"Well, my character doesn't have any reason to trust/follow the party!"

Theoretically the DM shouldn't have put him in circumstances where the quest is so shit that he'd rather stay home.

Adventuring for adventuring sake is fun, but it is better if the DM and the player can make genuine reasons to do things.

Frankly, in WFRP, you would have a better life and more regular meals by staying on the farm and dirt farming...

you want to do that?
Discuss it with your DM, and have a pre-game session or two, about your character beginnings. Works best for solo campaigns.

You don't always know beforehand. Sometimes the character you think will be fine ends up just not gelling with the rest of the party, or the plot takes a turn you didn't expect and your character ends up being incompatible with the new new direction things are taking. The trick is not to be a jerk when you realize it's happening, and either rework your character if you can or gracefully retire them from the campaign in favour of a character that fits better. You're only That Guy if you refuse to change when it becomes necessary.

THIS

players who bring paladins to tomb robbing games or generally less moral parties and don't want to change classes

Characters with trust issues can be fine. I'm currently playing a former criminal significant trust issues, the kind of person who intentionally sabotages relationships rather than let someone get close. He does, however, have reasons to be traveling with the party, and is willing to work with them - and after a few sessions, the other characters have realized that he's standoffish asshole to everyone, not just them, and he's at least being useful. So, yeah, I totally agree that characters need reasons to work together, but they don't have to be best friends while they do it.

>no general idea of setting
>get told whatever is fine
>other players don't want to talk, at all, about what they're writing up
>GM completely incapable of using any of the hooks I purposely wrote into the character to compel him into things

Yeah, I'm the problem

It wasn't so, though. He was a courier getting paid like 1 gold a week, that was thoroughly concened by the dangers that the community was facing.
He just didn't see why a down payment of 2000 gold with 2000 more on completion for, admittedly dangerous work, was worth it.

Plus, as for icing on the cake, the rest of the team were a squadron working off debt caused by criminal activity. He was offered to be a new member, or an officer of the law, or a citizen of the town being attacked, a mercenary, but no.

He had to be that courier because he's a deer-centaur so he's FAST.

Usually I find this is due to a mismatch of expectations on what a role-playing game is supposed to be like. Most fantasy novels, games, and movies tend to heavily focus on a single main character or several characters pursuing separate and interwoven plot-lines.

Most players jump into a tabletop game expecting to try and recapture or recreate the feel they got from other fantasy media - and the techniques used there are fundamentally at odds with the structure and nature of RPGs.

Tabletop RPGs have a sort of fundamental dissonance between your situation as a player (sitting around a table on a couch) and the character's appraisal of the situation (running from a gelatinous cube), which is why often you get comedy rather than fear or drama.

>if you don't give up on having fun, you're that guy!

Nah

Obviously if the situation can be salvaged, then it isn't
>necessary
now is it?

I suppose my experience was a shit troll going out of his way to make it a problem.

But yeah, I'd rather drop a game than sacrifice my fun.

I used to let them all meet up and forge alliances and shit...but this is what happened.

>The brave paladin stumbles across the elven bard.
>Paladin:"uh..hi join my party"
>Bard:"yeah sure let's go"

>Rogue pops out of nowhere
>Rogue:"I have watched you for a while let us join forces"
>Bard/paladin:"K let's go."
>Cleric joins
>Cleric:"I am with the rogue let us go adventuring"
>DM:"OK. Your party. Fully grouped moves towards the bounty board to pick a job"
>Paladin:"I'm the leader I choose a bounty that involves us fighting undead."
>Rogue:"im the leader, let's guard this rich guy"
>Bard:"I'm the leader, let's rescue the princess"
>Cleric:"im the leader, let's kidnap the princess and ransom her for double.
>Paladin/bard/rogue:"OK he's the leader"

That's the shorthand of 4 hours of back and forth.

I guess I don't understand how playing a character that doesn't work for your game constitutes fun, or how switching to a different concept that will work better constitutes giving fun up. It's not like there's only one character I've ever wanted to play-- changing from something that interested me to something else that interested me doesn't exactly sound like a hardship.

>no princess impregnation going on
0/10

Sometimes characters grow separate over time or it takes time to realize that you don't mesh with the party. I didn't realize my character didn't work with the party until playing as him for six sessions. As the story currently stands, he would no longer have any reason to stay with or trust the party, so I retired him.

This is why I roll Druids.
>I may be neutral, but I have a velociraptor as my companion.
>Velociraptor, what do we do?
>Trust the velociraptor. Always.

Eh, I can figure some ways you could make workarounds with paladins

>paladin who cares more about oaths and contracts than necessarily being good
>paladin of a god of nature that doesn't give two shits about people buried in the earth
>paladin of civilization that doesn't care what the party does as long as it doesn't damage social institutions

My friends may be social outcasts
They may be depraved and sick minded
They may even be secretly gay

But they thankfully never go full magical realm

I play my paladins like judge dredd

>Judge- find the charges
>Jury - decide their fate
>Executioner - carry out the sentence

Whenever I play paladin I usually flip a coin for it, or i write up at least 4 things then roll for it.

>The bandit leader is slain, his remaining men throw down weapons and surrender.
>Paladin: " for the crimes of theft, murder. Kidnapping and banditry...death to 1/2 the remaining men, the rest shall be sent to the church to be rehabilitated."

By rehabilitated I mean indoctrinated into the church.

Sometimes it's a result of just not fishing for info hard enough. True story of something that happened to me:
>dude is running D:tD over the interwebs
>I make a character because he says he has space
>ask what everyone else was making so I could try to fit into the group
>"It's D:tD, do whatever"
>over 9000 memes later, Ork Sherrif
>suddenly the guy mentions that the rest of the party is basically a bunch of Chaos cultists
>"How the fuck do I fit in with this group?"
>"It'll work out somehow lol"
I think I'm gonna see if I can get him to let me refluff the Sherrif class tree into a bandit/desperado thing. Might be a bit tricky depending on how he considers Backing (Criminal Elements) to stack up to Backing (Law Enforcement).

I now need an enchanted weapon.
>Foehammer? No, this is the Lawgiver

This is why my campaigns always start out in a way that basically forces the PC's to cooperate or they'll just die and no playing for you.
I start them in prison, or some camp that quickly gets buttfucked by the BBEG's army, or that one time I started them with what was basically "would you kindly?".

Why didn't you as a GM do your fucking job and correct the player before the game started?

My games are successful because I make sure the characters will have motives for sticking it through.

Your games are nightmares because you're a lazy piece of shit who takes any mouthbreather who shows up to the table with a filled-in sheet.

>Lawbringer

>Paladin readies his weapon and uses a battlecry
>"I am the law...AND THIS BRINGS IT TO YOU"

Mine didn't because a lawful good dwarven cleric wasn't going to heal an elf druid omniphile, a greedy human paladin, and a murderous barbarian so I just told my DM I needed to roll a new character.

bewcause mutual goals should be the basis for traveling together, not friendship. Friendship grows. Unless you say the party knows each other ahead of time, your asking for one dimesnional high fiving super friends and getting mad your not getting that.

A little partyconflict is good. It builds character and tension.

Heres somthing alot of people never think about till this questions posed: When was the last time, incharacter, anyone of you or your players ever actually asked anything about another characters story other then how it pertains to the current objective in your face? So many fucking times I give players the campfire conversation options and they never take it. I had a group I was in where I played an angry, almost crippled warlock. They all assumed I was just an asshole evil guy trying to be moody, but not fucking ONCE did anyone ask why I'm the way I am or try to understand.

So before you go "pfft, hes just trolling the group because he hates fun", fucking have in character development.

Because I've 0 interest in playing a morally void character, and that's exactly what would have been required of me to stay in the game.

So, yes, it was giving up on my fun.

And with some settings, yes, there is only one character concept that interests me.

I think no one asked why your angry crippled warlock was an angry crippled warlock because they had always been an angry crippled warlock to them. Did you ever break away from that at all? Have the warlock be nice to some random street urchin, get them curious about him? Did you talk about their backstory out of character at all, drop hints for them to get curious about in character?

You can't just roll around and squirm and basically go 'LOOK AT ME WHY AREN'T YOU ROLEPLAYING WITH ME' and expect people to take you up on it, especially if you're not offering any sort of mystery. The warlock is angry, and the warlock is crippled; the warlock must be angry because he is crippled.

Also, party conflict is only good for building character and tension in small amounts, and when it can eventually be worked over. Otherwise you just have a party split into a bunch of pieces that don't really want to work together.

I would much rather one dimensional high-fiving super friends than that, and saying that our characters are friends before the adventure starts is an easy way to bring them together and consider how they'd interact with each other despite their differing personalities.

>my own fun is more important than the fun of all the other players in the game
Spotted that guy.

Maybe it's my group but I'd hint ridiculously obviously at his mysterious backstory to the other party members half-OoC, nearly comically so.
>my warlock starts to rub his aching back, groaning and LOOKING AT HIS LOCKET LONGINGLY, PRETTY MYSTERIOUS I'D SAY HE'S GOT SOME WORDS TO SAY ABOUT IT IF ASKED I BET
Never really played a serious character in my life though, if I play a straight man it's because it bounces off someone else in the party.

Nah, but if I'm not having fun, I'm going to drop rather than try and 'make it work'.

Especially if I've talked about it OOC before the game.

>I'd rather drop a game than spoil my own fun

Clearly he's willing to leave a game instead of trying to sabotage it, so he's not really That Guy. That Guy would never drop a game.

>He wants a game where the party gets along all the time and never has drama between them

I guess internal party strife can go pretty sour if you play with a shitty group.

It always goes sour.

There's a difference between "The dwarf hates the elf, the paladin distrusts the mage, and they banter about it while fighting whatever evil draws them together" and "The cleric hates the party so much that he would rather stay behind in the nearest town than continue going on adventures"

One makes for good roleplay, the other ruins games.

What about when one player and the GM conspire to fuck over one of the players?

That's my experience with internal party strife.

Perfectly normal, basically if you're not counter-conspiring with the GM in preparations for such eventuality, you're not roleplaying hard enough.

Man, I'm glad I don't play with you.

What about "the cleric only joined the party because their goals happened to align with the groups', and now 4-5 sessions later, they've done what they set out to do, and are leaving the party on good terms"?

> You are not allowed to quit gaming ever if other people don't want you to.

Nigga do you have brain problems?

To be fair, I've done this before, but that's because I was playing a manipulative as fuck character who lived to put herself at the top and fuck everyone else over in the process to do it.

Again, glad I don't play with you.

Are you a tingling by chance?

Tiefling**

i dont think there's any problem with this. But if you're leaving on good terms, dont bring in a jackass to rile things up.

dont make the party wish your other character had never left, because they'll resent the new one. and that just causes unnecessary conflict

Because they are new.

That is literally the only reason.

I typically find that this happens because the player thinks the "loner who sits in the corner not interacting with people" is a cool character type, and forgets that those characters only work when other people draw them in to the action (and other players might not bother or might not realize that's what's required for the character).

Most of the time, thankfully, I get something more along the lines of (which still isn't perfect but it's much better).

If you're a good player, and you have a good group, playing someone at odds with the party can be really interesting.

Trouble is, most people are too shit to pull it off.

>I have to continue doing something I dislike for the sake of the people who are making me dislike it in the first place

Full retard.

The proper response to "My character doesn't have a motivation to adventure," is "Then roll up a character that does."

It's frustrating when people say they don't have any reason to adventure. Maybe you don't get along with the party, sure, but these fantasy heroes can afford to have dreams that are a little larger than life. Making a better world, spreading their doctrine, or even just getting rich.

Played a game of dark heresy as a scum, who was press ganged into helping an inquisitor find a smuggler of xeno tech on his home world. Proved himself so useful that he was kidnapped and brought along against his will. He spent the rest of the campaign attempting to secretly murder the inquisitor and escape from the rest of the party without getting killed for treason and/or heresy. It was a pretty fun campaign

>there is only one character concept that interests me.
You might have autism.

>"Then change the character so they'll want to adventure or roll a new one quickly. We only meet like once s month so please don't ruin it".

>with some settings

I'm not that guy, but I can totally understand not really being into the length and breadth of sci-fi or cyberpunk or fantasy settings except for one or two things, especially when they get really specific.

Just because you like a setting as a whole, doesn't mean you have to like everything in it.

Because every party needs a wildcard.

Do your players build their characters collaboratively, or seperately? Because if they're building them separately there's know way they can know what will/won't mesh with the rest of the party.
This is exactly why you hold a pre-game session if there's so much as a single fresh face; to go over the rules (which you know they won't read) and have everyone make their characters in the same room at the same time.

>Why the FUCKALL do players build characters they know will be at odds with the rest of the group - or even characters that have no reason to want to go on adventures at all - and then complain about how they don't fit in with the rest of the PCs?
When I play a game I usually don't have a reason for why my PC sticks around but I assume there is one and will pick one out/make one up after spending a few sessions with the party

I just don't get the mindset of "I can't think of a reason so I'll stop the game until someone gives me one"

Even Charlie Kelly has reasons to hang out with the party.

>hurr durr I'm a loner prima donna the whole campaign has to revolve around or else I won't engage in anything!
This is why I've banned dwarves from all my campaigns

I never imagined dwarves attracted that kind of player.

It's pretty much the only type of dwarf in existence.

>plays dwarf
>expects any story to revolve around him

Don't think I've ever experienced that the dwarf player is the loner one. Also i pity you for banning them for you will never experience the joy of an all dwarf pirate campaign and the hijinks that follows on the seven seas.

Ive found it to be a combo of DM and players. In general, some DMs make it part of the scenario (you guys have just escaped a prison together). If the GM is just like, "SAND BOX!" or is just unwilling to help the players ease into the adventure, the players might just be like, no way, fuck that guy.

I like to throw them into situations, or else just say, you were all hired to do this thing

However, failing all that, it IS just a game, and if youre going to say that and not be a team player then fuck you

>or else just say, you were all hired to do this thing
This is the least likely scenario to go wrong, I don't think it can be fucked up. Make the players already have their motivations for joining the crew, instead of meeting strangers and getting tied into a conflict they just meet their new allies whether they like them or not.

Weak bait. I can't even be bothered to post the meme.

I'm nipping this in the butt by having all my players be adopted siblings. They all know each other, they're gonna make their characters together, and they are going to role play a decent four hours of childhood to get to know each other.

Before you freedomfags get triggered, they're cool with this, I can relate to OP cause I'm fucking sick of situations like this happening in my campaigns too.

The last campaign I ran I tried to do "first session is how party meets and joins forces"
>fuck these guys I'm the hero!
>entire first session is an episode of the amazing race
>have to jump between all PCs cause they're literally racing to get the same quest done first

Never again.

>player makes active effort to exclude character from party
>"why am I being excluded"
and that's the story about how I dropped that campaign like a stone.

Some selfish players man. Do you play with random folks or friends? No matter what character I play in my group, I feel drawn towards them because I'm absorbed in the character development and interaction of each person. I find it kind of odd other people don't feel this way.

Why do people put chocolate in chili?

it makes shit tasty

>vaguely serious group
>new players come in with characters based around gimmicks and silly ideas
>new players are treated coldly, but never leave and instead a wedge develops in a formerly united party

I don't know why it always happens this way, but it does. It's not even all the new player's fault - it's not like the original group hands out a memo.

>old group members don't tell him why they're treating him coldly
>new player will never fix his problems therefore

And this is why I like Shadowrun.

>"What reason would I have to go on this mission?"
>"Because your rent is due in a week and you've got 27¥ to your name."

The GM had us roll up characters without telling us what the rest of us were making.

Thusly I created an ifrit paladin and was thrust amidst a group of chaotic neutral and chaotic evil rogues and rangers.

(No, I was not given any hints as I was creating this character that it would be a bad idea.)

I did my best to be copacetic and function well with the team, but after the fifth time I had to save innocents from being slain by the party, I was forced to engage the chaotic evil dominatrix tiefling in combat because I couldn't ignore the negative effect they were having on the world amidst a conspiracy between planes of shadow and demons.

Ultimately things stopped being fair play and translated into nonsense outside of the table, so I quickly headed off any drama at the pass and decided to stop showing up to the game.

I learned later that my character had become a recurring antagonist of the group.

It's also great for bringing a bunch of wackos together.

>Well, you're all idiots or crazy or people I don't want to spend the rest of my life with, but we worked pretty well together in there, let's say we meet up for a job next week?

The only flaw I would say that the system has is that if people have no clue what the world is like, they just tend to make characters that have various excuses for not knowing anything past the present day. It bugs me even more when they show no curiosity about the world.

Yeah, there's an amazing metafiction to go along with the setting, and it's always advancing at a reasonable rate.

And your picture reminds me; I've been playing Shadowrun Hong Kong and just finished the Shadowland BBS chain about the poor group that couldn't keep a decker no matter what they tried. Had a sad ending, but it's my favorite part of the game so far.

I think it depends my character doesn't trust anyone because he's a con artist, but everyone who is on the quest was promised their deepest desire. The catch is this group of individuals has to participate in a unknown tournament together.

He knows hes weak so he has to buddy up with them. Of course he still tries to take advantage of them but they all know his game so it hardly goes well.

>"I'll sell you this magic bow string(it just glows green when pulled) for 10 gold"

But they don't hate him because he has negotiation and deception skills that helped them get into places they otherwise wouldn't be able to. Currently the group has become closer then when it started and that's what I like about these kinda characters and campaigns it makes for a better experience.

WFRP is kinda silly in that respect. I mean, I get adventures in RPGs who do this shit for a living but when your party can be comprised of a beggar, rat-catcher, grave robber and coachman you kind have to wonder if you're just asking to die in a ditch somewhere.

>Yeah, this is another thing. I almost feel like people need some kind of pre-game checklist to help them avoid problems during the leadup to the first session.

You basically need to dedicate your first session to character creation and getting the group together, especially if you have NEW players won't don't necessarily get it.

Got to agree with I am glad that I don't play with you.

Not always. In a dark heresy game my group was playing the campaign ended with a pretty huge inner party conflict cliffhanger.

Basically, the party leader (Noble Assassin) was looked over for promotion. To inqusitor status because the last assignment we were sent on, he was horribly disfigured (insanity/corruption points almost through the roof, which caused his fellowship to take a shit and drop down to 3) and my guardsmen character was given the nod from on high, and became the party leader. There had been clashes of rank every so often, not to mention the tech priest also peaked in corruption (I believe he hit 90) and was only allowed to continue to serve if a meltabomb was surgically implanted against his heart ( which I had the detonator for). So here we are trapped on some emperor forsaken daemon plane in a three way Mexican standoff over a lost Sister of Battle, and my only ally is the party payment, who SOMEHOW has no corruption or insanity at all, but on principle I dislike and distrust him. Shit was cash, I really wanted to get back to that game, but I don't think the group will ever be able to.

I'd have to agree. If my gaming group decides to play Rifts, there's a 99% chance I'm playing a robot pilot.

Dude, I'd buy a magic glowing bowstring for 10 gold, you could get a ton of uses out of that.

Communication is the key. I always brainstorm with my group what they want to play and I ask everyone "Why did your character join the group?" or "why would your character adventure" before the first stat is rolled or perk picked.

I have zero interest in someone trying to be the extra special, contratian snowflake that requires half of a session for his character to be convinced to join while everyone else just wants to start adventuring.

A lot of the time it happens because a lot of great media has a party at odds with each-other. Odd couples, allies-of-convenience and "enemy of my enemy is my friend" type relationships are tense, interesting, and fun to watch. Hell, they can be fun to play, but only in a group that's all on board and is experienced enough in the hobby to act out inter-party friction without actually contributing to it.

Players don't usually build a character like this imagining them hating (and being hated by) the rest of the group. They're imagining some great scene where he and the rest of the party have a conflict of interest, ideology, or methodology that explodes in a dramatic fashion and then is resolved, with everyone involved growing closer because of it. The problem is that, just like the guy who makes a grizzled veteran with no idea how to actually act like one, the guy who wants to make an adversarial party member with a heart of gold usually doesn't actually know how to translate that from his head to the table.

>Why the FUCKALL do players build characters they know will be at odds with the rest of the group - or even characters that have no reason to want to go on adventures at all - and then complain about how they don't fit in with the rest of the PCs?
Nobody have them pic related.
Also, they're tools.

>I almost feel like people need some kind of pre-game checklist to help them avoid problems during the leadup to the first session.
See pic related

>you could get a ton of uses out of that.
.....Like what, did I get screwed in this deal.