Me? Work with HIM?!

[beryl]

Hey, guys.

One of the main reasons I've never been able to start a game (in any RPG system) is because I'm unable to come up with a convincing reason for the characters to actually work together and form a recurring party.

This is taken care of in X-Men games. You're part of an elite group of individuals who have taken it upon themselves to right wrongs and save the world. Great. That's reason enough. But in a homebrew campaign set in modern times, in an alternate earth, what reason would three or four strangers with extraordinary abilities (that they may or may not know about) have to work together? Even worse, once the task is finished, why would they stick together?

In such a campaign, where mutants are supposed to be fiction, and those who are different are hated and feared, revealing such differences would be very difficult. (Now that I've started watching it, think Claire and Nathan from Heroes.)

For another example, my brother has a character who's hundreds of years old, and looks severely inhuman. What could possibly convince him to reveal the secret that caused him anguish and scorn for generations, even in the most dire of situations?

Anyway, let's get to the point: what kinds of hooks have you guys used in the past to bring (and keep) your PCs together?

[dorkknight23]

There's a couple of ways I've made this work or seen it work in the past.

One is having a patron hire the players for a few different tasks and they build a reputation working together so soon people want them all for each job. A little cheap, but it can work.

Another is to encourage pre-existing relationships between the players. If the players are friends (or heck enemies might even work too) or family or know each other in the past, then they'll be more inclined to ask for each other's help (especially if one has specialities the other needs on the mission.)

One approach is to have more of a Defenders style game where you can just say the players come together for threats they couldn't individually deal with. Either they know of each other and their individual reputations, or they were all "in the right place at the right time," decided to work together, and thought they were good at it.

There are other ways to pull it too, but those are some that have worked for me in the past.

[WildKnight]

"If your PCs dont work together, we've got no game."

Sound lame? Guess what? Thats the honest version of what almost every game does. Its not "bad storytelling"... its "good organization"

Look at even the X-Men... by and large, most of these people would hate one another in the real world. It sorta made sense when they were in school... you dont choose your classmates and you make the best of it. But now that they're all adults... its silly that they continue to socialize with people with whom the only thing they have in common is genetic abnormality.

Most stories that throw together disparate groups of heroes involve some kind of goal... often saving the world (or some portion of it), that you'd want to accomplish no matter how much you hate the jerks you're traveling with. That, or they use the time honored "longtime friends..." formula.

So in all, yes, its completely fair to just tell your players... get on with the group or theres no game. In fact alot of times I think it cuts through alot of the pretense and BS that players bring to the table with them.

That being said... if you're dead set against doing things in a way thats easy and reasonable... there are a few "hooks" that typically work.

One very common one is the original "New Warriors" storyline. All of them had been rejected from various organizations (the X-Men, the Avengers, etc) and wanted to do their part. Night Thrasher just happened to have an HQ. So, even though they didnt necessarily like (or even know) one another, they banded together to do their part to make the world a better place, something nobody else would let them do.

Another is the "NPC in charge" option, which I really like. Basically you give them no choice, because theres somebody more powerful than them in charge of the organization they work for, and if they dont stay in line, they get smacked down. This works really well if the characters all belong to an organization or school.

I could go on... but you know what every scenario I would list would have in common? It can be nuked by an uncooperative player who feels that his characters personal motivations and background are more important than everyone having fun

There are alot of players who would try to put this responsibility off on the GM (and who doesnt like to shirk their responsibilities, given the chance), but the bottom line is that its EVERYBODIES responsibility to see to it that everybody is having a good time. And as a player, that often means that you should shut the hell up and go along with the game. If you dont like it, find another game or become a writer (you can be the one and only hero of every story if you're the one and only person investing their heart and soul into it).

Basically, what Im saying is... if you want a game, sooner or later you're going to have to get tough and tell players to come prepared to be part of a team (as players, not just as characters), or dont come at all.

[herugrim]

I've never really had much of a problem getting players to work together. Actually, they usually seem very anxious for the opportunity. Finding a common goal that makes it reasonable for them all to stay together is the real challenge. Finding an in-character reason to keep the campaign going.

I find it strange that no one's mentioned the reason I used to bring the characters together, survival. It's a common theme in many stories. "Yeah, we're all tough on our own, but none of us individually are tough enough to take out over a thousand zombies or a major corporation with a private army." It isn't so much as "We've got to save the world" as it is "we've got to work together if we're going to make it out alive!" That tends to settle differences fairly well.

[Pope Mega Force]

The most sensible idea that I can think of is that through some freak occurence, all of the players are in one place at the same time and are forced to work together. Take DK's Rayanna game. All of us had seperate reasons for being in the same city. But we each had a goal that would put us in the same place at the same time and then we were all arrested. (Stuff dealing with the Emperor) We were then forced to work together and you just kind of go from there giving them reasons to stick together such as Herugrim's suggestion, survival or a common goal.

[WildKnight]

Oh! One other thing I forgot to throw in. Even though I think he was a tool, check out Joseph Campbells "Hero With 1000 Faces" for ideas on heroic story telling. Basically by this model, you have a central hero who goes through his "heroes journey" and meets (and is accompanied by) certain archetypes along the way. It only works well with a group thats willing to accept the storyline being largely worked around one PC, but if your group is mature enough to handle it, it can be alot of fun.

[Brainstem]

*gasp* Joseph Campbell... a tool? Remember your whole Skywalker rant? Well, I'd go ahead and do my own here, but this is hardly the place.

I'm going to have to agree with your means, though, WildKnight. I come from a tabletop group that believes that good roleplaying is equivalent to going against whatever the GM says because it's "in character." Games never go anywhere because we'll have a hook thrown at us, we'll follow the bait, and then somebody will say something along the lines of "well, my character isn't going to do that because it's against his alignment." Which would bring up my dislike for the alignment system, but that won't be discussed here. Either that or, we're a bunch of random people in a pub and the GM places one person in there we're supposed to talk to and get together with, all independently of one another, etc. It's all a big mess and it's so much easier to just say "You guys are working together. The end."

[WildKnight]

Yes I know Joseph Campbell was a big influence on Lucas when creating Star Wars, etc etc. But Campbell also made an utter ass of himself by refusing to publish ideas he didn't like... just ask Phillip K. Dick. Dont get me wrong... Dick was a tool too, and a drug-addled one at that. But his ideas on mutants were, IMO, much more viable than those of Campbell and his cronies.

That being said, you can't blame the alignment system for the fact that your fellow players act like children. Its not the systems fault. Im a big fan of alignment (in those games where it exists... it has its place, and there are other games that are better off without it). Im glad that you've seen the kind of thing Im talking about, though, because in point of fact all groups are prone to it.

I've been GMing for over 15 years now, and the one thing that never ceases to amaze me is that every group is more or less the same, and will do the same things given the chance. "its what my character would do" is the biggest load of BS ever dropped by a player (Im guilty of it too, unfortunately, before I grew up).

Seriously, GMs of the world... its time to stop treating your players like they're your kids, and its time to stop being afraid they'll quit if you make them unhappy. There *are* good players out there, who genuinely want to have a good time along with everyone else. Find them. Don't let yourselves be enslaved by your friends' immature insistence on spotlight time by being the "lone wolf"

[beryl]

I've never really had much of a problem getting players to work together. Actually, they usually seem very anxious for the opportunity. Finding a common goal that makes it reasonable for them all to stay together is the real challenge. Finding an in-character reason to keep the campaign going.

Thank you, that summarizes my question perfectly.

Cooperation isn't the issue here. I'm just trying to have their cooperation make sense, and avoid blatantly railroading them.

What I know is that one way or another, they're going to be working together. What I'd like to do is find a reason for a group of strangers to trust each other enough to reveal their most important and dangerous secret. Other campaigns have similar problems. I'm just attempting to brainstorm a way to get the PCs to be (a) in the same place at the same time, (b) have a reason to trust each other (even if only a little), and (c) have a reason to work as a team. If I lay it in front of them, they'll take the bait. I'm interested to hear how others have done that.

Another problem is trying to keep them together after they accomplish their goals, but there's an easy way out of that: make the campaign long. If it's a long, winding road to the end, and nobody's goal is accomplished until the very end, it won't matter if they disband. They can separate between campaigns and do their own thing (out of game), but if we choose to start another, they'll come back together, and it'll be all the easier the second time.

If they fight it, then maybe it's time to lay down the law. But saying "You're working together and that's final" doesn't help anything when nobody even knows why they're even in the same room, and it certainly doesn't make the players happy.

[WildKnight]

beryl said:

If they fight it, then maybe it's time to lay down the law. But saying "You're working together and that's final" doesn't help anything when nobody even knows why they're even in the same room, and it certainly doesn't make the players happy.

Nobodies talking about giving them no reason whatsoever. The point is that we were discussing players' reluctance to get together in the first place, and Im pointing out that if the reason given isn't good enough, its fair game to put it to players in a way players can understand... "without the plot, theres no game"

As for making the players happy... I think in general players are less happy when theres no game at all.

I've had alot of people threaten to quit games because they cant have their way, and a small fraction of those have actually done so. In almost every case, the game has run more smoothly once that influence was gone.

If you're just looking for reasons for groups of PCs to get together and stay together... I think we've pretty much covered all the major options. You can put small variances into them but ultimately it boils down to the same 3 or 4 themes.

You were talking about reasons for groups to stay together after accomplishing a task... one thing with that is, one could hope that the group forms friendships (or at least bonds) throughout the course of their initial adventure. That way, even if they accomplish the goal that held them together, they'll hopefully stick together anyway.

One thing I've experimented with (and had good luck with so far) is to start the game with 1 or 2 players, and add people in one at a time until you've got the full group. This takes alot of work and patience from your players, but it allows you to build natural connections, similar to those you see in stories.

Another good (I think anyway) variation on the "you're all old friends" theme is to run preludes that occur before the in-game action, so that the players understand *why* theyre friends. Give each player a vignette with only one other player (making sure everybody gets equal participation as much as possible) that describes some earlier part of their life.

Its also helpful if you can get a couple of players to get together on their backgrounds. I have a pretty good tendancy to weave my character backgrounds (for table top games) in with at least one other character... in a recent game I played the social rival of another PC, and even though we were vaguel antagonistic towad one-another, our characters' desire to outdo one another turned out to be great "teamwork" (of a sort)

[thedragonmaster]

I'm glad this thread was posted. I'm about to start my first campaign (ever) and have been really nervous about how to.. get things going/keep them running and have found a lot of great suggestions here.

One question though. How would you go about building the trust between characters that was mentioned earlier? The problem for the game I'm running is that there are two "organizations" both set to take advantage of the abilities of metahumans, and my group has shown a tendency in the past to have at least one character (never the same player though) who has cause to hide his abilities. In our last game it was a character who had the challenge of "dangerous enemies". An ancient cult who had predicted his birth and had sworn to kill him (or something like that).

[Brainstem]

Well, the person may have offered a bit of a trade-off. He gives himself and his abilities to whatever group he's joined in return for protection from whoever is out to get him.

And, to WildKnight, my issue with the alignment system is more based on GMs that, when a hook is followed, say that the player can't do something or somehow penalize them because it isn't within the character's alignment (Oh, you're chaotic neutral? You can't help that person because that obviously means that you're really good). This is also the group that gave my Mon Cal ebola (wtf?) because I didn't establish that it was going to ever get out of the water when swimming for training during a break in missions. And they wonder why things never get beyond two sittings...

[thedragonmaster]

Well, he has turned out to be a very potent member of the team. And was easier than most to get him to join the team. Another of his Challenges is that if he's asked to do something 3 times, he says yes. Our cheerleader/team-founder kept bugging him to join till he said yes. We're a motley crew, we've got the worlds strongest man (on the run from the law for murder), a Spartan from Ancient Greece who was mutated by Aliens that he mistook for the Greek Gods, a Speedster with no other useful skills, a physically invulnerable computer technician who thinks he's dreaming the whole thing (after a series of... abnormal events he pinched himself to see if he was dreaming, and felt nothing, so he assumed he was), a smartmouthed thief who can disolve anything (and will work for the highest bidder), a samurai thunder god on the run from the cult who prophecied his coming, and a woman who made herself a Super Hero costume the second she found she had powers (and has spent the first couple of sessions trying to get every one to work towards the "Good of All Mankind" as she puts it).

[WildKnight]

Stem... I've been there with GMs. Thats one reason I GM more often than play. I really dont know how you deal with that kind of situation except to not play in their games. Thats really not a fault of alignment, though... its a fault of bad GMing.

As to the player asking about how to get players to work together when they dont have reason to trust each other... again, I ordinarily wouldn't allow a PC to take a disadvantage (flaw, whatever the system calls them) that would make it difficult for him to get together with the team, unless it was something he and I had talked about and worked on.

I ran a GURPS supers campaign long ago based on the idea of a world that was comletely normal, until one day 10% of the populace developed super powers. Everybody had the same "degree" of super-ness (i.e. everyone with powers was created with the same number of points, heroes and NPCs alike). The government built a super-task force to deal with them, and that was the player characters. One of my players (correctly) surmised that the government was going to end up being the bad guys (because he knows me and I like cliche's in my storytelling), and built a character who wouldn't ever work with the government. I was at first inclined to tell him he couldnt play the character, but after some discussion we worked out a deal where he would show up to help the group sometimes. Sometimes, due to his status as an "illegal" he had to miss missions, but the player accepted that as part of being able to stick with the concept he had crafted. When the group finally caught on that they were being used by the government and quit, he joined the team full time, and it all worked out.

[herugrim]

beryl said:

What I know is that one way or another, they're going to be working together. What I'd like to do is find a reason for a group of strangers to trust each other enough to reveal their most important and dangerous secret. Other campaigns have similar problems. I'm just attempting to brainstorm a way to get the PCs to be (a) in the same place at the same time, (b) have a reason to trust each other (even if only a little), and (c) have a reason to work as a team. If I lay it in front of them, they'll take the bait. I'm interested to hear how others have done that.

Another problem is trying to keep them together after they accomplish their goals, but there's an easy way out of that: make the campaign long. If it's a long, winding road to the end, and nobody's goal is accomplished until the very end, it won't matter if they disband. They can separate between campaigns and do their own thing (out of game), but if we choose to start another, they'll come back together, and it'll be all the easier the second time.

A.) That can be a bit tricky, but there's a number of different ways I think you can pull it off. There's a big event going on like a press conference, a public unveiling, or just something that people in general might be interested in. Maybe it's lunch time and everyone's off to the little coffee shop on the corner. The most common reason would probably just be that everyone happens to be in the same place (or close enough) at the same time when something happens that provides them with the opportunity to work together. Usually, you can just tell the players where they need to be, and they'll help you fill in the gaps in-between (if they're good players, that is).

B.) The best way to do this I think is just with some character development. Maybe the players create their own topic and do some one-on-one RPing with each other, or maybe you give them some downtime between missions to talk things out. The players know their characters better then anyone else, so I think it's easiest (and most effective) to just sit back and let them work out, stepping in when necessary.

C.) Most characters tend to be willing to cooperate if it means an easier success, I think. For the ones with tendencies to be loners, they need to be presented with a challenge they can't overcome themselves. A varied group of super villains can do nicely, as can unique obstacles that force players to rely on each other to get by. Or maybe there's one big baddie who's so tough with so many strengths that the only way to defeat him/her/it is to combine your powers at hit him at the same time. Maybe the only way to defeat him is to use a telepath to distract him, a strong fighter to knock him over, a good sniper to break the chain holding up the bucket of lava, and a fast flier/teleporter to get the good guys out of the way and there you go! I try to design good villains based on the abilities of the players, that way they aren't like "Hey, we need a flier to beat this guy, but none of us can fly?"

As far as bringing characters back together, or keeping them together, that shouldn't be difficult once the whole 'trust' thing is established. At that point, it's really just about coming up with a new challenge that's worth fighting, and requires all the players' individual talents to overcome (nobody should feel useless. Foolish maybe, but not useless).

Well, that's my take