How are party leaders chosen?

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Michael Cule

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.

I have been in campaigns in which the leader was chosen by the GM-as-employer or by game mechanics and in which it worked out badly. In one case the player whose character ended up as leader was too passive, did not provide sufficient direction, the game stagnated, and the party became ineffective at its tasks. In another the player whose character I had the NPC head office designate as leader made good decisions and gave timely directions, but the players of the subordinates argued and their characters ignored the orders, resulting in operations failing and furious exchanges of e-mails among the players. In several cases the player who was the usual leader of the group decided have a change of pace, generated a character whom the head office could not pick as leader and refused to lead, while the actual dynamics of the group failed to comply.

Anyway, either the group sorts out its leadership, or the GM chooses a character to be leader — but there are nevertheless good choices and bad choices.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Murrkon5

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.

Democracies have leaders. Persuasion, trend-setting, consensus-building and compromise brokering are all leadership techniques.

If you make a decision and get the others to go along with it, then you are leading.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

If you make a decision and get the others to go along with it, then you are leading.

Yup. Quote often, simply having spotted what's happening and thought of a sensible course of action will do fine in a game.

In my two (overlapping) regular groups, who's leading tends to trade off according to which character(s) are most expert in the situation.

That gets modified by personalities: in our GURPS TORG campaign, my character, a TL4 bard/diplomat thought he'd better let the newly-added TL8 character lead in the TL8 parts of the world. But it rapidly became clear that the TL8 character is a bit of a thug, too fond of confrontation to be able to negotiate anything subtle.

In the Infinite Cabal campaign, we have one character who's convinced that he should be in charge all the time: he's an eighteenth-century Royal Navy officer and everyone else is female, or not English. This is in-character, not the player's opinion that he should be in charge.

And in the other group, we have an actual commanding officer. Mostly he lets the other characters do their stuff, as most of them are more action-orientated. If we can't agree what to do, he gets to decide.

[gungfugilman]

Party leaders? To quote Han Solo "Look, Your Worshipfulness, let's get one thing straight. I take orders from just one person: me."

[Edges]

Every now and then some NPC asks to talk to the leader. Instinctively, each player ends up looking at someone at that moment. Whoever has the most eyes upon them generally sighs and says, "That would be me."

[Michael Cule]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

I have been in campaigns in which the leader was chosen by the GM-as-employer or by game mechanics and in which it worked out badly. In one case the player whose character ended up as leader was too passive, did not provide sufficient direction, the game stagnated, and the party became ineffective at its tasks. In another the player whose character I had the NPC head office designate as leader made good decisions and gave timely directions, but the players of the subordinates argued and their characters ignored the orders, resulting in operations failing and furious exchanges of e-mails among the players. In several cases the player who was the usual leader of the group decided have a change of pace, generated a character whom the head office could not pick as leader and refused to lead, while the actual dynamics of the group failed to comply.

Anyway, either the group sorts out its leadership, or the GM chooses a character to be leader — but there are nevertheless good choices and bad choices.

Well, in the first case kick the GM. You have to give the leadership role to someone who can handle it and if not enjoy it, enjoy bitching about how hard the other players make his life. (Hi Drak! Yes, that's meant for you!)

In the second case, there is no known means of making people wise who do not want to be. Either change the setup so leadership isn't needed or get a new bunch of players who aren't such jerks. Honestly, there's no way to predict or palliate such foolishness. Kill them all and let them know it's their fault that they screwed things up.

[simply Nathan]

My experience with dungeon crawling d20 campaigns was that every party would always elect a leader by taking a vote after introductions when We All Meet In An Inn. Usually the character of the player with the most RPG experience would be elected.

The leader would usually then designate whoever was playing a thief to be in charge of party funds, since such a player would likely to take a vested interest in dealing with the money side of the game anyway.

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Kenneth Latrans

The leader would usually then designate whoever was playing a thief to be in charge of party funds, since such a player would likely to take a vested interest in dealing with the money side of the game anyway.

It also allows the Thief Tax to be levied with minimum hassles 8)

[quarkstomper]

Originally Posted by Kenneth Latrans

The leader would usually then designate whoever was playing a thief to be in charge of party funds, since such a player would likely to take a vested interest in dealing with the money side of the game anyway.

It worked so well for this party.

[Anders]

Meh. Jesus had a Destiny, so Pilate would have gotten to him sooner or later.