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Its funny. Its been about three years since Ive Game
Mastered anything for a group of people, and I just started back
up again last night. Tomorrow is the three year anniversary of
Collector Times. In honor of this rather startling coincidence (or
at least because I couldnt think of anything else to put up for my
opening paragraph), I will share with you this column based on
one of the issues thats plagued me ever since I began GMing.
That is, group tying.
While it may sound like something kinky and fun to do at parties,
Im really talking about the basics of a gaming group. You
know, something that will keep the varying, diverse, and all-
important (at least from their players perspectives) characters
working together, thus keeping you (the GM) from getting a
really bad headache or dealing with people whine about
boredom as you jump from one group to the other.
I am definitely guilty of being a laid-back GM. I allow my
players to create just about anything within reason (no Titan
Cosmo-knight Tattoo-men, please) and try to work it together
into something fairly coherent - or at least funny. Hey, in the
words of Stephen King, "If all else fails, go for the gross out."
That has absolutely nothing to do with what Im talking about,
but Stephen King said it, so it must be important.
Player characters seem to always want to go into opposite
directions. It can be quite straining to come up with new and
creative ways to keep them together. I say, why bother? All of
the entertainment industry, whether it be music or movies or
comedy just repackages age-old stuff. If it works, it makes
money. If it does, keep milking it until it doesnt. Why should
we be any different? In any case, if youve read my previous
column on this subject, youll have a good idea its a conspiracy
(the pain that the PCs want to cause you). Some GMs
(optimists, the lot of them) claim that its a coincidence. Well,
with many years of parental funded experimentation, I have
narrowed it down. It either is a conspiracy or not.
So, with the hope of being as useless as I have been for you in
these past three years (and while were at it, heres hope for
many more of the same), I give you . . .
Ways to Tie your Characters Together (figuratively, please) by
taking inspiration from Popular Media
But wait! You thought this would be a list. Well, youre wrong.
Im too lazy to make a list, so this will be stream of
consciousness. Besides, change is good. I will prove this point
to you. Each of you send me some change, and it will be good.
**
The easiest way to bring the characters would be to say "You
all know each other, and have been working together in a
group." The amusing part of this method is to watch as the
characters flounder because their players dont know things
about each other that the PCs should. Unfortunately the player
characters dont stick together very well. This, along with player
whining (like, "Wheres my motivation?") makes it really more
trouble than its worth. However, Marvel has done it quite
well***, as you can tell by comics such as X-Men. It really is
much easier, though if you can switch off GMs when you feel
like doing something else, and can have multiple GMs for the
mandatory splinter groups.
That being said, heres the list (fooled ya!):
- Crouching Fighter, Hidden Thief. This one works best with
4 PCs. In it, two groups of two of the PCs start off in love
with each other (for best results, choose randomly). After a
bit of conflict involving sweeping vistas and unbelievable fight
scenes, they eventually come together based on the fact that
the bad guy (woman) is incredibly whiney and annoying. To
make it even more fun, kill off one of each couple in a
meaningful way, and make sure that at least one of the two
that dies does so mysteriously. After that, have the two who
died make up two new characters, and start over.
- Similar to the first option mentioned, try having most of the
characters in a group already. Pick out the ones that are the
most similar, or at least like wearing black and looking
mysterious. Then, the one that doesnt fit in, secretly tell his
player that hell be the most important character ever if he
joins them, and kill off all the characters of any players that
whine about it (except for the love interest, of course). Then
he will join them too, and they can all wear black and frolic
merrily through the street of whatever computer program
theyre in. Maybe not in that order.
- Make all of the characters look like John Malkovich.
- Make two of the characters have some sort of service they
can provide the other characters. And the other characters
need that service. Then the two that can provide it, who
were normally considered scoundrels and dregs of the Earth
(or Tatooine, or wherever) suddenly see their good side and
decide to help. Or suddenly see the riches in it and decide
not too. It helps if one person from one group gets a
romantic involvement (or at least sexual tension) going on
with one of the other.
- Make all five characters siamese quintuplets (this one will
work the best, trust me).
- Have a really powerful NPC that starts a school for people
that fit the basic characteristics of all the characters (you
know, they can breathe, they have players, something like
that). Then, make all of the characters join, regardless of
how old they are or what their level of education is. Give
them some common bad guys, and minor romantic
involvement an . . . err . . . already mentioned this one. Whoops.
- Toss them all into a colorful bus, give them Scooby Snacks ®
and let them solve mysteries.
- Makeat least one of them from some other world with no
way of getting back. Then make all of the rest of the people
in the area of the world they live in (other than the important
ones) totally incompatible with the players, thus causing them
to bond in their weirdness. Give them a shared love of
donuts and the ability to kill vampires with sticky rice. Wait
a second . . . this might work . . .
Of course, there are other ways of doing this, and doing it well.
There is the iron fist of GMing. I learned this trick from a GM
that I played under back in the early 90s. It was a Star Wars
campaign and the main NPC was someone who was mostly all-
powerful (insane Jedi Knight, very high level) and was the
employer of the player characters. If you needed to start a new
character (player death was high), then your character worked
for him and obeyed him. If he didnt, then hed die and youd
make up a new character. While this is fun (for the GM), you
tend to have your players go through a lot more paper and
erasers that way, and we all want to save the eraser trees, right?
Remember, being lazy is better than working hard. Because
otherwise, its hard work. Im gonna go get some donuts and
sticky rice.
This article was brought to you in part by Coalition of
Editors with Bullwhips and Texas Attitude Adjusters.
** Authors note: For me.
*** Authors note: Comic book writing is a lot like GMing.
Only, you control all of the characters, so they dont give you
any grief, you get paid usually quite a bit more, and people ask
for your autograph. If you work for a large comics company
(no names, of course), Player (they call them Readers in comic
lingo) satisfaction doesnt matter. When people get annoyed
enough with how youre ruining their series, you just get put on
another successful story to ruin that. Oh, yeah, and youre
usually only expected to put out once a month, if that. Where
do I sign up?
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