In Which The Warlock Muses on Thread Necromancy and Group Building...

For those of you that aren't frequenters of rpg-forums and the like, "thread necromancy" refers to the act of bringing back a "dead" thread, months or even years after its last response.  I was somewhat shocked, recently, to find that a thread that I'd started over at RPG.net had been necro-ed, dealing specifically with the idea of "allowing" items in a campaign.

If you're interested, the thread still exists--just poke around and you'll find it under "Allowing Things in a Campaign", but that's not what I'd like to talk about today.  Rather, I'd like to focus on one of my responses.

Has no business in a pirate game...

One of the biggest problems that I had in starting the first "Pirates of the Underdark" game was that...well, no one wanted to be a pirate!  In the wild and chaotic days of 3.5e, I ended up with almost every combination you could think of, but not one was even remotely piratical or linked to the Underdark.  I ended up with an anime-style sorcerer girl, a modron swordmage, and a "gelatinous orc", but nary a pirate in sight!  Needless to say, this campaign imploded nearly from the start.

You see, friends and neighbors, I've become a bigger and bigger fan of "group" character building, the longer that I've been gaming.  This isn't to say that people shouldn't generate characters as individuals--that's half the fun!--but rather that some degree of communication has to occur when a group sits down to plan an extended campaign. 

Our current Dark Sun group suffered from that, as half of the group were planning on playing amoral desert survivors, while others planned on being active agents of the Veiled Alliance.  As you might have seen in previous entries, such did not turn out well.  Had we managed to be honest with one another at the start, expressing what we wanted out of character development and plot points, a compromise could have been reached, but we just didn't think that far ahead.

Equally, has no business
in a Call of Cthulhu game...

Honestly, this is also one of the issues that I have with Call of Cthulhu.  Don't get me wrong:  I love CoC in all its various incarnations.  But, the disparity that exists when you bring together a history professor, a private detective, a teppanyaki chef, a college student, and a half-crazed journalist makes for a group that is ultimately unskilled in necessary areas, while are masters at items that may only come up in one session or as a group-joke.  That takes the inherent horror of CoC and degenerates it into slapstick comedy.  It's a fine line to walk, believe it or not...

For extended campaigns of all sorts, I've taken to spending an entire session for group-building and, as ChaoticFrederick calls it, "theorycrafting".  While this has met with mixed results--particularly in the "Tear of Ioun" game last year (heavy on the 'theory', light on the actual 'crafting')--it's helped to explain how the group got together in the first place, as well as what tactics they use when in combat or in investigations.

Madness encouraged!

But, on the other end of the spectrum, there's The Laundry...which takes the exact opposite approach, and hits it out of the park.  The Laundry encourages offbeat, especially nerdy professionals, with totally disparate skill sets.  However, it rectifies this by providing each character with a baseline of "Laundry Basic Training" as well as a set of skills that come as part of their directory assignment.  While characters are free to individualize their skills based on their own former profession and their preference, it becomes almost impossible to create an "ineffective" character or, for that matter, a character that overlaps or does not fit within the group as a whole.

Have you encountered another system that rewards diversity or group character-building?  Or, do you have your own methodology that works?  By all means, do tell!