As a GM, there are few things I hate more upon starting a new game than the mess that inevitably arises from getting a load of PCs, who may not have anything at all to do with one another, into a vague semblance of a coherent group. Most of the time, it just feels like a chore. Something necessary and unpleasant that you have to do to get to something more fun later. It’s part of the reason that just about every game, or genre of game, has a standard opening that has become something of a cliche. Characters aren’t meeting up in the inn/tavern because the GM is bad or lazy, but because it’s the easiest beginning that gets you into the game. It’s the minimum necessary to get past the problem.
And why is it even a problem? Something as complicated as bringing together what is likely to be a diverse group of characters as a group is something that requires planning and consideration before the characters are even made and that’s something that most games and GMs don’t really address. You need everybody on the same page from the very beginning and that’s just not the way most games have traditionally operated. Instead, the usual method is for the GM to maybe give a brief setting statement or description, the players create their characters (usually in some isolation from each other), and then everybody shows up to the first session with their PCs. It’s no wonder that getting groups together is a frequent problem, given this setup. It practically begs for dysfunctional groups with incompatible characters. However, I think that there are a variety of ways to help mitigate the problem and quite possibly make for a better game in the end as well.
Party Creation 101
To start, I think there one basic tool that, even just by itself, might help take the sting out of getting group cohesion. I suggest is that characters be created together. All the characters, all at the same time, likely as the first session of the campaign. Some games make this an actual part of character creation right in the book, but it’s something that can and should be applied liberally in others. As the GM, you can provide the baseline setting statement/description as you normally would, then facilitate group connections as the characters are being made. Ask them questions, suggest ideas, point out similarities between characters, make them aware of potential interesting scenarios, and keep the conversation and discussion flowing. The players themselves can relieve the GM of a great deal of the burden of creating a coherent group if given a chance.
As a player, you should be asking what characters other people are making, what their concepts are, and thinking about how yours fits in. Don’t hesitate to brainstorm and throw around ideas to everybody. Even an idea you immediately dismiss might be picked up by someone else and used or transformed. Don’t limit yourself to dealing with the players either. Ask the GM questions about the setting and the kind of game he wants to run. Tell him and the other players what you’d like to see in the game.
You Have Been Recruited By The Star League…
Okay, so your players aren’t necessarily interested in shared character creation. Or maybe finding the time to do it is hard to manage and everybody just wants to jump into the game. So what’s the next alternative to ensure you have a group of characters who actually want to work together and have reasonably similar goals? Make them all part of or connected to a particular organization. They all might be in the military together, they might be all part of the same holy order, they could all be connected to the same university, or whatever. The exact nature of the organization isn’t the important part, just that players are in some meaningful way tied to it. Many games offer this sort of solution right out of the box. Dark*Matter has all players as part of the Hoffman Institute, Eclipse Phase defaults to assuming that players are part of Firewall, and the Eberron campaign setting for D&D has everything from government organizations like the King’s Dark Lanterns to the Dragonmarked Houses and more.
The point is that if the players are part of an organization, it stands to reason that they will share at least some of the organization’s goals, mindset, and/or beliefs. They may have, and probably should have, their own individual goals and needs, but putting them together in this way ensures that they’re all at least broadly on the same page with each other. Flexibility within the organization to allow different backgrounds and kinds of characters is key, otherwise people will feel too constrained by the organization. Giving the players some say in things can help alleviate this. Players may even want to create the organization themselves, which is even better.
I Don’t Like You, But I’ve Got To Work With You
Another option, a riskier one, is to put the characters together into a situation where they have to work together. Throw them into a prison cell together on trumped up charges, crash the ship they’re sailing on, or have the village they’re staying at be attacked by a horde of evil beings. You can even pull out the classic scenario where all the players wake up in a dangerous situation together with no memory of how they got there or what they’re doing.
So what’s the risk? There’s no guarantee that this method will actually create a ~group~. It might just end up with a temporary alignment of individuals who have no reason to stay together after the current situation is resolved. Shared character creation as I described it earlier can help reduce the risk of this happening, but you still might have a character or two which sticks around only because the player deciding on a meta level that they have to or they don’t get to play something they want to in the campaign.
There’s another element that has to be considered as well, which is do you spring the forced circumstance on the players unawares? Or do you give them some idea up front of what you’re planning? The former presents the possibility of having players make “choo-choo” noises and make accusations of railroading. Whereas the latter has a metagame element that many players and GMs don’t necessarily care for, not to mention ruining the surprise.
Issue Zero
I think that one of the most rewarding, and yet most difficult, methods is to actually roleplay out the characters meeting and the group forming. As a GM, you work with individuals and probably small groups as the story warrants, and play out the prologue to the campaign proper. As you might imagine, this is a lot of work for the GM. It involves a lot of mini-scenarios, it requires a lot of juggling of characters, it is more time consuming, and demands a lot more planning. On the other hand, I can’t think of a better or more interesting way of bringing players and characters alike into a real group. It’s much more organic and much more memorable.
So how do you do it? That’s a hard question for me to answer because, for all my talking about it, I’ve never actually been able to do it. This is all theorycrafting, albeit informed theorycrafting. However, if I were going to do it this is what I’d do. I’d start with Character A and have a short solo scenario, which ends up with Character A running into Character B, who is neck deep in trouble. Switching focus to Character B, I’d ask their player to tell me how they got into such a mess. I would then play out the situation, hopefully getting Character A and B working together and getting out of trouble.Then I’d switch over to Character C, who is seemingly uninvolved with Characters A and B, but they soon run into Character D, who is dealing with the aftermath of the trouble that A and B got into. Eventually C and D would interact with A and B and find themselves with some sort of common cause or interest and the game would proceed from there.
I think there are some things to be concerned about with this method. First being that you have to keep all the players interested, even while another person’s character is currently the focus of the prologue. Second is that this might take a bit of time. Depending on how things go, it may take a full session or more just to get the party together. And as I mentioned before, it’s a hell of a lot more for the GM to juggle and it might be difficult for inexperienced GMs to do. Even experienced GMs might find it more than they’re willing to tackle.
The Novel You Always Wanted to Write
The Dresden Files RPG has a unique take on joining characters together at the beginning of the game and one not easily summed up in a single sentence. As part of character creation, you write a short paragraph of just 3-4 sentences describing the summary of a novel that your character might have been in, as though it were the teaser/synopsis blurb on the back cover of a book. Then you pass that summary off to another player, who writes a sentence or two as to how they fit into that story as a supporting character. Then they pass it along to a third person who does the same thing. Each character has one story that they “star” in and two more that they’re a “supporting character” in.
I love this method because it builds up a web of character connections. Every character is connected to at least two others, who in turn are connected to two characters each. There’s a lot of overlap and it really feels like a close knit group. I found, as a player, that it’s a lot of fun to do and a great creative exercise. You get to know a lot about all the characters in the group because, to some extent, you’re helping to influence their creation.
Not to say that this method doesn’t have potential issues, of course. Unless you’re careful, it can get confusing as to who is writing what for who and how they’re supposed to do it. It’s also not a method which seems to suit beginner or inexperienced characters very well since it assumes that you’ve participated in at least 3 adventures/scenarios (yours and two others). It’s also pretty time consuming and will likely require an entire session to itself. You also may have characters which are hard to make fit or who are difficult to connect with certain other characters, which potentially adds to the confusion or time needed or both.
You Know, On Second Thought, Just Skip the Whole Thing
For all that I’ve gone on about how to make a group come together better and more naturally, it would be neglectful of me if I didn’t point out that when you get right down to it you don’t really have to do anything I’ve said. Nor any other option or suggestion that I’ve neglected to mention here. Unless it’s directly built into the rules as a part of the game like it is with Dresden Files RPG, you don’t have to acknowledge any of it. If you and your group are okay with just handwaving how the group got together, go for it and more power to you. You can get right to the action and figure out anything that needs figuring out later on and sometimes that’s a really great thing in and of itself.
Some players and GMs might be more than happy to meet in the inn to be hired by the mysterious old man and if that’s fun for you, then you’re doing it just as right as a group that has a month of prologue sessions before the campaign proper begins. The important thing is to have everybody on the same page at the very beginning and if you are, it doesn’t matter where or what that beginning actually is.
Meeting scenes are almost universally boring and awkward when they’re not downright disastrous, so i don’t bother trying to come up with reasons for players to work together anymore. I generally tell them that whatever happened before, somehow they all got to this place and have known each other long enough to become friends and are expected to treat each other that way. I encourage them to flesh out that background if they feel like it, but that’s enough to get started.
To quote a little unintentional(?) wisdom from EGG, “The game starts at the entrance to the dungeon.” Replace “Dungeon” with whatever the center of your game’s action is and you’ll be off to a good start.
That’s one perfectly valid way to do it as well, yes, though I think some games wouldn’t tolerate it as much as others and would require more work (Call of Cthulhu springs to mind). The concern I have is the same one I have for meeting in an inn or whatever. You can say that “your characters know each other and are friends” to hand wave it, but if you’ve got characters that are fundamentally not compatible, it stretches that suspension of disbelief at the very least.
Spirit of the Century did the phase thing first, at least among commercial RPGs I would think. In any case the collaborative background creation you mention is a common component of the Fate system and is by no means unique to the Dresden Files RPG.
@Charlos: You are indeed correct and I did know that. I used Dresden Files RPG as the basis because it’s where I was first exposed to the idea and I also think it’s the FATE game that more people are likely to be familiar with.
For my D&D campaign, I did a combination of collaboration and hand waving. I gave all the players a map of the setting with a brief paragraph on each of the known locations and told them “the campaign will begin in [town x], so figure out your motivation for being there”. Then for the first session I went around the table, asked everyone for a brief rundown of their character’s history, and started weaving them together with occasional suggestions from the group. Each player got the chance to trot their character out in front of the group, nobody felt their character was less important, we ended up with enough of a common background for the party to feel like a proper team, and the whole thing only took about 15 minutes of the first session and led directly into the game.
I did something different last opening session. The group started off in a “battle”. It turns out to be a dream, but when the group runs into each other in town, they naturally want to find out more about each other.
In my experience, having the group create their characters together has overwhelming negatives.
It starts the game OOC; the first interactions the characters do are dealt with in OOC discussions; and every secret or piece of information about the characters is already known.
This is the death of IC interaction, the death of roleplaying, and the best way to make sure your characters talk a lot about how they’re friends but never actually bother to do anything to demonstrate that fact because their shared history contains enough examples to be going on with.
I am currently in a D&D game with a Good-aligned party playing a Good-aligned character. I lie constantly about my skills and abilities, background, and motivations.
The other players in the party are all entirely new to roleplaying games. Within the first session, we were having dynamic in-character discussions about our memories of our favourite inns on the Arabel road and debating religious philosophies. Our characters are a noble from a world that is just better, a peasant farmer thrust into soldiery, a cleric of annoying everyone, and a druid who was literally raised by wolves.
They are also the fastest of friends, ready and willing to die for one another, loyal beyond a fault, and all of this with exactly no input or visible forcing from the DM and not even any of that player cooperation you usually need where you like don’t actually tell the Fighter you just met to get lost, even though you want to.