Roleplaying Tips Weekly E-Zine Issue #392
Assembling The Party - Reconciling Diverse Backgrounds
Contents:
This Week's Tips Summarized
Assembling The Party - Reconciling Diverse Backgrounds
- Establish Common Ground Before PC Creation
- What Do All The PCs Have In Common?
- Create Character Cross-Hooks
- Provide A Mandatory Hook
- Deal With The Fluff Before The Crunch
- Hold A Conference Call
Readers' Tips Summarized
- Mapping Hamlet, Town, And City
- Use Sound As A Narration Tool
- Create A Character Gallery And Name Tags
Johnn Four's GM Guide Books
GM Gems
Systems-Neutral Tools for Every Game Master
A tome of game master inspiration filled with a wealth of
information and ideas to empower every aspect of your game.
Never run boring, vanilla games and never be caught flat-
footed. GM Gem includes:
- Alchemical Mishaps
- Empty Rooms Worth Describing
- Extraordinary Campsites
- Familiar Creatures with Unfamiliar Faces
- Short Encounters for Short Attention Spans
- Unique Taverns and Inns
- Unusual Holidays
- 100 Unique Treasures
GM Gems PDF at RPG Now
GM Gems Print at RPG Shop
Return to Contents
A Brief Word From Johnn
New Fantaseum Zine
The Cartographers' Guild, Plotstorming.com, and The Campaign
Builders' Guild have launched Fantaseum zine, with maps,
fiction, and more. I liked it a lot - the maps alone are
super content, and you can't beat free.
Be forewarned, it's a large PDF file (29 MB)
Thanks to Bryan Ray for the scoop.
New Article Up At The Site
I recently added a new article to the brimming articles
section of the website. "Make Your Life As GM Easier" by
Darren Blair covers a few classic tips to help generate new
ideas and organize your GMing.
5 Room Dungeons Volume 12 Now Available
The next volume of 5 Room Dungeons contest entries is now
ready for download. Featured in this volume:
- Stranger Than Fiction
by Uri Lifshitz
- Aboleth
by Andrew Anderson
- Dragon's Lair
by Aki Halme
- Lord and Killer
by Drackler
- Upshi Rises
by Cheka Man
Download (PDF 1 MB)
Previous 5 Room Dungeons
Have a gaming-full week!
Cheers,
Johnn Four,
johnn@roleplayingtips.com
Return to Contents
Lose The Eraser With Turn Watcher
Turn Watcher(tm) is an easy to use Initiative and Effect
Tracker for table-top RPG dungeon masters. It tracks spells
and other effects, alerting you when those effects expire,
automates temporary hit points and hit point boosts, tracks
PCs, NPCs and monsters easily during combat rounds, and
handles delayed and readied actions in a snap. Use it to
perform secret Spot and Listen checks and even Will saves on
your players without them being the wiser. Download your
copy today!
www.turnwatcher.com
Return to Contents
Assembling The Party - Reconciling Diverse Backgrounds
By Johnn Four
There are a few challenges when assembling a new party for a
campaign, and one of them is reconciling diverse
backgrounds. How do you explain a group of strangers
sticking together, especially if they are a bizarre zoo
party, which some game systems seem to encourage? Here are a
few tips, mostly centred around good, pre-campaign
organization, communication, and coordination.
1. Establish Common Ground Before PC Creation
As has been mentioned in past issues, you can get a lot of
success by knowing before character creation:
- What all the PCs have in common
- What one or more of their main goals are
- Their location and starting point
- Why the PCs will stay together through adversity
Do this by creating with the group their premise and
background before character creation. Once the players know
the reasons why the PCs are together and will stay together,
they can weave this into their character designs and
backgrounds to make the bonds even stronger.
Return to Contents
2. What Do All The PCs Have In Common?
A great technique is to give PCs several points in common.
These points can be party-wide, or just shared between
smaller groups of characters.
For example:
- All the PCs are employed by the city guard. One is a
guard, one is a scribe, one is a cleaner, one is the son of
the Captain of the Guard and just loafs around all day -
much to the anger of other guards.
- Two PCs got caught out in the open, in different places,
during that weird magical weather storm a couple years ago.
Ever since, their finger tips tingle at odd times. (Perhaps
you can tie the tingling into a nascent special ability,
such as danger sixth sense.)
- The same orc leader bullied several of the PCs' families
while the characters were growing up in the region. One PC's
father sought help from a local businessman and got his
protection. The orc stopped bothering the family, but the
father would often have to work late, and he would often
come home bruised and bloody.
- A PC and another PC's mother owe a large sum of money to
the same gangster. Perhaps a character motivation - minor
or major - is to pay back the gangster to secure the safety
of the PCs' families?
- A PC's favourite tavern song was actually penned by
another PC's father over 20 years ago when he quested for
the capture of an evil orc leader who never was caught.
During the quest, the father entered a strange cave and came
out with a large gem - and several amazing stories. The
father used the gem to start up a successful family
business.
- A PC's wealthy uncle lends money to the poor (at
exorbitant rates) when the evil merchant houses won't help
out. Any PC is welcome to borrow up to twice their starting
gold to buy extra equipment....
- Three of the PCs helped put out a building on fire started
by a strange storm two summers ago. One of them found a
rusty dagger that night, which he was able to clean up
nicely.
Create points in common by writing out a bullet list of
ideas like the one above. Do this yourself, or collaborate
with your players, based on your GMing and group playing
style (some players will want input, some won't).
Try to create open loops where the end of the story or
thread is not decided, and the status or situation carries
through to current day.
As you write, take elements of previous ideas and add them
into the current idea. I made the list above a little too
circular and tight, though sometimes that works well with a
group that doesn't like subtlety. For each PC, try to create
at least two overlaps with one or more other PCs.
Give each PC their background details in private,
preferably in writing. This creates the potential for
several aha! moments while gaming when players discover
their PCs have various things in common. I prefer a written
document because players' hearing and note-taking skills
vary, especially if you pass along the information in a
hurried hallway meeting just before game time.
Give each shared item a tangible "proof point" to ensure it
will eventually come up during play. For example, you can
trigger the tingling finger tips in the two PCs by passing
the group notes. When one PC mentions the effect, the other
should go aha! and chime in too. The dagger is another
example, and so are the relatives because each can factor
into one or more encounters and stir up discussion and
player questions. If you don't give each background point a
tangible proof point, then chances are less the association
will get revealed.
Also, try to use all background elements as potential plot
hooks or side-plot hooks. This gets you more value from your
planning time.
One or more PCs might reveal their entire background right
away. One time, a player started off the first session by
reading out all the background notes I gave him, which
triggered most of the other players to do them same. Sigh.
While it's disappointing if this happens, just let it go. At
least you've got plot hooks now.
Return to Contents
3. Create Character Cross-Hooks
Instead of doing all the work yourself, you might prefer
that the players figure out ways their PCs are linked
together. Ask them to do this during character creation, and
then check that each character has ties to at least one
other character.
While you want characters to have things in common, links
that motivate PCs to adventure together or follow your plot
hooks are even better. You might consider laying out a
couple of high level points that characters must eventually
hook up to, such as shared enmity for a villain, common
morals or alignments, or being at the same place at the same
time for encounter #1.
Types of cross-hooks:
- Background events
- Same race or culture
- Common profession, training, or mentor
- Family
- Relations (an extended family)
- Religion, beliefs, philosophy
- Character motivations, dreams, and goals
- Past relationships
- Friendship
- Character synergies
- Organizations (all serve the same church)
- A mix of multiple things (Joe and Don are brothers, Jill
is Joe's wife, Katie, met Jill through church, Harry and
Katie have been best friends since childhood)
Character synergies are a great type of cross-hook. Using
the rules, bending them, or creating new ones, gives the
characters bonuses and benefits when they work together.
For example, instead of certain Knowledge skills
overlapping, they become cumulative. If Brottor has 4 ranks
in history and Frostwolf has 3, given them 7 ranks combined
when making knowledge checks.
In the Player's Handbook II for D&D, parties can get
teamwork benefits for such things as camp routine, foe
hunting, team rush, and wall of steel - concepts you can
port to most game systems.
[Thanks to Ian Toltz for writing in with a similar tip. Ian
- I just ended up combining our tips into this one.]
Return to Contents
4. Provide A Mandatory Hook
Another way to reconcile PCs with divergent backgrounds is
to require they possess a certain hook you provide in
advance. This is just like creative writing in school where
the teacher supplies the subject ("What did you do last
summer?") and the whole class writes on that topic.
You can do the same thing:
- "You all have a military background."
- "You were all victimized in some way by Rufus The Great, a
wizard who is currently terrorizing the region with his
armies."
- "You have all committed a crime and are awaiting
sentencing. Let me know your crime and if you are guilty."
- "Each of you has the power to know the location and
emotions of the others if you are within 1 mile of each
other."
- "You are all the sons of nobles in the city. This gives
you certain privileges...and certain responsibilities."
Be sure to give players the hook before they start
formulating character ideas, else they might get
disappointed that their concept doesn't work any more or is
invalidated.
Many players are also a fierce about creating independent,
unique PCs, so make the common hook something non-
restrictive that allows them to craft what they want, within
reason.
Return to Contents
5. Deal With The Fluff Before The Crunch
Crunch is gamer jargon for rules, fluff is jargon for
description. Before you get into the crunch of rolling up
characters, have a discussion first about character
backgrounds, the nature of the game world, and some of the
campaign concepts.
Before each player makes their ninja-pirate-astronaut (half-
orc, half-dragon, of course), chat for awhile about the
gaming region, invite player questions about the world and
adventure, and discuss how and why the group is together
sharing an adventure.
Some groups might only last ten minutes before their
quivering hands clutch for dice and they start rolling up
PCs. To many players, discussing game world history is their
worst nightmare. Fair enough. In this case, get to the point
quick: who are your characters, what do they have in common,
and why are they about to risk their lives together? What's
the adventure set-up?
Return to Contents
6. Hold A Conference Call
Technology makes it within reach for many GMs to hold a
conference before the game starts. Consider this a
time-saving option if getting together in person is no
trivial thing, or if no one wants to waste time in campaign
set-up and your players want to start playing right away.
- Voice chat over the Internet
- Text chat over the Internet
- Many phone companies allow free or cheap one-time phone
conferencing
If you go this route, have an agenda ready so the call stays
productive. If you have questions for your players and
decisions for them to make, use an agenda to see it done.
Send the agenda around by e-mail first to prime the group.
For example, you might have a quick player survey to fill
out, and a short MSN or ICQ chat lets you get this done
before the game so you're ready, and you get a text log from
it for your records as a bonus.
Take good notes during the meeting. Consider recording the
call if done by voice - letting everyone know you are doing
so at the beginning - so you can fill out your notes
afterward.
Once the meeting is over and your notes are complete, send a
player-friendly version around. Make this version as brief
as possible, with key decisions and details highlighted or
called out. Busy players will skip long documentation, but
it's important that everyone sticks to the agreed-upon game
plan.
Invite feedback based on your notes, as well. People might
have a change of preference once the call is done. Then
notify people decisions have been locked down until the
first session. You want any re-factoring to take place as
soon as possible so you have as much time after lockdown to
do your session planning.
Return to Contents
Castles & Crusades: Engineering Dungeons
Engineering Dungeons brings the wearied Castle Keeper the
tools to entice the imagination, to create, wholesale, from
scratch, a varied array of dungeoneering experiences. You
will find the means to determine monsters, their treasures,
their lairs; trap creation; who, where, and why a dungeon
exists; and even flavorful aspects of the dungeon
environment, such as light, air condition, and odors.
Castles & Crusades: Engineering Dungeons at RPG Shop
Readers' Tips Of The Week:
Have some GM advice you'd like to share? E-mail it to johnn@roleplayingtips.com - thanks!
1. Mapping Hamlet, Town, And City
From: Bill Wire
- On a piece of paper, start with the sketch of a hamlet.
Think about why it's there, and how the people make their
living. The roads, if there even are any, will go around
trees, hills, and large rocks. There'll probably be a
village green or something, etc.
- Either keep using that paper, or a duplicate if you want
to keep history, and grow the hamlet into a town. Make it
bigger, but don't change a lot of the original portion.
Think about events in history - has it ever been sacked? If
so, destroy a few things.
- Now you've got a town, time to grow your map again into a
small city. Put in some walls, destroy parts of the town to
make way for public works like city hall, etc.
Straighten some of the roads that wandered around things
like trees and rocks. Leave the ones that wandered around
hills. Destroy buildings as needed to do this. Occasionally,
just leave the twisty way there and make a straight one too.
Build more buildings, and more and straighter roads.
Remember, people don't really like walking around the block
to get to the other side, so leave spaces and back yards in
your city at this stage.
- Time to crowd your city. Within the walls, start filling
in empty spaces with buildings and more buildings. What used
to be back yards and paths to "cut across" blocks become
alleyways between new buildings only feet from each other.
You should be thinking about the primary industries going on
in the city, but there should be other industries moving in
as well, so allow for them.
As the city grows, so will its commerce. If it's coastal,
add docks, warehouses, and "dive bars" along the waterfront.
Rip down things as needed to make room for them. If that
leaves a blind alley, so be it. ;)
- Now the city is too crowded. Build more city close to the
walls and gates outside. Destroy some random spots in the
city, build something new. Leave a few "ruins" in some of
the more crowded sections of town. People want their space,
and want protection, but they cannot have both.
Inside the walls is still more desirable than outside. Tear
down large swaths of "individual" buildings and construct
row-homes instead. This will result in alley after alley
that used to cut across the block instead ending at the back
of a building.
Wealthy merchants will likely take over a block here and
there. Clear the block and put up a wall and nice house.
They tend to congregate together for security to associate
with their peers - keep them clustered.
- Time to grow some more. The city planners decide to build
a new wall. New walls are expensive, so they're going to
build it as small as they can get away with while still
leaving a little room for expansion.
Draw a new city wall. Breach the old one in lots of places
as the stone will be scavenged for other construction
projects. You may even turn the old wall into a road. What
was previously poor land outside the walls along the main
roads is now expensive land. The poor are shunted away from
the main roads and build "shanty" town in between the main
gates.
Consider whether there is enough external threat to have the
city build a fortress somewhere. If there is a large enough
threat, a fortress might even exist prior to this point.
The rich will move out into the larger spaces. So, convert
some of their older, good places to live into multiple
middle class buildings, and a few of the closest to the
"rest of the city" into solid masses of buildings tacked
onto the original main house.
- Just keep growing in this manner until you get to the
city size you want. Keep in mind changes in government, the
"revitalization projects", "public works" such as fountains
and parks, and the acquisition of properties by the wealthy.
Erase and overwrite as you go. Don't be shy. Bear in mind
that old fortresses can be abandoned and new ones built
elsewhere, but it's expensive. More likely, the old fortress
will become a city guard barracks, prison, or other public
building.
- Also, somewhere along this time, the city will realize it
needs to do something about sanitation. The open channels in
the streets in the "old city" might have been OK when the
city was small, but out here, they're going to build sewers
to do things right while they have the chance. They might
even extend some of them through the old city if there's a
port, river, or other good way to get things "flowing out of
the city" off in that direction - or if there's a
particularly wealthy merchant still over there.
- Keep reusing the same paper (or copies). The sketch will
become more and more detailed. As it does, it will come to
the point when it's time to put it into digital mapping
software, such as Campaign Cartographer, just because it's
easier to edit there than to keep erasing paper.
I like to think out the whole life-cycle in broad terms
before I sit down in CC, so I know where the tangled mazes
of alleyways are, where the planned streets are, where the
"rich" live, and where things are not so pleasant. The
real/current roads are actually just a result of how the
city grew. Where did people need to travel between to do
their business, and what was the current, shortest route at
each stage of the cities life?
Mapping a large city is an incredible amount of work. But
when you're done, you know why any given part of the city
looks the way it does. In one city, Taris, I even went so
far as to make a coordinate system and index of every
business and place of note, listing the coordinates in the
index, and having a cross-reference to the page number of
the place description:
154.5x12 = Golden Eagle Inn pg:33
155x12 = Harls Blacksmithy pg:38
The place descriptions were listed alphabetically with noted
coordinates on the map.
You can always try to go straight for the end-run. I find
I'm much happier knowing why the city is laid out as it is,
and that you wind up with more "real" mazes of alley and
streets if you grew the city instead of just building it.
If you go for the end-run, start big and get smaller and
smaller. Which sections of the city are more open? Which are
more crowded? Draw mazes of streets, then fill in every nook
and cranny with a building to create your alleys and dead-
ends in the crowded areas of town. As you go, plan. how do
the people on this block make their living? Where do they
work? Where do they get their food? Where do they go on a
date?
Return to Contents
2. Use Sound As A Narration Tool
From: Andy
Watching the movie Zatoichi (2005) directed by Kitano
Takeshi, an idea for sound effects came to me. Since
Zatoichi is blind, there are various sequences during the
movie wherein the sounds he hears come together like music.
I thought it was an excellent narrational tool.
For some locations you could use the parts of a song as the
sounds and personality of the area.
- Rhythm suggests the pacing and stress level of the area -
a slow waltz or a quick march?
- Melody suggests the personality of the area - airy harp or
melancholy shamisen? Perhaps the area has more to it than
meets the eye? Maybe something is happening that demands all
of the attention?
- Solos can be used to suggest something subtle or something
that needs attention ASAP.
"The hoes of the peasants fell heavy into the dark soil. In
a shuffling pattern they beat out a steady chik-chak-chik-
chak, as a bird sang a throaty tune".
Mixed with suiting background music this could have a cool
effect.
Return to Contents
3. Create A Character Gallery And Name Tags
From: Loz Newman
I run scenarios at gaming conventions, which means some
constraints. Unknown players and rigid time-limits, for
example.
To avoid excessive loss of gaming time, I use pre-created
characters tailor-made for the scenario. (Bonus effect: the
GM can insert multiples hooks and inter-connections between
PC backgrounds, and set up potential rivalries, alliances,
and personality-driven surprises).
To help the players (who often don't know many of the other
people at the table) quickly latch onto who's playing whom,
I create an A4 gallery of the PCs' images, with their names
under each image.
Also, I print out this page, cut up the images, and put each
of them into one of those rectangular (54mm x 90mm) clear
plastic badge holders, so each player is physically labelled
with the image and name of the PC they are playing.
The gallery (left lying on the gaming table) becomes an
index to the group. This eliminates a lot of hindrances to
the game atmosphere, such as, "What's your character's name
again? What does he look like? What sort of armour is he
wearing?"
Also, the gallery images can contain visual clues to the
character's race, class, possessions, baseline facial
expression (and thus personality), etc.
That's a lot of advantages for the cost of two printed pages
and a few plastic badge holders.
Return to Contents
Johnn Four's GM Guide Books
In addition to writing and publishing this e-zine, I have
written several GM tips and advice books to inspire your
games and to make GMing easier and fun:
How to design, map, and GM fresh encounters for RPG's most
popular locales. Includes campaign and NPC advice as well,
plus several generators and tables
Advice and tips for designing compelling holidays that not
only expand your game world but provide endless natural
encounter, adventure, and campaign hooks.
Critically acclaimed and multiple award-winning guide to
crafting, roleplaying, and GMing three dimensional NPCs for
any game system and genre. This book will make a difference
to your GMing.