D&D 5E Goals for a party - why should they even go anywhere together?

[corwyn77]

Agree 100%. However, writing "evil" on the character sheet does pretty much guarantee that evil acts will be committed. I've yet to see a player want to play an evil character who then never did anything evil. So at a bare minimum, groups that don't want characters committing evil acts should not allow evil characters.

Actually, I have. Running CoS, I had a player who wanted to play an Oath-breaker paladin. In a moment of weakness, I OK'd it. Turned out he just wanted the powers and needed to be evil to get them. I had more problems with the CN rogue who wanted to be a serial killer.

 

[Nagol]

First off, @ccs - post 65 is completely full of win. Love it!
I agree with most of this.

Point 4: I see nothing wrong with a PC being untrustworthy and-or having a separate agenda from the rest of the party. The best ones are where a player manages to put an enemy PC into the party, has it run with them for a while, then after a couple of adventures gets it out so it can report back to its real friends. This doesn't happen often but it's cool when it does.

Point 6: Disagree most of the time. I'll run what I'm given, when it comes to split parties or solo scouting or whatever. If the timing works out such that someone goes solo just at session's end then that player and I have a perfect excuse to spend an evening that week in the pub. Or, I'll just run it by note during the session, while the rest of the party go on doing whatever.

If I get the sense that a player is repeatedly doing this simply to hog the stage and-or my time as DM I'll start paying less and less attention to their solo missions...I can be evil that way.

Worst case scenario is when the entire party goes solo. This happened to me a month or so ago: a mid-combat wild magic surge teleported each creature in the room (that's 10 party members and two opponents) to a completely random place in the (very large) dungeon. So now I've got ten solos to run, along with figuring out where the opponents wound up. Very lucky for me in that this happened close to when the session would have ended anyway, and so I did the solo stuff by email* during the week. By next session a few people had reunited...and again I got lucky; the characters belonging to the players I knew would be missing that session were still on their own, so I ran with a reduced crew whose characters had either reunited or were within a room or two. By session's end everyone had been scooped up with (amazingly) only one casualty. (they'd already explored quite a bit of the complex and by sheer luck many of them went to relatively safe places)

* - what this taught me is that I will never ever ever EVER run a full campaign by email. Bleah!

Lanefan

Point 4: I don't see much wrong with it either which is why it is on my list. I have experienced new DMs that went overboard: quite literally every NPC was out to stab the PCs in the back -- even the victims we rescued.

Point 6 Well if you do have the time and inclination to run N solo campaigns then definitely go for it. The N solo campaigns pretty much references your worst case and doesn't consider the times outside circumstances split the group. I used to be more open to lone wolves back in my carefree youth. My last D&D campaign ran approximately 4 hours every fortnight with the whole group present and almost no ability to get together at other times.. I did augment the schedule two to three times with a bit of play-by-email, but the feel is quite different. The group was used to having more solo freedom (it was a group I had DMed before) and they tried the whole "Let's split up; we can take more damage that way" and "You don't need to know what I'm doing; while secrecy isn't necessary, I think it's cool" shtick a few times early in the campaign since I happily played along when getting together was more trivial. The time constraint and game format did not lend itself well to handling multiple solo missions concurrently.

 

[Lanefan]

All that is fine. You can play a bit of a rogue, a jerk, a snob, or a Han Solo type. But in the end, you've also got some good in you, and you are loyal to your party.

Depends. If my hidden goal is to take down the local Baron and replace him with myself, I'm only adventuring for the money and power it brings - period. I'm loyal to the party only as long as they're useful (which equates, most likely, to as long as we're adventuring and rakin' in the loots). But at heart I'm a conspirator, a treasoner, and have an agenda quite different than anyone else in the party.

I can't play this?

Interesting, until one of the other PC's decides your behavior is over the line, and then you get into a party conflict that can disrupt the whole campaign.

Disrupt the whole campaign? Or simply become a part of it.

I've spent evenings both as player and DM where nothing happens other than party infighting. Doesn't bother me a bit. In fact quite often it's more entertaining than regular adventuring. Sooner or later the actual adventure will rear its ugly head, and I'm by no means running to a schedule that says x amount of adventuring must be completed in y amount of sessions: everything's open-ended that way.

Look, I can understand that it can sometimes be fun to play a weird and/or evil character. I get that.

While not all my characters are evil, I have to go back a rather long way to find one that wasn't in some way rather weird.

Lanefan

 

[Rya.Reisender]

Depends. If my hidden goal is to take down the local Baron and replace him with myself, I'm only adventuring for the money and power it brings - period. I'm loyal to the party only as long as they're useful (which equates, most likely, to as long as we're adventuring and rakin' in the loots). But at heart I'm a conspirator, a treasoner, and have an agenda quite different than anyone else in the party.

I can't play this?

Well, you could play this if you are willing to NPC your PC once you turned "Evil Baron" and then play a new character. Or the campaign ends at that moment anyway. I'd allow that. Would be nice if the player told me about these plans ahead of time, though.

Disrupt the whole campaign? Or simply become a part of it.

Disrupts the whole campaign, I'd say. I've never had any group where every single player enjoys infighting. You may enjoy it, but when it ruins the fun for the other players and the DM, then that's bad. I know I wouldn't enjoy it, so it's not allowed in my games.

 

[Havelok]

The traditional "Players walk into a bar" scenario doesn't happen in any of my games.

Player Start is an excellent opportunity to set the stage exactly how you want too, especially if you are the type of GM (like myself) who tends to let their players loose in the world.

So, there is always some grand premise, and this almost always involves all of the players. For example, all the characters were trapped in a dreamworld and just recently escaped. They all are part of an ocean's 11 heist group run by a head-goon. They are all spirit-bound to one another through an artifact.

Something like this keeps them together outside of the simple "Pretend you want to be together" schtick/unwritten rule that every good Tabletop player sticks too if they know what they are doing.

 

[iserith]

I've spent evenings both as player and DM where nothing happens other than party infighting. Doesn't bother me a bit. In fact quite often it's more entertaining than regular adventuring.

Hearing that, I have to wonder how awful that adventure is.

 

[iserith]

When I explain to my players what I expect of them, I often use Han Solo as an example. Yes, you can play a shady character who shoots first. Yes, you can play a character who isn't very noble. You may not even be all that nice to the rest of the party. But when it comes down to it, you've got their backs. You are basically a good guy.

This is especially important in my current pirate campaign. They are all playing pirates, so obviously they are all playing characters that are not that nice, and are breaking the law. They don't have to be kind to their enemies either, and they can be really violent. But in the end, they also have some good in them. They work together as a team, and they are not evil psychopaths.

Obviously this isn't the only way to play the game, and I have played with an evil party before. But for newcomers to D&D, I would definitely advise not to allow evil alignments. Not much good comes from it in general.

What you did here though is explain to your players the sorts of behavior you want and expect in the game. You didn't just say "No evil alignments!" and expect everyone to know what that entails. That was my original objection to the position you and [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION] took.

 

[jasper]

I think Glyph of Warding can be set to trigger when someone of a certain alignment walks into it, or anyone "Not lawful good" for example.

I DID THAT. On my front porch welcome mat. Lost a lot of mail carriers that way. And the neighbors never ever knock to borrow anything.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

Yeah, those alignment labels are kinda silly anyway, but I felt there was a general consent on what it entails, so I didn't have any problems with just saying "No evil alignments" so far, it's definitely easier than creating a list of 100 things you better not do.

 

[jasper]

1. Limit the alignments that are allowed in a quest, so that everyone has the same or comparable motivation: not nice for the role-players. And does not matter if a player is going be a jerk.


2. Work with multiple parallel goals for all players so that completely different characters will at least go the same direction, and fight the same monsters: not nice for the DM, it's complicated enough as it is.
Depends on the group. How much input are the players having? How much can the dm handle and prep in time for the game?


3. (is there a 3rd way?) Ok, I reply with this question "STORY? OR GAME?" To sum up the two groups.
STORY. You and players try to come up with story/plot/ character reason to adventure together.
GAME. with a snark. Darn it Jim and the rest of you! Are we going to play D&D or am I breaking out CANDYLAND with special deck?

With both, don't play with jerks. (jasper looks around at his players. see no jerks. Ug oh Shaggy!) As a newbie, I would go with GAME side of the divide. And tell your players up front. Warning your BFF may turn out to be a total jerk at the D&D table. If so talk to him about his behavior, and if he is on the naughty list, bounce him from the table, but not your life.