How do you feel about personal sidequest for Player's Characters?

How do you feel about personal sidequest for Player's Characters?

Man, our sidequests are becoming just like our main quest: we need to deliver a message, but we keep being interrupted by a village that is under attack, a quarrel between a noble with their retinue and a wandering knight and finally a pregnant young woman travelling on her lonesome, trying to escape a noble and a whole bunch of soldiers.

Give us a break please!

Those aren't "personal sidequests". Personal sidequests would be like the final line of pic-related.

depends on party size and cohesion. If you're long standing together as a party then fuck that shit, but if your GM is good then he'll be able to tie you in together and allow yourselves to get some breathing room to use more of your imagination for your character, that way you won't murder one another from the get go

Essential for good party cohesion. Every good DM should take the following steps when making a game.

>Give players a "premise". Tell them "the game is going to be about X" or "You're all part of Organization Y".
>Tell players they need to come up with a character who's motivation ties in with the premise. Tell players they need a character who has something to gain by being part of the premise.
>Use that thing the player character wants, whether it be a missing mentor/family like in , a personal life goal like uncovering a lost secret or achieving mastery of something, revenge against a rival, ect. to string the player along through your campaign.
>Even if you have a bigger overarching "main plot", be sure to drop your players breadcrumbs related to their personal goals as well so they feel like they're achieving something meaningful independent of the main quest.

bretty much this, but after a certain point it's stupid to do, unless you're putting in a brand new character in an otherwise old party

>but after a certain point it's stupid to do

If this isn't done during character creation or session 0 discussions with the DM, you've fucked up.

>he has a session 0
hi r*ddit

>Not holding a session 0 to ensure that the character's backstories work with the setting and one another.

Here's your (You) faggot.

>Thinking Session 0 is a bad thing.

That DM detected.

Don't do 'sidequests.' Don't think in the video-game sense 'this story gets a cutscene and a VA, but this other one gets just text.'

Every character should have a personal goal you can work into a quest. The more goals the better, though you obviously won't be able to use them all.

The really Fun stuff is when you set party goals against one another. PCa wants to destroy the fountain of youth, PCb wants to be immortal. Just make sure you don't set party members against eachother unless they have an even greater reason to stick together.

One campaign recap I read had the narrator as a Warlock and another pc as a Dragon Shaman(?) with directly opposed alignments. It was a 'save the world' plot, but that meant as the drama unfolded the Warlock let her morals slip and her methods become more extreme as the situation got more desperate.

The correct way to play is just to have players show up with their premade character sheets. Then, you kick them out if they haven't guessed the right system, source books or level range for the campaign.

>The really Fun stuff is when you set party goals against one another.

No... just no. You want your players to work together and cooperate. Setting their goals against eachother for the sake of forced drama is literally the same kind of shit as DMs who spend their whole time plotting to make the paladin fall.

I'd call this bait, but I think you're unironically just THAT retarded. Please find a different hobby to shit up with your grognard'ism, thanks.

Makes for the greatest quests and give players an excuse to say they have bonded and will keep sticking together even though their mission is finished

>No... just no. You want your players to work together and cooperate.

Really depends on the game and your players, for example i've run a sort of cyberpunk-noir style games where the players were all allies and on the same side, but they also had individual goals that were indirectly at odds.

I tried to frame these conflicts in a way that they players were never directly opposing eachother, but rather so that if Player A manages to complete their own goal, it might complicate or make it impossible for player B to achieve an "optimal" result for their personal goal.

It worked for the style i was running, but you need player buy-in an it needs to make sense in the setting you're running.

Where'd this meme hate for session 0 come from?

About 2 or 3 months back and everyone here was recommending session 0 as a good thing to have.

There's no hate for session 0, is just baiting and a retard, as numerous people have pointed out.

Always hold a Session 0.

>How do you feel about personal sidequest for Player's Characters?
Depends, are they cute?

They are probably fun for the players, because they feel that what they wrote in their backstory has an impact in the world you're all in.

>DM is running an eastern-themed campaign
>Tells us we're all going to be working under an Imperial official from the emperor's court.
>Tells us to come up with at least a page of backstory.
>Decide to make a Samurai (Battlemaster) who's Lord was betrayed by another Samurai during an important battle and that our province basically got sold out to the barbarians from the west.
>Typical revenge story, whatever.
>Make it perfectly clear to our handler in the very first session that I'm not helping for wealth or prestige, but because I want information about the bastard that betrayed us.
>He says he'll use the kingdom's information network to help.
>First plot arc happens, no new information.
>Next couple of plot arcs happen, no new information.
>Literally just get blown off every time I ask bout it.
>DM throws a hissyfit about it "not being in the campaign path" when I mention that my character really has no reason to keep doing stuff for the party if I'm not going to get even a shred of anything useful to my personal goal.
>Pulls the "do you wana play the game or not?" excuse on me.

Feels bad man.

And it wasn't just me either. We had a Kunoichi (Arcane Trickster Rogue) who was looking to rebuild her clan after an attack, and a Sage (Grave Cleric) who was trying to unravel a murder mystery given to him by spirits that couldn't rest.

DM didn't give either of them jack shit either.


So yes, please do give players personal sidequests and have them matter, please.

Had a similar thing happen with a dm. Sucks man. My players depending on how much content they give me sometimes get their own arcs.

Only works if the other players care about all the characters. Its not something you can just dump on people. If you read the room right it can work out, but you shouldnt include something like that unless its already critical to the goings-on of the story, or if everybody seems to care about the fate of one character (along with others, of course).