Group cohesion & working together

Making sure that your PC group can work together is important. If your characters are always fighting amongst themselves, they’re probably not following your story threads — unless you ram the plot down their throat. And where’s the fun in that? Sure, there are some games all about the characters scheming or struggling against each other. But in most RPGs, the protagonists are on the same team.

Cohesion is the tendency of the character group to share the same goals and cooperate in order to achieve them. Giving the group a reason to work together is vital to creating and sustaining a team. The premise of the game can often provide the launch pad for that cooperation. The characters may all be members of the same group, like a military squad, a secret order of mystics, or students at the same school. Maybe they have a shared dream in which they receive prophetic visions of the other characters. They may share the same goal and meet each other in the course of trying to achieve it. These kinds of things provide a shortcut to be­coming friends.

Keep an eye out for any potential conflict during character creation. If one player wants to play Elf-Killer PointyEarChopper who hates all elves and kills them on sight and another player wants to play Elfie McElferton, the elfiest elf who ever elfed it up, then it’s pretty obvious that those two characters are not going to work together. Work with your players to head off that kind of disaster. It doesn’t mean that conflict is bad, just that the players need to work with you and each other in order to keep the group and story moving along.

Maybe Elf-Killer is under a curse that means they can’t kill any elves unless the elf attacks first or something. It would allow the PC to role-play their prejudice, but keep them from murdering the other character long enough to grow and cultivate some mutual respect. The players have to cooperate a little here. It’s all good to say, “It’s in character, so I’m going to chop her pointy ears off.” But role-playing is a group activity and if you can’t play as a group, then go do something solo instead. The players need to build a little lee­way into their characters.

Work together to avoid everyone crashing and burning. Art by Tithi Luadthong.

The characters may still have conflicts and it can add dimension and intensity to a game. But if the group stops moving through your plot and the game stalls out because of infighting, you need to address the issue.

A good general rule is that as long as everyone is having fun, anything goes. But remember that as the Story­teller, you need to have fun, too. If the players are happily scheming against one another while your plot gathers dust, you need to intervene — either within the game by making something happen that turns their attention back to the plot, or by talking to your players about the game and the direction it’s taking.

The content of this post originally appeared in My Guide to RPG Storytelling.