Dark Champions
WizardStorm Think Group
running my wife solo for about a year. I have tried several group
campaigns, but the mentality of the characters doesn't work well in
groups. Has anyone else had this problem and can anyone offer
suggestions. The players that I play with, are tremendous role
players, so if their personality is that of a paraniod vigilante, they
will not even trust the other characters.
Jim
Atlanta, GA
P.S. The solo campaign with my wife has been wonderful and she
doesn't want any other players. I want to start a new group in the
same city.
ba...@sprynet.com
In Article<4lo4s9$2d...@mule1.mindspring.com>, <ws...@atl.mindspring.com>
writes:
> I am running a Dark Champions game, set in Hudson City. I have been
> running my wife solo for about a year. I have tried several group
> campaigns, but the mentality of the characters doesn't work well in
> groups. Has anyone else had this problem and can anyone offer
> suggestions. The players that I play with, are tremendous role
> players, so if their personality is that of a paraniod vigilante, they
> will not even trust the other characters.
For a permanent campaign, I can't help you, but for a multi-adventure
campaign that can be stretched quite a bit, how about overlapping problems,
leading to a problem bigger than anybody figured? For example, a criminal
organization has decided to create a killer germ and the cure, for world-wide
blackmail potential. Various cases leading to the source could be:
1) A biologist has been kidnapped. One of his loved ones is a good
friend of a DNPC of one of the characters, who is tracking him down.
2) There have been robberies of certain industrial chemicals,
connected with another one of the characters.
3) One of the characters is generally after the organization planning
this.
4) One of the characters is after an individual involved with the
plot, for unrelated reasons.
5) There have been human guinea pigs kidnapped to test the germ.
Connect one or more to one or more other characters.
6) Computers that track anomolies point to something strange
happening, involving yet another character.
Now, the characters start bumping into each other. If they are
paranoid, they will think that the others are part of the plot. The idea of
the campaign will to keep them trusting each other long enough to avoid being
made germ food.
Remember, it is EXTREMELY important, no matter how good the players
are at role-playing, that the PLAYERS do not know the connection between the
cases, or that there even IS a single connection. Giving each player's
instructions to them privately will make things even more fun.
Bart Lidofsky
Shawn Kester
>I am running a Dark Champions game, set in Hudson City. I have been
>running my wife solo for about a year. I have tried several group
>campaigns, but the mentality of the characters doesn't work well in
>groups. Has anyone else had this problem and can anyone offer
>suggestions. The players that I play with, are tremendous role
>players, so if their personality is that of a paraniod vigilante, they
>will not even trust the other characters.
>
Our GM had the same problem, so he asked us ever so nicely to start with
a group concept - ex special forces gone rogue. It was worked out
pretty good. Of course if the players are dead set on playing loners,
not much you can do.
Shawn
"I'm so far above normal people that they often mistake my divinity
for insanity." borrowed from Kun-chan.
"Then you must be the most divine person in existance" - Phil who
shares my cube.
Anne B. Nonie Rider
> I am running a Dark Champions game, set in Hudson City. I have been
> running my wife solo for about a year. I have tried several group
> campaigns, but the mentality of the characters doesn't work well in
> groups. Has anyone else had this problem and can anyone offer
> suggestions. The players that I play with, are tremendous role
> players, so if their personality is that of a paraniod vigilante, they
> will not even trust the other characters.
I make it clear to new players from the beginning that they
need to become responsible for getting along with the other
players, and helping everyone else have more fun, not less.
"Okay, you want to play a 1000-year-old vampire who
doesn't trust or like humans. The rest of the group
are humans. Is there some way you can run this character
that'll still make it fun and interesting for the rest,
or do we need to look for another idea?"
"Okay, you want to run a traitor who'll secretly
try to kill the other player characters. I don't
generally recommend that, especially for new players,
but if you want to, keep in mind that the traitor's
role in a comic book is to raise tensions and cause
a lot of emotional tangles, not slaughter the PCs
wholesale. Plan to either convert to their side or
die dramatically."
"Okay, I understand that this guy doesn't talk much,
but the other players are still feeling shut out.
How about communicating indirectly, like saying
`I stare out the window broodingly,' or `StormHand's
face tightens when you say that, but he doesn't
say anything."
And most of all, I never accept "But it's in CHARACTER!"
as an excuse for being an asshole. The players are
responsible for the characters they choose to play.
--Nonie
anthony m. vervoort
ws...@atl.mindspring.com (WizardStorm Think Group) writes:
>I am running a Dark Champions game, set in Hudson City. I have been
>running my wife solo for about a year. I have tried several group
>campaigns, but the mentality of the characters doesn't work well in
>groups. Has anyone else had this problem and can anyone offer
>suggestions. The players that I play with, are tremendous role
>players, so if their personality is that of a paraniod vigilante, they
>will not even trust the other characters.
I've encountered this problem quite a bit running games. The easiest thing
to do is get the players to make fairly compatible characters to begin with.
This may detract a bit from the Dark Champions mood, but there's no reason
the characters couldn't be members of a sociopathic street gang for justice,
rather than all being individualists.
However, if you don't mind running a lot of solo or small group games, it
can be convenient to keep the characters separate for the most part,
especially if it is hard for you to get your full gaming group together
for regular sessions. Characters could then continue their antisocial
behavior for the most part, joining forces with other characters when their
paths cross.
Of course, the classic way to bring together a diverse group of heroes is
to have the more powerful hero, villain, government agency, or alien species
grab the characters and force them to work together. This can provide a
framework for the campaign; for example, in the first episode, a secret
goverment agency kidnaps the characters and implants them with remote control
termination devices of some sort, then sends them on various jobs to fight
for justice and the shadowy goals of the agency. After a while, the characters
may come to trust each other and work well together to free themselves from
the control of this agency, especially once they begin to discover what the
true goals of the agency are . . .
If your players are bound and determined to make and play characters who do
not and refuse to learn to get along with the other characters, then there's
not much you can do, other than finding new players.
-anthony
http://www.antfarm.org/~falstaff
Theala Sildorian
In article <4lo4s9$2d...@mule1.mindspring.com>, ws...@atl.mindspring.com says...
>
>I am running a Dark Champions game, set in Hudson City. I have been
>running my wife solo for about a year. I have tried several group
>campaigns, but the mentality of the characters doesn't work well in
>groups. Has anyone else had this problem and can anyone offer
>suggestions. The players that I play with, are tremendous role
>players, so if their personality is that of a paraniod vigilante, they
>will not even trust the other characters.
>
This is a difficult kind of campaign to run in ANY setting--sort of along the
lines of an all evil campaign in AD&D.
There has to be some kind of trust, or running the game will be very difficult.
I would keep the game small--no more than four people to start. You're going
to have to do alot of camera switching, and that gets awkward with a big group.
You're also going to have to invent reasons for the characters to want to work
together. For example, one PC knows where the evil tong's hideout is--but
doen't speak Chinese, so he can't interrogate prisoners to find out where the
big man's hideout is. But another PC needs to find the tong so he can find his
dead partner's killer--and he speaks perfect Chinese. He just doesn't know
where to look.
The PCs may have to make an uneasy truce--must they must find resons to
cooperate or they'll trip each other up constantly.
M.Lindsay
> > running my wife solo for about a year. I have tried several group
> > campaigns, but the mentality of the characters doesn't work well in
> > groups. Has anyone else had this problem and can anyone offer
> > suggestions. The players that I play with, are tremendous role
> > players, so if their personality is that of a paraniod vigilante, they
> > will not even trust the other characters.
I shudder to conceive of an entire campaign with this type of
personality. I've GMed campaigns with just a few (as with you, great
role-players) of these sort of anti-social characters and it has been
HECK. It requires the most elaborate schemes and fiddling to "make" the
characters play nice together. More energy than I really want to burn. I
prefer campaigns where the players come into the game realizing that it is
a game and a group/social activity. They can have the most angst-filled
loner on the planet, but one hopes they leave the poor GM some loop hole
as to why they will actually cooperate with other characters.
Murray Lindsay
Artist and Illustrator
Box 22158, Bankers Hall,
Calgary, Alberta
T2P 4J5
mlin...@cadvision.com
Luke E. Thallmayer
In article <falstaffD...@netcom.com>,
>ws...@atl.mindspring.com (WizardStorm Think Group) writes:
>
>I am running a Dark Champions game, set in Hudson City. I have been
>running my wife solo for about a year. I have tried several group
>campaigns, but the mentality of the characters doesn't work well in
>groups. Has anyone else had this problem and can anyone offer
>suggestions. The players that I play with, are tremendous role
>players, so if their personality is that of a paraniod vigilante, they
>will not even trust the other characters.
Well, if the character will not trust anyone, then you'll have to
run them solo.
If you want to run them together and the characters have no reason
to trust one another, you'll have to either give them reasons to trust one
another or give them an enemy to big for them to handle alone.
To get them to trust one another, if the characters won't do it
without an in-character reason, then you could, say, have one captured by
some enemy and released by another. This may start a friendship of sorts
or a rivalry or nada.
You could work this in a couple of ways, instead of capture, a
character could be hardpressed and aided by another character. One character
could be investigating something that another character has already dug into.
If you give them an enemy too big to handle alone, you could work
up to having the characters get together. A small case uncovers a plot,
which leads to a run-in with one other character. Assuming the two join
forces, they could run into another pair who have teamed up following
another branch ofthe puzzle.
Unfortunately, some characters will not get along with others. If
you've got some of these, don't try to force them to become part of a group,
it won't work with the players getting out of character.
--
Luke E Thallmayer l...@eniac.seas.upenn.edu
FLGator
In article <falstaffD...@netcom.com>,
>ws...@atl.mindspring.com (WizardStorm Think Group) writes:
>
>I am running a Dark Champions game, set in Hudson City. I have been
>running my wife solo for about a year. I have tried several group
>campaigns, but the mentality of the characters doesn't work well in
>groups. Has anyone else had this problem and can anyone offer
>suggestions. The players that I play with, are tremendous role
>players, so if their personality is that of a paraniod vigilante, they
>will not even trust the other characters.
This kind of character unfortunately seems to pervade Dark Champs
campaigns. But there are plot means to make these characters stay together
and maybe even act as a team, beyond the Big Villain technique. Perhaps
the characters are forced to do missions for the government or they'll get
thrown in jail -- e.g. the Dirty Dozen. Perhaps some characters have
Dependencies fed by each others' powers, e.g. Cloak and Dagger (Marvel). A
romantic involvement with an NPC hero can keep a lone wolf in the fold
(sorry to mix metaphors), e.g. Wolverine/Jean Grey. There may be more but
you get the idea.
--
Another Thoughtful Posting Lovingly Crafted By SteveO.
"The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we CAN suppose." ‹ John Burton Sanderson Haldane
"This is truly a disturbing universe." ‹ Maggie Simpson