this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2025
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[–] Cataphract@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

back around late 90's early 00's I was pretty lucky to have a group of friends that all just hung around together. Talking like 8 or more of us and it always wound up that 3 of us would have a place together out in the sticks (it changed locations/roommates from year to year but we had a good long 5+ years of everyone being consistently together). We ended up playing basically any tabletop we could get our hands on or pirate (napster/limewire back then) and print off (we still ended up spending 100's a piece though on dice and official releases), we even ended up starting to make our own games that I still think about doing something with to this day. (all just context for how we could pull off some of what I'm about to say)

Getting EVERYONE together was rather difficult at times, people would come into stories and be quickly rotated out if they had to work or weren't available when we were wanting to continue running a story-line (multiple different DM's and storylines from different games going on in concert, still can't fathom how that all worked out looking back). So we all got pretty used to being fluid about it and no one really had any FOMO unless their character was low-level versus everyone else.

At that point it became apparent on my storyline that I was going to have to catch some people up so we started doing 1-on-1 DMing where I would spend a few hours running someone basically on a solo mission that I could tie into the rest of the story and give them something to catch up to everyone else. Sometimes we would do it before a bigger session and people showing up early could sit in or do cameo appearances to help out/etc. People are a lot more comfortable to ask questions and be involved with the story that way and translates well to the group play.

It ended up being a huge success and had some of my favorite interactions. Sometimes we would have a bunch of people over and some wanted to play and some wanted to listen to music and party so it just always felt natural and those involved really wanted to be there for it.

[–] Eyedust@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

You can get away with it while having some downtime in a village. The bard is making coin in the tavern and the barbarian is drinking in the same place, the priest visits the local chapel, the warlock looks to spend some coin on magic baubles, etc. This also increases the creativity in which you can give your players their next quest.

But once you're out adventuring on that quest, you're a goddamn party. If you don't want to be a party, then go home and play a single player game.

Edit: I have had good DMs separate the party themselves though, but we always spend it trying to find each other again.

Splitting the party is fine! Here's some great reasons why you might:

If you get in through the servants entrance, you're gonna have access to different stuff than if you get in through the front door.

You have the most wanted woman im the country and an anthropomorphized war crime in the party, and you've decided you need to ask a duchess about a thing.

The tunnel splits, and you're not about to allow that fucker to get behind you. Again.

I don't trust these other fuckers. I spy on the rest of the party.

You fucked up and only got one invitation. Hopefully they can open a back door somewhere.

He actually can't take the armor off. It's a whole thing. He can be the distraction.

The rest of the party moves 3x as fast as me and has stealth nonsense. But I have points in siege engineering, and resistance to fall damage. Shout when you need me.

[–] pyre@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

make checks until you fail. take 40d8 damage from a mysterious source. no one's around you to help unfortunately because you were dumb enough to separate from the party.

now make a better character or go home, your choice.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 0 points 2 weeks ago

Your character purchased and ate bad fish the night before, and you have uncontrollable gas, which quickly turns to greasy, putrid diarrhea. As the pub bouncer tosses you out the door for smelling like raw sewage, a micrometeorite hits you in the eye and lodges itself into your brain, disrupting your medula. As you lay there struggling to breate, you shake yourself awake. It would seem you fell asleep at the table and had an awful dream.

Sorry, what were you saying about not wanting to stick around?

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

My rule on this is very simple; if your character isn't a part of the group, they're not part of the story. That goes for lone wolves, people who betray the party, "evil" characters who work against the party's interests, etc. You make the choices you want to make, you do what seems right for your character, but the moment that means you're not a part of the group, you either figure out a good story for how we're going to fix that, or you hand me your character sheet. It's really that easy.

"But thats just what my character would do!"

OK, let's unpack that. If that's truly, genuinely the case, if there's no way your character could no work against the group or leave them at this point, then this is how your characters story ends. If that comes twenty sessions into a game, well, waking away rather than betray your morals is a pretty good story if you ask me. If it comes two sessions in then we need to figure out why you're not on the same page as everyone else.

But more often, the player simply thinks its the only possible way their character can act in this situation because they're not thinking creatively. People are complicated. Consistency is actually the bane of interesting characters. A good character is inconsistent for interesting reasons. "My character would never trust someone in this situation!" OK, but what if they did? Now we're left with the question of why, and figuring that out is surely going to be interesting.

There's also the other side of this coin, which is the responsibility on the GM's shoulders. Yes, your players owe it to each other to try to keep the story moving forward, but you also owe it to them to respect the reality their story takes place in. Don't run a gritty crime game and then expect your players to just automatically trust some NPC that turns up with no bona fides. You actually have to put the work into crafting scenarios where the players can have their characters react naturally and still drive the story. It's a bad GM who pisses their pants and cries because they created something that looks like an obvious trap (whether it is or not) and their players refused to walk into it.

[–] MagicShel@lemmy.zip 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

OK, but what if they did? Now we're left with the question of why, and figuring that out is surely going to be interesting.

"I ."

"You're about to, when you change your mind. What made you change your mind?"

It's a powerful tool. It can be overused, but it's good for bringing people into the right frame of mind.

Maybe something happens that's more urgent than the trust issue. Maybe they see a tattoo on another character that has meaning for you. Maybe they just realize it could be useful to be in the party for now. Whatever it is, they are solidifying the team while also taking more authorship of the story.

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 weeks ago

I don't like prescribing a characters actions to that degree, but I would certainly work with the player to try to help them come up with an alternate path.

If a player ultimately chooses to commit to a path that puts them at odds with the party, I'll respect that, but I'll make it clear to them that this is where that character's story ends.

[–] Crankenstein@lemmy.world 0 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Biggest pet peeve with players. This is why, during session 0, I make players pre-establish a reason that they not only go along with the party and the planned campaign but also a reason why they trust at least two other characters.

[–] burble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

And the person who didn't gets to default to being the loner outcast who doesn't talk much, easy

[–] Crankenstein@lemmy.world 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

How would they not? Session 0 we create characters together, anyone who doesn't follow the previously stated rules can leave my table.

The entire point is to prevent the creation of "rando loner who just sits in a corner and sulks".

[–] burble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

One of the campaigns I play in is more of a West Marches or Adventurer's League style with a rotating cast of players. There are... differening levels of effort.

[–] Crankenstein@lemmy.world 0 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Yea, I don't DM those types of games.

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[–] InputZero@lemmy.world 0 points 2 weeks ago

I've made it a hard rule, "Your characters are at least familiar with each other. They're not total strangers." It just makes everything so much easier.

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[–] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Alone and vulnerable, you are murdered by thieves. Make a new guy for the next game.

No fuck that. Just 'okay, but the narrator is looking at these assholes.'

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

I did this in the very first RPG I played. It was Star Wars and I was playing a smuggler (who thus had a ship). Obviously the GM intended my ship to be used to move the party around. Well, the jedi PC shows up wanting to board my ship as I'm getting ready to leave. I don't know this guy so obviously the first thing my character would do would be to say that and then turn the turrets on when this strange jedi tried to insist on joining me, followed by promptly flying off so he ended up needing to find another way to our adventure.

No idea why I was like that. The player was pretty much my best friend at the school, too, so it wasn't anything personal against him. I think I was just trying to hard to do what "my character would realistically do" instead of just playing a game.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Probably for the best. If you'd let him onboard it might have ended up like this story.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

That would have been more cool than whatever unmemorable shit actually happened in that campaign. Only other thing I remember is the GM offering me 3 capital ships if I bought him lunch one day and then promptly destroying two of them that same session, which I actually appreciate in hindsight because it contributed to seeing pay to win games as a waste of time and money. Either the shit "bought" in game can be lost that easily or it just breaks the game into a "just give me money and you, uh, win! That's the whole game!"

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[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Ngl, this has never been a problem for multiple sessions for me. As a player or DM.

As a player, I show up willing to play characters that will work with a group, even if they don't trust them. Trust isn't necessary to work together.

As a DM I remind all players of that fact before they roll one up. If they don't have an idea on how their character would manage that, I'll give them ideas.

Yeah, you'll run into players that just don't get that not every character has to have the same motivation to work with others, or just refuse to play different characters (instead, they try to play the same character with different names). But those are rare. And, so far, I've yet to run into a player that wouldn't take the "look, you don't have to keep playing with us, but give it a try my way and see how it goes, yeah?" talk and give it a fair try.

I've also never had a player quit because of the game not being engaging and fun.

[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

None of the kids you're talking to on this site have friends, much less play actual D&D, they probably just read the manuals and imagine running campaigns based on how they interact with other loners online.

As a game, it's a purely social experience that even the rules are far less important than the narratives and shared storytelling experience, most adults know this and it's why they play these kinds of games, not to "win" or be some champion of self-expression.

I am ranting about it because there is a wild disconnect between the kinds of people who use sites like this and reality. I don't think a lot of people who comment about things online have healthy, balanced lives. I mean, I know I don't, but I also know that many others have totally different kinds of issues that pulls them into the comment sections of sites like Lemmy or Reddit.

[–] InputZero@lemmy.world 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

look, you don't have to keep playing with us, but give it a try my way and see how it goes, yeah?

I've heard of players refusing to adjust their play to meet the party where they're at but I've never seen it happen. I've played with a player who did that intentionally, but their in real life stated goal was to ruin the game and ensure no one else had any fun. I don't play with that person anymore.

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[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 0 points 2 weeks ago

Lots of other good points already made, but I'll add my own two cents.

When I run a game, I always require players to make characters together. No "go off and make a character in isolation". That's just a recipe for disaster. You can have some ideas already in mind, but nothing is canon until the whole group agrees.

Second, everyone needs to have buy-in to whatever the hook is. If the scenario is "you're starting a courier business at the edge of civilization", there are lots of good options. Guy on the run from the law. Lady studying local wild life. Intelligent, local, wildlife. Don't play "guy who doesn't want to be here and is a total killjoy"

Third, it's better when characters have connections to each other. You can play the "we just met and we're forming a relationship!" arc, but like "what if we play ourselves in a fantasy world??" it has been done.

Honestly, everyone should read Fate's "Phase Trio" https://fate-srd.com/fate-core/phase-trio and the rest of character creation.

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 weeks ago

If the person playing is hellbent on being a lone wolf, they shouldn't have entered the game. Roleplaying a character who has trust issues but is willing to give the party a chance to convince them they're trustworthy is very reasonable, though - realistic, even.

There's a few ways I have approached this as a GM. I'll go from least to most effective (and, I feel, mature).

The first is to put a shared enemy in front of the party, so that even if the characters do split up, they're working towards the same goal. The character who has "no reason" to trust the party also has reason to recognize the effectiveness of sticking with allies in a world full of enemies. If the player wants them to go off on their own, fine, but as GM, the game stays with the party - oh, and have the player who left roll on a random injury table because they were outnumbered.

Second is to invoke the "Wolverine Approach". Wolverine in Marvel Comics always goes on and on about not being a team player, being a bad person, being a loner, etc. - and he certainly has had his fair share of solo adventures. At the same time, there was at least one month where nearly every major Marvel title had Wolverine in it - Avengers, West Coast Avengers, X-Men, the Defenders, Spider-Man, Marvel Team-Up, Alpha Flight, etc.. And because it was in the era where She-Hulk was part of the F4, he had a cameo there because of the WCA. Wolverine might claim to not be a team player, and he might be a pain in the rear end, but he's always there if there's a villain to be thwarted or a fight to be had. You have a right to have your character complain. Just stick in or near the party. I don't care if you sleep in a different hotel or a separate camp. Be there in the important scenes.

Third, "Take it or leave it". I'm not ashamed of myself for this one - I have told people, this is the game we're playing. if you want to play this game, I want to have you. If you don't want to play what we're playing under the terms we're all in agreement on, there's the door, don't let it hit you on the way out. It's effective, but I don't think it's the most mature method in my arsenal because of the all-or-nothing nature.

Fourth is an open and frank discussion. Explain that the concept of the game is cooperative. Make sure you get buyin from everyone, not just the loner. Express the expectation I have of both players and characters for the game in play. Paranoia, for instance, has a very different set of expectations and goals than Shadowrun or Spirit of the Century / Dresden / Fate. I have GMed for a loner character in a Fate game who never showed up with the other players, but because the system is so narratively driven, they were helpful by setting up Aspects with free tags because the character could realistically be "doing his own thing" and still contribute. So I've learned to be open and clear with my goals and intentions. I don't care if your character is going to be a pain - I care whether or not you as a player will contribute positively to everyone's experience in a fair way.

The more we are clear about goals and intentions, and the more we can apply nuance and understanding to the situation, the better our games will be.

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