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.
That’s why it’s pretty common in Shadowrun to just have everyone be kidnapped and fitted with a bomb in their skull.
If their character doesn’t want to cooperate, you activate the player’s brain bomb.
What are we, some sort of Shadowrun?
DCC/MCC likes character funnels for similar reasons
You mean the player character’s bomb, right?
Also, Cortex bombs are lame and lazy plot- & storywriting.
- GM with 20 years experience
You mean the player character’s bomb, right?
No. 😈
Wait, that’s illegal, I think…
Mac and cheese for dinner is lame and lazy too, but also fucking delicious. TTRPGS are something your friends put together for you out of love, not necessarily some clinically perfect professional product. And to extend the metaphor, if you go to a dinner party and start bitching about your friend not plating the food like a Michelin star place, you’re an asshole.
I agree with both. It is lazy, yes. But it is also meant to be fun, and Shadowrun is a particularly goofy game (cyberpunk, with fantasy creatures, ghosts, gods, and magic? How can you take it seriously?) so being a super solid story isn’t extremely important. It’s also literally the first suggestion in the rulebook for getting players to cooperate. 🤣
One day I’ll play Shadowrun… I’m too lazy to learn it well enough to DM it.
That’s not common in Shadowrun… 30+ years playing and running that game, and I’ve never encountered it!
I’ve seen it once…it was used against a single player because he refused to play anything but loners who backstabbed immediately and it was mostly used to piss him off enough he quit the group.
He should have just been kicked out, sure. I think the dm just hated doing that which was cowardly. Buuut he was gone and that game was much more enjoyable!
If your character has no reason to stay either the plothook was insufficient or you made a bad character. Both should be adressed ooc.
For me, as a DM, real shit always happens on session 1, you swim together or fucking die.
Create a new character that does have a reason to stick around.
The DM came up with the plot hook and the players agreed to play, so the players need to put some effort into finding a reason to go along with the plot hook.
Suggestions on making the hook more engaging is an option too!
It goes for the players among each other too. It’s not just the one character in OP that dislikes or distrusts the party. It’s up to the rest of the party to also accomodate them. If you have a moral character in the group you might refrain from murdering, raping and pillaging for shits and giggles.
As they say “the only way to have a friend is to be one”.
they should not meet in session 1.
Strongly disagree. Nothing wrong with doing that, but nothing wrong with having them meet in session 1 too, as long as you have built characters who will be willing to go along with the GM’s hooks.
And even that part is flexible, depending on the nature of the hook. If the hook is “you see an ad look for rat exterminators”, then you better have a character who wants to be an adventurer and will cooperate with other would-be adventurers. If the hook is “you’re prisoners being ordered to go explore this dungeon by order of the vizier”, there’s room for slightly less cooperative PCs, as long as you PC is cooperative enough to go along with that order, even if (at first) reluctantly.
Meeting people with the inclination and schedule that I enjoy the company of to make a party with is the worst part of d&d. Please don’t wake me role play it, too.
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.
I learn about the characters, myself included, throughout the campaign through their actions. Otherwise session one is like that time I asked a coworker about one of his tattoos and had to hear about his sister’s murder. That’s more of a session two+ thing to me.
For me, the tired trope of “strangers meet in a tavern” approach is the 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. It’s just awkward and everyone wants it to be over quickly.
Much better to just create characters together in session 0. Everyone already knows each other, their motivations, prior relationships established, etc… and just begin the campaign as if everyone is already on mission.
There are options besides “strangers meet in a tavern and awkwardly introduce themselves” and pre-made perfectly-tailored party. I’m a fan of starting in media res, with the characters all in a location for their own reasons, when shit happens that forces them to act as a group. I’ve just recently started the video game Baldur’s Gate 3, and it’s not a bad example of what I mean.
Yeah, I’m gonna back you up on that one. 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.” Every heist movie is basically required to have an “I’m putting a team together…” sequence.
Session 0 is where you lay out the expectations of the game, and your players think about either how their characters have already interacted, or how they will interact when they eventually meet. You give people an idea of what they’re getting into, you pitch the tone and the style of the game, and you help people shape characters around that.
As an example a friend of mine always pitches his games by describing who they would be directed by. I remember vividly his “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Halflings” game, a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay If It Was Directed By Guy Ritchie experience. Just setting that sense of tone up front meant that we all knew to make characters who would fit the vibe. I played “Blackhand Seth, The Scummiest Elf You’ve Ever Met,” one part Brad Pitt Pikey, one part Jack Sparrow, and I had a blast.
In my most recent campaign I’m running a Shadowrun game where the group would be assembled in session 1 by a down on his luck fixer. My pitch to the players was simple; make fuck-ups. I wanted characters who were at the end of their rope, lacking in options, either so green no one would trust them or so tainted by past failures that no one wanted them. The kind of people who would take a job from a fixer who had burned every other bridge. They rose to the assignment beautifully, and by four sessions in the group has already formed some absolutely fascinating relationship dynamics. A lot of that has been shaped by their first experiences together, figuring out how to work as a team, sometimes distrusting each other, and slowly discovering reasons to care about each other.
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.
Or third option: the person is operating independent of Table expectations or their character. Some folks just don’t get it and frankly I wonder why they want to play the game. It’s incredibly rare, but I have seen it.
You don’t have to put on a voice in a costume and write 20 pages of lore, but if you’re going to play at my table, I expect you to remain in character unless you have a question for me more or less. I expect you to take it seriously and use basic social etiquette. I’ve never played with somebody who was incapable of realizing that they are not being fun/funny, or considerate. They just get main character syndrome and stop listening to people for some reason.
It’s all about listening. If you’re capable of being at a table with a few people in life, then you’re capable of playing D&D!
Compleatly understandable. Roll three d20… unfortunelty, your character died from sevear case of buzz kill. Go ahead an roll out n new one that is exactly like this one but more trusty toward people exactly like those in the party.
In game punishments are the worst for these kinds of issues, just talk to each other.
That’s a much better advice. Much worse joke though.
make checks until you fail. take 40d8 damage from a mysterious source. no one’s around you to help unfortunately because you were dumb enough to separate from the party.
now make a better character or go home, your choice.
The whole We play a game so you have to cooperate together even if role-play wise it makes no sense is a bad practice, May-be not at the point you’ll leave the table but definitely a serious sign that the table doesn’t function properly.
Luckily, there is a very easy fix Do a session zero, and build a coherent party ab initio, it include in game reason for the party to work together, coherent goals (because when player A wants to abolish the reign of the emperor, and player B wants to defend the emperor you’ll have a PvP fight within 3 session) and a meta discussion to have a pallet of skills matching the party’s goal (At least in more epic game where you don’t want to feel powerless). Almost every RPG published in the last 10-15 years contains an extensive session zero guide and tons of tips to build a relevant party.
If someone wants to play a law priest in a pirate campaign or any other character not fitting the campaign theme or opposing other PCs, it’s perfectly OK to tell the no. Obviously if everybody is aligned on some PvP and betrayal the answer may be different, but it’s again something to address in session zero.
Nobody in here is saying “even if rp wise it makes no sense”. We’re saying exactly what you are - the DM and the players set boundaries as to what kind of game they wanna play and are willing to, and then you make PCs.
Don’t be an edgelord Rogue who’s too cool to work with anyone else. Go play Skyrim.
I have been a Dungeon Master for over 25 years. I am also a longtime anarchist, and many of my regular players are not.
I have three rules if im going to DM: 1) I pick the game system. Sorry, non-negotiable. I’ll play 5e (if I have to) but I won’t run it. 2) Party resources are communal. However you wanna work that out is up to you, but if you steal from The Party, The Gods will Curse You. And 3) You have to be willing to work in a group. This isn’t Skyrim, its a party game. The whole point is social problem solving. If you’re not up for that, its cool, I won’t make you talk or anything - but you gotta be a part of the team. Part of that is on me to make the initial hook good enough, but part of it is on you not to run a counterproductive pain in my ass.
I almost never have any problems if I do my job right and make all this clear and understood off the bat.
What if you had a player who wanted to secretly backstab and subvert the party, in character? They’d play as if they were part of the team, but in between sessions the player would communicate with the DM and decide ways to betray the party, with in-game consequences. It was the worst campaign I’ve ever been in. I still wonder if it was bad DMing or I’m just sour.
Yeah that’s not the kind of game I run. Complicating the party is my job.
Sorry for being off-topic, but I don’t think I understand anarchism as a political philosophy. Isn’t anarchism the absence of imposed rules? Communal resources seems to go against that, (it does make sense that the players get to divvy it up, though) and being cursed by the gods feels like a more theocratic thing than anarchist. Im not trying to be rude or anything, I just like to pick people’s brains about this stuff.
See my other reply re: “no rules”
Also, just read the first chapter or two of this. It’s very, very accessible https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread
Communal resources seems to go against that
Mutual aid is a fundamental principle of (most types of) anarchism, as is freedom of association.
In other words: if the PCs don’t like it, they can make their own game with their own rules.
Thank you. ✊️
I’m not hurting for players. I run my game exactly as often as I want to.
I think it’s funny that I have the exact same rule zero: I’ll reluctantly play 5e, but I won’t run it.
Dude, dealing with 5e players is just the worst. I’ve spent so much time and energy learning how to deprogram them.
3rd edition was a mistake
Yeah. He has a lot of rules and demands for an “anarchist” lol.
Political anarchy is not inherently against rules. Anarchy does not mean that everything is on fire and everyone steals from others and do whatever they want, that’s just a common misconception.
Also it’s only 3 pretty basic rules, nothing particularly crazy about them
Thank you.
I’ve given a lot of thought to this. I want everyone to have fun, even if its not my kinda fun. But any player’s right to do so stops when they make that impossible the rest of us.
Anarchism means “no rulers” not “no rules”. If we all consent then what’s the problem?
IRL consent is complicated by coercion - you can’t disagree with your boss because if they fire you, you can’t pay your bills.
DND is an asymmetrical activity. One person, the DM, has an outsized level of effort required. If im expected to create a whole world, NPCs, plots, and respond to all your nonsense, I think its totally fair to ask the players abide by a simple code of conduct.
Again, I’ve almost never had issues.
Your rules are great, I agree you deserve some privileges when acting as DM because rod the effort you put in. My comment wasn’t on that front.
But if you are enforcing the rules, and receiving different treatment because of them, you deserve that. But if you are win control of the space, you set the rules and you enforce them. You’re a ‘ruler’ in that context. My point is, your anarchism isn’t really at play here.
The system where the enforcement of rules is delegated to trusted person who everyone agrees on is closer to “Democracy”.
Standard nonsense here folks, nothing to see. Someone who thought they could “gotcha” an anarchist. You gotta get up about :checks watch: 30 years earlier if you wanna catch me slipping.
Lol you have zero ground to tell me my own table isn’t anarchist. I’ve been doing this for a long time. Go on out of here. I gave you enough of my day.
Go read the Bread Book I linked you instead of wasting our time.
Please don’t take this the wrong way, but you should read some anarchist political theory if you want to address their actual beliefs.
This is exactly the kind of communal structure that anarchists advocate for: a voluntary collective where everyone agrees to contribute to furthering certain goals, values, and objectives.
OP is not coercing players to be in their game or to do things their way; they’re saying “this is the game that I run, take it or leave it,” and the players can join if they share the same goals.
Thank you
Don’t forget to hydrate. Must be tired after all that mental gymnastics.
I could tell by your first comment that you didn’t care to know about how others think.
Ignorance is a lot easier than educating yourself, so I can see why you’d choose the easy path; I’m just disappointed that you decided to be incurious instead of learning something.
But I’m sure your “highschool rebel” understanding of anarchism is truly accurate, thanks for the notes.
I’ve got a second tho so I’ll try:
- it means “no rulers”, from Greek. Not no rules. You can’t have more than 2 people without some rules, we just want to all be able to agree with them. Anarchists by and large are opposed to hierarchy, that’s the focus. We tend to like direct democracy and communal organizational structures.
The stories I tell don’t have to be purely anarchist in structure. If im DMing, and we all agreed to the God Curse if you screw over your party, and then one player does - who’s responsible? The one with full knowledge of the consequences who then did the thing anyway, right?
Look: as a political philosophy, anarchism exists in the real world. There are people who’ve done it very successfully. But that’s not why I call myself an anarchist. I do so because when I discovered anarchism, I found other people who thought the way I did. I’m an anarchist because my soul is anarchist and always has been. I also think its what we need to do if we’re going to survive climate change, but fuck me for trying to convince anyone of that, so I keep to myself.
DM: As you walk away, you feel a slight tingle in the air before a flash as bright as a thousand suns blinds you for an instant before… nothing. A bolt of lightning has vaporized your body. Miraculously, nobody else in the vicinity seems to have been harmed in any way nor even do they seem to have noticed what just happened, including the fact that you just disappeared. It’s as if the Gods themselves, for no particular reason, have arbitrarily decided to smite you out of existence entirely.
Ready to roll a new character?
DM: “Alright, so your character walks off after refusing to go along with the group. Okay. Well, guess you can pack up and we will see you next session. I don’t have anything planned other than what the group is doing, so, guess you won’t be playing today. Bye.”
Make it sting. Refuse to let them roll a new character and have them do the walk of shame. They made their choice So they can deal with the consequences of them.
I’m a big fan of “you all wake up in loincloths sitting in a wagon, hands bound” and as long as someone at the table can roll higher than a 1, they can break free.
Or something attacks them while they’re all in a tavern
Basically I’m a fan of “you could ignore having your shit kicked in, but will you?” since so many players would stop at nothing.
Fallout NV had the right idea. “Where’s that little fucker who shot me in the head?!”
Hey, you. You’re finally awake. You were trying to cross the border, right?
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?
If you don’t have a reason to work with the group, accept that this is a one-shot for you, which may be retcon’d as needed.
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.
Fun fact:
The Expanse books (and eventual TV show) were started as a unique role-playing campaign where the person running it (Ty Franks) would write a prompt, the players would explain their character’s reactions. He’d then write a story section incorporating that and the players would say how they reacted and so on.
There was a core group of characters who were the “survivors” early on, but one of the players had to drop out early-ish, so in the next bit of story that character died.
That was carried into the books and TV show, which is why after the core group of characters is established, there’s a sudden, shocking death.
Wow that really is a fun fact!
Dice-less, narrative games are so much fun. Sadly finding a good group for it is like pulling teeth, at least in my area.
*Sad theater kid noises*
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.
I mean, I think they get the term, but just have a hard time doing it.
I’m new to my party and roleplaying in general (though I’ve consumed it as entertainment) and I’m having a slightly different issue. My character was intentionally designed to be a bit naive to match me as a player, and doesn’t have high skills in any int based stuff (at least for now) and instead has medical, nature, survival, etc.
A lot of puzzles or traps etc I can as a player try to reason through, but my character shouldn’t be able to sus out, and I feel torn between playing the character as it should be or adding ideas to solve stuff so we aren’t just sitting there twiddling our thumbs for ideas.
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.
Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between factual knowledge and just cleverness. There’s no reason a bumpkin fresh off the farm can’t be curious about what makes something tick, so they look under it or break it open - and whaddya know, they find a hidden thing. It’s really up to the DM to say no, your character wouldn’t know to do that. The intelligence you show when you figure out a puzzle or a trap could make total sense as the same spark that made the naive character want to leave the farm and explore the big wide world.
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.
It’s natural that we gravitate towards familiarity.
Case in point, how some actors always seem to play the same character, no matter which movie they’re in.
Yeah that’s a good parallel. Lately I’ve been watching Kaitlin Olson’s show High Potential. Even though she’s playing a super-smart crime solver, to me it’s the same character she played in It’s Always Sunny and The Mick. Not that there’s anything wrong with that lol.
“Oh, you encounter a desert. There’s nothing around for miles”
“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.”
Basically my only rules for character creation are 1) your stiff must be from an officially published 5e rulebook, and 2) it must make sense for your characters to party up. It’s really hard to make an interesting campaign for a group of four lone wolves who are totally disinterested in The Quest
