D&D Character Introduction

[@derekburge5294]

I always liked having hirelings be 'promoted' to PC status when casualties happen.

[@BanditsKeep]

Makes sense

[@menion2599]

Same here

[@bryansmith844]

Same, love a nice big pool of NPC buds that just might get shoved into the spotlight

[@lbur7119]

This all harks back to the old Braunstein kind of game. Many characters running around a town and mounting expeditions. Cooperation between PCs is not automatically assumed. Very cool.

[@BanditsKeep]

For sure

[@heyitsMattyP]

It is very cute that you need to name a next of kin for new characters - I love it haha

[@BanditsKeep]

😂

[@matthewkirkhart2401]

It is sort of funny, but it has a really valuable purpose in old school games. If/when the player’s character dies, their valuables are given to the next of kin, which is often the players next PC. This allows the new PC to have more money to buy equipment, and in some cases may allow the new character to start with a scroll or potion or something like that. It mechanically allows a player’s future characters a greater chance of survival. I truly think this was another intentional way for Gary to allow “player experience” to matter. Not only do I as a player learn how to play better as I play more, which allows the next character a greater chance of staying alive, but even in the game itself my new 1st level character is mechanically advantaged through the inheriting of items, money, etc. that also allows them a better chance of staying alive. When I was a kid we thought this inheritance thing was sort of a silly throw away thing until one of us did it and we saw how important it is in fostering the survival of future PCs.

[@DM_Curtis]

"Gary, tell me how you introduce a character to your Greyhawk campaign."

[@BanditsKeep]

♥️

[@mitchellslate1249]

Rocks fall...Then the character slides out from the chute with the rocks! "Hello! Been in that box-well for days! Finally cranked the lever loose! Who is this the boulders have crushed!? Poor fellow...A Hireling of yours! Well I, the Great Dwarf of Grey Hammer, will help you through my caverns now!"

[@DDHomebrew]

So great to look back at that 1st edition stuff! Every page of the PHB is weirdly familiar; second only the 1st edition Monster Manual, where every page evokes memories for me. I've always run sandbox, homebrewed campaigns, so the modern adventure path style is a bit jarring when I've run as a player in those campaigns in recent years. And since people died more often in 1&2 E, you did have to introduce new characters to an ongoing game. I wouldn't usually run solo for a few hours; but instead get the background ideas from the player and come up with a reason they're wandering alone in the Mountains of Death, where the other players are currently running. That's an extreme example but those did happen if the session stopped before the players could get back to town. Maybe the new player was in a party recently wiped out, the new player not only gets saved by the group but also brings some information on the item/treasure/place the players are investigating. It can help reduce the pain of that player's old character's recent death!

[@BanditsKeep]

For sure! Having a bit of a recent back story as to why the new PC is there makes so much sense

[@freddaniel5099]

I have great appreciation for the way Gary wrote about game play and this passage is an excellent example of how so many paragraphs are full of implications that have been either overlooked or abandoned. Thanks for bringing this some attention. The idea makes me wonder if Gary didn't do character creation one-on-one with him as referee, then run the new PC through a short one-on-one adventure just like the text suggests. What a great way to learn about your character as you explore the setting and establish rapport with the DM. No, I don't recall playing AD&D this way. We were impatient and jumped right into hacking and looting. Having to roleplay town interaction even to buy equipment seemed such a waste of precious game time. We didn't know any better, I suppose. What a treat it must have been to have sat with Gary on his porch and rolled up a character under his guidance! :)

[@BanditsKeep]

For sure!

[@bryansmith844]

I never got to dive into the campaign, but I did a similar style of bringing new characters in. However I didn’t do 1 on 1 sessions for each. Instead I made a one shot vignette that would feature each PC (at 1st level) and the other guys would grab basic 0 level NPCs to participate in the session. It let everybody get invested in each others PCs, build some background together, and let the other players insert NPCs they liked into the narrative for us to callback on later. I was really happy with how well it worked and how loose my group was able to get when they were just cutting loose with “Fishfinger the Crusty Thief” instead of their meticulously crafted PC

[@BanditsKeep]

Nice!

[@Vasious8128]

When in school and uni so had the time we'd often do a solo adventure for each Player to into the Character to the world to serve as a background. Especially in the King Arthur Pendragon RPG when we would run a quest for a squire to earn their spurs so they could join the main characters as a knight and equal and have a story for them to tell of their deeds. I think the bit about not all the PCs might go on a quest is a great way to also have people join a players quest playing the Henchmen if their own PC might be busy. A bit of a troupe style play ala when is popularised by Ars Magica

[@BanditsKeep]

For sure!

[@christopherdecator9742]

Used to play one on one all the time as a kid. As a group, it was assumed that in whatever given setting it was, it was the same universe, so to speak, and players could grab whatever character that was generally appropriate and jump in or out with them from session to session. I had friends with characters from campaigns with other DMs. Whats funny was they would get some mysterious item from another DM, then ask me what it was or did. I would ask them to set that aside until their other DM would elaborate on that some other time. There might have been kinks to work out, like custom race / class combos mostly, but it was pretty much plug and play back then.

[@BanditsKeep]

I had the same experience

[@gregmackay5821]

I’ve been doing more solo play as “side quests” once group got more political and acquired wizard tower, property etc. they are like two pages outlines and are light on combat usually ( it’s up to the player

[@BanditsKeep]

Nice

[@danielrowan4716]

Greg - I’ve been doing a good bit of one on one and two on one play with some of my guys and it’s been highly enjoyable and successful. Play flows really well as there simply isn’t the same amount of opinions to be considered. I do anywhere from 2-10pgs of notes with a map or two and it’s go time.

[@peterdelios663]

I think its a great way to start, I've done it in the past as well i think i might use this practice again when i start a new campaign. Great video.

[@BanditsKeep]

Cool, thanks!

[@ishmiel21]

I now usually start a campaign with all the characters knowing each other. I find the whole "getting to know each other" pretty tedious and usually pretty awkward. Im not sure how running individual sessions to start a campaign would work if you were playing an in person game. Depending on how many players you have in your group, that could add an extra month to the campaign, before it starts in Ernest. Sounds like a super fun idea, just not sure how practice it would be.

[@BanditsKeep]

I think for an adventure path type campaign this is less ideal, and yeah it can be a bit of time for new PCs to “become friends” - in my ASSH campaign I always try to make a connection for any new PC. As far as adding time / in person games. While it’s definitely more work for the GM - doing a quick session for each PC (not on the regular game night) could be done fairly quickly - I’d likely run those session online with my schedule, but for some it could be done. I find this idea intriguing for longer “open” campaigns though, not necessarily for every campaign, that’s for sure!

[@ishmiel21]

@@BanditsKeep Totally. The majority of the campaigns I run are open world. I don't run a lot of adventure paths or pre-written adventures. If you're running an online campaign I think it'd be pretty easy to run solo sessions for each player. Most people can squeeze in an hour or two on a random day. I think it'd be hard to do it in an in-person game though.

[@BanditsKeep]

@@ishmiel21 very true

[@ishmiel21]

@@BanditsKeep These are the kinds of ideas that make me wish all my friends were retired and lived near me so I could do this kind of stuff, because I would love to do this ind of stuff :)

[@BanditsKeep]

@@ishmiel21 hell yeah, that would be so nice

[@mitchellslate1249]

Ahh! He discovered Medieval Art! I shall pray for the suffering of his soul! Both the Beauty and the Pain of what is the Medieval Art we all love!

[@BanditsKeep]

Indeed

[@danielrowan4716]

Daniel - this topics a great one. My group and I have been playing together since ‘89. We’ve done both approaches- playing each PC or even pairs of them in to a larger narrative and the Heros Call where the group is assembled by some individual or group for a specific purpose. Admittedly we’ve done the good ol’ yada yada you know each other, so let’s start rolling dice too. Mostly I start them out after a zero session where we’ve assembled for character creation as a group then run our session 1. I’ve found that giving them the leeway to create a character then provide a few (maybe 2-4) facts on their backgrounds they will build a story organically as to what the motivations are for assembling are beyond treasure and glory.

[@BanditsKeep]

For sure - so many great ways to start a new PC!

[@ForeverYoungKickboxer]

We used a variety of ways, a lot of one one one that became background stuff, some just all starting together, and, allowing bonds to grow and a reason to stick together for further adventures usually arose naturally during the game.

[@BanditsKeep]

Cool

[@DiegoMartinez-ri4yd]

Very interesting topic Daniel. I think introducing characters to the world is a basic and sometimes challenging thing to do for a novice or veteran DM. I like to bring them together in an action scene so they have a reason to be together, like a caravan attack or some thugs are beating a kid in the town square. Definitely I will try the approach of one on one too! Thanks for the recommendation.

[@BanditsKeep]

Bringing them in as a group has typically been my go to as well, but this seems really fun

[@torinmccabe]

I heard that the original d&d campaigns had something like 50 characters per campaign. One dungeon master would run a shared campaign setting with multiple player groups all sharing that setting

[@BanditsKeep]

It does seem like that was done

[@andrewhaldenby4949]

By the way Daniel, I’ve just caught up with the podcasts, which are also great ty

[@BanditsKeep]

Awesome, Thank You!

[@menion2599]

I’ve done it on occasion. The last time I did it, the player bit off more than he could chew and died before meeting up with the party. Recently I’ve been thinking of running a second BX slot with other characters/players but in the same world.

[@BanditsKeep]

I thought you could only die before the campaign starts in Traveler 😉

[@mitchellslate1249]

Okay, I did this...I had my brothers and sisters meet with their characters. Now, there was some metagaming to meet, I did not run it well. It was bad run, for bad times honestly. But the way of bringing the players together spontaneously...Young roleplayers, not enough given to them, not enough to bring them together, BUT...Does not dissuade me from the method. It was my fault in regards to many things that were not prepared as far as System, World, and Character Intros even. Almost had one player completely confused smashed and killed in two seconds. There was not enough set up, preparation, or anything else. It did take MORE Effort, but lacking BASIC Effort made it really bad on my part. Still think the players proved it was enjoyable how they would seek to come together. Shy, and some objected to just going at the quest, but it works I think that the broken turns we did were not awful or wrong in themselves. That is for sure.

[@BanditsKeep]

I think in a larger campaign having characters not want to go on certain quests works well - the player just need to have extra characters and ideally one of them will want to do it

[@mitchellslate1249]

@@BanditsKeep I did not even consider that one. I had often looked to Chainmail and OD&D to remember to write and remind players they do not need single character roles, but not having one character fit a quest or part of the Story and switching to another is pretty brilliant. My resolution was badly done by forcing the reluctant brother to leave his room in the inn when we did it. Otherwise I would not have minded letting him sit it out the small short combat the rest were on and he can figure it out later what he was going to do. It would be interesting to see players bringing different characters in at different times for different parts, not far from my idea of dissolving the Game Master role and letting players share different roles in the World nd Story. Ever heard of the Protagnist gameplay? If less structured than that, larger or swappable roles sounds brilliant for players to tell a Story and play a game without needing a DM or GM. I have tried figuring out how to do multiple players who are not playing together to get a Star Wars RPG going. If half the table is on the Dark Side we figured the game could flip back and forth between scenes like the movies. Hard for preventing metagame, but perhaps it would work for creating that kind of adventure with the opposing characters.

[@BanditsKeep]

Sounds interesting for sure

[@UncleRiotous]

I'm curious what you do when a character dies in a mid or high level game. Do you start the new character at level 1 if there's no retainer they can pick up? Start them at the average level of the party minus a couple of levels? I have a couple of games where the players are moving from Basic to Expert teirs so I want to start doing some hex crawling but don't want to end up with a group of mostly first level characters miles from safety if everything goes wrong.

[@BanditsKeep]

It depends on the campaign - if it’s heavy dungeon crawling (and loot) I tend to start people on level 1. If it’s a more epic “story” I tend to start then at the level or XP they fell -whichever is lowest. So you can’t die a 3rd level thief and then make a 3rd level magic user - you’d likely be 2nd

[@UncleRiotous]

@Bandit's Keep I'm tending to run dungeons but want to move out as the characters progress into doing more hex crawling. Dropping them down to the previous level seems like a good plan once they're up at level 4+ then.

[@christopherbollinger86]

I think that's a interesting idea and way to go about introducing new PC's and wish there was more of it instead of the same old " well the next tavern you guys come across there is _ sitting at a table" and they just join the party. I like the idea of backstories for characters but not the concept of the DM needs to incorporate the back story of every character into the campaign and why it matters to the overarching Story of the campaign. There's just too much of that going on nowadays IMO. I'm getting really tired of back stories that are far out there and doesn't really make any sense or have to do anything with the actual campaign but somehow now you as the DM need to jam it into the overarching Story that makes sense?

[@BanditsKeep]

Sure - I think for a backstory to be fit into the “story” of the campaign (more than just as a way to role-play) the player needs to work with the DM while building the character.