Do your PCs have a designated leader?

[Oryan77]

I tend to be one of the more outspoken & take charge players in the group. I have mostly DMed in my gaming career, but even before I was a DM, I was always looked at as the party leader among my friends. I eventually got tired of being forced into that role and I purposefully made PCs that should not be the party leader. But even then, when I make it a point not to play the leader role, I find myself repeating to the guys that should be the leaders, "Ok, so what's the plan? Ok, what are we doing? Ok, where to next?" because they are not taking charge.

My current group has pretty much been all lone wolves to the point where our group is dysfunctional and reckless. So I figured I would go ahead and play a character that is supposed to be the leader type in order to establish some teamwork. Unfortunately, I guess my outspoken and take charge personality annoys one of the players; although he makes no effort at all to be a team player himself.

Now I'm worried about trying to be the party leader because I don't want to further annoy this guy. Yet, this group is in serious need of a party leader and he certainly hasn't stepped up to the plate. Two of the players have already had multiple PCs die....before we even reached level 2.

 

[Umbran]

Charisma has to count for something. That is the leader in my games, characters will naturally defer to them and their plans. If it is a bad one, time for a roll off!

This is an interesting point here. The game I mentioned where I'm playing the leader, it is Star Wars Saga Edition. We're all playing Force users, and the Use the Force skill is Charisma based. Everyone in the party's got a pretty good Charisma. Except for me, the effective leader. I'm playing a character with 11 Charisma (no bonus to skill checks). No social skills trained, either.

How do I pull it off? Simple, really, when you think about it. The party is mostly made of characters built to Use the Force, and fight. So, high Charisma, High Strength, high Dex, high Con. What do you think they left out? Intelligence and Wisdom. Those, I have in spades.

You know how, in D&D, you can take Weapon Finesse and thereby kind of replace Strength with Dex? Same idea, but without a feat. There are two ways to convince someone else to do what you want - one is to be charming and persuasive. The other is to have better information, and be right. I end up the party leader not because I can cajole others into doing what I want, but because I'm the one who has the plans in which we attain our goals and not die!

 

[haakon1]

Like Umbran said, it depends on the party. I'm involved with 3 campaigns.

1) Email 3.5e campaign I DM. They elected a leader (the Rogue). There was a disagreement with the leader's approach, so one of the PC's (the cleric) left the party (the player stayed and wanted a new character; this was a good in-character reason for the switch). The results of the new election (the fighter) have remained stable, and the former leader PC (who came in second in that election) acts as a second-in-command on the rare occasions when they split the party.


2) 4e campaign where I'm a player. There's no official leader. But generally, my paladin takes the lead in NPC interactions (and has high Cha) whereas the cleric tends to take the lead in combat and in advising on leveling up choices. Both of us are DM's . . . the cleric's player is a 4e DM, so he knows the rules much better than the rest of us.


3) 3.5e live campaign where I'm the DM. No official leader. Unofficially, the Rogue tends to make the decisions, with the Cleric having the 2nd most influence.

 

[Ahnehnois]

We tried having a designated leader of the PCs a while back, and it was a really bad idea. Everyone just resented him, and not a lot of leadership took place. In general, we try to keep characters independent and make group decisions democratically if absolutely necessary.

I do, however, think that this depends largely on the personalities of the players.

 

[Phototoxin]

My PCs seem to run a more 'first amongst equals' style although the swordmage defender seems to be the 'defacto' leader. (seeing as how he's at the front a lot of the time!)

 

[Nagol]

My current campaign (modern-day X-File style invesitgation) is experimenting with 'designated team lead' based upon the assumed nature of the mission and environment. It's working reasonably well so far.

 

[Razjah]

I've done campaigns with a true leader, ones without, and ones with something in between. I think if the circumstances are right, the leader can be a really valuable tool for the group. Many games can get bogged down in planning and debate among players and characters. Having a leader make the final decision can keep the game moving forward. Other times it is necessary to the genre. A war campaign has ranks, pirates have captains, sometimes a tactical game needs a combat leader to decide when to press an attack and when to fall back.

I have never had an issue with this, as long as the players are aware that a character is leading and have some say in that. For example, I ran a skypirates game and the players voted for one character to be captain, she then picked her first mate and others assumed other positions in the crew. The characters acted as her cabinet so that they had some input into where the ship went.

Leaders can also be used to help characters feel like the characters they are supposed to be. Having another player suggest a line of dialogue and then running it through the leader works very well. It is the same when the players of a low intelligence character can solve a puzzle, just tell the intelligent character's player so it feels like the intelligent character truly can solve all the difficult puzzles.

 

[Wangalade]

in the past i have played in games with an appointed leader. they were usually chosen because of their high charisma score. in the past few years though we don't usually have a leader, and every one does what they want, sometimes splitting the party and sometimes not. sometimes a player takes charge and tries to be the leader, but it doesn't always work out depending on the personalities of the characters.

 

[tuxgeo]

We're currently playtesting 5E-Next using play-by-post (and it's going slowly, as PbP does). We haven't designated a leader, but our Dwarf Cleric of Moradin (with Knight background) usually sets a lot of our agenda. The others in the group are a barbarian, a rogue (my PC), and a wizard, so we don't automatically all obey the cleric; but we do act in a sort of coordinated fashion a large bit of the time. (My rogue has fairly average INT and CHA, so he's not set up to be a leader.)

The alignment of our wizard is NG; my rogue's CN; and the alignments of the other two aren't listed, but the cleric of Moradin acts LG, and the barbarian acts fairly chaotic, so we do have some alignment differences. Despite that, we manage to work together anyway.

 

[Jon_Dahl]

Well, yes... Some of our players have very strong personality. It's very interesting actually and someone might be able do an interesting psychological study about our group. It gets very interesting when two leader types are playing together. Synergy is certainly needed.

It would be interesting to break the mold, but I find it very difficult.