Yellow Brick Road: Getting the players to unite and stick together.

[FathomsDeep]

It's been literally decades since I ran a campaign, and I have a mixed bag of brand new and seasoned but similarly rusty players. My campaign is ambitious, and involves a dictatorship on an island nation. Several of the PCs arrived there via shipwreck, and so have at least a minimal common plight. Another pair were co-workers in a nearby mine. I have given the group a common enemy, (the Empire.) I have given them shared hardship, and the camaraderie of shared combat. I have guided them through shared victories, as well as shared noble acts. I have given them several NPCs to whom each of them share some connection. Still, they strain at the very notion of being a party and traveling together. They feel a lack of common goals.

I've been wracking my brain trying to think of ways to unite these diverse individuals, and frequently feel as if I'm somehow letting them down, but it also seems to be the common collective wisdom that, to a large degree, deciding on reasons to stay together and function as a party is their job. I have given the them the materials, and more than a few reasons to draw from, as well as support in their backstories to help them along.

After the last session, one of my players came to me and said he'd been talking with another of them, and they'd come to the conclusion that they seemed to lack a shared "yellow brick road", by which, he meant that while Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow all had very different goals, they shared a common destination. I'm not sure where I'm going with all this. No idea whether what i need is advice, encouragement, or maybe just validation, but I came to GitP to pick the brains of fellow GMs, and you guys have proven admirably brain-pickable so far! :D

[Koo Rehtorb]

I don't think it's inherently a problem if they aren't a "party" at all.

Just offer them opportunities that they'll need to work together to accomplish. It's okay if they have different goals, if they can all at least get on board with the idea that recovering the Sacred McGuffin from the Temple of Elemental Wombats is in their mutual best interest, and that they can't do it alone. It's an easy sort of working relationship to get to if the place is full of dangers that can't be faced alone, and the other PCs are the only other people around who are motivated/powerful enough to tackle those dangers.

[Lord Torath]

Have someone connected to the "end goal" steal something from each of them. Doesn't even necessarily have to be valuable. The thief could steal their boots, their favorite knife-sheath/sword-baldric/hammer-hanging-loop (not the weapon itself, just the storage device!), or just their favorite quill. The important thing here is that PCs know who did it so they can track the thief down.

Kill my family? eh, Mom always liked Phil better anyway. Raze my home town? meh. Serves that obnoxious shopkeep right. I've out-grown them anyway. Steal my boot?!?!? That makes it personal! You're goin' DOWN!!!!!

I realize this may sound silly, but from what I've read on these boards, nothing is quite as motivating as having someone steal your stuff.

[DeTess]

Have you considered asking the players themselves, as a group, to come up with a uniting event? This could be adding some kind of shared past, or even a suggestion for a future event that they all agree would serve as unifying force.

Something that would generally be very helpful is to give the PC's as a group a shared stake in the world. A piece of real estate (like a small castle) or a cool (air)ship can function well in this regard.

[Darth Ultron]

Really, this is a metagame type thing.

Way too many games try to come up with real, in game reasons for the characters to all stay together and have some sort of common goal. But even if you take this near endless amount of time to craft a massive story, it still might not work. The truth is, unless you alter and rewrite the game reality every couple of seconds, it can be near impossible to get several characters to all be together.

And it's even harder when a lot of modern players want to be wild races and classes and have massive backstories that they ''must" do.

So, it comes down to the metagame: you are all real life players in the same game: your characters must stay together as a group.

Period.

[The Jack]

Give them people to love, wait a little, and axe them horribly.

The fighter gets a wife, the wizard gets herself a library, the cleric gets a nice church in the lovely little village where the ranger raises his pigeon.

cue a badguy sacking the village and burning the fighter's wife with the wizard's books in the cleric's church, whilst toasting the ranger's pigeon.

I think I need a good idea of each character's goals/wants to really go more into that.


Under no circumstances should you contrive a magical object that forces the party together.

[FathomsDeep]

Koo Rehtorb:

I don't think it's inherently a problem if they aren't a "party" at all.

Just offer them opportunities that they'll need to work together to accomplish. It's okay if they have different goals, if they can all at least get on board with the idea that recovering the Sacred McGuffin from the Temple of Elemental Wombats is in their mutual best interest, and that they can't do it alone. It's an easy sort of working relationship to get to if the place is full of dangers that can't be faced alone, and the other PCs are the only other people around who are motivated/powerful enough to tackle those dangers.


This is the fabled "yellow brick road" of which my player spoke. And I feel as if I've given them all reasons to seek a few common goals: Stay alive is a good priority, don't get arrested by the empire, of course. Some or all have at least a small degree of investment in helping the peasant victims of oppression and/or joining "the resistance" so to speak. But I fear it's one of those cases of giving them TOO MANY choices. The sandbox dilemma, as it were. I should perhaps consider introducing a few more rails to my story, as discretely as possible, of course, and not to the degree of eliminating all character agency. But narrowing their options a bit.


Lord Torath

Have someone connected to the "end goal" steal something from each of them. Doesn't even necessarily have to be valuable. The thief could steal their boots, their favorite knife-sheath/sword-baldric/hammer-hanging-loop (not the weapon itself, just the storage device!), or just their favorite quill. The important thing here is that PCs know who did it so they can track the thief down.

Kill my family? eh, Mom always liked Phil better anyway. Raze my home town? meh. Serves that obnoxious shopkeep right. I've out-grown them anyway. Steal my boot?!?!? That makes it personal! You're goin' DOWN!!!!!

I realize this may sound silly, but from what I've read on these boards, nothing is quite as motivating as having someone steal your stuff.

It actually doesn't sound silly at all- it makes perfect sense, or would, in a different setting. Alas, it wouldn't really fit in the current situation. At least, not without some tweaks.... Hmm. *considers the tweaks that would make such a thing possible.* It MIGHT work. Bears consideration, absolutely.

Randuir

Have you considered asking the players themselves, as a group, to come up with a uniting event? This could be adding some kind of shared past, or even a suggestion for a future event that they all agree would serve as unifying force.

Something that would generally be very helpful is to give the PC's as a group a shared stake in the world. A piece of real estate (like a small castle) or a cool (air)ship can function well in this regard.


I have indeed spoken with them, both individually and collectively. Collectively, everyone puts on a brave "everything's fine" sort of face, and no one wants to quite address the elephant in the room. Individually, I get the same sort of uncertain not-happiness I descibed initially. They don't feel connected. They don't feel invested, in each other, or at times even in themselves. On some levels, I think it may simply be that half the party's players'styles and my own are a bad match, and I suppose if that's the case, it will reveal itself unfixable over time, but until then, I certainly would like to find a solution.

And- YES! The "shared stake"! I gave them this as well! They have a ruined and hidden temple which they all agreed would make an excellent base of operations, but then they abandoned the idea and wandered off in another direction. ~le sigh~

Darth Ultron

Really, this is a metagame type thing.

Way too many games try to come up with real, in game reasons for the characters to all stay together and have some sort of common goal. But even if you take this near endless amount of time to craft a massive story, it still might not work. The truth is, unless you alter and rewrite the game reality every couple of seconds, it can be near impossible to get several characters to all be together.

And it's even harder when a lot of modern players want to be wild races and classes and have massive backstories that they ''must" do.

So, it comes down to the metagame: you are all real life players in the same game: your characters must stay together as a group.

Period.

THAT is the validation part that I needed. *lol* Thank you, Darth. At least on SOME level, this isn't my fault, and at least on some level, my players should be grown-ups and play the game they came to play. Thanks for that. :D I did need to hear it.



The Jack

Give them people to love, wait a little, and axe them horribly.

The fighter gets a wife, the wizard gets herself a library, the cleric gets a nice church in the lovely little village where the ranger raises his pigeon.

cue a badguy sacking the village and burning the fighter's wife with the wizard's books in the cleric's church, whilst toasting the ranger's pigeon.

I think I need a good idea of each character's goals/wants to really go more into that.


Under no circumstances should you contrive a magical object that forces the party together.



NO circumstance? Not even if it's a really cool magical nailgun, or ... or.. a +9 collective corset of sexiness? ;)

[The Jack]

[B]


NO circumstance? Not even if it's ... or.. a +9 collective corset of sexiness? ;)

I dare you to give this to players.
I double dare you.

[Nifft]

Make this stuff part of Session Zero -- and yeah, make the players answer these questions.

"That guy over there (indicate one of the other characters) looks brutal and unscrupulous. Why do you trust him with your life?"

"You and that guy (indicate other character) have vastly disparate backgrounds, what with one of you being a royal magical princess and the other being a second-hand zombie beggar. How did you two become companions?"

[Erloas]

Not that I'm going to claim any experience, but I'll give my thoughts anyway.

You say you've given them a common enemy in the Empire, but empires tend to be pretty big and "the boss" is too strong to even think about taking down right now.
You've given them many options, maybe too many options, and they all want to do different things.
I think you need to give them a more obvious "next step" to work towards. A lower ranking noble, merchant, mayor, bandit group, etc. that is stepping up his "game" and looking at increasing his power in the local area. Increased raiding, taxes (not just the villagers, but a group of soldiers that show up and demand payment from the players as well), violence towards their friends, that sort of thing. Depending on how you think the group will react to it, you can have many different things happening and not have it be obvious that it is the same cause. Let them do their thing and find out it is too big to take alone and find their own common ground.

Maybe a little mustache twirling, puppy kicking, evil from a couple enemies to get them going.

[Florian]

That's all basic session zero stuff.

Ok, sit down with your players and explain to them what you consider to be the social contract and rules for the game you run. And with rules, I don't mean the mechanics (which are uninteresting), but how gaming at your table/campaign you run should work.

Examples for the real rules would be:
- This is a group-based game, so you sit down and come up with a) a party and b) reasons why you work together and trust each other. That's your job, not mine.
- You play the heroes of the island campaign, in which you are the heroes. Create heroes, play heroes, be heroes of the story, no reluctance, no "but my characters wouldn't do that", no "But what is my characters motivation to go up against the dictatorship?". None of that. Create characters that will be heroes in this story and it´s your job to make them fit, not mine to throw endless hooks at you.
- No character and background creation before session zero. You don't know what campaign I'm going to prep, you don't know the rules for the campaign (you're reading them right now). I´ll give you a rough campaign outline, then we talk about our shared (?) expectations and then you can create a character for this particular campaign, following all the rules.

[MrSandman]

What others have said about session zero.

Making a coherent, cohesive party that'll want to stick together isn't your job, it's the players' job (unless you're making pregen characters, in which case you've got a share of the responsibility). If they can't think of a reason for their characters to stick together with the party and be involved in the story, well then they might want to consider making a new character.

It might be that part of the problem is that they don't find the story/world/whatever engaging. Then you must talk about what sort of game everyone wants to play. But if it all comes down to players saying "I can't see why my character would stick to this party," the appropriate answer is "You tell me, it's your character, not mine."

[FathomsDeep]

Ahhh the "Session Zero" talk. Yes. Truly my bad for not having done this, but as I said, it's been ages since I've either run or playined in a campaign, and honestly, I don't recall ever experiencing much of this in campaigns past. Sure, now and then, a difficult player would be all, "My character doesn't trust them, so he's going to walk away and do something else." But for the most part, I've had the good fortune to play among people who seemed to have a decent natural understanding of the "we're here to be in a party together" part of the social contract. Heh. And I'm old as the hills back in MY day, we didn' have alla y'all's fancy VID-yos an' workshops! We flew by the seats of our pants, and we LIKED it that way! ;)

I absolutely realize the value of this now, and whether this campaign tanks entirely, or finds it's feet, I'm certainly never starting another without this brilliant piece of advice.

And Florian- you sound like you're probably one badass of a gm, who brooks no bull from anyone. Good on ya!

Thank you all, for words of both encouragement and butt-kicking. As before, you have proven yourselves to be an excellent bunch of brains to pick!

[Jama7301]

If people are having issues coming up as to why they're a party, but you want to establish that they've known each other for a bit, you can start by ripping some of the Bonds from Dungeon World. They're listed for each class on the Dungeon World SRD, and give you a basic idea of why these people work together. They can easily be discarded as the game goes along, and things evolve.

[TeChameleon]

Dunno if you still need any more advice, but a slight refinement of the old 'steal something from 'em/kill their loved ones' gambits (with a nice healthy dose of blatant emotional manipulation :smalltongue:) is to send along a minor NPC of a sort that the players would find sympathetic (a child, a sweet grandmotherly type, heck, even a weirdly intelligent puppy, whatever) that gives a small, but highly useful, boost in combat.

When something or someone kills or kidnaps said sympathetic NPC, a lot of players will burn down the world to get the S.O.B. who did it.

[Quertus]

What others have said about session zero.

Making a coherent, cohesive party that'll want to stick together isn't your job, it's the players' job (unless you're making pregen characters, in which case you've got a share of the responsibility). If they can't think of a reason for their characters to stick together with the party and be involved in the story, well then they might want to consider making a new character.

It might be that part of the problem is that they don't find the story/world/whatever engaging. Then you must talk about what sort of game everyone wants to play. But if it all comes down to players saying "I can't see why my character would stick to this party," the appropriate answer is "You tell me, it's your character, not mine."

So, my opinion on session zero and the division of labor, I think, most closely agrees - and most interestingly disagrees - with the above post.

It is, generally speaking, the GM's job to know the adventure / the contents of the sandbox, and to impart sufficient information to the players that they can create a character suitable to / enjoyable to play in the environment. And, at a larger scale, that includes suitable for the enjoyment of all, in the style that the group enjoys.

Thus, yes, the GM can say, "man up, and make characters that will work together". Or even "make trustworthy characters that will trust one another".

Once those parameters are set, it is, indeed, the players' responsibility to follow those parameters, and the players' responsibility to fix any problems that arise from not following them (by modifying the character, or bringing a new one).

If those parameters have not been set, however, then the GM is at fault for just assuming that everyone will inherently follow their expected playstyle without being told. And, thus, it is the GM's responsibility to fix it. Usually, by informing players of the desired playstyle, and letting the player fix it.

[Florian]

Heh. And I'm old as the hills back in MY day, we didn' have alla y'all's fancy VID-yos an' workshops! We flew by the seats of our pants, and we LIKED it that way! ;)

Let´s put it this way: In the last decade, TTRPGs have incredibly broadened and branched out, so much so, that people socialized to the hobby with one style are nearly unable to play in a group with people socialized to a different style. The main difference is not in the concrete rules system you use, but in how you understand that the whole game itself should function. For example, systems like D&D are still best at site-based exploration, while systems like Fate Core are best at situation-based exploration, as they hand a large swath of narrative control to the players as part of the core mechanic. The difference between having a, say, dungeon as a site or a situation is pretty profound.

To be honest, my guess is that most of us long-time GMs experienced way more campaigns falling apart (or dwindling into nothingness because of lack of interest) pretty early on than those that we played to the finish, no matter how brilliant the initial idea, no matter how much time we sunk into prepping, because either something was missing , didn't click or lacked a certain "funk" for the table.

The lesson of the last decade is simply, that "Let´s play D&D/Pathfinder" is pretty much an empty phrase with a lot of unspoken expectations that should be voiced. In addition, we should be open about the fact that the GM wears three hats: 1) Storyteller/World Creator, 2) Arbitrator of the rules and 3) Enemy. At the same time, the players also wear two hats: 1) Storyteller and 2) Part of the story. Plainly speaking, they also have to do their homework and prep stuff, namely that their "side of the table" works according to the social contract, with point 1 meaning that they also have a duty towards the GM and more so, to the other players.

[Honest Tiefling]

Steal something from the party. Give them an immediate, close threat that has taken something valuable from them. Nothing works to make player characters hate someone than touching their loot. If they all hate the same person, there is a goal dangling right in front of them, with possibly even more loot!

That ruined temple? Not so ruined! Someone else came in and is using it to a very effective degree. You snooze, you lose.

[MrSandman]

So, my opinion on session zero and the division of labor, I think, most closely agrees - and most interestingly disagrees - with the above post.

It is, generally speaking, the GM's job to know the adventure / the contents of the sandbox, and to impart sufficient information to the players that they can create a character suitable to / enjoyable to play in the environment. And, at a larger scale, that includes suitable for the enjoyment of all, in the style that the group enjoys.

Thus, yes, the GM can say, "man up, and make characters that will work together". Or even "make trustworthy characters that will trust one another".

Once those parameters are set, it is, indeed, the players' responsibility to follow those parameters, and the players' responsibility to fix any problems that arise from not following them (by modifying the character, or bringing a new one).

If those parameters have not been set, however, then the GM is at fault for just assuming that everyone will inherently follow their expected playstyle without being told. And, thus, it is the GM's responsibility to fix it. Usually, by informing players of the desired playstyle, and letting the player fix it.

I thought you said we disagreed on something?

[Quertus]

I thought you said we disagreed on something?

Eh, just that your post felt like it put the responsibility squarely and solely in the hands of the players, whereas mine (much like Florian later stated, I believe) put the responsibility first and foremost on the GM to explain things. And then I put the power to actually make changes squarely and more or less solely in the hands of the players.

So, yeah, most closely agrees, and with the most interesting differences, IMO. Even if they're only differences in focus or explanation.

[MrSandman]

Eh, just that your post felt like it put the responsibility squarely and solely in the hands of the players, whereas mine (much like Florian later stated, I believe) put the responsibility first and foremost on the GM to explain things. And then I put the power to actually make changes squarely and more or less solely in the hands of the players.

So, yeah, most closely agrees, and with the most interesting differences, IMO. Even if they're only differences in focus or explanation.

Well, I tend to put the responsibility on the group to agree on things, rather than on the game master to explain things, but yeah. That sort of stuff was implied in my extremely helpful and detailed opening statement: "What others have said about session zero."

[Ronnocius]

I agree that it is generally the players job to find a reason to adventure together.

However one suggestion I have (apologies if this has been mentioned already; I only skimmed other responses) is the Empire puts out a bounty on them (I assume they have hurt the Empire in some way already; if not they could be implicated by another band of rebels which could be interesting because although the adventurers and rebels are on the same side the rebels are sort of throwing the PCs under the bus) and they will be hunted. Have an NPC suggest that they stick together and try to reduce the Empire's power so they have less resources to use on tracking down and murdering the players.

[LordCdrMilitant]

I never have a "you meet in a tavern" scene; the party starts with everybody knowing each other and being cool with adventuring with each other. Otherwise, invariably, the paladin will try to smite the tiefling and somebody will spend the whole campaign complaining that their character would never work with the rest of these obviously evil, greedy, murder-happy, wandering psycopaths.

Alternatively, the party's Inquisitor/Watch Master has assigned them to the same team, and they better learn to work together now because orbital drop is in three hours.

[Knaight]

I've actually got some material I wrote up a while ago (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nOu3Lb3u6Gzdd3TmMew-wzAHreqlyqk6Arg4ZDPwbuY/edit?usp=sharing&authkey=CL6-9ZQJ) for this sort of game - it's a little over specific, but there are things you can steal from the structure - particularly as the document in question is a mid-design document that went into something else later.

There's a common enemy already, which is plenty, but actually going into the Reason to Hate and Reason to Fight sections might help a bit here.

[Pex]

Tell the players you are here to play a game together, not one on one therapy sessions. Tell the players to choose differently. They choose to work together just because. Their characters are friends just because. The only motivation they need is to play the game. If they absolutely refuse tell them this is not the game you want to run and leave. Find players who want to play, not special snowflakes.

[Nifft]

It's not necessarily too late to have a Session Zero.

Just start your gaming session with some backstory discussion, and let the players know that any stuff they come up with -- including positive stuff -- may figure in the campaign.

- Which NPC or organization have you sworn revenge upon? Which other PC saved you and swore to aid your revenge?

- Nice boots. Who did you loot them off, and which other PC helped you hide the body?

- That's quite a scar. How'd you get it, and (drumroll) which other PC was involved?