"Strangers meet in a tavern and awkwardly introduce themselves" is just an example of "random group forced to team up". I've tried the whole "use McGuffin to literally force the party to work together" and still get roadblocked by that one inevitable player who insists on being the "edgy loner who has to be dragged into everything". Yes, even with the threat of death, they usually just waste time trying to argue how "that's what [their] character would do! [I'm] just punishing [them] for playing [their] character! Reee!" Still, on another point, players will still have to do the whole rigamarole of character introductions that always feels like the first day at school unless the characters were made together during session 0 anyway. I just nip all of that in the bud by just eliminating that from my table through the previously stated method: starting in media res with a party that has been pre-established during session 0. BG3 works because the cast of characters are all pre-written, specifically designed to work with that story, being that it is a video game. Real players, unfortunately unless you find a unicorn, do not roleplay on the level of professionally hand-crafted characters.

"Oh, you encounter a desert. There's nothing around for miles"

What if they leave the party and create a new character to join the party that fits in better? Is that good or bad?

I mean, it's good, but it feels like an over reaction. They don't need to make an entirely new character, they just need to think of a reason they'd cooperate. It can be a contrived reason, that's fine, but they need to work together. Some examples, 1. Highly shy character "warms up" to at least one other character and sort of talks to the group "through" that character, but you can still (as a player) face the whole table to talk as a group. 2. Character who is extremely distrusting has met a character before (just tweak backstory) or finds at least one other character implicitly trust worthy. Maybe the Rogue who has been backstabbed too many times trusts the Paladin because they know they're too honest to lie.

It goes for the players among each other too. It's not just the one character in OP that dislikes or distrusts the party. It's up to the rest of the party to also accomodate them. If you have a moral character in the group you might refrain from murdering, raping and pillaging for shits and giggles. As they say "the only way to have a friend is to be one".

Everybody plays RPGs differently, but it's funny how some people don't get the term "roleplaying" and are constantly, relentlessly playing their real selves in the game.

I'm new to my party and roleplaying in general (though I've consumed it as entertainment) and I'm having a slightly different issue. My character was intentionally designed to be a bit naive to match me as a player, and doesn't have high skills in any int based stuff (at least for now) and instead has medical, nature, survival, etc. A lot of puzzles or traps etc I can as a player try to reason through, but my character shouldn't be able to sus out, and I feel torn between playing the character as it should be or adding ideas to solve stuff so we aren't just sitting there twiddling our thumbs for ideas.

Fun fact: The Expanse books (and eventual TV show) were started as a unique role-playing campaign where the person running it (Ty Franks) would write a prompt, the players would explain their character's reactions. He'd then write a story section incorporating that and the players would say how they reacted and so on. There was a core group of characters who were the "survivors" early on, but one of the players had to drop out early-ish, so in the next bit of story that character died. That was carried into the books and TV show, which is why after the core group of characters is established, there's a sudden, shocking death.

Wow that really is a fun fact!

Sometimes it's hard to distinguish between factual knowledge and just cleverness. There's no reason a bumpkin fresh off the farm can't be curious about what makes something tick, so they look under it or break it open - and whaddya know, they find a hidden thing. It's really up to the DM to say no, your character wouldn't know to do that.

It's natural that we gravitate towards familiarity. Case in point, how some actors always seem to play the same character, no matter which movie they're in.

Yeah that's a good parallel. Lately I've been watching Kaitlin Olson's show High Potential. Even though she's playing a super-smart crime solver, to me it's the same character she played in It's Always Sunny and The Mick.

Maybe your char bumbles around the room doing goofy things instead of working hard and logically to crack the puzzle and the dm can make your bumbling uncover extra clues that advance the plot.

If you don’t have a reason to work with the group, accept that this is a one-shot for you, which may be retcon’d as needed.

Also accept that you suck at making characters

I mean, I think they get the term, but just have a hard time doing it.

"I perform a history check to see if there's any historical significance about this desert."

DM: As you walk away, you feel a slight tingle in the air before a flash as bright as a thousand suns blinds you for an instant before... nothing. A bolt of lightning has vaporized your body. Miraculously, nobody else in the vicinity seems to have been harmed in any way nor even do they seem to have noticed what just happened, including the fact that you just disappeared. It's as if the Gods themselves, for no particular reason, have arbitrarily decided to smite you out of existence entirely. Ready to roll a new character?

This shouldn't be the GMs job btw, players, roleplaying and backstory are YOUR department, write a reason why your character would end up with the others. Work together.

> it’s the same thing, effectively I **strongly** disagree. The first two are substantively the same, I agree. But the third is a wholly separate category. I see 3 basic categories we're talking about here: you choose to work together at the start; you know each other already; you're forced into working together by circumstances. The key difference between the 1st and the 3rd is that choice. "We have the same patron" is still a choice to work for that patron, and gives room for someone to say "nah, I'm not working with these people". When the circumstances themselves directly *force* you to work together, there's no ability to turn around and say "I'm going my own way". Being kidnapped and having brain slugs put in your head is one way. Everyone arriving in the same town at the time the town is unexpectedly invaded is another one I've been in as a player. The other key thing about in media res is that you don't have that "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". You're thrown into *doing* things before there's any chance for that. You get to know each other not beforehand, as in case 2, but *as the adventure is going*. To be clear, I'm pointing to BG3 as an example that I've only very recently (the last two–four weeks) started, and which serves as a good well-known *example* of something that demonstrates a good example of something I already know works well. It's not a game that made me realise I completely new way of doing things. In media res will require players be cooperative enough to care to act, but it doesn't require they trust each other or know each other immediately. It *definitely* doesn't require pre-written specifically-designed characters.