The Problem with Adventuring Parties

[I'm A Banana]

But I think the best advice is that you have to forgo some of those conventions to make it a game.

Right. You can tell a story with this game, but remember that you're playing a game and not telling a story.

A story needs an audience and an audience needs a sympathetic character. There is no real audience for a D&D game, except for the people playing it, so you don't need one sympathetic character. Everyone's character acts as their anchor into the fantasy world.

 

[Hjorimir]

This is a very delicate thing to balance as a DM. There are some big dangers about wrapping too much story behind a single character. The biggest two come in the forms of a disproportionate amount of limelight for the protagonist which makes the other players feel like they are nothing more than support and what we call 'title-protection' for the protagonist (you cannot exactly kill Spiderman in a Spiderman comic book).

I try to hook the PCs in my games together as much as I can and while some characters come to the forefront of certain plots I make sure that no plot (or character) becomes larger than the world. I did that once (long ago in my youth) and learned the hard way why that is a bad, bad idea.

If the characters go in different directions the players will have to be patient. I do try and encourage them to stay together as much as possible to keep more people playing at the same time, but I allow for whatever choices a PC makes.

 

[diaglo]

adventuring parties are teams. this game is more like a sport than a novel.

some teams focus on buying the "one" star. which is fine and dandy. to win some games and to attract some attention.

but real teamwork is needed to win championships.

 

[howandwhy99]

An occult detective ala Lord of Illusions? Cool with one guy, but how do you get 5 or 6 people into that story? 6 police detectives? Doesn't seem right.

Think of your favorite medical/police drama on TV. How many central characters do they have? 6 detectives works, but each has their specialty.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

If you look let's say at Sagiro's story hour, I think you can see a great example of an ensemble cast in a D&D game. The party works together and are definitley a standard D&D style party, but at the same time, each of the characters has something happening individually. Right now the focus is on Kibi and whatever it is that he is the center of. There is Aravis and the Crosser's Maze, Dranko and Morningstar's marriage etc. etc. There is a central storyline that the game works from, but then there are all these little side stories that may or may not be directly linked to the main story line. I think it takes a clever DM to handle things elegantly, and a group made up of individuals who are willing to let someone else be the focus for a time.

 

[The Shaman]

It's a problem in trying to use the game to tell a story *instead of* to play a game.

This is why our group considers RPGs to be more of a "game" than anything else - and certainly not a novel or story at all.

Right. You can tell a story with this game, but remember that you're playing a game and not telling a story.

A story needs an audience and an audience needs a sympathetic character. There is no real audience for a D&D game, except for the people playing it, so you don't need one sympathetic character. Everyone's character acts as their anchor into the fantasy world.

While most people understand the adventurers to be the "actors," the problem comes up when the GM decides that s/he's the writer or the director, when a good GM is simply the stage manager.

All I do is make sure the sets, the props, and the extras are all in their places, and let the actors do their thing.