Requring Character Connections at Chargen

[MisterBoring]

As an alternative to this, what do people think about games that require you to have no connections at the start of your characters story, i.e. your character is completely new to the region the game takes place in, and has never met any of the other PCs (or NPCs) before.

[shit-piss-love]

@MisterBoring That seems very reasonable to me if there are theme reasons for everyone to be coming in unattached.

[Faraday]

@MisterBoring said in Requring Character Connections at Chargen:

As an alternative to this, what do people think about games that require you to have no connections at the start of your characters story, i.e. your character is completely new to the region the game takes place in, and has never met any of the other PCs (or NPCs) before.

Unless there’s some special thematic reason why that would be necessary, it seems weirdly micro-manage-y to me. It would probably be a big turn-off even if I had no intention of coming in with connections to other PCs.

[icanbeyourmuse]

@MisterBoring I am not a fan of that either. I often join a game with/for a friend. We generally do the ‘We already know each other’ and often set up a close relationship. Being told ‘Nope! You guys can’t set up like that for our game’ would put me off any game. I don’t see the need to require relationships or to not have them to join a game.

If you are getting solo people who don’t get involved (I don’t mean people who complain about not being included plots and think they are being shunned) try opening a door for them to get involved. Some won’t. Like me. I’ll likely be ‘Take someone who is more invested than me. I would just do it on a whim or because it is time for your thing and you are still asking for people’ unless you specifically tell me this is an angle to get me involved. And some will take that door. Leave options for people to connect to NPCs and/or willing PCs.

To me, as long as you /try/ to keep a door open for solo people, even if they never take it, you’re being a good game runner. You are giving people options to do what they feel they want to do.

[Pavel]

My main thought process with any rule or policy like this is “why?”

If I can get a good reason why, even though the rule is off-putting to me, I can take some satisfaction in knowing it was actually considered rather than just some arbitrary thing that was decided.

[STD]

@Pavel

The only thing I can think of that makes sense would be if there was some kind of setting that required either people all know each other or know nothing about each other (someone else mentioned that possibility above).

If every character comes to the setting as an amnesiac, maybe? Or if everyone is supposed to be in the same family? Stuff like that.

[Pavel]

@STD Hey, I never said it had to make sense, just that it had to have some obvious thought behind it.

[Faraday]

So there was this one TV show where the main characters had each been (independently) kidnapped and then wake up in a strange town with no idea why. If you made a game like that, it would be a situation where, thematically, you might insist that nobody know each other for Plot Reasons.

You could also imagine a game based on a Firefly-like setting where everyone was crew on a small, independent ship. That might be a situation where, thematically, you might insist that everyone already knew each other at least a little bit.

But most games will be somewhere in-between, where there are some people who know each other and others who don’t. Trying to legislate that just seems weird to me.

[Cobalt]

So Anomaly TrekMUSH and Gamma One (its spiritual successor). Did something kinda like that? But not completely. You had to have a service record that showed what ships you had served on, when, and what position you held. It allowed people to pick up connections based on past ships.

Shattered does something similar, where they have a ‘hooks’ page. That lets people list what outposts they served at, but again allows people to be like ‘hey we both served at x,y,z maybe we know each other’. Without forcing it.

[Warma Sheen]

@Faraday said in Requring Character Connections at Chargen:

So there was this one TV show where the main characters had each been (independently) kidnapped and then wake up in a strange town with no idea why.

I absolutely loved that show. So bummed that it was only one season…

@Pavel said in Requring Character Connections at Chargen:

My main thought process with any rule or policy like this is “why?”

If I can get a good reason why, even though the rule is off-putting to me, I can take some satisfaction in knowing it was actually considered rather than just some arbitrary thing that was decided.

The idea was supposed to be that new players would have people they could go to for RP rather than start out not having any connections and wandering around unable to get hooked into RP and plots. If they already knew each other, they would have at least someone and something to talk about to get the RP ball rolling.

It didn’t work that way in practice, but that was the theory. They explained it often since a lot of people had the same questions you guys have.