So I'm having a bit of a challenge to unite my players. They tend to act, at least in my perspective, as lone wolves in a group. Hell one of them actually died in my last session, also was our first death. I have half of my players heavily interested in my main plot in our sandbox world, while the others have said "their character has no honest reason to care about what is going on."
My house rules are very open and accommodating to help allow players be whoever and whatever they want to be within reason, also if I can make it fit. So we use Pathfinder, but have plenty of homebrew, dnd 3.5, etc
We have:
- Dragonborn Barbarian/Witch Doctor ( Heavily Disinterested in main plot)
- Earth Genasi Samurai (Heavily Interested in main plot/personal backstory)
- Night Elf Rogue (Heavily Interested in main plot/personal backstory)
- Panda Barbarian (Neutral, also is the Samurai's Lord) and more or less Party leader
- DEAD CHARACTER (Interested when alive, currently making new character however player will be moving away in 3 weeks
I have managed to create a new bad guy NPC who will make an appearance hopefully in our next session, who has his fingers in every character's back story. He has ties with my main plot that players have mixed feelings on. Players have also just come across a now empty destroyed fortress they plan to make their home. (possibly a kingdom in the future)
I'm reaching out to hopefully get some advice on ways (encounters, plot hooks, whatever i can get) to get them to have their characters develop trust, friendship, loyalty, etc in each other. (disclosure, I'm fine if characters don't agree with one another however there is that and then there is just ignoring each other's presence.)
I could type out what story I have going on and any information people may need, however I tend to ramble and get in depth to try and paint an exact picture/scenario for someone to understand what is going on. (this is actually my 4th attempt in actually posting this, trying to make this short) lol
This is probably your fault. Sorry to tell you. But! There are several things I'll put out there for this and future campaigns:
Future:
* Have a session 0 where you help establish why your party cares. If they don't care, help make a campaign they will care about. You need your players to "buy in"
* This helps establish a cohesive group as you figure out restrictions and motivations and whatnot
* Cultivate your player's characters so you know what they're doing. Don't make them each have an objective or plot hook, because that means that they all are motivated by things that the others are not.
* Build the plot hook naturally so that they *want* to solve it.
* Find connections between the players that make sense and glue them together. In my case, i started with two groups of two. One was a pair of friends reuniting and looking for work in a new place. The other was a paladin dedicated to a cleric, guarding him on his various holy missions. Via the main plot and some coincidences I stuck in, I hooked the two groups together later on since their motivations were aligned and since they ended up helping eachother.
Current:
* I've had a group that I couldn't motivate before. They ended up owning a bar after they hijacked it and rested a lot making it difficult to build meaningful encounters. Well. I decided that the person they killed was part of an order.. one that cares quite deeply. So that order burnt down the entire town and mounted any resistance (including their allied NPC managing the bar) on stakes and left a note. You better believe that they were motivated to go kill the people who took their fun-time away.
* Similarly, invest the barbarian by having the mainplot care about *him* for a second. Have something regarding the main plot really screw with his character somehow, maiming.. stealing.. destroying his family.. etc.. Some event that he feels helpless against and needs to avenge. Certainly his cohorts who *do* care about the main plot will be useful in assisting him get his vengeance on the culprits.
I don't know if I would try to invest in all their backstories. Some of your players are already "bought in". I'd invest in the people who aren't "bought in", or I wouldn't mess with the backstories at all, and instead mess *with the characters themselves.*
Steal items, wreck their s@$& in a fight they can't win.. taking some gold and leaving them for dead in the middle of nowhere, embarass them in public, have them framed for something they'd never do.
To get your players to "buy in", you need to do more than screw with something they made up that has no bearing on their situation; you want to mess with the stuff they earned so they feel like they actually lost something. They'll be mildly upset with you, but they'll actually give a s~@% about your BBEG
I knew I wasn't fault free so rest assured I'm not hurt. And sadly at the start of my world building/first session I had three players. The Dragonborn barbarian / Night Elf Rogue / and a player no longer playing. We started under the agreement they were all close friends/allies with different backgrounds but managed to see each other as worth dying for. The Dragonborn has disregarded this completely. The Panda/Genasi are not a part of that group so I totally get it, just bewildered on what to do about the Dragonborn ignoring the past we as a group agreed to have.
And after recent educating I have learned several of my mistakes and acknowledge them. Currently trying my hardest to become a better DM for my players.
As for the back story thing, this is a bit of personal part I enjoy doing with the players, and vice versa. When I say 'back story' I have actually worked with the information they have given me and create future open quests tide to their already existing history.
And I may use your idea of what happened to the bar and do something similar with their newly acquired castle.
-So what should I do if a player has disregarded me saying "this NPC has helped you in the past" or actually doesn't care that the NPC has actually helped and saved them in real game time?
The Dragonborn has disregarded this completely. The Panda/Genasi are not a part of that group so I totally get it, just bewildered on what to do about the Dragonborn ignoring the past we as a group agreed to have.
As for the back story thing, this is a bit of personal part I enjoy doing with the players, and vice versa. When I say 'back story' I have actually worked with the information they have given me and create future open quests tide to their already existing history.
-So what should I do if a player has disregarded me saying "this NPC has helped you in the past" or actually doesn't care that the NPC has actually helped and saved them in real game time?
A) That's what I'm saying, rather than try to glue him to the group, get him to care about the quest by messing with his character somehow (BBEG's dudes rough him up or something.) Motivate him to do it "himself", he'll probably be interested in working with the others. I could be wrong and he finds it lame.. but then it's a player vs. campaign issue at that point.
B) I know, I just think he'll care more if you mess with his character and not something he didn't earn. If I have a blurb about how I like my uncle a lot and I have a bag of platinum on my person, one certainly motivates me more due to "metagame" reasons by comparison to the other that has no real effect. I'm implying that you can get inside his head and really motivate him.
C) I think the issue is that you want to build things unnaturally because you got stuck in a bad situation. Unfortunately if you want him to care, I think he needs to *see* the NPC help him to care, and think that the NPC may help him in the future. He may even need the NPC to benefit him directly somehow.
Aside: I wasn't trying to be a jerk; I just thought it was worth mentioning that unfortunately this is symptomatic of someone not "buying in", but showing up anyway. Try a couple things and see if you can figure out what makes him tick. It may be that he's a the type that just wants to dungeon crawl/roll dice and isn't going to care, in which case exciting battles is what he's there for, not the story/roleplay.
I will mention that I often reflect information I've gotten from TheAngryGM when it's not personal experience, so you may look up the personality types on one of those articles. Additionally, you may look at the Spike/Timmy/Johnny (etc) archtypes that Magic: The Gathering has articles on (Mark Rosewater) and consider where he falls. If he's a Timmy instead of a Melvin, he just wants to hit stuff with a sword. If he's a Johnny, he's really playing to see how mixing in a Monk/Swashbuckler level will make his guy interesting to play.
Best of luck!
Just my 2 cents: I have had a few players that had characters that "just didn't care" and would wander off doing their own thing in game. I eventually figured out that they usually just wanted attention.
I asked why they would make a character that didn't care about what was going on in the adventure they were playing in. Then I focused on the players that had bought in to the story. Usually the wayward player came around fast when they realized the couldn't derail the game to be the center of attention.
Yes one of my starting flaws was building the story fairly linear, however a lot of my flaws I've caught and worked to fix. My plot writing is a lot more open and I roll with the punches the best I can with what the players decide to do. I've watched Matthew Colville and Geek/Sundry for a majority of tips to aid me. I appreciate all of the input you've given me though =) I haven't taken any of this negatively, just constructively.
Yeah, it's sounding like this will just have to be my go-to regarding the dragonborn.
I mean I caught myself in our last session worrying if he was having fun/approving of how everything was going. In sense more focused on his fun/approval, rather than everyone else and even my own fun. (though I'm with Colville in 'I have fun if my players are having fun')
I don't think any of my players are actually this way. My dragonborn may not feel anything towards the main campaign, but he is interested in the world itself. Hell his character wants to fight a northern country to save the people simply because he sees the leader as an a@#@~#@. That's it. Like, that guy is an a%+%~%! to his country. He cares about this. But the main villain has a massive army, powerful ancient magic, has already killed a diety, and obviously planning to do more with his power. The dragonborn doesn't care in the slightest. I'm just dumb founded by what is driving him lol Tis' why it sounds like I just need another talk with him to help solve the issue.
NOW! Back to what my other issue is if you guys are sticking around and wanting to help =)
What are somethings I can create/use/put in my sessions to help characters build bonds? I felt giving them a location they can all work together on was a good step towards this. Any other ideas or things you guys have done/seen that could help with this?
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Whenever I start a new campaign, I make sure to give the players enough background to enable them to build characters who are tied to important elements of adventures. I then ask them to complete a short questionnaire that asks them questions about WHY their PC would go on such an adventure or what they would do in certain situations. If, at that point, they haven't built in a reason to care about the campaign I can pick it up before we start and work with the player to give the PC a reason to care.
As I say, I normally do this BEFORE the campaign, but there's no reason you can't give the players a similar questionnaire once you've started. Don't try to force a PC to care in a certain way, ask the players to find their own reason. That way you don't have to do all the work and the player will feel invested, involved, less railroaded, and like they have contributed. Everyone wins.
This is something that might work. I gave most of my characters low level cohorts. This was just a throw away idea I had one session. Most of the cohorts knew eachother. Two of them were teenagers and best friend. At the end of an adventure they were all that was left of a cult. The PCs had wiped out everyone else. The party ended up taking them in and caring for them and they have become apprentices of sorts.
Later on the group freed a bunch of dwarven slaves. The slaves pledged themselves to the group for 1 year as gratitude for saving them. Now the group works together to figure out what to do with them.
As Shaun Hocking mentioned, the best way is to have the players come up with the hooks.
Specifically, you can have them use the Relationship with Fellow Adventurers table in the Ultimate Campaign Character Background Generator for inspiration so that each PC has an already established connection with at least two other PCs before the campaign starts.