D&D 5E Official material to help character motivation/party cohesion

[tetrasodium]

XP for effort. But D&D (or the wider DRPG hobby) can't do anything solid for @Plutancatty's problem due to two major issues in bonding PCs:

1) The GM creates a campaign that could include anything.
2) The PCs create characters who can be anyone.

Any motivations you try to apply on top of this are going to feel forced and/or cheesy.

This a thousand percent. The rules of the system need to provide some level of guidance & need for players to take the effort of collaborating on 2 and working as a team. 5e largely leaves it to the gm to figure out and train initial collaboration & is mostly structured so an individual PC doesn't need anyone for much of anything on the off chance the gm manages to force some collaboration on 2. With the players set to perform point 2 in isolation with no need to work together there isn't much the GM can do about illuminating 1 in ways that make 2 not forced & cheesy.

 

[el-remmen]

Amazing that to @GMMichael and @tetrasodium my way of running D&D does not work, and if it does only in a "forced and cheesy" way.




The rules of system completely leaving collaboration to the DM and the group does not mean the game doesn't work with it - that seems so out there to me - as if people haven't been playing D&D successfully, happily, excitedly, for decades.

 

[delericho]

Anyway, I began looking for inspiration, first in the DMG and then in published adventures. I was pretty disappointed by what I found
In summary, I think WotC should put more effort into giving DMs resources to help their players determine why they are present at the start of an adventure and why their character would embark and stay engaged in it.

In theory, I agree. The PHB really should have a sidebar about "creating the party" right there in the "creating a character" section, discussing things like choosing varied classes for the party, and the importance of the characters being able to work together. The DMG should provide some solid advice on how to bring parties together, hook them into the adventure, and make them care about the setting. And the published adventures should provide good examples of this. What we have is pretty half-assed.

However, I kinda think that this is an area where maybe it's okay to half-ass it. Honestly, I don't think there's really much value in agonizing over why the PCs work together and trust one another - the important thing is that the players agree that they do, and then you can throw on a wafer-thin justification for it.

If you do want more, way back in the mists of time Dragon magazine published an article entitled "Keeping the Party Going" (issue 177). It gave some possible examples:

• The deocentric party - all the characters follow a common deity.
• The town party - all the characters come from the same town, which is now threatened.
• The familial party - the characters are all related.
• The mercenary party - the characters are mercenaries who have been hired to do a job.
• The guild party - the characters are all members of the same guild (whether thieves or otherwise).
• The quest party - for whatever reason, the characters have all sworn to complete a common quest.
• The clan party - like the familial party, but a wider group.
• The chance-meeting party - because why not risk your life with random strangers?

 

[GMMichael]

Amazing that to @GMMichael and @tetrasodium my way of running D&D does not work, and if it does only in a "forced and cheesy" way. . .
The rules of system completely leaving collaboration to the DM and the group does not mean the game doesn't work with it - that seems so out there to me - as if people haven't been playing D&D successfully, happily, excitedly, for decades.

Please re-read our posts. It's worthwhile given that you all-but-agreed with us about three posts ago:

I think any "official" and most published material is going to err towards the generic side because everyone's game and meta-motivations are different, so coming up with some details as a group is best.

 

[Cruentus]

Most groups and campaigns (IME) just hand wave party cohesion away. Since the game isn’t ‘competitive’ between players, the only other option is to cooperate, otherwise, what are we doing here?

Sometimes the group I play in will have one or two players come up with a joint background, or some connection pre-campaign/adventure, but not all of the PC’s.

I agree with @el-remmen that people have obviously been doing this for decades, and really don’t need the rules to spell out how to create party cohesion, and there is no wrong or bad way to do it.

The only place I’ve seen (of games I’ve played) it baked in is Beyond the Wall, and OSR style game, where characters can be generated using ‘playbooks’, and the random rolls determine ability scores, AND build connections between players around the table more or less organically. I really like it in a pinch, or where those connections matter.

 

[abirdcall]

Doesn't Tasha's have a bunch of this stuff?

This is really what a session 0 is for.

Everyone should be creating characters who will work with each other.

Everyone trying to be the main character no amount of rules will help.

 

[el-remmen]

Please re-read our posts. It's worthwhile given that you all-but-agreed with us about three posts ago:

Ok.

Any motivations you try to apply on top of this are going to feel forced and/or cheesy.

So by "you" you mean WotC?

 

[tetrasodium]

In theory, I agree. The PHB really should have a sidebar about "creating the party" right there in the "creating a character" section, discussing things like choosing varied classes for the party, and the importance of the characters being able to work together. The DMG should provide some solid advice on how to bring parties together, hook them into the adventure, and make them care about the setting. And the published adventures should provide good examples of this. What we have is pretty half-assed.

However, I kinda think that this is an area where maybe it's okay to half-ass it. Honestly, I don't think there's really much value in agonizing over why the PCs work together and trust one another - the important thing is that the players agree that they do, and then you can throw on a wafer-thin justification for it.

If you do want more, way back in the mists of time Dragon magazine published an article entitled "Keeping the Party Going" (issue 177). It gave some possible examples:

• The deocentric party - all the characters follow a common deity.
• The town party - all the characters come from the same town, which is now threatened.
• The familial party - the characters are all related.
• The mercenary party - the characters are mercenaries who have been hired to do a job.
• The guild party - the characters are all members of the same guild (whether thieves or otherwise).
• The quest party - for whatever reason, the characters have all sworn to complete a common quest.
• The clan party - like the familial party, but a wider group.
• The chance-meeting party - because why not risk your life with random strangers?

That bolded bit where the players need to agree that they need to work together is the part most critically needing mechanical support & player guidance from the core (or even supplemental) rulebooks. I can tell my players that they need a reason for x & y along with saying that z is an expectation but without mechanical support or mechanical teeth it's certain to fall flat. With newer or less experienced players who might have come to d&d from a for profit production with professional voice actors putting on a work of entertainment for the viewer* that vacuum is even more problematic since they feel that any failure in their story is just because the rest of the table is dropping the ball

All it takes is one player at the table to decide they are the main character & don't care about those reasons any longer to put the gm in a corner. Unfortunately in 5e that corner is boot the player or force retire/lightning strikes the PC is "please bob" fails . None of those three are good options & they actually exacerbate the problem by teaching a player already stepping down a problematic road that said road is a rewarding hostage negotiation.

*ie critical role(roll?)

 

[Voi_D_ragon]

That bolded bit where the players need to agree that they need to work together is the part most critically needing mechanical support & player guidance from the core (or even supplemental) rulebooks. I can tell my players that they need a reason for x & y along with saying that z is an expectation but without mechanical support or mechanical teeth it's certain to fall flat. With newer or less experienced players who might have come to d&d from a for profit production with professional voice actors putting on a work of entertainment for the viewer* that vacuum is even more problematic since they feel that any failure in their story is just because the rest of the table is dropping the ball

All it takes is one player at the table to decide they are the main character & don't care about those reasons any longer to put the gm in a corner. Unfortunately in 5e that corner is boot the player or force retire/lightning strikes the PC is "please bob" fails . None of those three are good options & they actually exacerbate the problem by teaching a player already stepping down a problematic road that said road is a rewarding hostage negotiation.

*ie critical role(roll?)

I'm not sure that without mechanical support any DM proposal will fall flat, but I definitely think that giving unthought-of angles and depth to character creation is great inspiration for newer players, who might not even have the notion that having a reason to be together with their group will give more and better opportunities for roleplay.

 

[delericho]

The mechanical support, if you really need it, can be pretty straightforward: once you decide on the group background, define a group trait - if the PCs act in accordance with the trait, they gain Inspiration (or maybe a smallish XP bonus). Again, it doesn't need to be much, just enough to encourage the desired behaviour.

For example: "You are all sworn to quest to recover the Holy Grail. When you work together and successfully uncover a clue to its location, you each gain Inspiration."

It might be better if the official books helped, but a homebrewed solution can be more specific more easily. Plus, it gives scope for the players being able to define their own 'reward' condition.