I have this love of strong, One Piece-esque bonds formed between characters. I also prefer that my adventuring party has a couple with one another even before they go adventuring.
When possible, I like characters, then, to have met already when I start a campaign. A lot of people don't like doing this, and I think it has to do with character development, but there are some characters that don't mesh well if they don't have an established relationship.
My discussion questions are thus:
Do you prefer for characters (yours or those which your players possess)to have prior relations with one another?
How close do your parties typically get? Does this closeness or lack thereof alter your gaming experience?
Have any of you actually had a game that functioned when the characters all hated one another's guts? (Mine only ended in bad blood between players irl, but I didn't tell them to hate eachother.)
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1. Prior relations as in family or friends? Yes. Romantic ties only if they want to. Usually for me developing a character and their relationships is something that happens during play and is not established beforehand.
2. Typically we develop strong friendship bonds. Like willing to die trying to save each other bonds. Not always though sometimes we play the reluctant companions and that can be fun in its own way.
3. Yes but the players took a lot of care to try and role play their way around PVP and all out disruption. Sometimes it resulted in really good role play opportunities. Other times one player would eventually give a look and the issue would be dropped in interest in keeping the game going smoothly.
1) I'm pretty indifferent about that. It's not necessary, but I have tried to set it up in the past (unfortunately, the campaign got cancelled). I generally prefer players to have a few "past relations" NPCs that I can use (as GM), and I devellop or destroy the relationship as is necessary (I recently had a dwarven player disowned by his mother for refusing to kill a helpless Goblin).
2) Only been playing TRPGS for about 7 months now, AND I've been moving around. No being a very gregarious person, I havent formed any stron friendships yet. I have gotten a bunch of interesting acquaintances though.
3) I have yet to see that happen. BUT I think it could be interesting in, let's say, an evil campaign, where it is expected. But this requires relatively mature players I believe.
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1. I don't mind it. It varies from character to character.
2. Depending on the group, our characters usually end up a tightly knit crew. Most often from saving each others lives in battle.
3. I had one game involving CE and CG characters that didn't care for each other. I didn't enjoy the antagonism and unspoken threat that existed. Maybe with a different group it would be alright.
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1. This can vary for me, if it fits with concept, and background story that is awesome.
2. Generally pretty good friends up to willing to sacrifice ourselves for one another. I even had a few characters get married to another character in the party.
3. I ran a game like this once where none of the characters knew each other before the first session. They had all convened at a remote location, some ancient ruins. They were all following clues about some vast treasure...once all the players arrived they were ambushed by the very organization that set them all up. Needless to say, a common enemy helped unite, but not make friends out of the party. The treasure had already been looted by the organization, and the campaign was on. Each week brought about quips, and short remarks back and forth in playful jest toward one another most of the time. All the players were friends before, and after the game ended. They said it was one of my best.