Party Leader
You guys remember Inquest magazine? That was my jam back in the day. Lots of cool strategy articles, M:tG deck lists, and even the occasional gaming-related comic (clearly an inspiration for yours truly). I seem to recall teenage Colin being a huge fan of their cover art as well.
Anywho, I bring it up today because of one particularly intriguing article. The subject was building a D&D “dream team,” and if memory serves the final roster came down to Conan, Aragorn, Elminster, and the Gray Mouser. Now there are two things that struck me about that list. One was that they were trying to squeeze Aragorn into the cleric role by virtue of Athelas. (The nerd rage of my youth still burns hot at the notion! Aragorn is obviously a necromancer.) But more relevant to today’s comic is the hypothetical rivalry between Conan and Elminster. Those are some strong personalities, and both would surely want to lead the company. Upon reflection, I don’t think that conflict is specific to Cimmerian musclemen and Faerûnian archmagi.
When you imagine the kinds of people that would want to risk life and limb to go dungeon delving, “strong personality” is something of an understatement. We’re talking arrogant elven princelings, power-tripping sorcerers, wannabe liches, and Keith Richards. Choosing a consensus leader from that lineup is damn near impossible, and that’s just from an in-game perspective. Managing out-of-game personalities is its own special challenge. I think that’s to do with the nature of the game.
When you sit down to play an RPG, you want to feel like your choices matter. However, RPGs are fundamentally social activities. That means no one player ever gets the final say in group decisions, whether it’s something blasé like camping vs. pressing on, something momentous like choosing to help the rebels vs. the empire, or something actually important like pizza toppings. It’s always down to a negotiation, meaning that “party leader” is at best a first among equals.
One interesting effect of this rule can be seen in Starfinder. Just take a look at the captain’s role during starship combat. The job description is to “encourage the crew while taunting enemies into making critical mistakes.” This is no tyrannical Captain Bligh. This is a party face rather than a despot, a friendly distributor of buffs rather than a dictatorial autocrat. Even more telling, the way to become a Starfinder captain is to simply “declare your role when you board a ship.” From the games I’ve seen, that declaration usually takes the form of a conversation: “I’ve got a pretty good Bluff and Diplomacy. Mind if I grab the captain’s chair this time around?” It’s an experience that mirrors the casual democracy of group decisions in general.
“Should we keep the goblin babies?”
“I’d rather not deal with it. Why don’t we drop them off at a temple or something?”
The only way to be a leader in that sort of situation is to do like the Handbook says, and to convince rather than demand. Let’s just hope Barbarian has a few rounds of rage left by the time she figures that out.
So what bout the rest of you guys? Have you ever had a formal “party leader?” Did they get any kind of special powers along with the job? Let’s hear all about your own micro-democracies down in the comments!
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In most parties I run with, the quality of leadership requires three things in acending importance: Charisma, Planning, and Note Taking.
Typically the party “leader” also doubles as the party’s face guy. Generally because when the inevitable big bad/guard captain wants to know who you are and what you did, it’s best to push the guy with the best diplomacy/bluff score up front than the strongest but dim beat stick. When one thinks of leadership it is as you mentioned, someone who could convince others to follow a course of action.
Of course having +20 to your diplomacy means nothing if that same bonus only works when you’re trapped by the bbeg’s dungeon or in jail, and ideally the party leader has devised a way to escape or simply not be caught in that mess I. The first place. So the next trait of the party leader, which is much more player depends than character dependent, is the ability to put together a plan. Whether this is as simple as combat tactics or a conspiracy to take over the city, the guy who knows what needs to be done is the one calling the shots and putting the players where their abilities are needed. God knows we wouldn’t have figured it out ourselves.
But the most, most important trait of the party leader is the guy keeping track of everything. The guy who actually knows the names of NPC’s, all of our loot, who the bad guy is, the world lore, how much EXP we’ve gotten it should gain, etc. because being good at making up plans on the fly or talking out of your ass means nothing if you have no idea what’s going on or who you’re talking too. And fortunately it seems that, in my experience, the guy who actually keeps a running journal about the game tends to be an intulectual who can either think of a plan or could at least construct a good enough argument that sometimes you dont even need to roll any skills for.
The only exception In thise examples I’ve mentioned is whenever the plot is focusing on a specific player for whatever reason. Whether we’re trying to save his family or just because we’re on a job from his nefarious organization, of the plot or quest was started and/or is important because of one of the players, he or she is the defacto leader until otherwise.
So let’s try this as a thought experiment. What would it look like if the big dumb guy was the party leader? No charisma to speak of, doesn’t care about civilized things like world lore, but enough low cunning and raw strength to get the party out of bad situations. Could that make for a fun play experience?
I could see your hypothetical leader work as someone who is very quiet, but when they speak, the rest of the party listens, because they know it is important. They don’t make decisions for the party often, but when they do, no one else questions it.
I once played a game of Pokemon where I ended up giving all my Pokes personalities and conflicts and arcs and stuff. And one of the major ones was that while there was an “official” team leader (my starter), the team’s de facto leader was another ‘mon, a quiet, thoughtful Fighting-type with a tendency to swoop in and save the day when things got bad (he had a move that did enormous damage if used the turn after one of my ‘mons went down). The team had a lot of strong personalities who didn’t like each other at all, but they all respected this Fighting-type because they each knew that when they were in over their heads, he’d come for them. They admired him, and wanted to make him happy. And it was that collective respect that kept the Grass-type ninja and Ground-type barbarian from killing each other, and the Ice-type loner sniper from walking off and so on. Great fun.
While Roy from Order of the Stick is plenty smart and does care about the plot more than some of his compatriots, the trait that makes him indisputably party leader is the fact that he is the only one able to keep all of the crazy personalities of the party together and pointed in the right direction. That’s the most important element of a leader – not to be the smartest, or wisest, or most charismatic, but to be able to understand their allies and get them to perform at their best, in ways the allies themselves never thought they could.
In another example, Aqualad from the Young Justice cartoon ends up as leader largely because of process of elimination, but also because he has the ability to calmly make decisions and see the big picture in the way the others cannot.
I was just trying to imagine what Conan leading the party might actually look like. The concept of “war leader” vs. “diplomat” is interesting. I bet you could have a neat dynamic if you formalized those roles.
Speaking from experience, there is one other virtue you want in a party leader both in character and out: the ability to make snap decisions and stick with them. Before I switched to the other side of the DM screen, I almost always ended up as party leader by default because I was the only person who wouldn’t hmm and haw and debate every possible action for 10 minutes. Especially when your DM will do things like drop a random encounter on you if you take too long to decide things, the ability to actually make a decision is perhaps the most important aspect of leadership.
Once our original DM retired from the throne and I took over, there was a sharp increase in the amount of time it took for them to make decisions. Eventually somebody finally stepped up a bit and took responsibility for making the call, but boy is it painful to watch a bunch of people dither about trying to decide why none of them want to go left.
I know your pain:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/dithering
My thinking has always been that things are going to go wrong anyway. It’s the nature of the game that plans don’t go off without a hitch, so why bother over analyzing? Grab a “good enough” plan and then roll with the punches.
Ugh, Elminster. A major contributing factor to the realms being the second worst “Generic” setting. (Grehawk with the serial numbers filed off (3X) (Which isn’t a setting so much as treating Greyhawk themes and concept as core D&D and expecting you to use their pantheon) is the best “Generic” “Setting” Nentir Vale is the best generic setting, and Dragonlance is the worst)
Most of the time I play an informal leader because out of game I know the rules the best, and generally have the best grasp of tactics, whereas in game I’m a deranged, drugged-up irresponsible rock star Hin Bard or a ego-maniacal Gnome Wizard who sees his allies as tools on his path to magical omnipotence. A less comical character from the party generally steps up to be the official leader.
In the case of my Bard the official leader ended up being the Dwarf Cleric (Dwarves are usually the leaders since they’re natural protagonists compared to the boring expendable humans, the comic relief sidekick halfling, and the insufferable hipster elves) who was compentent and had an actual connection to the main story.
In the case of my Wizard no natural leader has emerged among the party.
My Dwarf Paladin was leader in every sense. He directed the group’s overall direction, handled combat tactics, spoke for the group, was the party’s face, and was generally in charge. (Once again, Dwarves tend to be the natural leaders of a party, and Paladins also tend to be pretty natural leaders) Any failure of the group was his. He’d cut out a notch of his beard for any failure. (A common Dwarven military practice. You can gauge the quality of a commander by his beard/her ponytail) He saw himself as something of a Captain Kirk/Hannibal (A-Team/Historical. Not cannibalism) figure.
I dig the beard thing. That’s a cool bit of worldbuilding.
Failure is communal. If you failed in your task, it was a failure of your commander. A commander with a poor team may shave often.
Maxim 63: The Brass know how to do it by knowing who can do it.
We just picked up our sandbox campaign in Golarion again, and as part of our merry band’s tasks in becoming a full-fledged guild, we had to: Pick a guild name, figure out our leadership hierarchy, and make a guild charter.
The name was democratic as it should be, and the charter was a mashup of ideas that would also be voted on.
As for the heirarchy though, the two proposed formats were Guild Leader, which I felt my character would most fit the roll of, and Guild Council which others were in favor of as it would give everyone a say in the guild.
Now I was ok with the council idea as a OoC as a means of avoiding toe stepping, but I strongly felt my character was a natural choice for a leadership roll, and that he would seek the position as a means of ensuring the guild’s success.
The result?
We have a council, with my character as “guild leader”. He is the public face of the guild, and final say on any matters not needing council approval (i.e. Business deals and decisions that can’t wait for the council fall to him).
We have been having fun with the “real time” play complete with a calendar and actual date tracking. We already have the first loan payment for our guild site and building ready to go…
I think a goal of any guild is something like the first introduction of Fairy Tail’s guild house, and one of my favorite characters in The anime was Makarov.
How exactly does real time play work?
Cant speak for Will, but one session we set a literal kitchen timer and had in game events occur every X real minutes, regardless of the combat rounds or whatever else was going on. It sure added an element of suspense to what we were doing.
I heard of “Fouthcore” and egg timer dungeon runs before, though I was under the impression that the style had died out with its namesake. Good to know that the ticking clock is still kicking ass and taking names out there!
I mean we keep track of the current date, and anything that happens, will do so as time goes by in the campaign. For instance, we got our guild house purchased and designed, but it’s being built now.
It should be done in a month or so, but we aren’t just speed timing it because the loan we took out to fund it’s construction is on a monthly payment. So as we take jobs and travel around, time goes by…
That’s all I meant. Not like a second here is a second there sort of thing. Just tracking everything and time doesn’t just magically sail by with nothing happening.
Sorry for the confusion.
Fair enough. Like the man said:
The first campaign I played, the DM announced that he wanted a PC.
“You run the world. You can literally create whatever NPC you want, and you control them all”.
“No, I want a PC, not an NPC.”
“Huh?”
He meant he wanted a control freak Gandalf who would start several levels higher than anyone else, with unique spells including the innate ability to force people to do exactly what he said because this wasn’t railroading, this was literally “lunatic sociopath wizard take you all hostage and forces you to have an adventure where he does all the things”.
This is why I don’t complain that my friends usually ask me to DM.
So, your first campaign was basically DM of the Rings?
Yo… I’m what universe is that not railroading? Somehow because “it’s not me, it’s my character?”
Yes, DM of the Rings is exactly how it was, except with more blatant coercion of the PCs.
Railroading is benign compared with that campaign.
In my last PF campaign, I ended up being party leader.
Mind you, it made no sense. My character was a discreet witch that didn’t want to draw attention.
It was simply an IC solution to an OOC problem, namely that my group suffers from serious indecisiveness. We once spent about 10 minutes debating wether or not we should enter a house… where the next plot point was clearly waiting.
I was kinda bummed to have to take a role that didn’t fit my character but hey, at least we finally got stuff done.
Bright side: You got to experience unexpected growth and change as a PC. That’s kind of exciting, right?
If you’re dropping humanoid babies off at a temple, I think there’d also be a ‘reasonable effort’ requirement of double-checking that it’s not dedicated to the God of Catapults or something like that.
Just sayin’…
How exactly does one worship the god of catapults?
I’m imagining a lot of smashed melons & pumpkins and a tenacious refusal to fix nor reimburse gaping holes in roofs.
Probably also turning a blind eye to innovative smuggling methods…
“Our god delivered unto you this wonderful gift of a ripe melon, and you would complain of such a divine gift?!”
Not going to lie. I kind of want to introduce the cult of the siege gang into a game.
Regular goblins are mildly dangerous.
Goblins trained from infancy in the art and math of long-range projectile combat and siege warfare are much more problematic.
Can confirm. Own this model:
https://images.dakkadakka.com/gallery/2011/6/16/235652_md-Doom%20Diver%2C%20Goblins%2C%20Kamikazekatapult%2C%20Warhammer%20Fantasy.JPG
Neither Paladin nor Sorcerer have watch Goblin Slayer? No, of course no, well more fun to watch as they suffer 🙂
Now, party leaders in my group? we are four plus our DM so… yep four leaders. Since you mention pirates, they were more democratic than the actual breed. Our in-game party usually talk to resolve disputes, we expose our arguments and try to change the opinion of the other on our favor. If that fails we go to voting, we choose our course of action, in case of tie our DM cast Vote, 9-level spell treat like a Geas/Quest cast on the players, or his vote if he prefers. If that fails or we are still in tie, yep in our country five people can still tie a voting, we lets our dice decide in the form of Finger of Death cast on the pc of the player who disagrees with you. That or the proper dice cast into the teeth of that player, in any case another glory day for democracy.
Seriously i like to play Neutral Evil characters, and the rest of the group like neutral good, chaotic evil with a ambiguous legal evil to complement. We all like to spoke our opinion and we all like to impose our will on the others. We all are the leaders of the group because any other leader will not awake of the first camping night.
I don’t think HoH works on GrimDerp Animu logic. Goblins are people too. Gnolls were explicitly made more monstrous so there’d be a humanoid that there wouldn’t be any moral questions aboot indiscriminately slaughtering.
But to me Elves already filled the “Kill them all without question” niche.
“Goblins are people too”, sad day is this in which D&D has been invaded by PETA. Another universe has fallen in a animal-loving darkness 🙁
Goblins are so lovable they’re now a core race in Pathfinder 2e. Tolerance, diversity, and high explosives find a way!
Please don’t remind me that, i don’t know why haven’t use wish to exterminate them, and halflings and gnome. Well an old and classical extermination war is more fun. Um, a good campaign could be out of this. All hail humanity 🙂
So on the subject of baby monsters, anyone got any interesting stories?
This one is from last session. So in 5E Hags reproduce by eating children, and birthing identical “children” who turn into hags on their 13th birthday. My Wizard being a knowledgeable sort explained this to the party. After we killed 2/3rds of the coven (The third was in town hunting more children, which was why it was the ideal time to strike since they all need to be together to access coven magic) we saw found their hostages. 3 children and a baby. Some divinations later, we knew that 2 of the children were hag “Children”. We all agreed that we would not suffer a hag to live. (The universal agreement surprised both me and the GM) We then had to figure out how to kill the hag-spawn without scaring the child away with all our “Child murder”. One of the hag-spawn ended up escaping, and we ended up traumatizing the child by putting an arrow through the neck of the other in front of her.
Are we still the good guys?
How old is the child? If it’s under the age of four then you can hope that it will lose that memory when its brain goes through some serious remodeling in the next couple of years.
My two cents on the goodness (or lack thereof) of your actions:
Assuming nobody in the game world is going to prosecute you for this, the importance of your actions was not whether they were good or bad, but whether your characters feel guilty about them. And that’s something that you can only decide for yourselves.
The elder child we saved was like 9~. Even if we didn’t traumatize her, she’s in for a lifetime of nightmares aboot her time with the hags.
Our actions were fine morally, our execution was shit. If we let the hag-spawn live then in a few years the town would be terrorized by hags again, and more children would be eaten. (Giving us job security as adventurers) I feel like the option with the fewest children eaten is the morally correct one.
My monster adopting was considerably less brutal:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/heroesofkassen-e1447727307177.png
I tend not to go in for the “hard moral choice” style of play. I’m a comic at heart, and this sort of dilemma isn’t the kind of fun I look for at the table. Of course, I have a script for an upcoming comic which says something along the lines of, “The gods do not wish for thee to fall. They wish for thee to agonize.” The choice isn’t important. The fact that you feel conflicted is.
I have one case of this, and on case that wasnt this, but everyone in the game universe thought it was. With Elliot the Unlucky, he was honestly on the bottom of the totem pole for making decisions for the first half of the campaign, with that only changing when the bad luck let up soon and the great late game strength made up for the still fairly bad luck. To the rest of the world though, he was the clear leader of the party, being famous for his generosity, mercy, and bravery, as he was a. The only truly good person in the group, and b. Despite his multitude of nat 1 diplo checks, most of those were on monsters, with him rolling ok with the faction npcs, and his high skills carrying him the rest of the way making him a decent party face there. The other time we had a party leader was in our short lived elemental evil evil campaign under water cult leader Alex Jones. With that one, he also didnt have too much authority in the actual group, as no one actually believed any of his bs. We did still though sorta follow him, as doing such was the best way to obtain the characters various goals, with those being getting money, people to eat, glorious battles filled with blood, or fulfilling an obsession to be friends with everyone, alive or dead.
I think that “authority” is the key word here. You can think of yourself as a leader, but until you have the authority to push that vision through, it’s a purely mental exercise. Some interesting reading on the topic in this one:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8545049-the-creation-of-narrative-in-tabletop-role-playing-games
Often as not, I’m the “party leader” in any game I’m in if there is one at all. I’m sure there have been a few where there’s mechanical benefits, though nothing in particular comes to mind.
Mostly what it has meant to me is making sure people are still actively participating or keeping track of the loot or suggesting plans. In the later case that’s just because most of the time I’m just the kind of person who is going to try and come up with a plan for any situation, whether or not my character would. And that’s also the least “leader” situation as often as not other people also have their own ideas and it’s not infrequent that someone has a much better idea for a plan than mine and I’ll be happy to go along with that instead.
Do you think that you’re more committed to the game than others? I ask because I’ve got this theory that the player who’s most into the hobby tends to be the most focused, which translates into the most in-game activity, which translates into a leadership role.
Hmmm. I’m not really sure. Having more free time and more focus seems like a more likely reason for my behavior. Though it’s hard to judge since I’ve played only pbp for the last several years. I have no idea how my behavior would be in an irl game at this point.
Of course in irl games making sure people don’t forget to note down the loot is much simpler.
But my guess is that “party leader” behavior is more about personality than commitment to the hobby. At least in a group of people who are all/mostly enthusiastic about it. Obviously less enthusiastic people are much less likely to take charge or take on irl support roles.
So, my main party has had three main eras of leadership (there was a fourth one at the beginning, but that leader’s player left right before I became involved, so I don’t know much about it).
In the first era, the self-important, cowardly Sorcerer tended to claim leadership, but the real leader was the dwarven Cleric who I once described as “heals the party, carries everybody’s stuff, acts moderately sensible sometimes and complains”. She acted pretty literally like everyone in the group’s mom, though we left actual party face work to the other, Kitsune, Sorcerer. Overall, that seemed to work pretty well.
In the second era, both the Cleric and the cowardly Sorcerer’s players had moved on, so my Magus ended up effectively as the leader just because she was the character who had been involved in most of the plot events, and so knew what was going on. Even then, it was pretty much an “operate on consensus” model.
In the third era, the party Monk’s player switched him out for a halfling Paladin/Cavalier with a ton of team-buffing abilities. And it would seem like he’d naturally end up as the leader. But a) he was a total stranger who showed up literally out of nowhere and b) he was intentionally played as Lawful Stupid for his player’s amusement. So my Magus ended up actually asserting some authority and truly claiming the mantle of leader, instead of just being the de facto lead. Which was funny, because literally every PC but that Magus was a Charisma-based character. The Magus was moderately intelligent, though, and so that left her as the one who makes the plans. She’s also shifted from damage-dealing to tanking and absorbing attacks and protecting her allies, so that fit the leader role, especially as her main character arc had been evolving from a reckless, aggressive fighter who tended to get herself hurt. I suppose beginning to worship Milani, who is the goddess of hope and revolution, also fit with a move into leadership.
Out-of-universe, I probably end up in this kind of role because I’m a thinker, planner and problem-solver, I know a lot about Pathfinder mechanics and lore, I’m the one who writes down everything that’s happened, and, in the above-mentioned campaign, I’m the only active player who has been to all of the sessions of the last two years, so I have a much better idea of what is going on at any given time. I’m certainly no tyrant, but things seem to work out a bit better when I take the wheel.
I had a surprising experience on a recent group project. The prof asked everyone to take a moment to write our answers to “who has a leadership role in your group?” When it came time to compare notes, it turned out that all three of us though we were the leader.
When you say that your guy “truly claimed the mantle of leader, instead of just being the de facto lead,” do you mean that the other members of the party actually refer to you as the leader? Do you feel like the cavalier player might think of himself as leader despite the lawful stupidity?
By “truly claimed the mantle of leader”, I meant that, in retrospect, the character had been becoming leader-like in the previous period, but hadn’t realized it (nor had I). Claiming the mantle mainly meant intentionally trying to lead, instead of just happening to do it.
My suspicion is that the cavalier player did not think of the cavalier as the leader, but played the character as thinking that he was. Though I guess I can’t be sure without asking him.
In several games I’ve played in, the dominant personality becomes the defacto leader, but I’ve rarely seen the leader role actually work well. In most cases, the leader is the face, and that’s it. However, I had one leader that did well at something that often fails in D&D: he led combat roles as well. When we’d face bad guys, he’d bark orders, often understanding where each member of the party would work the best, and this often made tough fights go quicker rather than just the free-for-all method you see so often at tables.
He didn’t really have any special powers that came with the job, he was just the highest level due to not having racial hd, LA that hindered him, and he never missed a session. I guess that presence at every session aided in his stature as leader, and the one session he was late to we completely flubbed an encounter. He was a cleric-zilla though, and healed/rezzed everyone.
No kidding it usually fails in D&D:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/general-disarray
How does he manage to “bark orders” without being a jerk about it? I genuinely want to know, because that sounds like the tough as nails sergeant I always imagine when I think of playing a party leader.
I have just finished DMing a 3 year long Dark Heresy (Warhammer 40k Inquisition) campaign.
The opening of the campaign was that following a failed military operation, an Inquisitor drafts the surviving participants (and witnesses) of the final push on a cult base into a new cell following up on the clues uncovered. For the first couple of missions (I ran the campaign as a series of one-shot session-long missions) the PC’s were placed under the command of an NPC, but after they had had the opportunity to get to know each other, I subjected them all to in-character psychological tests (in the form of a questionnaire to fill out in character between sessions). The questions were to determine each characters honesty, trust in each other, dedication to carrying out the mission, loyalty to the Emperor, and loyalty to the Inquisitor.
Based on these answers, I had the Inquisitor assign a number of roles to various PC’s. But there was a twist – the Inquisitor had actually gone rogue, and although was maintaining the image of loyalty to the Emperor, he was more interested in people who were loyal to him. The character who appeared the most likely to follow orders ruthlessly and without question was assigned the role of team leader, while other members were given other roles, either openly (like the Tech Preist and Psyker who were granted full authority to assume command in matters to their specialities), or more covertly (like the assassin who was given the “political officer” role and a nice stack of kill authorisations for the other team members if they showed “disloyalty”).
The players loved it, especially when the truth of the con I was running on them came out. I had been using special private “eyes only” breifings to drip feed clues about the Inquisitors treachery to the team leader and various specialists, but in ways that were easily explained away in isolation. And each being a good loyal servant of the Emporer, they had never disclosed to each other the odd things they each knew until the dam burst, and the whole corrupt picture came in to focus (the looks of shame and disbelief on my various players faces when they finally disclosed everything they knew to each other was priceless!).
One of the most fun campaigns I have ran, but very definitely a one-time thing!
Now that’s interesting. Having an NPC assign the roles means that there’s more than ego at play when choosing the party leader. There’s this outside authority, and so characters have to live up to / accept the imposition.
Did they re-pick leader or get rid of the notion of leader altogether when they found out?
The party went through three leader over the course of the campaign. The first (a female Judge Dread) was real hard line, but who everyone followed without hesitation. The player left the group due to a job change, and I wrote her out in a way that dropped some big hints to his replacement that something dodgy was going on.
The second leader (a gunslinger) saw a lot of dodgy things, but because he had trusted the previous leader so unquestioningly, he just assumed it was all ok. Also, the character had been hoarding xeno weaponry (a big no no in the inquisition) as personal kill trophies, which the Inquisitor had been quite obviously overlooking, so he had an attitude of “he’s bending the rules for me, he must be a bit softer on the rules than the normal guys”. He was the guy in command when the revelation happened, and was probably the most gutted he hadn’t seen it (also this player was probably the most knowledgable in the group on the setting, even more so than me, so it wasn’t just ignorance of the setting, he knew their boss was deviating from the norm).
Only one character hadn’t been privy to anything suspicious (although the player had on a previous character). After the psyker sucked himself into the warp (hilariously during a moment of calm and zero pressure while healing an injured character after a lengthy psyker battle), the player rolled up a bible-bashing battle Cleric. The Cleric was understandably furious when everyone else confessed to what they knew, and he pretty much assumed command (with everyones meek acceptance) on the grounds that any more heresy in the party was going to be dealt with by his flamer!
I’ve mentioned the Pbp one person Changeling games I play in before. My character ended up gaining de facto leader of the Freehold position at one point by virtue of having saved everyone so many times. She simply had such a reputation for always having a reason behind things that anyone who opposed her tended to draw a lot of suspicion by default. I was also pretty good at manipulating the situation so that I could use my reputation effectively even against people who had reason to work against me.
In my RL party, the leader is typically a social position that I end up falling into more often than a really like. The leader is the person who does the talking when the NPCs show up. In the game we just finished where I was PC, my character was the leader by virtue of sanity. The other party members were an aggressive warrior with memory issues who freely admitted that he only cared about the death of the invading enemy and an insane old man who learned a powerful ki dominion style through his nightmares and suffering. I am a young mage who ran away from home to become an adventurer after my sixteenth birthday because my father kept stressing the responsibilities I had because of my magic. Brianna has ended up being a reluctant leader/moral compass after the invasion started because she had the power to do so. Luckily for me, I had built her with the concept of she had been raised in a culture where magic meant you were a leader, so she had the skills she needed. But I’ve been having fun roleplaying her having an increasingly brittle exterior as the pressure mounts and finally got to have the breaking point of she meets an older wizard and gets her alone and just cries for a little while. Then she puts her face back on and walks back outside, and everyone thinks she is the talented young mage with a plan, like they need to see her. The GM loved it.
In my Savage Worlds Firefly game, it was a small ship. Private conversations were hard. We had so many people declare “I start talking” during supposedly private conversations that we started mocking one another for being stealth ninjas.
“What the crap? Did you descend from the ceiling by wires?”
In a game played by talking, it seems like there might be a lot of leaders. Have you ever run into the situation where too many people wanted to take on that position?
My group’s most common party leader is the character who’s survived the longest and is being played by the most experienced player. (The fact that these two things are frequently the same is only partly causal—our group’s “old man” prefers backline roles over barbarians independent of his experience at not dying.) Sometimes one character just slips into the role, like my elven noble-cleric. Sometimes the party rolls around without any defined leader, the strongest personalities dominate, and our inner murderhobos get a bit looser on their chains. Or a lot, for some.