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Post by inflatus on Dec 7, 2011 11:09:23 GMT -8
Party dynamics is a term that all of us have come across in our gaming lives. Most of us have tried to create a good dynamic to work together or defeat the bad guy. Regardless of the RPG system there is a class or role that your character falls in. It does not matter what you call them, whether it is a Fighter or the big strong character with a sword who likes to hit stuff. The party dynamic usually has characters that are strong, smart, dexterous, or have a moral conscious, are problem solvers, healers or fast talkers. This type of party mold should be broken at least once.
I challenge you as a player to come up with characters that are of the same role or class. I have talked about this before, having a party full of magic users who found themselves in sticky situations. The adventure was memorable and it was interesting to see how the players interacted with each other. When I ran my adventure it was in the fantasy genre using the GURPS system. There was some problem solving in the beginning. Later there were physical feats that needed accomplished. In the end they all had to fight the Big Bad. I found that the adventure promoted character role playing. It was mostly trying to decide who was better “equipped” to do a task and the criticism afterwards.
Depending on your players you may want to run this as a one-shot adventure. Having this go on for a long running campaign may lead to some players getting bored. As the GM you can come up with any type of adventure in most systems. It would be difficult to run this party in the Traveller system, because character creation is random. Besides a ship full of cooks may not get very far. As long as the system has character creation flexibility the players should be able to create similar roles. So if your group is looking for something a bit different try playing the same role. It could open a few minds.
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joegun
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Post by joegun on Dec 7, 2011 11:29:09 GMT -8
My current group has this (in a way). For the longest time there was only 2 players. I ranged bow guy, and an in your face mace guy. Aka no magic, no healing, just run in bust some guys up and get the job done. However what ended up happening over time was this: The players started filling in the cracks with skills after the fact. The Melee guy picked up lock-picking, streetwise, and command time stuff to lead around NPCs, while the ranged guy picked up healing skills, and tracking, trapping ,ect to provide "survival" out of town for the group. Of course this was a bit easier to accomplish as it was savage worlds and being classless, it's a bit easier to slowly round out your character.
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Post by inflatus on Dec 7, 2011 12:17:06 GMT -8
The players started filling in the cracks with skills after the fact. The Melee guy picked up lock-picking, streetwise, and command time stuff to lead around NPCs, while the ranged guy picked up healing skills, and tracking, trapping ,ect to provide "survival" out of town for the group. Of course this was a bit easier to accomplish as it was savage worlds and being classless, it's a bit easier to slowly round out your character. That sounds like a group that saw necessities and found ways to get them. I would say that a classless system is the best way to go with these types of groups. It is cool to see that the players was able to grow their characters. Sometimes I think that is the most important part of the game.
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joegun
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Post by joegun on Dec 7, 2011 14:02:49 GMT -8
Yeah that's probably my favorite part of Savage Worlds is how quickly you get the small advances. I know other systems do this as well, but I came from Palladium (yeah I know!) where you got the typical, hit a new level get a TON of crap system. And it really makes it hard to grow your character. Whereas the quick advancement allows you to grow and add things as they are needed. I'd also note that I think that is the real trick. I'm sure class based systems, if they had more granular quicker advances would also be able to mitigate this problem by players filling in the cracks. I mean our crew didn't have Magical healing, just old fashion bandage it up healing. (which is why they recently added a player to the group with magical healing!)
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2012 5:09:29 GMT -8
My Traveller game is a bit like this. Which makes sense, because that's just how it was rolled. They're mostly all scientists. And at present, they're mostly getting their asses kicked. But I'm going to try and steer the adventures to something that fits better with their strengths.
I honestly don't know how much my group thinks about balance in the group when building their characters these days. I believe they think about making characters that would get along and function with the others... but less about filling the roles, per se.
I dunno. I may have to ask them tonight, actually.
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Post by jazzisblues on Mar 6, 2012 7:31:23 GMT -8
I tend (as a rule unless I'm making characters for a con game) to not worry about the traditional "roles" of characters in the party. This is particularly true for campaigns where my goal is to create the game to fit the characters so I try really hard to get the players to build the character they want to play and then tailor the adventures to suit the characters that we have to work with.
Cheers,
JiB
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maxinstuff
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Post by maxinstuff on Mar 6, 2012 14:54:16 GMT -8
I think of the homogenous party as pretty much analogous to the military unit.
If you think of the (imaginary) navy seals team, or commandos - the core of all the characters is the same - with the differentiation provided by probably only one or two different skills (key differences might be tracking, explosives, sniper rifle skill etc.). Their base stats are likely all extremely similar as well as their core skillset.
I don't see any reason you can't extend this to other genres - but I think it would be easier with a mercenary group of some kind - like a group of fighters. A group of mages could work but you would want it to be more of a political game with access to the aforementioned mercenary fighters if need be - some jobs just require blunt force trauma.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2012 18:48:10 GMT -8
I ran a brief but very fun D&D 3.0 game where all the PCs played halflings from the same clan, all multiclassed rogue/something else. The party made great use of their shared rogue abilities, most notably tumbling into flank positions and just generally being a group of sneaky bastards.
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jpk
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Post by jpk on Mar 9, 2012 23:29:33 GMT -8
One of my favorite campaigns is one we called "Three Rogues and a Necromancer." Go ahead, guess what the party make-up was? It was D&D3, and we were all surprised how wildly different our three thieves were.
I think a number of the games we've played with "non-standard" role mixes have worked out spectacularly well as we've adapted our approaches to our resources.
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Post by inflatus on Mar 10, 2012 16:58:56 GMT -8
I ran a brief but very fun D&D 3.0 game where all the PCs played halflings from the same clan, all multiclassed rogue/something else. The party made great use of their shared rogue abilities, most notably tumbling into flank positions and just generally being a group of sneaky bastards. I have not had the chance to play D&D 3.0. Were the players able to function together well? Is D&D 3.0 dependent on different classes like 4.0? I can see them making their way into town like a bunch of short badasses.
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Post by jazzisblues on Mar 11, 2012 11:03:43 GMT -8
I ran a brief but very fun D&D 3.0 game where all the PCs played halflings from the same clan, all multiclassed rogue/something else. The party made great use of their shared rogue abilities, most notably tumbling into flank positions and just generally being a group of sneaky bastards. I have not had the chance to play D&D 3.0. Were the players able to function together well? Is D&D 3.0 dependent on different classes like 4.0? I can see them making their way into town like a bunch of short badasses. My experience (just fwiw) is that if the game morphs to suit the players and the characters, it doesn't really matter what the game system is or what the traditional "roles" are, it's going to work out. If, however, the game forces the pc's into its mold instead it's going to be a problem regardless. As always, just my 2 krupplenicks worth, your mileage may of course vary. JiB
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Post by inflatus on Mar 11, 2012 14:47:57 GMT -8
JiB
I thought that D&D 4e, forced the players into making a well rounded party. Do DM's have liberties to take so that a group can play a bunch of Halfling rogues?
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HyveMynd
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Post by HyveMynd on Mar 11, 2012 17:04:50 GMT -8
This is just my experience and therefore may not be true for everyone, but it seems to me that D&D 3.x is more flexible with it's party composition than 4e is. I've played and run 3.x games and played in a 4e game. Bear in mind though that the GMing styles of the people who ran the games were very different; the GM who ran 4e is very linear and all about his set pieces (regardless of what system we use), while the GMs who ran 3.x (myself included) were more sandbox-y and let the story go where the players pushed it.
So, JiB is right (once again, damn it). Any system should be flexible enough to support a non-traditional party, so long as the GM is willing to work with the players and craft the adventure around the characters. That being said though, with 4e's crappy multi-classing rules and slimmed down (to the point of sucking) skill mechanics, it felt very difficult to expand a 4e character outside of their archetypical role. As it's been mentioned before, 4e is all about having an optimized character so that you stay on the correct power level curve. "Wasting" a Feat slot so that your character can multi-class and cover something your party is missing puts you at a mechanical disadvantage. Which totally sucks.
I did that in our game; I was an Invoker who multi-classed into Cleric because no one else had stepped up to to fill the Leader role to provide healing. When gaining levels, I tried to make mechanical choices that reflected my character's fluff, and saw myself slowly but steadily falling behind the players who didn't do the same.
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Post by jazzisblues on Mar 12, 2012 6:48:47 GMT -8
JiB I thought that D&D 4e, forced the players into making a well rounded party. Do DM's have liberties to take so that a group can play a bunch of Halfling rogues? I've never run 4e but that is my understanding of what they're trying to do with it. JiB
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Post by jazzisblues on Mar 12, 2012 6:50:50 GMT -8
This is just my experience and therefore may not be true for everyone, but it seems to me that D&D 3.x is more flexible with it's party composition than 4e is. I've played and run 3.x games and played in a 4e game. Bear in mind though that the GMing styles of the people who ran the games were very different; the GM who ran 4e is very linear and all about his set pieces (regardless of what system we use), while the GMs who ran 3.x (myself included) were more sandbox-y and let the story go where the players pushed it. So, JiB is right (once again, damn it). Any system should be flexible enough to support a non-traditional party, so long as the GM is willing to work with the players and craft the adventure around the characters. That being said though, with 4e's crappy multi-classing rules and slimmed down (to the point of sucking) skill mechanics, it felt very difficult to expand a 4e character outside of their archetypical role. As it's been mentioned before, 4e is all about having an optimized character so that you stay on the correct power level curve. "Wasting" a Feat slot so that your character can multi-class and cover something your party is missing puts you at a mechanical disadvantage. Which totally sucks. I did that in our game; I was an Invoker who multi-classed into Cleric because no one else had stepped up to to fill the Leader role to provide healing. When gaining levels, I tried to make mechanical choices that reflected my character's fluff, and saw myself slowly but steadily falling behind the players who didn't do the same. This right here is the very definition of a crunchy system to me where decisions are made based not on character development and the fiction, but on what is mechanically sound in terms of the game. JiB
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