Help: How to "bond" a party?

[Charles Dunwoody]

Check out Dragon 320. It has an article in out for groups of player characters. Basically, one character takes a feat and others put in skill points to show team feat and skill building. Various group bonuses are gained. The bonuses are played out through roleplaying. Looks easy to use and binds a group together.

 

[Laurel]

Something I did in my planescape game to bond everyone together might not be for everyone, cause some players would see it as noseleading but my players liked it. I had that they were all offered an obscene payment for something simple (deliver parchment a to place b kinda thing). Since they were all desolute after being dropped into sigil from other worlds their greed got the best of them. They were leary, of course, so they all inspected the diamonds, which the cloaked figure encouraged. Of course it was a trap. The diamonds were cursed and in order to reverse it the characters had to basically endenture themselves to the man for a time. It didn't last long but it did serve to motivate them to the same goal and when they got free of it they just kept working together out of habit.

As I said, it won't work for every group and is something I recommend only doing rarely in any case.

My current GM did a similar thing except we were saving a city and did something illegal in order to save it. We were then taken to a holding cell (good place to say hey, what's your story) and then told we had the option of service or death. We choose service, though one PC actually argued with the guard first. On our way to this mission other stuff happened and we became outlaws. But the story continued and it just bound us tighter. Actually even now without that initial bond the PCs would have split.
But as Kaleon Moonshae stated this may not work for your group (OOC or IC).

 

[barsoomcore]

Simple solutions work best.

Say to your players: "I want your characters to have reasons to stick together. Figure it out."

Why should you do all the work?