Splitting the party from session 1
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Everybody plays RPGs differently, but it’s funny how some people don’t get the term “roleplaying” and are constantly, relentlessly playing their real selves in the game. So you get barbarians with the sensibilities of software developers.
Like for beginners just learning that’s fine.
But the amount of players I’ve DM’d for who always play the exact same character that is just “idealistic version of self” with different coats of paint is way too damn high.
Forget that for average people it is incredibly difficult to put themselves into the perspective of others, much less hold a continuous train of logic based on that perspective, which is what roleplaying is all about.
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You’re missing the entire point by what I mean by “effectively the same” and the point of my argument.
There are only ever two choices: your characters know each other beforehand, or the don’t. Being forced to work together or working together by choice is irrelevant to what I’m talking about.
if the party is not planned together to be a cohesive group that are all guaranteed to have a motivation to play the written campaign AND have at least a reason to trust the party members, regardless of if they have personal history or not, is my method for avoiding the inevitable player who wants to bitch about not belong allowed to play their “edgy loner”.
As I said before, even with literally using the threat of death forcing the character to work with the party, there is ALWAYS that one dipshit who wants to bitch and moan about how I’m “railroading them/preventing them from roleplaying their character” by doing so. Or, they waste time trying to argue for some loophole to go off and do their own thing, separate from the party yet somehow still “technically” doing the job. I am speaking from personal experience of over 10 years as a DM.
The other key thing about in media res is that you don’t have that “inevitable round of introductions that feels like that time at the start of school when everyone had to stand up to say their name and one interesting fact about them”. You’re thrown into doing things before there’s any chance for that. You get to know each other not beforehand, as in case 2, but as the adventure is going.
Yes, the characters are. The players, on the other hand, are all just sitting around a table rolling dice with no sense of urgency. They roll their dice, the encounter is over, and then the customary introductions start cause everyone is wondering what the other players have created for their character. Like, either you have been incredibly lucky with groups or have let Critical Roll give you rosey glasses about the role-play capabilities of the average player if you think doing things in media res makes a difference here.
I avoid all of this by just doing it in Session 0 with the afformentioned rules about character creation. It works. Ever since, I’ve never had to deal with it or any of the annoyances I have talked about.
Also, no, BG3 is not a good example. It is a video game that doesn’t have to deal with fumbling IRL people who all have differing expectations and preferences. See, the biggest thing about the BG3 cast, is that the characters were all built in such a way so that they work together. Which is exactly what I have done with my method of character creation.
In media res will require players be cooperative enough to care to act, but it doesn’t require they trust each other or know each other immediately. It definitely doesn’t require pre-written specifically-designed characters.
See, the problem I have been talking about is that my method guarantees that players are cooperative enough to care to act that’s the entire point of why I do it how I do it. Again, I am speaking from direct personal experience across 10+ years as a DM. Problem players will find a way to be a problem. So I nip it in the bud with a method that doesn’t have to rely on the good-faith of the player, cause I’ve been burned by it more times than I can count.
even with literally using the threat of death forcing the character to work with the party, there is ALWAYS that one dipshit who wants to bitch and moan about how I’m “railroading them/preventing them from roleplaying their character” by doing so
This is an out of character problem that should be addressed by talking to your players at session 0 (and at any other time it arises). The manner in which you create characters is irrelevant here because it’s an interpersonal issue, not a mechanical or narrative one.
either you have been incredibly lucky with groups or have let Critical Roll give you rosey glasses about the role-play capabilities of the average player
I don’t watch actual plays. Never have. Tried Critical Role for a few episodes and didn’t see the appeal. I don’t think it takes an awful lot of roleplay skill to accomplish. Because I’ve seen it work many times with very ordinary players. Ordinary, but participating in good faith, which is the bare minimum. If you don’t have good faith, you shouldn’t be playing.
But it’s pretty clear from a lot of your tone and actions here that you are not participating in this conversation in good faith. Unless that changes, I’m out.
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Also accept that you suck at making characters
I don’t know. One time I joined a game, and I had plenty of reasons to join the party, but the DM started RPing a really rude character, and it’s like his method of getting me to join the party was to be a huge asshole to me? I just didn’t pick up on it, and when I finally gave my character an ass-pull reason to join (that I could do some good if I tagged along) the DM was like “jeez, finally” and it sucked.
Like, if I’m playing a level 1 wizard, and the DM tells me I’m gonna die if I enter the conflict, it’s not really my backstory’s fault that I don’t jump into the fray. Sometimes you’re dealing with an inexperienced DM that expects you to metagame your way into the party. I genuinely thought he was on the verge of giving me the opportunity to convince the party to run away from the dragon, not stay and fight it.
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even with literally using the threat of death forcing the character to work with the party, there is ALWAYS that one dipshit who wants to bitch and moan about how I’m “railroading them/preventing them from roleplaying their character” by doing so
This is an out of character problem that should be addressed by talking to your players at session 0 (and at any other time it arises). The manner in which you create characters is irrelevant here because it’s an interpersonal issue, not a mechanical or narrative one.
either you have been incredibly lucky with groups or have let Critical Roll give you rosey glasses about the role-play capabilities of the average player
I don’t watch actual plays. Never have. Tried Critical Role for a few episodes and didn’t see the appeal. I don’t think it takes an awful lot of roleplay skill to accomplish. Because I’ve seen it work many times with very ordinary players. Ordinary, but participating in good faith, which is the bare minimum. If you don’t have good faith, you shouldn’t be playing.
But it’s pretty clear from a lot of your tone and actions here that you are not participating in this conversation in good faith. Unless that changes, I’m out.
This is an out of character problem that should be addressed by talking to your players at session 0 …The manner in which you create characters is irrelevant here because it’s an interpersonal issue, not a mechanical or narrative one.
It is actually both, considering that it is entirely about how problematic players design their characters to be problematic. In a roleplay game, the narrative is an interpersonal narrative, which means interpersonal issues are linked to narrative issues.
Which is exactly why I made the Session 0 plan that I did. Don’t need to rely on good faith when you pre-bake it into the character creation. It has worked flawlessly for getting rid of problem players.
Because I’ve seen it work many times with very ordinary players. Ordinary, but participating in good faith, which is the bare minimum. If you don’t have good faith, you shouldn’t be playing.
Unfortunately, it fails more often than it works, because everyone thinks they are in good faith from their perspective, even the edgy loner wolf player. Because everyone goes into a game with different expectations. Which is why I built my session 0 to avoid the problem altogether by setting strict expectations of players and their characters.
I am participating in good faith. You’re just not understandstanding me. Don’t be a dick and police my tone just because you fail to understand my perspective. That’s arguing in bad faith.
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Maybe your char bumbles around the room doing goofy things instead of working hard and logically to crack the puzzle and the dm can make your bumbling uncover extra clues that advance the plot.
This right here is what makes it roleplaying.
You as the player know what to do to move the story forward. Just need to figure out how the character you built would go from Point A to Point B, then roleplay doing it, even if it means they bumble their way through it like a clown.
Let the DM worry about what skills you need, if you even need them at all; the only thing the player has to do is describe their actions and their intentions.
A good DM will make sure you fail forward.
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“I perform a history check to see if there’s any historical significance about this desert.”
“Sorry, but, as DM, I don’t remember calling for a History check. So, no, you actually don’t.”
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Obviously, I’m probably missing some context here, but reading the way you’ve described this, I don’t think you were at fault here. If the GM’s decision really was to fold that character into the group by just having them stroll up to a smuggler’s ship like “Yo, I’m the jedi, let me in,” that was an incredibly fucking stupid way to handle that character introduction.
If that happened in an actual Star Wars movie or TV show there would be a million youtube videos ripping on how stupid that scene was. Forget “Paranoid smuggler trying to evade the law”, basically anyone working against the empire should have been suspicious as fuck there. That’s not a jedi, that’s an imperial spy, or worse, a sith lord.
Yes, players owe to each other to try to move the story forward in a collaborative way, but the GM also owes it to the players to never demand that their characters act like complete and total morons for the sake of the story. There should have been some kind of framework there for why this group of people would trust this random-ass dude wandering into the docking bay. A message sent ahead by their contact in the resistance saying “This guy is gonna help you out, you can trust him,” something like that. Not just “Yo, I’m a party member, lemme in.” Real life doesn’t work like that, and when games try to work like that it just makes everything feel stupid and pointless, because it’s so obvious that none of it is real or meaningful.
Why is it always a jump to “Overly Paranoid to the point of seeing everything moving as a spook” instead of just “reasonably cautious but otherwise still level headed”?
If the GM’s decision really was to fold that character into the group by just having them stroll up to a smuggler’s ship like “Yo, I’m the jedi, let me in,” that was an incredibly fucking stupid way to handle that character introduction.
Do you forget that this is almost literally what Obi Wan and Luke did to recruit Han and Chewie? Ya know, the famous Smuggler pair? They just walked up to the pair in a bar and had a polite discussion about requesting some discreet passage aboard Han’s ship.
Last I checked, no one bitches about that part of A New Hope.
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Why is it always a jump to “Overly Paranoid to the point of seeing everything moving as a spook” instead of just “reasonably cautious but otherwise still level headed”?
If the GM’s decision really was to fold that character into the group by just having them stroll up to a smuggler’s ship like “Yo, I’m the jedi, let me in,” that was an incredibly fucking stupid way to handle that character introduction.
Do you forget that this is almost literally what Obi Wan and Luke did to recruit Han and Chewie? Ya know, the famous Smuggler pair? They just walked up to the pair in a bar and had a polite discussion about requesting some discreet passage aboard Han’s ship.
Last I checked, no one bitches about that part of A New Hope.
No, Obi Wan and Luke found Han through contacts Obi Wan had at Mos Eisley having lived on Tatooine for years and gone to the trouble of maintaining underworld connections knowing he was on the run from the authorities, and they didn’t just rock up and say “Yo, we’re buds now,” they employed Han and Chewie to smuggle them somewhere, that being the job of a pair of smugglers.
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Sometimes assembling the group in session 0 is what’s right for the story, and sometimes it really, really isn’t. Think about how many movies literally have “Assembling the team” as almost their entire plot. The Avengers hangs two hours of non-stop action on “We need to put a party together.”
Oh, that reminds me of a 4th way campaigns can start (in addition to the 3 I said in a different reply) that I’ve been in before and quite enjoyed—though wouldn’t want to be overused. The MCU method. Where each player individually gets a 1 session (maybe 2 at most) solo session introducing them and getting them to the right place to start the campaign.
Doesn’t have to be a solo session. If you have the right group for it (big IF there) you can jump back and forth between the individual characters, essentially running four solo sessions in parallel. This relies heavily on your players being the kind of people who are invested in the action even when their character isn’t present, but it can be done.
That said, I think for the most part the “Solo movie” should really be a character’s backstory. This is why I don’t like D&D, or at least the D&D presumption of starting at level 1. It leaves no room for characters to have an interesting history if they’re basically at the level where the average house-cat is a threat. If I run D&D, I start people off at somewhere around level 5 - 10. Give them enough ability that they can actually have done some interesting things already. Get the solo movie out of the way before the game even starts.
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It might be your least favorite part of DnD, but there are plenty of people (myself included) who enjoy meeting a new group of characters and finding out about their particular ticks and specialties.
The friction of people rubbing off of each other for the first time creates so many wonderful opportunities for storytelling, and forming bonds naturally through play, instead of prescribing them in a clinical session 0 context, tends to make the players much more invested in those bonds, in my experience.
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This shouldn’t be the GMs job btw, players, roleplaying and backstory are YOUR department, write a reason why your character would end up with the others. Work together.
Disagree. The DM should provide some sort of reason for the party to come together. Some sort of external influence, to bring in any characters that don’t start the game together.
But it is the duty of the player to roll with it. Don’t fight the plot hook. What’s the point?
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Disagree. The DM should provide some sort of reason for the party to come together. Some sort of external influence, to bring in any characters that don’t start the game together.
But it is the duty of the player to roll with it. Don’t fight the plot hook. What’s the point?
I got let off in my game (second session tonight). I found that I belong to the party’s pack yak. He’s a holy yak and my monk is his protector. Party needs its yak.
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No, Obi Wan and Luke found Han through contacts Obi Wan had at Mos Eisley having lived on Tatooine for years and gone to the trouble of maintaining underworld connections knowing he was on the run from the authorities, and they didn’t just rock up and say “Yo, we’re buds now,” they employed Han and Chewie to smuggle them somewhere, that being the job of a pair of smugglers.
He also offered him a ton of money!
“Ten thousand. All in advance.”
“Ten thousand! We could buy our own ship for that!”
…
“We can give you two thousand now… and fifteen when we reach Alderaan.”
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Generally speaking, this is something that an experienced GM can handle in session zero. An important part of session zero is establishing expectations for the style of game to be played: Things like “are the player characters friends?” “Is PvP encouraged or discouraged?” “Do I as a DM want the characters to stick together?” etc etc.
Generally when running DnD, I request of my players to design characters who:
- Have a disposition to get along well with their companions. (this can be for any reason: because they’re like that with everyone, or because they’re loyal to the group, or because they view it as useful to have some friendly scapegoats nearby or any other motivation.)
- Be the kind of person who will go on adventures and take risks. (This can be because they’re a daredevil, or because they’re desperate, or because they’re devoted to their duty, or any other motivation.)
Fundamentally, most DnD games are the story of a group of friends going on adventures together. If your DnD game is the story of a group of friends going on adventures, then it’s extremely beneficial for your players to build characters who will be friends, and who will go on adventures. Together.
