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.

Probably for the best. If you'd let him onboard it might have ended up like [this story](https://aussie.zone/post/407650).

One of the campaigns I play in is more of a West Marches or Adventurer's League style with a rotating cast of players. There are... differening levels of effort.

That would have been more cool than whatever unmemorable shit actually happened in that campaign. Only other thing I remember is the GM offering me 3 capital ships if I bought him lunch one day and then promptly destroying two of them that same session, which I actually appreciate in hindsight because it contributed to seeing pay to win games as a waste of time and money. Either the shit "bought" in game can be lost that easily or it just breaks the game into a "just give me money and you, uh, win! That's the whole game!"

What if you had a player who wanted to secretly backstab and subvert the party, in character? They'd play as if they were part of the team, but in between sessions the player would communicate with the DM and decide ways to betray the party, with in-game consequences. It was the worst campaign I've ever been in. I still wonder if it was bad DMing or I'm just sour.

Yea, I don't DM those types of games.

I agree with both. It is lazy, yes. But it is also meant to be fun, and Shadowrun is a particularly goofy game (cyberpunk, with fantasy creatures, ghosts, gods, and magic? How can you take it seriously?) so being a super solid story isn't *extremely* important. It's also literally the first suggestion in the rulebook for getting players to cooperate.

back around late 90's early 00's I was pretty lucky to have a group of friends that all just hung around together. Talking like 8 or more of us and it always wound up that 3 of us would have a place together out in the sticks (it changed locations/roommates from year to year but we have a good long 5+ years of everyone being consistently together). We ended up playing basically any tabletop we could get our hands on or pirate (napster/limewire back then) and print off (we still ended up spending 100's a piece though on dice and official releases), we even ended up starting to make our own games that I still think about doing something with to this day. (all just context for how we could pull off some of what I'm about to say) Getting EVERYONE together was rather difficult at times, people would come into stories and be quickly rotated out if they had to work or weren't available when we were wanting to continue running a story-line (multiple different DM's and storylines going on in concert, still can't fathom how that all worked out looking back). So we all got pretty used to being fluid about it and no one really had any FOMO unless their character was low-level versus everyone else. At that point it became apparent on my storyline that I was going to have to catch some people up so we started doing **1-on-1 DMing** where I would spend a few hours running someone basically on a solo mission that I could tie into the rest of the story and give them something to catch up to everyone else. Sometimes we would do it before a bigger session and people showing up early could sit in or do cameo appearances to help out/etc. People are a lot more comfortable to ask questions and be involved with the story that way and translates well to the group play. It ended up being a huge success and had some of my favorite interactions. Sometimes we would have a bunch of people over and some wanted to play and some wanted to listen to music and party so it just always felt natural and those involved really wanted to be there for it.

Splitting the party is fine! Here's some great reasons why you might: If you get in through the servants entrance, you're gonna have access to different stuff than if you get in through the front door. You have the most wanted woman im the country and an anthropomorphized war crime in the party, and you've decided you need to ask a duchess about a thing. The tunnel splits, and you're not about to allow that fucker to get behind you. Again. I don't trust these other fuckers. I spy on the rest of the party. You fucked up and only got one invitation. Hopefully they can open a back door somewhere. He actually can't take the armor off. It's a whole thing. He can be the distraction. The rest of the party moves 3x as fast as me and has stealth nonsense. But *I* have points in siege engineering, and resistance to fall damage. Shout when you need me.

No fuck that. Just 'okay, but the narrator is looking at these assholes.'

The guy who splits the party on session 1: 

I've played and DMed both. A West Marches campaign has been the right fit for some groups with tough schedules. That format can work really well when you have a larger world plan and story that different venn diagrams of groups slowly discover and have to post notes about to a group chat or Discord. Players remember and read about things from different sessions and piece together the story and world, then can decide on new missions and exploration in a real collaborative setting. Picture a tavern setting where they're arguing about different plot hooks, missions, and tips, and start to switch from the selfish motivations of wanting cool loot to also wanting to uncover the story. It can be great if you lay the groundwork. A few lazy players can disappear into the background, and they still have fun and want to hang out.

>Picture a tavern setting where they're arguing about different plot hooks, missions, and tips, and start to switch from the selfish motivations of wanting cool loot to also wanting to uncover the story. Yea, this is exactly what I'm *purposely* trying to *avoid* with a Session 0. I, as the DM, list the plot hooks of the campaign I have prepared to run and players create characters around them that are guaranteed to be invested in the story as well as be cohesive with each other. No arguing needed. If anyone wants to argue, they know where the door is.

THANK. YOU. Players who do this ARE BAD PLAYERS. I don't care what it takes, you WILL find a reason to cooperate. Call it metagaming if you have to. This is a team game, you will work as a team. Players are expected to make characters that will, for whatever reason, will work together and, for whatever reason, will take plot hooks. Without those two things the game doesn't happen.

Yeah, that's the kind of person that's invited to GTFO and never come back.

Hehehe it's so fun when I just have to sit and watch and can't interact, I love iiiiit!

> (instead, they try to play the same character with different names). I'm imagining every session they play a new character who meets the party and decides not to join them.

Best advice. Players start the game knowing how and why they are going to stick together. I'm also inclined to put my thumb on the scale a little as DM and give the players a loose connection that they can build on and incorporate into their characters while building. BG3 did it really well - everyone has a tadpole in their head, y'all gonna be mindflayers if you leave the group. I recently had players all start as fresh recruits in an organisation - they got to decide the organisation - where the higher-ups put them together. Previously I did a one shot at level 5 where players already had an adventuring group together 20 years before and were called back together for one last mission.

Basically my only rules for character creation are 1) your stiff must be from an officially published 5e rulebook, and 2) it must make sense for your characters to party up. It's really hard to make an interesting campaign for a group of four lone wolves who are totally disinterested in The Quest