Trying to get the players all starting in the same place believably

[Shoe]

Greetings all,
I have been DM'ing for around 15 years and consider myself to be pretty good at it. I always find myself with the same problem right before begining a new campaign; How do i get all my players to begin the campaign cooperating? I do not restrict Alignment/race/class other than by use of the 3.5 D&D PHB, so getting the players interested in working to gether can sometimes be a challenge. I am leaning towards telling them a back story that links all of thier backstories and just not roleplaying it out, but does that stifle players too much? My games always tend to be a somewhat metagamed/forced cooperation between players and then an awesome epic during which everyone has a blast. I am trying to improve my skills as a game master and this seems to be my major weakness.

Players in my group are decent roleplayers and make choices based on thier charaters not on thier own preferences, and with many choosing at least one Neutral axis on thier alignment it is hard to motivate them to care about one another.

Any ideas

Thanks,
Shoe

 

[Crothian]

We have a session of Character Generation. One of the things the player have to do during this is figure out why they are together and why they are in X location. Sometimes and some games have some really good systems for this that I might borrow from but usually I just leave it up to the players.

 

[Doug McCrae]

What Crothian said. Make it the player's responsibility to figure out why they're working together. That avoids stifling their creativity. Ask the players to connect their own backstories. Remind them to create PCs that aren't bitter loners, that never works, but people who can be part of a successful team.

Suggest they avoid evil or chaotic alignments unless they can figure out a way to do it while satisfying the aforementioned criteria.

 

[Shoe]

All of the players tend to look to me for a reason...I guess I should have them all come up with why they know each other. With mixed races this gets to be more difficult, however we ususally just start playing the first session with characters that were made beforehand. Maybe I should do the "character creation and story begining session" first.

 

[Shoe]

Suggest they avoid evil or chaotic alignments unless they can figure out a way to do it while satisfying the aforementioned criteria.

this is likely the root of at least SOME of the problem...they are almost all Neutral or Chaotic Neutral...most of them have a hard time with "Good" characters and Lawful is almost 100% out of the question...

I don't allow evil characters, but they rarely play characters that care about much of anything so finding motivation is difficult

 

[Nifft]

DM: "... and that's the job in a nutshell. So, how do you all know each other, and why did each of you decide to take this job?"

Yep, it's best to make them tell you why they're working together. Do this as part of character creation if possible. Get them talking -- on your email list, on the forum thread, or in person -- at the same time as they're coming up with their character concepts. That way you don't get one guy saying "... but I'm a lone wolf ninja! The rest of the group shouldn't even know I'm in the room with them!"

Cheers, -- N

 

[Shoe]

Double post - delete me

 

[Shoe]

thats likely the best idea..i'll give that a shot this time around. the player roster is changing a bit this time too so maybe the 2 new guys will bring some much needed motivation to the party

Thanks all,
Shoe

 

[D'karr]

Throw all their characters in jail accused of a crime they did not commit and have them find a way to escape.

 

[coyote6]

Throw all their characters in jail accused of a crime they did not commit and have them find a way to escape.

Or someone comes to them with an offer -- engage in this one little nigh-suicidal mission, and they'll be free to go. Then they could do the mission, or run off. They get to choose whether they're the A-Team or the Dirty Dozen.