Hello. I have 2 issues that are fairly well tied, so just putting them in 1 post: Keeping my world "On Genre" & creating a "group" out of 4 seemingly random in-world characters.
I am struggling currently with keeping my homebrew world "on genre". What I mean by that is I have a tendency to fall back on Heroic Fantasy (like more typical D&D), although I like the idea of under current genres like Political Intrigue and Cosmic Horror in the same world. Example being: My world has a large Empire, King+Counsel, so it fits with some generic Heroic Fantasy theme, however I also have the Political Intrigue with 5 Monster Families acting as a Mafia of sorts & if you went deep enough underground you'd run into things like Mind Flayers/Behoders/Aboleth lair etc. My struggle is that if I give that initial "This is a Heroic Fantasy" premise, the Political Intrigue and Cosmic Horror elements could be completely foreign to the players' characters.
Secondly and tying in with that, I am trying to figure out how to better "rope" players together into an actual group, even with them being vastly different backgrounds. For example, the current group is as follows: a Cleric Half-Orc who is not from the current continent, a Fighter Earth Genasi who is now part of a Guild for parole for starting a revolt, an Archfey Warlock Lizardfolk who simply wants to get his people to the "Promised Land" (Feywild), and now a Gnome Wizard who is looking to get some sort of revenge for his father making a deal with a Devil and dying. 4 COMPLETELY different characters, and I am struggling in getting them to feel motivated to stay together from the things they want to do. This ties in with not having a 100% concrete genre for the Campaign, in that I just said "play what you want to play" and this is what happened.
The second is a common problem. IMO, the best way to deal with it is to prevent it by having a session 0 and coordinating character creation. The next best option is to start with the party on their third or fourth adventure together. With things already in progress your options are far more limited, you'll generally have to force it a bit with prophecy, magical item bonding, or shared circumstance.
Put the onus of creating a group out of these snowflake PCs on the players. That is a central part of the social contract, they have to make characters that will work together.
Put the onus of creating a group out of these snowflake PCs on the players. That is a central part of the social contract, they have to make characters that will work together.
Only if you have a coordinated character creation. If the DM says "play what you want to play," the onus is on the DM to at least give them suspension of disbelief on why their characters would stay together.
Unless you run a railroad, the story is going to be whatever genre you and the players make it.
If you want political intrigue, the best you can do is seed the right elements in your world. Those five families seem like they would have the kind of reach to touch all of the PCs. Maybe one of the families made promises to each PC to get them to do a task - promises they have no intention of keeping. The players could end up together in hot water with one or more of the other families.
In a world like what you describe, the players would have to do favors to make allies and avoid or kill enemies if they ever want to achieve their goals. Make it obvious they can only trust each other and alone they will be easily picked off.
No, it is still the responsibility of the players to ensure their PCs can gel together. A DM has given them adventuring hooks, now they have to be heroic touch the glowy thing and stick together. It is on the players to formulate this. They should be talking to each other MORE than they talk to the dm ideally.
Getting the players to form a group is part of "player buy-in", essentially the thing the players should do in order to allow the game to work. With that, it isn't totally on you to make that work for them, they should sit down at the table with reasons why their characters should want to group up. If they have not done so, I would ask them to come up with some reasons. This might challenge them and push their solo lone wolf PC's to develope in some interesting directions, as well as make the game work.
Maybe your Outlander cleric relies on the others to guide them through this strange land and odd customs.
Maybe your revolutionary is trying to drum up support for their cause and is trying to induct their party members.
Maybe the Lizardfolk thinks the wizard is his best shot at ever reaching the feywild.
Maybe the wizard knows his limits in a fight, and knows he needs friends/lackeys to take on his dad and or devils to fulfill his revenge quest.
Those could be initial reasons for characters to stay together, but invariably they're drawn together as a pseudo-family as parties often are.
If any of your players claim that their character flat out is not the type to form bonds with others, then that's a character that's not really good for dnd. If they say something like that, I would request that they change that about their characters. They don't have to love everyone and be all happy smiley all the time if they still want to embrace their inner edge lord, but there's more creative ways to do that than I DON'T LIKE PEOPLE GO AWAY. If they refuse to change their character's personality, even gradually, then I would just allow them to eventually realize that there is no reason for their character to still be in the party, give that character an opportunity to leave, and let that player roll a new character.
Have you already started? I've had good luck with "Your character is a member of...(adventuring group)... What would they be hoping to get out of it?" That let me pull a coward rogue who only thinks of themselves into the party(the player supplied that the rogue wanted connections and security supplied by the adventuring group). And it gives a connection to allow character growth.
Edit: This is for initial cohesion, I see no problem with forcing a buy in for the initial stage, but once things are in motion I don't dictate who you "must" be connected to
Edit: This is for initial cohesion, I see no problem with forcing a buy in for the initial stage, but once things are in motion I don't dictate who you "must" be connected to
To clarify, you should encourage your players to be the driving force behind deciding why they're in the group, and you shouldn't tell them "you're here because you think the wizard can get you to the Feywild." You should work with your players to come up with something, or ideally have your players work with each other.
And I don't think this is something that has to be done at session 0 or never. A character can realize why it might be beneficial to stick with a party at any time, no matter what kind of character they are. Especially since, and I can't reiterate this enough, the whole game *does not work* if they don't.
The player "randomness" came from one player's original character leaving the group for my own mistake (assumed they would do A and they did B and had great reasons, learning moment), and the other was due to one person irl joining late, then ghosting the campaign and thusly being removed, so a new irl player had to be brought in. We started with a Tiefling Girl that would rope in some of the intrigue, and then the Fighter & Cleric. Then, the replacement to the Teifling girl was the LIzardfolk, who wasn't linked to the intrigue at all.
The new addition was a Triton Sorc, who was a part of one of the Families, but then he decided to ghost sessions and I had to remove the character. So that kinda left the intrigue element up in the air as to why the current party should care about them, beyond the information/slight tie the Fighter & Cleric have.
Players "ghosting" and/or new players joining is not an excuse for the players to not collectively figure out why their PCs will work together. They made snowflakes, but now they need to work together to create the connective tissue that will bind them together. RPGs *REQUIRE* players to make decisions designed to further the game in ways that *TRUMP* reasonable and sensible. The players are charged with the creation of heroic PCs that touch the glowy orb, walk into traps blindly, and run bellowing after the Orcs fleeing down the tunnel. These actions are decidedly not smart, or tactical, but they are essential for the game to progress. Players also have to make the effort to ensure their PCs are motivated to stay together. DMs shouldn't have to use the BIG levers of plot contrivance against the PCs. Ideally, the PCs will just do what is expected of them. If not, you as a DM are not required to run games for these PCs.
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Hello. I have 2 issues that are fairly well tied, so just putting them in 1 post: Keeping my world "On Genre" & creating a "group" out of 4 seemingly random in-world characters.
I am struggling currently with keeping my homebrew world "on genre". What I mean by that is I have a tendency to fall back on Heroic Fantasy (like more typical D&D), although I like the idea of under current genres like Political Intrigue and Cosmic Horror in the same world. Example being: My world has a large Empire, King+Counsel, so it fits with some generic Heroic Fantasy theme, however I also have the Political Intrigue with 5 Monster Families acting as a Mafia of sorts & if you went deep enough underground you'd run into things like Mind Flayers/Behoders/Aboleth lair etc. My struggle is that if I give that initial "This is a Heroic Fantasy" premise, the Political Intrigue and Cosmic Horror elements could be completely foreign to the players' characters.
Secondly and tying in with that, I am trying to figure out how to better "rope" players together into an actual group, even with them being vastly different backgrounds. For example, the current group is as follows: a Cleric Half-Orc who is not from the current continent, a Fighter Earth Genasi who is now part of a Guild for parole for starting a revolt, an Archfey Warlock Lizardfolk who simply wants to get his people to the "Promised Land" (Feywild), and now a Gnome Wizard who is looking to get some sort of revenge for his father making a deal with a Devil and dying. 4 COMPLETELY different characters, and I am struggling in getting them to feel motivated to stay together from the things they want to do. This ties in with not having a 100% concrete genre for the Campaign, in that I just said "play what you want to play" and this is what happened.
Any Help appreciated :)
The second is a common problem. IMO, the best way to deal with it is to prevent it by having a session 0 and coordinating character creation. The next best option is to start with the party on their third or fourth adventure together. With things already in progress your options are far more limited, you'll generally have to force it a bit with prophecy, magical item bonding, or shared circumstance.
Put the onus of creating a group out of these snowflake PCs on the players. That is a central part of the social contract, they have to make characters that will work together.
Only if you have a coordinated character creation. If the DM says "play what you want to play," the onus is on the DM to at least give them suspension of disbelief on why their characters would stay together.
Unless you run a railroad, the story is going to be whatever genre you and the players make it.
If you want political intrigue, the best you can do is seed the right elements in your world. Those five families seem like they would have the kind of reach to touch all of the PCs. Maybe one of the families made promises to each PC to get them to do a task - promises they have no intention of keeping. The players could end up together in hot water with one or more of the other families.
In a world like what you describe, the players would have to do favors to make allies and avoid or kill enemies if they ever want to achieve their goals. Make it obvious they can only trust each other and alone they will be easily picked off.
No, it is still the responsibility of the players to ensure their PCs can gel together. A DM has given them adventuring hooks, now they have to be heroic touch the glowy thing and stick together. It is on the players to formulate this. They should be talking to each other MORE than they talk to the dm ideally.
Getting the players to form a group is part of "player buy-in", essentially the thing the players should do in order to allow the game to work. With that, it isn't totally on you to make that work for them, they should sit down at the table with reasons why their characters should want to group up. If they have not done so, I would ask them to come up with some reasons. This might challenge them and push their solo lone wolf PC's to develope in some interesting directions, as well as make the game work.
Maybe your Outlander cleric relies on the others to guide them through this strange land and odd customs.
Maybe your revolutionary is trying to drum up support for their cause and is trying to induct their party members.
Maybe the Lizardfolk thinks the wizard is his best shot at ever reaching the feywild.
Maybe the wizard knows his limits in a fight, and knows he needs friends/lackeys to take on his dad and or devils to fulfill his revenge quest.
Those could be initial reasons for characters to stay together, but invariably they're drawn together as a pseudo-family as parties often are.
If any of your players claim that their character flat out is not the type to form bonds with others, then that's a character that's not really good for dnd. If they say something like that, I would request that they change that about their characters. They don't have to love everyone and be all happy smiley all the time if they still want to embrace their inner edge lord, but there's more creative ways to do that than I DON'T LIKE PEOPLE GO AWAY. If they refuse to change their character's personality, even gradually, then I would just allow them to eventually realize that there is no reason for their character to still be in the party, give that character an opportunity to leave, and let that player roll a new character.
This!
Have you already started? I've had good luck with "Your character is a member of...(adventuring group)... What would they be hoping to get out of it?" That let me pull a coward rogue who only thinks of themselves into the party(the player supplied that the rogue wanted connections and security supplied by the adventuring group). And it gives a connection to allow character growth.
Edit: This is for initial cohesion, I see no problem with forcing a buy in for the initial stage, but once things are in motion I don't dictate who you "must" be connected to
To clarify, you should encourage your players to be the driving force behind deciding why they're in the group, and you shouldn't tell them "you're here because you think the wizard can get you to the Feywild." You should work with your players to come up with something, or ideally have your players work with each other.
And I don't think this is something that has to be done at session 0 or never. A character can realize why it might be beneficial to stick with a party at any time, no matter what kind of character they are. Especially since, and I can't reiterate this enough, the whole game *does not work* if they don't.
To help clarify things:
The player "randomness" came from one player's original character leaving the group for my own mistake (assumed they would do A and they did B and had great reasons, learning moment), and the other was due to one person irl joining late, then ghosting the campaign and thusly being removed, so a new irl player had to be brought in. We started with a Tiefling Girl that would rope in some of the intrigue, and then the Fighter & Cleric. Then, the replacement to the Teifling girl was the LIzardfolk, who wasn't linked to the intrigue at all.
The new addition was a Triton Sorc, who was a part of one of the Families, but then he decided to ghost sessions and I had to remove the character. So that kinda left the intrigue element up in the air as to why the current party should care about them, beyond the information/slight tie the Fighter & Cleric have.
Players "ghosting" and/or new players joining is not an excuse for the players to not collectively figure out why their PCs will work together. They made snowflakes, but now they need to work together to create the connective tissue that will bind them together. RPGs *REQUIRE* players to make decisions designed to further the game in ways that *TRUMP* reasonable and sensible. The players are charged with the creation of heroic PCs that touch the glowy orb, walk into traps blindly, and run bellowing after the Orcs fleeing down the tunnel. These actions are decidedly not smart, or tactical, but they are essential for the game to progress. Players also have to make the effort to ensure their PCs are motivated to stay together. DMs shouldn't have to use the BIG levers of plot contrivance against the PCs. Ideally, the PCs will just do what is expected of them. If not, you as a DM are not required to run games for these PCs.