Wild idea for some bored but creative PC's! Team Party Build!

[RolePlay]

Have you ever, as a group of players, developed your characters into a group of characters with established relationships?

I was musing over the idea of building a party, and presenting the party as a full-team to a DM based on our availability. This would make for a quick and convenient game start, and would give the players an opportunity to discuss their roleplay style as a group prior to beginning an adventure. There's a bunch of other benefits (party chemisty, teamwork, party management).

Just acouple ideas:

- A band of barbarian raiders
- A folk hero and their (equally inexperienced) attache
- A band of evil thieves and/or wide-eyed travelling musicians...

[Skillkoil]

That is a great idea RolePlay. Something I do as a GM, especially online, is have my group meet 1 week before session 1. We get together and discuss what we expect from each other and from the game. We "break the ice" and go over character ideas, rules, our favorite parts of Roleplaying, etc..

For my latest campaign my group will be starting as an established group of mercenaries that have worked together for the past 6 months. They got together and make backstories together. In fact, two of the characters are dwarven clerics that are married to each other.

You don't always want your groups to be familiar but it works for certain campaigns or adventures. You just want to make sure that you don't share your entire backstories with each other. That way, you can still be surprised and surprise each other.

Best of luck in your group!

Happy Gaming!

[RolePlay]

Thanks for the encouragement!

Definitely keep in touch if you're ever building a roster for your next campaign!

[Skillkoil]

No problem! I will do that.

[Zacchaeus]

Any of the 5e adventures would work with a party like that - one where the characters already know one another. They might all come from the same town/village or may all have studied at the same place. Adventures like PotA positively encourage that since having all of the characters start as captured Drow is one of the options.

The only downside would be where the players want all sorts of different races. It can be difficult to fit in a Dragonborn, Half Ogre, Half Elf and a Tiefling all living in the same tiny village.

[LordEntrails]

Many times, though still a minority of the games I've played in. Always have a session 0, very important even if you're not coordinating characters.

[Skillkoil]

I think as far as story elements that you can counter just about anything to make a party work. The reason I would not want a group to have prior knowledge of each other would be for hooks and party development. When a group is just meeting each other in session 1 it is a great time to foster roleplay and group cohesion. Even subsequent sessions can involve learning something new about a person/people in the party. I would say PoTA and OoTA could still even be strangers as prisoners of the Drow. It all comes down to preference really. That and how the GM wants to bring you all together. I have one campaign where the party woke up in a room together and were all strangers(Each having the same last memory before they blacked out) and each session they become more and more a family.

The beauty of Roleplaying is the infinite combinations and possibilities that you all weave together into your group authored epic story.

[RolePlay]

Yeah, there would be a limitations in terms of party balance. but I think the potential for epic amounts of memorable, immersive and unique campaign outcomes.

I'd like to coordinate something like this.

[Trenloe]

Quite a few campaigns I've played in have spent time linking the PC's back-stories together and they've been quite fun.

The biggest issue you need to be aware of is when/if a player leaves the group for whatever reason - and it will happen unless you're incredibly lucky. You then have a number of things to consider - get a new player who is willing to integrate into the developed back-story, change the back-story for a new player, etc.. Sometimes it works OK and things move forwards again, sometimes it doesn't work too well and things don't move forwards. It's definitely a bridge to be crossed when it happens, but something to keep in mind in case it does.

[GavinRuneblade]

I do this often, and I have two players who do it when I don't or in other campaigns when their GM doesn't.

My last 3e Eberron game all the PCs were the only survivors of a Cyrran military unit, except for one who was a human child they rescued from some hobgoblin mercenaries and one of the PCs tricked the warforged (male aspected) into thinking that he was now the child's mother. Since the warforged had no idea how biology worked he believed it, and the child of course called him mom. The Warforged was actually my character, I wasn't DMing this one just playing in it.


I did a Witchfire game with a priest and a paladin in a romantic relationship, the paladin's niece travelling with them to keep her safe (family being hunted down and killed), and the other two PCs were the last family servants of the Paladin's noble house.

Player 1: How did you and Naz meet? (curious)
Player 2: In Hell (calmly)
Player 1: How did you get there? (surprised)
Player 2: Oh, the traditional way (still calmly)

My second-to-last campaign in my homebrew world for 4e had three players bringing in characters they had each played in past campaigns but never together. Their story was that the tiefling (prince of hell epic destiny/paragon path) had met the other two in hell which is where they ended up after they died (because they deserved it) and he got them out in return for them being his servants, but they ended up in the wrong plane of existence. Also, they don't really live up to their end of the agreement and don't serve him. Technically their race is "petitioner" rather than the mortal version of their previous race. But meh. The Tiefling and one of the two were husband and wife in real life and the third was a long-time friend of the family. So they had awesome dynamics at the table, and never excluded the other players. Each of them picked one other PC from outside their triad and mostly rp'd with that PC. Was really a fun group and added a lot to the game.

In my current campaign I pre-built 11 characters and wrote up all their backgrounds as short stories and the PCs each cast secret ballots for their first and second choices to figure out who was playing whom. All the ones no one is playing I run as NPCs. So whenever I kill a PC then there's already easy replacements available and worked into the story.