New characters joining a group and issue of trust

[Numion]

We never trust the "PC halo" effect in our games, but that doesn't mean we expose all new characters to an interrogation squad and lie detector tests.

It's a bit of damned if you do, and damned if you don't. I just think that giving one player a veto over the new PCs when he can decide to accept or reject them from the group can lead to trouble. What's keeping him from 'negotiating' a larger share of the loot, since whats the new PC gonna do? Not join the group? Good riddance. ..

On the other hand the remaining PC shouldn't be forced to artificially accept a treacherous member.

If half the group is dead, why don't the new PCs 'reject' the original PC and pick up the game from there?

 

[diaglo]

i never trust the new PCs.

it also makes for great roleplay.

you can read about when biorph joined our group in the Story hour in my sig around page 10 or so. his character Veridian at the time was an elven thief.

Angelsboi and i had fun along with biorph in working out how to trust the new guy.

sometimes it works that the new guy just fits. and trust is granted right away.

like the prisoner we freed upon Timmay's death in the story.

other times they are of a race or nature (alignment) that no animosity is present. so they fit in just great.. like JoeBlank's character Sully. or theJester's Pepto.

some times there is an edge that is maintained throughout the campaign like with arielslover and howandwhy99.

whatever works for the campaign that makes it fun.


edit: currently my character Fiddle is planning on Coup de Gracing the party in their sleep and selling their things.

 

[Zweischneid]

Big Brother is watching you!


Anyways. To build friendship and companionship, one needs to extend a bit of trust, not force certainty through mindcontrol/reading spells.

Besides. My Characters are all aware that adventuring is a dangerous profession and I wouldn't want to do it with people who expect such proof.
People who are too craven to take the risks of trust with their allies certainly wont proof very reliable when the bad guys show up.

 

[Umbran]

Hm. Seems to me that you gus tend to add characters diffeently than I. You guys sound like you run things rather like an organized mercenary company.

I tend to work things more organically. I work new characters into the story such that they really have to be there for a while, even if the older characters don't trust them. The group doesn't really have the option of doing an entry interview and tossing the new PC aside if they don't pass.

If I were a character faced with such questioning, my thoughts would probably be, "Either these guys are paranoid, or they have enemies that might use subterfuge and betrayal to get to them. For all I know, there's already an agent among them. If I join this group, I'm stepping into a rather nasty nest of snakes, and I may well die even though I had no part in what these people did to cheese off their enemies."

Many characters, having had such thoughts, would choose not to join. Questioning like that is rather like showing all the worst aspects of your company to a new recruit at a job interview. It should really fail to impress your candidates.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Weirder responses that I expected to see from the first post.

Harmon, I understand where you're coming from. IMC, the players are involved in well over a dozen different plots across the continent, exposing any one of them could result in their immediate death plus those of hundreds, if not thousands, of innocents.

My players are very concerned about adding new characters and often a new character won't be introduced until the group is going on a long out of the way journey. If they like and trust the character, they keep them. If not, they may end up turned to ash, the ashes sent to another plane, and spells used to make people forget the missing PC ever existed. (slight exaggeration; they'd probably get the victim turned to an undead and then destroy him so he couldn't be raised)

I try to minimize the chaos by having one of the more trusted conspirators vouch for the new character. Even then, there's an adjustment period.

In a campaign where the DM is instigating the betrayal, sure, I'd do what you suggest. Short form is that people who won't accept the possibility of betrayal are great targets to be betrayed and are probably a bad type to keep around. The ones who have something to hide are prone to being blackmailed and betraying you.

To use standard line from Shadowrun:
"It's just biz. We got nothing against you, but we don't know you and we don't have time to get to know you. We told you up front, you hang with us and you're going to get shot at and you're still here. Means you're crazy like us or here to shoot at us. We need to know which."

I have no idea how many times we mindprobed people just to maintain security. (BTW, with hostile people, hit'em with serious stun and physical trauma along with some drugs. Only the toughest mages or lucky ones can resist then) On the plus side, we never got doublecrossed by someone inside the team.

 

[Harmon]

Answering a few questions

Lots of cool thoughts on this. It was the player and the leader of the PC group that has come up with this idea, as far as I know the GM and other Players have no idea this line of Q&A will occure. More then likely at least the GM does as he is a serious ENWorlder.

Few things I wanted to answer- feel no offense if I didn't get to your question.

Two Players- existing Players (for ten to fifteen years) recently lost their characters (a monk and a ftr/bar), the monk left because she had been the focus of the campaign and could not take the pressure anymore (two of her friends had died defending her) the Player felt uncomfortable about playing the character and so the character left. The other character- the Player volinteered him dead- tired of playing the dead end character, or something like that. Thats cool, the character was the focus of keeping us alive in battle.

The NPC that died was planned, he was the cleric, the original Player of the character left (disappeared- never called when calls were made to him, email never answered, etc. very odd). The GM was tired of the plain drab character so.... he was offed.

So the Players made up new characters- a Cleric/rog and a Complete Warrior character which eludes me at present (nothing that screams evil).

Why recruit? We have enemies. Our only HTH combatant is a Rogue that is considering leaving the group if we don't get some serious coin soon (one of my concerns is that she will turn on us- she's LN, a dwarf, and seemingly only likes one of the NPC (none of the PCs)). There are two wizards and an Arcane Archer (Ranger/wiz).

Looking at 10th lvl- seems that if we have no HTH expert we could be flattened pretty quick.

As far as my character taking a larger share of the loot just because he's the focus of the campaign. It has happened once- the big battle with one of our enemies ended with loot being acquired from a big bad ass wizard, my character grabbed everything. We ran because we had to- big horde of Orcs coming down on us, no spells left two dead party members, no healing to speak of.

(The next campaign- the party is headed to a dragon's lair, the dragon died years before and the dragon had defenses. The group is going there to aquire loot- why? The people that got nothing for the last few campaigns (loot was pretty light for a while) need to get paid- my character has little intention of taking anything.)

Which brings us to how the two new members met the party. The Arcane Archer was approuched that our two dead companions had been raised as undead and were headed into the Pomarj (a very evil fortress area of the Flanaes). She joined with old friends and allies. These two new characters wandered into the party combating evil critters and joined in. They were very helpful and I doubt without them would we have managed to off the two dead friends.

As far as the Detect Thoughts spell and others are concerned (for them being fulproof)- I know that the spell can and will fail if that is what the GM wants, that is okay. Point is that I will have at least tried and if the character ends up thinking something like- "crap how am I going to beat this- they will know my lord sent me here to murder them."

For what that's worth- "take care of yourself and never ever let me see you again," will be the only response given to the character; meaning he will be allowed to leave. A mistake, but he trusted in us- we will honor that.

Need to split here soonish, so- thank you all for your thoughts. Please keep it civil and keep the ideas and questions coming.

 

[jmucchiello]

If I were the DM, I'd let the players do this once. The next time, I work with the new characters to give them ironclad reasons to be in the group without interrogation whether the old players like it or not. Jerking around the "new" PCs is not going to fly in one of my games. The new characters are going to have some macguffin that the other players will respect and put up with to go along with following the new characters.

If I were a character faced with such questioning, my thoughts would probably be, "Either these guys are paranoid, or they have enemies that might use subterfuge and betrayal to get to them. For all I know, there's already an agent among them. If I join this group, I'm stepping into a rather nasty nest of snakes, and I may well die even though I had no part in what these people did to cheese off their enemies."

And thus the new PCs should attempt to negotiate a larger share of the spoils. Turn the whole thing around. "Hey, I'll take your tests, but you guys obviously need me to keep you alive. I'll take 25% of your share as long as these assassins could put a knife to my throat while looking for yours."

 

[Harmon]

If I were the DM, I'd let the players do this once. The next time, I work with the new characters to give them ironclad reasons to be in the group without interrogation whether the old players like it or not. Jerking around the "new" PCs is not going to fly in one of my games.

The group originally formed out of a need for survival- transported to a nasty jungle, allied with a group/expidtion of evil people, then it became a matter of- we're all adventurers, lets make some money, we like each other lets be buds and such. Then it became a matter of terrified, oh crap, run for our lives! Now its back to the adventure and keep our enemies off our backs. I suppose we could just blindly trust them, I mean they are PCs <shrug> but I would rather go in role playing the whole of it.

The new characters are going to have some macguffin that the other players will respect and put up with to go along with following the new characters.

Thats cool. One of the new characters is bring in an adventure draw (i guess you could call it that). His clan/tribe lost an ancient sword, they sent him out to find it. The Player was pretty vage on details, when he meets up with the rest of the group I am sure it will come out.

And thus the new PCs should attempt to negotiate a larger share of the spoils. Turn the whole thing around. "Hey, I'll take your tests, but you guys obviously need me to keep you alive. I'll take 25% of your share as long as these assassins could put a knife to my throat while looking for yours."

"The assassins arn't the major focus, just a very deep concern. They show up, you do more then pull your weight against them and we'll talk about a larger portion. If you don't like that- well sorry it couldn't work out."

The group works on an equal share, no one pulls more weight then others. There has been one occastion where a PC grabbed more then his weight and it was agreed on by the PC that it would be dumb to not just give it all to the Wizard- it was way powerful wizard gear and the wiz was in need of it.

As I said the next (for the two new PCs their first adventure with the party) adventure is gonna be a dragon's lair, could be a real tough one, or just a pay out (which I doubt) or it could be waste of a few teleport spells.

Its cool thou, I mean- I know I would have a hell of a time trusting someone to do just that- read my mind, but if the situation were something that I knew where I could equal things out- an offer to- "you can use Detect Thoughts on me if you like."

Oh, BTW- we're using a heavily House Version of 3.0e so...