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View Full Version : Pathfinder What would you do to make my players team-up with this scenario ?



Selween
2016-10-19, 06:53 PM
Hello everyone,

First of all, i have to warn you : my native language isn't english, so i may be difficult to understand sometimes. Please tell me if something i said needs to be edited, in order to be as understandable as possible. However, be sure i'll do my best to avoid this necessity.

So, i have recently been a member of a pathfinder party.
During this game, we played evil characters who worshiped Asmodeus. Because of this, our purpose were clear and none of us could do the usual bath of blood usually expected from evil characters.

Sadly, this game came to it's end after we made the huge mistake to think that an angel might be an ennemy we could handle, we were level 4.
After that, the GM told us he wouldn't be able to keep going the table anyway, because GM require him too much of it's precious time, because he have 2 jobs simultaneously, and he had to free the 10 hours he spent until now every weeks to prepare the game session.

As given that everyone (including the GM) still wanted to play, and if possible keep the whole evil character theme thing, and because i already have a fair experience in this domain, i suggested to become the GM of the next game.
We discussed about what players wanted to play, and we finally agreed to play in a campaign with less fight, and more rp / background / political - personnal issues to resolve.

This is where my problem occurs : i have the perfect world for this king of campaign, but i cannot find a satisfying solution to make characters meet each others and team-up together.
Of course, i could simply say "you already know each other, and work along already", but i kinda think it'd be kinda disappointing to start a heavy-rp campaign with something like this.

Of course, you cannot help me without any infos about this universe, so here is a "few" words about it :

The entire story will occur in the city of Tevra. It's the capital city of a well-sized country named Gelor. It's a mix between middle-aged and victorian-style city : a lot of nobility lives here, but churchs remains extremely influent, and inquisition have sometimes more power than the army, given the situation is about gods and stuffs.

three noble houses possess almost all of the best influences avaible in the city (the other ones only possess minors advantages) :

- The Andhoran house is the one where the king come from, they have the last word on almost every subject and are, for most of them, rightful persons who mainly wish the good for everyone (even if some extra to their personal comfort is sometimes envisaged). They have to deal with other houses, as well as multiple ennemy groups.

- The Kayne house built itself with commercial tactics. They have the best alchemist in the country, and because Galor isn't agricultural enough to support it's own needs in term of food, Tevra needs them to bring the missing supply with their sense of market.
The kayne house deliberately slow the food production of Galor, countering the efforts of the royal family to put an end of their dependency to foreign country, so they can stay essential : and essential ones never risk to be eliminated, even if they ask a lot for their services. Of course, only the main members of the house are allowed to know all of this

- The Dael house have almost all of their member being a part of the army, and are famous soldier, and commander. one of them is the main warlod, and none of them have a grade under colonel. Rumors say that they can survive almost any wound.
All of the main members of Dael house are vampires. They are also expert in illusion and abjuration magic, to avoid being spotted (either by not aging, or being under the sun). Their purprose is to gain enough influence to be able to take the absolute control of military activities, and for this, they plan to subtly bring the king toward making of Galor a military nation. Their nature is a secret for non-vampire in the house.


In addition, to houses, there are two main groups that represent a problem :

- The red hammer faction : these are fanatics, they are present in every nation of the world and plan to conquer the whole world for their god, Herrias. She needs an army to fight against a rival god who wish her destruction, and she thinks that if she can train every humain to learn magic, they will have enough power together to detroy him definitively.

- The awaken faction : These are children, who possess the mind of an adult. Some childs, during one night (when they are about 10) mysteriously have their soul transported in another plane, and during this single night, they live 10 000 days in an oniric world that reproduce a reality of savagery, danger and darkness, and dying there means ending in the coma when they return. These children are terribly dangerous, because they developped skills, abilities, can be anyone, and noone can suspect them. Their existence is a well-keeped secret that only a few persons knows. They do not have a precise goal, most of them are independant and skilled enough to be a serious threat by their own. But some of them aim for the kingdom.


PC are not defined yet, and no restrictions have been given about character creation for now (but they must wait for my instruction before making a character).
I thought that i could allow characters to select one of the house at their creation, because i personally think a background is always more interesting when some elements are directly part of the campaign, but by doing this, i have no idea of how i could end-up to gather them in a group.

Because the events will be almost entirely based on their personnal interests (the player will decide by their own what is their goal (it must be difficult and meaningul, like "being the most influent person in the city", or "assassinate the queen for my personnal revenge"), the campaign will end when all of their purpose will be accomplished.

How can i bring them to meet each other, and make them work together without knowing the group yet ? (assumed the fact they will choose loyal evil alignments, and they all have the inability to achieve it alone, it will be part of the instructions for their characters)

Thanks a lot for reading, i'm sorry if you had a hard time understanding some parts. I'll correct those if needed later.

NomGarret
2016-10-19, 07:11 PM
Would having them collectively pick a House work? That gives them a premise for knowing each other and interacting on a somewhat regular basis. It gives them a basic set of expected similar goals - though they are still free to pursue their personal goals.

Selween
2016-10-19, 07:15 PM
It would be a good idea, i will use it if i cannot find something better.

My main goal is to allow them to integrate their character the way they want, so if some prefer pick different houses, it could be an issue for this purprose.

Still, a good idea that do not fill the goal is better than no idea to fill the goal !

icefractal
2016-10-19, 07:20 PM
Of course, i could simply say "you already know each other, and work along already", but i kinda think it'd be kinda disappointing to start a heavy-rp campaign with something like this.I'm going to disagree - I think having pre-existing connections works better for a heavy-rp campaign.

The issue is that many characters, especially evil ones, would not be so trusting as to immediately cooperate fully and openly with some people they just met. So that leaves three options:
1) Play the characters accurately to their personality - expect a lot of note passing and secretiveness and little cooperation. They may eventually grow more trusting as they work together, but it may take quite a while IC and even a fair amount of time OOC.
2) Have the characters act in an OOC way and trust each-other very quickly. Works, but it's not very conducive to RP. And also, if any of them do start backstabbing the party, now everyone else looks like idiots IC because they were trying to be good players OOC.
3) Have the characters meet in the backstory. This can be done collaboratively in a "Session 0", where people are also deciding on classes and such. Then you can have things like "Alvar the Weasel didn't think much of Brosk Ironfoot the first time they met. Or the second. But after working together for years, a grudging respect had grown between them." without needing to actually play through years of IC time.

Although that said, not every character has to start out trusting every other character, as long as there are enough connections to hold everyone together in the end. Alvar trusts Brosk, and Brosk is the brother of Corven, and Corven is best friends with Demetria, for instance.

Selween
2016-10-19, 07:42 PM
Yes, a session 0 might be a very good idea !
Do you have an idea of what kind of "first event" can bring a group of five ambitious, and not really morals persons to meet and work together ?

Ecliptic
2016-10-19, 08:36 PM
Yes, a session 0 might be a very good idea !
Do you have an idea of what kind of "first event" can bring a group of five ambitious, and not really morals persons to meet and work together ?

If they are members of important houses, what about some sort of event or gala thrown by the royal family in which prominent members from all of the city's houses are invited. Things can happen at said event, but basically, they are all at the same place, trying to figure out ways to increase their own house's power and connections or whatever.

Ualaa
2016-10-20, 02:11 AM
I ran a premade adventure/campaign for Pathfinder, called 'Way of the Wicked'.
All of the characters began the adventure in prison together.
The requirements were that they were evil (lawful evil was recommended, so the group would be more likely to cooperate with each other) and that they were correctly found guilty of their crimes.

Evil should do what is in their own best interests, and not really care if that's not good for someone else.
So being able to trust your group is likely going to require they have a history together.

Being on death-row together, and escaping from prison is one effective method.
They know they can trust each other to a degree, because they're in it together.
A stranger could go to the authorities for a reward, but a traitorous group member would just be executed, so they cannot double cross you.

Also, having worked together and successfully broken out of prison, they know the others are capable.
So purely out of self interest, having capable partners is going to get them further than risking unknowns.
Sure, they can hire/dupe new partners... to be double-crossed when it is convenient.
But they know, from their history together, that the rest of the group is capable.



You don't have to be from the same prison.
They can have an employer who is also evil, and for the time being has something on the group.
Which gives them a common enemy to overthrow together; someone who they can hate together.

And in the meantime, they're forced (by this mastermind) to cooperate.
If they don't know each other initially, being forced to work together will let them learn that the others are competent.
It will be in their best interest to retain the favor of their coworkers, purely because that gets them ahead the fastest.



You could also require that every character have two relationships, within the group.
The players then get to be creative.

My guy, is the younger brother of one of the characters... flesh that out a little bit, between the two characters in question... did they get along, or did they despise each other? Were they orphans together, and split up in their late teen years?
My guy is also the lover of another character... or whatever.

Your players will be more invested in the setting, if even at a personal level, they're helping to create it.
Plus, if they're in a situation where they can adventure... everyone has a connection to two of the other characters.
So there is a plausible reason to cooperate... and to not turn on each other quickly.