Your DM wants your D&D character to care

PLEASE give your Dungeons & Dragons character a reason to join the D&D party!

[jordanw]

Low key sending this to all players in my next campaign... Hope it goes better this time 🤞

[NewDM]

Okay: "I've always been on my own and find it hard to trust people, but because we must work together for XYZ, I will agree to do this as a group effort. You can count on me. And over enough time and talky talky, maybe we become friends."

Not Okay: "I'm a dark and tortured loner with a mysterious past I don't talk about, I murder everything in my path (including you if you get in my way), and I don't need anyone. Now I've got first watch."

[Microwayev]

I have a friend who NEEDS to hear this. All her characters are basically lone wolfs, serious and mysterious 😂

[ninjakittysuperstar]

It’s honestly astonishing that this even needs to be said, but it’s SUCH A COMMON PROBLEM 😩

[ardentslacker]

Lone Wolf character: "OMG, I get to travel with *people*! This is so exciting! People to TALK to!"

Just because you're a Lone Wolf doesn't mean you can't also be an excited puppy! ^_^

[TheLynxer]

This is actually one of my main group's house rules. Every character must know at least one other character, and have a reason to actually travel together and trust eachother.

[Sifeus]

Collaborative storytelling means the players gotta work with the DM. Please meet us halfway sometimes. This is a lot of work.

[brianbarber]

I wish I started telling this to my players like, 15 years ago. The amount of time I spent trying to wrangle and motivate edgy lone wolves vastly outweighed the rest of my planning ...

[crazyredbard]

One thing i do when im about to launch a new campaign is i usually send my players about 3 different adventure "pitches" that im interested in running and each one has a "buy in" part where it outlines something the character should feel a way about or be part of. Its helped me alot with getting the party invested. Great message Ginny!

[houndscradle]

When your character joins a party because he's lonely and was used to being on a team in his backstory.... Also he IS in need of protection snice he was falsely accused of a crime

My first campaign ever, i think im doing not horrible xd

[geoffreynelson]

This is why I love Beyond the Wall: not only does it make char gen cooperative, it also has the players develop their home village together as part of the process. The chassis is D&D adjacent enough to be familiar to to anyone who wants something a little more cozy.

[kylehahn]

Playing a PC who is proactively adventuring is incredibly fun. You can find a reason to take those interesting hooks dangled in front of you, to talk to that interesting-looking NPC, and to actually put effort into interesting shenanigans.

Bonus points, it makes your DM's job easier when they don't have to give a full power point presentation to persuade the party to just go to a place.

[umbraemilitos]

Yeah I flat out just tell them session one: "You are responsible for coming up with the reason your character stays with the group. No one else is going to do that for you."


Sets expectations and eliminates all sorts of problems.

[smcclure]

next short: challenge a player's character in-game who doesn't care by engaging with the question of why they are involved with the party even though they don't signal as much. Around a campfire, it's a tense moment that brings to light the question that everyone in the party has on their mind, and it can really begin to flesh out a bland 2-dimensional character... "It's not your GM's responsibility to find a way to keep the party together."

[VanNessy]

My character simply had nothing better to do. She's a human Warlock who signed a pact with a Celestial, and needs to fill in the 24 hour wait time with an adventure of her own.

[Ikdulo]

A good player makes characters that care about the world the DM cared to put together for them. Its a give and take.

[KnicKnac]

Now you can start as a lone wolf style character, but slowly open up to your found family, or new friends, venturing companions or whatever just know it is a group story. Tell it together.

[adibaby]

Honestly that subspecies of Aasimar that Pointy Hat made is pretty good for this specific situation. You want to be able to do your own thing but this other PC you’re bonded to is always picking fights with bad guys and getting into trouble, and if they get themselves killed doing it, you die with them, so you’d better tag along to make sure they don’t get you both killed.

[Veelofar]

I give my players that do this two “rope tugs”. Which is to say I give them some reason that they can latch their character onto to stay with the party. Often times one of those is money, but the other is something I get out of them or figure out of their backstory. I never ever bind the party to the loner, though. If the loner ends up leaving or doing something that the rest of the party rejects and gets kicked out, they have to make a new character. I got accused of railroading once, but their suggestion of what I should have done was literally railroading every other player than themz

[danaoct]

Generally speaking of ur content - you make it look so effortless, unbelievable
Big ups ❤