Are your PCs even friends...

Are your PCs even friends, or just fellow mercenaries that tolerate each other because their players don't want friction?

the later, but my runner's fondness for explosives means it's less then tolerate.
Fun fact: If a johnson pisses you off, a car full of ANFO does NOT get you future jobs.

Kind of in between, generally, only occasion I can think of where our characters became full-on friends was a 5e D&D game awhile back, my Shadowrun group seems to be working toward that, though.

Me and the barbarian and a increasingly-not-so-friendly rivalry going on, Me and the paladin disagree because I want to built a mind control device powered by fragments of pure evil to force everyone to be good, and me and the swashbuckler a good buddies who want to make the world a better place. We are bound together because we are the chosen ones, but it looks like the party may split in to two as we approach the climax of the story.

Friends may be a stretch to say, but I'd like to think they have each other's backs. It's actually developed pretty well so far: my character (like all PCs) has single handedly been the direct or at least indirect cause of three gangs dying to the next guy, so his body count is close to about sixty people. During that time one of our players has lost two characters back to back due to a series of unfortunate events that could be tied directly to my characters actions. Needless to say my character has realized his potential for life taking, and has lost his taste for it, so tries to settle things with the least amount of violence involved. At one point another player bailed in the thick of it, which you could argue resulted in the player losing the second character, and has kind of set off the party a bit about what it means to be a "team" things seem fine now, and the player in question didn't do it for malicious reasons, so out of game there isn't really any friction within the group except from one individual, but only slightly.

>The party is a recognized and celebrated group among the wood elves of Greenwood and the Autumn Glade. We have been given the name The Stalwart Vigil as the term for our adventuring party, a large swathe of land within a reason fouled by undead that we cleansed, and in that are the ruins of a keep we're refurbishing for our base of operations and hopefully home to a future guild of adventurers.
>An elf that joined the party during our celebration feast is a pretty boy that's good with women, and blessed with the powers of the divine.
>Said elf keeps referring to my character as Keeper. It's odd, but he doesn't pay too much attention since they don't interact much.
>Eventually ask the elf why. He seems surprised, but simply replies, "Keeper. As in Keeper of the Vigil."
>mfw
>Gradually becomes my character's confidant.
>Smart, cunning, and convicted.
>Starts helping with the bookkeeping and letter-passing.
>Start confiding in the elf, they're starting to become good friends.
>Also assume he made a promise to my character's wife that he'd ensure my character would come back alive since she was forbidding it, because she was with child.
>My character has made some kind of bond with everyone in the party except the arcanist, who seems exhausted with all this strife and darkness, but presses on. Not everyone is friendly with everyone else, but they get along well enough.
>The one time my character bit it the entire party spiraled swiftly into infighting. No other deaths have caused such huge emotional or cohesive fissures in the party, and there has been many.
>mfw I am the party glue.

I really wish my current group could ever, even once have the party dynamic work out in a way that isn't tense and awful. I had high hopes for the latest game, until we stumbled upon a cache of money, then came the bluff rolls, the arguments, and the prospect of the party simply falling apart.

We started out as mercenaries and became friends after fighting together and having to trust eachother with our lives and other tropey weeaboo anime stuff.

It's not as bad as it sounds though.

I always make sure my character will have a personal attachment to the other PCs. Unless I'm purposefully trying to play an edgelord.

I think a lot of anons wish their group could have this dynamic. It makes the events within the game all the better when they, as a group can feel that things are actually on the line, whether that be their lives, or the things their characters personally hold dear. Within the groups I've played in, it's only happened a handful of times, and recently I've kind of hoped that it would happen again. It makes for good stories when we're all hanging out having a beer or something.

They're kind of just together because Don't Split the Party. I don't like that, so I keep a constant stream of shit thrown their way to keep them justifiably together for reliance on each other's power until they find a dynamic beyond "Well we're both in the same place and we tend to kill the same stuff". I'm going to try some one on one sessions using an NPC to draw out more character from them. They seem slightly more interested in roleplay interaction with NPCs than each other, presumably because it's expected. Less awkward. More obvious conversation hooks and personality handholds to grasp onto.

Honestly, the character I played most is basically sullen and bitter about being in the party because an archmage cursed him to never be able to split from the party.

I literally have to live in their houses when we take time off from adventuring. I cannot be further than 100m away from them for any reason. I had goals, an entire life, a career before this happened to me.

He occasionally goes to exceptional, above the call lengths to help party members, but this has been repaid with incompetence and betrayal basically always.

The one time I managed to get away was when I enacted a blood rite to enter the underworld to go sulk after I'd been sent back in time 1000 years, had my soul ripped out, been hit with several conflicting mind control spells, and been driven insane by another party member's passive. A god of death put me up in his place and let me chill out for a while. The GM was trying to sell it as some kind of horrid faustian lotus trap, but it was a (subjectively) week long period where for the first time in the six in-game months since the campaign began, things were actually going my way.

I finally realised that if I stayed there much longer this dude was going to fuck with me pretty hardcore, so I eventually had to break free and get back to the party. And then everything was shit again.

Crack open new bottles, comrades, it is time for long story time.

Joined a new 5e game on roll20. Advertised as drop in drop out West Marches style. No idea what that means but desperate so I join. Group is based in one town, weekly sessions, every session is a week from the last ingame. Setting has humans as exotic race, theyre apparently about to die out. Not keeping it in the species is the general consensus. World is ruled by dragons and dragonborn are the predominate species. I decide to make a dragonborn eldritch knight. Another player makes an elf monk. Other players dont matyer much for this story.

The GM has had trouble with players being stupid murderhobos before so she made a PC police (heh) npc for the captain of the guard. I think she took a base knight and then gave him 15 levels in fighter. 23HD plus some abilities the Knight gets, and his strength is 18 or 20 I think. The gm also decided that he would fall for the first female pc he saw, which ended up being the monk.

Fast forward a couple months and the monk and guard captain have been having some sweaty training moments, but nothing more. It's pretty obvious to others, but of course they don't know. Meanwhile, a nearby Red has decided to burn our town down and sleep in the embers. It is made obvious he is too strong for us to take down, and hes brining an army with him anyway, so we're more than a little worried. Our gameplan is to arm the guard captain with dragon slaying equipment, get him 1 on 1 wih the Red, and everyone else try to keep the army off him. I personally am planning on flanking the red while also fighting off the minions because by this point Im the strongest pc we have. Before the big battle we get some RP time. I go for a walk with him and he admits his feelings for the monk, but isnt aure what to do. Decides to put it off until after the battle.

My party has a combination of friends and coworkers as the general feel. They've been through a lot together, but not all of them are that chummy.

My character did invite all the party he could find to his wife's baby shower though.

They're family. Legitimate family.

Some are, some aren't. Half of us burned some bridges such that the other half is looking to kill us now.

My character, Nadarr, thinks that is kind of dumb since he knows there's no way the monk will reject him. Furthermore he worries that the captain will be distracted during the battle, and he thinks a new relationship will give the captain a driving force to fight thw good fight. He collects the monk and tells her he has something to show her. Marching her to the barracks he demands to see the captain, and too bad if he just got in the bath. As soon as the captain shows up Nadarr sarcastically introduces them to each other and ends with "By the way, you both love each other. Now you can stop worrying about it." He takes a step back to see what will happen.

He does not expect the very wet guard captain to tackle jim and start pinching him. As he is in his armor he doesnt mind so much and even takes the oppurtunity to explain. The monk stops the captain, and reaches down to Nadarr. She gently takes off his full helm, and punches the shit out of him. Full damage roll and everything.

She disliked him for a couple months after that (even the player told me she was pissed about it) but he radiated pure smug in return since immediately after the battle the two started dating. Eventually they became good friends again.

My story is not done.

They actively hate each other, but went through so much shit pursuing their own goals, they work together when needed. The rest of the time they argue a lot.
You see, early on two of the players asked me to play a secret mini with them and I went for it and their plans. Then the rest of the team, both in and out of character was trying to figure out from where those two suddenly had all that stuff and pretty big pile of money to spent. It soon turned into lots of friction and during regular game, I gave the rest of the team few bread crumbs that the duo left behind. It ended up with imprisonement of said two PCs, or would end, if they weren't bailed out with their own money. They all still hold a grudge, but since simply killing own team-memebers won't give them that money back, they just keep a tally how much exactly the rest of the team owes them in cash.
In short - they travel together and they work together, but they have in the same time tonnes of friction AND a serious reason to be together (namely getting the money back). And since the constant danger makes them tightly knitted group that must work together, well...

I was once in a pathfinder campaign where there were four PC's. Each of us were a different half elemental race(Sylph, Ifrit, Undine, Oread) with the same human mother and different full elemental fathers. It actually created a lot of fun character interactions because we decided on our backstories as a group thing. For example the oldest (the undine) was estranged. While the middle two brothers (Ifrit and oread) doted on the youngest (the sylph). It was probably one of favorite parties I've been in.

Time passed and I made a second character, this time a human ranger with background: noble. The gm thought it would be amusing if my new character, Rent, was from the same town as the captain, T, and I took it a step further by saying they were childhood friends before T left to train to be a knight and it was so long ago theyd forgotten each other's faces. Eventually they remember and Rent joins the guild the monk established, where he teaches classes and generally sits in dark corners being stoic for his downtime. Lots of time passes and T and the monk, Rix, have been married. Not only married, but she is preggers with his child.

By this point I've had to stop playing because of new job schedule, so Rent is said to have gone back to his estate for the winter months and is dragging his heels on coming back while he chases a girl. Meanwhile the sessions have revolved around shenanigans with an incubus, and one of the PCs dies and becomes a succubus. For some reason the player and the gm got together and decided the succubus is fixated on T. Meanwhile the town has attracted attention from a pack of lycanthropes headed by the progenitor of werewolves. Rix, being pregnant, is semi-retired until she can stop being so damn pregnant. Her player doesnt want her to be eaten by werewolves and asks me if Id be fine with Rix staying with Rent. Of course I am, and we get to talking about the game and how it's been doing. We agree that the town may truly be fucked, and itd make for some interesting rp if T died because the lycanthropy would do something to his soul, so before bringing him back with a res spell we'd have to hunt down the progenitor ourselvea which could take a long time. By the time they do it, I joked, his kid could be as old as he is and Rent would be a crotchedy old man.

And then it happened.
>A terrible cliff hanger

Last one, promise.

I was browsing charactr art threads on Veeky Forums when I found a monk picture that looked like a mix between Rent and Rix. It was uncanny, and when I showed Rix's player she agreed there was definitely a similarity there. I joked about how fucked up it would be if they hooked up and T ressed to find out his best friend fucked his wife while he was dead and tried to fight him, but being over level 20 by that poimt old man Rent would handily kick his ass. After a bit though we got to talking and it was settled that if T died Rix would stay at Rent's estate while they researched the progenitor and hunted it down. If it took more than 2 years theyd hook up, and that picture would be their kid.

T did not in fact die to the werewolves, and the players managed to kill the progenitor eventually. So our what-if never happened, but I figured it fit the thread anyway. Hope some people enjoyed story time at least.

On the one hand thats pretty edge, but it sounds like the group and the universe just kind of took a dump on you so...
Anyway, your misery has brought me amusement. Worthy post.

>What is with these cheap shitty gifts? We split the loot fairly, I know they could afford better shit.
I hope the DM didnt punish you for having a famiry.

>I hope the DM didnt punish you for having a famiry.
My wife got dominate person'd, but I can probably fix it. The kids may die, but that is actually my fault and due to the wife's family.

Well, one PC is literally retarded, and signed up for a single payment of 200gp. While i can hardly claim anyone is a friend of him, my character at least feels like he owes his life to the guy, because he's amazing at killing things and mending wounds.

There's another guy who literally became possessed by a shadow demon to save my life after we first met him, frozen in time. The DM is full aware of the fact that expulsing the demon is more important to me than the campaign plot.

And then there's two more guys, who are essentially just mercs. One is a hot-headed rollplayer who charges into all combat situations. The other one has, due to a series of unfortunate events, become almost useless in combat, making my mage quite pissed that he won't defend me while i try to buff the party, stop enemy spellcasting or et cetera.

Spoiler!


PCs aren't real. Players are.
If your players don't like each other,
their PCs never will, either.


/spoil

I don't know if I could say we're all friendly, but we are all related so that probably counts for something.

Players can like each other and ha e their PCs at odds. Good roleplay integrity is a wonderful thing when you take the proper precautions.

Honestly while I was probably the edgiest party member by a decent amount, this was:
a) A consequence of having not been free of a mind affecting spell, ability, debility, curse, condition, or any other bullshit that might rend at my sanity for the last six months. Like not even because I built a character that does this to myself, I just constantly got hit by NPCs who inflicted stuff like that, and also was unable to stay away from the party member who made anyone who stayed near him long enough insane BECAUSE I was cursed to never be able to get away from the party.

b) The GM's NPCs were ludicrously edgy, barring the dude who cursed me. The archmage was like, fucking Santa. I kept telling everyone that he was clearly evil but they just dismissed me as being bitter about my curse.

You know, until he brought in a god to destroy material reality and fucked off. Party decided to go fight the god, instead of chasing him, I said FUCK THAT and got an NPC to carry me after him (I couldn't chase him with my own legs because of the curse, and also because I was critically injured, and also all the OTHER curses I had on me at the time).

Because I'm sorry but I would rather fight the mastermind behind the apocalypse than the apocalypse itself. And ALSO, MORE IMPORTANTLY, fight the man who literally took everything from me.


As an aside on the whole "covered with curses" bullshit, I actually had twice the resistance to this of the next best member of the party, I was just always targeted. Getting my soul ripped out, I will admit, was largely my fault, since I basically said "What are you gonna do, rip my soul out?" right before it happened. I was trying to intercede between her and a bunch of innocents though and get her to explain why she was murdering huge numbers of people and raising them as zombies.

We are a team of super villains! Well, our part of the group is, the other part are heroes.

Of our villain team, some are friends, though my character specifically is not any of their friends.

>The archmage was like, fucking Santa.
That's pretty fucking evil user, your DM is a god damn monster.

In our current Pathfinder game the Bard, Sorceress and Cleric are all married to each other, mostly symbolic that they intend to stay together no matter what. Also it's settled the legalese should one of them die on their adventure.

The Fighter has come to see the entire group as his family and acts as peace-maker with everyone and the Druid.

The Ranger at first saw them as just a group that would have her but since then she's become close friends with them.

The Druid, however.
She's a bitter and spiteful thing who loathes everyone with a passion.
She has genuinely tried to kill the party once and the only reasons she stick with them is because of the familiarity from coming from the same community as the married mages, the fighter is too stupid to know better and so nice to her to earn her ire and that she has nothing left to her by this point.

All five PCs are close. They have all slept with each other at least once and a pretty much each others only friends.
Ever since the secrets of their manufactured origin and munipulated memories have come to light, they are pretty much they only ones that even understand each other now.

Pic pretty much related.

Our werewolf pack will constantly try to viciously beat one another to a bloody pulp. But in general we actually like one another.

Except for the red talon who probably hates all our monkey asses.

Mine and another person characters were brothers and they needed crew for their spaceship. Over the 8 or 9 sessions now the crew is pretty tight and trusts each other.

>Not starting off the game with significant differences and overcoming them to become best friends over time in classic storytelling fashion.

I'm going to go with "mercenaries that tolerate each other because the players don't want friction".

Then again, considering it's a Numenera game, I'm led to believe it's part for the course.

We've got a cannibal who's wanted in six major cities, his friend, an old man who wants to practice his crazy-assed religion, and a human mind stuck in a robotic body that just can't find enough shits to rub together about anything going on.

The bot and the cannibal seem to be rivals, of some sort.

We're like the Avengers, all pretty high-level dudes tearing shit up like a team one minute, then the two hard-heads get into a fight that fissures the entire fucking group. I'm one of the hard-heads, it's a dick move to be part of the problem, but fixing what's doomed is a fun challenge.

My paladin is a close friend with the party rogue. So much that after his return as undead, my paladin sees the rogue as his dearest and closest friend, enough to reveal his undead state to him and share a life bond.

The other party members, he sees them as friends and allies, but only the rogue is a beyond-death tier of friend

I've had games where it's been both. It's always better when players genuinely get along, it lends to more interesting personal stories. Have some stake in another player's personal plot makes everything more enjoyable.

I have a player who very rarely actually makes friends with the other player, despite the group all being friends IRL. You can't force friendship on players but it just makes everything run more smoothly if they are.

My current group is a mix of both, sadly.
There's two or three players that are just hard core That Guy rules-lawyering assholes, who can't ever, ever not play douche-tool assassins and edgelord wizards. And that's an okay arche-type to play sometimes but we're all in 4 games together and in every game they're the same character.

nice story. i wish my players talked about the game outside of it but they're all massive faggots.

before we started our newest campaign, i specifically told them over a month ahead of time that they're supposed to be an established party who know each other at the start. we get to the table and the characters are two thieves, an LG paladin vigilante, and the punisher. none of them had talked to each other about their characters and it was left to me to figure out how these fucks could possibly know each other.

the only real RP they had was just them calling each other psychopaths and freaks beacuse there is no way for them to see eye to eye.

Sounds like a good setup for a CN party.

well one thief has become robin hood, the other spends more time crossdressing than actually thieving, the paladin is borderline retarded and is probably going to fall because of it, and the punisher died and was replaced by bruce lee. so i think we're getting there.

I mean that kind of setup for a story has been around for a lot longer than anime has.

My sorceress didn't actually want to come along, this isn't even my quest
But the huntress and her ability to persuade (read: threaten to kill someone's only friends) had other plans

I just told them at the start, "You guys all know each other in some way and are willing to work together," for the sake of simplicity.

The Barbarian and Paladin filled in that they're like buddy cop movie duo, in that they're friends who play Dragon Chess with each other during down time. They've also become sort of rivals over the course of the campaign, and I've been trying to drive a wedge between them further to create a Civil War style plot.

The rest of the party seem to just do their own things and don't do that much character interaction.

The only reason our party could even stand being in the same room as each other is because we had to for the campaign to even happen. There's absolutely no reason why we would work together outside of metagaming.

That being said, the campaign fell apart after meme characters broke the line and one of our guys made an antipaladin solely to kill other players and important NPCs. It was some pretty elaborate sabotage.

>gets soul ripped out
>W-well NOW whatre ya gonna do? Give me loads of dosh?

My character is pretty much a hired magic consultant because the rest don't know jack shit about wizardly things and they were smart enough to realize they might need someone who does if they want to loot places protected by magic.

Our party originally stuck together since plot contrivance would cause us to all explode if we failed to do so.

But as we have been traveling together we are all on good if not friendly terms with each other even after the bomb collars were removed.

Which is kind of a miracle since our party's alignments are all over the place. Basically the only thing we absolutely agree on is we have each others backs.

Ugh. My party is gradually developing an appreciation for each other as individuals, which is neat to see them overcome initial barriers (racism, introversion, and insanity, respectively) and open up to each other...

All except my brother-in-law. He plays exactly the same "My CHA is the highest, so I can talk anyone into anything," "CE but I'm better than the rest of the party so they've never realized it," "Killing is always the solution/interrupt the BBEG's expository monologue," "If there's any girls there I wanna do them" solo edgelord with no attachments and no connections that he plays in Every. Single. Game. Just like this guy
It's like, "Why are you even a part of this adventuring party? Why should our characters trust you?"

...and yes, he's a tiefling bladelock.

My players got Kane & Lynch dynamics going between their PCs. They are on a job. They fucking hate each other. They regularly screw each others plans. And they are also on the field, on the job, for mutual benefit.
Best part - they've roleplay through it. And this is what I love about the whole situation. The self-awarness how pointless their team-up is combined with their willingness to actually role-play through teeth-clenched teamwork