Thanks to Idle Champions, you can log in and use code GINN-YGET-GOLD to unlock Karlach and 3 Gold Karlach Chests! Not sure how to claim a code in-game? Check out this video on KZfaq for an easy step-by-step tutorial: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/rqyon9SLlqfblZc.htmlsi=yUKUqTDRDEBHx-oy.

I'm in a game where we all decided to be siblings. It's been amazing for RP, we don't even need to work out details. All we need to do is reference a vague past event. I once said 'This is just like when you got me grounded' and the other player ran with it with no prior planning; His response was 'For the last time, that wasn't my hedgehog!' and now the whole family keeps referencing the hedgehog... My sister still blames me :P

I’ve been playing d&d for a few years, and the most memorable campaigns were always ones with very close pc relationships. A friend and I teamed up to play a married couple without mentioning it to the other players to see how long it took them to catch on. Now it’s a tradition to make our characters know each other before the start of every campaign we play!

Immediately thought of the interactions between Clint and Natasha in Avengers. They'd been in separate movies, but with a few well-done interactions ("You and I remember Budapest very differently!") we got the dynamic between them and it gelled in a way that spoke of years of camaraderie.

My favorite recently has been, "Regardless of your varied backstories, include a reason why you've been a regular at this pub for the last 4-6 months." This way they don't have to be great friends with each other, but they at least know each other a bit because they're the regulars at the same pub 👍

DnD mom out here helping everyone be the hero she always knew they could be. Thanks, Ginny.

One of the best games I was ever a part of is where we all started as kids and became childhood friends in the same village. We played out a story where something catastrophic happened and we all had to escape and we all got split up. Then we jumped forward as our adult characters and found each other to reunite and fight the baddies who took our home. The banter was AMAZING.

I once DMd for a short campaign and one of the players wanted to try the "you killed my father" background, but they felt that something was missing in the character's depth, so I suggested that the other players could help. I cannot even begin to describe the joy I felt when they sent me the backgrounds of the entire family of the deceased man, each of them with a different outlook on the quest. Barbarian grandma included.

I added a mechanic my players like and pitched it to my GM for his campaign and I simply call it: "The amount you talk is the amount you travel." So it takes 3 days to get from point A to point B. You aren't gonna be silent the entire 3 day walk, so to simulate the time traveled, banter, talk, get to know each other, talk trash about last encounter, about the big bad. They should eat? Alright what does your character eat? Where do you find that on their journey? It forces everyone to get acquainted a lot faster, suddenly banter shows up in combat. And they don't get the new area/location without talking. They HAVE to talk, whether it's dinner plans or just like talking.

Examples from Critical Role: Vax and Vex are brother and sister. Pike and Grog have a shared backstory. Caleb and Nott travelled together and have many schemes.

I'm an old curmudgeon who has been playing RPGs for long enough now that when the big surge in popularity hit circa 2020, my greatest dismay was watching "D&D Advice" videos on KZfaq where people would make the same ignorant recommendations that I saw folks make on forums twenty years ago. It's been extremely faith-restoring for me to watch you (Ginny) catch up on twenty years of theory in just four short years, such that now you're able to give a complete and correct breakdown of D&D's flaws, how other games have fixed it, why D&D hasn't fixed them, and why the best way to fix things is to change the system itself to suit your goals. I hope your fans appreciate the way you've bootstrapped yourself into becoming an genuine guru at this, while so many ostensibly-more-experienced guys on other channels haven't evolved at all! KEEP IT UP GINNY!

In the last Fantasy game I ran, the starting premise was that the player characters were already an adventuring party, and were celebrating their big win over the self-titled 'Goblin King'. I started the game in a tavern, with the player characters carousing after having just been paid, and then had the patrons ask them about their recent adventure. I then made the combat tutorial be a flashback to defeating the goblin king, using the bar table as our battlemap, and trinkets, coins, and wine-corks as our tokens. This gave the player characyers a sense of comraderie, a reputation as capable adventurers, and fans at the inn who they'd told their exploits to.

On Dimension 20 they have an unaired session every season to a) establish any pre-existing relationships between PCs and between PCs and NPCs, and b) to actually roleplay out these relationships so that in episode 1 everyone is already in the swing of it.

I played a campaign once where my elf fighter was best friends with a plasmoid wizard. They met when she lost a fight and awoke at the side of the road with the plasmoid trying to eat her thinking she was roadkill. From then, Lavinia and Puddi were inseparable, and Puddi always valued Lavinia for helping her with the game of "food or not food?".

My newest character is from earth, she did the classic millennial joke of standing in a fairy circle being like "Oh no, it would be a shame to get kidnapped by a fairy" but she DID actually get sucked into the feywild. Eventually someone sent her to the elemental plane of Earth thinking thats where she was trying to get to. Then a Genie said "I can't get you to your home, but I can at least get you to the material plane, I'll send you to one of my followers so you're not alone, but you have to protect her." And that is how my character met our party's warlock, and she brought me in to the rest of the group.

I love your point about the lone wolf character being viable with a preexisting connection to another PC! This is what my friend and I did in one of our campaigns. We played as student wizards from Strixhaven who’d been assigned to partake in the mission as a last-ditch effort to save ourselves from getting expelled. My friend played the “dead inside, disappointed, done” Goth lone wolf whose parents were rich enough to pay him out of trouble, but he stuck with the party the whole way through because I played his lover, a rambunctious ball of energy and red hair, whom he wanted to protect. We ended up being the party’s resident comedy duo. It was so fun and memorable.

My absolute favourite example of this is in World's Beyond Number, where they did a full mini-campaign of all their characters meeting as children, having a little adventure that formed the basis of who they were, and gave them their first ever class features, and then they all reunited as adults at the beginning of the *actual* campaign. I would *love* to do something like that in a game of my own one day.

I ran a campaign where two character had a relationship as lovers that they kept secret even from me. Without knowing about it i had the bbeg force one of them to kill the other (they messed up a lot and got a bad ending). It being a secret made the tragedy so organic they all still talk about the campaign years later. I will probably never have a campaign that good again. We all loved it for different reasons. In terms of party cohesion i had the party conscripted by the military after they were rescued from being kidnapped. Like session 1 was them all waking up bound on a pirate ship and they explained to each other how they got there.

First time GMing. Its honestly a super SCARY experience. I've been a player for some time and eventually wanted to be a GM. Thankfully everyone is super cool and helping me on occasion. We're on our 8th session this weekend and my GF is joining my session.

100% i love the idea of pre-existing roleplay hooks like relationships. for a recent one-turned-four-shot i went a step further and added _motives_ (yeah, it was a murder mystery) and even _public perceptions_ to every character sheet on the table. the players picked from that pile and it really jump started the roleplay at the table. you _know_ what motives you have, and that'll get people interested in figuring out how to pull off their crime. and with public perceptions, players know what people think of their character and can play into or subvert that expectation

One of my favorite one shots was when I and another player both made our characters as Aasimar Rangers, and our backstories said we were from the same town. The DM laughed so hard at the odds (we had no clue the other made a similar character) and we rolled with it - the relation eventually wound up with my character being the father. It was such a fun dynamic and definitely gave us both a reason to stick together.

My favorite barbarian (My PC) was a Bugbear who was befriended by a half-elf rogue (Other PC) - Who had been running scams together for months before the campaign. The rogue was the brains and my bugbear, with his mighty 5 INT/8 WIS and 20 STR was the brawns. It was an absolute blast to get to play someone else's challenged wrecking ball. Our table regularly compared us to George and Lenny from Of Mice and Men.

I played in a FATE Accelerated campaign set in the Dresden Files universe where two of our characters were best friends in high school, and one died in a cult ritual at 18 and became anchored to his best friend. The living one was a gnostic street preacher who was always on the run, and the ghost one was basically a kid who never grew up. The two together were a straight man-funny man duo and an absolute laugh riot! That game was our favorite one to play and produced some of our best characters!

Some of the session 0 homework I give my players is to determine a "call-to-action" for why they would want to find a party and go adventuring. It's helpful to get the ball rolling! Also you mentioned "lone wolf" characters - while creating a backstory connection for them can absolutely be helpful, I maintain that these kinds of characters can work in 5e. If a character is edgy and moody and quiet, instead of roleplaying with them, their version of "roleplay" can be to describe their body language, their movements and behaviors as they react to stimuli. I once played an edgy rogue like this and we didn't have many issues with roleplay since my character still has presence in the scene, even if he wasn't talking. Lots of creative ways to solve problems!

I'm writing a D&D style humor story and have found this to be a really fun way to write character interactions! Several of the characters in the party have history long before the party was formed. The halfling wizard and his ranger daughter met the bard when he was having his flute enchanted. The father kept trying to play matchmaker with them, which led her to come out and admit that half-orc ladies were more to her liking. This creates tension and humor in the party when the half-orc paladin whose dad was a halfling joins the story.

Your hair game is on point this episode. Our group used this systemized relationshippery in our spelljammer campaign to bond the characters together and it helped out big time. As an already established pirate crew there was no awkward first session where the warriors are puffing their chests at each other, vying for leadership or finding ways to softly railroad the characters into an adventuring party. They already had prepared inside jokes and battle tactics before we even started the first session. I've never been more proud as a DM.

My current players drew a connection between two other players ranging from former lovers, distant relatives and former cellmates. A tiefling and a halfling drew the 'distant relatives' one and their web of logic for how this is possible made roleplay much more engaging.

Earlier this year, I joined an ongoing campaign with a tiefling Harper who was sent to spy on another PC, a half-elf who happens to be her semi-distant cousin. My character is very reserved and not trusting of other people, but she needs to gain the trust of everyone in the party to make her cousin open up, and it's led to some of my favourite roleplay moments I've ever had at a D&D table.

I’ve been doing this sort of thing for yeeeears. I am SO glad it’s finally getting talked about here. This might be the best advice for any table top group. It will always improve your gameplay.

My first Pathfinder 2e character was was Chaotic Neutral and hearing how that alignment can be a problem, plus a part of her backstory is a tendency to bond deeply with people when she does, I wanted her to start bonded with someone. Well one of the other characters happened to be from a place I had to travel through to get to the adventure location, and ended up being the party moral compass. This meant that I could still play CN and do things like draw a dagger on a tavern patron without hesitation but still not needing to be forced to follow the adventure. At one point when the rest of the players were not committing to the next leg of the adventure path I even used this bond to push the game on "I know that you think this is the right thing to do, and if you say your going to I am in. So why don't we skip the decision making and just say yes to helping."

Im looking forward to seeing you in the lego dnd session!

There was a clever spin on Traveller’s version in that Traveller campaign on the Glass Cannon Network, Voyagers of the Jump, where they don’t decide on the actual connection until a mid-session flashback so the two players can each pick a skill that they know will fit with the campaign. EDIT: Seth Skorkowsky has an example of this in a video he did of mechanics to borrow from other systems (full title escapes me) and he started using it in his own games because he was a player in the Glass Cannon campaign.

In my most recent campaign, I'm the party's healer, and also well known as a prominent doctor in town. I had passing familiarity with everyone because of that, particularly one person that's gotten into a lot of scrapes over time and needed to be patched up, because he has sticky fingers. Meanwhile, I've also been tapped a few times by the less ethical members of the local government to perform various... unsavory methods of extracting information from prisoners over time. That got me introduced to another party member who tends to run in the underbelly of the city and cleans up crime scenes professionally. It was great getting to see a tactic that my group has kinda taken on organically over time be featured in your video! I know there's not really any wrong way to play tabletop games, but it sure helps reinforce that there are things that can be right!

Pretty sure every GM's worst nightmare is Brendan Lee Mulligan bursting into their game and pointing out everything incorrect.

Ginny Di strikes again! My group is probably sick of me sending your vids to them, but they're very helpful and I want you to keep making them as long as you want to, so I gotta feed the algorithm. In a Traveller game I played in, my PC dropped out of college and another PC was super smart and basically a legend at his college. His character was a few years older, so he was like this mythical creature come to life for my dropout techie. Another PC in that game had bailed me out of some financial trouble in my past and hadn't been paid back yet, so that was another great interparty connection.

This is such a great idea. I was playing a new game with some old friends about a month ago and it was our first session of a new RPG. One of the players rolled up his character and then started figuring out how he knew all the other characters. And that was how the rest of us met. It was so simple and so fun.

My group just started our third major campaign, and though all the players really enjoy the slow burn of revealing their backstories over time as their characters grow closer, this time two players decided to play as an Eladrin father and daughter combo. Even two sessions in it's led to some really unique group interactions and we love it. When it comes to running one shots, these days I usually have my players all begin as an established party who already knows each other to save on time. In exchange, they recently surprised me by showing up as a group of four tortles who may have been teenage ninjas in their past lives! That led to some amazing moments, like them worshiping the god of pizza and spreading it everywhere they went.

I love your advice. I have connected relationships between my own PCs because i love the developing storylines they have with each other, but never thought to connect the players together in the same manner. As I have only months of D&D experiences under my belt, this is invaluable advice that I am certain I will seek to incorporate in my games, both as a player and DM.

We never got this campaign off the ground, but when I was making a character for a Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign, I had a back and forth with another player where we were crewmates on a ship. I was the ship's cook, he was the navigator, and the kickoff for our plotline was that my character found out they were working for pirates, and that the navigator was shanghai'd into service. He "freed" the navigator by kidnapping him and quit his job by setting the ship on fire. We were gonna pick up at the first village we end up in in session one, but for life reasons the campaign didnt even start.

I almost always start a new campaign with a "you've all traveled here for the last couple of Rides in the same caravan" or whatever variation on that. I encourage people to talk to other players to talk to each other about pre-existing relationships, because thats often also the richest backstory and where I can take a lot of ploot hooks. Fantastic advice, Ginny

It sounds like obvious advice but the way you implement this is so much better then what we have been doing. Thanks for this!

Ginny, thanks for being so articulate, funny, entertaining and bringing my awareness to those situations ! Btw, your hair is really pretty

I played a bard where the party had two bards and we where in a band together. I was the quiet type person cause of a stutter and the other bard was a chipper over excited person that dragged me everywhere.

Honestly just having pairs of characters makes everyone much more comfortable. I played at a table where we had six players - one were the privileged son of a merchant and his (reluctant) bodyguard, as you suggested; two were just war buddies, and my friend and I were drinking/travel buddies. It already made the first fight much more meaningful in watching out for one another, and the heir/guard had, over thr course of the campaign, one of the most beautiful bromances I've seen to this day, despite the players not knowing each other before the game started. It also makes at least one piece of your backstory immediatly meaningful at the table!

Fantastic video! I’m really glad you brought up the imbalance that can occur when some players create prior relationships and others don’t. I played in a campaign that fizzled out where 2 players decided that they were incredibly close with each other before the campaign started, while the other 2 of us had no prior bonds. Sessions felt like they devolved into just a 2 player show, since these two constantly defaulted to making decisions with each other, and pretty much ignoring everyone else. Having this type of relationship building be deliberately fostered table-wide is incredibly important in order to ensure that no one feels left behind once play starts.

One of the games I've played for many years, Mutant: Year Zero, has relations between PCs and NPCs as a central feature. In fact, putting yourself on the line for them is rewarded with EXP. That being said, this is very useful advice I wish we would've had when we started. Will definitely take it with me whenever I'm starting in a new group.

I always give the players a reason to have gathered before even a one shot. Recently, ran a one shot where the party was being hired to track down a missing prince and bring him back alive. One person played a criminal that was given the chance to earn freedom, and another played a member of the Guard that worked with them first hand after they were arrested. Everyone else was an adventurer, and had already established a solid reputation within the guild itself. That gave everyone an excuse to already be at least mild acquaintances, or at the very least be aware of each other's accomplishments.

Currently in a casual D&D game where two of the members are besties from a small town and it's made a WORLD of difference in their RP since one of the besties is a brand new player. I'm playing a faun barbarian whose kids are grown and she's empty nesting so she feels very protective of these children who are just starting their adventures. They can get into so much trouble! (That's the idea ;) )

One of my favourite characters was the sister of another PC and it was so fun, we even got to meet the 2 character's other siblings and moms. I'm starting a new campaign soon too so this couldn't be better timing.

GINNY POSTED A NEW VIDEO!!! Thank you so much for your helpful tips!! I have been playing DND because of you and I am so happy that I have found your channel ❤

Our group started a really cool mini campaign recently where our DM had us use relationship prompts in session zero. Since the campaign is meant to take place over several time periods, our party begins as a scrappy group of kids/teens. Having pre-existing group dynamics for this was wonderful. It felt really natural to fall into the mindset of our young characters -- who they stick close to, who they're wary of, who they look up to, who they want to protect... we've had three sessions and I'm so attached to this party already.

I was relatively new to the friend group in college, and I was entirely new to Dungeons and Dragons. When one of the veteran players suggested we could have an established relationship prior to the game beginning, I jumped on the chance with both feet. That relationship, he the OP feral human and me the little lizard person that could somehow control him, gave us some amazing RP opportunities, and an excuse to sit together so he could help me with the rules. It also made us closer out of game too. I will always appreciate him for that.

Good luck with your new campaign !

"You don't generally become someone's sibling over the course of the adventure" happened twice to me. First time was one of our bards and my wizard share a half brother, that my wizard didn't know existed, but share no blood between them. The second time our wizard latched onto my cleric as a brother figure but if THAT doesnt count she died and her disease became the next player character that was JUST born and my cleric gave them his last name.

I definitely like to weave my players' backstories together as much as I can. One of my favorite relationships was one my players came up with on their own, being inspired by the lore. The grung mystic saw the tortle ranger as his slave, where the tortle saw the grung as his best friend. The tortle's mind has been addled by a steady application of the grung's poison (the tortle wouldn't accept food from anyone other than his best friend). As a slave master, the grung didn't actually exert much control over the tortle, and basically only told the tortle to do things he would have done anyways.

This is a great video, and it's one of my favorite topics, figuring out how to bypass the awkwardness of early sessions and tie the characters together via backstory. 200% agree with the lone wolf point too, I remember Matt Colville bringing up a similar example in one of his vids before as well. I've got 3 different examples of how preexisting relationships were set up for campaigns I was in/ran. In-line with the first bit of advice from the video, I remember one game where for session 0, we formulated tie-ins for how our characters got roped in to an expedition. We decided my paladin was acting as the parole officer for the reformed rogue, and managed to arrange a bargain to get him released early if he volunteered for service--something that had to be done through his cleric contact and friend in the government (who wound up being ordered to join us by her superiors, cause someone wanted her office). Can definitely attest that it works--the early interactions were incredibly strong and interesting, and it was probably the best session 0 I've ever participated in. One other option is a common enemy. One of my favs was in a campaign I played where every player had been horribly wronged by some local, scummy criminal. The first session involved the individual players getting a letter about a chance to finally get back at him, which resulted in the party meeting up for the first time to take this guy down. Turns out the letters had been sent by the ghost of one of his victims, who had chosen our group to save the city from a much bigger threat. While nobody had any strong ties beforehand, they were formed pretty quickly and organically cause of our common goals, and it was a super memorable start. And one I've used a few times is via a theme game. There's one game I've run that had two character creation guidelines: one, everyone has joined up with a mafia ran by a vampire, and two, each player has some kind of undead tie-in (from practicing necromancy to being a vampire spawn), for an undead mafia. There's an expectation of teamwork out the gate, and provides a baseline for familiarity / simple relationships, but it also still keeps the door open for deeper relationships. Plus, theme games sometimes can open up character ideas you wouldn't normally play (e.g., the mafia allowed for way more 'morally gray' characters.)

I was running a campaign with two people who decided to have a backstory that revolves around each other. This made roll play with them so much fun. Whenever something interesting happened with one of them, the other got some spotlight too; and they were ok with that! It overall made the campaign all the more interesting. 1 year later they got into a relationship (not saying this will happen, it just was just so sweet).

Sometimes you can improv character relationships, or give the party prompts for someone to fill in on how they'd be connected to you. For example... I was in a one-shot module last weekend. As such, we had to already know each other, but didn't have much time to coordinate backstories, so there was some hand-wavy "you all already know each other" after we gave the elevator pitches of our characters' backgrounds. The game was going to start with us at the after party of a wedding. But my character was kind of an edgy, brooding bastard with a revenge plot, so why would he be at some random wedding party? So I said to the group, "I had learned that one of the people I'm trying to get revenge on is at this wedding, so my character basically said to the group 'someone get me into this party'" and one of the other players says, without missing a beat, "Oh, that was me for sure!" ... and yes, it was the bard who said that : )

The way you opened your ad promo spooked me as I’m playing BG3 with Karlach on my party.

Yes, yes and yes! Thank you so much for that. I played a campaign with a lone wolf and it was a real nightmare at times. The entire bond/relationship thing was missing for the entire campaign and I felt it all along. At some times I really wanted to ask the question as to why we were adventuring together at all, but I didn't because I didn't want to make problems with the players obviously. It's really difficult to play a group of people adventuring together when in reality they would have split a while ago. This mechanic is so important for a good campaign in my opinion. Thanks a lot for the incredible quality of your content.

Played with a group where 4/6th of the party were siblings and it was ridiculous fun. Sibling banter is some of the best drama. I've played spouses with other PCs in a few games too. A dragon burns down a tavern? "My love, it's our 14th anniversary all over again."

My husband and I often make up a shared backstory for games we play in. It all backfired once though, when we decided to play an adventurous but naïve academic and his over-protective mother-hen cousin convinced their family would blame her if she let him walk off a cliff. The rest of the party kept assuming my character secretly had a crush and I had to remind them every few sessions that we were not that kind of family 😫

I feel inspired by this video! I've had this idea for a character that I will not be playing next time around so if my friends read this comment, it won't spoil anything. The character is a Changeling Warlock/Bard who literally sold his soul for rock and roll (or fantasy equivalent) and, in the process, had to sacrifice (trap or something darker) a mortal traveller to appease his new patron. The character then takes on the form of this traveller and goes to the mortal plane as them. With connections, it would be SO much fun to go to someone in the group who likes to improvise and build a connection to them but have the connection be the false identity and tell them to make stuff up about you!

Many decades ago, I played in a D&D-like fantasy game that had a lot of options for character design. The character that brought the party together was a wealthy sorceress, and as far as anyone else knew, my character was her mostly ineffectual valet and social secretary. He would occasionally suggest in very deferential tones that she use her magic for some purpose, and while everyone (including the other PCs) was distracted by her loud chants and dramatic gestures, my character would very quietly cast the needed spell--because he was actually a wizard, but he owed her for the student loans her family gave him when the two were in magic school together. Acting as her servant was how he discharged his debt. Amazingly, the other players never caught on.

I usually try to give my characters at least one person in the party, discussing it with the player of course, that already has some form of connection with them. Now, I can’t always do this, like with ongoing campaigns I join, but in those cases I usually try to find themes and ideas, maybe even sharing the same hometown, that will help me blend with the others of the party far more quickly. Also, and this is because it’s my own personality bleeding through, I have characters who look at the party and want to protect and care for them. I’m a bit of a compulsive caretaker irl so my characters will share certain aspects of this trait and it usually helps a ton with party cohesion. Found family is not uncommon in the groups I play with. Now this isn’t always the case but I usually try to use my intro to make my character appealing to the other players in such a way that they want their characters to latch on. For an example I was a session late joining this newish fey themed (we are all fey or born/created in the feywild) campaign I’m in. So I had to bring my character into the fold for a party that had a whole session to bond already and started hitting their stride together. For this campaign I was a druid, dream circle actually, and when my character got to the door where the party had long rested, I told the dm that, instead of opening the door and introducing myself, that I actually turned into a spider and crawled under it. I then latched onto the party, who started investigating, not noticing my character. At some point I end up going through a portal with the artificer’s homunculus and when they come through themselves, I am hold the homunculus and handing it back to them, apologizing and just being nice. The other players found the whole thing so hilariously comedic that I was able to fold in my character to the party with ease. My character has also kept that disarming nice side and uses it for the party and lets it be a huge part of their fey nature (yes, pulls pranks). The hilarious part is that this campaign was meant as a long term horror one and now it’s more like we are the horror except it’s comedic, like the Addams family but fey themed. And that was how I introduced that character and folded in my character with ease. As I said, I don’t always have the leeway of binding my character into the backstory of others but I try where I can to do so, even opening up my own backstory for a newly joining player to weave theirs into my own sometimes. Like for one, I had my ranger know the father of our newly joining paladin to the party. But regardless, suspending one’s belief and communication is important. It’s usually good to play with people who know you to do this but not always necessary. And for Ginny, man this video was great timing! I actually just finished putting together some characters with one of my dnd friends for future games. We designed out a pair of fairy cleric siblings, one is serious and the other a prankster and we are setting up some hilarious backstory things to maybe refer to in rp. Since this friend and I have such sibling energy irl, we plan to incorporate that vibe when we finally can play these two together. Hoping that campaign goes well! (Edit:oh and example of another character. I actually had the ties for this character be on multiple levels. I chose a lot of parallel themes that would highlight the character arcs of the other players, made the character a caretaker by giving them that big sibling energy, had the character have a complex about protecting people due to previous incident in their backstory, had my character be close friends to npc the party was there to see and rescue (the same npc who is friends with another pc of the party), be from the same hometown as another pc even though the two had never met (allowed for bonding over homesickness and discussing places of interest there), and, most importantly, I gave this character a somewhat meta feeling trait. So, some people irl might tell you “I just had a feeling that it was important I do ‘such and such’” right? I gave this character that trait. They have strong hunches that are almost prophetic that they rely on. For them, I had them basically get to know the party and think “I need to go with these people when they leave, I need to be there with them because it’s important feeling.” Yeah so, little meta but I rp it like the way an irl person would do so. Despite that, this character is still really cautious by nature so isn’t fully reliant on that strong hunch ability. The character I had find and “test” the party in such a way that they could give themself excuses to follow through with their hunch. It worked and the character is very beloved by the party and well integrated. I’m actually shocked by how well they were and it’s been great rp this character, definitely my favorite of my characters.)

I’m running a campaign with 4 PCs at the moment. 3 of them knew each other prior to the events of the campaign, and 1 they met after the inciting incident. He happens to be familiar with their situation so it naturally made sense for him to join them. I played separate one shots with each pair of the 3, so they could form bonds/figure out how they felt about each others characters. It’s been a godsend because they now have connections that the other players don’t, and allows them to have smaller interconnected stories within the bigger story. Like my rogue having a mentor type bond with the son of my fighter. Or my fighter being one of the only people not to underestimate my Ranger. Or the rogue wanting to platform the Ranger and let him prove himself rather than fall into his imposter syndrome.

We had a similar situation in a dungeon crawl we did. We all played townspeople and even without planning it we just ad libbed a bunch of events to talk about. It all started because my artificer asked the rogue about her shop whose shop exploded recently, they both spent a few moments bringing the barbarian a lumberjack up to speed on the town gossip

We're actually gonna do something this for our next campaign! My Bloodhunter is gonna be traveling companions with the Paladin (rough and touble sellswords), and the Wizard and Sorcerer are gonna be twins (elven nobles). We've also already prepared some solid reasons for them to travel together (My bloodhunter really wants to meet their dad, who as the royal mage can help him find out more about his curse and grand my character access to the royal library. The Paladin is a Plasmoid who doesn't really vibe with other people, so she'll stick with my Bloodhunter. And the nobles are basically recruiting allies for a grand quest given by their dad, so they'll take any help they can get) I'm hoping to make some pre-existing backstory stuff with the Paladin's player, given that our characters have probably been traveling together for quite a bit now. She generally doesn't talk as much so I'm hoping the character connection will also give her somewhat consistent chances to engage in rp. Should be quite interesting!

Bond mechanics are Great for Role-playing. The system I've been using is based on Dungeon World's take on Bonds, where exploring and developing your Bonds with the other players is one of the main systems that rewards XP. You're just as incentivized to kill an epic boss monster as you are to meaningfully role-play with the other character. My addition to this is to better define how to write these Bonds so that they more clearly define what your current relationship is, and how you'd be interesting in exploring how the relationship might develop. A State & a Hook. "Daniel seems naive to the ugly reality of the word."

My fiancé and I have recently realized this technique is such a great way to cut to the action, get rid of the messiness of characters struggling to find reasons to stick together, and getting to the good stuff so that they can RP from there! Forged in the Dark systems also tend to “cut to the action” like this. Thank you for sharing your experience with this version to the community!

I have a character recently who is incredibly cold and self centered Prince. Helping people purely cause it helps him and his goals out in the future. But everyone loves him because one of the other characters is a body guard who grew up with him and now they travel with each other. The body guard is the only one Prince would literally leave everyone to die for. And he’s had multiple moments of dropping everything to make sure his body guard is okay. It seems like despite how he treats others, everyone is invested in the story between the two and it makes them want to interact with one or the other. It’s been a lot of fun to see how that plays out.

Yes, my purchase of baldur's gate 3 was a business expense 😅

I feel like this is explaining the players doing their part to tell a good story. Like poor players make video game main characters that the DM has to fit together into a party whereas good players either do it themselves or make it very easy for the DM to do that. One of the best players I’ve had in this area was actually a first timer who irl was very friendly so he naturally wanted to be friends with characters in game and it bonded everyone in about 10min

I've been doing improv classes for a while now, and this was a note I got that made a lot of scenes click. You can just decide your history, and knowing who you are *to each other* is invaluable for showing you how to improvise/role play.

DM here! In one of my players favorite campaigns i ran everyone grew up in the same village and the campaign started when they all reunited in said village. All 5 of them were good friends and got into all kinds of trouble growing up. Every session started with a short, 20 min to 1 hour at most, diceless story from their childhood where they were going to succeed no matter what but, it gave them shared stories.

Josh knows too much!

First, I want to say I love your videos! They are well produced, entertaining, and informative. Thank you for all the time and effort you put into them! Now, on to the heart of my comment. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay has a similar concept. The Gamemaster's Screen insert has a table called "How do I know you again?" with 50 different connections. Some are good, some are bad, but all of them are interesting. The few times I've used it have resulted in parties that were more cohesive and easier to get involved in the story.

Most recently in one game I played an Owlin ranger whose younger sister was another member of the party, and it was very like you mention about "lone wolf" characters. "I" didn't want to hang around anyone, but little sis loved getting in trouble alongside the other PCs, so I was stuck coming along to try and keep her safe

WELL ACTUALLY-

I've seen this trick before, but it's a great idea! I'll add it to my homebrew list. Noodle incidents are indeed another great thing that comes of this. I've got this inherently in the Pathfinder game I'm running currently. They're all goblins who are part of the same extended family hunter-gatherer band in the paleolithic. It makes coming up with plots related to their backstories much easier, too. The inciting incident that made them go off on a journey was a curse turning the band's last shaman into a ghoul, so now they need to go find the other half of their extended family that split off some years back to break the curse that's on the shaman's son, and to find a replacement shaman who can teach the shaman's apprentice.

I started my first homebrew campaign at the New Year (4th campaign to date) by trying to figure out the characters having a patron that they've done some work for and, in turn, helped them figure out the relation to each other. One of the PCs suggested working for the local apothecary, so I created her and her shop in turn, and everyone else latched onto it. 2 of my 6 PCs are cousins and 2 of the others having the Rashemar Witch and Rashemen Berserker guardian type relationship as additional connections, and I think it's really worked out well so far.

i find it fun to have total strangers bonding through the game. both the players and the characters... with an understanding discussed before we play that once they start to get to know each other that they work as a party not against each other

One of my favorite pre establishing relationships intergrated game mechanic is in Kids on Bikes. Everyone goes in a circle establishing a relationship with 3 charts. They will choose if they have a positive, negative or nutral/dont know them type relationship. Then roll on the chosen chart and answer the question. Then the other person has to roll on the opisite chart. It makes sure that" negative" perceptions also are involved in the relationship.

The best example of this I've seen in a liveplay was in EXU: Calamity when Aabria and Sam, who I don't think had roleplayed together before, made the legendary decision to play divorcees whose positions forced them to work together. The tension was hilarious and the sense of backstory their bickering brought to the table made both characters feel more real. And of course it turned out they weren't over each other and wanted to protect each other even if they weren't prepared to concede any of their old arguments. It was funny and sweet and added so much to the show.

Played a one-shot of a Wildmount campaign and my character was a human fighter while the rest of my party were all some form of beast/magical race. I remember having connections with three members of the party: worked with a dark elf in the same soldiering company who unbeknownst to my character betrayed the company where I was the only one left (yet still on friendly terms), a dark elf/half orc who healed me after said betrayal, and a kobold that I caught trying to steal scrap from my things and won my character over with their lovably timid and mischievous personality. It is my favorite game so far. ❤

In the last campaign my Group and I finished, We did not have relationships set up beforehand, but built them naturally through the game, and that was awesome. We are now starting a new campaign and now we're doing this. One of mine and my friend's characters got married in the previous campaign, and we didn't want our next characters doing the same thing in the new campaign, so now we're siblings. We came up with some concrete connections for our characters, but also all gave our DM 2-4 ways we would be happy to have linked Backstories that the Characters don't know about, and he can pick one or multiple of them and we'll find out in game, so we know the possible ways they could be, but not which one(s) our DM will pick, or he could make up new ones entirely! So excited for this new campaign!

Love your point about the lone wolf character using a preexisting relationship to join a group. I actually used that in one of my more recent games. My character didn't even want to be an adventurer. He was a sword for hire and the party's artificer had hired me as a bodyguard. We had a lot of fun with him being all "I want to examine this place!" and me being all "It's not safe. You shouldn't go in there." Then he answered "I'm not going. WE are going. Who's paying you?" It worked out beautifully, was a blast, and let me play a very different sort from my usual flamboyant and high charisma sorts. I joked with our table about just being a weapon for the artificer, even if I did have more going on, just way more quietly.

I did this for my campaign as well. I had 3 of them, that already got along, be pirates that used to sail together during the Orc Wars. One of them was the captain and the other two were his officers. It worked out quite nicely. The others had firm relationships, even family, with other NPCs. That worked out even better than I had hoped. It brought the whole team together and they were invested in each other's stories. It helped them play their characters better as well. So I agree with you, it's a great idea and does make player easier and more fluid.

The only dnd game i ever played, I had a pre-existing relationship with another player and it really did help roleplay!

I make each PC create a bond to another PC that isn't already bonded to them, so everyone is either a friend/relative or a friend of a friend to each other. They have to plan this bond with the other PC, of course, which creates communication and teamwork before the game even starts. I'll also assign them a bond that ties them to the storyline, which they'll work with me to flesh out. I used to get character sheets with the bonds section completely blank, or with a copy/paste from the generic list before this. Bonds add so much party cohesion.

This is part of character creation in the RPG Monster of the Week, and each of the playbooks (think classes or backgrounds) comes with premade relationship prompts to help facilitate this discussion. It works out great.

Thank you for posting this- a natural device for party cohesion and good roleplay is sorely needed for so many tables. I'll definitely be implementing this uin my Pathfinder, Starfinder, and Dungeon Crawl games as well!

My favorite player characters I DMed that had a preexisting relationship were gnomes that were cousins and spoke in heavy southern accents. It was great.

From experience, this totally works. Starting at level 5 or whatever means you have 4 levels of backstory to flesh out. Pair up with other PC's to overlap part of those backstories. Maybe you earned your level 1 together, or you were from the same town. Anything. Just create a hook to be instant friends when you encounter each other in session 1.

Great advice, Ginny. I use this in my own games and it has been a huge help both in getting parties into comfortable roleplay quickly and making for interesting character arcs in the long term.

Thanks for another fantastic video Ginny! I’ve used variations on this myself over the years. I’ve sometimes got the players to sketch the kind of party they’d want to be… chat quickly turns to connections between characters 👌🏼

I joined a Curse of Strahd game halfway through, so to give my character a purpose for being there another player offered to make our characters best friends that were separated a long time ago. The best part is this other PC is a complete menace that nobody likes because he makes everyone miserable…all except his best friend a.k.a my character. It’s surprisingly really sweet.

Had a really great time when I partnered with my Brother for a DnD campaign. I was an arrogant Divine soul Sorcerer and he was my hype man bard. It was really fun having that backstory with him and it did ease my anxiety when we started playing

I implemented this rule as a DM 2 campaigns ago and I agree Ginny, it makes the roleplay just so much better, when there are pre-existing relationships between the PCs! Fantastic video.

This was a thing in the first 5e campaign i played and has been a staple of every game our friendgroup does since then. Some were sisters, some friends, others battle buddies, the newest crew is one who gets hired occasionally to go hunt monsters who picked up a guide and a few muscle men on the way to the campaign start. This is an absolutely glorious tool that I wish more people embraced because having it as a standard in most games I don't know how people lived without this.