We start the new year with a new D&D 4e campaign. I spoke a little bit about this new D&D 4e clockwork campaign we were starting.
After having read the first chapter of the Dungeon Master Guide 2, Mouse Guard and having heard about several games where character generation is part of the shared game (i.e. you do it with all players around the table), I decided that we would try doing the same thing for that new campaign. So we decided to make the first session into a character/party generation session. We had it shortly before the holidays We spent some time on it and then we did a trial fight to test the PCs.
Thus I thought I would share the annotated version of this “party building template” I built for our campaign (a series of objectives, setting elements and questions to be answered as a group). I’ll also share some of the cool answers we got.
(Start template here)
Objectives of the Session:
- Create, with player input, a cohesive party
- Create an overarching mission for the party
- Create locales that have a special meaning for each PC
Notes: This was my road map for the preparatory sessions leading to the campaign. If you adopt a similar template this is where you write your expectation as a DM for the character/party generation session.
Highlights of the World
- Water poor
- Deep Wells (rare and guarded)
- Imported from other worlds ($$$)
- Ice mining from polar caps.
- Transported from open portals in Elemental Chaos.
- Drained from people.
- Surface world very harsh
- Most ‘civilization’ is into Airship “towns” or Mountain Cities.
- Some fortified outposts on the surface, built around strategic resources like Iron, Water/ice or equivalent material.
- There are no ‘kingdoms’ or ‘countries’ on this world, just companies, guilds and factions that have a vested interest in this world.
- Unless channeled through from the Elemental Chaos Magic (Arcane and Spirit) is too weak to be invoked without the help of clockwork machinery embedded in magic items, implements or the equivalent of the Wrist watch, an armoured clockwork catalyst.
- Most of the Airship borne factions and companies are Human-centric of vaguely Germanic origins.
- Airships fly because of Helium (lift), precise manufacturing (constructs) and Clockwork.
Notes: I don’t have a Wiki yet for my campaign’s setting so these notes were mostly mine, to present to players and use them as a reference during the upcoming steps of the session.
Names of PC:
- NarBeth the Waterfinder (Stef): Dwarven Druid, born on this world, in a dwarven colony established here over 100 years ago
- Magma (Franky): Earthsoul/Firesoul Genasi Swordmage, voluntarily exiled from the Elemental Chaos. “It’s all behind me”.
- Vorian (Mike): Githzerai Monk from the Zerthaldlun Monastary in the Elemental; Chaos. Fights the influence of Chaos on this world.
- Holy Clank (Yan): Warforged Fighter/Cleric Hybrid. “Squishy things are mysterious and must be understood”.
- Rod Stone (Math): Goliath Warden. Big and strong… and running from something.
- Eric was missing, he’ll likely play an Avenger. I’m pushing him to make some sort of ecological terrorist of a radical nature cult.
Notes: While the players were giving me their PC names they were also sharing their backstories so instead of stopping them, I noted the main idea and asked for an extra element in the next section (see below).
Party Cohesion
Each PC provides a 1-2 sentence story/background for his PC
- Holy Clank : Squishy things are mysterious. Very curious about out of ordinary phenomenon.
- NarBeth: A water Robin Hood. Finds freshwater wells for poor surface dwellers.
- Rod Stone: Wanderer, counts coups. Still searches for his role in the world. Has had high stress recently in his native cloud-top village.
- Vorian: Seeks to attain harmony of body, mind and soul. Emotions get the better of him in stressful situations but he tries to control it.
- Magma: Voluntary exiled from the Elemental Chaos, seeks his lost path. Two opposed personalities Stone/Fire.
Notes: This is pure story gold. I’ve was handed a gift basket of what the players wanted to achieve with their PCs and everyone around the table learned a simple fact about each other PC.
Each PC creates 2 positive relationships/links with 2 other PCs (We only had time to do one each so far)
- Holy Clank: Developed a friendly competition with Rod Stone about all physical feats.
- NarBeth: Along with Holy-Clank, has made Airship-City Deputy Minister of Security of headquarter crazy with their experimenting with dangerous technology on the main-airship.
- Rod Stone: Likes to follow Magma’s impulsion, makes life exciting and simple .
- Vorian: Sought Magma out, following the instruction of his sensei in order to help him find “The Path”.
- Franky: Sought out a Warforged, met one on a battle field (Holy Clank), fought on the same side. Became friends.
Notes: If you were to borrow just one ‘question’ from this whole template, I’d say use this one. By asking players to create positive relationships you require players to start asking the thorny ‘why are we together?’ question at the best possible moment, when everyone is willing to be cooperative all excited about a new campaign.
Each PC creates a Tension with a PC he has no relationship/link with
Notes: We didn’t get to that yet. This is a nice little drama tool where players get to create little ‘stress fractures’ in the party to explore later. Great for Psychodrama-driven players and helping players roleplay PC/PC scenes.
Each PC creates a friendly NPC he is linked to
- Holy Clank: Killinerix, Adult Bronze Dragon. Philosopher, keeper, mentor and friend.
- Nar-Beth: Ratchet, dwarven mechanic and mentor, teaches the Druid about technology. Also the party’s airship mechanic.
- Rod Stone: Perre-Grina . The youngest girl of his village’s Chieftain, she’s just too friendly.
- Vorian: His sensei in Zerthaldlun who sent him into this world. Vorian trusts him implicitly.
- Franky: The “Old Mage in the Park”, an old Archmage who likes to talk about everything and nothing.
Notes: How cool is it to start a campaign with a full set of friendly NPCs? Plus, I’m a great believer of the one-sentence NPC. And yes, the party starts with its own Airship and crew. Lucky dogs…
Each PC creates an enemy/rival NPC
Notes: We didn’t get to that either. This is to allow players to create their nemesis and enemies in advance. This will make your Storytellers really happy.
Each PC creates a locality he/she’s related to.
Notes: This is where players create taverns, temples, headquarters, gardens and so on that have significance to them. They can help to inspire you for creating adventures.
And that’s my template for our next D&D campaign.
Do you know what is the biggest selling point here? The players won’t feel like they have to do any work. In exchange for one or two hours of game time, we fill the template which often feels like we’re actually playing the game (although the storytelling part), giving the DM a ton of useful leads for the campaign and gives the player some solid bases to start adventuring together.
Do try to keep this as short as possible, as your Power-gaming butt-kickers will start becoming restless after the first hour.
Anybody else, in D&D or other RPGs use something similar? What kind of questions do you ask? What would be the benefits for your groups of using a similar template. What would be the downsides? Let me know!
In our campaigns, we’ve been using the “10 minue background”, found here:
http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19713850/The_Ten-Minute_Background–Post_your_characters!
It uses pretty much all of the questions you’ve given above, plus a few extra ones. Still, the format you use is better for the party making session as it’s more party focused and public information focused as well. I’d like to use your format to start off the characters, and then let any player who wants further depth to move to the 10 minute background on their own afterward.
Nice job.
I actually set up many of the rules of my game, decades ago, to create much more of an automatic background for them. PC’s have to decide what factions(s) they belong to upon character creation as this decides what skills they have access to, but this also gives them a full compliment of comardes, NPCs, support group, history, and an idea about how they feel about other factions.
However, I really like the cooperative ‘within-party’ way you built it here, as it builds upon iteslef and maginfies the relaionships ‘within party’.
Kudos again.
.-= LordVreeg´s last blog ..edited Church of Belial the True and Clear-iGBAR =-.
I’ve tried it with my own game.
It works great the only part that was harder was the local and rival for the more casual of my player which I did not force to fill.
Thanks for the kudos. The core reason to do this was to integrate the party together before we actually rolled our first dice. In the past, I had wildly different levels of preparedness from players. Some would write books about their PCs (cough Yan cough) or compose a mental epic about them (Franky) while others would show up at the table with no PC (cough Eric cough).
This exercise evens the field. While the storytellers can build as much as the want, they reveal as much as the others who need to make it on the spot. And when players are stuck for ideas, others can chime in.
I’m quite impressed with the concept so far.
I’ve done similar things with parties in the past and had great luck; this sounds like it was a really productive session. I’ll also throw out something my gaming group did recently with an established group of PCs: a character building and party origins session, just like this one!
We’d played about fifteen or so sessions with our heroes, having started from the loose background of “you all answered the summons to fight the fell taint infestation in this sanitarium”. Party cohesion was OK: we were a little stuck as to why we’d all continue traveling together, but there was at least a common enemy for a time. After fifteen sessions, we all had a pretty good handle on how we wanted to play our characters (and how they ACTUALLY played in combat, vice how we had originally conceived them). We were having a slow week just before Thanksgiving, and our DM decided that rather than do a standard session, we’d get together and have a fireside chat, swapping stories from our characters’ past like the PCs actually might do one night around the fire.
It was a blast… and it was made all the easier by the fact that we KNEW our characters at this point. We could play up on the character quirks that they each had and give some insight into how they developed–the druid is so bloodthirsty because his father was a famous mercenary who only valued martial authority; the paladin is so money-hungry because he’s trying to rebuild his ancestral holdings that were stolen from him during the Last War, etc., etc.
So while I think that initial party-building sessions can be invaluable, I also had a really great time doing this one that came later. Think about it for a time after your first few adventures, when you’re just getting geared up for The Next Big Thing. I think you’ll really enjoy it! I know that I will, next time I run a campaign!
One thing that I do that’s really helpful is have every player tell me 5 NPCs with whom their PC is acquainted. This builds on/works in contrast to the pick your rival option you use.
Often, at least one of the NPCs is a rival – in my current campaign, the villain/problem NPC of heroic tier is someone invented by a PC in character creation (the player said “X is blackmailing Ivan, my PC. Let X equal whoever Chris’s wizard character’s mentor is.”
I also got love connections, family members, superiors in a religious order, and assorted other people to populate the game world with. I wrote everything down on index cards, created an NPC secret on the back that the players don’t know, and had 20 NPCs on the books ready for the first gaming session. I keep a stack of index cards behind my DM screen to create entries for every NPC I have to make up or that the players make up, and refer to them before sessions to keep the world consistent. I even have an index card catalog for this.
I’m big on prepping for games, though, to the point that I always overprep. Others might not be into that. But for me, it’s a lifesaver and something I’m doing every campaign from now on.
I have done similar with most of my campaigns, but perhaps not as extensive as this (but there is a lot of good stuff here). I ask the players to:
1. Describe how their character is connected to one other character.
2. Describe their family and how they came to be in the work they are in.
3. Name one friend.
4. Name one enemy that seeks to cause them discomfort or harm and why.
Awesome template. I’ve used some of these questions for private PC creation before but never at the gaming table. My next campaign is starting in Feburary and i’m planning on having a PC creation night.
My personal concern is developing the rivalry between PC’s straight away, but probably because i have some players who cause enough inter-group trouble as it is. I might use this as a tool for them to focus thier ‘rivalry attention’ on specific goals instead of stirring trouble all over the place… Damn Chaotic people, lol.
Thanks Chatty.
@Scott: The rivalry must be small and almost inconsequential. Heck, skip it if your group doesn’t swing that way. But it can be as simple as a Dwarf calling a Halfling ‘Shorty’ all the time or the Wizard asking the Fighter if he hit his head in that last fight whenever he proposes something that actually sounds decent.
I’d steer away from the classic ‘Hates (insert race)’, ‘Suspicious about (insert character’ and anything that will lead to outright conflict at the 1st decision point the party reaches.
Nifty.
.-= Andy´s last blog ..Breakin’ Down the Christmas Tree, Part 1 =-.
Nifty. That’s a cool little thing to generate potential story points. I may have to link a friend of mine to this, to help out with group creation. The world you’re drafting is also pretty cool, and the little touch about draining water from people has a bit of a nice creepy-ish feel to it…reminds me of science fiction, actually, with the “how far is too far?” deal.
.-= Andy´s last blog ..Breakin’ Down the Christmas Tree, Part 1 =-.
@Andy: Thanks! This world has stolen so many elements from so many sources of Science Fiction that I don’t think I could ever publish it.
The ‘take water from others’ is from the classic Sci-Fi Dune that occurs on a desert planet.
Happy you like it… stay tuned!
Oh! I should’ve recognized that…it’s been a while…
.-= Andy´s last blog ..Breakin’ Down the Christmas Tree, Part 1 =-.
Love it 😀
Our party usually has the problem that they all come to the table without characters. As I don’t want to make RP into an obligation, just calculating in a complete session for char generation could really help our party forward.
Thanks
Love it
Our party usually has the problem that they all come to the table without characters. As I don’t want to make RP into an obligation, just calculating in a complete session for char generation could really help our party forward.
Thanks
I love the Party creation template, I think I will adapt it to other games and systems.
Did these characters start at level 1? This sounded like a pretty epic battle to begin the campaign with. It’s cool to see an interesting world that isn’t your typical D&D medieval setting. My old college DM used to mix all kinds of things into our worlds from movies and games he liked. The worst being Aliens & Terminators…
.-= Marc´s last blog ..lawlDnD: http://twitpic.com/xo3xt – Cheydinhol =-.
The PCs are level 14. While we switch campaigns often we start each new one with PCs at the same level the previous ones were. Allows us to fully explore what the game has to offer.
And yes, I like to mix genres a lot!
When I saw Phil’s status message saying ‘4 Days to Gears of Ruin!’ I thought I had missed a GoW update for the Xbox.
Very helpful article though! In fact, I’m hoping to be in a new local campaign sometime soon, so we’ll see about using some of these ideas & then report back.
.-= AvatarArt´s last blog ..The ENnie Awards & AvatarArt =-.
Woot! Stealing half of a Video game’s name is a good move to get attention! 🙂 Thanks man!
.-= ChattyDM´s last blog ..Chatty’s Tales of the Arabian Nights =-.
The bit about the dwarven colony roused my interest, particularly in relation to the idea that the world is basically anarchic. Places like this are where governments are born.
Take Florence or Venice: a community defines its boundaries, defines who is and isn’t a member of it, and decideds what rules and procedures will govern it internally. Either an autocrat is set up over the community or else there is some sort of council (of elders, merchants, representatives, priests, technocrats…) Obviously there are all sorts of chances for internal dynamics in this government. In time, the community realises certain common interests (trade routes, law and order, resources, land for settlement, tribute from other communities) and creates the necessary bodies to attain and hold them. They don’t belong to any individual (unless it’s a principality), but to the community. Empire is born.
This is the direction I would take your setting in. It offers interesting possibilities. As a new government tries to assert its authority, people may resist or infringe on it. Other bodies might infringe on its claims. While you might say that the IDEA of government doesn’t exist in this setting, it might make sense for some people to invent it.
@Bercilac: interesting but I’d be surprised. Phil rarely goes in politic in his game… and some of the players have close to no tolerance to it. 😉
However, it speaks volumes of the potential richness of the setting (and Party Template) that one sentence would fire the imagination of a DM and/or players to veer such a campaign toward politics.
Interesting indeed, thanks for the thought.
Thanks for the reception.
Yan raised an interesting point, that it’s all well and good to expound what is possible for a campaign setting, but actual application is really down to the preferences of the group. I have a problem kind of in the opposite direction.
I personally love templates like this (I’m using a few from Amagi Games for my new campaign), because as Chatty points out they provide a starting structure which is fertile ground to move in any number of directions. They can really inspire your work. But for character creation sessions in particular, I’m wondering whether they’d be appropriate for my group.
I would like to run a session like this, but I have a lot of trouble convening my group. The commitment to gaming is lackluster at best, so the prospect of getting everyone in one place for what looks like a “homework session” seems difficult. Perhaps I’m wrong, and a session like this would actually be a low-pressure way to get people to sit down and flesh out their ideas (rather than saying “No game until I get your character sheets” leading to… no game)? Or maybe group creation could be integrated into a first mini-adventure? You mentioned running a combat-test with the group after creation, perhaps this could be extended. Or perhaps the sentence-writing could actually be integrated into a mini-adventure in the form of “flashbacks.” Or maybe I just need to find some more enthused players?
.-= Bercilac´s last blog ..Fudge, with bells on it =-.
@Bercilac You’ve got some good idea. I would run them with your player and see what brings the strongest reaction. In my game I’ve got two strong RPG players and two very casual players.
I tried it with my game of 4 player composed of 1 tactician, 1 storyteller, and 2 casual/buttkicker players. The character went rather well and the trick was not to force it too much on the casual player if they don’t have idea let the blank be there. Encourage your more experienced/driven players to create link with them or provide multiple idea of what they could do. They will either latch on an idea or could spark idea in them…