How to Get Your Players to Play Together as an Adventuring Party

Justin:

Hi there listener, this is Justin Lewis and I have here Tanner Wayland with me today. Say hi, Tanner.

Tanner Weyland:

Hi.

Justin:

And today on how to be a better DM we are going to talk about Sort of a niche topic One that I think a lot of people struggle with without knowing they struggle with so let me paint a picture for you It’s session zero right and you’ve finally gotten all your PCs in the same room We’ll say it’s a tavern right there sitting at the same table a few of them know each other So you have two over here that know each other two over there and two over there with most groups, your players start saying, oh well my character’s mysterious and untrusting of other people and you have to prove yourself to me. Except every player in your party is acting like that. So the question that we’re gonna answer today is how do you get your players, or at least your PCs, to start treating each other like friends and to start wanting to travel together and to view themselves as a party? difficult things to do in session zero or in a one-shot, especially if you as the DM don’t outright say, you guys have been traveling for a while, you are already friends. So naturally, let’s get that one out of the way. The simplest way to do that specifically in one-shots is just to say, you guys are already friends. You have a long history, you don’t need to worry about that. That method doesn’t really work when it comes to long-term campaigns because the whole point of the campaign your party integrates and becomes solidified and galvanized, right? So

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

we’ll get that one out of the way, but Tanner, any initial thoughts?

Tanner Weyland:

Uh, my initial thought is that like you were saying, it’s not as clean of a process as, as you’d like, it’s not as clear cut because not everyone has a fellowship of the ring type situation where they’re all sitting, they all gathered for one reason and then they all, everyone who joined it volunteers and it’s like, Oh, you have my acts, you know, that kind of thing. Most of the time it’s like, Oh, they just happen to be in the same town together. And then this event happens, you know, but a party of orcs attacks the town. believe, you know, we like to skirt over the fact that like, oh, obviously these people band together to go fight the orcs. It’s like, not everyone does that. Some people, when they see trouble, they just, you know, they, they get out of town, you know, but, but so that’s why the inciting incident is so important. And also you have to have kind of external factors that tie them together. For example, you know, if they are in a town, like let’s say that they’re there festival, right? And you know, I’ll keep with my example and an orc attack happens. You know, instead of just assuming the players are going to fight together, what you could do is have an initial fight in the plaza, you know, or in the town square. And of course, everyone’s fighting there because all the players just happen to be there and stuff. But then after that, you could have it be like, Oh, everyone else that wasn’t a town like specifically puts you guys together, right? Like inciting incidents like that, you kind of need that initial moment of obligation or obligated partying in order to then later build on that and hopefully make some more connection, if that makes sense. So, I’m gonna go ahead and start with the first one. So, I’m gonna start with the first one.

Justin:

Yeah, that makes total sense. And actually let’s, let’s kind of put this into an example. So let’s use the example of our homebrew one-shot that we’re working on with Rob from

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

New York, Rob Van Auken or, or no, wait, is that his DM name or his real? I think that’s his real

Tanner Weyland:

That’s

Justin:

name,

Tanner Weyland:

his

Justin:

right?

Tanner Weyland:

real name. Yeah.

Justin:

Yes. Roderick Van Helm, Rob

Tanner Weyland:

Yes.

Justin:

Rick Van Helm is his DM. Anyways. it’s called For Whom the Bell Tolls, the Chime Fell Ceremony, right? And

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

thinking about this inciting event, the way the, gosh, I don’t want to give too many spoilers away, but essentially your party comes to a town, participates in festivals and trials to win awards to kind of become a new ceremonial figure that protects the town in a sense, but also protects reality in a sense from And at one point a leader of the monastery hosting the event turns and basically summons the big bad that everyone was trying to keep out, right? So I think in this case, to kind of give an example to what Tanner just said, an inciting incident could be this session. Like this could be your session zero. All the players come from different places to participate in the Chime Fell ceremony and possibly gain the award, right? figure

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

and I feel like naturally as your players win because they naturally will they’ll win those trials they’ll come together to meet the chief monastery officer or whatever the name is that the abbot and that you know they’ll meet each other and then the inciting event will be that large monster gets summoned and suddenly they have to work together to fix the problem right

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

I think that that we should hang out more, kind of an idea, right?

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, I think that when you have a galvanizing like event, then that can cause a lot of connection. Otherwise, like I think it’s a little bit harder with like longer journeys, you know? Because if you do have an inciting event that all happens in one town, like what happens in our, you know, the Chime fell ceremony, then that’s like very easy because all the players are in one town, there’s a festival, they’re all there for the same purpose, in the same trials and you know that you that’s certainly a way to make it happen and then just you as the DM as they’re playing you’re having little moments that you create of them like being like oh this person’s not half bad you know this other character and things like that can kind of help them become more of a party how about if you were on like a longer journey style like campaign things along the way create connection there.

Justin:

When you say longer journey style campaign, can you give a little bit,

Tanner Weyland:

Yes.

Justin:

yeah.

Tanner Weyland:

Like where they’re going to multiple locations, you know, they go from a town to a dungeon, to a seaside port, to, you know, and they’re like camping along the way, they run into bandits here and there. It’s just like, it’s a lot of traveling and

Justin:

Okay.

Tanner Weyland:

there’s more, a bunch of small events versus one big event.

Justin:

Yeah, see even that I think is pretty easy. So I think deep down, and this is honestly, this is kind of a topic of social encounters anyways, there’s a book called The Like Switch. And it’s funny, these last few duo episodes where you and me have both been on, have been both about D&D, but also about life in general. So

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

this is more about life in general, but this book is called The Like Switch. an FBI agent writing a book about how to influence people and kind of gain relationships and things like that and he lays out what’s called or what he calls the relationship formula right and he says your relationship is a formula derived from in proximity frequency intensity and duration so essentially

Tanner Weyland:

Hmm.

Justin:

you can boil down relationships to how close are you physically and like how intense are the emotions you feel and how long are you close together. See that’s why in my opinion, when you go and work at a new place, at first you don’t really make friends with the people sitting at your desk. You may or may not introduce yourself, but if you don’t, after a month, you’re gonna know each other’s names and you’re gonna start talking to each other just because you sit next to each other every single day. So in this case, with forcing your players to be together, have to get that formula in action, right? In the case of the galvanizing event, they are having such intense emotion that it’s kind of like the foxhole friends, right? Shared trauma leads to strong emotional or at least somewhat strong relationships. But in the case of a long-term campaign, you’re having them together for often, those natural occurrences are going to happen naturally. they would naturally relax and feel more comfortable around each other because kind of from a primal sense that person that unknown is becoming more known right. So I think just force the key to getting your PCs to want to travel together is to have them kind of fulfill that formula you know and there are obviously

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah.

Justin:

other things to do but I think that’s a good place to start.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, I like that too because it made me realize kind of an issue with a lot of DMs and characters, you know, because it’s we’re talking about parties here. But if you don’t give like one, if you don’t give your players the incentive to create good backstories. And then second, and this is where I realized with your comments, if you don’t allow the where they can share parts about their character that they’ve created and parts of their character’s personality then even if they have shared trauma like you were saying and even if they spend time together what are they going to know? It’s like you’re with someone at work who only ever talks about work, right? Are you going to actually ever know that person? Probably not. You know, you’re only going to know them in work capacity because they never talk about their personal life and so if you ever saw them outside of work they’d be practically you. You know, it’s like a teacher in school, right? Since kids never find out about what their teacher did, when they see them at the supermarket, they’re like, what the heck, aren’t you supposed to be at school? It’s kind of like that where if your players are only having their characters talk about the event in front of them, the next goal, the next thing, and they never talk about their character backstory or, you know, or get opportunities, character do, then they won’t have any latching on points for each other, right? I think that’s an important thing.

Justin:

Yeah, I agree. And actually to that note, I think getting your party to gel together starts long before session zero and it begins with character creation. And naturally you’re probably thinking like, oh, well, duh, you’d want, you know, a melee combat person in the same party as someone who casts spells or is ranged. Sure. But what I mean more is I think that relationship formula that I talked about, it might be a little bit… but incomplete, you probably need to add in the individual efforts of each person as well as the individual moral codes of each person. So, for example, in my current campaign, I have a character named Saban. He is a lizard folk artificer, and he’s from the swamp, you know, he has a southern accent, and he’s generally a very polite, caring individual, you know, I’d say he’s neutral good tending towards lawful good. He’s the kind of guy that like, if he sees someone struggling, he’ll go help for no reason. He’s just a good guy, right? And I

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah.

Justin:

put him in there just for me to have a character that I can play around with. But sometimes, other of the players in the group, they are neutral or evil, depending on their situation. And so they’ll do things that are questionable for Saban. And to be honest, it has made Saban think, do I really want to continue with this group when they’re doing certain acts, right? you need to make sure that your character creation will not spawn characters that act in ways that are diametrically opposite of one another. If you have two characters that spend lots of time together in incredibly intense emotions, but they disagree with each other about the basic standards of life, they will probably come to hate each other, and that’s how you get villains, to be honest.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, exactly. You have to have during character creation, you have to create characters who would in any world be willing to like spend some time around each other, right? If it’s like, oh, this is just such a big event that they have to spend time together that I mean, that’s okay, but you’re not going to have as much of a gelled party as you need. One thing I realized is that you have to have opportunity like Incidents are a great way even better than I think bigger incidents for your characters to gel, right? let’s say that you’re in a town and your characters are at a tavern and You know, everyone’s giving them the stink eye and the innkeeper is actually overcharging them and they see it because everyone else is like when the innkeeper is like gives them the like the tab essentially Like the players tab is like three times higher, right? such a small thing and you don’t think that would like help the party gel but guess what that’s a perfect incident to really reveal people’s like characters because unlike a big bad where it’s like oh everyone just hates these you know like what do you do about the local innkeeper who you can’t just well you could just massacre but like most people are gonna try and find other solutions and that’s where you’re gonna see each individual characters

Justin:

you

Tanner Weyland:

personality but then they’ll have to work together and be like hey what do we do because you I want to just steal from him and then the priest over there just wants to you know, turn the other cheek and leave, you know If you don’t have small events like that Where people feel cheated people feel like their trust was betrayed People feel disappointed then they can’t flesh out their character and they also can’t make moral Decisions between characters, which is where a lot of that kind of connection comes from, you know

Justin:

Agreed. I think when it comes down to it, in some way, either physically, or emotionally, or spiritually, I guess, you have to separate your characters and kind of have them secluded together. And another example I want to use is, in the one shot I’m doing on April 29th for listeners of this podcast, and it’s actually gonna be the starting session for the next campaign I do with my group in my homebrew world of integrity, will essentially be on a cruise ship. And all the characters will be in the same hallway, and they’re gonna be the only people in there, aside from maybe one or two other NPCs that are salient to the story. And by doing so, they’ll essentially be forced to sit at the same dinner table, because that’s what you do at a cruise ship, you have an assigned dinner table essentially.

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

And like, they’re gonna be assigned to sit next to each other, they have to talk to each other, you know, and they’ll get to know each other that way. Something I’ve noticed though, and this is thinking of Critical Role, this is thinking of High Rollers, their Arois campaign, usually they’ll have a couple Session Zeros with just a few of the players. So for example, in Critical Role, their most recent campaign, Sam Riegel and I believe Taliesin Jaffe, their characters were kind of grouped together. I don’t remember their names. those two had already formed their relationship and chosen to kind of travel together. So

Tanner Weyland:

Mm-hmm.

Justin:

when you have that, you have smaller groups, smaller parties, it’s a bit easier to kind of galvanize them together because instead of having to make ties between seven players, you’re only having to make like four ties, right, between smaller groups. And I think that’s a very powerful way to also do this, though it does take a little bit more time and a few more sessions.

Tanner Weyland:

Yeah, agreed. I think that that starting grouping mechanic, whether it’s like, oh, they all wake up in a prison cell and they’re all in one. Or like you said, I love the cruise idea. I think that’s going to be very fun. I think there’s multiple ways that you can do that. And then that gives you the time. It’s natural, but it also gives you time later to build those deeper connections as the journey goes on. I also think that something that is to provide incentives for good character sharing and interaction, right? Like everyone knows about, you know, a common practice is if players are traveling and they do a campfire every night, you know, a classic thing for DMs is to touch base with the players at the campfire, you know, be like, okay, what do you do? Oh, you’re sharpening your sword? Cool. And then when players decide to talk with someone, maybe about the events of the day, maybe about their past, then a great way to incentivize people is to be like, oh, that’s wonderful. You know, here’s a point of inspiration for you, you know, that you can use later. I love that role play. And, you know, I think that there’s that I think there’s also other more material ways where you can, you know, give them a bonus on the help action. Right. 24 hours or something, right? By having good role play. Yeah, I think that, I think honestly, when it comes to having players gel together, if you have a good start, like a good inciting incident that groups them together, and then later if you’re able to give them that frequency, that openness and incentivized sharing, then I think you’re gonna have a great time and your players are gonna feel like they have a much deeper party connection, which is the goal, right?

Justin:

Yeah, yeah. Sorry before, I think either I froze or you froze, so like I didn’t hear part of it and then it just stopped. So

Tanner Weyland:

You’re good

Justin:

if I acted weird, that’s why.

Tanner Weyland:

I was like I’ll

Justin:

But

Tanner Weyland:

keep going

Justin:

no, sorry Tanner. The last thing I’ll share is, along with incentives, you can incentivize them even within the story. So every player, every character should have goals and a drive, a motivation to do something. align some of those goals and motivations so that way, you know, a few of the players want to do the same thing. Well, I’m not going to give any spoilers about the cruise ship, but suffice it to say at the end, all the players motivations will align because their choices will be significantly decreased. And I’m excited to see what people think about that. But anyways, any last words Tanner that you’d like to share before we sign off?

Tanner Weyland:

I guess my last thing would just be an encouragement to make sure that your party gets meshed because it’s easy to just you know Just play without you without really working towards that but you will feel a difference when the characters within the story Have specific things they can say about other characters like oh, I’ve been through this with that other character I would never leave him alone, you know things like that. They add a lot of flavor. They add a lot of and emotional depth to a story that could be very surface level otherwise.

Justin:

Agreed, agreed. Well, thank you listener for sticking in with us. We’d love to have you back next week to hear another episode of How to Be a Better DM. But until then, let’s go ahead and roll initiative.