4 Responses

1. Micah  •  January 19, 2009 @10:11 am

   As the often leader myself, this is a good writeup on how it works. I just love the game so much that when we interact with an NPC, I blurt out what my character would say, never thinking that others might want to say something.

2. Dragon Blogger  •  January 19, 2009 @2:38 pm

   Many times I play with a group of players where one has a very strong personality and likes to be very active, some of the other players like just side lines except for combat. Typically a party leader should be the character with the most charisma in the group (IE, you don’t want the orc barbarian being the one who interacts with most of the PC’s) but you want to gain the benefits a high charisma character has. Sometimes a “leader” player will play a character who should be a “party leader” and this is always fun.

   Mostly, in towns and such I sometimes take “segments” and if a party splits up I will give each player 15 minutes one on one roleplaying time while they get their personal stuff taken care of in town. This is a good way to give each person leadership time and not drag the game out too long (1 hour for quick in town excursions or such).

3. Ravyn  •  January 19, 2009 @11:25 pm

   The biggest misconception I’ve ever seen is that the party has to have a leader; I’ve seen plenty that have managed without, and far too many games spoiled by fights between people who think they’re the best choice.

   I don’t think Charisma matters that much; opening paragraph aside, who says the party leader has to be the party face? Can’t they just delegate that to the talker? Added bonus to having them as two separate people: Since the talker isn’t the leader, they can stall a particularly difficult negotiation by saying “I like this idea, but I have to run it by [Leader] first…” Which not only gives them a chance to look more carefully at a particularly sneaky offer, but also gives the rest of the group, even the ones who couldn’t be trusted to be present at a polite negotiation (there’s always one!) a chance to weigh in.

   Then again, I’m the kind of person who ends up as party leader by accident (and usually with face-capable characters). I still have yet to figure out whether the fun of having a bunch of people expecting me to make the right decision is worth the irritation of always having to make the first move.

4. Unwinder  •  October 14, 2009 @10:21 pm

   While some parties can easily manage without a designated leader, it is absolutely essential with others.

   I typically set up my quests to contain way more enemy encounters than the players can handle, with the expectation that the players will come up with clever ways to bypass most of them. The vast majority of the players prefer to outwit their opponents, or find a smart way to take them out without putting themselves at risk.

   However, about midway through the campaign, the party gained a couple of fighters who were very combat-oriented types. Whenever the party would start discussing strategy, and trying to figure out if an encounter could be avoided, these two would invariably get bored and charge into battle, ignoring everyone else’s input, and putting their less hp-endowed companions at risk.

   I tried a couple of solutions to the problem, and even confronted the worst offender on the matter, but the same thing just kept on happening time after time.

   In my new campaign, I’ve designated a trusted veteran player as the leader. I know him well enough that he will listen to everyone else’s solutions, and only use his power to decide disputes.

   More importantly, though, in this particular campaign, the party is working for a company, and receives a wage for adventuring. The leader character is in charge of payroll, and if a character gets too far out of line, he is authorized to dock paychecks.

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