OK - long story short: New campaign; framing story is that the party members are all ( mostly ) relatively new members of a Mercenary/Adventuring company, base out of Port LLast in the Forgotten Realms ( what? Matt who? What chain? I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about .... ).

Most of the Party will be relatively new recruits - out of basic training, and with a few missions/contracts under their belt, but pegged early by their training officers and commanders as having abilities and skill sets above and beyond those of most of the rank-and-file troopers.

One Party member will be a veteran of the Company, originally attached to the Company's "special talents team" - most likely the Dragonborn Commander Character. This Character will be detached from their team, promoted, and given a new team in the command structure. Then the DM can - for the first while - pitch adventures at the Party as contracts, until the common threads from the various contracts start to connect and spell out a much larger series of events in the world, which the Party will be entangled in, by the time they figure it all out. I think that eventually they'll either end up in command of the entire Company, or they'll be the last survivors of the Company - depending on how the story breaks out - but by the time they're around level 12 or 13, I'd ideally likely them to be out from under military command.

My concern, however, is: what problems might crop up giving on Player actual in-world authority over the Party? What can you envision being some of the problems I'd need to look out for, and how would you head them off ahead of time?

Thanks,

Until the party forms a semblance of mutual respect or some kind of friendship, you could have them put in a situation where rank doesn't matter. Somewhere in the wilderness perhaps where it doesn't matter how many shiny medal you have, what's important is who knows how to survive and get us out of this mess. Or maybe the high ranking character knows he's bad at being a leader, or suffers from a lack of confidence and hates giving orders. 

Since the one player will have rank over the others, does that translate mechanically at all? Or is it only flavor? 

If it's only flavor, I would have a talk with my players about how this character will be over their characters - what kind of problems do we see coming out of this? How can we fix these problems so it's fun for everyone? No one likes having their choices dictated to them. But maybe there can be a balance with your specific players.

If it's mechanical, I would absolutely give the other characters some kind of bonus, or some kind of penalty to the ranking character, lest it look like you're either playing favorites or having a main character. Off the top of my head, they get advantage when their uniform is clean but disadvantage when it gets dirty because they're too preoccupied with keeping their medals straight and shiny?

My gaming group was running a WOD with a military-ish hierarchy amongst the party.  It worked for us because we are F2F and friends and we understood that lording position over the others IC would probably wreck the game and as an unspoken agreement, we never allowed this to be an issue.  I think we were fortunate to know each other well from the word jump.  We have developed, I guess you might refer to it as, a social contract a few years ago and have seldom had an issue and even then nothing that could not be resolved.

That being said, definitely set it out for the players ahead of time.  IC, the character would be in a position of authority.  OOC, all need to understand that this is ONLY a mechanic for the story.  The one in IC authority must know that this is not for them to command the other players as to what their characters MUST do in game.  The other players must be made to know that this is not going to affect the importance of what their characters bring to the table.  With this understanding and with open communication throughout, hopefully you will not have any problems.

I'm thinking it's mostly only flavor, role-player, and - perhaps - party dynamic, depending on how the Party takes to it. I'm not building in any mechanics to it; it's all "in world".

As they're a "special talents team", and their first mission together will be a classic wilderness trek, to a dungeon, Dungeon Crawl to retrieve an item which the client is paying the White Bear Company a lot of cash to retrieve for him, then bring it to him in Gauntlgrym - so their "getting to know the team" period won't be a military mission on the front line of a war where military rank is critically important - it will be out in the wilderness.

For the most part, rank might have some impact back at White Fang Keep, where proper military discipline and decorum is expected - but they'll be "in the field" a lot of the time. 

I'm kind of picturing an Stargate SG-1 kind of vibe, for this team.

Although that brings up an interesting idea to file for later. Maybe later down the road after the group dynamic has solidified, throw them in a situation where chain-of-command actually is important.

Quote from chriswalrath >>

That being said, definitely set it out for the players ahead of time.  IC, the character would be in a position of authority.  OOC, all need to understand that this is ONLY a mechanic for the story.  The one in IC authority must know that this is not for them to command the other players as to what their characters MUST do in game.  The other players must be made to know that this is not going to affect the importance of what their characters bring to the table.  With this understanding and with open communication throughout, hopefully you will not have any problems.

That's a good call out. I don't think this will be an issue.

There's an interesting wrinkle here that the Player who might end up being the commanding officer, is actually a retired military officer.  He's also a Player I'd like to draw into the game more, as well - so making him central to the Party is something that might help with that. 

I have asked him if he has objections ( which he didn't have to detail ) to taking an in-game officer position, and he did not.

My concern, however, is: what problems might crop up giving on Player actual in-world authority over the Party?

You already know the answer to this question.  It's the players' story and your world.  Giving a player a lot of "in world" authority means you are going to have to be a bit faster on your feet.   Also, depending on what has been discussed with other players, they may find it off-putting.   Perhaps  a good solution would be to have your session 1  give the one player a chance to "take control" of the group and provide direction.    If that player isn't of that personality type, it could be hard though.

Try to give that PC a chance to establish their character as one to be the leader... and you know what, if that doesn't work, maybe another PC did step up and they can be your "liason" as it were.  Granted you don't wan the "strongest personalities IRL" to dominate the table, but why not open this up to all of the characters and see what happens?

Once that character has "earned" the position,  I think your structure could work,  just understand there could be some bucking of "the chain" (what mat? who?) of command, and there could be some intra-party conflict about this.

As always, hope this helps :)  (and why am I always in Vedex threads?)

I think that one of the easiest ways to avoid this conflict would be to have the party specialize a little in skills. If the ranking officer is going Charisma based, then he's likely going to be the face. If he's going wizard, he could serve as tactician with out of game guidance suggesting that it stays general (focus attack this enemy, CC this group, affect the terrain here, set up in this formation- as opposed to "bard, give druid inspiration; druid, cast entangle; Hulk, smash!").  I would even say that metagaming the strategy out of character could be written off to drilling and having certain conditions almost set to muscle memory through those drills.

The rest of the party can specialize in abilities that  the officer doesn't have (even if it goes the other way in selection process).  There will be some areas where overlap won't matter as much, insight seems like a good leader skill, acrobatics and athletics are fairly individual, stealth and medicine seem to be just as applicable party wide as with one individual specializing. 

Finally, it might be interesting if the officer were more of a support/battlefield control character. Perhaps a battlemaster if he wants more physical, but dropping cc on someone without specifically commanding someone is easier if the person doing the CC is also the commander. Of course, much of this advice is moot if you've already had session 0 and created characters.

I've had this kind of scenario develope naturally in a few campaigns, and in those experiences it has been both a non-issue and a complete and utter disaster that required direct intervention to save the group.

Each time, the party created their own organizations and developed leadership structures; the times that it worked, they basically ignored leadership positions entirely and no one ever attempted to exercise authority over anyone else.

The one time it failed, it failed magnificently.

One guy tried to lead and got disgruntled because no one listened to him, then someone else tried and didn't enjoy it, then another person tried and was a massive drama queen when no one listened to her either. It almost turned into a fight.

I stepped in and mandated that the characters had all spontaneously agreed to lead together by council and I gave them some quiet time to figure out how and why their characters had made that decision.

Drama queen ranted, shed some tears, and then got over it; and everyone was fine after that. I swore in that moment I'd never permit a player to exercise authority over other players and haven't tried since.

I imagine it can work, but you've gotta play carefully. Egos are fragile entities, and pride is a... beast.

Quote from TopherooJack >>

 

Egos are fragile entities, and pride is a... beast.

Up-voted for this alone; that's a good general life lesson.

You could maybe frame it so that their "special talent team" is made up of those who were unable to comply with military discipline, but too talented to fire. So this "unconventional" officer has been given command of the unit as a punishment for insulting an uptight superior officer, who would like nothing more than to see them fail.  (sounds like the plot of a movie) In that way you've already set the expectations that he can't control them, but he is the one who has to answer for everything. You might also need to have another superior officer who believes in them as a counterweight to the one who hates them.

(I'm so stealing this one from myself at some point)

It actually went pretty well last night - and so far.

The Party was focused and organized. The CO Player was way more involved and on top of things than they normally are. Things didn't get draconian ( apparently the CO is way laid back, outside of camp ). The Party didn't spend a lot of time hemming and hawing at decision points because after a short discussion the CO made a call, and everyone seemed happy with it. They got a lot more done than they usually do.

I think I may have accidentally been very fortunate the way things have worked out; but it's only one session into this.

In some groups having a de facto leader is a massive boon, in some groups it's a recipe for disaster, it seems your group had the right mindset from the get go. Most of the groups I play in, no matter how hard I try to avoid it, I become the leader of the group. I tried to set one of my players as a prefect for a party I was running and it got fubared quick, but I place the majority of the blame on the player being a tool and not trying to play the role properly. I may try to set up this type of hierarchy for my less involved players in the future, just to try to break them out of their shells.

OK - we left the session at the start of a combat, for a cliff hanger.

Today the CO character has started an email thread with the group discussing tactics options.

They're discussing tactics!

They never used tactics before, much less discussed them :o 

That's awesome! Don't think I've ever seen players do tactical planning outside of theorycrafting combos. Glad to hear it's going well!

Quote from Vedexent >>

OK - we left the session at the start of a combat, for a cliff hanger.

Today the CO character has started an email thread with the group discussing tactics options.

They're discussing tactics!

They never used tactics before, much less discussed them :o 

C'mon most of us are DMs here, try telling us something believable. Players discussing a campaign, let alone tactics, outside of a session...that's unheard of. 

Good on you that you have a group which communicates like that, and good luck, they'll probably keep you on your toes.

Quote from DMThac0 >>

Good on you that you have a group which communicates like that, and good luck, they'll probably keep you on your toes.

No kidding - given the tactical situation ( they've come upon a merchant caravan under attack by a mounted company of Orcs on the High Road, south of Neverwinter ), I've already starting skimming historical cavalry tactics :p

Although - I'm reminded of the adage that one may design to block the Party's first "go to" tactic, to keep them challenged, but don't complicate things beyond that, or they'll start to feel persecuted and frustrated. I'll give them a reason to not just charge in directly on horseback, but that's all.

Pretty much my approach to combats; I find one tactic that the party likes to rely on and make it obsolete. Barbarian's massive damage; creatures have resistance to B/S/P. Monk's mobility, the location is in a confined space. Druid's...nvm they're just annoying. Cleric's Spirit Guardian's...I just close the book and walk away from the table. Things like that...

Then you throw a Hydra at the party and they dismantle it in 3 rounds...I need to make their combats more treacherous...

A lot will depend on the interpersonal dynamics of your players. Not the characters, but the players. If the player assigned as the officer is a good leader and does not try to be a tyrant over the group it should work well.  It sounds like you have this.

I played a lot in days of the party 'Caller" who relayed most of the actions to the DM, and generally spoke for the party. Most of the time it was a fairly casual leadership role. As long as the Caller was pretty sensible in what they said people just went along.