Forging Found Families: Expanding on Party Sheets
Beyond the Adventuring Party
As I work towards an upcoming visit to Hot Springs Island I have been considering several rule sets and one idea has stuck out as exceptional in some places and missing in others. I really appreciate games that treat the collective of player characters as an entity unto itself. I think I first encountered this in a less mechanically focused way via Fear the Boot's Group Template but it's been all around me in media and games since the start.
There's a reason that the Lord of the Rings is focused on The Fellowship, and not just on Frodo and Samwise. These relationships are mirrors of what many of us experience in our lives and in our game groups. What else is a game group but a bunch of dissimilar people coming together for a shared purpose?
Basically an average game night.
When most of us play role-playing games we do so with a group of players who are working together. Some games do manage to successfully provide ways for players to meaningfully conflict like Apocalypse World, Burning Wheel, and Dramasystem. But most benefit greatly from cohesive groups. The World of Darkness has practically made a game of coming up with names for these groups of different Hammer monstrosities who have come together to party and bullshit.
Over on Goblin Punch, there's an excellent post about Party Sheets that I want to expand upon. Specifically I want to bring together the details there and some of what I recently read about a Leftist D&D on the Legacy of Bieth blog. There's a loosely Pavlovian nature to old school role-playing that I think can be beneficially combined with a shared understanding of the group to encourage consistent play and provide incentives for creativity and consistency. That might fly in the face of some ideas about what Old School D&D in particular is, but I don't think it's that far off.
My current draft of what a party template (party class?) consists of the following, which would mostly be the same between classes of party.
- A shared inventory.
- A shared perception and noise rating.
- A shared pool or collective of affiliated characters/hirelings.
What then distinguishes different classes?
- By what method does this group gain experience?
- What are the benefits of being in this group?
- What are this group's specific responsibilities?
I have toyed with the idea of these group classes being broken up into templates, tiered abilities that are gained as the party levels up (an idea that mirrors GLOG classes). Here's a draft of one such group class:
Merchant Caravan
Starting Items: Wagon and Draft Animals or Mules, A Local Trade Good, An Exotic Delicacy
A: A "Fair" Exchange, Nose for Profit, Hungry Investors
B: Just the Thing
A "Fair" Exchange: A Merchant Caravan gains experience equal to any profit they make on a transaction or whenever they secure a new source for trade goods. In the latter case they gain experience equal to the value the source is expected to produce in a single year.
Nose for Profit: The members of the merchant caravan can spend an additional hour on arrival at a location with intelligent beings to determine who there would be willing to trade with them and one trade good those people want.
Hungry Investors: A Merchant Caravan has to pay dividends to their shareholders every month equal to 100 coins times their level. If they fail to pay they will be hounded by eager and violent debt collectors more than eager to repossess their belongings.
Just the Thing: Merchant Caravan's tend to accrue a bunch of interesting and useful items over time. Three of their party inventory slots can be filled with "Useful Odds and Ends". At any time a member of the caravan can declare that among these odds and ends is actually some non-magical item useful to them at that time. Convert the slot from useful odds and ends to that item and enjoy.
This concept is still very much early in its life, and I have a number of details to hammer out in testing before I fully incorporate it and develop more examples. Some other examples of group classes would be:
Local Heroes who gain XP when they save Someone AND/OR Invest in a Community.
Explorers who gain XP when they discover a new place or ancient device AND/OR Pay for vehicles and passage
Dark Cultists who gain XP when they murder in the name of their dark lord AND/OR Build dark shrines
Hardscrabble Adventurers who gain XP when they recover a great treasure AND/OR carouse and satisfy vices
Religious Order who gain XP when they fulfill divine commandments AND/OR make donations to the church
Arcane Researchers who gain XP when they recover lost magical texts AND/OR pay for experiments and studies
Warlord/Conquerers who gain XP when they claim Territory AND/OR Build Fortifications and Settlements
Hopefully when the new game gets running I'll have some more feedback to provide but in the meantime I'd love to hear any thoughts or ideas about applying a class to the group as well as individual characters.
Selected Inspiration:
The Group Sheet, Guardian Angels from Goblin Punch
Leftist OSR, A Spectre is Haunting Europe from Legacy of the Bieth
Cabals, Shared Objectives from Unknown Armies
Motleys, Responsibilities and Benefits from Changeling The Lost
Group/Crew Playbooks from Blades in the Dark
XP for Discovery from Numenera and Jeff Rients
Group Tags from City of Mists
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