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View Full Version : How do you do? On meetings.



Neon Knight
2008-09-20, 08:16 PM
So, recently I was browsing some PbP games on another forum, and I was surprised at the sheer number that chose to begin in-media-res, or at least with all the PCs having known each other before hand. Further reflecting on the player practice of linking backgrounds to one another, I began to wonder if DnD players are afraid of meeting new people. :smalltongue:

Facetious remarks aside, I understand the desire to get the whole "the party meets for the first time" thing out of the way. A group of strangers deciding out of the blue to work with one another and trust each other with their lives can be akin to a haymaker to the face of verisimilitude, not that I don't enjoy inflicting pain on verisimilitude, but then again I think Descartes has a good point with his whole hyperbolic doubt thing.

On the other hide, displaying the proper amount of doubt and wariness can limit both the group's efficiency and on the types of roleplay it can do. Character interactions are rather simple when the basic relationship between them is suspicion and mistrust.

Then again, having the group meet for the first time doesn't always result in either instant BFF or everyone sleeping with a dagger under their pillow. In fact, watching the relationships between the PCs develop organically (as overused as that term is in regard to these, but whatever it works) can be extremely satisfying.

The example I always think of is what occurred during a game I participated in. Our group had ever reason to not trust one another; A LG elf cleric, her paladin son, an angry sorcerer whose village had been smooshed by hobgoblins, and me... a LN hobgoblin.

Now, we didn't exactly give each other hugs and we were actually pretty guarded towards one another, but we still managed to not only function, but to also get into some pretty interesting conversations, mostly about the goody two shoes philosophy of the elf and the extreme survivalist philosophy of the hobgoblin way.

So, what do you of the playground think about the subject?

AstralFire
2008-09-20, 08:22 PM
If you have a strong group of players that have worked together for a while, you can get great results with the "you start in a tavern and have no compelling reason to do anything but drink ale" campaign starters. I've seen it done.

Otherwise, I feel you're asking for trouble. I agree with you on how neat it is to see the characters organically develop a dynamic, but I've seen the process occur with prepackaged relationships, too. Just because you were friends before doesn't mean you can't become better friends.

Generally, though, I think what I prefer most - and what you touched on less, I think - is starting either in media res or with a minor railroad to get things started. Call it more of a Thomas the Train Engine Trailway than a railroad. A gentle shove in the dungeons, or an attack by murderous guerilla kobold ex-slaves out for revenge and whatnot? Powerful motivators to work together AND a chance for distrust to really play out. Best of both worlds, generally, as long as your TtTET isn't transparent/forced/cliche.

More important than any of that, though, is making sure your characters are actually compatible with one another. If your backstories say you're the best of friends but they end up never talking to each other because one's a ditz and the other's a snob, then you have an issue.

Knaight
2008-09-20, 08:23 PM
I use both, to keep things interesting, as well as having several characters that know each other, but don't know other people in the group.

Lert, A.
2008-09-20, 08:47 PM
Our group tend to die off or move on, etc. fairly often. We just end up roleplaying a chance meeting with new characters most of the time, although if there is a common bond it is usually played as a relationship with the recently departed, not the group.

For starting we often work with the DM -myself or one other member of the group - for good set-ups.

For example: The tavern meet my have two friends meeting for a drink, meeting a stranger from another land and going off to the local games as a full-strength team. As they leave another character runs past leaping onto the back of an assassin, killing him. Mistaking the circumstances, a scuffle ensues, only to be broken up by yet another character who witnessed the original crime. Multiple hooks are given - usually one per character - and plans are made by the new party as to how to proceed.

Isomenes
2008-09-20, 08:57 PM
My group is a very good one, and we know each other's style very well, so the whole "meeting for the first time" bit goes well. We've run in four campaigns, now, and several one-shots, and in three of the four campaign beginnings, most of us didn't know the others. There were a few acquaintances, but relative strangers. It has been hit and miss, but we get along fairly quickly once we get the show on the road.

This last one, our first in 4E, it's taken us (counts) five (counts again) no, six sessions to actually form up as a group. But it has made for a hell of a prologue. I think it just takes time to actually roleplay the meeting well, and sometimes it takes a bit of warming up. I suspect not everyone is willing to invest that time, and it's probably easier to start with that warm-up time out of the way. Our one-shots tend to go that way for that very purpose.

Knaight
2008-09-20, 09:03 PM
Yeah, although sometimes it can be fun to have interesting meetings, although that can be difficult in some cases(ie, getting a noble to meet a skilled commoner mage who would normally never talk to the noble, although that was easier than I thought it would be. Noble enters a stable to look at magical beasts the royal family was showing off, commoner is there to prevent havoc, unicorn starts havoc, and they meet through the traumatic experience of trying to keep a unicorn and a gryphon from tearing each other and the stable apart.

Prometheus
2008-09-20, 09:56 PM
Yeah typically just ignoring how players met and why they are traveling together still works out well enough.

I can understand why the PbP tends to cause characters to know each other 1) there is time between character creation and campaign start 2) linking your character to someone else's probably improves your chances of getting in

I think the ideal situation is to start off the campaign with something that pulls your characters together. For example, Dark Sun (the computer game at least) starts off with the PCs as gladiator-slaves that are looked upon by an evil tyrant. They escape jail together in the beginning and stop the tyranny together in the end. This however, is hard to fit into all campaign settings.

valadil
2008-09-20, 10:35 PM
My one experience with hand waving away the introductions was abysmal. We were an established adventuring party who had known each other for the past 15 levels and had no outstanding conflicts. My character's cannibalism was therefore okay in everyone else's book. Okay, that parts kind of funny.

What I didn't like was that the DM said we knew each other and threw us into a combat. We didn't know other character's names until the end of the first session. We didn't know another character was female until the third game. If characters know each other, fine, but let them actually know each other instead of simply ignoring that part of the game.

Personally I prefer games where some characters know each other and others don't. Having the whole party on a friend of a friend of a friend basis gives them trust but they still have to bond.

Knaight
2008-09-20, 10:37 PM
I use that fairly frequently, but I would advise occasionally throwing out the unknown person.

Nerd-o-rama
2008-09-20, 11:42 PM
Most of my games, I've just noticed, involve players being brought together by some higher authority, which serves as a nice balance. The characters don't know each other but they have an authority figure telling them they're all trustworthy and giving them a good reason to work together.

But can they all trust the authority figure?

AstralFire
2008-09-21, 06:18 AM
What I didn't like was that the DM said we knew each other and threw us into a combat. We didn't know other character's names until the end of the first session. We didn't know another character was female until the third game. If characters know each other, fine, but let them actually know each other instead of simply ignoring that part of the game.

I don't think that kind of handwave was actually what the OP meant.

Neon Knight
2008-09-21, 08:43 PM
I don't think that kind of handwave was actually what the OP meant.

Yeah, that's... that's the oddest beginning I've ever seen. You knew eachother... without knowing eachothers names.

Hal
2008-09-21, 09:21 PM
In my book, it's generally a good idea to have a group template of some kind, some reason that these people are adventuring together. While you can have successful games where the characters hate each other or have ridiculously conflicting goals, it's more often the case that those games crash and burn when the characters (and their players) start creating a little too much friction.

Organic meet-ups can work, but you have to make them compelling. I've been in games where it was pretty darn silly what made the lot of us to go off to kill skeletons together. However, I joined a game that's in progress, and I think my integration was finessed well. One of the existing PCs was kidnapped by a wizard and the party was off on a quest to rescue him. Halfway during their rescue, both he and I woke up in the same cell of the dungeon. It gave us a pretty good reason to stick together for a while.

Asbestos
2008-09-21, 09:23 PM
This is great because I've recently been without a stable gaming group (moving and such)
In the spring my roommate and I got in on a game that was already going on. It was really early on so the DM just went with us having always been there. Was interesting when my roommate rolled two d12s for his weapon rolls during our first encounter, prompting the DM to go "Wait, what are you?" First time anyone even asked us what our characters were!

Fast forward till a week ago. I've moved to a different part of the state and just found a gaming group. Again, had to join them mid-adventure. Was a 3.5 game so I decided to goof off with something I hadn't done before. Dragonfire Adept with wings from feats. DM has me enter by landing on the rampart of the castle the party had just entered. Choice was either join up with the group of 3 elves, a half-dragon, and a civilized looking minotaur, or take my chances with the hungry looking wemic tribe. The intro was basically "Hey, you guys going to eat me? No? Cool." My character has pretty much been 'adventuring' with the group because the alternatives so far (hungry wemics, skeleton hordes, iron golems) are so much worse. I think they're keeping me because my breath weapon is the only truly consistent damage they can do.


Games that I was in since the start though... the intro can be shaky.
Found that a sort of 'greeting by fire' can help. For instance, one campaign started with everyone just happening to be in Generic Village. Everyone is off doing their own thing oblivious to each other, buying their hempen rope, drinking in the tavern, whatever. Suddenly a group of monsters raids the village! The PCs, being adventurers, drop what they're doing and scramble to counter the attack. First PC to get there engages the monsters, later PCs just assess the situation to figure out whether to join up with the guy whipping spells/arrows/sword blows or to join up with the monsters attacking the villagers... If you have a good group (good as in not jerks) of players they should join up against the monsters almost all the time. Once the dust settles intros and backslapping ensues, people of influence in the village have found the heroes they need, adventures follow.

BobVosh
2008-09-22, 02:13 AM
All my adventurers are TRUE adventurers. They relax thier throat when unconcious (for ease of potion entry), have a PCDAR, inherently summon plot devices, and trust everyone ever at a tavern. The shady guy in the corner with a no-good look on his face? Salt of the earth, reliable, and full of things you can do (by which I mean kill and take stuff from).

In all honesty most of our groups are "we have known/seen each other a few times" to the point of we make up stories that the other can't contradict. We may however make up counters that derail it a bit. Leads to some fun IC sniping.

Oh, and all tavern names are made up by PCs on the run. That annoyed one of our DMs that makes whole cities, naming everything. We enter a city and say we go to "The Copper Kettle." She says "where?" To which we immediatly respond "the inn in this town."

It is amazing how many towns have the name of "Copper Kettle" or "Copper Ante" for a bar/inn.

Kaihaku
2008-09-22, 02:59 AM
My favorite two openings are prison or traveling on a vessel. Then something happens, escape and pursuit for the prison, which forces strangers to work together and depending on the setting binds them together.

Meeting in a Tavern is cliche to the point of nausea and, more so, not really that interesting of a meeting.

BobVosh
2008-09-22, 03:53 AM
My favorite two openings are prison or traveling on a vessel. Then something happens, escape and pursuit for the prison, which forces strangers to work together and depending on the setting binds them together.

Meeting in a Tavern is cliche to the point of nausea and, more so, not really that interesting of a meeting.

I hate prison meetings so much more, after 2-4 times it is much more annoying.

Forgot to mention caravan gaurds is another one of our favorites. Works equally well with vessel.

Kaihaku
2008-09-22, 04:19 AM
Heh...

I had a caravan start-up once, travelers not guards though, that worked extremely well. The caravan leader, who was popular with the PCs fortunately, was abducted by a demon shortly after the campaign opened, after the first battle actually, and the PCs first took over leading the caravan and then went hunting for him.

Generally, for the prison starts, I don't tell the players that they're starting in prison. It's not a prison-break campaign, just a meeting. The best meeting I managed the PCs were strangers who had traveled together on a ship, didn't know each other, and had just arrived in a new country. Seeing some armored thugs assault a lone man, they leapt to his aid and were then arrested for aiding a terrorist. Learning that they were going to be executed, they escaped and then they proceeded on their own initiative, caught between the two most powerful factions in the country. It was the best opening in regards to the group meshing that I ever ran. Other prison openings haven't been so remarkable though... I had a campaign that died in which each character was pronounced a heretic by the church and thrown in prison together. The escape happened but no one was really keyed into it and they sort of drifted off after that.

BobVosh
2008-09-22, 05:27 AM
The best meeting I managed the PCs were strangers who had traveled together on a ship, didn't know each other, and had just arrived in a new country. Seeing some armored thugs assault a lone man, they leapt to his aid and were then arrested for aiding a terrorist. Learning that they were going to be executed, they escaped and then they proceeded on their own initiative, caught between the two most powerful factions in the country. It was the best opening in regards to the group meshing that I ever ran.

That is pretty awesome, but damn near impossible to do. Espically 2x.

Reinboom
2008-09-22, 05:56 AM
I use "here's a goal, all of your characters are interested in it - so please, when you write your backstory, make this plausible, I will group you together from that." the most. My current campaign started with me asking my group to be interested in guarding a delivery for a king. Starting each player separate so -I- could learn where they were from, having them meet in an inn temporarily (Much more like a "Oh, hi.. ok *sleep*" event). Then on their travel through the city to get to the castle to answer the king's call for guardsmen, they all stopped to take down this barbaric figure who started to slaughter city guards.

Then from that point, keeping them together for pure "we need to be together in order to live" thing.

The more interesting events comes from adding PCs to the party.
With these players, i tend to try to spend at least an hour, if not longer, trying to develop out their character with them - finding their character motifs, defining a situation in which I need certain events to occur with their character (which, I normally provide options for which events, as to let it be more flexible for them), and slowly try to work out why they would be in a particular place.

From here, the joining is dependent on the information we worked out. The last PC to join, we worked it out that he was chasing a particular dragon in order to get a 'void crystal' out of its head. Purely curiosity and religious reasons as to why. The party just happened to just have a very long conversation with this dragon, and convinced the dragon to take flight and assault the capital of the kingdom towards the east. So, the new PC started by tracking down this party he saw coming from where the dragon last rested.
It played out more like an encounter at first, the party happening to glance that something was following them, and the new PC being stealthy enough in idea and in stats to want to hide from being noticed, making a "Oh crap, somethings following us!" situation occur. This is worse since, the two NPCs the party feared the most at the time both have a very... stealthy/pick the party apart way about them. The first significant trait of one of those NPCs is "moves ridiculously fast". Which, the party themself suddenly pieced together falsely when they realized this thing that was trailing them was moving at nearly exactly the same speed as the NPC.
The party turned back, and set up a trap quickly to assault the new PC. Was about to all out attack, when they, fortunately, took note that something was off - and... made peace and rp from there.

I prefer these interesting collision types.

valadil
2008-09-22, 09:25 AM
I don't think that kind of handwave was actually what the OP meant.

No, it was an extreme, but true, example to show where this type of game can go wrong. If the characters know each other, let them really know each other. I'd even go so far as to pass around each other's backstories before game starts.

Saph
2008-09-22, 09:53 AM
If I want a high-speed entry where the players hit the ground running, I use the following canned setup:

"You're all adventurers. You met each other in the last town and decided to work together on a trial basis, and you're travelling to X because of Y." Then I go around and have everyone introduce their character and give a 15-second description.

I find this gives a good balance between starting from scratch and previously knowing each other. Everyone has some reason to trust each other, so you don't have the long set-up, but no-one knows too many specifics about the others either, so they don't trust them completely.

Which is exactly the position in real life - the players know a bit about each others' characters, but not everything. Hence it nicely matches everyone's actual attitudes. :)

- Saph

kamikasei
2008-09-22, 10:03 AM
I used a setup much like Saph's for my first RL game: "Okay guys, you've all signed on to help NPC X explore this ruin. How you got to the city where he hired you is your own business, there's no reason for any of you to have known each other before."

In PbP games I've mostly seen first-time-meeting openings. There was, let's see: mercenary work (united by employer), shipwrecked prisoners, called up by the prince of the land to carry out a mission, signed on to an expedition to Xen'drik, answered a "call to adventure" poster, signed on to a different expedition to Xen'drik, randomly all happened to witness a murder and get drawn in to events...

I guess the "no prior contact between the players, united by a patron for a specific mission to start with which may grow beyond that" opening is the most common. It certainly does the trick in my opinion, combining a reason to work together and a clear goal with an openness in inter-PC relations.

TheCountAlucard
2008-09-22, 10:17 AM
Well, my evil game had me telling the players to explain their characters to each other.

Kaihaku
2008-09-22, 08:05 PM
That is pretty awesome, but damn near impossible to do. Espically 2x.

You know, that might be why my campaign openings haven't gone well since then. I'm trying to get that to happen again and it just isn't working. :smallfrown:

I've also tried memory wipes twice and the results were a bit disappointing. Once the characters knew their pasts, the other time they were completely blank (trying to do a KOTOR thing where they discovered their backstory). Both times it just...eh...

Maybe I'll try something different...next time...

Prometheus
2008-09-22, 08:42 PM
Memory-wipes are great because it puts the power of the PCs backstory withing the domain of the DM, but it can be overdone. We had a gaming session with two or three characters that started with memory wipes and it was kind of awkward.

Shazzbaa
2008-09-23, 12:56 AM
In fact, watching the relationships between the PCs develop organically (as overused as that term is in regard to these, but whatever it works) can be extremely satisfying.

I just have to add that this is my favourite part of the game.

It somehow "feels wrong" for me to know the other characters ahead of time unless I know the other players well, because frankly, I haven't met the other characters before. The first session is the first time we'll interact, and I always look forward to that so much just for the joy of meeting everyone else and seeing how we click -- or don't, as the case may be.

I've had a couple of characters whom I planned to have a history with another PC -- I haven't gotten to play either, yet -- but in one case it was just "he's a friend of the family" so I knew his name even though I didn't know the PC well, so I might as well've not known him, and in the other case... I was never as excited about starting the game. I like seeing player relationships that are not remotely decided ahead of time, and I have a hard time determining that our characters were previously friends when I've never truly interacted with them before.

I won't knock the idea of PCs who come in with a history. It's really cool, and sounds neat, and I've seen it done well. I've just never been able to get excited when my own characters knows the others.

The idea that "you all meet in a bar and then SOMETHING HAPPENS that forces you to work together!" is a rarer thing surprises me. It works okay, as far as I've seen. :smalltongue: