Hi all,

I'd love to see if you have more suggestions for my plan. After character creation (that'll happen during session 0) I plan to introduce a little encouragement for inter-PC roleplay during downtime. I already know my players are into it, but I also know it can be challenging to act on it off the cuff, so I plan to have a collection of short conversational prompts for them that offer an avenue of connection to one or more of their partymates. I'll ask everyone to pick at least one prompt for their character (more is fine, of course), and to then find another PC (or the whole group) to eventually share a moment with. Once the players use the prompt for their characters, I get the prompt back and the player who held it gets inspiration.

I have a short list already, which I will share below, but I could do with more suggestions. Conditions that apply: FG setting, must be race (species), gender and orientation neutral. Must not make large presumptions about backstory or origin. Relatively lighthearted. A little tension is fine, but no cause for real discord (they can start their own fights - I'm not helping)

Thanks in advance for anyone willing to spend some brain cycles on this. It is appreciated!

List so far:

A traveling troupe performed a play. You both saw it at different times and had strong feelings about it.

One of your partymates has a small object or trinket. You could swear it is the exact one that was lost by / stolen from a relation of yours, but there is no way that your partymate could be  the thief.

There is something most people can do (like winking, or rolling their tongue). You’re finding out 1) that this is the case and 2) that you can’t do it.

You once had (very different) pets with the same name.

You have heard a rumor about a partymate / partymate’s family / clan / institution of origin. It may or may not be true.

One of your partymates regularly makes a sound. It is an innocent enough sound (sighing, slurping, chewing), but it drives you up the wall.

Each of you knows a verse or fragment from the same song, but can’t remember the rest.

There is something small your partymate can do. You would love to learn to do it too.

You both know the same joke, but the punchline is different.

You wakes up from an awful nightmare during the other character's watch.

Something a fellow PC does reminds you of someone that you miss.

Here are my two copper pieces,

While your basic concept is noble, I would suggest encouraging this sort of interaction through the introduction of game relevant information. While a large percentage of today's players want to focus on social interaction and character development, these things have more value if they also contribute to the development of the story. Since I assume a group interested in inter-character socializing (often incorrectly referred to as roleplaying) would also be interested in both character and story development. Perhaps you have worked up individual character story lines and if so it would make these interactions more fruitful, and thereby encourage players to engage in them more, if they advanced, in some small way, the individual story arcs or the main story arc.

A

It would be my idea that, where appropriate, the players use these prompts to share something about the backstories that they have developed (it's just that I do not know what they are yet). A few prompts (such as the nightmare one) also tie into the campaign as is (OotA), where strange and unusual dreams can play a role in conveying information about the situation at hand. It'll depend on which player / PC ends up with which prompts for them / me and them to fill it in in a way that makes it meaningful for the game.

I am curious about the distinction you make between 'in-character socializing'  and roleplaying. Are these not the same thing to you? Isn't anything done in-character a form of roleplay?

Thanks for the 2 cp. Hope you do not mind the follow-up questions

You find you both worship the same god, but in different aspects.

In-character socializing is just a part of roleplaying but too many people on the internet these days conflate the two terms. Roleplaying is all aspects of the game where the player is acting as his character and making decisions as his character. But I see too many posts asking for a "roleplay heavy game and not just combat". Which is funny, well funny faux pas not funny ha-ha, because combat is one area where players are really roleplaying their character.

As a further note for your idea, if you really want it to work I would advise/suggest/cajole your players not to create detailed backstories before the game. The reason for this is once we spend time writing things down people are loathe to change them, they are invested through the time and creative energy needed to imagine and then record the backstory. I think your idea is really good but might run into resistance if those backstories are already fully formed. There is simply no room for anything not already written down.

Just another pair of brassy Abe Lincoln's for ya.

A

A couple of things strike me, here - some which people have already pointed out.

• Your intent is well meaning, I have no criticisms of what you're trying to do, but ...
• Talking in character is not the same as role-playing. It absolutely is a form of role-playing, but the Player is who never speaks in character but makes all their game choices in character is still role-playing.
• Some Players are not comfortable with, and do not like, talking in character - they feel like they are being put "on the spot". If you do something like this, tailor it to be opt-in for the Players who like this sort of thing. Some Players really love this sort of thing as well :)
• This seems like an awfully forced and unnatural mechanic. Can you imagine being introduced to a group of strangers and told to ask each other questions off a sheet? I wouldn't do it, personally - or I might lead with "OK, who else thinks this is dumb?" :p

What I've done in the past - with reasonable levels of success - is use an inquisitive NPC to engage the characters in natural social interaction, asking the players about themselves, and telling the PC about themselves is return. This is also - as suggested above - a good way to salt the conversation with game/adventure specific information, world lore, and future story hooks. I also - as the DM - note which Players respond well to it, and which do not. For those that do not, the NPC backs off.

I have also - over the years - come around to Auberginian's viewpoint: encourage the characters to leave blank spots and grey areas in their backgrounds. This allows Players to write their characters into the current campaign narrative if they wish to: "Wait, the village of Arkney is being terrorized by raiders? Um ... I have relatives there! "  - or allows the DM to collaborate with the player to fill in parts of their backstory in such a way to mesh with the campaign story "Hey Bob - you mentioned that Gorath had a younger sister ... do you have any objections if she moved to the coastal village of Arkney after she got married? No? Cool - what can you tell me about her? When did she get married? Does she have a family? .... "

I see where you are coming from, Auberginian and Vedexent and I wonder if maybe I didn't explain my idea very well. I mean... The slips of paper from which they could choose one would be for them to use as they saw fit somewhere over the course of a full campaign, and there's absolutely no penalty for them not to use them (and also plenty of other ways to get inspiration), so it does not seem overly forceful. For both of you to feel as if it is... can you elaborate on what makes it feel this way? I don't want the players to be obligated.

Speaking of the players: I do this in part because most of them have expressed really enjoying the sort of down-time IC dialogue between players that you see a lot of in (for instance) Critical Role, but they felt like it would be tough to fully ad-lib it, especially early in the campaign when people are still 'trying on' their PCs. Offering them  a prompt is just supposed to be a starting points for them to find a lighthearted moment or experience to share with a fellow player's character. The idea is to spend time conversing in-character with each other, rather than with me-via-an-NPC (which they'll do a lot of already, obviously), or without necessarily revealing some huge backstory secret or plot point.

It's not "forceful", I don't think you're obligating your players, and I get you're trying to give the players tools to help them; that's a good thing.

But to me, it feel un-natural. Real-life social interactions don't work that way. 

Real life social interactions are people talking. So, if you want players ( and characters ) to talk, talk to them :)

You invoked Critical Role - and I agree it's a really good example of IC discussions and interactions ( just keep in mind they're all professional actors - don't measure your game from what CR does ). But Matt Mercer doesn't invent mechanics to facilitate conversation between the characters - he just creates NPCs which talk to his player characters. The players make it easy on Mercer, as they'll go off and have character-on-character conversations totally on their own - but a lot of the time there are multiple PCs interacting with NPCs at the same time.

It pushes a lot of the workload onto you as the DM - at least at first, and that may be daunting at first. But you can be sneaky - have an NPC engage two PCs at once in conversation. That gets those two NPCs talking to each other, on some level. Last time I checked, conversations don't have to be just between 2 people :) I'm picturing the sly NPC rogue sitting back with a drink talking to a couple of characters, asking them questions about each of them in turn as a conversational starter, but ( hopefully ) at some point the characters are drawn into talking to each other directly.

Later, you can sneakily insert facets of the adventure which touch on topics they've talked about, which gives them something else to discuss.

You can also totally meta-game here - ask players if they can make an effort to engage and get to know their new adventure mates IC, if that's something they want to do. Push some of the effort onto them.

And if you want your players to know each other, they are totally going to reveal aspects of their backstories - getting to know someone else is the whole point! 

If your player characters have backstory secrets or hidden agendas ( an aspect which is waaaaay overused IMHO ), they don't have to blab everything.

TL;DR: Encourage conversation, not mechanics - make it natural.