Examples would include working for the same merchant group doing caravans, crewmen aboard the same ship, guards of the same city, or members of the same guild.
Then get the players to really think about what that means. What sort of talents are needed and whom is going to carry out those duties. Get the group to work together to make sure they cover the major roles/stations. You may want to have an NPC in certain roles, some players hate having to take orders from another character. This varies quite a bit depending on players, campaign, and other factors.
Viking Bastard
Adventurer
Of course, you could go the easy way and just make them all a
part of some designed team. Like a thief guild, spies, law enforcement,
the King's royal guard or such.
part of some designed team. Like a thief guild, spies, law enforcement,
the King's royal guard or such.
Ravellion
serves Gnome Master
Eve though different PCs might have different agendas, jsut make sure the tasks require the other PCs help. they would then "owe the rest one". And you can do this several times without it growing too stale. Make sure the PCs 9not the players necessarily) are real friends.
I've a barbarian/ranger in one game. When he was introduced he had just escaped from slavery. The group eventually fought the orc slavers and their army. What I find with this character is that he has no long term goals; he was a slave, and he has a very short time horizon.
Sure, he wants to get into things like herbalism and poisons, but the big thing that keeps him with the old members of the group is that they are his only family. Coming from a tribal childhood, family was paramount. After having been ripped away from that, the first thing he's going to do is to find another family to cling on to, and share that bond with.
When it comes to keeping a group together, the most important thing is not what the PCs eventually want to do (that usually changes, like majors in college) but what the interparty relationship is. I may want to move to california and become a famous actor, but I will still make room in my life for my family. Perhaps the group relationship should be that close.
Of course, it didn't start out that close, but rather developed over time. Still, cohesiveness is an emotional bond between the PCs, not the congruence of their goals.
Sure, he wants to get into things like herbalism and poisons, but the big thing that keeps him with the old members of the group is that they are his only family. Coming from a tribal childhood, family was paramount. After having been ripped away from that, the first thing he's going to do is to find another family to cling on to, and share that bond with.
When it comes to keeping a group together, the most important thing is not what the PCs eventually want to do (that usually changes, like majors in college) but what the interparty relationship is. I may want to move to california and become a famous actor, but I will still make room in my life for my family. Perhaps the group relationship should be that close.
Of course, it didn't start out that close, but rather developed over time. Still, cohesiveness is an emotional bond between the PCs, not the congruence of their goals.
Joshua Dyal said:
I like those sessions too. The first time I tried one was for my Survivors campaign in second semester 1987, and that campaign is still one of my favourites, even though (and Herremann is going to smile at this) it was a collect-the-set quest to save the world. The only problem I find is that some of my players really resent having their freedom to introduce arbitrary characters trammelled. They will put up with being assigned a functional specialisation (sometimes). But they really bridle at being asked to discuss and agree what sort of personality types they will play for mutual support and contrast.
And this is in spite of the fact that PCs really go off when each acts a a foil for the other. A series of young enthusiastic NPCs will never contrast a jaded cynical PC the way a young enthusiastic PC will. And contrariwise. Tony Purcell and I had a terrific time playing the naif but pugnacious young French nobleman Armand d'Alembert and his world-weary, brutally pragmatic English cousin the Earl of Rule. Mutual contrast made our characters far more vivid both to onlookers and to we who were playing them than our characters had ever been before, and certainly much more effective than characters are when several people are playing to the same stereotype and there isn't any contrast.
The original Star Wars RPG from West End had an interesting rule that every PC had to have an agreed personal link to at least one other PC: to be his brother or her teacher or its former commanding officer in the Imperial Navy. The players could make up anything they liked (there weren't any tables or anything like that), but it had to be something that would give the characters a line of banter and would affect their decisions in adventures.
I have run campaigns in which the PCs were just people who happened to be together at the beginning, and who were sucked along together, or were welded into a band of comrades by the early adventures of the campaign. But I find them too unreliable and too much work to GM, especially if my players are in a fractious mood. So I far more often ask my players to generate, for example, a the homicide squad of a police precinct, or the members of a small private detective agency, or a field investigating team of the Imperial Justice Department, or a half-file of the militia of the remote mountain city of Charn, or members of the agema of Darulan the Silent (episkopos of Skyra), or even members of the crew of a small Survey frigate, whose five-year mission....
Regards,
Agback
