[RANT ALERT] Party Cooperation a Myth?

[dreaded_beast]

taken from an earlier post from a different topic thread:

too many times egos get in the way of the greater good for the party. even when attempting to play in character, noone within my group likes to be told their shortcomings or things they need improvement on. their is a strong independence streak running through everyone. try and tell someone how to run their character, and you'll get more than you bargained for.

and having a party leader? forget about it! even if one was elected, everyone would still want to do their "own" thing. noone would agree that another idea was better than their own, or just not care and contribute nothing. usually things got solved when the dm was forced to make the decision for us. whenever a so-called "party leader" was elected, the party leader would say this is what needs to be done and the first thing out of everyones mouth is:

"are you telling me what to do?!"

arghh! (i'm not saying i don't act like the above, i do)

 

[Isida Kep'Tukari]

Party cooperation is a very good thing, as I can attest to.

I recently started a 14th level game, and due to poor communication (and the fact that everyone was still trying to get used to their character), we had to metagame like crazy to avoid hitting each other with friendly fire. One person should be the leader (he's a Mindbender), and we've said that in-game, but he's relatively new to D&D 3e and a little uncertain.

Theoretically we've been adventuring together since 5th level and should know how each other fights, but again poor communication and unfinished characters caused two rounds of combat to take an hour and a half.

To prevent a repeat the next time we play, I've sent out an e-mail begging for battle tactics and character backgrounds from everyone. In the e-mail I've made very clear whom my character considers to be in charge of what. The Mindbender is the nominal leader, the Artificer is the expert on magic and weaponry, the witch/cleric does some of the healing, the cleric takes care of all religious matters (and some healing too), the rogue takes care of all of our less than legal dealings, and the monk is our "straight face," the guy that talks when we need to convice someone of our honesty. Me, as the fighter, takes care of tactics during battle. And I will emphasize the roles my character sees in the rest of the party, with a sledgehammer if necessary.

The other group I play with the same people is more established, but there is no clear-cut leader, which makes doing anything an exercise in patience. Each person has to give their opinion and then a consensus reached. For a mostly chaotic neutral party, this can get lengthy and tiresome upon occasion. And then there's the time when someone (or two) just says, "to heck with it," and goes and does their own thing. Then things get messy.

Emphasize and re-emphasize the party power structure and chain of command. It saves a lot of headaches.

 

[magnas_veritas]

Emphasize and re-emphasize the party power structure and chain of command. It saves a lot of headaches.

In the game I'm in (a homebrew 3e Birthright campaign), the party leadership varies depending on whose crisis it is. In fact, the PC who has the crisis will often try and wriggle out of it, but to no avail.

Even then, leadership duties are minor at best, mostly concerning which direction of the dungeon to go into, or forcing them to talk to the whatsit.

As such, we have no chain of command, and I'm not sure we'd want to do that anyway. We've adapted, with the spellcasters keeping a mix of mass-attack and precision targeting spells available for damage. We're also a bit on the loose side; if we're not using miniatures, the DM's lenient about targeting. It's cool.

Brad

 

[dreaded_beast]

The other group I play with the same people is more established, but there is no clear-cut leader, which makes doing anything an exercise in patience. Each person has to give their opinion and then a consensus reached. For a mostly chaotic neutral party, this can get lengthy and tiresome upon occasion. And then there's the time when someone (or two) just says, "to heck with it," and goes and does their own thing. Then things get messy.

sounds like my group all right...

 

[Emerald]

In one of the games I currently play in we often split up and have no idea what the other PCs are doing. We all sit around and chit chat while the DM takes us off one (or sometimes two) at a time to walk through what we are doing. This works good until what one character does affects what another did (which has already been RPed) but all in all there is no party unity. But then the party is evil heavy (3 evil, 2 neutral). The other game I play in (which is good heavy) cooperates really well and thinks out pretty good statigies in advance. This is based on the PC not the players for it is the same group of players in both games.