Tabletop Role Playing Games are truly wonderful things. If for no other reason than every time you play one it will be a different experience. (Although there are many many other reasons). Even if you play through a published adventure module that you have run through before And even if you do so with the same exact group of people that you played with last time. This time it will be different.

You will make different choices. You might play a different character. Things that seemed easy last time might be harder, and visa versa, due to the randomness of dice. Different NPCs might appear. You might even have some new characters or players at the table every now and then, either of which will change up your experience dramatically. The variables in any RPG story are almost endless. And so why then, if RPGs are so varied and unique, do so many campaigns begin with those age old words ‘you meet in a tavern’?

Mechanically and logistically speaking, sure I get it. Almost regardless of the setting a ‘tavern’ is going to be somewhere that adventurey type people might meet. And it provides a neutral mood for the beginning of the game, where the group can get a feel for each others characters and how the GM is going to run the session and all that stuff. Plus, at least usually, meeting in a tavern avoids the risk of the very rare, yet horrifying possibility of a character meeting their death before ever seeing the light of day. (Side note, the closest I have seen to that actually happening is the time I almost killed a new players character before they had even met the party. They were approaching our campsite at night and I decided to roleplay my wizards bad habit of casting spells in his sleep. The new player just barely made a saving roll to not die from my chain lighting nightmares. Good times!)

Even though this article sounds, as judged by the title, totally against taverns, I would like to point out that I actually don’t hate taverns at all. ‘Tavern’ is not really the keyword that I am focused on here. I actually think taverns are an awesome RPG trope. You do need to know when to bring out that trope, but every tabletop RPG should get a tavern scene at some point. They are awesome.

It doesn’t really matter if you are a band of elves who have left the mages college to learn more about their ancient heritage or a group of computer ‘hacktivists’ looking to take down a mega corporation. Any place that has music and booze is going to be a good place to meet up at if you are of the adventuring persuasion. But if you think about those two examples I just gave for a second you might start to realise which keyword in ‘you meet in a tavern’ is the one I do have a problem with.

Time to Meet Your Maker

The problem with meeting in a tavern is the meeting part. In most cases, ‘you meet in a tavern’, legitimately means that the whole party is just now meeting each other for the first time in the story. Now, maybe if your GM is pretty good, then there is some small bit of story about why you all decided to meet here. Or perhaps two of your players decided that they knew each other in their backstory. But often there aren’t even those small boons.

Most of the time we just get a bunch of random characters meeting up at a bar for reasons that may or may not exist yet. As cold openings go, ‘you meet in a tavern’ is in the arctic. Let’s drop the players right into a social scene at the start of the game, (the hardest scenes for players, at least until after a few sessions when they have a good handle on the dynamics of the group), and assume that everything will proceed swimmingly.

Except it doesn’t proceed swimmingly. Ever. Ok maybe if you are part of a regular group and this is just a campaign reset for you, then you might get through this as a team and make the scene story related and exciting. But even then, probably not. What happens in this scene, if the characters have no backstory ties whatsoever, is that each character will start to do different but random things that make very little sense in context. And this usually sends the GM into a bit of a panic.

Chaos on the Tavern floor

It goes a little something like this: The roguish character just introduced themselves at the table and then promptly started trying to pickpocket every person in the establishment, often including the PCs themselves. The bard is now asking the tavern keep if they could get some work for the night playing their lute and telling tales for the patrons. The barbarian has picked a fight with a big group of drunk guards. The paladin and the cleric are at least talking to each other, but it’s not about the story that is going on, it’s probably about how crap each others deity’s are. The wizard isn’t even really playing the game yet, they are still flipping through the spell list in the Player’s Handbook because the GM said they could just choose their spells later since it was getting a bit late by that point.

Does any of this sound familiar? I’m sure it does if you have ever played with a group of people who hadn’t really met before and/or whose characters ‘met in a tavern’. In response to this the GM is surely reassessing who they invited to the game. They are worried that there is no group cohesion. That everyone just did their own thing, no one stayed on point with the goal of the session and it seemed like people weren’t getting along.

Of course the GM has nothing to worry about in that regard. Everyone probably had a great time. It was hilarious and fun. People actually got along better than they might have otherwise. But why is there this disconnect between player perception and GM perception? Because the players were doing exactly what their characters were suppose to be doing, or at least so they thought. But to the GM, it seemed like none of them were doing the right thing. They should have been discussing the best options for approaching the tower of evil right? Well not in the eyes of the players.

See, at this point, if all the characters are meeting for the very first time, then the players will just assume that their character will do things that they have read about in the race and class chapters of the player’s handbook. Or maybe if you have a really creative player, then they are doing something a bit more interesting that relates to stuff they came up with in their backstory. But right now none of these characters have met each other before, and they are all unique and interesting snowflakes, so what’s to say that they would even get along? Let alone entrust their very lives to one another and immediately cast themselves into the fires of adventure?

Nothing that’s what. If they are just meeting now, then that means they have no ties to each other. No history. No bonds, blood or otherwise. And if they aren’t bound to each other then all that makes sense to them is to do whatever sounds like something a ‘Bard’ would do. Or a rogue, or a barbarian. Or even an orphan who has been searching for their long lost parents. But they won’t be doing what the GM wants them to do the most, which is play as a team. Because up to now in their backstory, they haven’t even been a team! And unless they are under very strict instructions from the GM or if they are all veteran players and thus aware of this issue, they aren’t going to know how to come together and magically become a well oiled adventuring machine out of thin air.

A Few Obvious Complaints

Now at this point, purists might be arguing some of the usual points about how the ‘everyone meets each other’ opening is more of a warm up session and the group needs time to work out their characters and yadda yadda yadda. And warm up sessions are important, don’t get me wrong. But other than warming up, what did that tavern scene even accomplish? Well it set the tone for the whole bloody adventure, that’s what.

And again, here is where the purists might say that setting a tone for the adventure that is barrels of fun can’t be too bad. Can it? The fun element of silly tavern openings is most likely the reason they have stuck with us as a gaming culture for so long. I mean fun is the whole point of doing what we do. So in that sense, these scenes do at least accomplish something. But they aren’t always fun. And they aren’t ever helpful to the story of your game. Nor do they help the players figure out how to roleplay their characters. Despite some people often disagreeing with this point.

In my opinion, ‘doing what a bard would do’ isn’t really roleplaying. I mean sure, in the most basic sense it does qualify. But if you are just doing that, then you aren’t playing your role in the team. And this is a team game after all. Everyone needs to be having fun and working out how they should bounce off of each other. Both in tactical, fighty situations and in the more social, talky situations. And if you are just ignoring the other people at the table and fighting/grifting/robbing NPCs or anything else that is all about you and not about your fellow players, then you are doing the whole table a disservice.

One Way for us to Skin this Cat

But, don’t despair my friends! With just a small tweak, we can keep all the fun, even keep all the silliness if that is what we want as a group, but remove the difficulties having our rag tag bunch of characters meet for the first time in a crowded noisy tavern creates for us. All you really need to do is to tie the characters together at some point before the first scene. The tighter the existing backstory bonds between them are, the more they will operate as a unit. And the more they do that, the more of the long term issues that starting untethered will creates, are just avoided all together. And there are lots and lots of those.

Games with these starting points almost always end up with problems, even if by some miracle the players make it through the first session and end up trying to work as a group. Ever had your players diverge so far down different paths that they ended up trying to kill one another? And even though you hated it, you had to admit that in terms of the narrative and what each character was trying to achieve it actually made sense for them to do so? Me too. But it shouldn’t ever get that far if they have a strong backstory relationship.

For the sake of example let’s say the players are quarrelling siblings. Siblings are together till the end. Even if they do end up on different sides of some war, the players of these siblings won’t want to actually kill each other. Whether this is because of the human experience of knowing what the sibling relationship feels like, or because said players have watched too much Supernatural, it’s hard to say. But what is clear is that if you bind everyone together somehow, before the game ever starts, it keeps them together for the rest of the campaign.

The Aforementioned List

So, hopefully I have convinced you that trying to tie the party together in terms of backstory is a very good idea indeed. If I still haven’t managed it, go and play a game of Fate Core, including the ‘phase trio’ section of character creation, and then tell me that it wasn’t one of the smoothest first sessions you have ever had. I bet it was, since the phase trio is a cool mechanic in-built into Fate that does this whole process for you automatically. (Side note, even you are playing Fate Core this list is still relevant to you, choosing something of this list to use and doing the phase trio, will just cement your players together even more).

Once you are on board with what I’m saying here, or if you just love reading stuff you disagree with, carry on to the below list where I outline ten awesome ways to start your next RPG campaign that will tie the players together and have everyone on the same page from session one.

1. The Mercenary Company

Premise

The basic premise of The Mercenary Company is that the Player Characters are an established organisation that will do jobs for money. Does that sound familiar? Yes that’s right, it’s basically what the PCs already are. A group of strong, powerful individuals that roam around taking odd jobs (some more odd than others) for money. So what’s the difference between that and The Mercenary Company you ask? Banners! Flags! An official group name! In other words, more teamwork. Teamwork that is built right into the premise of your adventure.

Implementation

In medieval campaigns, whether historical or fantasy, The Mercenary Company can be implemented exactly as the name implies. The players form a Company, and the Company, rather than the individuals is what takes the jobs or missions that the players will then attempt to complete. Of course the players can still all have their own motivations, obligations and other personal goals or issues. But it is the Company that takes the main jobs and receives any rewards from those jobs.

In sci-fi campaigns The Mercenary Company works nicely as well. Pretty much in the same way it works for medieval campaigns. If you use The Mercenary Company in a sci-fi setting however you might end up with a table full of Boba Fett type characters. If that happens, just try to make sure that the players don’t adopt Bobas horrible trait of being shit at working in teams.

The Mercenary Company is an especially good option for your sci-fi campaign if the players do not have access to interplanetary travel. If that option is available then The Mercenary Company will still work very well, but you should definitely look into The Spaceship Crew below and try to work out a mix of the two backstories since that will work even better.

Some other examples of The Mercenary Company include a posse of bounty hunters and quick draws in a western setting, private investigators in a modern mystery, a group of vampire / werewolf hunters or any other group of people that an NPC would hire to do… well whatever it is the PCs normally do in your setting.

Regardless of your setting, if your players want to form a Mercenary Company then make sure it happens either as backstory or as the very first mission that you run. Even then, my personal preference would be backstory. You usually want your RPG sessions to start in media res (in the middle of the action) and setting up a business would be a pretty boring first session. Unless of course it was mixed in with a good action story as well. Then it might be awesome!

Before the first adventure of your campaign starts, get the players together to do the following:

  1. Come up with an awesome Company name!
    • Try to make sure it is an equal name. Not ‘Jason and the Argonauts’. Just ‘The Argonauts’.
  2. Draw up some banners and flags!
    • Even if your players are all art-hating philistines they will be able to pick three colours they like and put them together on a piece of paper somehow. That is all that is required. But if they are more creative types try to encourage them to come up with detailed designs that reflect parts of each characters unique style. Bonus points if they keep updating their banners and flags to reflect their victories as the campaign goes on!
  3. Decide on a going rate and a party split for the loots.
    • Usually this would be an equal split of the reward money and the GM would come up with a going rate that makes sense for the adventure. But make sure the characters talk about it and agree to it. Bonus points if you write up contracts and sign them in character!

Final Thoughts

The Mercenary Company is perhaps the most classic example of a backstory tie-in in RPG history. Well as far as I am aware it is, I don’t really profess to be truly encyclopaedic on the subject of tabletop RPG history, but this one has come up in some form or another pretty much since the invention of the hobby itself in the 1970’s. That isn’t to say it’s the best or most effective entry on this list however. It is probably the most commonly seen backstory example simply due to the fact that it is almost inherent in the formula of D&D. And in turn D&D has been the most commonly played RPG since its inception (my stance on which you can find here).

To be honest though, this is actually one of the weakest and most tentative backstories on the list due to the fact that the players may just choose to quit the Company or to betray it. And if they have set their character up to be roguish those actions would still make sense in terms of the game world.

However the main advantage The Mercenary Company does have over some of the other options on this list is that it is very easy to get solid player buy-in on this concept. It doesn’t really change much in most regular, D&D-like, RPGs. And the PCs get to make things up for their group like flags, banners, advertisements and all kinds of other cool team props. So most players will be all for it. And then at least you can say ‘you meet in your Company hall’ rather than ‘you meet in a tavern’. Sometimes it’s the little upgrades that make all the difference.

2. The Spaceship Crew

Premise

In The Spaceship Crew the player characters each take a different role aboard the helm of their very own vessel. Now before you read the title of this entry and run away screaming because there are no dragons or wizards, The Spaceship Crew works just as well in the ever popular medieval fantasy genre, with just one small edit: The Space Pirate Ship Crew. See? Of course you could use any type of ship (Pirate or otherwise). Or even another type of other vehicle that requires a number of people working together in order to operate it correctly. Spaceships are just the coolest version of that idea. (Let the flame wars begin in the comments below).

Implementation

This backstory will actually affect your campaign fairly significantly so only go ahead with it if your game will still work if the players should be able to travel anywhere they want at any time. Of course do remember that the player’s ship could always mysteriously break down and need repairs, or it could be stolen or lost entirely, requiring a whole session to repair it or to steal a new one. So make sure that everyone at the table is aware that some adventures might need a little plot doctoring in order to make diegetic sense.

The exact nature of the vessel that the players will command can vary greatly depending on setting and how powerful/rich the players are meant to be. But as a general list of prerequisites, such a vessel should have the following; A ships wheel / pilot’s chair (somewhere from which a player can set the vessel to go in a particular direction), a captain’s chair and/or cabin (someplace for the party leader to bark out orders and such), a crows nest / scanner (a spot for someone to sit and look around and tell the rest of the party if they are approaching land or when an enemy vessel is approaching them), a gun / cannon (or someplace a player can sit and operate a weapon that will fight back against bad guy vessels) and an engine room (someplace that a player can do work that increases the speed or some other performance metric of the vessel).

There are many options for what exact vessel any given party might start out with. Pirate Galleons, Space Freighters or even an old beat up Panel Van will do the trick, depending on what makes sense for your setting. Just make sure that the players do the following before the first adventure starts:

  1. Name the ship!
    • Bonus points if you can purchase or create a miniature statue that matches your chosen vessel!
  2. Assign each player a role on the ship!
    • Each player has to know what role they are performing. Like, I am the helmsman who steers the ship! Or I am the main engineer who diverts all power to the shields when shit hits the fan! Etc. Every player should have a different role (no double ups, trust me) and every role should greatly benefit the ship. The ship should be significantly debilitated if one player is not performing their role.
  3. Get the players to talk about what possible missions or adventures they have completed together in their backstory while aboard the ship.
    • This helps cement the sense of camaraderie that you are trying to build between your players by tying their backstories together and it can also give you some juicy story hooks for later.

Final Thoughts

The Spaceship Crew, is a beloved campaign starter that can be found in published adventures everywhere. It really helps to give every player an idea of what they should be doing during critical times (like ship to ship combat). This helps a bunch in warming up that cold dead air that can arise when you say to a group of people who are new to the hobby ‘you meet in a tavern, what do you do’.

If they have already gone through the setup of having everyone choose their ship roles and naming the ship and talking about their past adventures, then when you say ‘you all meet aboard your vessel, the shit is hitting the fan, what do you’ they will know exactly what to do and what everyone else will be doing. And trust me they will have a blast doing it.

One last thing to note about The Spaceship Crew is that while it is a great tie-in in terms of helping new players understand their role in the game, it can still lead to players not having enough direct, solid ties to each others characters in the shared story you are all creating. So consider combining this one with pretty much any other entry from this list that your group might be excited about.

3. The Band

Premise

The Band is all about the music, man. In The Band, you will be doing what awesome, adventurous, highly egotistical humans have been doing for millenia: sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. The reason The Band works so well as a backstory is that it creates just enough room between the players that they can still squabble, bicker, break up, reform and otherwise cause each other grief. But not so much room that they would consider doing physical violence upon each other. Well not not much more than the odd drunken punch up at least. Which is awesome if you find that, while your players really enjoy fighting internally now and then, they sometimes end up actually killing each other’s characters and thusly ruining the game for themselves. (If this has never happened to you as a DM, consider yourself lucky).

The Band can become the centerpiece of your adventure if your group wants it to, (roaming the land from gig to gig, getting into adventures along the way), but it can also just come up in play every now and then, if that works better for you. In that way this is actually one of the most flexible backstories on the list, since depending on what the plot dictates, it’s very plausible for a Band to simply not get any gigs in a certain area, or for a certain time frame. Thus allowing the plot to veer off and be about anything the GM wishes.

The Band concept is actually one of my personal favourites and I have been trying to convince people to play in a game like this for near on ten years. So if this sounds cool to you, LET ME KNOW!

Implementation

The Band is one of the most genre agnostic backstories on this list that still affects who and what the players really are. And as such it can squeeze itself into almost any campaign. Music is one of the most basic and instinctual elements of human life and getting a musical group together to make it that much more awesome just makes sense. So whether your Band are minstrels, playing their Lyres and Harps, or a modern Band that plays metal by night and slays vampires in the day or some kind of awesome retro-80’s-future Band that exists in a post apocalyptic cyborg wasteland, one way or another, music is going to make their lives a whole lot more awesome.

In order get your PCs a’rockin’ you will first need to figure out whether or not The Band itself is a core part of the story. As I said earlier, you could play this as backstory colour, where the players are in a Band together, but going out and getting gigs isn’t going to be the main focus of the adventure. Or you could really dial in on The Band and perhaps the players are entering a Battle of the Bands and must rise to the top and win over the crowd, all while overcoming many other shenanigans at the same time.

Personally I would recommend hitting somewhere in the middle, where the players might be seeking musical work whenever and wherever they can find it. And by doing so, they get mixed up in all kinds of other issues. This is a great way to hook the players into basically any kind of crazy story, whether it be in a gross back-alley bar or playing to an arena of thousands, Bands can get into all kinds of weird and wonderful situations. Plus this way you could play out the plot of The Green Room, which is an amazing movie and would make a badass RPG one shot.

Before starting your first session as a Band, make sure the players do the following:

  1. Come up with a Band name!
    • Bonus points for cover bands with names that are clever puns related to the original band. Even more points if you decide what kind of music your Band plays. This is even better if you can bring along a mixtape of tracks and hit play on them whenever your band is meant to be rocking out on stage.
  2. Figure out what instruments each player plays!
    • Whether they are the lead guitarist or the drummer, each player should have a unique instrument to play and the group should figure out how, if at all, the playing of these instruments affects gameplay.
  3. Work out how famous The Band is!
    • Are you just starting out, sending demo tapes and practicing in your garage? Or are you grizzled rockers whose brains have been addled by years of drugs and STDs? Would every person on the street recognise you? Or have you had one hit song, years ago, and now it’s an awkward story you tell at parties? The GM might need to weigh in here to fit your Band into the adventure they have planned but just make sure everyone at the table is happy with the choice before proceeding to play.

Final Thoughts

The problem I have always faced trying to get The Band into an actual game is that players often balk at the very idea of it. I think it is probably too silly of an idea for the average player to bring into most RPGs. Which is odd since most RPGs devolve into silliness at every opportunity. Another possible reason for its rarity is that the Bard is not a very popular class in D&D and for whatever reason most people decide that if you are all in a Band then you all must have at least one level in Bard or some such other annoying cost. Personally I think The Band is actually perfect fodder for RPG stories. And no costs should apply to allow your character to be able to play music.

As many writers, directors and other creative people who deal with story on a daily basis will tell you, often the most interesting storytelling will occur when characters have to juggle the wild, crazy situations given to them by the main plot with their everyday normal lives. Countless TV shows, movies and books revolve around this idea, a small notable selection of which might include Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and actually most of Joss Whedon’s work), Harry Potter and practically every superhero movie, etc.

The Band offers an excellent way to both tie the players together and to give the story that everyone at the table is crafting some real meat on its bones. It will help the GM work out hooks for the players to get involved in the plot, and it will help the players work as a team and know what their role in the group should be. Plus any excuse to blast highway to hell on whatever speakers you can find during your rpg session is good enough for me.

4. By Our Powers Combined

Premise

By Our Powers Combined is a classic trope wherein the players are literally more powerful when acting together as a unit (often by transforming into a giant robot of some kind) than they could ever hope to be alone. I have seen this trope implemented by sneaky GMs more than once right in the middle of a campaign without anyone noticing. The players find a few magic items, but they don’t know what these items do. After some experimentation they realise that the items are meant to work as a set. Wherever the fighter points his new sword, the player holding the new magic shield will appear! But it doesn’t work if the same player is holding both the sword and the shield! Suddenly the players have to work together and they might even figure out ways to basically break the normal rules of the game using their new items, which is super cool and fun!

But of course you can also use this backstory as the very core idea of a whole campaign where the players must join together or they stand no hope of defeating the big bad boss. Think TV shows like Voltron, My Little Pony or the age old classic for which this entry is named, Captain Planet. (Side note, Captain Planet is actually not a great example, since if you were playing an RPG by the exact rules of that show, once the players had combined their rings of power you would basically either be giving a separate player who was silent up until this point, or the GM themselves, the only way to win the main battle of your session. Which sounds pretty boring and not in the team spirit that his article is espousing).

Implementation

By Our Powers Combined is a bit of a tough trope to pull off when it comes to player buy-in. Most RPG players want their characters to be unique and beautiful snowflakes who are each the protagonists of their own massive novel series. They often don’t want to be part of a team. But since you are reading this, you have probably recognised that playing as a team makes the whole hobby more enjoyable for everyone. The players don’t even have to be all goodie goodie and super into team spirit, they can be an evil team of baby-snatching witches with they want to be. They just need to all be on the same page.

The player buy-in problem is why most GMs that I have talked to who have successfully pulled off this kind of trope have done so very sneakily. Rather than doing the normal thing, talking it all out with the group, ensuring that everyone thinks the game they are about to embark upon sounds fun, they just keep this element as plot development that they reveal fairly soon within the campaign. And that can work very well.

Personally, having played too many games where player and GM expectations did not overlap enough, I would steer clear of this approach. Especially if By Our Powers Combined is going to be the very core focus of the plot in your game. Anything that is super important like that should be agreed upon by everyone. So instead of just telling the players that they are all pilots of animal-shaped-space-robots that must come together to form a much larger animal-shaped-space-robot, instead just ask them what is awesome about their particular space robot.

Or their ring of power. Or their element of harmony. Or whatever plot device it is that they use to combine themselves into a more powerful force. If they at least get some awesome benefit from it that relates directly to their character concept they are more likely to want it. And ultimately they are going to be working as a team to overcome the bad guys anyway, so that will just happen naturally later on.

To formalise this process I will explain that, before starting out on a By Our Powers Combined adventure, the players should all do the following:

  1. Figure out what happens when their powers do in fact combine!
    • Now this may be provided by the GM, but if the GM is open to it then having the players decide this will pretty much always add to the overall awesome level of the adventure.
  2. After having decided what happens when they assume their ultimate form, have the players work out exactly why their own power is special and how that relates to their character concept.
    • Bonus points for coming up with catchphrases, colour coding their outfits, and making sure that no two powers are too similar.
  3. Decide whether or not the players start with their powers unlocked.
    • Usually I would say all of the entries on this list are better as backstory. But for this one, so long as the players are aware of this whole idea and have chosen their powers already and everything, it can be very fun to have a bit of an ‘episode one’ where they all come together and receive their powers. Just make sure that they don’t ‘meet in a tavern’ first. Please. For me.

Final Thoughts

By Our Powers Combined is certainly a bit of a weird story tie-in since it can barely affect the main plot at all (in the form of some disposable special items that have to be used together) or it can be the very centerpiece of your campaign (as in the various TV shows that use this trope). But it’s actually somewhat difficult to imagine any kind of middle ground for this one, it’s basically all or nothing. So it’s a bit specialised for those two use cases. Either as a smaller technique to try to get any players who aren’t getting along to work together. Or as the backbone of the whole story.

But however you choose to use it you should find that once it is cemented into the game it will help the players know their role in the party. It will also give everyone automatic stakes in any encounter related to their powers or related to a bad guy who is only vulnerable if they use their powers. And it also ensures that the players all value each other’s roles in the team. Because without every single player working together, their giant-spaceship-robot-hamster just wouldn’t be the same.

5. Cops or Robbers

Premise The idea behind Cops or Robbers isn’t just that your player characters might enjoy playing as a squad of lawmen or a gang of outlaws. The core idea behind this type of story is the ‘us versus them’ mentality. Now in the real world this mentality is pretty much always unhealthy, but in a tabletop game it can actually work wonders and be a really positive thing. The most important word in the title of this entry isn’t Cops nor, you guessed it, Robbers. It is ‘or’. The idea that is most important here is: you are either with us or against us. There is no middle ground. The players need to stick together, because out there in the big bad world all they will have is each other.

All that said the title I chose to express this concept is Cops or Robbers because both cops and criminals are both great examples of this idea. If the whole party are lawmen, be it FBI agents, Space Cops, or sheriffs of the shire they will have a shared hated of the other side of the line. And the same is true if they are members of a notorious drug cartel. Assuming none of them are crooked cops or snitches. Both of which can be fun roles to develop later on in the campaign, but I would recommend everyone play it straight for at least the first few sessions even if they know from the start that they want to be a betrayer later on.

Implementation

The details of your Cops or Robbers implementation will really depend a lot on your setting. Sometimes a systemic approach to law or crime doesn’t make sense in a particular world. If your players are some of the last few surviving humans left on Earth then it might not make sense for them all to enrol in a police academy. However there is always a way for you to work out an us versus them situation. It could be your survivors have banded together to fight against an undead horde. Or maybe there are ‘Others’ roaming around, stealing the supplies that should have gone to you players. Either way, since we are all human, we all know instinctively how to hate groups of people who are eager to show how much they hate us first.

The more organisational you can make your player’s side the better. It helps if there are ranks they can rise up, NPC team mates who might help or betray them, a place that the organisation will meet up at to receive new missions or orders and above all the organisation needs to have a diametrically opposed organisation. One with which no real peace can ever be reached. Cops themselves, and even Robbers (if they are the Godfather kind of robbers) are both awesome examples of this kind of story setup. But there are plenty of other options, such as soldiers in a war, opposing sports teams, hunger games esque dystopian children, normal people as posed against Cthulhuian monsters and their horrible cultist peons and etc.

If you group seems excited by the idea of having system hate built into their weekend fun times, get the players to do the following before the first session:

  1. Come up with who is ‘us’ and who is ‘them’.
    • It must be clear that the two groups could never coexist.
  2. Have everyone come up with a backstory that involves some detail about why they hate ‘them’ so damn much.
    • Bonus points for originality! But having ‘them’ kill your parents/wife/children tragically will always work, so don’t think to hard if you don’t feel like it.
  3. Decide on all of your organisations details, like if you are lawmen choose exactly what comes under your jurisdiction, or if you are criminals, what kind of crimes does your gang control in this city?
    • I can’t get through one of these lists without writing: Choose a group name! So go on, you know it will be fun, just do it.

Final Thoughts

Cops or Robbers is a simple choice and very easy to slide into most campaigns. Even ones that have been going for years. It just takes the players making a group choice that they will now dedicate themselves to furthering the cause of (us) and ridding the streets of (them). Once the choice is made they can get deputised by the local sheriff or they could meet a local drug dealer and start selling dope to school kids. For that reason, it is very flexible which is a great boon if your campaign is already complicated but you just need something in there to unite the players. However you might find that at one or more of your players really doesn’t to be a Cop when all the rest of them do, and that is a big problem.

This entry, along with The Mono Party which one might say this is a descendant of, are both very hard to run. Just simply because you need every single player, and the GM to boot, to not only agree to it but to be excited for it. RPG players are fairly notorious for loving their characters to be totally unique and amazing individuals (a large part of the reason this list exists) and so getting that total player buy-in can be very hard. It’s kind of a ‘planets aligning’ type situation. Rare as hell, but awesome when you can make it work.

Part Two Coming Soon!

Keep hitting that refresh button! Part two of this list will be coming out soon! In the next part I will explore some options that don’t necessarily involve the whole party. Although they still can be used across the whole party to keep everyone on the same page, many of the items in part two are also great when they are just used to connect two or three of your players instead of all of them.