This is probably one of the hardest questions that any role-playing group, especially when few if any of the players have gamed together before, have wrestled with… how do we turn a collection of individuals into well-functioning team?
It’s something you see very often in media, particularly those based upon superheroes, such as the Avengers films and even Agents of SHIELD to an extent, but it’s not unheard of in fantasy tales such as Lord of the Ring and The Hobbit, and it can even be found in science fiction and space operas in the form of the rebooted Star Trek films and the initial films in each of the Star Wars trilogies. In each of these cases, you often have a group of disparate individuals that plot-based circumstances force into working as a group.
While films, novels, and TV series have the easy way out with the “author can force the group to work –together,” in an RPG we don’t have that luxury. So how do we, both as players and the GM, resolve this thorny issue?
The way I see it, there are generally two options, each with their own benefits and drawbacks.
The first of these, and the one that’s probably less satisfying from a purely role-playing perspective is to work out the group dynamics ahead of time. As an example, consider the X-Men series of comic books and films, in which for the most part the existing members not only know each other, but are fairly well versed in what each member of the team brings to the table in terms of abilities. They also have a few general strategies in place before the game even starts, so that once combat starts each member of the group knows what their role is during the fight and so avoids getting in each other’s way. While it may not be all that interesting for some groups, it does help make the group into a more cohesive unit while also allowing for back story elements to explain the characters’ earlier efforts to work out the kinks in the group dynamics. A pretty good example of this can be found in the early strips of the popular webcomic Order of the Stick, which is centered on a fairly typical D&D adventuring party. In the strip itself, the group has some pretty solid tactics, but if you check out the “Origin of PCs” graphic novel that serves as a prequel for the heroes of the story, you’ll see that they had a rough start of things.
So for a group of newly-minted adventurers and heroes, the same can hold true, with the players having the option to go into detail about the trials and tribulations of their group becoming a team. This does require some advance work on the part of the players, as they will need to discuss in advance of the first session what sort of character each of them is playing and come up with ways to make those characters synergize with one another. That doesn’t mean you can’t have the odd person out in the form of a character that’s new to the group and thus not part of the team dynamic; a fine example of this would be the introduction of Bilbo Baggins into Thorin’s company of dwarves in The Hobbit. But for the most part the group should have plenty of traction for when the action starts and be operating fairly smoothly. Now taking this approach doesn’t always mean the team is going to operate perfectly, especially if everyone’s playing a new character, but it does go a long ways towards smoothing out the rough patches of those first few sessions while still giving the players room to explore and experiment with how their characters operate from a purely mechanical perspective.
The second, and to me the more interesting option is to simply accept the premise of “learn as you go.” As Tony Stark admitted to Loki just before the big fight that was the climax of The Avengers, it took Earth’s Mightiest Heroes a little time to get some traction. If anything, The Avengers is almost a textbook example of how a GM might work to bring a disparate group of adventuring heroes together while not having them be a well-oiled bad-guy thrashing machine. Now the reason I say that this is the more interesting option is that it allows each of the players to organically get a feel for both the other player’s characters as well as how their own character reacts in this new team-oriented environment. Some folks take to it pretty well, such as Captain America and Black Widow, while others have a more difficult time of it, namely Iron Man but to a lesser extent Bruce Banner as well. You can even see this in Star Wars: A New Hope in the way that Luke and Han operate; Luke’s quick to sign on to the Rebel Alliance and pilot an X-Wing against the Empire’s dreaded Death Star, while Han’s more anxious to take his money and run while he can (at least initially).
Of course, the major pitfall with this approach is that the odds are much better of each player wanting to be “the star of the scene” and to take actions that primarily benefit their character as opposed to helping the group achieve their particular objective. Again, it’s going to take some time for the group to get any traction in working as a cohesive unit, but after a couple of sessions when everyone’s gotten a solid feel for their characters and those of their fellow players, they’ll start to lean towards working as a unit, playing to each member’s individual strengths and covering for their individual weaknesses. A great example of this happening is in the Avengers, when just prior to the battle in New York against the Chitauri you have Captain America calling out the battle plan to the Avengers, with his orders taking advantage of each member’s key abilities while drastically minimizing their short-comings.
It bears mention that a notable problem with either of the approaches I’ve listed comes in the form of the “lone wolf” character archetype; while Wolverine-type personalities might work within a comic book or film, they really don’t work well within an RPG group. To some extent, each character in the group needs to have a solid reason to want to work with the other characters to form a team, and while this is true for most RPGs in general, this is all but required if you’re playing an RPG based upon super-heroes, such as Mutants & Masterminds or ICONS, as a collection of “lone wolf” personalities aren’t going to do very well in a setting where effective teamwork is what often wins the day for the good guys.
Most of what I’ve described above has been from the player’s side of things, which might leave some GMs wondering “so what can I do to help turn the group into a team?” In a way, the GM probably has the easiest part in accomplishing this, as they’re the ones generally in charge of the campaign’s theme, story arcs, and overall plot. One big step the GM can take is to give each character a personal stake in defeating a particularly notable threat; to give them a reason to come together to fight a battle that individually none of them could hope to win. As we’ve seen in the previews for Avengers: Age of Ultron, the Avengers have to face the threat presented by Ultron not as a group of individuals, but as a team working together, and if they can’t do that, then the world is in very big trouble. You also see this same sort of thing happen in Guardians of the Galaxy, where a thief, an assassin, a maniac, and a pair of thugs have to come together as a team in order to stop a zealot from wiping out all life on the home planet of a galactic peace-keeping force.
Another angle the GM can take is to provide something of a “Big Good” in the form of some higher authority or patron that is responsible for bringing the heroes together in the first place, giving them an incentive to work together as opposed to operating as individuals. Nick Fury provides an excellent cinematic example of this courtesy of the Avengers Initiative, and it’s a set-up that can be put to use in genres outside of superheroes just as easily. The D&D party is assembled at the behest of a wealthy noble that wants the party to uncover the source of the orcs/kobolds/goblins that are pillaging nearby villages and put an end to the threat before they become too big of a problem. Or a party of scoundrels and would-be freedom fighters are contacted by an Alliance Operative who is looking for people of their particular skill sets to strike a blow against the Empire. Or instead a Hutt crime lord needs a group of enterprising and daring individuals to solve a few “minor problems” for him.
Hopefully the above advice proves useful to both players and GMs in helping a group of unusual individuals come together as a team, to fight the battles that individually they never could.
