Captain Willard: "Hey soldier. Do you know who's in command here?"
The Roach: "Yeah." (turns and moves off)
- Apocalypse Now
Leading a group of PCs is sometimes likened to herding cats. That's not really an accurate description, though. It's cute but doesn't get to the core of it. Leading a group of PCs is leading a group of equals who you need to get at least tacit cooperation from, and who all have veto power over the group. You need to build a consensus to get anything done. Or at least, build a consensus of the most concerned and able to deal with a problem.
Even that assumes there is a leader.
In my experience general there isn't. There are a couple players who you need to get on board to get things done, but otherwise, people talk until something like a plan emerges.
I wonder, though, how it would work if you elected or appointed a leader in the group.
I see a few ways to do this.
By Session
Have a leader for a particular session. That player's character, and/or that player, gets to push an agenda, break ties, etc. Or simply is in charge and gets to decide what the group does that session. It's your turn, you decide if it's time to raid the castle, or deal with that nagging issue with the thieves guild, or go right instead of left.
By Task
Maybe you break up leadership by task. You could:
- appoint a combat commander. Like a pirate crew, have a single unifying leader for all combats. Makes sense if the character gives in-game benefits to the group in combat by commanding . . . may as well wrap it together with that player's decisions, too.
- appoint a negotiator. This person handles all negotiation decisions.
- appoint a treasure and equipment leader. This person hands all treasure tracking and group resource tracking.
etc.
These could easily be rotated, too. This would potentially work even with an in-game nomimal leader ("If anyone asks, Sir Stikinthamud is our commander, but today Inquisitor Burnsemall is our leader"), too. I'm just thinking as I write, here. I notice we tend to rotate overall decision making in our Gamma Terra game pretty smoothly, and did so in the Southern Reaches, as well - we'd find someone decisive for the session and then just let that person dictate most decisions. It seems like handing out an actual "leader" position, no matter how strong or weak the leader is, and rotating it around, could smooth out a lot of "What are we doing this session?" issues. It's up to you. Ask advice and opinions, but today, it's your turn.
Anyone do anything this?
I'd use real life pirate leadership.
ReplyDeleteLeader is elected, but only has command in a crisis. At all other times it's a democracy
I suggested a variation of that above, but we've never done that. Have you had that work in play?
DeleteNope. Everyone just does what ever they wanted to. Have I mentioned how hard it is to run a game?
DeleteIt's not hard to run it. It's hard to be in one. :)
DeleteI ran a big group of 6 to 8 players for a year plus champagne and the eventualy elected a leader to speed up play, but it wasn't a envious position. Basically the group ran as a democracy but the leader broke ties. The leader was only important in discusions on what the plan of action would be. But if they made a bad choice then they took the blame. Combat was every man for himself.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing that. Yeah, I think "combat leader" is more of thought experiment than anything I'd actually expect would really happen. Not unless one player was demonstrably exceptionally good at tactics.
DeleteA while back, we had a science fiction game where part of the players ran scientist characters and the others had their military escorts as characters. My wife spent points on military rank, which I worried might create an awkward dynamic. It turned out to be a very good thing, though. She has a knack for getting people organized and moving (heh), which everyone immediately took a liking to. The scientist characters had more autonomy, at least until shooting started, and were a lot more anarchist. It felt narratively sensible. I don't know whether it would work as well for other groups or players, but it was a pretty good arrangement for us.
ReplyDeleteIn the DF campaign we played afterward, there was no leader, and the guy with the leadership traits on his character sheet was not interested in directing others. The cleric's player sort of offered gentle direction a lot of the time, but in combat it was just mayhem. I remember the wizard's player coming up with plans sometimes, but he only got buy-in from about half the others, usually. Squishies got smashed too often.
That first one sounds nice - so an actual leader-like player meant for more organize play.
DeleteThe second one is most of my games. :)
In Castle of Horrors, I instituted a version of your "by session" dictatorship: one person each session was the decider, and they made group decisions about what to do and where to go (they could be overruled by group consensus). The goal was to break the logjam of mostly amiable people without strong plans who would all defer to each other, and in that sense, it worked pretty well. There was slightly less dead time in the sessions with that rule, and when nothing was happening, I knew exactly who to go to make a decision. I switched to a new player on each new session so no one felt overwhelmed with the responsibility.
ReplyDeleteI didn't try to impose any order in combat. I figured if the players wanted to have a combat commander, they could sort that out for themselves.
Thanks Mark. I'm glad to hear about how that worked.
DeleteIn the AD&D group that taught me to game, we used to divvy out jobs. One of them was Party Leader. It was a rotating position where your job was to communicate party consensus to the DM, and to make executive decisions when no consensus could be reached. Our group had 9 players, so it was really helpful having someone wrangling opinions into line.
ReplyDeleteNo one really liked the job, so we'd appoint a different person to do it every week. And as an enticement for doing it, the leader got a 10% XP bonus at the end of any session in which no one under their command was killed.
We also had non-rotating positions for Map Guy, Notes Guy, and Party Treasury Guy. It was a nice setup.
That sounds a lot like the "caller" that early D&D recommended - in the days when groups were regularly much larger than the 4-6 I find usual, it was very helpful to have a single executive interface to the DM.
DeleteIt does sound like a caller, yeah. Even without a caller, you can have someone in charge, but it does sound like it would mesh well.
DeleteIn my last fantasy campaign, it was small party of 3-4 players and very much anarchic collective style of decision making. The Impulsive barbarian often acted as tie-breaker.
ReplyDeleteAs far as GURPS goes, I felt that the rules expected the players to agree a leader for combat, at least. Initiative p.B393 talks about bonuses to the initiative roll based on the leader's traits, but also indicates a -2 penalty to initative for a group without any leader at all. I wonder how many GMs enforce that rule...
I wonder how many people use partial and total surprise at all, actually. I use it, slightly modified, and I strictly enforce the leader rule.
DeleteI just don't require that the PC who is the leader tell the other PC what to do. If there are NPCs, though, they look to that PC to make decisions and give orders. They take their cues for action based on that PC's actions.
In my D&D group as a rebel teen we'd usually elect the PC of the most experienced player as the party's leader regardless of in-universe qualifications, and this would be a nominal position for the most part; we'd usually just follow the first quest option a GM would show us anyway because we were eager to bust skulls and gather treasure.
ReplyDelete