My character doesn't work with others

>teammember literally about to kill my character for being a known theif.
>Defends himself
>Gets punished by the dm and the character is killed on the spot
What a shitshow that was.

>My last DM had us all start out at a parade and witness the assassination of the Empress, and have to work together to clear our names for the crime.
>Not taking pride in killing the empress.
>Being this much of a beta bitch.

I think you meant to call him a cuck. Update your memes, user.

Good I never wanted to play in your shitty game anyway.

Well I wouldn't want the whole damn country after me for having allegedly killed the Queen...

I survived. Now look at me. I'm the GM now.

Sure. Door's to your left. I'm sure you'll find a group better suited to your tastes.

>My character has social anxiety about being left out
>Will break down if separated from the party.

>the party is fill with nothing but murder hobos who want to kill the people we could reason with and talk with the clearly evil people who will fuck us over but they want to wait for them to try so they have a reason to kill them
Im hardly even exaggerating

That sounds like it could be fun actually. A team psychos who seize the upper hand despite by bloodthirsty morons by constantly out villain-ing the villains and acting beyond conventional reason.>L

>What do you think is a good way to get players to stay and work together?
By excluding faggot who refuse.

You make it crystal clear that the player characters have to work together. If a player doesn't want a character that likes working together with others, then he can find another game.

It is not that fucking hard.

>that is adorable and useful

>have to work together to clear our names for the crime.
I tried that shit, one PC ended up in jail for a few days while the rest ignored every hook, lead, and option I threw at them, and literally sat down in an alley and waited.
Eventually I had an NPC officer order them around and use them as muscle while clearing their names and finding a real lead. Now I look like a DMNPC asshole, the players don't give a shit about the real perp, and got kicked out of town for trying to kill the officer.
I guess I'll just keep shoving then into dungeon crawls and pray they find something to give a damn about.

Sounds retarded and would hinder the group if they needed to split up.

Have them make characters as a group, pointing out all the while that they should have a character that will work with the party.

It's harder for someone to insist on being the edgy loner rogue when they're in the middle of making it and everyone is asking them questions

I meant plot-wise. The players (most of them anyway) know that working together as a group part of the game, but the characters are usually a bunch of strangers thrown together by circumstance.

You'd go on a long dangerous quest with your friends, but most characters wouldn't with some complete strangers. So story-wise there needs to be something that encourages them to work together, and given how different all the characters can be in race and background and motivation, it can be tricky.

Some other ideas: Characters are part of an Ocean's 11 kind of heist. Characters are the newest recruits for the local city guard. Or of course, your standard mercenaries, I guess.

I wouldn't mind as a GM.

It is called having an impactful weakness. You know, like getting so drunk you are useless until late into the following day, or being a Lawful Good Paladin or something in that ballpark.

And quite unlike the "my characters greatest flaw is his pride and never backing down from a fight he thinks he can win."

Is it a dick move that I made my character unable to read?

It fits his backstory since he came from a tribal village.

As long as he has his uses.

Not really, he would probably come of as a simpleton to most people. Just be good friends with someone who can.
in fact could lead to some interesting things, such as navigating through a city unable to read street signs constantly asking where so&so place was.

Have your players sit down, create or at least put the finishing touches on their characters together, and ask them "Why are you together? What makes you stay together?" Things like this don't necessarily have to come from the GM.

Depending on the setting, e might just come off as a normal person instea dof some smarty-pants to most people. It's not like literacy has always and everywhere been the norm.

I'm making a character that wants to be a bodyguard, and would insist on guarding another character. Problem is, so far it doesn't seem like anyone in the party needs guarding.

Is it worth weakening the character's central concept by lessening their need to be a guard, or should it just be scrapped?

>I meant plot-wise. The players (most of them anyway) know that working together as a group part of the game, but the characters are usually a bunch of strangers thrown together by circumstance.
Actually, the character are fictional constructs whose goals, thoughts and actions are decided entirely by the players. The characters themselves do not have motivations or preferences; they have only what the players project onto them.

The expectation that player-characters will work together is an assumption of the medium, user. If you have a character who refuses to work well with others, what you have is a player who isn't buying into the shared assumption.

I feel like it is a breath of fresh air.

Here we have a problem that for once is not thrown at us suddenly by the GM. A weakness that is not a problem that needs solving asap. If the GM decides to exploit this weakness, it wont be like we didn't see it coming and if we were smart, we would have a plan for this situation to keep our weak party member at least functional enough to not be completely useless.

I mean, sure having 4 self sufficient adventure heroes would make stopping the BBEG easier but I find the "fun" parts of the campaign are when our heroes get caught up in their own shenanigans.

In my current tabletop I play a Lawful Good half-orc paladin who's strongest virtue is his sense of comradery. Only the most wicked and selfish of villains would ever abandon a comrade. I even wrote out a passage from a holy book that tells the tale of a knight who stood against a force outnumbered 10 to 1 when a bunch of his company ditch their suck and wounded so that they could move at full speed.

Of course he's still abrasive and tough to get along with like a lot of half-orcs and he's Lawful Good in a party of entirely Neutral characters so he gets in fights with the other party members all the time. No matter what, though, no matter how badly he wants delay their main quest for a few days to charge off to track down the gang of robbers he just heard a rumor about nearby, he'll never leave the adventuring party. Ever.

If you have to ask if a quality is bad then ask yourself "will other players be able to derive enjoyment out of this?" if the answer is yes then go ahead, if the answer is no then don't do it.

its how our GM has run Dark Heresy and it ha worked out gloriously, as we all managed to be truly dysfunctional characters who barely even like each other, united only by purpose and the authority of the inquisition

...

People who play loner types tend to be the same people who join a campaign for the purposes of looking cool rather than sharing a run romp with their buddies.

With that in mind, if you can't give a reason why you would work with the rest of the party, then I can't give a good reason for why your character is going to exist within my game.

>but characters like "I work alone, I'm a lone wolf" keep showing up.
this is fine. WITHIN LIMITS.

I'm thinking of making a character that works with others, and is polite, but tends to keep others a arms length, due to losing close friends before.

Does this sound good or does it come off as edgy?

Nah, it's fine. At worst he'll come off as a bit coldly professional.

>and because the thief had repeatedly tried stealing his gold

Wow your group sounds like shit.

That's what I was aiming for, though less cold and more reserved I guess.
Like the smiles there, but it doesn't reach his eyes type of deal.

I mean, it's fine. I occasionally play lone wolf characters, but typically he works with the party for some reason. Some campaigns they all broke out of jail together, others, they all ended up together on a strange world. Either way, my character sticks with the group, because for now? He, and the group need eachother. Usually, either due to character development, or having another quest that's REAL IMPORTANT, he may even stay with the group.

Still fine. Nothing wrong with a reserved character, as long as it's not intentionally without any emotion or character, but with hidden or subdued emotion or character.

This shit isn't a problem with collaborative character creation.

yeah, but you need a group on the right wavelength for that kind of chargen to work well.

>Ok my new character is anarchic arsonist. He's with the party because Chaotic Neutral does whatever.

It also generally makes for more interesting characters.

Too often I get players who dumbs charisma and instead tries to avoid rolling charisma in favour of so - called "roleplaying", or disregards Int rolls because he already knows OOC, or goes on investigations despite having shit wis and Int.

I just want players to have actual flaws, instead of those Mary sueish "My greatest flaw is that I am the best person in the world" flaws, or worse, the "i am clumsy which makes me cute, unless it is in a fight, in which case I am a graceful fighter"

And it is not difficult, people just want their perfect special snowflakes too often.

My current 5e party has:
>Nearsighted fighter who can't discern people from more than 10 meters away.
>Bard who gets panic attacks if she is alone, even more so if it is dark
>A Wizard who can't multitask to save his life, and cannot notice anything happening around him if he is focusing on something, including during a fight
>A druid who can't physically sleep in a building, and simply suffers from a severe case of insomnia if she tries.

It isn't all that much, but it just gives so much to the group dynamic, and gives them plenty of issues among themselves, rather than constantly throwing outside threats at them.

4 perfect adventurers might be *best* at saving the world, but also boring as fuck for the purpose of an actual roleplaying game.

>t. lone wolf player

I take it you left that group?

That's actually not a flaw: it's more of a merit. Because, you know, splitting the party is Always a bad idea. youtube.com/watch?v=PUMCIn2swTU

As long as he's not as haughty as general Edmund

As a GM, I love making retards who think like this sacrifice a fuckton of loot and lives.

The most hilarious is how obvious it should be. There are two groups that needs to be saved, but you either split up, or sacrifice one of the groups. The instead figure out who they want to sacrifice, and go save one of 5he groups, only to find 2 weak guys that had been a fairly easy fight for 2 of them, but turned into a stomp because they took the entire 5 man party there, instead of splitting up and saving both.

>stir the ire of dozens

Or just one

Nah he's like that dude at work that everyone talks to, but then later if they think about it, they're like "holy shit, I know fuck all about that guy".
There's one in every work place.

"Hook your characters together during the collective brainstorm session" is a perfectly working solution. You don't need to contrive plot bullshit to make a gang of randoms that's at each others throat to work together.
You make a gang of misfits that hate each other with a group of players that you have very hard vetted and who all fully agreed to the premise for it's roleplaying value.

>One other idea I have for a game I'm going to run, is that the players are members of a caravan traveling across some really brutal terrain, and the caravan leader has taken a piece of their souls in exchange for getting them safely to the city on the other side.
That's some serious bullshit power level for a fucking caravan job.

I mean, high level adventurers guarding a transfer of an artefact of doom across not-mordor? Sure.
Trade caravan? Nah.

>le shrug
Better safe than sorry.

Besides, you sound like one of those GMs with a mentality of 'GM vs Players' so I find it hard to believe that any group would like your games anywho.

>What do you think is a good way to get players to stay and work together?
Include it as a requirement for character creation.

>you are all friends.
>come up with two significant shared life events (one designed mainly by you, one by the other guy) tying you to each other character in the group.
>each of you come up with something that brought the group closer together in some way. Shared peril, hardship, etc. How did your character take it. How did the other characters react?

And done.

>Watching your best friend die in front of you
This could make recruiting new characters difficult.

I manage it via the difficulty of encounters, generally. Every time the group has split up to do something, they've gotten in over their heads and only managed to survive by the skin of their teeth. Granted, I'm usually shooting for things to play out like that no matter what but when they're together they usually avoid coming so close to death through teamwork and clever thinking. It's taught them to stick together whenever possible.

>My character doesn't work with others
Well we're playing a group game, so you should consider a different character archetype.

New characters all also have ties to someone in the group, albeit with less ties.

Instead of your best friends, it's a guy one or two of the pcs worked with for a couple years who helped you out of a jam a few times.

Everyone wants to be 1970s/1980s Wolverine

A bit too far, I see it causing a lot of problems IC, but it is an original and interesting character. Would let in game and give hero points whenever it triggers.

>GM vs Players
Not at all

I just hate players who seem to assume this, and constantly take ALL the precautions, even slowing down games to a screeching halt, because of some autistic "never split the party" spergtrip

I try to play loner chars all the time but end up in directly leading the group or manipulation the groups "leader" - or better the groups character everyone else follows - to not make bullshit decisions. For once I would like to play a loner or a confirmist soldier who is just following orders.
No the autistic group dynamic in my group does not allow it.
Even if I build a npc with my char whos in charge, this npc will make murderous bullshit decisions that would kill everyone if I would follow them because of the autistic DM who can't handle character resources.

It showed

>And quite unlike the "my characters greatest flaw is his pride and never backing down from a fight he thinks he can win."
Oh man I'd have this guy get his face broken SO MANY TIMES.

Fuck those shitheads that think Valor 5 Conviction 5 is a free ride on "I do whatever the fuck I want and my literally buttfuck insane personality traits are no hindering me at all".

It's your anecdotal experience vs mine. In my experience, whenever the party split up, something bad happened which could've been prevented.

Or something bad happens because you refused to split the party for meta reasons.

Pick your poison.

Just protect the squishies
The wizard, sorc, druid or rogue

You can also, you know, actually talk with the other players and see who'd be cool with having the muscle be their personal muscle and start from there.

If something bad happens either way and the players notice that, no matter what they do the outcome is the same, then the GM fucked up. Because the players noticed the rails they are on.

But yeah, it would be refreshing to actually be able to split the party without everything going to shit.

>known theif
If you are thief and well known you did something wrong as a thief.

I once played a "lone wolf" character who only STARTED that way but their whole character development revolved around becoming a team player and realizing the POWER OF FRIENDSHIP!

I also DM'd a campaign where the player refused to have their character grow out of being a lone wolf then had the audacity to wonder why the party left him behind to go do stuff all the time. We didn't invite them back to the next session.

Most people avoid splitting the party because it's not any fun to sit there with your thumbs up your ass while the DM deals with the different groups.

>druid
>squishy

Rogue's gonna be upfront too.

Just stick to the classic nerd types.

Hence why I make a point of never punishing a split of the party, but make obvious sacrifices when they decide to stick together.

The power gamer goes in the group with the most dangerous enemies, the other get some challenge requiring their skills. It works brilliantly, as it let's the rogue do his thing with skills, while the grizzled wizard walks all over a hard encounter, by himself, because he is min maxed to hell. Everybody wins, and no one gets left out of the fun.

>even slowing down games to a screeching halt
>implying keeping the party together does this
>implying splitting the party doesn't do this

>you acted with caution therefore I hate you and will punish you for doing the smart thing

honestly people should make characters directly connected to eachother pre-story more often

it works great.

You would think this is common sense, right?

I know. My first few games of Dnd started off such a mess. Everyone is way too awkward to start talking to strangers then it feels so forced when they do.

Sounds like something you should discuss with your DM, so that he can design adventures with your guarding focus in mind. It shouldn't be difficult to design adventures with untrained NPCs you need to escort or situations where one might need to travel with you over a longer period.

For example, say you are tasked by the king to rescue the young prince, who has gone missing. When you find him, living with a veiled servant in a cottage hidden in the woods, the group is attacked by assassins who had tailed you to find the prince's hiding place. After the fight the servant (who may be mortally wounded, the DM was probably gunning for it but I know from experience that guard-themed characters throw a wrench in such plans) removes her veil and reveals herself as the current queen. She explains that the boy is the child of the former king, and the current one, who she married after the old king's death, wants the boy dead so that his own child will inherit the throne. Since you were able to protect him from the assassins, she tasks you with his safety and requests that you take him with you on your adventures, where he'll be away from the grasping schemes of her husband.

One thing Fate does right is making bringing the party together part of the character creation process.

When i played a game with my little sister, her 14 year old friend didnt want to work with her. It took some doing, but I got it through his head.

>smart thing
Being overly cautious isn't smart, especially when it means deliberately sacrificing something or someone in the process.

I play shadowrun, and the party gets split all the time.The trick is to keep your actions short, simple and entertaining... And to shoot out a camera or door to trigger an alarm every time the powergaming decker jacks in and starts a 30 minute host hack.

Seriously: If the other characters bore you that much: Find a new group. This is a social medium, there's no need to zone out and drool just 'cause the boring guy with a sword is doing things instead of your super-awesome mage.

>Joining 5e game
>want to make drow character
>other players agree it might be cool
>Explicitly explain this will not be Drizzt chaotic good clone
>Party thinks it will be interesting
>Begin play.
>Party immediately angry when drow is confrontational and doesn't rush to everyone's aid
>MFW

This.

Sorry, this isn't a single player game, and you won't have the spotlight all the time. Deal with it.

> One player makes super optimised OP sleep/instant kill sorceror
> Blows through first encounter instantly because OP
> "Har har too easy"
> Encounters enemies that are immune to his specific flavour of insta-kill
> "What the hell fucking killer GM"

>Invite players to join a Star Wars game with the PCs being members of Black Sun. Say it will be morally dark characters.
>get 4 players
>1 of them made an assassin sniper whose modus operandi is killing a ton of targets alongside his primary target, just to throw off investigation.
>the last 3 made good characters, 2 force sensitive, who are "working in Black Sun to make the organisation a better place, and work towards the better of the galaxy."
>they spend the entire first session figuring out ways to prevent the assassin from doing anything
Come the fuck on man.

>my character likes to make single line of greentext threads

Some people can't do non-good characters, I have learned this.

Then you don't fucking join games explicitly requiring evil or morally black characters

>REEEEEEEEEEEEE

I'm joking, I hate it as well, but you just keep running into people doing this sort of thing.

If the landscape is dangerous enough that you can't get across it alone, and organized trips are few and far between, I could see it working. But there would have to be some serious threats and environmental hazards, not just your average walk with wolf attacks and kobolds.

>My character is myself
>I was transported to the setting via a magical portal