For the most part, my experiences at DMing and playing in D&D have resulted in a group of adventurers with no more cohesion than whatever threw them together in the first place. There's no signature style, no focus for the group beyond "we all met, get along, and like adventuring."
Don't get me wrong - the characters are usually very detailed, with marvellous backgrounds, and role-played extremely well. I tend to run very plot driven campaigns (one of the reasons I'm loving the "Shackled City" adventure path is that I can weave the characters stories into the plot and not worry at all about all the number crunching and monsters and maps, etc., not to mention the great plot that's already there)
But... now and then, I would have loved to play in a themed group, or DM for a themed group. Like, say, a Cleric of Olidamarra working with a Rogue/Temple Raider of Olidamarra, an Illusionist/Rogue/Arcane Trickster, and a Fighter/Invisible Blade. Or a group built around fire, or electricity, or somesuch. A nature/naturals group with a Druid, a Ranger, a Sorceror or Bard, and a Scout. That sort of thing.
I'm just curious if anyone has had this come up, and/or if anyone has some really interesting combinations of classes/prestige classes/themes that I can steal for use in my campaigns as NPC adventuring groups (hey, I can always play 'em that way.. and I really like having NPC adventurers around to sometimes stomp on the PC's and/or steal a little glory for themselves)...
Personally, I love the idea of all the characters having a common background.
For example:
- We're *all* 1st level clerics of whatever. Maybe a paladin thrown in.
- We're all members of a travelling group of minstrels or circus performers that is suddenly stranded and take up adventuring.
Can't say that it's ever happened for me, but it should!
DMs can certainly encourage this. Hook up your players well in advance of the first session and require them to come up with a shared history.
- rob
Definitely bugs me that in most campaigns I've played in, we're asking ourselves, "Why, again, are we travelling together?"
- We're all members of a travelling group of minstrels or circus performers that is suddenly stranded and take up adventuring.
That's a great idea...! And between the strongman, the snake charmer, the magician, the tightrope walker, and the lovely Larabelle Larksong and her lute, there are plenty of options for a well-rounded party.
Sadly, no party I've played in had such cohesion. In fact, I've often struggled to come up with reasons why my character should stick around with these freaks.
But other themes, other themes...
* Travelling merchants selling enchanted arms... The smith (who is, naturally, quite lethal with the blades she or he forges), the enchanter, and a fast-talking hawker to lure in customers with clever rhymes or clever lies. Stir in talented spouses, siblings, or children, as necessary.
* Similar to the aforementioned, a band of crusaders determined to liberate a holy land or relic.
* A noble or royal envoy (a princess about to be married, a noble escorting a peace offering to a neighboring nation/state/principality, et cetera)... The bodyguard(s), the advisor (religous or otherwise), the minstrel, the hired guide, and let's not forget her majesty or his lordship.
So many possibilities...!
Definitely bugs me that in most campaigns I've played in, we're asking ourselves, "Why, again, are we travelling together?"
Exactly. I love having rival groups of NPCs, but it seems like they're the only ones who ever really work together with some sort of legitimate working relationship.
The most memorable NPC group I ever threw at a group of PCs were memorable because of their theme: storms/lightning. They included a Half-Elf Druid/Skylord, a Conjurer/Bonded Summoner (air), a Paladin/Shining Blade of Hieroneous, and a Sorceror/Rogue/Arcane Trickster with a penchant for electricity. They were very memorable indeed - their backstory was that they'd prevented a strange twisted ritual that had unleashed all sorts of air and electic demons loose on the world, and were hunting down the ones that had slipped through the fiendishly charged air-planar gate before they destroyed it...
I run into these types of problems with my game as well.
I'm planning a couple of games that force the issue I'm not sure how my players will take it.
One is a Group of Thayans: Red Wizard, Thayan Knight, Slaver, Gladiator.
The other is a group of Bhaal cultists.
Pre-generated characters or Strict character background is the only way I see of doing this.
After running an evil campaign for over a year, I started a new campaign back in February or March. All of my players decided after being evil for so long that they wanted to play really good characters. I've got a monk of Rao who took the Vow of Poverty, a paladin of Heironeous trying to find his true purpose, a human sorcerer just following where her destiny seems to be taking her, and 3 others that are kind of in a state of flux... meaning they keep getting their characters killed and bringing in new ones. The most regular of these three is Padril the deformed elven ranger. He's not exactly good and not really evil. He has issues.
What unites them is a journey to the opposite end of the Flanaess where they have been told an important artifict called the destiny stone will have great significance for them and many others. Having planned out most of the adventures I was going to run ahead of time and a few alternates in case I needed them, I was able to use a mystical blind soothsayer to foretell certain events that waited for them and bad things that could happen should they not work together.
Little by little they are learning more of what they are supposed to be doing and why. It's very different for me since I've run the same kind of campaings others have described here. This was the first time I got the chance to go with a themed campaign and it's been very fun.
If you are interested in it, check out The Destiny Stone - Las Vegas, NV in Campaign Journals.
TO be fair, when discussing party cohesion in background, look at your personal group of friends. You all have common likes, like D&D, and some other things. However, it is possible, and in fact likely, you all come from very different backgrounds. It is not your different backgrounds that unite you, but your common likes.
As an example, my friends and I: One from a well off, married home. One from a military family, one from a lower middle class single parent home, one from a step family. All had different jobs and experiences among their families, some going through trauma, others not finding any. However, our common likes, D&D, video games, and movies, unite us and bring us together. We have likes we don't share, too.
As such, a D&D group is similar. The elf wizard, the halfing rogue, the human cleric, and the dwarf fighter come from very different places, from different backgrounds. They share a common like for treasure, adventure, and seeking knowledge. They share a love of justice or a way to collectively seek to make the world better.
Another way to look at it is as employees of a corporation. You may not associate with people you work with at home, but you may work with them very well, and be very productive with them. This would compel you to still work with them, even if they were not your friends.
I guess my long winded point is that it is not that strange to have groups this way. Often, groups of friends are very different in background but similar in goals and likes, or they may just work together well.
I guess my long winded point is that it is not that strange to have groups this way. Often, groups of friends are very different in background but similar in goals and likes, or they may just work together well.
True, true. But often "You like gold? No way...! I like gold!" just isn't a strong enough glue. In... come to think of it, in every campaign I've played in, there was at least one player who felt their character would not realistically continue on with the party after that first adventure, given the other characters' behaviour.
And I've almost exclusively played with my personal friends, not some random assortment of the DM's cousin's acquaintances. The rare random acquaintances turned out to be better attuned to my characters' inclinations than my friends did, strangely.
Hmm. On further thought, perhaps this lack of group cohesion is not so much a factor of adventuring groups, but of my particular group of friends... ;)
My current group actually has a theme, odd though it is. It sort of started out as a joke, but the players fleshed it out as they went along and now it's actually developed into a back history for the campaign.
The fighter and cleric are reformed 'Ladies-of-Negotiable-Virtue', the rogue had previously worked as their 'Manager' and the sorceror was a failed acolyte who had been living a servile life serving soup all night in the nearby church of the Redeemer when they all decided to leave the squallor of their lot and take to the road in search of action, adventure and really wild things.
This had led to an ongoing series of run-ins with affiliated guilds who haven't taken to kindly to the ugly precedent the heroes have set.
Regie
TO be fair, when discussing party cohesion in background, look at your personal group of friends. You all have common likes, like D&D, and some other things. However, it is possible, and in fact likely, you all come from very different backgrounds. It is not your different backgrounds that unite you, but your common likes.
Yes, but I wouldn't even go on a vacation for a week with most of my friends, let alone wander the world adventuring. ;)
The fighter and cleric are reformed 'Ladies-of-Negotiable-Virtue', the rogue had previously worked as their 'Manager' and the sorceror was a failed acolyte who had been living a servile life serving soup all night in the nearby church of the Redeemer when they all decided to leave the squallor of their lot and take to the road in search of action, adventure and really wild things.
That rocks, and is exactly what I mean. Another interesting group would be a group of escaped slaves...
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No offense intended, but it sounds like you all need to work on your gaming a bit. With my original adventuring group, we never had a problem figuring out why we were travelling together. Each player would come up with a detailed background for his character. Then it was the DMs job to fit everything together and make it work. We never needed a theme. Besides, diversity in a party helps to cover all the bases. And with our DM we needed to cover them.
No offense intended, but it sounds like you all need to work on your gaming a bit. With my original adventuring group, we never had a problem figuring out why we were travelling together. Each player would come up with a detailed background for his character. Then it was the DMs job to fit everything together and make it work. We never needed a theme. Besides, diversity in a party helps to cover all the bases. And with our DM we needed to cover them.
I'm not sure I'd throw "make all these guys work together" into the lap of the DM, actually. That doesn't seem fair at all - the poor guy has to already be the rest of the world, if the players can't come up with cohesion on their own... well, they're only responsible for themselves.
I'm happy for you that you had such luck with your gaming groups. My experience with the PCs of the groups I've played with is just different, that's all: everyone comes up with really interesting characters and character backgrounds, it just doesn't always jive into a group that "make sense" to be adventuring together.
In the Shackled City adventure path, for example, I've got:
A very greedy human wizard,
A virtuous (literally, 'Vow of Chastity') elf ranger,
A harsh and callous human druid,
A faithful fighter/cleric of Pelor with a hate-on of the undead,
A pretty cowardly halfling rogue,
and
A kind rogue/diviner.
A few of them fit together, but as a whole, they approach adventures with a very different mindset - the wizard is all about the reward, the cleric wants to do the right thing, the druid wonders if Cauldron isn't just too spoiled already and to throw in the towell, the elf is the moral conscience that often frustrates the others... why do they hang out? Well, they all game at my house. But in-story... sometimes it's a reach.
Players bring a character they really want to play to a table. The unifying theme for the group that is currently keeping them together is the magic curse I threw their way - so it's not like I can't do it - I just wondered (way back at the start of this thread) - if players had even coalesced on their own into a party with a nifty theme or backstory, and wanted to hear shared tales thereof.
Definitely bugs me that in most campaigns I've played in, we're asking ourselves, "Why, again, are we travelling together?"
Hey, it's better than, "Why, again, are we not KILLING each other??"
...we have a couple of PC groups that seem to be continually asking themselves this question.
One of the questions this raises is do party members need a common theme, mindset, or goal to succeed as a group?
The answer to this question really depends on so many factors its difficult to know where to begin. I have played in a game where a pair of thunder twins have ended up strangling each other and ruining the campaign even though they were supposedly on the same page. On the other hand I've also played in a party with such diverse backgrounds we never thought we'd get past the first asventure. Yet we did, and despite our diverse backgrounds we worked cohesively as a team mainly because the DM worked our diversity into the game.
Before I get told off by Steve or Bram though, I'll present a few ideas for themed parties.
1. The great grand parents of the party members were adventurers themselves, and were cursed by a demon lord. The party get together to break the curse they all share.
2. The party wake up in an abandoned laboratory to find that they have no memories of their former lives. They must work together to find out why this has been done to them, and by whom.
3. The party members have been trained from birth to protect the world from a growing menace long foretold in prophesy. They are an elite fighting force that all share the same magical tattoo upon their forearms.
As I mantioned above, my current players have a theme for their party, and with the prospect of a new player soon it is probable that they will be an old 'client' who is on the run from affiliated debt collectors.
However, I have also had parties that have absolutely no in game connection whatsoever, apart from wanting to adventure. They almost always end up forming a theme through their common adventures, becoming a unified group over time.
Both types of parties have worked well, and as DM I've not found either require more work on my part than the other.
The characters always end up with the strangest personal histories regardless!
Reggie
reading this made me think of something brilliant: a multiclass character with MPS(multiple personality syndrome), it explains why they trained in different classes!
Before I get told off by Steve or Bram though, I'll present a few ideas for themed parties.
Uh, oh. Is he talking about me? I better make nice. Well, Phil, those are great ideas. Well said! Seriously.
Here's one I used about 6 years that was a hoot. The theme of the campaign was to actually find a theme for the campaign. It was pretty cool. It doesn't work for every group, but with the right one that you can give a long leash to, it's great.
Basically, I always had a series of adventure leads for them and I brought them together by circumstance (yeah, I know... cliche). One of the players came to the aid of my wife's character on the road as two horse thieves were trying to take her horse. The two were going the same way and traveled there together. In the next town they met a down on his luck gambler that charmed his way into joining them in traveling to the Big City where they figured they could find whatever they were looking for.... fortune, fame, whatever. Think The Wizard of Oz.
Others came along and soon they had built up their own party and theme based on their adventuring decisions, circumstances, and all of the other common stuff that makes the game great. It was fun watching them build the campaign themselves.
reading this made me think of something brilliant: a multiclass character with MPS(multiple personality syndrome), it explains why they trained in different classes!
The problem I see is that the player will confuse themself trying to keep track of what each personality believes and knows. Also trying to remember what the dominant personality does not know would be a nightmare. I mean if you learn to be a fighter for one personality usually the dominant personality (who might be a mage say) would not know how to use the fighter feats. In fact I think this might drive your DM crazy as well...and eventually she will squash you like a bug just to alleviate the headache.
actually, it's a druid 4/fighter 1, NG/LE, they can use each other's features, because they are cognizant. The DM actually really likes it... and what is with all the "her" stuff... doesn't anyone EVER say "he" anymore?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
reading this made me think of something brilliant: a multiclass character with MPS(multiple personality syndrome), it explains why they trained in different classes!
I presented a submission idea to James, Jeremy and the gang in which an evil wizard lost a battle with some mind flayers and lost part of his mind. He was healed by a cleric, but the memory of who he was had vanished. As he struggled to come to terms with his condition he developed another personality, that of a good aligned fighter. Shortly thereafter he became the sherrif of a town. Months past and the town was attacked by some ogres. The ogres were stopped, but the sherrif suffered a blow to the head and his wizard personality returned. What transpired was a battle of wills between the two personalities that got the PCs involved. The staff got back to me and said that while they were into weird things my idea was just too weird for publication!
This sounds like an excellent idea, but unfortunatly many players are short sided and will see this as a way to "control" them rather than an opportunity for great team work and role playing. I would rather play a farmer that fit into the story and backgroud than a super freak that had to constanly justify his being there in the first place.
I presented a submission idea to James, Jeremy and the gang in which an evil wizard lost a battle with some mind flayers and lost part of his mind. He was healed by a cleric, but the memory of who he was had vanished. As he struggled to come to terms with his condition he developed another personality, that of a good aligned fighter. Shortly thereafter he became the sherrif of a town. Months past and the town was attacked by some ogres. The ogres were stopped, but the sherrif suffered a blow to the head and his wizard personality returned. What transpired was a battle of wills between the two personalities that got the PCs involved. The staff got back to me and said that while they were into weird things my idea was just too weird for publication!
It reminds me of "Tribe of One," in a way (an old 'Dark Sun' novel, which was really well done, says my vague highschool-era memory).
Similarly, with a group where attendance was iffy for a particular duo (a married couple with a kid who rarely could afford to spring for a sitter, and as such, took turns coming to gaming night), I slammed them into the same body, via magical curse, and depending on who could make it, the personality (and physical body) shifted to match. It was extra-fun because it was a Paladin Male and a Rogue Female - and the typical line was either, "What has that loose wench gotten me into this time?" or "Oh for crying out loud, did he give away all of the money again?"
Similarly, with a group where attendance was iffy for a particular duo (a married couple with a kid who rarely could afford to spring for a sitter, and as such, took turns coming to gaming night), I slammed them into the same body, via magical curse, and depending on who could make it, the personality (and physical body) shifted to match. It was extra-fun because it was a Paladin Male and a Rogue Female - and the typical line was either, "What has that loose wench gotten me into this time?" or "Oh for crying out loud, did he give away all of the money again?"
Obvously anyone should be able to play whatever character they would like subject to their DMs approval and if everyone is having a giood time great.
That said I think the idea of having different people playing some one with multiple personality disorder is probably the only way to get it to seem really authentic both from the point of view of the actual mental illness and maybe more importantly from teh view of the literary and media rendition of the condition.
From a literary and media perspective what makes the mental illness so interesting, in part at least, is the fact that some of the personalitys simply don't seem to be aware of the others and they can display such dramatically different beliefs and values as well as actions.
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I've always wanted to either run a campaign where the players had a theme to their characters (like an all-dwarf party, or nature-lovers, as posted elsewhere on this thread). I thought it would be easier to plan linked adventures that addressed that theme. That said, when I've played in games where the GM has restricted the character types available, it's felt a bit limiting. Since all the ones I can remember went bust fairly quickly (most of these cases were online games), I never found out if it was possible to make it work.
What I mostly wanted to say was, even if the characters have wildly differing motivations, that's a source for good role-playing opportunities. I think any group that adventures together can find a reason to stay together, even if they don't agree with each other. Even the fact that they survived their first adventure should create a bond between the members of the group, and hopefully respect for each other despite their backgrounds. Trying to think of a common example...okay, take the opening episodes of Voyager. Half of the characters were Starfleet, the other half were (Maqui?), all had their own motivations and personalities. They eventually developed respect for each other and were able to work together instead of against each other. An even better example is if you check out the campaign journal "Tales of Wyre" at enworld.com. I'm in the midst of reading it, and the high-level characters portrayed are highly different, but they find ways of getting past it. And the group is pretty extreme: a devout paladin with a history fighting fiends, a "pagan" druid, an at-best agnostic rogue-type character, and an alienist. How they resolve their sometimes extremely different viewpoints is very interesting.
What I'm interested in, is how my current group is going to gel. I'm playing in an Age of Worms campaign at playbyweb.com: Eight players, all totally different backgrounds. Everyone seems committed to finding a group cohesion, yet wanting to play their character to the full as well. It will be fun to see what happens. Wow, this was a rather long-winded reply, and I'm not really sure I said anything helpful. Sorry folks! :P
I actually participated in a campaign where everybody was actually related. We had almost every class and we were all elves and half-elves belonging to the same family whether by marriage or birth. We all had a blast at this because as family we had our little spats in the game, but the bond between each character remained strong.
I actually participated in a campaign where everybody was actually related. We had almost every class and we were all elves and half-elves belonging to the same family whether by marriage or birth. We all had a blast at this because as family we had our little spats in the game, but the bond between each character remained strong.
Here, finally, is a plausable reason for a motley band of adventurers to put up with each other!
I am currently DM'ing a group through the new Age of Worms AP, and the theme that my players came up with on their own was to model their characters after characters from Marvel. So, we have Angel, an aasimar favored soul with wings (via wing of the celestial feat), Pyro, a fire genasi evoker, Nightcrawler, a rogue shadow walker, Thing, a dwarven fighter mineralized warrior, Colossus, a goliath cleric, and Sabertooth, a barbarian feral human.
The group was formed by Angel, who assembled a contingent of like-minded, down on their luck vigilantes who were looking to clean up the decadence of Diamond Lake, and make a little money while doing it. They call themsevles the League.
I like that idea! I wonder how would you make Gambit?
Psion + Quarterstaff.
I'll just have to see to that then. I once made a character modeled after Wolverine. I had a blast playing him. I can't really remember all the basics, it's been a few years ago. I'll see if I can't find that old character sheet.
We had a good Dragon Slayer group, with people being the best at their role while mixing in some feats and prestige classes from the Draconomicon. The whole line-up was about having a few strong fighters geared to fight dragons and a support team to help them out.
We were working our way up in levels, but some changes to the group outside of the game made it hard to continue, and the best dragon-slayer we had was killed by a scorpian. Ugh.
There was a nice combo going with a Dragon Slayer who had two previous levels of Wizard, so for first level of Slayer could take the Wraithstrike spell. You could cast that as a swift action and then charge. 6th level feat Favored Power Attack (1 level of Ranger) and 9th level feat Leap Attack. Use a two-handed weapon and you can do insane damage.
The druid could Snake's Swiftness, and the Mage could benign transpose him with the heavily armored cleric so he could charge again the second round. On the first round we had one character that would lead the charge...their entire purpose was to be a decoy, drawing AoO before the two real fighters charged in.
Well I once had a party of characters who were all Long John Silver impersonators…ar…aar…ar
ASEO out
The party in my homebrew campaign I ran thru an intro adventure at 1st level that got them together. So far they've managed to kill off three characters and gotten a couple of replacements.
I had them finishing up their enlistment in the army at a frontier fort, and they started adventuring from there.
My original Shackled City Evil group featured a priest of Vecna and a Priest of Erythnul working together to weed out the heretics from their respective faiths; the rest of the party consisted mostly of various Evil half-breeds who all banded together after being rejected by the rest of the lower-class population in the city.
However, once all of the original characters died through the course of the campaign, the players' new characters all had no single common bond; as a result, characters began to die faster from lack of teamwork and a general sense of self-serving greed that ate away at the party with rapid acceleration...to the point that player-to-player interaction was beginning to suffer.
It didn't help that my players aren't all close as a single entity to begin with...more like three or four.
After 20 months, the Evil party has officially been ended and all 14 players are now generating a 100% new party...
...and they're Good.
M
In all seriousness, I once ran A 1-4, Scourage of the Slave Lords. The party were all ex-slaves, or family members who were looking for their kin who had been taken as slaves. It worked pretty well, but character death started to take its toll. All the primary characters died (or in some cases the players moved away) and eventually the characters who were left decided to just go home to their families.
ASEO out
I've always wanted to play in or DM for a group of "sneakies":
(in order of appearance depending on group size)
Rogue
Ranger
Monk
Ninja
Scout
all maxing Move Silently - Hide in Shadow
all light armor/no armor
all fair-to-good DEX (read all 14 above with at least on 18 above)
all fair INT (for those yummy skill points, well diversified among the group)
probably all along 1 alignment axis (like all lawful, group concensus)
the rest is personal ...
Adventure to 3rd level and then start multiclassing
I would propose the following ... but that heavily depends on stats and personal preferences of the players ...
Rogue-Sorcerer (or Wizard)
Ranger-Druid
Monk-Paladin
Ninja-Favored Soul
Scout-Warlock (this combo is killer with the right feats)
all eventually shoot for ShadowDancer (hide in plain sight) prestige class ASAP ... if it's awesome for one PC, imagine a party!
That would make for a really cool strategy-oriented group ...
The lack of heavy tanks is highly offset (in my opinion) by the battle options at the disposal of the group as a whole ...
Alas, this has never happened to me ...
I still dream of it at night ...
My brother is running my and my friend through a campaign in which me and my friend are brothers (both swashbucklers) on a quest to loot enough towns and raid enough villages to buy us a ship to become pirates (my friends becoming a dread pirate, but i'm becoming a duelist)
Its pretty neat because we work together and we've already wiped out a small village (looting every house). We're well on our way to our prestige classes, and my friend now has 5,000 gp at lvl 4. I'll update more as we get closer to becoming pirates.
A few years ago I ran a campaign where every PC was tied to a family-run trading company. Several PCs were family members; the others were friends of the family patriarch or owed him a debt. When the patriarch died, the PCs united to save the faltering trading company. (Once they did the game ended naturally. Since this took about a year and seemed very natural, we were happy to let the PCs "ride off into the sunset".)
I followed that up with a small (two PC party) campaign where the PCs were bounty hunter partners. One had a Charisma of 6 (but a powerful psion) and the other was a Bluff/Diplomacy machine (but only awesome in combat when he could get Sneak Attack), so they teamed up out of need. That was a fun game because having only 2 PCs meant that they could really grow and develop naturally. They even had a big fight at one point and split up, and I ran them in solo sessions for a few weeks until they made up.
I once ran a Wizard's Guild game in which all the PCs were different specialists (an evoker, a conjurer, a necromancer, and a transmuter iirc) working for the same guild. That was a lot of fun.
My current game, set in Eberron, has a disparate set of PCs who all have some tie to House Tharashk. By the time the house ran out of quests to send them on, they were pretty good friends. They recently bought a tower together!
-Amber S.
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I am currently running the Shackled City AP for three players whose characters are known as the "Rangers Three." They all sons of the same mother, but have different fathers. One is a Ranger/Rogue, one is a Ranger/Wizard, and the other is a Ranger/Cleric. They do not intend to multiclass further than this.
The players came up with this tie in on their own, and even have this little Barbershop Quartet like, Power Ranger-ish dance that they perform as the Rangers Three.
I'm a first-time DM (and, in fact, a first timer with respect to d20 generally) who in his hubris decided to have a homebrew campaign based entirely in the fictional world I have composed for a novel series I'm writing. Perhaps a bit too much to chew. But it's turning out pretty well, I think.
The PC group is themed. We've got 6 players, and they are all in a quasi-secret (though not so secret anymore) society called the Nailav ("silent ones"). Although they have a long backstory, their emphasis is on stealth and utter efficiency. It's a low-magic world (until the PCs hit level three, their group comprised all the people who could use anything resembling magic) that is becoming via plot events (that correspond to events in the novel) more "magical." The climax is going to come in a few more levels for the PCs, after which I may run the Shackled City campaign or start a new one in this world but kicked ahead a few centuries to achieve a setting more amenable to getting magic items, etc. (One will note that if only your little group does "magic," then you have to get your magic items from the group.)
So far it's been interesting; and the experience of doing an entire campaign world from scratch my first time to play DnD (and four of my PCs are totally new, just as I am; one has played perhaps part of one game; the other is experienced) has really helped me along, I think - a sort of sink-or-swim situation. And then there's my compulsion to have to create a map in Photoshop of every significant place I can that the PCs will visit. (Thanks a lot, Boredflak. Sheesh. Got me map-OCD.)
Right now, with the PCs feeling out the game a bit more and starting to roleplay better than at first, the theme is producing interesting dynamics. One character, our rogue (I kept the original classes since it's the first go) Aijath, just threw a grappling hook through the third story glass window of a place the party was seeking to infiltrate, of course alarming all the guards. Not only this, but he then proceeded to firebomb the place with nicely tossed Alchemist's Fires. Now this sort of behavior might (MIGHT) be a problem to control for non-themed campaigns; but in my setting, this level 3 guy is responsible to the level 15 or so boss of the organization. And the other players are too. He'll probably get court martialed for that bit of shenanigans, which really hacked off the other PCs, and perhaps be committed to indentured servitude until he pays off the damage (since there was no proof); or perhaps he will be executed.
Anyway, it's been extremely fun so far; and the players, diverse though they are in Class (we've got a sorcer, a ranger, a monk, a rogue, a barb, and a cleric) and in personality (different religions, and those who are Christians in the group have widely varying interpretations of its philosophical impact; different majors: biomedical engineering, history, philosophy/english, and two prep schoolers), have cohered nicely in game and out of game. I think the in-game cohesion has even helped with the latter. Of course, a theme like mine does, especially at low level, restrict roleplaying a bit (they have to ACT like lawful good or at worst lawful neutral, though they may actually be hypocrites to be exposed at a later time). Nevertheless, I'm thoroughly pleased.
We've got a campaign blog. Here's the addy, if any of y'all are interested.
<a href="http://nailavim.blogspot.com">http://nailavim.blogspot.com</a&g t;
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We often do themed mini-campaigns between each mayor campaign-arc, and these are always fun. The last we had was a group of orcs, raiding civilized lands and getting deep into trouble (orc-style...:) )and the other was a group of religious fanatics on an inquisition-like quest.
Both were great.
But besides these i hardly have problems getting the characters together and into the story. Most often the story itself suggests a "logic" way to get the characters involved.
But if you're just playing single adventures that are only loosly tied to another i can imagine some problems.
I ran several sessions for an all Ranger party. If anyone is interested, I can post the write-up in the sessions in the campaign journal area.
ASEO out
We're running a Ninja-style campaign in Rokugan right now. The characters escaped from prison with the help of the mysterious Kage, a 10th-level rogue, and have been on the run ever since. One character killed a couple of Crane patrols for their katanas, and another is a were-tiger. The nezumi is a scout, with an emphasis on ranged weapons. They were assigned an under-the-table deal from the Crab clan to get back an important document from Scorpion spies, and end up accepting a job offer from the Scorpion involving covert double-agent operations in Crab territories.
Ninja theme: very fun (I design the maps, it's about all I'm good for) ninja mansions.
I was in a group that played an all rogue party. I was a womanizing bastard rogue/cleric of Old... there was a gnome rogue who had an unhealthy obsession with locks, a mistress of a brothel, and a surly halfing (I don't remember the kind, but they can blink). We were mostly in Waterdeep trying to keep ourselves from getting arrested or killed. The gnome was trying to exact revenge from some prison guards, I was trying to start my own brothell (with Zombie + Gentel Repose + Permanancy employees!) and the halfling became a higher up in the guild! It was reall fun until player of the halfling became the DM and the DM made a new character, and I was killed the session after that after being betrayed!!!!
Well, that's why you should only allow ONE evil charater, and they shouldn't be able to be homosidal with the other players!!!
I am going to start DMing an all (or nearly all) rogue part based in Sharn. I think that is going to be a blast.
One of the better groups I've gamed with wound up with a great theme as a short cut. We decided semi spontaneously to start a group and so we each rolled up a character and assigned one guy to be DM.
Rather than buying equipment and rolling for cash, we just had them start the campaign as prisoners on a slave ship. The first session consisted of figuring out how to escape the slavers. Once that was accomplished, we wound up having to hire ourselves out to a group of NPCS (nice reversal there) to help scrape together some money so we could buy our own equipment and strike out on our own. It was hilarious doing a dungeon crawl as the "expendable resource" for the main party and then getting basically NONE of the loot!
The nice part of this was it gave each of us a lot of freedom in crafting our individual back stories, provided a solid reason for us all to be adventuring together, and it got the gaming session moving FAST!
In my current group, I had three complete newbies to the game, so a theme was needed. The original group were all from the same, small town. Our first adventure was with them as children (low abilities, little skills points, wizard had only 0 level spells, etc), and we branched out from there.
Having a central theme helps keep the fusion of the PC's, and also makes them goal oriented. Obviously this is not for everyone, but with as many new players I have taught in the last couple of years, it helps greatly.