Advice on running a good intro

Hey everybody,

I’m gonna be running a horror/urban fantasy play by post game very soon. The player group has been mostly put together, but they are a very eclectic and diverse bunch. The characters are all from very different backgrounds, with some varying motivations and points of view. While I love the dynamism of the group, I’m also trying to determine a clever or interesting way to help them all get to know each other and start to form bonds (something other than "you met at a bar..."). I’ve learned that a strong intro scene that really help set the tone for an entire game and help the players work out some early kinks.

I’m hoping people here can offer some advice on how to run a good introduction or prologue. Can anyone recommend any PbP games with a well done intro threads that I could read, perhaps? Thanks in advance.

One way is to have each player know one or more of the other players. This gives you a friend of a friend connection.

The other way is they are part of some sort of organization either formal or informal which makes a connection even if they do not know each other.

A common goal that they all have based on the setting. Such as with horror they all understand the danger of what will happen if the horror isn't faced so they have come together to fight it.

The old you have been hired by X so you got to work together or any combination of the above can be used to bring together different and diverse groups.

There are some hilarious YouTube gaming channels, and one of them I saw has a great motivation for players: Steal something from them. Players hate that. They'll chase that NPC from one plane of existence to the next to get those 13 silver pieces back.

That's really a huge part of all literature. Give the characters something to care about, then threaten it. That's the essence of plot. So the trick is to make sure that the players truly care about what is at stake. The rest of it is of minor flavor. Tie those resisting bastards into your setting, and if they resist, write up some NPC family members for them. If they insist on being disconnected orphans, penalize them, take away XP or other character creation points. They are, after all, deliberately making your job harder, haha.

To follow up on what Qrallog said, give the PCs a common enemy. And perhaps they were invited to the meeting place by an unknown someone who is also after their enemy?

This post got long fast, sorry.

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I would say that in the future, don't shy away from being heavy handed in regards to what sorts of characters your players should be rolling up. My games have improved immensely, both on my end and from my players' side of things, when they can go into character creation knowing exactly how their character "makes sense" within the setting. Nothing is more frustrating for a player than rolling up a character they're excited about, only to feel out of place and/or useless for the entire course of a module, with no recourse. And of course, it makes my job much easier when I don't have to do cartwheels trying to unite the PCs in a plausible fashion.

I don't do much fantasy gaming, personally - the "meet in a tavern" trope isn't something I've ever relied on. I usually unite the PCs merely through common employment: "Everyone should be an FBI agent or a specialist contracted by the FBI"; "Everyone should be a faculty member of Miskatonic, or otherwise have some professional connection with the University"; "You've all been hired by a psychiatrist to investigate the disappearance of one of his clients, so everyone should have a character that could plausibly be hired as a sort of private investigator."

There's also always the "wrong place, right time" intro: they happen to be in the same place when something dangerous/horrible/catastrophic/intriguing happens, and their personal drives compel them each to look further into the matter, bringing them together as a group. This approach, though, requires each player to have an extremely clear sense of what motivates their character to put themselves in a dangerous situation. You could take a look at the notion of "Drives" as found in the GUMSHOE system, and see if you can adapt it to something that suits your game (for all the flaws of GUMSHOE, the introduction of Drives are one of their clear innovations. They act as a means for the GM to essentially pressure the Players to act "in character" with mechanical penalties if they go against their character's Drive.

To give you an example, in Trail of Cthulhu, drives include:
Adventure
Antiquarianism
Arrogance
Artistic Sensitivity
Bad Luck
Curiosity
Duty
Ennui
Follower
In The Blood
Revenge
Scholarship
Sudden Shock
Thirst For Knowledge

In ToC, acting in accordance with your Drive grants you Stability points, while acting against your Drive threatens your Stability. It refers to plot points that the GM introduces in order to compel PCs to act as "Drivers", and it splits them into two kinds: "Hard" and "Soft" drivers. "Hard" drivers are "scenario plot points which a character with a particular Drive would find irresistible." "Soft" drivers are "scenario plot points which a character with a particular Drive would find attractive but not irresistible." In ToC, what that means mechanically is that a Hard Driver is worth double the penalty that a Soft Driver is.

I assume you're not using GUMSHOE, and you're not dealing with Stability/Sanity. But it's a really interesting tool to consider adapting and adding to your GM arsenal.

I used to DM and play a lot of one-shots in a school club and way too many DMs start everyone in a tavern, haha. I'm not sure if it would work well with Play-by-post, but when I run one-shots, I like to start all of the characters already on the adventure, then describe how they think back about what led them there where I can explain more context.

This means their character's initial motivations don't matter right off the bat---what matters is their characters are on the adventure and the player can come up with a good reason as you go.

I agree to a very large degree with this.

Your grasp on your Players attention is too tenuous, and efficient use of time/posts is too precious, in PbP, to waste both on a "meet-cute".

Which isn't too say that it can't work, or that isn't important or doesn't bring value, it is and does, but it's a risk, and IMO it's not as important as hitting the ground running, with your PCs already embroiled in the plot...

If you can confabulate your meet-cute to be that exciting action or dramatic rp that immediately embroil your PCs on the plot, great. But if not? Skip it.

Just explain in no uncertain terms to your players that you're PCs are together by whatever means you foresaw the Prologue achieving it by.

One tool I used as a bit of an icebreaker was to have an immediate encounter occur after character creation. Once that encounter was resolved which included a bit of roleplaying by the players, I asked the *players* to describe, from their character's point of view, what another character did (I assigned this). This recounting of another character's action didn't have to be "right" -- the description wasn't cannon, so they could interpolate events a bit. But, the idea was to give the players some sort of feedback on how other players viewed their character's "performance:" what hit and what didn't, for example. Did other players pick up on the subtle humor your character was using? or his false bravado? did another player quickly identify that you're playing your guy as kind of a prick? that sort of thing.

Starting off a campaign in media res (in the middle of the action) and then asking the players how they got there is often a good way to get things going quickly that doesn't invite the players to be passive. To show the difference:

Exposition: You're in a bar. It's quiet. There's a fight that starts over in the corner between a dwarf and a half-orc. What do you do? ... Nothing, usually.

In Media Res: A glass full of ale whizzes by your head and smashes into a wall sconce. Fire explodes across a table. That dwarf is really pissed off at you. What the hell did you do to him?