Tying characters together with their motivations

[JoyWriter]

Character group-cohesion is a tricky subject. Many GM's need it to keep track of events (especially if they like surrounding players with well drawn npcs), but how do you make it fit in fiction?

I have one method, which I will hopefully be testing out soon:

Every character has three "needs", goals they move towards, and two of them must be unbounded goals, goals that keep on going without a prescribed end (such as more ___ , or a need to preserve something, or even a need for a relationship). So we have driven characters, primed to explode in a million directions!

The next stage is that each player gifts another player's character with the ability to help them with their need. How this occurs should be sorted out between players, and you can expect a lot of swapping around. You do this twice, with each character linked to two others by a dependency.

Next you put all the names on a sheet of paper and draw the dependencies; little arrows leading from one character to another. It should become clear when following the lines that some PCs need others more than they need them, or have no direct link at all. You can solve this with the following mechanisms:

Common experience; this is a weak link that helps with characters only indirectly linked, it gives them something to talk about and ability to understand each other, but doesn't help the whole "I don't need you" issue.

Sympathy/protectiveness; this is a much bigger link, and can be made quite strong, for obvious reasons.

Family; like the two above, but with all kinds of extra issues, can be quite weak or strong depending on the character.

Love/Sex; would you like even more issues? This one is risky as it can backfire (if you have good "actor" RPers and the characters fall out) or be boring/stupid (if you have imature or rubbish actor RPers)! But it can be so worth it if your ready for it.


Now many people will think, "Yeah, I can do that anyway, why draw a map?". Maps are a classic way of keeping track of complex relationships, and can show you things you didn't notice before, like who is "downhill" from whom in terms of dependencies, and so who is likely to seem more powerful in the actual game. It also smoothes nicely into persistent relationships on the outside of the group, and you can see what adding new people does to the dynamics, such as providing alternative father figures or drug dealers or people to save. It also helps you to remember if you drop the campaign for two months or something, etc etc.

I also think this should be done before anything more than the most basic concept has been created, so that the stats of the character can be built with this in mind. Hopefully this should make it compatible with most systems.

So do you think this has merit, can you see it fitting in to your games? I built it for bronze age ego-heroism and ruthless cyberpunk/crime settings, but it seems to have a fair amount of transferability.

Also have I missed out any important links? I've excluded "banding together for safety" and other group making effects like that 'cause they don't really need a map! Plus they are more about external pressure, and this is about making the characters want to keep each other around.

[Ayyavazi]

I like this so much I may even incorporate it into my game as a hard mechanic. Maybe requiring a few trait/relationships between party members, or even using the needs thing wholesale and giving it its own dice. It could even be something "untouchable" so that no one could steal the resources like they can with vices and virtues.

This will require some thought. But its a great idea,

--Norm

[Daniel B]

I have thought about this issue a lot over the years.

Typically, the games I've run have used one of two methods: (1) the group cohesion is assumed, i.e. the characters just spontaneously start working together for no apparent in-game reason, or (2) I run the game in an illusionist GM style (.. I'm using the correct term, right?), where I weave the PC's stories together behind the scenes, aka "Hey! Fancy meeting you again!"

One of the good points of the second method is that the players still choose a path of their liking, but "magically" that path inevitably intersects with those of the other players, so while it's obvious there's some GM hinkering going on, the players feel that they're in control of the story line. This doesn't feel like an ideal solution to me.

As for your idea, I feel like it would suffer the same problem, just in a different domain. Instead of making map or event paths cross, you're giving the characters goals and making those "goal-paths" cross. This would irk me even more than solution (2) mentioned above, because the two ongoing goals are chosen during character creation and fixed for the game, so the players have no option to abandon the goals. If you do allow goal abandonment, it would take work to rebuild the chain link because the other character who was "supposed" to provide aid may or may not be able to aid with a given new goal.

Furthermore, maybe this doesn't matter (if, say, you envision characters in the game as just pawns), but I'm a bit worried that characters with specific, well-defined goals would feel too artificial, since most real-life people just "float".

These issues aside, I really do like the *principle* behind your idea. Linking the characters together by virtue of the nature of the characters themselves, not because "circumstances" (i.e. GM fudging) pushed them together. I think a system that could do this in a way that attracts the characters to each other, like a force of gravity, rather than linking them together with dependency chains would be ideal in my mind. (However, if you disagree, I won't pollute the thread by continuing with the topic here)

Dan

[JoyWriter]

Ok getting into the "unbounded goals", I don't consider them to be unchangeable, just not from within themselves. It's like a drug addict; seeking drugs will never in itself put him off drugs, but other events that happen as a consequence might. I can conceive of this as setting up some kind of transitional period, with "get clean" as the interim goal. I'd hope that this special circumstance setup would eventually lead to them getting invested in something else, not nessecerally anything bad, minimally with a new goal like "stay clean from all drugs despite temptation" which is again protracted and without internal resolution.

Now anything like this is obviously a big change in tone or direction of part of the campaign/chronicle, and is hopefully well within GM hands.

As to making goal paths cross, I think it is artificial, but so are characters! If you are choosing to create characters in a system like this, then you are saying something about people; that their personalties are built into their relationships with others, and a person outside of those relationships is a different person. It means that the characters are never considered in isolation, with incompatible backgrounds designed separately, but you try to have only as much overlap or effect in order to make cohesion work. Or more if you feel like it! The idea is that you can start with a very minimal "mercenary" linkage between people and buff it up to taste.

Now it might be I have misunderstood you, but I take goal paths crossing to refer to when the people come together; at the moment you start the adventure, the characters are compatible with each other, whether they know it or not. I don't mean that events can't pull them in different directions, but such events might cause you (as GM or player) to look back at the map and see what it will do to group cohesion, and if the camaraderie of recent shared experience is enough to keep the group moving coherently, or if they will branch off. Characters too may recognise threats to the group and move against them, like pushing out a romantic interest because it risks removing that other characters dependence on you, unbalancing your relationship. Now that is very much on the mercenary end, but it happens amongst teenage friends!

As to behind the scenes work on keeping the group together, one fun solution is the background synergy hike; you use what has been found out recently about the characters and add extra history that shows links, extra commonality to the two characters, up to and including "I am your father Luke"! If it's done via appropriately dramatic reveals (ie not to big or small), then the tension/release in terms of group cohesion can match up to the events with a sort of "thank goodness" that makes it easier to accept.

Also, and this is more advanced, you can have links that are nemesis-ish; "I stay around these guys to keep an eye on them", like a whole Roy/Belkar thing, or when powerful dudes worry about what other guys would do if they were "pissing in" instead of out.

It will always take work to weld these stories together, and my solution certainly doesn't resolve that; I hope instead that it makes the places where the work should be done more visible:

I wrote a theoretical bit about whether the GM should "force" player characters to get along, and in summary, I think that the integrity of player choice is damaged if they can never have their character leave the story and betray their friends, but that the GM should not be obliged to follow every action of the PCs, they should be able to leave the chronicle as active members, and the player could get a new different character. The thing that my system is supposed to do is highlight when this kind of thing could happen, so people can talk about it and how they want to play it, or simply recognise game changing events for what they are. We could talk about "GM responsibility for cohesion" if you want, but in case you don't I'll keep to the system.

One cool feature is that characters designed in this way always require a society around them, and so a lone PC is drawn to new groups, meaning that someone who buds off from the group will likely do it for a better group! (Or one that suits their changed needs) You can use this understanding to build a new group more suited to that PC, for running a different campaign in the same world. At the same time, the lack of the old member forms a hole that another character can fill, giving the player a chance to put in another one, perhaps who fills it in a very different way.

As to whether these passionate people are too unrealistic, they are based on me and my friends, and many people I know! But I drift too from time to time, and I suspect a different system could cover the same idea; if people drift they are generally "moving on the waves", and so the structure of how they respond to "hooks" in the classic adventure sense can be used to pull them in the same direction. You could also use the same system to have them act as inspiration to each other, with them staying around people who get them motivated into action. As for those drifters who are not affected or inspired by events, well I doubt they have many adventures, and an rpg based on them would be unusual! But a "motivational" system might be a little more like your gravity idea, what d'you reckon?

[chance.thirteen]

Do you foresee any difficulties integrating a new PC when you get a new player, or  have a character death/retiring/leaving and being replaced?

A long time ago the D6 Star Wars game started my friends on this topic with the requirement that any PC have a reason to have a working relationship with one other PC be it shared history or a ready made relationship about to happen.

Currently I still require this in some form, and i have the players discuss concepts and personalities and they go from there.

[JoyWriter]

Replacing I would find easy, but it might be more tricky to put in another player, although both change if characters gain more needs over the course of play:

When you replace a PC, you can just recreate the first procedure; finding the loose "needs" and giving him abilities appropriately, and latching onto their background to add common experience etc. The problem is that the new PC can be restricted in grounds for similarity; by that point the backgrounds of many of the characters will be quite fleshed, and you don't really want a long lost brother turning up! Unless of course one of the players has been thoughtful enough to mention that their character has a brother during player, although descriptions given will provide further restriction. So there isn't really the level playing field of gen-ing together.

Even if the new PC does fit into the old ones spot, they can do it in different ways, analogous to how defenders in D&D4e can do it in many differing ways. My idea is that a player will come with a one or two note character, and will find ways to match the needs given to him, similar to in Char gen. Also they will hopefully have a better idea of what is needed given the play they have had.

When it comes to the new PCs needs, that is often easier, as players will by that point likely have a number of skills, and so fitting to one of them shouldn't be too hard.

To be honest I can see this causing quite a few problems if people are used to separate gen, as they may dislike having to define their characters needs in ways that match other players skills, I only hope that with a group of 3-6 they will be able to find something without too much adaption.

When adding a new player, things might be harder, as I really wouldn't want to push the group dynamics I mentioned in the last post. Can you imagine coming to an RP session, everyone's friendly, and then you get into character and you just get undermined by the defenders of the cliche. Yeah that would be awesome....

So they need a way to get into the group, regardless of the frictions and changes that such a new member will inevitably cause. (And to be honest, if you have this much respect for character integrity, you're probably interested in that) One way to do that is to build up more needs over the campaign, but in a way that doesn't feel like a shopping list; "I have sworn to take down Portun, King of the Jeldin tribe", rather than "Kill king, find out fathers killer, find gem of ages, forgive self for treachery, ...". Depending on how it works, this can either lead to a growing alliance of common destiny or a troupe of psychologists and gurus following around the guy with the huge issues list!

Another way to do it is to provide the character as a sort of semi-replacement; if you find that one part of the group is disproportionately strong, then adding another character who can fulfil the same needs may work, although at that point you have to ask why a character group who know each other that well would chose an outsider over a friend. But if you do introduce a character who "competes" with an existing one in that way, check what it does to the dynamics of the group, does it split things up, leaving characters with less in common etc, or does it give one PC a lot more influence than before?

If you can't tell, this is me just trying to solve the usual problem of changing close nit groups using mental pictures of their relationship maps. I suspect that replacement is almost always easier than adding people, unless you have an "and freinds" way of doing it, so that the group always has links that go off towards the rest of society, allowing you to stick a person on the side in much the same way. The point is that the characters should need the new character, adding an extra one without this will undermine the whole business, or make them feel second class because unlike the others he is joined only by circumstance. My reflex is to slowly promote them from non-GM NPC, if I can't fit them in directly, from supporter to having his own quests and plans, but that is partly to lower NPC strain on me!

If you wanted to explore this problem directly, perhaps someone could make a game called "drummer wanted" about adding a musician to an existing band?