Forum > Pen and Paper Roleplaying Games (RPGs) Discussion
Social connections in D&D
jhkim:
The thread on Adjusting the "Adventurer Mentality" to non-D&D settings got me thinking about background ties for characters in D&D or D&D-based games. The quote that made me think was:
--- Quote from: Chris24601 on September 22, 2021, 02:07:02 PM ---
--- Quote from: HappyDaze on September 22, 2021, 11:41:26 AM ---Do you require them to have ties to NPCs/organizations/locations too, or just other PCs? I don't find that they have any problems tying together with other PCs, but the other stuff is usually WAY down on their list.
--- End quote ---
Depends on the genre.
D&D wandering adventurers don’t get much from prior ties because they’re rarely in one place long enough for it to matter.
Most of the other systems I run generally either have built-in rules for establishing and encouraging NPC ties (ex. Backgrounds in World of Darkness games which provide mechanical benefits to having allies, contacts, fame, influence, status, etc.) or are settings where NPC/organizational ties are part of the base setting (ex. Star Trek PCs generally have a small town’s worth of NPCs aboard ship with needed specializations they’re probably lacking themselves and personalities you can play with).
--- End quote ---
In my experience, yeah, D&D characters tend to not have any social connections. But in other games like GURPS Fantasy, it was common for players to have a few connections. One PC might have a powerful family that gives support, another might have rank in the local military. A few even take things like a sidekick or a useful pet. Conversely, PCs might have powerful enemies or loved ones who might be at risk. In a point-based game, these can be paid for as Advantages and Disadvantages.
But D&D doesn't have this structure in character creation.
Do people have any preferred ways of handling these in D&D-based games? I could see handling this by random rolls on a table, or maybe by a simple selection (i.e. take one major connection or two minor, maybe).
therealjcm:
I think the notion of "write down a short paragraph explaining your connection with two other PCs" is somewhat common. I've used it for a very long time, I've heard of other people using it as well, and I've never had players push back on it or get upset about the requirement.
I should probably expand on that a little: the process of writing down connections to other characters typically gets the players thinking about their connections in the larger sense. They invent a family, guild, friends, or other things as a consequence of that. It's simple and generally effective in my experience.
oggsmash:
--- Quote from: jhkim on September 22, 2021, 08:01:30 PM ---The thread on Adjusting the "Adventurer Mentality" to non-D&D settings got me thinking about background ties for characters in D&D or D&D-based games. The quote that made me think was:
--- Quote from: Chris24601 on September 22, 2021, 02:07:02 PM ---
--- Quote from: HappyDaze on September 22, 2021, 11:41:26 AM ---Do you require them to have ties to NPCs/organizations/locations too, or just other PCs? I don't find that they have any problems tying together with other PCs, but the other stuff is usually WAY down on their list.
--- End quote ---
Depends on the genre.
D&D wandering adventurers don’t get much from prior ties because they’re rarely in one place long enough for it to matter.
Most of the other systems I run generally either have built-in rules for establishing and encouraging NPC ties (ex. Backgrounds in World of Darkness games which provide mechanical benefits to having allies, contacts, fame, influence, status, etc.) or are settings where NPC/organizational ties are part of the base setting (ex. Star Trek PCs generally have a small town’s worth of NPCs aboard ship with needed specializations they’re probably lacking themselves and personalities you can play with).
--- End quote ---
In my experience, yeah, D&D characters tend to not have any social connections. But in other games like GURPS Fantasy, it was common for players to have a few connections. One PC might have a powerful family that gives support, another might have rank in the local military. A few even take things like a sidekick or a useful pet. Conversely, PCs might have powerful enemies or loved ones who might be at risk. In a point-based game, these can be paid for as Advantages and Disadvantages.
But D&D doesn't have this structure in character creation.
Do people have any preferred ways of handling these in D&D-based games? I could see handling this by random rolls on a table, or maybe by a simple selection (i.e. take one major connection or two minor, maybe).
--- End quote ---
It depends on what, if any in game advantages such a connection would offer. For instance if a character wants to be the son of a landed noble, and has an income or access to things others might not because of his social position, I would probably have some responsibilities pop up because of that. If a Barbarian wants to be known as having been part of a famous warband for making it easier to talk to berserkers the party may run across in the wilds, I would likely have some group of bounty hunters or the like attempting to track down some members of that warband.
If they just want to mention it as a background, I would just let them. GURPS of course assigns a point cost, because often these advantages come with some very nice benefits, but even they are often balanced with obligations to match them, so I guess I would use that as a model to try to balance how big the advantage is to some responsibility/obligation/disadvantage attached to make it "zero out" with regard to what the player will get from it for nothing.
I do like to reward players with in game connections based on their actions and deeds (or give them enemies on the same basis, and some of these enemies will attack with rumors and bad mouthing instead of swords and spells) in all the games I play, even in things like DCC where there really isnt much of a "metric" for this. For games like this and D&D, I definitely allow the RP part of tabletop RPGs to come in more and allow them to take advantage of such connections or squander them, or something in the middle.
HappyDaze:
--- Quote from: jhkim on September 22, 2021, 08:01:30 PM ---The thread on Adjusting the "Adventurer Mentality" to non-D&D settings got me thinking about background ties for characters in D&D or D&D-based games. The quote that made me think was:
--- Quote from: Chris24601 on September 22, 2021, 02:07:02 PM ---
--- Quote from: HappyDaze on September 22, 2021, 11:41:26 AM ---Do you require them to have ties to NPCs/organizations/locations too, or just other PCs? I don't find that they have any problems tying together with other PCs, but the other stuff is usually WAY down on their list.
--- End quote ---
Depends on the genre.
D&D wandering adventurers don’t get much from prior ties because they’re rarely in one place long enough for it to matter.
Most of the other systems I run generally either have built-in rules for establishing and encouraging NPC ties (ex. Backgrounds in World of Darkness games which provide mechanical benefits to having allies, contacts, fame, influence, status, etc.) or are settings where NPC/organizational ties are part of the base setting (ex. Star Trek PCs generally have a small town’s worth of NPCs aboard ship with needed specializations they’re probably lacking themselves and personalities you can play with).
--- End quote ---
In my experience, yeah, D&D characters tend to not have any social connections. But in other games like GURPS Fantasy, it was common for players to have a few connections. One PC might have a powerful family that gives support, another might have rank in the local military. A few even take things like a sidekick or a useful pet. Conversely, PCs might have powerful enemies or loved ones who might be at risk. In a point-based game, these can be paid for as Advantages and Disadvantages.
But D&D doesn't have this structure in character creation.
Do people have any preferred ways of handling these in D&D-based games? I could see handling this by random rolls on a table, or maybe by a simple selection (i.e. take one major connection or two minor, maybe).
--- End quote ---
Using 5e as the point of reference, I think Backgrounds were supposed to lead into this, but they don't really push it very hard (and I know a lot of players that view Backgrounds as simply being the source of 2 skill proficiencies, 2 tool/language proficiencies, some most likely to be useless ability, and a bunch of ignored fluff text). They later added the option of a Group Patron in Eberron (and later Tasha's Crock of Excrement) that was, again, largely viewed as a few game mechanics surrounded by useless fluff.
Aglondir:
--- Quote from: HappyDaze on September 22, 2021, 09:05:02 PM ---Using 5e as the point of reference, I think Backgrounds were supposed to lead into this, but they don't really push it very hard (and I know a lot of players that view Backgrounds as simply being the source of 2 skill proficiencies, 2 tool/language proficiencies, some most likely to be useless ability, and a bunch of ignored fluff text). They later added the option of a Group Patron in Eberron (and later Tasha's Crock of Excrement) that was, again, largely viewed as a few game mechanics surrounded by useless fluff.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, that matches my experience.
I created a house rule where you get contacts based on your Charisma mod (so a +4 gets you four contacts.)
No one cared.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page