One thing that might help focus character and crew generation is a motive, a unifying purpose. If the group can agree on one, that can shade the rest of the process. Here are some possibilities.
Resisting Theft. All members are connected to an event or tradition in their neighborhood where the powerful take from the weak. This may be removing children from parents, unfairly jailing a target population, severely under-paying for work, and so on. The characters have formed a crew so they will gain enough power so they can protect themselves and those they care about, resisting the casual theft enforced by those who currently have power.
Going Legit. It is impossible for someone who is not connected to succeed in business and have a life of wealth and comfort. So, the objective is to use illegal means to amass power, then convert that power into legitimate enterprise, so you and those you care about CAN be connected enough to succeed in business and have a life of wealth and comfort.
Only the Best. Your crew is formed out of a vision of collecting those who have certain talents, and learn to work together to be professionals of the highest caliber. Everyone has a role to play, and the future vision is to take on ever-grander schemes and ever-tougher targets, proving skill and wits. Your crew will be famous for their audacity and reliability.
Devotion. The crew is an extension of a religious group, or is formed by zealots. The crew plans to carry out the objectives of the power they worship, relying on divination and oracles to aim their service. Perhaps they were formed by a portent, gathered by divine coincidence, or assembled for just one job (and worked together well.)
Revenge. A person or faction has wronged everyone in the crew. The crew will gain power and wealth so they can destroy their target. It costs coin to collect secret weaknesses, turn trusted agents, assume various personas, and manage the other methods for wreaking vengeance. This is beyond a killing spree or assassination; the target must be punished, then destroyed.
Once the objective is in place, then players can build related material into their character’s back story and resources. From the start, the group has an agreed-upon objective that guides decisions and activity. Can it change over time? Of course! Setting up a motive at the beginning, before making characters and crew, can help point everyone in the same direction and cut down on working at cross purposes.
Great stuff, as expected Andrew Shields. I’ll use this when guiding players’ crew creation in the future. In fact, I’ll probably also use it for other rpgs about scoundrel-type parties.
Adam Minnie Thanks! I found this splinter emerging with a crew when there were two of them to begin with, one was focused on heists and the other on empire, and that’s been a tension that persists through the crew’s exploits. Seems like an avoidable problem. =)
I mean, sure, characters wanting different things is fine. But when the players want different things that’s harder to navigate.
I was just talking to one of my players about that, in the sense that she wanted to have her starting bond to the group based on wanting to help them collect loot that she later intends to steal from the group. That’s a recipe for trouble down the road, but it’s also a classic motivation for scoundrels. So what is a better bonding strategy a GM can suggest that both maximizes cohesion and narrative believability and interest in characters’ personal arcs?
I wondered if shifting more to DramaSystem’s relational bonding could help. In that framework, the characters have a mutually beneficial external bond, they both want something that’s the same, and the likely need each other to achieve it. Internally however, the characters focus on emotional needs or desires that other party members can meet or refuse to meet. So rather than focus on the question “What does your PC have that my PC needs/wants?” instead the central question might be “Assuming we’re externally cooperative and interdependent, what is something my PC emotionally wants/needs that you either provide or refuse to provide?” This allows plenty of drama, but it also answers the question “Why don’t you just solve your tension by parting ways?” It is in fact, more interesting to watch long-time friends wrestle with emotional tension, because they have already invested heavily in each other to the point that working through the tension is worth more than just ending the relationship and being done with one another.
I don’t know, it’s just the start of an idea, but I’d love to know more GMs ideas on how to help players forge strong positive/cooperative bonds with fellow PCs while also being true to characters having interesting personal motivations, drama, and development that can accommodate some unpredictable behavior and variation.
Good thoughts. I feel like what I need from the players is to provide the commitment to something in common that is strong enough to override other concerns.
I’ve played games where I ended up in the default role (in other games) of trying to provide reasons for the characters to stick together when the players weren’t doing any of that creative interpretation. They were solo playing at the same table. Some people are cool with showing up to a game session and solo playing for 20-30 minutes of a 3 hour session, but that’s not what I want to play or run.
The advantage of a shared commitment like the driving purpose of the crew means there’s room to have those disagreements and such without just walking away, as you said.
Well put. “Solo playing at the same table” is a great way to phrase the phenomenon, along with “providing shared commitment to driving purpose.”
I could see this being useful, especially to allow the same group to start a new crew without it seeming like just a rehash of the same stuff. Currently my group is just about pulling off daring heists in order to make coin, but the tenor of the story would change completely if this were all actually about revenge on a specific target.
Of course, in the full rules there will be different crew types which will allow for a similar ability to start over. I still think there is value here, but I’m not sure if it’s a thing that needs to be added to the rules. That might just be my personal bias because my party tends to stay away from inter party conflict, so their groups don’t break down.
I do like using a method of providing game-related choices as a secret path to having groups make decisions about how they want to play.
If they choose one of these motives, then that’s the group communicating to me the KIND of adventures they want to have, the sort of story they expect to find satisfying.
Thinking about what they want their characters to do may be more effective than the GM flat-out asking them to describe the sort of game they want.
Blades in the Dark can support a number of different kinds of game, and it has as a main focus cutting right to the good stuff. For me, figuring out what you want to do as a group is part of that process.
That said, I would not by any means make it mandatory. Just another tool in the box. I think it would be especially helpful if you knew you had one story arc to play.
In order to increase the ties, I reckon that the crew motive should be tied to one of the Factions chosen be each player (for good or ill) – leave purposefully ephemeral at chargen and then play to see what happens with that connection.
If every character is tied to a different faction, how does that increase crew cohesion? My goal is better crew cohesion.
No, not character – the crew. step 8 in crew creation. Tie the crew motive into the faction
Sure, I could see that. Then it’s not just that the crew has decided to go in a direction, but they have NPC collaborators with expectations. =)
Exactly! Weaves the group into a more cohesive tangle of complications 😀