A lot of my players go for the untrusting, chaotic evil types that are generally disruptive to a smoothly functioning party. So when they start to pull this kind of crap on me, things generally start to go south for the party and the general geographical area rather quickly, forcing them into "together we live seperately we die" scenarios with alrming regularity until the collective lightbulb clicks on and play can resume normally again... after the latest catastophe is dealt with.
The hardest thing about running with Bastard Players (aside from getting thier attention away from random dick-waving contests) is setting a decent Adventure Hook to get at least two or three of the "important" classes interested and then gently guidung them down the path you want. Not neccecarily by brickwalling them when they go off on tangents, or offering seemingly unsurmountable odds if they go the "wrong" way, but generally by offering a nice fat reward for the storyline adventure. These rewards can take the form of Money, Items, extra XP or feats.. or just plain old survival. Find out what motivates them or thier character. Last campaign I ran, I straith-up asked each player what was the motivation for thier character to take up adventuring and proceeded to string carrots and swing plot-hammers like nobody's buisness until most of the kinks were ironed out and everybody was more interested in killing the bad guys than each other or trying to pick each other's pockets.
As for people trying to pull the "I'm the biggest badass in the party" card, I'll let them settle that any way they want. They can sling insults at each other all night, or we can get down and dirty in a PC-on-PC fight. Or they can run into my favorite clan of PC-killing Ogres and Hill Giants, and join the Club. (When a club-wielding Ogre, Giant, or apropriately large critter whacks a PC with thier beatstick of choice I advise said player that they have "Joined the Club" and proceed to roll damage.)
I have an anecdotal, slightly interesting take on this:
In our current game, we have 2 good aligned clerics, a good aligned paladin, and my character. My character is a shadowy rogue with a rather complex backstory which I thought would be cool. He is also somewhat of a loner, or at least is reluctant to share his history and motivations, which is pretty much the same thing.
Turns out though, mine's the only character with such an extended backstory.
Which means that, in order to try and fit my backstory into the game, my character tends to have a lot of solo stuff shoved at him by our very accommodating DM. Most of the time this is dealt with away from meat-space, but sometimes it crosses over (inevitably).
This leads to me really worrying about the other guys getting annoyed with my character twisting the adventure into the 'Fayne Backstory Show'.
And I don't even like sneaky games, or Machiavellian characters, or hogging the spotlight. So I'm constantly trying to come up with reasons to not deal with my stuff at the table, and get it into mail-space instead.
LOL - anyway, I feel your pain. My experience has shown that loner characters can get sidelined by their desire to not be considered part of the group. If you have a whole bunch of people like that and you want them to be more cohesive, then this might help:
Give the characters secrets. Preferably secrets that they want to keep, so secrets with the promise of a reward for keeping it that way (just a promise though at the moment). Then, engineer circumstances that if they want to keep the secret a secret, they have to do something boring, that takes them away from the action. Tell the player to sit out for a bit. Repeat for all the other characters.
When they realise that they are taking it in turns to get the DMs attention, and the rest of the time they are sitting around twiddling their thumbs, they'll soon come back to being a group.
And here is the kicker: you make sure you get them just as this realisation is sinking in (so they don't think about quitting your game), and you reveal a hitherto unknown aspect of their individual secrets; in that they are all connected to a larger truth, and that the promised reward is actually for all of them as long as they work together to accomplish something that benefits the common good. Then you may end up with a team that you like...
As an example, the wizard is taken aside by the leader of some black academy and told that he is their scion and will inherit great reward when the moons align (as will the academy), but must keep the existence of the academy secret until this point or he will lose it all.
The rogue is contacted by the guildmaster and told of a gem that only the PC can get because it is mythically linked to some aspect of the rogue's backstory (or PrC, or something else) and if he managed to recover it then the guild will pay handsomely for it's return (more than it's worth). But the recovery must be done at a certain time (insert mythical link reason here) or the gem will crumble.
The Fighter is told of a certain sword only the worthy wielder (ie: him) can reclaim, and even then only when the tomb of previous owner is accessible.
Etc etc. Then after they've wandered off trying to get this stuff, or preparing to get this stuff, bring it back all together with a simple 'oh, I was lying - this person actually wants to see you' or something less likely to get the speaker killed, and introduce a sponsor who wants the characters to do something good, and then they get these rewards. But they are linked. So any one guy going off by themselves ends up getting nothing. Emphasise the reason that these rewards are so powerful is because they're are cooperative in nature and that should make it clear in game how they should act.
For extra meanness, try making the sponsor a BBEG, who will take all the characters new-found stuff off them just before they get the reward. After that, the reward may not work anyway, depending on their actions. If that doesn't bind them together, I don't think anything will.
It's all really an example to show them in metagaming terms how an adventuring group 'works' under 'standard' conventions.
Comments welcome - I'm very aware that this is (a) a lot of work, (b) railroading in a fairly major way (but only if they fall for it), and (c) not explained in detail. But I hoping the idea is coming across ok..?
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I ran a campaign where the party was evil. After only a little while, they complained to me that the whole world seemed to be against them. I explained:
GOOD: Helps Good, Destroys Evil.
NEUTRAL: Helps/Destroys/Ignores Good/Evil.
EVIL: Destroys Good, Destroys Evil It Can't Subjugate.When you play evil, there's more things lined up against you. So, yeah, you're going to be running the gauntlet a lot more.
Interestingly, my players stopped playing evil characters after that.
Loner/Brooder: Usually has something in their past that keeps them from trusting others and/or that they're brooding over. RESOLVE THAT ISSUE! Let Wolverine nail Jean Grey, have Eilistraee's NPC Good Group destroy Menzoberranzan and bring drow to the surface in a major public relations campaign so not every Mickey Mouse farmer goes screaming for Martha to get his pitchfork when Drizzle comes waltzing along, have God dispatch a batallion of angels commanded by the Arch-Angel Michael to wipe the floors of Hell with Lucifer ("I did this once, I'll do again, and again until Eternity ends, Satan!") thus freeing Spawn's soul from condemnation.
The more players choose this archetype, the earlier you should resolve it. Hey, take care of it by 3rd level if you have to. Then, in character, they've no reason to be brooding/loner!
PC: "I'm a loner. I'm not going to help the group!"
DM: "Why are you a loner again?"
PC: "Because my wife betrayed me by seducing my brother, killing him, and then killing herself."
DM: "But last session you learned that a wizard, bitter over losing to you at hop-scotch in the 2nd grade, killed your wife and brother, polymorphed himself into your wife and cast an illusion of "her" having carnal relations with your brother. You tracked this wizard down, and avenged your wife's and brother's death in a bloody, public display of retribution. So, it turned out that your wife had been faithful all along."
PC: "Oh, yeah, guess I'll help this group that helped figure that all out."
Yes.
This is a very good point. Helping playes to see that character stories can develop and lead toward a character change - is true character development. Once done, work with your player to develop new character goals more in-step with the fabric of your campaign.
This leads to me really worrying about the other guys getting annoyed with my character twisting the adventure into the 'Fayne Backstory Show'.
In my case, I shamelessly declare my table is a Thespiocracy, and all players are encouraged to have equally rich backgrounds, goals, and problems of their own, mainly because players with the most complelling roleplay tend to get extra spotlight.
Heh, but now sharing anecdotes, at my table what we're up to right now is forcing the spotlight on our shyer player as a "remedial crash course" of sorts. Basically, we're focusing on his background and issues regardless of whether he likes it or not lol, also we're having him lead the group for a change and our characters of stronger personality are finding reasons for staying quiet and leaving him the decision-making for now.
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16
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"Get Past It" has always seemed a cop out to me. When those words are invoked by anyone - a player, or their spouse, it usually means the story got wonky somehow, and the suspension of disbelief was shaken somehow. This is one of the effects that happen when meta-game decisions make a story change - I'm not defending anything with this comment, merely pointing out there is a relationship here, and tropes aside, many players would prefer the player not make a munchkined character in the first place (that suddenly compromised the story and affected the game's believability). Heind-sight though is 20/20.
Pax, I hear you, and of course nobody except the swordsage player wanted him to play a swordsage (we all said, "man, just do a fighter, for the love of pete"), but invariably stuff happens and you have to roll with it. Sometimes rolling with it means breaking suspension of disbelief if that's what it takes to prevent the game from falling apart entirely, and that was the beef with this guy... he was even more willing to break the game for everybody than have his own suspension of disbelief broken for 5 minutes. It was even more bewildering because normally, this guy is in the top 5 players I have played with, ever. Could the DM have worked in the new character better? Sure, but DMs are human too, and he was feeling the pressure to keep the game moving forward. "Get Past It" is something of a copout, but sometimes it's a necessary evil of the genre.