Character Chemistry

Has anyone ever noticed that some games seem to rather smoother when the characters just "click"? How does that factor into your games, if at all? Is it a product of active players, which gives more opportunities to develop character relationships, or the right combo of personalities that allows the chemistry to develop organically? For example, would a team of introverted characters work at all? Curious if anyone has any idea what I’m talking about. I’ve only experienced it as a player.

This is totally true and you need at least two players developing a relationship for this kind of flow to work. Ultimately, no matter how much work a GM puts in, if there are no active players to bounce off, it won't work.

I have had several games like this, and it's always a thrill. I'm not sure how we can foster it, it seems to me that you need players who are invested in their characters and the story. They need to really feel the character that they have made. From my own experience that doesn't always happen, but maybe it's something you get better at over time. I have had characters which I have tried out for particular adventures which just didn't do it for me, and I ended up just posting in the replies dutifully. Then i've had others where I couldn't wait to see if other players had updated so I could get another chance to post.

Maybe there would be some process at the beginning of the game that would help everyone get invested in their characters? Like, I don't know, a question/answer session going into their background. Or finding interesting ways to tie the backstories of some characters together. How can you help players create characters they care about?

Yeah, it's one of those things that just happens sometimes. Sometimes people really click, other times, they don't...

I believe a session 0 is a great nursery for developing characters like that. You sit down, say, "Ok, we're going to be playing this kind of game, which these kinds of situations. What do you all like about this?"

Then, people start tossing out ideas as to what kinds of encounters they'd like to see in that kind of game, then naturally, they start talking about character concepts they'd like to play. If you can get them to start chatting about why so-and-so is angry and whosit and how whosit messed up their relationship with idunno's sibling, you've got a tight-knit group. And that deepens the investment of each player into the character.

Of course, this requires players who really get into their character. It entirely possible to do a session 0 and have people not care that so-and-so knocked up whosit and they can't decide whether to keep the pregnancy or not.

I think Shark_Bone mis-posted here instead of his soap opera writers 101 Forum :)

This is an excellent question, and a tough one to answer. I've seen the same group of players achieving varying degrees of party cohesion in different games. As others have pointed out maybe players were more invested in one PC than the other, or one story more than the other. Who knows, really? Or maybe it doesn't even dependent on level of commitment but rather (to use your words) just the right combo of personalities.

There doesn't seem to be one specific reason for good party chemistry. I've seen games with zero chemistry and games with tons of it, all with the same players and GM. Some games apparently just hit the spot, while others flounder for no apparent reason.

Actual lol.

I think he's also in mega Burning Wheel (which is often basically a fantasy soap opera) mode :P

I've been in games from Knifesedgegames and fluglichkeiten (I enjoyed playing a creepy guy in his game) and I think if you forget a little bit about mechanics and feel all the players are invested in the story that is going to unfold and you discover together things kinda click.

In Shark_Bone's defense when the GM wasn't ready to start we just RP'd for a month interactions on the ship and backstory about all our weird quirks. Honestly if the party all enjoy the not adventuring/normal down time and RPing that players click I think because you know kinda where they're coming from either the person playing or the character's likely reaction.

Also I enjoy Soap Opera writing 101 because if you kill Manuel you always find out, Emanuel, his twin brother will come back for revenge... and he's sometimes .

I didn't expect to learn so much about soap operas when I started reading this thread. I feel like a better person now.

I've run a few games here -- and it's one reason that when I make games I tend to ask the characters to put together a story about how they came together /before/ we start adventuring (avoiding the 'you meet in a tavern'). Numenera, in particular, has some hooks in the system that help create interactions between characters that help things click and I do what I can to lean on something similar.

By far the best chemistry I've seen in one of my games was when we took awhile to do character generation (I feel like perhaps I was helping some people out, or perhaps I was too busy to get rolling). Folks just started roleplaying in the character creation thread and building the narrative backstory for their people and working together. It was lighthearted and more comedic than serious -- but helped gel that group of people together really well.

Thus, from my experience -- mostly it takes a little bit of mechanics and a whole lot of will by at least one character/player. That done, many times the other players will join in.

Some whipped themselves into a frothing RPing fury... (Kind of like before the season premier of a Series you see some little snippets of things and say oooh yeah did gun be gud!)