Thank you

Lol you have zero ground to tell me my own table isn't anarchist. I've been doing this for a long time. Go on out of here. I gave you enough of my day.

Standard nonsense here folks, nothing to see. Someone who thought they could "gotcha" an anarchist. You gotta get up about :checks watch: 30 years earlier if you wanna catch me slipping.

Lots of other good points already made, but I'll add my own two cents. When I run a game, I always require players to make characters together. No "go off and make a character in isolation". That's just a recipe for disaster. You can have some ideas already in mind, but nothing is canon until the whole group agrees. Second, everyone needs to have buy-in to whatever the hook is. If the scenario is "you're starting a courier business at the edge of civilization", there are lots of good options. Guy on the run from the law. Lady studying local wild life. Intelligent, local, wildlife. Don't play "guy who doesn't want to be here and is a total killjoy" Third, it's better when characters have connections to each other. You _can_ play the "we just met and we're forming a relationship!" arc, but like "what if we play ourselves in a fantasy world??" **it has been done**. Honestly, everyone should read Fate's "Phase Trio" https://fate-srd.com/fate-core/phase-trio and the rest of character creation.

Ngl, this has never been a problem for multiple sessions for me. As a player or DM. As a player, I show up willing to play characters that will work with a group, even if they don't trust them. Trust isn't necessary to work together. As a DM I remind all players of that fact before they roll one up. If they don't have an idea on how their character would manage that, I'll give them ideas. Yeah, you'll run into players that just don't get that not *every* character has to have the same motivation to work with others, or just refuse to play different characters (instead, they try to play the same character with different names). But those are rare. And, so far, I've yet to run into a player that wouldn't take the "look, you don't have to keep playing with us, but give it a try my way and see how it goes, yeah?" talk and give it a fair try. I've also never had a player quit because of the game not being engaging and fun.

I did this in the very first RPG I played. It was Star Wars and I was playing a smuggler (who thus had a ship). Obviously the GM intended my ship to be used to move the party around. Well, the jedi PC shows up wanting to board my ship as I'm getting ready to leave. I don't know this guy so obviously the first thing my character would do would be to say that and then turn the turrets on when this strange jedi tried to insist on joining me, followed by promptly flying off so he ended up needing to find another way to our adventure. No idea why I was like that. The player was pretty much my best friend at the school, too, so it wasn't anything personal against him. I think I was just trying to hard to do what "my character would realistically do" instead of just playing a game.

Alone and vulnerable, you are murdered by thieves. Make a new guy for the next game.

Biggest pet peeve with players. This is why, during session 0, I make players pre-establish a reason that they not only go along with the party and the planned campaign but also a reason why they *trust* at least two other characters.

My rule on this is very simple; if your character isn't a part of the group, they're not part of the story. That goes for lone wolves, people who betray the party, "evil" characters who work against the party's interests, etc. You make the choices you want to make, you do what seems right for your character, but the moment that means you're not a part of the group, you either figure out a good story for how we're going to fix that, or you hand me your character sheet. It's really that easy. "But thats just what my character would do!" OK, let's unpack that. If that's truly, genuinely the case, if there's no way your character could no work against the group or leave them at this point, then this is how your characters story ends. If that comes twenty sessions into a game, well, waking away rather than betray your morals is a pretty good story if you ask me. If it comes two sessions in then we need to figure out why you're not on the same page as everyone else. But more often, the player simply thinks its the only possible way their character can act in this situation because they're not thinking creatively. People are complicated. Consistency is actually the bane of interesting characters. A good character is inconsistent for interesting reasons. "My character would never trust someone in this situation!" OK, but what if they did? Now we're left with the question of why, and figuring that out is surely going to be interesting. There's also the other side of this coin, which is the responsibility on the GM's shoulders. Yes, your players owe it to each other to try to keep the story moving forward, but you also owe it to them to respect the reality their story takes place in. Don't run a gritty crime game and then expect your players to just automatically trust some NPC that turns up with no bona fides. You actually have to put the work into crafting scenarios where the players can have their characters react naturally and still drive the story. It's a bad GM who pisses their pants and cries because they created something that looks like an obvious trap (whether it is or not) and their players refused to walk into it.

Your character purchased and ate bad fish the night before, and you have uncontrollable gas, which quickly turns to greasy, putrid diarrhea. As the pub bouncer tosses you out the door for smelling like raw sewage, a micrometeorite hits you in the eye and lodges itself into your brain, disrupting your medula. As you lay there struggling to breate, you shake yourself awake. It would seem you fell asleep at the table and had an awful dream. Sorry, what were you saying about not wanting to stick around?

For me, the tired trope of "strangers meet in a tavern" approach is the inevitable round of introductions that feels like that time at the start of school when everyone had to stand up to say their name and one interesting fact about them. It's just awkward and everyone wants it to be over quickly. Much better to just create characters together in session 0. Everyone already knows each other, their motivations, prior relationships established, etc... and just begin the campaign as if everyone is already on mission.

I've made it a hard rule, "Your characters are at least familiar with each other. They're not total strangers." It just makes everything so much easier.

> look, you don't have to keep playing with us, but give it a try my way and see how it goes, yeah? I've heard of players refusing to adjust their play to meet the party where they're at but I've never seen it happen. I've played with a player who did that intentionally, but their in real life stated goal was to ruin the game and ensure no one else had any fun. I don't play with that person anymore.

And the person who didn't gets to default to being the loner outcast who doesn't talk much, easy

> OK, but what if they did? Now we're left with the question of why, and figuring that out is surely going to be interesting. "I ." "You're about to, when you change your mind. What made you change your mind?" It's a powerful tool. It can be overused, but it's good for bring people into the right frame of mind. Maybe something happens that's more urgent than the trust issue. Maybe they see a tattoo on another character that has meaning for you. Maybe they just realize it could be useful to be in the party for now. Whatever it is, they are solidifying the team while also taking more authorship of the story.

How would they not? Session 0 we create characters together, anyone who doesn't follow the previously stated rules can leave my table.

None of the kids you're talking to on this site have friends, much less play actual D&D, they probably just read the manuals and imagine running campaigns based on how they interact with other loners online.

make checks until you fail. take 40d8 damage from a mysterious source. no one's around you to help unfortunately because you were dumb enough to separate from the party. now make a better character or go home, your choice.

I don't like prescribing a characters actions to that degree, but I would certainly work with the player to try to help them come up with an alternate path. If a player ultimately chooses to commit to a path that puts them at odds with the party, I'll respect that, but I'll make it clear to them that this is where that character's story ends.

You can get away with it while having some downtime in a village. The bard is making coin in the tavern and the barbarian is drinking in the same place, the priest visits the local chapel, the warlock looks to spend some coin on magic baubles, etc. This also increases the creativity in which you can give your players their next quest. But once you're out adventuring on that quest, you're a goddamn party. If you don't want to be a party, then go home and play a single player game.