Adventuring Parties

Adventuring Parties
Terminology
Term Name:	Adventuring Party
Description:	A party is a group of characters who wish to work together on an ongoing basis
Abbreviation or Synonyms:	Party
Rule Type:	Character

Adventuring parties are one of the backbones of the game. They allow the game to function at its highest levels.

Adventuring Party Definition

Over the history of the game many hundreds of players have come and gone. Many stick around for long periods of time and get into all kinds of adventures over the years. Others never really get engaged or maybe don't find what they are looking for. The primary difference between the two is often that players who band together into parties tend to have a better time overall.

There are a couple of different reasons for that. From just a basic structure standpoint, parties are groups of people who often become very close real world friends over a long enough window of time. When you spend 10 hours during a weekend most months with the same group of people that tends to happen. This inherently makes the game a lot more fun, because now you are doing cool things with friends.

Groups also help keep each other entertained. Maybe you don't have anything happening right now, but the druid in the party has something they really want to look into. Now you have something to care about too.

From a staff perspective groups help tremendously with allowing targeted plots to function. If an average event has 60 or 70 players, even with many GMs learning 60 or 70 character histories and then writing specific plots for all of those characters is a lot of work. And remember the GM's are all volunteers with other parts of their lives to keep balanced too. Then those same GMs need to come up with normal plots, plus lores, running PIPs, and still find time to be a PC themselves. It can easily get overwhelming. However, it is practical to try getting a plot together for each group. Sending targeted plots at a group of players is significantly more manageable.

Forming Groups

How do you go about forming a party? That's sometimes the hardest part. There are different ways groups form. Sometimes it's just two people get together and start playing together every event. Then they add another person and another, until suddenly there is a full group.

Other groups form when 6 players all talk and decide they would like to join forces. Some groups are real life friends who come to events as a collective and decide to explore Novitas together.

Players leave over time, players have real world responsibilities, or move away. When that happens groups will recruit new players, and if they can't do that, sometimes groups that aren't full size will sometimes merge together to make one group from the remains of 2 (or more).

Groups sometimes have themes of what they are interested in doing and sometimes they are just people who enjoy each other's company.

Benefits

Not only are players who join parties more likely to have a good time and stick around, but there are other perks as well. Adventuring parties will get priority assignment when shift balance is figured out each year. Parties are kept together so they can accomplish the goal of playing together.

Parties of 4 or more active players also get stories aimed at them on a regular basis. Roughly twice a year these plots will have bonus rewards, epic items, as part of them. Independent characters can still acquire epic items in play, but we can't reasonably give out one epic item per character, it would simply be too many on a yearly basis.

Many parties also eventually create encampments where they can rest between adventures. While any individual can do this, having a group to work with leads to less burn out all around and often brings out the coolest looking encampments.

Limitations

Groups should never be so large that more than 6 players show up on a regular basis. It's hard to put an exact limit on groups because if a group is full of people who attend irregularly we want them to be able to still work together. On the other hand if a group were 10 people who all attend every event... that is too many. We never want to get into a situation where half of a shift everyone is part of the same group. That makes awkward situations for the people who aren't in the group and skews the game into being about that party.

When you retire an existing character (or your character perishes) the next character you bring into the game should not be part of the same party. Go out and meet more people, make additional friends! This rule is in place not only to encourage branching out, but also to help prevent the game from breaking down into cliques. Its worth pointing out that if you spend all of your time with a group, but aren't a "member" of that group, that still counts for what this rule is intended for.

You may find that you want a new character to come into the game and see where they naturally fit in. This is interesting and immersive. But, be careful. Out-of-game players have friends that you are likely going to fit right back in with. This can lead to the same issue. Sometimes you need to metagame (in the good way) talk to other players out-of-game to arrange for a meeting or a reason to join a new group.

Encampments

Parties create in game places to gather and make into a sort of temporary home which we call encampments. There is no restriction on what an encampment can look like or where it can be (though some locations are prohibited from being used by players because they are reserved for encounters). Most parties choose to use one of the lean-to's that are available at the site, but some find other unusual locations instead. Encampments can move from event to event, but generally cannot move in the middle of an event.

One of the primary uses for an encampment is as a place to keep encampment items, powerful tools parties have access to which cannot be stolen.

References

Encounter Limits

Encampment Items

Categories: Character Rules | Terminology