Do your groups require someone to lead?

[Kzach]

A phenomenon I've witnessed countless times over the years when DM'ing or playing in groups where most people are unfamiliar with each other, is that nobody seems to want to take the lead.

This manifests both in game and out of game. In game, people are hesitant to take affirmative action, whether that be a skill check or questioning an NPC, or suggesting a course of action, and especially with roleplaying in general.

Out of game it seems to manifest mostly as a lack of motivation to organise everyone or be prepared for games.

9 times out 10, I end up taking the lead whether I want to or not because I know that if I don't, either the game or the group will get bogged down and become disorganised. And every single time I've stopped organising games or stopped leading in games, whether I've told someone or not to continue, it has always ended up the same way.

It's like people want someone to tell them what to do and how to do it. Again, I rarely actually want this role but there always comes a point where I know that if I don't step up, nobody else will.

So I was wondering if this is a common situation or if it's just something that seems to happen for me a lot.

 

[amysrevenge]

A phenomenon I've witnessed countless times over the years when DM'ing or playing in groups where most people are unfamiliar with each other, is that nobody seems to want to take the lead.

I've never noticed this, but only because I'm incredibly bossy and take the lead in the first 30 seconds, before anyone has a chance to dither about it. It starts even before dice and character sheets are brought out - the setup and "how's it going"s set the stage for my epic-level bossiness.

 

[Jaysue]

Our group survives only with a confident leader, however the one week he was absent (after playing with each other for a while) we were surprised to see almost everyone was keen to 'step up up their game'.

 

[weem]

I prefer to lead as a player for the most part (unless I am playing a character that I don't think would enjoy the role).

As a DM I generally know ahead of time who will end up being the leader (as I play primarily with people I have known for a while). I'm not sure my games require there to be a leader, but it tends to help depending on the makeup of the players themselves as some are not as motivated to move things along.

 

[cmrscorpio]

I've noticed this phenomenon is true. Particularly in groups where one player is perceived as more game-knowledgeable.

The worst example was a player I used to play with whose characters were always chaotic stupid/chaotic insane. He was the *last* person anyone should have followed. However, because he was the first to propose a plan, and then typically became dismissive toward other players when they proposed alternate (and almost always much better) plans, he became the de facto leader of the group.

 

[MerricB]

Happens to me a lot; at least when I play. And I've seen my groups without a natural leader as well - which can mean a lot of doing random things.

I've sworn to never play a low-Int low-Cha character again; it just doesn't work for me!

Cheers!

 

[Jhaelen]

My group also has a 'natural' leader who's usually the one pushing the game forward.

It's quite noticable when he can't make it to the game, since everything else is reluctant to take the lead.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Happens to me a lot; at least when I play. And I've seen my groups without a natural leader as well - which can mean a lot of doing random things.

I've sworn to never play a low-Int low-Cha character again; it just doesn't work for me!

Cheers!

This.

All my recent characters have at least something in Cha as I tend towards leading a group and taking charge a little. I think a 4e Sorceror is in my future somewhere along the line.

 

[Jack7]

It's been my observation over time that out of any group of 100 people you've got maybe five to eight leaders (if that many). One or two will be natural born leaders, the rest will have trained themselves, or been trained by others, to become leaders. (Trained leaders and natural born leaders always make for interesting style contrasts.)

Of course it also depends upon occupation. Some occupations naturally promote leadership qualities, the military for instance - leadership is integral to the occupational structure, other occupations will not or do not.

I think out of any group of people the percentage of any given occupational elements being obviously evident will help determine who is a leader and how that leader tends to function. (Not all leaders operate the same way, just as not all inferiors will, and there are good leaders, and bad leaders, and ranges in-between.) Of course, that's a chicken and egg question. Does a man become an officer because he's naturally designed to lead, or does he become an officer because he's trained to lead, or both?

As a little side observation it seems to me that several of the D&D and other RPG "classes" (or professions really) are specifically designed as "Leadership classes," (I don't mean some silly made-up game classification mode, but are designed specifically around the idea of leading others - as an inherent nature of the profession) yet at times non-leaders and even anti-leaders play them because of other advantages. The Ranger for instance. To me the Ranger and the Cleric should be natural leaders. For different reasons and in different ways of course, but overall they should be leadership material, and reliable leaders. But sometimes the players and the classes don't mesh very well in that regard.

That is to say in real life (if they really existed in a "real fantasy" world) if you had a Ranger and a Cleric then for the most part certain types of people would naturally gravitate towards those professions. But in gaming those character classes people very unlikely to be like a real Ranger or Cleric in nature choose those classes for a whole host of "gaming reasons." That creates what I call Class Dichotomies.

 

[Hadrian the Builder]

This isn't specific to gaming, IMO. It seems pretty normal behavior to be more "conservative" and accommodating around a small group of people that you don't know very well. And I think this creates some collective inertia. So it takes a little leadership to get the group going.