The Party, a taxonomy
Whither The Party?
The desire to be in The Party is one of the most consistent elements I find when discussing tabletop RPGs with people in my community. For many of my best players, it's a red line dealbreaker. Games that don't sufficiently consider The Party are a struggle for them. But what is, exactly, The Party to these people's minds? Of course everyone has their own point of view. Here, I try to make all those points of view intersect at some "center point" of what The Party is to them.
Qualities of The Party
Here are the qualities of The Party, as told to me by its most devoted followers:
- The Party is 3+ people. 1 or 2 people is not a The Party.
- The Party bickers and argues but never seriously fights and especially never directs any even arguably negative game mechanics at each other. Urban Shadows' Debt will never be called in on another member of The Party, The Party will not steal treasure from each other in D&D, no member of The Party will never betray another The Party member for their vampire girlfriend in Vampire.
- The Party primarily handles external challenges, although there may be some emotional content, The Party's internal emotional relations to each other are always completely, one hundred percent, ride-or-die supportive.
Towards a Taxonomy of The Party
Self-Interest
High Self-Interest. The High Self-Interest Party is operating with loyalty to The Party being paramount. They will sometimes seem to have a fully amoral attitudes towards NPCs and the game world. "Murderhobo" is a casual pejorative for a subset of high Self-Interest The Partys, but Self-Interest can also be a creatively constructive force in the depiction of a harsh, amoral, hypercapitalistic or libertarian world. Gamercyberpunk arguably contains a fully functional High Self-Interest The Party. Examples include: classic D&D adventuring parties, gamercyberpunk tactical teams, Mechwarrior mercenary crews, Traveller ship crews, vampire groups and The Bad Cops.
Moderate Self-Interest. The Moderate Self-Interest Party, by contrast, will, together, sacrifice their collective (always collective!) well-being to effect change in the game world, expend collective (always collective!) resources to take on the bad guy and protect the innocent. The typical "Moderate Self-Interest" team has a goal of some kind, but also a code of morals which guide them towards that goal. Examples: A group of merchants, "we run a diner", a band, The Good Cops, honorable soldiers in a noble cause, 7th Sea Heroes.
Selfless. The Selfless Party will sacrifice everything except their friendship and loyalty to each other to do the right thing. Examples include Star Trek crews, superhero teams, the Scooby Gang, cozy coffeeshops.
Geography
Significant - The Party goes someplace new every day, or at least every session. Examples include spiritual pilgrims, Star Trek crews, D&D adventuring groups, pulp globetrotters, almost all games about fugitives of all sorts go here, along with the Scooby Gang.
Moderate - The Party has "our place", but it can always go someplace new within that place. Examples include a citywide superhero team, vampire siblings, Deep Space Nine, The Cops, or the Buffyverse Scooby Gang.
Limited - The Party is stuck in a few limited places. Examples include prisoners, or maybe those games where we're all different aspects of a single character...
Temporality
Brief. The Party's formation, and often its loyalty to each other, is highly abbreviated. Examples: We're escaping the Titanic sinking, our plane goes down behind enemy lines, a supervillain puts explosives around our neck and makes us rob a bank, etc. Note that even when The Party's internal loyalty is brief, it lasts the entirety of the campaign, even if it's only a single session.
Prolonged. The Party is engaged together for a finite but extended length of time within the game world. Again, this still covers the entirety of the campaign, but the characters expect to move on from each other at some point even if the players never will. Examples: a Star Trek crew, an Ars Magica alliance of mages, a military unit during wartime, etc.
Eternal. The bonds of The Party are unbreakable due to supernatural or longstanding social forces. Example: a literal family, a werewolf pack sealed by a spirit's pact, etc.
Flatness
Vertical. The Party has a leader or central figure. Star Trek captain and crew, military unit, crime family with a boss, a messiah and followers.
Horizontal. The Party has no particular authority and bickers and argues about everything it wants to do. Gamercyberpunk teams, vampire coalitions, superhero teams.
New Parties
Can you use the above taxonomy to help you develop new Parties? Can you use the concept of the Party to narrow your game selections and assist with campaign design? Yes.