How are party leaders chosen?

[Murrkon5]

I dunno. Any gang I've sat around the battle map with are usually the definition of mule-headed libertarian iconoclasts. And almost guaranteed that any character actually built with leadership in mind is in the hands of the player with feeble and grating social skills. So, no one is inclined to march to his fife, even if it'll give us +1 on initiative rolls.

I haven't played a lot of games with a command structure built into the concept. Most GMs automatically understand the people involved and the captain of the ship or the sergeant of the squad is a GMC. We're all of more-or-less equal rank.

One time, no PC was designed to be a leader. In the first major fights/events, the player with the best showing with the dice was seen by the GMC commander and given a promotion over the rest of us grunts. And then it was way more a curse than a perk for the poor schmuck. We weren't very obedient underlings, stopping short of being charged with mutiny or desertion.

That's why I've always felt three Players was the ideal number for a campaign. Few enough to keep debate time to a minimum and an odd number so no vote would be deadlocked in a tie.

[Peter Knutsen]

The BRP-derived "Drager og Dæmoner" states that the player character with the highest CHA shall be the party's leader.

Note that it talks about the characters, about the abilities and potentials of the characters, rather than about the players.



One mechanic that I quite like, is one of the abilities of the Point Man character class from the Spycraft d20 RPG (I'm pretty sure it's in the OGL game Spycraft 2.0 too), which is that he gets a number of orders he can issue to other party members (I think it's per day, but might be per adventure instead). Crucially they don't have to follow the orders at all, there is no compulsion whatsoever, but whenever they do they get a bonus to the one combat roll or skill roll most relevant to carrying out the order (the orders have to be fairly specific).

That's one thing I long wanted to import into Sagatafl, but initially I had some problems with making it a potentially learnable ability (I do believe there's such a thing as born leaders, but only up to a point - anybody with a little charisma and insight ought to be able to learn to do a little of it), although I eventually did find a satisfactory solution ("Charm Points", for anyone curious).

The whole Orders concept seems to me to be very focused on the tactical domain, however. Nothing wrong with that, per se, but it is important to understand that as being distinct from the domain of strategic leadership.

But with any kind of restriction upon the ability, so that half the PCs don't randomly learn how to do it, I think it can be quite workable for what it is.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Some of these interest me. I'm not clear if this is an in-character or out-of-character option. I've heard of some D&D groups where the players elect a "party spokesperson," sort of the guy who makes all the hard OOC decisions and represents the party to the GM, but that always struck me as a result of the rather antagonistic set-up of some D&D groups. Some of this sounds the same, but much of it sounds like a leader of the characters, rather than a leader of the players. Is that so?

It's worth contemplating group size paradigms.

My "frame of reference" is that four players (not including the GM) is already a lot of playes. My ideal number is 3.

But in a group with 7 or 8 players plus a GM, or even 10 players, it may be expedient to appoint a player group spokesperson to do much of the direct interaction with the GM, without that being in any sense "antagonistic".

I dunno... I find it hard to visualize what a campaign with 7 players plus a GM would even be like.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

It's worth contemplating group size paradigms.

My "frame of reference" is that four players (not including the GM) is already a lot of playes. My ideal number is 3.

But in a group with 7 or 8 players plus a GM, or even 10 players, it may be expedient to appoint a player group spokesperson to do much of the direct interaction with the GM, without that being in any sense "antagonistic".

I dunno... I find it hard to visualize what a campaign with 7 players plus a GM would even be like.

I've run campaigns with four, five, or six. Four is good for intense roleplaying and character focus; six is really best for an action campaign; five is a good workable average in general. I would consider a campaign that only interested three people to be too unpopular to consider running. I can just barely manage seven, but I only once did that on a sustained basis, and that was in a campaign where the seventh player was my co-GM.

Bill Stoddard

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Michael Cule

Except where the campaign needs a particular leader for practical purposes (a ship's captain for instance), the group has an employer who requires that there be a team leader (my current LAUNDRY FILES game for instance) or the setup involves there being a leader (my YRTH 1100 game where one player is the 'lord of the manor' because Feudalism) I can't say I usually bother.

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.

[sir_pudding]

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.

Even in campaigns without a formal hierarchy natural leadership tends to emerge. If nothing else the normal peer-leaders in the group will tend to drive the narrative along if the more passive members are wool-gathering.

[Anders]

Last Man Standing. To the Death.

We do a lot of solo roleplaying.

(seriously, entirely informally arranged as a contest of wills and lungs)

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Murrkon5

I dunno. Any gang I've sat around the battle map with are usually the definition of mule-headed libertarian iconoclasts.

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.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Even in campaigns without a formal hierarchy natural leadership tends to emerge. If nothing else the normal peer-leaders in the group will tend to drive the narrative along if the more passive members are wool-gathering.

That's one of the things that leads to typecasting. It can be problematic when [both] the natural leader[s] in your group want[s] a change of pace, or one of your wool-gatherers has notions of playing Jake Sisko without the chops to lead the team.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

That's one of the things that leads to typecasting.

Sure, and I don't have a good solution to that. I'm pretty much resigned to be seen as the "the leader" even if I'm roleplaying someone you'd need to be insane to follow. The natural leader can only step back if another peer is willing to step up and you can't make them be willing.

It can be problematic when [both] the natural leader[s] in your group want[s] a change of pace, or one of your wool-gatherers has notions of playing Jake Sisko without the chops to lead the team.

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

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.