Eberron DM requests advice about PC/party motivations.

[Sidekick]

Once again I turn to my Enworld padre’s for advice and counselling.

I DM in an eberron campaign & I’m struggling a little bit. How do I motivate the party and get them to act as a group? The current group are a bit too disparate so I’m thinking of starting a new campaign, thi sis helped by one player leaving and another joining the group – it’s a good place for a change.

My group are quite RP heavy , so the whole ‘meet in a bar’ thing simply won’t fly and will invariably end up with another batch of misfits who have nothing in common.

I’m seriously thinking of tying the group down at charcter creation and getting them to create a party of all cyreans or all Brelish veterans. Then I can simply do a prologue adventure during the war, then do the reunion adventure and after laying down a fair few hooks see what they bite at.

But I want advice and opinions. How the other DMs here unite their groups and keep them together as a coherent group? Do you tie them down at character creation? Or do you simply string in a few plots early on to get them working as a group and then motivate them along a main stream of thought.

Cheers in advance,
Sidekick

 

[Stormborn]

In our Eb game we all worked for or went to Morgrave University and happened to be in the library one night when something was stolen from the vault and were later implicated in the crime but got a chance to clear our names.

I think its perfectly legitimate to tell the players their characters have to have a reason to be at X location or to be loyal to Y NPC/Organization and Eberron is rife with possibilities. The former soldier angle is a good one,and seems like Eberron is designed for that. Part of it kind of depends on how high you are stating the PCs. 1st level will require a prequel as you suggest, or else they will likely have been too young to have actually fought in the war.

Of course you can also go with some classics like being hired as a mercenary company to protect a House Orien transport through Droam, the only surviors of a crashed Lyrander airship who have to make it out of dangerous territory, or a group who all want to go into the Mournlands for various reasons and meet up in a bar in New Cyre or someplace similar.

The best way to create party cohesion is to set it up before the PCs are rolled up.

 

[EricNoah]

One of my DMs had a "contest" during character creation - write a background for your PC, and more points will be awarded the more you can work in the backgrounds of the other PCs. This was done on a message board so we could write out some rough notes, look at each other's rough notes, and start working the others into our back stories. It didn't always work out, and that's fine (you'll always have someone who knows a few PCs better and a few PCs worse) but it gave us a hook to hang our charcters on.

Another way to do it would be by having your PCs all work for a common employer, like a noble house or a guild or something.

 

[Kestrel]

I just started an Eberron game with the PCs as POWs in Cyre on the Day of Mourning. As the big blast came, they were swallowed by a living Teleport spell. Five years later, they pop out as an adventuring party of dwarves slew the spell. Now they are dealing with finding thier lives after five lost years (and all the changes that have happened to Khovaire).

The POW thing allowed for a group of folks from different backgrounds to be together and know each other pretty well.

 

[shilsen]

I've done two Eberron campaigns with each group being ex-military, one consisting of members of the same elite forces group from Breland, and the other being ex-Cyrans who met in a prison camp after Cyre went "ka-blooey!". With the war being the central aspect of recent history, that's an easy choice. But with all of the different organizations in Eberron, you can always have the PCs be associated with one or the other. Personally, I'd base it on the character concepts the players come up with, rather than deciding it beforehand.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Make them know each other, at least to some extent.

IME, one or two shared adventures causes the PCs to become friends for life. The more dangerous the adventure, the more likely they'll say "this is fun" and "let's do it again!"

 

[BadMojo]

Make them know each other, at least to some extent.

IME, one or two shared adventures causes the PCs to become friends for life. The more dangerous the adventure, the more likely they'll say "this is fun" and "let's do it again!"

I agree with the Severed Head (that's a fun thing to type).

Let the players make their backgrounds up (with XP incentive and the knowledge that you'll use their background for plot hooks that will feature them strongly) and then tell them where and under what conditions the campaign is starting (working for House Orien, etc.).

The players can work out how they know each other. That way you can get a good mix of things like "old war buddies", childhood friends, friend of a friend recommend for his skill in X.

I like to think of the TV show Firefly as a great template for an adventuring group. Mal & Zoe fought in the war together, the Dr. and River are siblings, Jayne is on the crew due to his skill in....uh, being a thug, etc. Seems like a more "real" scenario than a bunch of strangers who happen to work for the same person or group.

 

[icedrake]

Another idea would be to set the players up as members of various dragonmarked houses that worked together during the war or in the post-war era. The houses have all kinds of political intruige and power-grabbing as they try to out manuvuer one another squash smaller stores/merchants trying to get some market share. Their agents also do not need to be members of the same race, so a whole party would be working for a single house. Personally, I'd suggest Lyrandar or Orien. The players could have worked together as the crew of an airship/ elemental galleon or on the lightingrail/caravan route.

 

[ValhallaGH]

I've had a couple things that have worked out, though I didn't really expect them to be the way of things.

1) Over-arching organization. In one of my games the party works for a group, and every character, new and old, has had to become an employee of said group. This has barred a large number of incompatible character concepts since everyone that makes it to the game has to have had a good reason to accept employment with the organization.

2) Darwin's survival of the fittest. In some of my games (a frighteningly large number) the group dynamic is refined by the deaths of incompatible characters. Sometimes they are killed by other party members, sometimes by their own choices when the rest of the group decides not to bail them out. It's resulted in a rough start followed by a smooth game as the survivors team up with any new people and continue along the campaign.

That second one bothers me some, but it works with greater reliability than most other methods I've tried so I accept it, however much I'd rather not.