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View Full Version : Party Contracts, Dynamics, and Names



Coidzor
2009-05-09, 05:13 AM
Anybody here use 'em? Basic gist of what you do use?

I've never actually been in a party where we've had one, but the groups I've played with have had an informal set of guidelines similar to the "British Constitution" I think is the expression...

I've been wanting to bring up the idea in one of the campaigns I'm in, especially since we're basically a company of private contractors right now anyway, and we kinda need a name. And, y'know, I'm curious about what other people do and their experiences too :smalltongue:

So any suggestions as to naming conventions would help as well... haha. :smallredface:

Edit: the amount of times that the concept of party funds have been bought up has me curious as to how those of you who play with them deal with them.

Do you basically just give the party fund the equivalent of a share in the treasure? Keep all the loot in common in the fund and only spend it for travelling expenses and when the party agrees it's time to upgrade?

BobVosh
2009-05-09, 05:32 AM
In one game we are the Cormyr Coin Collectors Club. CCCC FTW!

I am indifferent one way or another to the concept, except in terms of leadership in high level games.

KIDS
2009-05-09, 05:49 AM
In the pirate game where I'm playing, we have a charter with 15 laws that everyone in the crew abides by. Ironically, none of the other games I play in, even those populated only by LG clerics and paladins never thought of making such a thing.

revolver kobold
2009-05-09, 06:03 AM
I've only played in one game where we actually bothered to name our adventuring party, and we called ourselves The Flaming Monocle (and we all wore monocles with Continual Flame on them).

Ovaltine Patrol
2009-05-09, 06:07 AM
My group maintains a "party fund," which we put in an equal share of all treasure along with any petty cash too small to bother splitting amongst ourselves. The party fund covers room, board, hired spell casting, and anything else the group agrees upon. If I'm playing, I end up taking the leadership role. If I'm the DM, there's a pair of players who sort it out amongst themselves, the rest of the group doesn't care. We don't usually have an official party name, because we rarely agree on one that's cool. We've taken to calling the group "Action Team Violence Makers," out of character though.

Tsotha-lanti
2009-05-09, 06:09 AM
In the pirate game where I'm playing, we have a charter with 15 laws that everyone in the crew abides by. Ironically, none of the other games I play in, even those populated only by LG clerics and paladins never thought of making such a thing.

Pirate Isles, a supplement for Conan d20, actually includes a bunch of rules and options for pirate charters. The mercenary book has no such things...

Anyway, adventuring companies only really seem like they fit into settings where "adventurer" is actually a profession, like the Forgotten Realms (where Cormyrian law, for instance, actually requires registering your company). Oddly, FR is also the only setting that seems to have canon adventuring companies, like the Knights of Myth Drannor. The Companions of the Lance in Dragonlance aren't an adventuring company; the name is a title, legend, or honorific.

Names are easy, though. You follow the basic fantasy tropes: you're either the Adjective Nouns or the (Adjective) Nouns of the (Adjective) Noun. Green, Black, Fast, Flaming, Righteous, Fell, Swift; Blades, Knights, Company, Troupe, Band, Swords, Spears, Arrows, Heroes, Riders; Raven, Sword, Horse, Mountain, Forge, Battle; just about any appropriate place name...

chiasaur11
2009-05-09, 02:09 PM
Or Acquisitions Inc.

Artanis
2009-05-09, 02:33 PM
Anybody here use 'em? Basic gist of what you do use?

I've never actually been in a party where we've had one, but the groups I've played with have had an informal set of guidelines similar to the "British Constitution" I think is the expression...

I've been wanting to bring up the idea in one of the campaigns I'm in, especially since we're basically a company of private contractors right now anyway, and we kinda need a name. And, y'know, I'm curious about what other people do and their experiences too :smalltongue:

So any suggestions as to naming conventions would help as well... haha. :smallredface:

Dwarf Fortress (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html) has a random group-name generator that you can play with when starting a new fortress. You can get some pretty fun names that way.

Another suggestion to expand on what BobVosh said, you could try to make up a group name which makes the acronym L.O.O.T. Or, if you want to break the more serious players' minds, L.3.W.7 :smallcool:

Totally Guy
2009-05-09, 02:37 PM
We used "The Birthday Party" because of the way the campaign started.

"You all meet in a tavern.:smallwink:"
"Seriously? We meet in a tavern? Why am I in a tavern?:smallannoyed:"
"Yes, it's you companion's birthday after all. You're attending his party.:smallsmile:"
"Oh, Ok.:smallcool:"

kamikasei
2009-05-09, 02:39 PM
In the pirate game where I'm playing, we have a charter with 15 laws that everyone in the crew abides by. Ironically, none of the other games I play in, even those populated only by LG clerics and paladins never thought of making such a thing.

One must be honest to live outside the law.

Dixieboy
2009-05-09, 03:09 PM
In the pirate game where I'm playing, we have a charter with 15 laws that everyone in the crew abides by. Ironically, none of the other games I play in, even those populated only by LG clerics and paladins never thought of making such a thing.

Not really ironic, the LG guys kinda expect each others to behave decently while the others have to work with cutthroats, thieves and other assorted scum. So logically they would make a list of what you can and can't do to avoid problems.

Bugbeartrap
2009-05-09, 03:42 PM
In my favorite current campaign, my group calls itself The Remnants, as they are the last surviving members of an adventurer academy (all the rest were murdered thanks to the BBEG). We don't have any written rules, but since we have been on the run we're sorely under WBL so we just have a giant pool and we make group decisions if a peice of gear would benefit the party enough. Most of the group's wealth was sunk into a ship we needed to continue our fight against the BBEG, and now that we don't need it anymore we have only 20,000 GP to spread around lvl 8 characters.

The_Scourge
2009-05-09, 04:54 PM
I've had groups with the names:
The Freelance Problem Solvers (We ran World's Largest Dungeon and made friends with half the hostile creatures in the dungeon. We had a Bard who was our party leader. He even managed to counter-seduce the vampire.)

Orchesta' United

The Order of the Stone (That one's a long story involving a bored druid making Thwomps using stone shape and dropping them in random places across the land with a mirror of mental prowess.)

The Freedom Alliance (My M&M superhero team. The name was decided when we were ambushed by a bunch of reporters. The GM asked for initiative rolls and whoever got the highest chose the name.)

I'd suggest you don't pick something right away. Just let the group develop and see what name seems appropriate.

On party contracts, I've never used them beyond a few informal rules like: Don't be a ****. Don't spawn monstrosities which an affront to god and nature. Don't crash an airship into the orphanage district.
Stuff like that

Skaroq
2009-05-09, 06:16 PM
My players want to call the group the Necrocide Guild right away, since they slay undead, but that's plain silly, they don't slay undead EXCLUSIVELY, and there's no way the player's serious, non-silly characters would name themselves that. Besides, the PCs are under a contract set into place by a PC that happens to hate silliness. And the PCs haven't "bonded" yet, they're just starting out. So I said no, that's illogical, and you'll regret it later, because you have to see how the group develops. I hope they eventually come up with a better name than THAT cheesy, illogical, and plain silly name. And it should fit the party. I'm not railroading them, I'm trying to prevent them from making a bad decision. And don't give me that! I did the right thing! :smallmad:

Tiki Snakes
2009-05-09, 06:31 PM
The Necrocide Guild is Heavy Metal. I'm with the party on this one. Rule of Cool!

DamnedIrishman
2009-05-09, 06:39 PM
To steal some names from history...

The [Area or Country of Origin] Free Company - Several English and French free companies existed
The [Colour] Company - Such as the White Company led by John Hawkwood
The [Region] Guards - the Vatican's Swiss Guards are technically a mercenary company.
The [Area or Family Name] Freelancers

Assassin89
2009-05-09, 06:56 PM
I just play a mercenary who works for a wizard named Prince Heward in a 3.5 D&D setting. There is no name for the group, but considering that my character's employer has plenty of enemies, it might be a good idea to give a name that sounds as distant a relation from the man as possible.

Asbestos
2009-05-09, 07:02 PM
I just play a mercenary who works for a wizard named Prince Heward in a 3.5 D&D setting. There is no name for the group, but considering that my character's employer has plenty of enemies, it might be a good idea to give a name that sounds as distant a relation from the man as possible.

The No Hewards Club.

Flickerdart
2009-05-09, 07:05 PM
The No Hewards Club.
"No Hewards. We can have one!"

KiwiImperator
2009-05-09, 07:46 PM
When I last played, we took a page out of Penny Arcade's book, and checked out PMCs of the modern era. You end up with some really cool sounding name like Executive Operations or Blackwater, it's not hard to see where Acquisitions Incorporated came from. So we named out little L.E. Adventuring group Extralitigious Acquisitions, and never looked back.
C.S.C.O. (Complex Situations, Clandestine Outcomes) Adventurers-4-Less, and Kingfish Enterprises have also served us well. There's a lot to be said for a catchy name with a backstory, it sticks with you longer.

msully4321
2009-05-10, 03:03 PM
My last campaign took place in a region called the Vanguard. After a while without a name, I started calling us "Vanguard Adventures, LLC.", and it stuck.

We didn't really have a contract, but our "party leader", a Favored Soul of Kord, kept a spreadsheet where he tracked all of the loot everybody had gotten and the size of the party fund. The cash equivalent of what everybody had gotten was listed, and was used to guide decisions on how to allocate new magical items we got as well as gold (my two-weapon fighting Swordsage, for example, got 2 +2 daggers as loot early on in the campaign and was never given any gold from loot for the rest of the campaign...).

At one point, the Favored Soul was trying to figure out things that could cause a Cleric of Kord to fall, and he came up with:
1) Giving up drinking
2) Becoming an accountant
I pointed out to him that he was the party accountant, and he quickly justified it by saying that Favored Souls often serve as a counterpoint to the organized clergy; in the case of Kord, apparently that was by occasionally being responsible.

(That Favored Soul character was just a lot of fun in general: 20 Cha, 10 Int, 8 Wis. It's difficult to play a character with higher Wisdom than yourself (my Swordsage had 16 Wis, I'd probably have 11-12 at best), but having him in the party made it really easy: I just needed to be wiser than him.)


In my current campaign, kjones's instance of Red Hand of Doom (I am Imsril, the wizard), we go by either "you lot" or "The Wanderers of the Vale".

chiasaur11
2009-05-10, 04:36 PM
"No Hewards. We can have one!"

Wouldn't that be the ancient society of no Hewards?

Zaq
2009-05-10, 05:08 PM
In the campaign I just finished, the PCs were (originally) part of a special ops police force dedicated to hunting down illegal magic users called the Royal Forces Eldritch Division, or RFED for short.

It took until I pointed it out (nearly an ENTIRE SEMESTER) for anyone to get what else RFED (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RocksFallEveryoneDies) stands for. Sigh.

Warning: Link is to TV Tropes. I take no responsibility for a lost afternoon.