Gotta disagree here. PC vs. PC games can work very well if the players know more than the charaters. In fiction, it’s called “dramatic irony” and it’s a powerful storytelling technique. If immersion is not one of your goals (it’s not for me) then a delicious separation of charcter and player knowledge can make for a wonderful back-stabbing game experience.

See The Mountain Witch for a game that takes this tactic to the extreme.

It’s interesting that you mention Paranoia, too. In that game, the characters know they must destroy all mutant commie traitors. The players already know that all the characters are mutant commie traitors. It works great.

I always appreciate your perspective, John, because you make your points eloquently and we often come at things from a different POV. I’ll edit your comment into the post.

On a few rare instances, groups can also help design the campaign, its themes, and some of the basic story elements. In one supers game, players at the table helped other players create their characters, suggesting powers and background elements. This lead to several characters having tie-ins with other characters, by virtue of the fact that the players were working together. End result? A team of characters (and players) keyed on working together as opposed to “lone wolf”-ing it. Pretty important for a supers game, if not *all* games.

Characters built in secret tend to sow seeds of discontent, hushed mutterings at the table (“how’d he do that?”), and engender a fair degree of mistrust. That’s not a pleasant gaming experience, IMO.

Just my 2 cents.

Quim (sorry for my bad english)

PS: I will also like to mention Orcworld where groups have a points pool to distribute to the PC, so every player has to agree.

I agree that in some games, collaboration is a must. It helps to group the PC as a party and allows them to “grow and mature more harmoniously together”.

I don’t enforce collaboration in my games for one reason: Freedom of choice.

True, in a StarTrek game, there should only be one captain of The ship, but what if another player wants to be a captain? he can be a captain that was rescued from another ship and that could cause some great RP encounters between the players themselves.

I’ve noticed that enforcing collaboration amongst players, can really take away from their personal fun, to let their PCs grow the way THEY like to shape them (of course, it must adhere to the rules of the theme or they might find themselves outcasts).

My only enforcement is that of the “Choose your side of the story”. I don’t mix Good/Evil PCs in the same group. Not because I want an all HERO party, but because my players have asked me to not allow such a thing, they can either choose to play the heroes or the villains, but not a mix.

DM T.

Ok, I might be accused of being an Objectivisionist, but I’m up for individualism. giving the group a pool of points and letting them distribute it amongst themselves is not something I’ll encourage. Heck, I even don’t encourage the “Party Bank” pool or distribution of treasure according to Need vs. Greed.
Sure, it might be helpful in some games, but I let my players do things the way they want to. If they wish for a party bank, it’s up to everyone to agree on it and if they don’t and instead have a roleplaying debate on the topic, that’s where the fun really shows.

The process was interesting. I described the world I was working on and asked for contributions (they added little things but mainly left the world to me). I talked about the towerland I wanted to use for the game, and they liked it. We bounced ideas around and the idea of princelings and princesslings came up and we liked it. The king was a human and a number of players wanted elves. One player wanted a human. We decided on a king who had two wives (one now deceased) so the characters are half-siblings. It’s a crazy Brady Bunch family, but it works.

Games like My Life with Master not only encourage collaborative character generation, but also require collaborative world generation. That is, the group as a whole in MLwM invents “The Master” and his demesne.

The point of D and D is teamwork vs. the environment and it really helps if pcs work together to build a team. What I don’t allow at my collaborative pc creation sessions is any other player telling another waht they should have. I let them all talk about the kind of character they want to create and the brainstorming sessions usually flow from there.

The best part is the background relationships that develop from the session. Characters can talk about the histories of their families and common enemies. It helps me as a DM understand what they want out the campaign and write adventures that focus on those aspect.

The people I DM’d at gencon had never had a dm do this. They were always either told to pick a kind of character or given a few minutes before a campaign to begin.
In the competition they had an hour to create a band of heroes. This allowed me as the DM to craft an adventure suitable for the characters.

(Don) Some games, such as Star Trek, nearly demand collaborative character generation–you just can’t have two captains on your starship, no matter how hard you try.

My only Trek experience has been at GenCon, but I can see why this would be highly desirable in a home game. I can’t remember offhand whether or not the rules explicitly encourage this — do they?

A team of characters (and players) keyed on working together as opposed to “lone wolf”-ing it. Pretty important for a supers game, if not *all* games.

Agreed — but I don’t think the level of collaboration that you mentioned for this supers game is standard in a lot of groups, or something that many rulebooks make reference to.

(Quim) I will also like to mention Orcworld where groups have a points pool to distribute to the PC, so every player has to agree.

Quim, how does this work in Orcworld? I’m not familiar with that game, and it sounds interesting.

(DM T) I’ve noticed that enforcing collaboration amongst players, can really take away from their personal fun, to let their PCs grow the way THEY like to shape them (of course, it must adhere to the rules of the theme or they might find themselves outcasts).

I’m not sure how much impact collaborative PC creation would have on character growth in most games, since growth takes place during the course of play. Or do you mean the growth of PC-related ideas during character generation?

(Adam) I have used collaborative chargen in my D&D games to great effect.

The meta-creation you described from your D&D game sounds very similar to what’s in PTA (which I’m almost done reading — one of my best GenCon purchases!). It’s good to hear that it can work well in D&D. (And welcome to TT, Adam!)

(Nathan) The people I DM’d at gencon had never had a dm do this. They were always either told to pick a kind of character or given a few minutes before a campaign to begin.
In the competition they had an hour to create a band of heroes. This allowed me as the DM to craft an adventure suitable for the characters.

Congratulations on your Iron DM win, Nathan (and wlecome to TT)!

With regard to this group, did you encounter resistance from any of the players, or did they all take to the idea pretty quickly? Did anyone not take to it at all?

After reading your comment, I can see why! It sounds like you had a really good experience with it, and you’re using that experience to inform your future games — that’s great.

My method is that I come up with the story and world with a lot of proto-concepts. Nothing set in stone, just a pool of ideas and one “hook” per class. If someone uses a non-core (D&D-centric group) I just use the closest core class “hook” and modify it. The players and I usually start trading emails when it’s clear the current DM is winding down their game. First I ask the usual “what class and concept” questions and we start working together to graft the hook and concept together. It’s a very fun process and it inspires plenty of new ideas for me. One guy’s concept was so good, I built a whole island nation around it that was a part of the game.

To get the party to gel together, I usually have a few characters have tenuous connections to each other in the backstory so it doesn’t have that sorta cliched “you all meet at X as total strangers” thing going on. I dont think it hurts the game to have a Char know another Char before the start.

My only caveat is that I don’t allow evil alignments (unless thats the thrust of the game) as it always becomes disruptive sooner or later. It’s like a ticking time-bomb. The “all evil” games tend to denegrate into a “greatest hits” session of who killed the most/best NPCs. Thats just my group, your results may vary.

-Judas