Cohesive Groups w/spiritual attributes

[Jaif]

Probably nothing new, but...

I'm sure we've all either done it or seen it: the GM gives the Player's Guide to the group and says "make you characters", then he runs the adventure.  It turns out the characters have a badly misaligned, uncohesive group.  I don't mean in the gamist sense: you may have 2 fighters, a wizard, a cleric, and a rouge, but none of them belong together.  Why is the cowardly money-grubber always putting himself in mortal danger? Why is the awful-good guy helping to pillage and desecrate a tomb?  Why are they all associating with the evil guy? And so on...

Anyway, in RoS, I've been using the spiritual attributes to deal with this (I use narrative in other systems), and I think it works well.  Basically, tell your players "all of you have a passion: hates bad guy at 1 or higher" or "all of you must take either loyalty: Arthur or drive: defend Britain".  

I like these spiritual attributes: they give me a little mechanical leverage for something I used to have to do by narrative solely.

-Jeff

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

I agree with you, and as I've said in other discussions many times, the entire paradigm of "Make your characters, show up, we'll play," is badly flawed for the vast majority of role-playing experiences.

I also suggest opening up the "shared Spiritual Attribute" approach to full-group discussion. Rather than dictating that they all take X or Y at whatever value, I'd suggest locating an area on the map, discussing whatever it might be like there or what's going on, and then discussing what sort of Spiritual Attributes come to people's minds. It may be that the characters do not end up with the same ones, but that what they do have are entirely compatible in terms of getting a great story underway.

Best,
Ron

[Bankuei]

Actually since I'm trying to run a oneshot of ROS, I basically dropped a quicksheet with the players, with a nice bit of conflict, background, and suggestions as to the spiritual backgrounds.  I'm just going to come up with a few viable characters in terms of other stats and let the players do the spiritual bit without having to jump through the crunchy bits for a oneshot.
This way, they get to play their characters, but don't have to plunk in half an hour to an hour of agonizing over stat choices for a oneshot.

Chris

[Lance D. Allen]

I think RoS makes a very good point by suggesting that the entire group get together for character creation, and make it a group activity to design their characters. It's a good idea for any game, but RoS is probably the first I've noticed that actually tells you that you should do it this way. The suggestion of using the rest of the session time, if there's not enough to actually begin playing, for mock-combats and run-throughs of various aspects of the game system is equally worthwhile. In games where character creation is mostly freeform (as opposed to class-based) This is a lot more vital. In class-based games, it's easy to simply say "We need a couple fighters, a rogue, a cleric, and a wizard, go." In RoS and other games, it's not quite so easy, especially when there aren't even really templates to go off of, as in, say,  Shadowrun ("We need a street sam, a decker, a mage, and a rigger, Go.").
Ahem. Basic Point: Group Creation is much better than Individual Creation for games of this sort, esp. for groups new to the game, or to playing together.

[Ron Edwards]

Hey Lance,

Group character creation (and sometimes "clan" or "group" creation) is explicitly recommended and sometimes required in Everway, Sorcerer, Tribe 8, Orkworld, InSpectres, Conspiracy X, and several other games.

Chris,

What you describe - make up PCs but let the players do the Spiritual Attributes - is exactly what the Driftwood guys did for their GAMA demos. It worked really well, notwithstanding that I got a dwarf and I dislike playing nonhumans in fantasy settings, especially dwarves.

Best,
Ron

[Bankuei]

That's very cool to hear that I'm thinking along the same lines as the demo guys.   Since it is a oneshot, I'm restricting everyone to humans, non-magic types from one clan.  I'll be sure to drop something in actual play after we give it a go.

Chris