How are party leaders chosen?

[exalted]

Seems to move around in my group, most have had leaderish roles in different campaigns. Mostly during sessions however they use a semi-organized fashion each taking charge when in their characters area of specalization.

In the current campaign after selecting a grand leader in a vote, they deligated a lot of their responsabilities to seemingly competent NPC's when nothing too interesting happens, so they can go on with personally doing the job of their underlings. :D

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

That seems appropriate for a Jake Sisko. Do you mean his dad?

Almost certainly.

At any rate, I think if the player really wants to lead I can work with them by teaching leadership skills, and using both my own leadership as well as the game-mechanics to reinforce them. In this way it's not much different from training a junior leader in the real world.

Unfortunately I don't have any leadership skills: just decision-making and critical-thinking skills, a forceful personality, and a menacing personal aura. I was absolutely the pits as a supervisor, and simply ended up doing all of my subordinates' work because I simply couldn't get them to do it right.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Unfortunately I don't have any leadership skills: just decision-making and critical-thinking skills, a forceful personality, and a menacing personal aura. I was absolutely the pits as a supervisor, and simply ended up doing all of my subordinates' work because I simply couldn't get them to do it right.

Ironically, given my individualist views, the only time I was in anything like a managerial position, I didn't do too badly at it. I got the people under me to take on part of the work, I shared information with them and got them to share information with me and each other, and I think morale was pretty good. Of course, this was running a convention programming staff of, I think, eight or nine people in a few months of part-time prep work and then four days of hard labor. It wasn't like being a commanding officer or a business manager.

Bill Stoddard

[Murrkon5]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Do you find that that makes playing things like Star Trek, in which command is intrinsic to the situation, impractical? You mentioned an NPC Kirk/Picard as a solution: is that the only way you typically solve the problem.

In a word: yes.

I've been in a couple of Star Trek campaigns, if briefly. We were all kind of "The Naked Time", if you recall that plot. One chap in particular brought new life to the character of Lt. Kevin Riley.

Whether by design or desperation, the GM had our band of miscreants on a lot of Away Missions. Far, far away missions in the shuttle craft. We mostly only paid attention to the command structure/leader stuff "in front of the aliens".

I don't want to say we're a bunch of chaotic slobs when we play. The role-playing is rich and fun and the story heartily embraced. We just don't have "leaders".

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Murrkon5

I don't want to say we're a bunch of chaotic slobs when we play. The role-playing is rich and fun and the story heartily embraced. We just don't have "leaders".

It's hard for me to imagine a stable peer-group that lacks any leadership at all. It's also hard for me to imagine a role-playing game where everybody is always doing absolutely their own thing at all times and never going along with a bellwether or consensus-builder. How do you not end up with six totally disparate campaigns?

[Koshka]

In my Sunday group, combat leadership is a no-brainer -- it goes to one of the three former-military members. Default is the guy who is former Intelligence, but since his work schedule was changed last month he's been getting to game late.

If none of them is running a combat-oriented character, it's highly unusual, but the players can still give combat advice to whoever's playing the combat expert.

Out of combat, it usually comes down to what character has the most appropriate skills (the team medic can override anyone when it comes to triage).

I'm also in an every-other-Thursday group, currently on hiatus due to player schedules. That one, it comes down to who's got the biggest mouth. Luckily, that's a much smaller group.

[Agemegos]

I started a similar conversation in another place, and got one reply that I think is particularly interesting. I'm going to quote it here with permission from its originator, Benj Davis.

In my experience, it works smoothest when you agree amongst the group that the chain of command is exclusively in-character, so while it gives the character of the Captain authority over the character of the Navigator, it doesn't give Carl the player authority over Nathan the player. Agreeing to have the Captain order the Navigator to do things the Navigator doesn't want to do, but Nathan does, works well.

[Murrkon5]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

It's hard for me to imagine a stable peer-group that lacks any leadership at all. It's also hard for me to imagine a role-playing game where everybody is always doing absolutely their own thing at all times and never going along with a bellwether or consensus-builder. How do you not end up with six totally disparate campaigns?

First off, I'm afraid you're the victim of a little hyperbole. My gaming experience is not with wild maniacs. We design characters suitable for the campaign. In the Star Trek example, the PCs have appropriate skills, disads and whatnot to be legitimate Starfleet graduates. Various heroic ideals and mutual loyalties and sense of duties are chosen to keep the group on track and in functional harmony. And that applies to any genre. If it's pirates, we're all pirates. If we're monster hunters, we're a Scooby Team par excellence.

It's just that no gaming group I've been involved would ever "bend a knee" to one of the group. I've never met another player who I felt had such an excess of savvy and keen insight that I'd let him/her make all the decisions of where the campaign story goes. Sometimes the campaign requires a character to be the "leader", and is subsequently stocked up with various strategy & tactics skills. But that character is treated as a specialist the way another character is stocked up with medical skills. Yeah, he's our "leader", but the player no more calls the shots than the player with the doctor character actually treats real-time injuries.

It's all done in the democratic method. Most times the decision is obvious and quickly chosen. Other times, miserable amounts of time are spent in debate until the GM snaps and demands a final vote.

Perhaps I should add that this isn't just my most recent gang of gaming chums. This scenario has been my general experience thru about thirty years of gaming and dozens of players in a couple of different cities.

[Kalzazz]

I recall one DnD group where we broke deadlocks with opposed Cha checks

The one time I was nominally a leader IRL I smiled pleasantly, held a clipboard, wore business casual and went back and forth between our clients and the collection of hooligans we had actually doing the work. The actual work was accomplished with no intervention or participation on my part, but I had a MBA and could string together an entire sentence without the forum software blocking half of it, so, leadership!

[Michael Cule]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Indeed not, which is to say: neither do I. But the exceptions are common and the task tricky, so it's worth discussing what we do when it does come up.

Actually the exceptions are easily handled:

Either the 'employer' chooses, which means the referee decides and the players are willing to let him.

Or

One of the players is willing to take the part and its responsibilities on which means the other players are willing to let him.

It only gets tricky when either the Maximum Leader is incapacitated or dead or one of the other players decides its time for them to make a push for power or that the current leader is an idiot or, you know, a bit of both.

In the last case it is resolved by role-playing and dice rolling like everything else that comes up in play.