If your character has no reason to stay either the plothook was insufficient or you made a bad character. Both should be adressed ooc.
Create a new character that does have a reason to stick around. *Session 0 should be the creation of the story of how the group met, they should not meet in session 1.
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 make 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.
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.
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”.
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For me, as a DM, real shit always happens on session 1, you swim together or fucking die.
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.
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. 🤣
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!
One day I’ll play Shadowrun… I’m too lazy to learn it well enough to DM it.
DCC/MCC likes character funnels for similar reasons
THANK. YOU.
Players who do this ARE BAD PLAYERS. I don’t care what it takes, you WILL find a reason to cooperate. Call it metagaming if you have to. This is a team game, you will work as a team.
Players are expected to make characters that will, for whatever reason, will work together and, for whatever reason, will take plot hooks. Without those two things the game doesn’t happen.
What if they leave the party and create a new character to join the party that fits in better? Is that good or bad?
I mean, it’s good, but it feels like an over reaction. They don’t need to make an entirely new character, they just need to think of a reason they’d cooperate. It can be a contrived reason, that’s fine, but they need to work together. Some examples,
- Highly shy character “warms up” to at least one other character and sort of talks to the group “through” that character, but you can still (as a player) face the whole table to talk as a group.
- Character who is extremely distrusting has met a character before (just tweak backstory) or finds at least one other character implicitly trust worthy. Maybe the Rogue who has been backstabbed too many times trusts the Paladin because they know they’re too honest to lie.
Edit: It can also be like “my god told me” or “I just know y’all are a good bunch” lol. Doesn’t need to be elaborate.
The guy who splits the party on session 1:
Hehehe it’s so fun when I just have to sit and watch and can’t interact, I love iiiiit!
I did this in the very first RPG I played. It was Star Wars and I was playing a smuggler (who thus had a ship). Obviously the GM intended my ship to be used to move the party around. Well, the jedi PC shows up wanting to board my ship as I’m getting ready to leave. I don’t know this guy so obviously the first thing my character would do would be to say that and then turn the turrets on when this strange jedi tried to insist on joining me, followed by promptly flying off so he ended up needing to find another way to our adventure.
No idea why I was like that. The player was pretty much my best friend at the school, too, so it wasn’t anything personal against him. I think I was just trying to hard to do what “my character would realistically do” instead of just playing a game.
Probably for the best. If you’d let him onboard it might have ended up like this story.
That would have been more cool than whatever unmemorable shit actually happened in that campaign. Only other thing I remember is the GM offering me 3 capital ships if I bought him lunch one day and then promptly destroying two of them that same session, which I actually appreciate in hindsight because it contributed to seeing pay to win games as a waste of time and money. Either the shit “bought” in game can be lost that easily or it just breaks the game into a “just give me money and you, uh, win! That’s the whole game!”
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*
There’s a few ways I have approached this as a GM. I’ll go from least to most effective (and, I feel, mature).
The first is to put a shared enemy in front of the party, so that even if the characters do split up, they’re working towards the same goal. The character who has “no reason” to trust the party also has reason to recognize the effectiveness of sticking with allies in a world full of enemies. If the player wants them to go off on their own, fine, but as GM, the game stays with the party - oh, and have the player who left roll on a random injury table because they were outnumbered.
Second is to invoke the “Wolverine Approach”. Wolverine in Marvel Comics always goes on and on about not being a team player, being a bad person, being a loner, etc. - and he certainly has had his fair share of solo adventures. At the same time, there was at least one month where nearly every major Marvel title had Wolverine in it - Avengers, West Coast Avengers, X-Men, the Defenders, Spider-Man, Marvel Team-Up, Alpha Flight, etc… And because it was in the era where She-Hulk was part of the F4, he had a cameo there because of the WCA. Wolverine might claim to not be a team player, and he might be a pain in the rear end, but he’s always there if there’s a villain to be thwarted or a fight to be had. You have a right to have your character complain. Just stick in or near the party. I don’t care if you sleep in a different hotel or a separate camp. Be there in the important scenes.
Third, “Take it or leave it”. I’m not ashamed of myself for this one - I have told people, this is the game we’re playing. if you want to play this game, I want to have you. If you don’t want to play what we’re playing under the terms we’re all in agreement on, there’s the door, don’t let it hit you on the way out. It’s effective, but I don’t think it’s the most mature method in my arsenal because of the all-or-nothing nature.
Fourth is an open and frank discussion. Explain that the concept of the game is cooperative. Make sure you get buyin from everyone, not just the loner. Express the expectation I have of both players and characters for the game in play. Paranoia, for instance, has a very different set of expectations and goals than Shadowrun or Spirit of the Century / Dresden / Fate. I have GMed for a loner character in a Fate game who never showed up with the other players, but because the system is so narratively driven, they were helpful by setting up Aspects with free tags because the character could realistically be “doing his own thing” and still contribute. So I’ve learned to be open and clear with my goals and intentions. I don’t care if your character is going to be a pain - I care whether or not you as a player will contribute positively to everyone’s experience in a fair way.
The more we are clear about goals and intentions, and the more we can apply nuance and understanding to the situation, the better our games will be.
You can get away with it while having some downtime in a village. The bard is making coin in the tavern and the barbarian is drinking in the same place, the priest visits the local chapel, the warlock looks to spend some coin on magic baubles, etc. This also increases the creativity in which you can give your players their next quest.
But once you’re out adventuring on that quest, you’re a goddamn party. If you don’t want to be a party, then go home and play a single player game.
Edit: I have had good DMs separate the party themselves though, but we always spend it trying to find each other again.
Splitting the party is fine! Here’s some great reasons why you might:
If you get in through the servants entrance, you’re gonna have access to different stuff than if you get in through the front door.
You have the most wanted woman im the country and an anthropomorphized war crime in the party, and you’ve decided you need to ask a duchess about a thing.
The tunnel splits, and you’re not about to allow that fucker to get behind you. Again.
I don’t trust these other fuckers. I spy on the rest of the party.
You fucked up and only got one invitation. Hopefully they can open a back door somewhere.
He actually can’t take the armor off. It’s a whole thing. He can be the distraction.
The rest of the party moves 3x as fast as me and has stealth nonsense. But I have points in siege engineering, and resistance to fall damage. Shout when you need me.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I mean, I think they get the term, but just have a hard time doing it.
Biggest pet peeve with players. This is why, during session 0, I make players pre-establish a reason that they not only go along with the party and the planned campaign but also a reason why they trust at least two other characters.
I’ve made it a hard rule, “Your characters are at least familiar with each other. They’re not total strangers.” It just makes everything so much easier.
Best advice. Players start the game knowing how and why they are going to stick together.
I’m also inclined to put my thumb on the scale a little as DM and give the players a loose connection that they can build on and incorporate into their characters while building. BG3 did it really well - everyone has a tadpole in their head, y’all gonna be mindflayers if you leave the group.
I recently had players all start as fresh recruits in an organisation - they got to decide the organisation - where the higher-ups put them together. Previously I did a one shot at level 5 where players already had an adventuring group together 20 years before and were called back together for one last mission.
And the person who didn’t gets to default to being the loner outcast who doesn’t talk much, easy
How would they not? Session 0 we create characters together, anyone who doesn’t follow the previously stated rules can leave my table.
The entire point is to prevent the creation of “rando loner who just sits in a corner and sulks”.
One of the campaigns I play in is more of a West Marches or Adventurer’s League style with a rotating cast of players. There are… differening levels of effort.
Yea, I don’t DM those types of games.
I’ve played and DMed both. A West Marches campaign has been the right fit for some groups with tough schedules. That format can work really well when you have a larger world plan and story that different venn diagrams of groups slowly discover and have to post notes about to a group chat or Discord. Players remember and read about things from different sessions and piece together the story and world, then can decide on new missions and exploration in a real collaborative setting. Picture a tavern setting where they’re arguing about different plot hooks, missions, and tips, and start to switch from the selfish motivations of wanting cool loot to also wanting to uncover the story. It can be great if you lay the groundwork.
A few lazy players can disappear into the background, and they still have fun and want to hang out.
Picture a tavern setting where they’re arguing about different plot hooks, missions, and tips, and start to switch from the selfish motivations of wanting cool loot to also wanting to uncover the story.
Yea, this is exactly what I’m purposely trying to avoid with a Session 0. I, as the DM, list the plot hooks of the campaign I have prepared to run and players create characters around them that are guaranteed to be invested in the story as well as be cohesive with each other.
No arguing needed. If anyone wants to argue, they know where the door is.
I learned as a GM to set expectations.
“I don’t want to have to fight and force you in to making this game work, because even though I’m GMing, I’d like to enjoy myself too. You need to create a character that will want to stick around with the rest of the group. You don’t have to all get on, or have deep attachments, you just need a character that I won’t have to railroad”
I have found it productive to make part of the character creation prompt a motivation for the main plot. Like tell me your class and backstory and all that, and then also tell me why you want to be on this adventure
This is a great idea
100% this. Have a conversation about expectations before you begin. DnD is a little bit game, a little bit therapy. The DM isn’t your Unity Engine. Make sure everyone is on board for the same experience and you’ll be fine.
I absolutely used to be that “my character is a quiet rogue-ish type that definitely wasn’t modeled after Aragorn when he was introduced at the Prancing Pony mixed with Robin hood” who always “had to be convinced” to join, and nobody ever called me out for it. I honestly wish they had because that’s annoying as fuck and you miss out on playing an actually fully developed character.
Nowadays I tend to be less tactful that you are, but essentially tell people the same thing, or literally beat their characters over the head with ambushes.
Lots of other good points already made, but I’ll add my own two cents.
When I run a game, I always require players to make characters together. No “go off and make a character in isolation”. That’s just a recipe for disaster. You can have some ideas already in mind, but nothing is canon until the whole group agrees.
Second, everyone needs to have buy-in to whatever the hook is. If the scenario is “you’re starting a courier business at the edge of civilization”, there are lots of good options. Guy on the run from the law. Lady studying local wild life. Intelligent, local, wildlife. Don’t play “guy who doesn’t want to be here and is a total killjoy”
Third, it’s better when characters have connections to each other. You can play the “we just met and we’re forming a relationship!” arc, but like “what if we play ourselves in a fantasy world??” it has been done.
Honestly, everyone should read Fate’s “Phase Trio” https://fate-srd.com/fate-core/phase-trio and the rest of character creation.
Your character purchased and ate bad fish the night before, and you have uncontrollable gas, which quickly turns to greasy, putrid diarrhea. As the pub bouncer tosses you out the door for smelling like raw sewage, a micrometeorite hits you in the eye and lodges itself into your brain, disrupting your medula. As you lay there struggling to breate, you shake yourself awake. It would seem you fell asleep at the table and had an awful dream.
Sorry, what were you saying about not wanting to stick around?
Gotta build those connections and relationships into the party during session zero. I like to model mine after the game fiasco where players are linked by relationships, locations, objects or needs. For DnD I think the dragon slayer classic playset works best, you can find it under the downloads section
