Once the Players have their characters (the PCs) and the Game Master has all of his notes and paperwork (and dice or what-have-you) ready, it is time for the game to begin. In some ways, the start of a game can be the most awkward part, as the PCs are all usually individuals with no particular ties to the gameworld or each other, and so have no pre-existing reason to be together.
So You’re in an Inn…
There are various ways to approach this, sometimes the GM and Players will use a Group justification, such as the PCs all being members of the same team, group or organization, and pre-existing familiarity between the PCs is assumed. Sometimes happenstance is good enough, and the PCs just all happen to be in that location at the same time for various and mostly irrelevant reasons. Still other times the PCs may NOT start the game in the same place but a brief “arrival” introductory mini-scenario may be played, as the Players get into the game by doing a brief role-play of their characters arriving in the beginning location. The most common cliche found in the first couple decades of gaming opened gameplay with the GM simply saying “So you’re all at an inn…”, thus tying the PCs together loosely, allowing Players to decide if their characters begin as strangers or come up with some impromptu inter-group relationships “Er… Jacob here… he uh… he landed on me when he fell out of a tree when we were kids, we’ve known each other ever since”.

Regardless, the typical playing style of a tabletop role-playing game is for the Players to play cooperatively as part of a Party or Group, banded together to obtain or achieve some common goal or acquire some particular item – the best example of this kind of adventuring party is J.R.R. Tolkein’s “Fellowship of the Ring”, an unlikely group of diverse characters allied together for a common cause – casting the One Ring into the fires of Mount Doom. This is a most fitting example, as Tolkein’s works (along with a few other lesser-known stories) are considered to be the largest source of inspiration and setting for the earlier role-playing games.

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This entry was posted by J P on Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 at 1:49 am and is filed under General RPG. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.