Branding
What’s this? A lady pirate with a strong fashion sense and a race that’s as-yet unused in Handbook-World? And she’s got a cadre of copper constructs manning the boat? Batten down your doubloons and hoist the mizzen parrot, because it looks like Swash and Buckle just got themselves an antagonist! I hope you will all join me in welcoming Artificer to the comic! With any luck, her cannon will soon be canon.
While we wait to see what this latest villainess brings to our ongoing adventure, what do you say we talk about that sweet motif she’s got going on? It’s like she shouted, “Skulls for the skull boat!” And every last automaton in earshot leaped to obey. This mess is not easy to achieve, but I do think it’s cool when it happens.
You see, part of the appeal of gaming is watching a band of weirdos come together and become a party. A goblin rogue has no business partying with a human paladin, and a dwarven ranger is going to be badly out of place adventuring with a merfolk bard. Seeing what these disparate personalities become when they’re forced into the same room together is good clean gaming fun. But it’s not your only option.
When you’re planning out your character, there is nothing wrong with taking your buddies’ preferences into account. We’ve all talked about the mythical shenanigans of the “let’s all play bards this time” party. Yet the dream of exploring Faerûn as a touring band—acquiring groupies and/or solving mysteries in the process—is one that eludes most gamers. Same deal with playing servants of the same church, enlisting as soldiers of the same army, or becoming plucky reporters from the National-Enquirer-in-Space together. That’s because a tightly theme group of heroes requires planning and coordination. And when everyone is stoked to run their own unique idea, it can be hard to get buy-in for a cohesive concept.
So for today’s discussion, what do you say we talk about those times when it actually worked? Have you ever managed to coordinate your choice of PC with your partymates? Or would you always and forever get kicked off of Artificer’s steam punk pirate ship for blatant dress code violations? Sound off with your most on-brand adventuring parties, superhero teams, and eldritch investigators down in the comments!
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Well, I’ll be curious to see what Artificer does in the future.
And if she’s fighting Swash and Buckle, we’ll hopefully see their ships get sunk more often. 😀
But they only just got this one!
Exactly! They’ve had it for much too long already! 😀
Claire FYI I’m seeing your old avatar and display name.
It should stick around on older comments, but since this is a new page that is indeed concerning.
What is your browser and OS?
Never mind. As it turns out, you have to sign in with the new account after you’ve made the new account. :/
Force of habit is a hell of a drug.
Habit is a hell of a thing. During our first Covid lockdown and working from home, I ended up (for reasons) with the keyboards for my personal and work computers swapped. And it took the best part of two weeks to convince my fingers to stop entering my personal login on my work computer and work login on my personal computer… overriding long-developed muscle memory.
I can only imagine how many habits you’re now struggling to break…
Accidentally signed “Colin” on a work email the other day. Had to fill out an HR form to apologize to myself for deadnaming myself. I’m going to be brought in to talk to HR about the incident. I just hope they don’t turn it into some kind of kangaroo court where they take my side before they even consider my side. 😛
If you’ll allow me to continue where the mouseover cuts off…
Well I’ve sometimes wore the green pants and I’ve sometimes wore them orange
and I’m always changing trousers and sometimes none at all
And I’ve worn the bright blue tophat and I’ve worn the cherry beany
and I’ve put on every item in the mall
’cause we are the pirates who would wear anything
We just try it on and strut around
And if you ask us to wear anything
We’ll just tell you
We would wear anything
WEEEEEEEELL IIIIIIIII have tried on on a bicorne
but I do prefer the tricorne
and I’ve both put my hair in a bandana or just let it fall
and I’ve swung from masts in dresses
and fought bare save for my tresses
and I’ve put on every item in the mall!
cuz’ we’re the pirates who would wear anything!
We just try it on and strut around!
And if you ask us to wear anything,
We’ll just tell you:
We would wear anything!
Ooh… Very piratey!
You guys, I’m loving the shit out of this. 😀
Props for “I’ve put on every item in the mall.” Genuinely clever stuff. 😀
Artificer is the judge, jury and executioner of the fashion police. That or she’s just not very woke.
“judge, jury, executioner”
As though little Miss Purple Stripes has any room to get judgey. But who knows, maybe her crew signed a uniform agreement and planking is just the only punishment for deviation from the dress code.
Plank-walking fashion-outlaw: “I swear by my pretty floral bonnet, I will end you!”
I mean, if he passed up the chance to say that, the Geek universe might implode…
Piracy-based vengeance is an institution!
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/origin-stories-thief
Naw. That would be Bard:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/diss
They can be rival fashion officers, each enforcing their own aesthetic onto a world that won’t stay serious.
And into the “totally original comic ideas that I did not steal” document it goes!
What’s the name of the skull-boat that we’re not seeing? And why isn’t it SkullyMcSkulface?
The Skullcap is my guess. Unless as a technology aficionado she’s leaning on both the fourth wall and trademark law (“Ha! Pirate.”), and going with “Skullcandy”.
…that was not on my list of guesses. Laurel is sneaky.
Laurel informs me that it’s called The Skullcollector.
Let it never be said that I’m a solo author.
Discounting games where the shared theme was the premise, I think I have only been in one game that managed to get one.
It was a Warhammer Fantasy game set in the empire and we where all Dwarfs and the remnants of a trading expedition from the Dwarven naval hold of Barak Varr determined to accomplish our initial task of establishing some good trading relationships despite the expedition getting all but destroyed by an ambush before game start.
The group consisted of:
A dwarf noble: the brother of the original expedition leader who had taken charge after the ambush. He didn’t really live up to the ideals of the dwarven nobility and was more than a bit sneaky. Originally he had been sent along in the hope he’d learn something from his honorable brother.
A dwarf Runepriest apprentice, sent along to hone his craft and to provide a bit of spiritual guidance to the whole thing. (plus the humans would likely see his apprentice work as even more amazing than the rest of us).
A dwarf messenger (or “runner”), he had some messages to deliver and experience in travelling beyond the hold that could serve the expedition well.
Me, a dwarf Troll Slayer, originally a guard for the expedition, I felt that it was my fault that the ambush happened (it was never defined whether I was right or not). In response i shaved my head except for a mohawk (and my beard obviously) painted all my hair orange and took the slayer oath to go forth and get killed by the biggest nastiest most dangerous thing I could find to cleanse my shame. As you do.
However since I didn’t want to compound my failure I had decided to stick with them and protect them first and foremost, my honorable death could come on the way, or at some later point after they had made it home.
Finally we had a local Empire dwarf who had grown up on tales of “back home” in the Holds and how everything was better there. He joined up as a way to prove himself and earn a way back there, as well as to gather glory like the heroes of his story.
I approve of the general dwarfiness of the all-dwarf party.
I gotta wonder which one was “the grumpy one” though.
Thinking back at first I thought we didn’t have a grumpy one, but on second thought the Runner could get a bit grumpy from time to time
Well that just opens the door to more questions! I mean, who was the bashful one? Who was sneezy? Did you even have a Doc!?
We didn’t have either a bashful one or a sneezy one through the latter was a bit close. You see we all succeeded on our toughness test when we fought the Nurgle Deamon those cultists summoned.
We didn’t have a proper doctor, but the local empire dwarf knew how to treat pig wounds from his time on the farm, and even through a dwarf wasn’t quite the same it was close enough for desperate situations. We were lucky to have him really.
Well at this point I’ve fairly certain you were fighting witches as a primary vocation.
The other handbook welcomes this influx of steampunk booty.
I believe that the scientifically accurate term is “Steamjunk”
In the steamer trunk?
Yes. But the question we now find ourselves asking is what’s she going to do with all that junk, all that junk inside that trunk?
One idea we once had was that we were all from the same family of exiled nobility. The arc our characters would go through would be basically grind levels abroad, gather an army, and then go back home to reclaim our rightful lands, but the campaign stopped before we got to that point.
Something that usually works is to have all the characters be part of the same organization. Whether it be the Dark Lanterns in Eberron or a cabal of vampire hunters in the World of Darkness, the idea of just “make a character who’s a member of this group” is a very simple idea to gather everyone without having to go for the ol’ Tavern Meet Up. Plus it makes for super-easy plot hooks. “Your mission is to go investigate this. Go there if you want to earn your pay.”
Oh sure, but I feel as though I’ve conflated two different things by comparing “all bards party” and “members of the same army.” The bards will play in a specific way mechanically, while the soldiers can be every bit as random as a typical party.
Still, I suppose they are similar in that they require some degree of planning. Maybe they’re just subcategories of the general “coordinated party” concept.
We theme our parties a lot. We’ve played a 10 person all-bards party in Curse of Strahd, which was hilarious and great fun. Especially since our stated objective was to rickroll the DM by slipping in lyrics into regular conversation.
We’ve played all young adults from our post-apocalyptic village, all revolutionaries in 1830’s Paris, rogues intercepting the mail. It’s a lot of fun and definitely worth a shot.
I’ma need the tale of your best bardic rickroll.
There wasn’t a standout one, but a couple spring to mind. The goal was to use them in regular conversation, so imagine the following but in a dozen or more contexts.
Aasimar bard, pulling one of the three lizardfolk bards back from the abyss over the castle parapets: “never gonna let you down!”
Half-elf bard leader: “Remember everyone, let’s be on our best behavior. You know the rules and so do I”
Half-orc bard casting thunderwave on a vampire spawn: “You wouldn’t get this from any other guy”
Half-elf leader to tortle bard: “Can you stay here and watch our backs?”
Tortle bard “Sure thing boss! I’m never gonna run around and desert you!”
My first time running a campaign was branded!
Given that my handle is Birdy51, I decided to cheekily name my R20 server Birds and Buildings as it was a Waterdeep Campaign. That ended up being the catalyst for my party all deciding that they were going to play Aaracokra or Aaracockra themed off shoots based off of Simic Hybrids and the like.
It was a hoot and I couldn’t have run for a better first group!
Bro… How you gonna tell me about your bird-themed campaign, then write the words “it’s a hoot” without slam dunking the owl joke? Giving me anxiety over here!
We’ve never done that kind of coordinated party. The closest I can think of is a group where — by chance rather than design — most of the party had some kind of musical instrument proficiency, which once discovered, made for a better way to tie the characters together than having them meet in a tavern.
None of them was a Bard mechanically (the warlock was one thematically)… I think we had a fighter playing bagpipes, the warlock with something stringed, and I can’t remember what the artificer played… some kind of percussion, maybe?
Bagpiping fighters are no joke: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Millin
I see your Scottish soldier who went along with orders to play his bagpipes, and raise you an Englishman who is recorded as having played his bagpipes in battle at least twice without prompting, and also brought actual weapons into battle. Including longbow and broadsword.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Churchill
He didn’t out-Scot the Scot, but he certainly out-crazied him!
For modern badasses, I always liked the Gurkha on the train:
https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/nepalese-warrior-train-robbery/
War changes. Crazy motherfuckers armed with traditional weaponry do not.
https://xkcd.com/556
“The moment their arms spun freely in our air, they were doomed — for Man has earned the right to hold this planet against all comers, by virtue of occasionally producing someone totally batshit insane.”
Is she a proper Bigfoot-Firbolg, or one of those weird cow Firbolg that keep popping up for some reason, but unlike green Orcs/Goblins I can’t figure out why?
She’s actually a fur blog. Be prepared for her steamy Centaur World self-insert fan erotica.
My main campaign started out with a party of two bandit hunters and one bandit leader, which, while it was rather the opposite of cohesive at first, had a similar effect. The composition of characters not only led to some unique drama and roleplay, it gave the plot an immediate driving direction that was far more interesting than the characters all randomly meeting in a tavern.
What else? I also ran an all-bards campaign once, about a band having to make a detour through a magic forest to get to a festival on time. That was good fun.
My players once invented “Bard Stock” as a solution for accidentally turning the campaign’s central town into stone. Since it only takes a 7th level bard to learn Stone Face…
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/bard/bardic-masterpieces/masterpieces/stone-face-comedy-oratory
…The advertised far and wide until enough showed up for the epic contest, trying to see who could unfreeze the most citizens during the festival. We kind ignored the save vs. death though.
In any case, that’s the closest we’ve come to assembling a proper all-bard party.
“Have you ever managed to coordinate your choice of PC with your partymates?”
With one or two of them, sure, frequently.
The whole party though? Only when it completely flew in the face of what the GM was planning. Like when our GM wanted to run a serious mecha-pilot game and we all rolled up angsty teens; when he wanted to run a “Team 7” style supers game (covert ops squad) and we all made “Elemental themed heroes” – Water, Wind, Fire, Earth… and Heart; or when he wanted to run a strategy and tactics facing L5R game and we made the perfect Courtier Ensemble; or when he planned to run a court investigation/intrigue and we showed up with (basically) Robyn Hood and her Merry Men. In none of those instances (except the angsty teens) did we coordinate at all, we just showed up with our paper mans and meshed perfectly with each other… and not at all with the GM’s plans.
Every time we Players tried to coordinate (and it didn’t fly in the face of the GM’s plans) someone would always decide “I can go against the grain, it’ll be cool (or necessary), yeah…”.
It was never cool or necessary (okay, the “All Rogues” party does really hurt spellcasters, so understandable why the Cleric refused to join the fun).
My understanding is that serious mecha-pilot plots are traditionally powered by teenage angst:
https://static.zerochan.net/Demotivational.Poster.full.501470.jpg
As someone who did actually DM for a group of bards it is hilarious, but an absolute pain for the DM.. We ran through the first chapter of strixhaven since I am a big magic fan and had just gotten the book for the spells and other meaty bits. Well I only DMed because it was a Christmas gift for that friend that buys themselves everything, and since it was a gift my other two players decoded to roll with it and we had a three man band in a magic school. This sounds fun, but encounter balances were extremely off. Do you realise how much health I had to remove from monsters since 90% of the bards damages were just 1d4 mocking? It sure was funny long run but running it was a nightmare of exploiting the I’m screen and never showing hitpoints.
There’s been a recent surge in “the monster is defeated when it’s appropriate, not when it loses ## hp” out there. Like you say though, that style friggin demands the DM screen. See my “one last round” note over here:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/claiming-the-throne-part-4-5-spotlight-moments
The same warnings about preserving mystery apply.
For what it’s worth though? Sounds like your Strixhaven game was solid GMing to me. You adjusted your world to fit the game your players wanted. That’s what it’s all about.
If Artificer is a villain/rival for Swash & Buckle, where does that leave Thief and her history of piracy in relation? Ally/friend, rival/villain, neutral, or ex-crew/ex-lover?
Heh. Seems to me like Artificer would be more of a Wizard antagonist:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/medieval-stasis
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/what-grinds-wizards-gears
The 1890s Gyges Society never made it past their first haunted house, sadly. (But I daydream of making their characters into pregens for running “D20” Past one-shots with minis.)
The 2010s (mostly) costumed heroes of H.E.L.P. (Huntsville Emergency League of Power) aided the police on many occasions, were (mostly) celebrated in the community, and cracked more than one major case, sending powered villains to prison.
In the far-future, several units of both active-duty Space Marines and honorably discharged (acting as bodyguards to vacationing nobles) carried out hazardous missions to a number of hostile worlds, including the Barrier Peaks of one particular (supposedly) uninhabited and unexplored planet.
Other than the far-future redshirts, though, I’ve never been able to get a gaming group to agree to put their characters in matching outfits. I’m still hoping to launch a fantasy “redshirts” campaign with tired but victorious soldiers returning from the wars in their matching tabards, only to encounter mischief on the return trip. (Sort of a medieval Odyssey.)
Space Marines at the Barrier Peaks is friggin’ hilarious. I hope you made ’em fight a random fantasy party at some point.
Not yet, but you’ll be pleased to know that a follow-up mission is a remix of DA2-Temple of the Frog (1986), where they’ll be sent to a primitive planet to apprehend and extract the BBEG (canonically a spacefarer currently being worshipped as a god by the awed locals). The “alien artifacts” will of course be perfectly normal to the redshirts, and a few primitive screwheads in chainmail won’t pose much of a threat, but the robed cultists who defy science with their strange hand signals might be able to ruin a perfectly good mech…
It amuses me that a ship full of redshirts are basically the perfect counter to a whole friggin’ village full of primitive screwheads. Advanced weaponry FTW!
Has Artificer been sharing fashion tips with Jinx? They both like tinkering, and apparently both like purple stripes…
Jury’s out. Until we get the full body shot, we can’t be sure how goth Artificer’s boots are.
I think you can have a lot of fun with themed parties. I have DM´ed for a fun game where everyone were dwarves and another where everyone were elves. It allows the group to really play with the tropes of it, and can help unite them more. In the case of the elves it also lead to some in party friction between the wood elves and the high elves, through they always united against whatever mortal being they ran into. So I think one can have a lot of fun with a single species/class party (I regularly dream of DM´ing an all cleric game)
As for most wacky party, I think it is my current one. It consists of a skeleton, a robot-man, a tiefling and a player who have reincarnated so many time that I am genuinely unsure which species she is currently. While it is very enjoyable, I must also admit that there is only so much I can do to point out that the party of odd-balls are a party of odd-balls, before it just becomes background noise. Even when it by all accounts shouldn´t be.
Thank you! For some reason, your phrase “the wacky party” finally helped me remember the other post I was thinking about while writing this:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/major-class-feature
700 comics later and even Google is having trouble finding my old posts for me.
“[…] playing servants of the same church, enlisting as soldiers of the same army […]” is what we do. As well a never-do-wells going for the same objective, or people hired by several parties to achieve the same thing. You all just meet on a tavern is quickly but playing the first meeting allows for a more organic and interesting story as each character meets each other and learn to deal with each other antics 🙂
Think like a zero session of Blades on the Dark in which each party member tries to steal the same place stumbling into each other, each one trying to accomplish things their way and finally either going to jail together or getting away and deciding it’s better to work together as a crew 🙂
I feel like the difference is premise. This is what I was trying to articulate in that earlier reply to “someone.”
If you’re simply hired to do a job, you can come from the usually diverse walks of life. But if you coordinate with your fellow players to make a consistent theme, then you’re all aboard Artificer’s skull boat.
It’s the difference between, “You’re a catfolk bard and I’m a dwarven artificer and you’re an android marksman and we all happened to join the army,” and “We’re gonna play the Dirty Dozen, so we should all have that prisoner backstory in common.” One is just an excuse to get you in the room together. The other is a thematic link between PCs.
I suppose you could argue that “raw recruits joining the army together” is a thematic link, and it certainly could be. If you’re all playing into the military theme — writing letters home, hating the sarge, and hailing from the same small town — it still requires that coordination on the player side. It’s a different kettle of fish, however, if the GM just tosses it out “you’re all recruits who meet in basic training.”
Does that make any sense? Or am I trying to draw too fine a line here?
You just ask them to roll each one a character and then when they ask which kind of campaign it will be you just turn on “you are on the army now” 🙂
Different groups work on different ways, what works for one may not work for other 🙂
I was once in a Cyberpunk game where we were all supporting staff for a punk rock idol (who was also one of the PCs). It worked out pretty well. The only issues with it that were that some of the players would leave and others would join as happens in college games and that was a bit of a mess. And also that the GM had this big epic story going on that we spent more time on than the actual music career related stuff.
(It was still cool, but it did make the fact that we had party cohesion often kind of pointless.)
There were also a few short lived D&D games I’ve played in where the PCs were all members of the same family. (Though for some reason those families were always inherently dysfunctional.)
It’s tough. My biggest weakness as a GM is the tendency to railroad, so I understand the siren song of THE BIG EPIC STORY. But when your PCs set you up with an easy hook (we’re all members of this touring band) it’s a real shame when that isn’t the story. Like… Shouldn’t there be some crazy music shaman trying to harness your raw punk energy to tear open a rift or something? It seems to me like *that* should be the story rather than the generic cyberpunk stuff.
A jumble of misfits that have nothing in common grouping together to achieve impossible tasks?
this is basically the premise of every Shadowrun game i ever joined.
for example our last group had :
– a Poch British troll Deker – Derek Frost (aka D.Frost ,he would take on any black I.C.E. he finds. turns out having beefy body help against them)
– Rabbi Jeremaiya Kats, a hermetic Mage (using Cabalistic rituals to summon demons and others ‘Mazikin’ spirits and to put the evil eye on enemies)
– Tochi Dai Itchi, a Japanize street Samurai (ex-cooperate high level operative, who everyone knew was a triple agent -the enemy of my enemy’s enemy is my…frenemy?!)
– the Azteck Rigger Cheka Gettz (Part-time girl, part-time aircraft division. One girl, many drones)
ohh the mess we went around solving\causing was epic…
Yo… What would a thematically consistent Shadowrun game even look like? All members of the same elf biker gang?
Depends on the kind of theme you’re looking for. It wouldn’t be hard to get a bunch of desperate low-life outcasts who turned to crime to survive, for instance, and it wouldn’t be much trickier to get everyone to play some variant of a superficially-professional shadow contractor. You just need to discuss it with the players ahead of time and accept that some players might not want to play a theme as narrow as “elven biker”.
At one point, three of the six characters (but not players) left for a mixture of in- and out-of-character reasons. The DM suggested that the two characters taking their place (two players played an ettin) join my character’s faction, and had that faction assign them to me to assist on our then-vaguely-defined quest. Which moved my character from “party quasi-leader because nobody else wanted to” to “semi-formal party quasi-leader because rank and title”.
One of those characters didn’t work out so well (didn’t read his paladin oath carefully enough, suicided via jump attack to avoid having to play with it), but the ettin was a ton of fun. Probably could’ve been OP if the players coordinated instead of just doing whatever seemed funny (exhibit A, that time our tank was unavailable to tank because the warlock half cast blink), but hey, it wasn’t Adventurer’s League.
So is this an example of “character tied together by backstory,” or “character who deliberately failed to coordinate for comic effect?” A little of both perhaps?
Eh…tied together by thin threads of backstory, with failures (and successes) in other departments having comedic effect. The paladin’s player was always good for stories that were funny once the campaign ended.
Coordinated parties are my jam 🙂
my ex had seven campaigns that were woven together. One of them you got to play a ‘monster’. rules were thus: starting ECL 15. if you were under, make it up with class levels. if youre over, then you are a ‘baby’ demon/dragon/whatever and have some penalties and grow into your full power. he said anything in the monster manual goes and one day someone was like…..hey. so. human is in the monster manual. do i just get to play a level 15 human? answer is yes.
so one time a group of us are gearing up to try the campaign again and one guy has this fun idea of “what if all of you were like, small or invisible or otherwise hidden and i was a normal ass human so it looked like i was always talking to myself but we are actually the whole party?”
so he plays level 15 human, friend 1 plays an animated object cape with bard levels, friend two plays a will-o-the-wisp that just globs onto his chest like iron man’s heart, and i played an imp that hid inside his hat. i think i was a psion and will-o-wisp was a wizard? so we now had the added effect of Generic Human actually had the power of basically three spellcasters while looking like a fighter. was a very fun deception play all around 🙂
You ever hear of the RPG “Wield?” I think your group would dig it. 🙂
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/131729/Wield