Today I come to you with a MC and player conundrum.
Beware – it’s a long post with a twist.
Overall question is how to make PCs interact for a reason other than PCs are together because they are PCs?
I totally understand that PCs are together in Dungeon World because that’s the genre this game is about, a party of adventurers vs the threats of the dungeon and monsters.
In Urban Shadows there is this MC principle “Give everything a price, even friendship” plus US is also very political game with debts and factions etc. The genre the game is about (for my understanding) is politics and factions. I find it very super weird for a hunter, a wolf and a Fae to stick together just because they are PCs.
And I play with a group of individuals who think like me. We play together for some time, but we realized that sometimes there is a session where we don’t interact with another PC at all or very little like one short conversation and it started to bother us.
Each of us has his own political game, his own enemies and allies. Each one of us is (sometimes) playing his own campaign solo between him and MC.
When we do interact with one other it is short, usually debt exchange “I need you to do this for me” and then “I’ve done this for you, we are now square”.
Where have we gone wrong? Is it our PCs job to connect our political game or is it MCs duty to make our stuff connected?
Do we have wrong setup? should we discuss what is our political game about and have each player somehow attach himself to another player political game?
To give you some concrete examples.
My Vamp tries to play a local Hunters to assassinate Vamp clan leader so he can take his place.
A scholar is exchanging magical items left and right and tries to find a good husbands for his granddaughters.
A Veteran wants his revenge on Vamp clan leader as well, but so far he was working on stuff for Vamp or Scholar because we used debts we had on him.
Mostly the disconnect is between Vamp and Scholar – our political games don’t mix and interact in any way.
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Conclusion and question:
Why should PCs be working together? Why are they working together in your games?
Is it because they want to get debts on another PC or is it because PC used debt on anther PC to get them involved?
Is it just PCs stick together because they are PCs?
The City only looks big from the air. Down here it’s crowded. Everyone knows everyone and is in their business one way or another.
Look for PC-NPC-PC triangles. They don’t have to be antagonistic, but they should make links.
Do some searching on Crosses and Weaves as GM techniques. There are ways to make sessions feel connected even when PCs are not.
> Is it our PCs job to connect our political game or is it MCs duty to make our stuff connected?
It’s the MC’s job to take the NPCs and relate them together. This is how you get the PCs involved with one another. When PC1 talks to a contact who says they need to kill Tommy the Sprite, well the next chance you get when PC2 is asking to find the right magic to do a thing… well they learn that Tommy the Sprite is the only one who can offer it.
Like Toby Sennett said – look for, or create, triangles. If someone’s tangled with an NPC, entangle another PC.
Per your concrete example:
Vamp: using Hunters to kill Vamp leader
Scholar: exchanging items to finding husbands for granddaughters
Veteran: wants revenge on Vamp leader
Ok so here’s some ways to muck this all up:
a) The Hunters approach the scholar, looking for some particular advice on taking out the Vamp leader. The leader of these Hunters perfectly matches the ideal husband he’s looking for, and one of the granddaughters who is present for some reason, is giving him googly eyes. But the Scholar learns these guys are no match for the Vamp clan, and are probably gonna die.
b) The Hunters reach out to the Veteran, making sure it’s cool if they kill they Vamp leader. Everyone knows The Veteran, right? They know his grudges. If the Veteran says no, the Hunters refuse the job out of respect.
c) Maybe the Hunters just go out and fail. And the Vamp leader turns them, and learns who sent them. The Vamp is gonna need help from his friends.
d) Maybe the Vamp leader reaches out to the Scholar or even the Veteran. They learned of the plan against them and don’t want to die! They need help and would be willing to do anything…
Ralph Mazza i cannot find anything on Crosses and Weaves. Any advice?
Aaron Griffin something like this, perhaps? https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/16788/how-do-i-get-my-players-to-form-a-pc-party-without-just-forcing-them-to
rpg.stackexchange.com – How do I get my players to form a PC party without just forcing them to?
In my experience forcing the initial debts to be 2 for PC 1 for NPC helps a lot. Asking them questions on how the debt happened, why they know each other, etc helps tie the characters together.
In my case some characters are not tied directly at the start of the game. But they are always at one step of it.
I usually start the game with some move that force one or more of the characters to cooperate at least for a while. In my last game the oracle dream the death of the whole party, even only knowing directly two of the other characters, this forced the 4 o them to share at least one scene together.
Then I use NPCs to stir them into taking actions that put them on one side of a conflict. Not necessarily the same side (usually, the better they know each other the better it is to make them clash). I managed to do this without even the players knowing using PC-NPC-NPC-PC squares. Some pc is helping npc1 kill npc2 but doesn’t know yet how npc2 is, npc2 hires pc2 as body guard. When it is revealed that the target of npc1 is npc2 players tend to live it.
Aaron Griffin surprising difficult to find.
With some help I did come up with this actual play which touched on the issues of remaining engaged even when the party is split.
That part starts on page 2
indie-rpgs.com – [Sorcerer]Sorcerers in Casablanca – AP
In my campaign PCs do not stick together but we run short scenes (between 5 and 10 minutes) and if the scene is too long I switch spotlight between PCs.
I like to use session start moves to bring PCs together:
e.g. let’s say PCs are Mage, Tainted and Hunter
Mage’s conflict (Power): “Some ancient little statues have been found in the city, they are magical relics that even mortals can use!” – rolls 7 – He’s requested by the council to recover the relics before some mortal can use them.
Hunter’s conflict (Mortality): “A group of demon hunters is in the city” – snake eyes! – Your hunters contacts asked you to stole two statuettes from the vault of the Zambrotti, a famous italian notary family, they’re planning to use them to fight demonic influencers in the city. You’ve been caught by the police and the relics have been seized as evidence of the crime.
Tanted’s conflict (Night): “A coup! someone is planning to kill the vampire prince” – rolls 10 (information) – You know that the prince’s oldest child has been scraping up information for a while about demonic artifact. A member of the Zambrotti asked you to recover two old statuettes related to an ancient egyptian godness, Sekmeth. She owns you one. Maybe she’s planning to sell them to the prince child.
Let’s start first scene at police station, the hunter is under interrogatory!
One technique I use is to give one pc a problem that another pc is better equipped to handle. One of the first plotlines in my current game saw the dragon pc threatened by a draugr. The dragon didn’t have the ability to deal with h that threat, so they had to go to the hunter for muscle and the scholar for magic.