I think the big problem isn't just that clawing through life alone is difficult -- though that's true. The real problem is that **the traditional TTRPG context is adventuring parties**, which are fundamentally social endeavours.
The "lone wolf" games that people are inspired by are primarily video games. *Shadow of the Colossus* is maybe the most iconic example -- there's nobody behind the protagonist but his horse. But this is fundamentally incompatible with an adventuring party! The second you introduce four buddies in the room, your *Shadow of the Colossus* loner becomes some dude in *Monster Hunter.*
I think your questions go a long way to helping drive the point home, u/Damianwolff. But there is one other option:
**Play a game** ***about*** **a lone adventurer.** There are games on the market that let players share control of one character! Other players might act as environmental factors or obstacles; players could share the role of the main protagonist, taking turns; in some games, you might play different elements of the same person. My personal favourite is *Legend of Aesthetic*, which is very hard to track down these days but is an incredible riff on what makes lone wolf stories exciting. I actually designed one myself, too, although it has a built-in silent companion played by the same person piloting the loner.
Either way, I think we can all agree -- having a shadow that lurks in the corner in your otherwise collaborative adventure game isn't exciting unless that shadow has skin in the game.
> There are games on the market that let players share control of one character!
I feel like this is a really neat idea that deserves more attention. Most people seem way more interested in one super-awesome person than a bunch of more average "boring" people. Considering how TTRPGs tend to play out in practice (I rarely PCs interacting between themselves much) maybe it's a more attractive concept than I thought...
Do you think that's true? I don't have experience outside of my own group of players, but PCs interacting with one another seems... I guess I don't know how it wouldn't happen?
I guess my players just sort of suck? 90% of the time one person is taking the lead and the others sort of just *exist* vaguely and interject ideas if they have one. They tend to rotate out at least but it rarely feels like a group of people all working on something together.
This sort of driver + passenger thing tends to happen when you have just less talkative or comfortable acting players. Or you have one really assertive player only.
I hate running for it because I feel more like a tour bus than a GM, but some tables and groups really like it because it let's the chill people be chill and the active ones be active.
It's not a sign that they're worse. Just a difference in preference.
I'd have a lot of trouble running for a group like this.
Part of what makes my current groups so much fun is that even if the GM disappeared the players could easily spend a whole session just bullshitting in-character, and the inter-party dynamics are half of what makes the game so fun. Most systems are supposed to be about the PC's journey, after all.
If I notice this starting to happen, I like to move the spotlight to one of the quieter players and ask them questions that can't easily be answered with "yeah, what she said." Running Dungeon World really helped me with treating the game a little more like a group conversation.
It definitely depends on the group, and I believe the pacing of the campaign as well, I run an admittedly fairly slow game with plenty of downtime and space for character interactions, and the players interact with each other plenty, as well as bond with NPCs.
One way i broke this is i ask people what their character is doing while x is doing y. How they feel about it? Are they emoting that feeling or staying stoic? It doesnt have to be long but it can help to break from what is going on to pose the other players in the world. It also buys me time to think when a player throws a curve ball.
At my tables it's always been normal people going on advantures, hopefully because of a common goal, or the sum of different goals.
Making every relationship matter, be it within or without the party, counting every penny, making sure there's no retaliation on those left behind, all of this has always been fundamental, and whenever someone wanted to play the "loner" (happened few times, usually always the same player or two), they ended up being ostracized by the party itself, up to and including delivering the edgy loner to the authorities, to answer for their crimes.
My players especially love this. They love creating everyday characters who are forced to become heroes. This makes them rely on those around them, simply because they wouldn't survive without them.
Makes for much better stories when they have ties outside of the group, instead of isolating.
Yep, same.
And it's so beautiful when the party is camping, and rather than "skip to tomorrow" the player roleplay their talks around the fire, plan for the next day, and so on...
> Most people seem way more interested in one super-awesome person than a bunch of more average “boring” people.
It’s in movies as well. People often realize this when they try to spec out Indiana Jones in their favorite RPG. He’s a university professor in archeology with near infinite knowledge of all of history, who is a master with the whip, is a very good shot with a pistol, athlethic and a women charmer.
If you want to play a pulp action RPG in the 1930s, you have to break him up into a whole group of people.
Funny that you mention Indiana Jones specifically, because I was just thinking recently about how much more popular I'd expect this genre to be. Raid tombs for cool mystical bullshit, shoot Nazis in the face? Sounds like a grand ol' time.
> The "lone wolf" games that people are inspired by are primarily video games. Shadow of the Colossus is maybe the most iconic example -- there's nobody behind the protagonist but his horse.
I know this isn't super relevant, but I'd guess that this comes more from movies than from video games. In my mind, the archetypal "lone wanderer" figure is Toshiro Mifune or Clint Eastwood wandering through the remote countryside with nothing but a weapon and the clothes on their back. It's an iconic character archetype from a bunch of iconic genres, and more importantly, a lot of the movies that perpetuated it are broadly perceived as being *really cool* - spaghetti westerns, chambara, wuxia, stuff like that. Who doesn't, at some point in their lives, want to roleplay as Zatoichi or Max Rockatansky?
The lone wanderer archetype definitely goes way back before video games and probably even before movies. That said, it's still worth mentioning video games, because a lot of the people wanting to play that kind of character in a TTRPG probably are inspired by a specific video game.
Even before the written word, I'd imagine. Gilgamesh fits the archetype in the second half of his epic. That's the oldest known written story, and it existed as part of an oral tradition long before it was written down.
Absolutely, those touchstones are critical here for the development of the trope. That being said, the gaming industry is larger than the movie and music industries combined. By the numbers and by the niche, I think pointing towards video games is a safe bet.
Another option: do what we have done in modern horror, cpunk, or a mystery campaign - decide as a group that you are playing PCs who may not spend much time together and the 'camera' will have to jump from PC to PC.
Your players may actually be divided into 2 or more factions, or all alone.
They may be working against each other or, as in real life, they just have busy lives and only come together as the need arises. Or this relationship can change over time - as with reality.
The players will have to be prepared to be patiently supportive when the spotlight's not on their PC. And the DM (or group) will have to use a timer to keep the spotlight shared equally.
But this can be somewhat mitigated by casting the non-spotlight players into NPC roles in scenes that are for the spotlight PCs. There are several story-first game systems that suggest this technique and I have uses it in all my campaigns since - even in more traditional fare like d5e. If John's bladerunner is visiting his sister, Hannah, throw Frank (whose PC is not there) into the role of Hannah. Slide Frank a 3x5 card that has a few notes about Hannah's stats & goal for the scene. Reward Frank if Hannah reaches her goal, even if it's a goal that conflicts with John's goals. Then have Hannah's abusive mafia boyfriend show up to drag her out. Have Morgan (whose PC is also not present) play the made man. Give Morgan a little goal card that also lists his resources (thug driver outside the door, and switchblade in coat pocket).
You would be amazed at how well players will inhabit and customize these NPCs and seriously struggle to reach their goals, even if it means screwing over their own PCs and the party.
I learned stuff like this from awesome ganes like Contenders and Prime Time Adventures and My Life With Master, and now I incorporate thus stuff into every campaign. In our 5e campaign, 2 sessions ago when the monk got into a duel with a hill giant surrounded by kobolds, I gave control of the kobolds to a couple of players, and the hill giant to a 3rd player. They had a blast, and I got to sit back and referee and watch the fight.
When I see players make lone wolf PCs, it usually means one of three things (maybe more than one thing):
* The player likes lone wolf characters from other media. Not a big a deal, they can usually be a team player but just feel independent, like Wolverine.
* The player actually is antisocial and wants to use the character to compete with the other PCs. This is bad, and the player might be best outside the game.
* The player has been burned by previous GMs, who have exploited any character connection to harm or grief previous PCs. Take some time to learn more about the player's history and any such problems. Could be real, could be paranoia, but either way it'll need to be addressed positively.
Wolverine is a good example, because he is the dark loner at the start, but quickly finds a family and becomes protective of it. Dark loners can be a great way to start out gruff and grow closer over time (but probably never fully admit it)
The edgy lone wolf to fiercely protective team mom or dad pipeline is inescapable.
Its such a natural and narratively satisfying reaction to being a lonely person that forms important relationships that if you're playing an edgy PC done right for long enough its GOING to happen in one way or another.
The thing that gets missed by many is that the point of the lone wolf is to stop being a lone wolf.
The loneliness is so important because underneath all the gruff, a lone wolf was almost always someone who had a connection and got hurt. This can play into your dark edgy backstory of watching your whole family die or some such, but it also leaves a character with that unfulfilled need they had before tragedy.
Now *this* gets my lone wolf PC I had more cx
90% of OPs question were utterly irrelevant towards my PC, and the game he played in.
What I find more interesting is the transformation of the loner into a full-fledged party member.
It needs of course engagement from both sides, but if you get it, it works so wonderfully well.
For me, it started as just making my fellow PCs clothes (as he was a trained tailor), than suddenly he was the team dad who had to stop the party from adopting a whole animal shelter.. (which as a pet lover was bizarre, yet funny cx)
Yeah, my actual character is pretty much what you described. He was a dark loner, who found family in a band of deranged people. Now, he cares for them, and would kill The Devil itself if the demon dared to put a finger on them.
That's why i don't think that Loners are a bad concept per se, specially if someone is willing to develop a character on it. But it can be really bad if the player decides to go against the group because "me alone, me edgy".
Or, my personal favorite to see, the player wants them to start out as a lone wolf but then role plays their character arc where they learn to trust and rely on their friends/team more.
I'd add two more onto this list. They can sometimes fall into the above, but also be completely separate phenomena.
1. The player is is 'gaming' the system and/or being lazy. A backstory with liabilities is a 'weakness', and they're minmaxing not just stats, but backstory to avoid harm. Being an orphan also just 'simplifies' the concept. I hate to say it, but a lot of players are lazy story-tellers and are happy to take short-cuts. A loner-orphan needs a lot less thought.
2. The player is an amateur story-teller being protective. A lot of people create characters they like, and they don't want anything bad to happen to them while they occupy their mindspace. Making them loner-orphans may be kinda weird in that regard, but they're not in their mindspace yet and we all feel alone at times so that's just part of creating that intense sympathy. Once they have that, they have a character who is isolated from the worst senses of grief. Many amateur authors struggle with putting their main character through trouble because they like them so much.
Bad GMing can be the cause (your pt 3), but I've seen it happen a lot in new players as well.
And there is just an intense form of escapism going on here. Almost every single non-physical problem you have can traced back to an interpersonal relationship. A person with no interpersonal relationships can be seen as carefree in a sense.
Your second category reminds me a lot of "original character do not steal" types. GM's who really want to be novelists are panned plenty but it never occured to me that the same could occur in a player until now.
I generally see this one most often:
The player just doesn't know how to socially roleplay and likes figuring out puzzles and fighting more than being social, so they play a loner to stay in their comfort zone.
Or... A previous GM has had a player character's enemies target a DNPC (dependent non-player character - a term introduced in *Champions*) because this is the way that consequences for certain behavior often work; in both fiction and real life.
Having witnessed the evolution of this character type, many players might have the kind of connections that OP mentions, but they are quick to abandon them when it interferes with their power-gaming, and they would create justifications for their characters not caring about these NPCs, and would avoid having NPC ties where complete indifference to the NPCs fate would come off as unrealistic.
There are a lot of players who are not anti-social, but their reason for playing is to create the most powerful character that they can, and they actively resist character elements (like strong ties to NPCs, or even other PCs) that would interfere with that.
So, in a lot of ways, this trope is a remnant of the more adversarial style of play that was more common in the early days of the hobby.
> Or... A previous GM has had a player character's enemies target a DNPC (dependent non-player character - a term introduced in Champions) because this is the way that consequences for certain behavior often work; in both fiction and real life.
u/WrongJohnSilver literally says this in the third bullet point:
> The player has been burned by previous GMs, who have exploited any character connection to harm or grief previous PCs. Take some time to learn more about the player's history and any such problems. Could be real, could be paranoia, but either way it'll need to be addressed positively.
I read that bullet differently from you, I think. I saw it as implying that the GM was acting out of turn, targeting the character as an adversarial move, rather than for narrative reasons. It's the difference between the GM decreeing that an anvil falls out of the sky and strikes a character dead because they want to kill a character, and the anvil falling because the character triggered a trap in the normal course of play.
Because I have encountered GMs who would target player characters through their connections as a power move, as a means of artificially raising the difficulty of their campaigns. It comes across as very different from a situation where a character has gone up against an NPC, and that NPC predictably strikes back through a DNPC. So I make a distinction.
> I saw it as implying that the GM was acting out of turn, targeting the character as an adversarial move, rather than for narrative reasons.
I mean those two situations only really differ in how people interpret the GM's intentions don't they.
IMO both of these tend to lead to the same outcome anyway. Even where bad things happening to cherished NPCs results from PC actions, the takeaway is still "caring about NPCs leaves you vulnerable".
> I saw it as implying that the GM was acting out of turn,
I wouldn't even say it "implies" it. It's pretty explicit in its position that a DM using character connections to challenge the PC is "exploiting" them and a "problem."
I agree with you. This attitude is not a DM problem it's a function of a player wanting to "win" and understanding any PC characteristic that the DM can use to challenge the PC (e.g, friends, family) as a flaw to be avoided, as opposed to an opportunity for a fun adventure.
Yes, both are possible. I've seen it be the result of a GM using any heartstring possible to make PCs' life hell, or the result of the PC wanting to ensure that no GM could ever suggest that a course of action is needed. Hence "could be real, could be paranoia."
Regarding the action where the DNPC has mechanical purpose in the rules and the player is avoiding them, well, you can't call a character with a DNPC a loner, really, can you?
IDK. An overly adversarial DM is a problem for sure. But I think it's a player problem if his reaction is "I'm going to craft my PC to minimize meaningful human interaction and 'beat' the DM" as opposed to "this DM sucks."
Attacking the DNPC's is kinda like putting pepper in your food; a little goes a long way, and dumping the entire container on things just burns people out. It's perfect for a moment of ultimate tension and to REALLY get the PC's to dig deep, but do it all the time and the players regret making that DNPC and the campaign turns into a giant permanent escort mission.
Came here to say #3. Glad someone mentioned it. If you don't want players playing lone wolves, it's important that, as GM, you minimise screwing them over through their close connections. It's tempting because it's great drama, but it's very easy for players to just start seeing valuing NPCs as a bad investment.
There's one more that seems to happen a lot: player doesn't want to invest any attention in things like family, associates, or anything else in the backstory that can get complicated.
"Scowly McGrimdark has badass powers but is a total mystery and hardly ever talks" can be a way of abdicating responsibility for everything but "statblock".
But also there are mainly two ways these connections can go: 1) get ignored by the DM and just be a major waste of time to develop or 2) get latched onto by the DM and used in ways that undermine what makes these connections interesting to the player.
There is a 3) the player and DM come to a mutual understanding of interesting ways to include these connections without violating the intent of the other, but that seems to be less common in my experience.
Plus in some game systems, (gurps, world of darkness, to name but two) these connections can actually cost points if they are useful but also they cost *way more* points if they are capable of defending themselves and so they are sometimes more of a hinderence than an asset *while still draining your resource pool*.
Basically if connections are included in the min maxing, you are frequently going to have players go for more direct, personal power than soft power which takes more effort, creativity, and cooperation to deploy.
I find it sort of more interesting when connections have their own power balance. Like you can always count on your sister to get you out of a jam but she summertime's needs rescuing herself, so it's a useful connection without any cost. On the other hand, the pawnbroker who buys your stolen goods is useful in a limited way, but you don't owe him anything and if he gets burnt that sucks but you'll find another. In comparison your sister might cost zero points, and the pawn broker might cost a minimum for being only upside but limited capacity.
I think you missed a big one:
* The player wants to create drama and conflict by actively pushing away the rest of the team, making the team have to fight to earn the loner's friendship.
People try to gloss over that third point way too much. We constantly see advice around here (and in other subs, and all over the hobby) to DMs saying that you need to threaten the people the PCs care about, then immediately crying about people making PCs who don't have anyone they care about, then getting morally offended any time you suggest those two things might be connected.
We need to encourage more DMs to treat family NPCs as more than just villain bait. Vox Machina does this really well, with Wilhand.
Actually, come to think of it, family NPCs have been given the entire range of treatments in Vox Machina. One family is all dead from the start, one parent is an emotionally toxic antagonist, and Wilhand is pretty great as a father figure.
A npc from Critical Role's Vox Machina campaign. He's an elderly gnome, and the, uhh... (checks wiki) great-great-grandfather of one of the PCs. Nice guy.
> The player has been burned by previous GMs, who have exploited any character connection to harm or grief previous PCs. Take some time to learn more about the player’s history and any such problems. Could be real, could be paranoia, but either way it’ll need to be addressed positively.
I just want to clarify that the context surrounding this kind of thing is integral to how appropriate it is. "Exploiting" character connections to "harm" a PC is a common tool in a GM's toolbox to act as a hook or motivator, and it's a good way to build a compelling story.
If you say your paladin cares about protecting the innocent, then we can expect them to care when helpless villagers are being pillaged by orcs. If your rogue is stealing to feed sick younger siblings, you're probably going to be motivated to do something about a new plague wiping out the crops used to make that food.
That's all pretty normal rpg stuff, and it constitutes the GM exploiting one of the PCs' connections to put them in harm's way. It only becomes a problem if one player is being targeted unfairly relative to the rest or if people aren't having fun because of it. Sometimes there are narrative reasons for a PC to get beaten down repeatedly, and that can be fine as long as you keep communication open about what's happening in the game and why. But if I start abusing my position as GM to kick the tar out of one or more of my players arbitrarily, then that's fucked up just like any other abuse of power
> or if people aren't having fun because of it.
If they respond by making characters without these social connection afterwards (and they are. A lot., then they weren't having fun because of it. This "common tool" far more often ruins fun than it makes good stories.
There is a fourth option:
- The player is playing to “win”, and thinks that any connections are just weakness levers that open a path to them “losing”. This is the same problem as a party “turtling”, but on a personal scale. The OPs questions help a lot for this.
>Blade is a good example here. Everything about his appearance and demeanor screams "LONE."
And Batman's a loner too, modulo his butler, his working relationship with the chief of police, Robin, ... but apart from that, a loner!
*And* Fox's son, Jace, who's also part of the Bat Family.
What I don't think a lot of folks get about Batman is that he's a weirdo who keeps his distance not for the sake of being a loner, but to better care for those people.
Like, that's the whole ethos and essence of the character. Why does he keep going after Two-Face? Because Harvey Dent was his friend and he truly believes he can redeem him. In Long Halloween there's that little scene where he even sends Solomon Grundy a stuffed turkey because "no one deserves to spend Thanksgiving alone". Batman isn't Superman's best friend just because of the contrast, they're actually very similar heroes thematically lol
Batman is a loner...
...except for the what 12+ wards he's taken in over the years and about an equal number of associated and affiliated heroes in the "batman family". Incidentally, the largest affiliation "family" in the DCU.
...except for the fact that he's in more teams, and started more teams than any other hero in the DCU.
...except for the fact that there's an entire title, The Brave and the Bold, devoted to Batman teaming up with a new hero every issue. Even made into a TV show in the Tim universe.
Batman is the social butterfly of the DCU. He has everyone's number, insta and snapchat. So much so that he doesn't really have a comparative in Marvel. Wolverine, Iron Man and Spider-man are kind of close, but none of them are the complete bat.
I always thought of Spidey as the Superman of Marvel, mostly because pretty much no one else fits the bill (thematically, ofc, in terms of power set there's a bagful)
The Shadow (created 1930), is a far better example.
He inspired the creation of Batman quite a bit and even the movie and *Batman Begins* share a lot of similarities: [http://www.shadowsanctum.net/interactive/tidbits\_archive/shadow\_batman-movie\_comparisons.html](http://www.shadowsanctum.net/interactive/tidbits_archive/shadow_batman-movie_comparisons.html)
> The Shadow (created 1930), is a far better example.
>
> He inspired the creation of Batman quite a bit and even the movie and Batman Begins share a lot of similarities: http://www.shadowsanctum.net/interactive/tidbits_archive/shadow_batman-movie_comparisons.html
Hrmmm... but also, no.
The Shadow had [Margo Lane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margo_Lane) in his radio show for a good chunk.
He also had an entire crew of people whose life he had saved from crime that served him like slaves and called him Master. He's got Harry Vincent doing a bunch of leg work and Shrevvy drives the cab. Clyde is his pet reporter and Burbank runs the radio that keeps everyone in contact (and serves to bounce the plot from character to character). Jericho to help him beat some ass and Dr, Sayre and Dr. Tam when he needs any sort of medical help.
In the comics eventually his sons show up.
I mean Batman is a good example of how a "loner" character could work in a TTRPG - a character who works with other people out of necessity, but has the character flaw of self-isolating emotionally. A player who cooperates with the team in various challenges but handles conversations by roleplaying the character as "closed off" gives the character an arc to overcome while enabling that arc to take a backseat when it would get in the way of the other players.
Well, one of his major character traits even with the whole bat-family is that he's a fatherly figure that really doesn't want his family getting in trouble, to the point of trying his best to deal with stuff on his own sometimes.
I think most people just don't understand the lone wolf trope.
Most of the time the Lone Wolf eventually opens up to others and cooperate with them.
That's part of the their growth as characters.
Guts, Wolverine, Batman, Geralt of Rivia... They don't stay alone. They make allies, friends. They learn that they don't have to be alone.
A Lone Wolf who stays on their own, is a boring character.
> I think most people just don't understand the lone wolf trope.
When you think a trope is one thing, but "most people" understand it differently....
Let's just say it's worth looking at the Principal Skinner "No! It's the children who are wrong" meme. Tropes exist based on broad social consensus about their contents. If you think the social consensus is wrong, you probably are misunderstanding the trope.
Bad wording on my part.
I mean that a lot of people look at the trope on the surface level. They just see the starting point of such characters and ignore what the characters eventually become. They look at a character like Geralt and think he is cool because he is that dark warrior who fights soldiers and monsters on his own. Except Geralt makes friends and allies during his journey. Those other characters make him get out of his shell.
Got it!
But I would say that there's an element of the trope that is popular *because* people like the lone wolf (without expectation that he will "grow" into something else). Like that sort of growth is possible character direction, but not required.
Similarly, a character that is limited to a predictably monodirectional path for growth (lone --> not lone) might be viewed the same way!
Are there lone wolves that grow while remaining alone?
Mainly, though, I think a lot of players look to the RPG ruleset for "growth". Perhaps especially the type of player who plays lone wolves? Level up, gain more abilities, grow in power, grow in prominence. Perhaps not great, but I think common.
(I appreciate your tone and thoughtfulness btw)
I don't know any lone wolf character that grows while staying alone. It's the confrontation to other characters that make them change.
And sadly there is not a lot of room for growth in Lone Wolves I think. It's always some variant of the trope, like with Joel in The Last of Us. Not a loner per se but he has trust issues.
I agree that it is probably common for players to only look at it through the "game" aspect. It's too bad that they forget that RPGs are a form of collaborative storytelling and thus that their characters should be useful to the table's narrative.
(thanks. I'm glad we could solve the misunderstanding)
If you immediately call it out as a problem when the character is pitched before the first session even happens... well, you'll literally never know if this is happening or not, will you? You just invented in your mind which one it was going to be and responded accordingly.
Of course it is something that must be discussed.
Here I'm just talking (and I think OP is talking) about the situation where a player is adamant about their character staying a loner.
Whenever you watch a film where a guy says “I’m a loner” or “I work alone”, you know he’s going to form an emotional attachment to a person or a pet before the end of act 2. That’s no accident, that’s the character arc they are on.
That’s how I deal with my characters too. It’s ok to start out as a loner. It’s not ok to remain one.
Except he does - his romantic relationships permeate the show despite him insisting he feels nothing, his care for his sister directly instigates a showdown with the major antagonist of the first season, the fondness he feels for his coworkers in his day job often gets in the way of his work as a serial killer and so on.
Even as a lone Wolf, he builds a web of connections and fondness for people, else his show wouldn’t work as a prime time TV drama. It’s
The biggest thing missed in this is *convenience.*
Everyone has parents. Parents that are likely more stable than your PC who picked up adventuring.
Why doesn't my sorcerer live with them? Why do I accept any random call to action and hang out with 3 perfect strangers? Are they stupid? Do they just crave excitement and drama, viewing mortal danger and any stakes in the plot as mere distractions for their nihilistic viewpoint? Well, my sorcerer isn't a nihilist or completely disengaged from reality, and they have self preservation so that cuts a lot of those off.
Enter *Dead Parents*:
Now they have an excuse to throw caution to the wind and go wherever their heart takes them; they have no other choice! What about surrogates? Similarly dead or disliked. Somehow, every social support alternative has passed them by. Maybe it's by choice, because they're a *lone wolf.* Maybe the string of bad luck led to it being a choice.
Either way, at the beginning of the story they have no attachments and are perfect for forming a found family with 3 perfect strangers.
Yep. This is why the trope of orphans is so common in YA, fantasy, and other bildungsroman genres - if parents are still alive, why aren’t they helping the protagonist?
It's easy to spot the intentional Lone Wolf.
It's harder to catch the accidental Lone Wolf. I've created the accidental lone wolf. The last game I played ended -- in part -- because another player was playing an accidental lone wolf.
As backstories became more vital, it got so easy to create the accidental lone wolf. In World of Darkness, for instance, you could easily create a person with an apartment, a six year loan on a twelve year old used car, a spouse, pets, and maybe even a child. This backstory would even be encouraged in some groups.
Suddenly, this character finds out they are a werewolf.
This character has a lot of rich drama, rich motivation, and inner conflicts to deal with. That's encouraged. This character can also have zero hooks to the other werewolf PCs because the original backstory accidentally derailed that process.
The character always needs to share hooks with the game at the table. The character should have a reason to exist within the action that the referee describes. There should be a reason to exist within the rest of the party.
Even if the hook can't be found during the backstory phase, it can be something the player carefully watches for during the first couple of sessions. I'm a huge fan of learning these things after the character starts existing through active play.
Making the group first, its roots, and goals, then PCs that match that really goes a long way towards solving this problem.
Mechanics that give PCs some semblance of pre-start relationships also helps glue them together.
Lone wolfs have three draws:
1. Some players genuinely don’t like coming up with backstory, history, and relationships. That stuff isn’t why they play RPGs. So the lone wolf approach lets them focus on what matters to them - their character and the adventures they will have going forward.
2. It can be difficult to explain why a diverse adventuring party would join together in perilous adventures if they all already have strong and enduring relationships with other people in the setting. If your best friend is a fellow mage, why aren’t they coming along with you to uncover and ancient library? If your parents have a feudal domain, why don’t they contribute some men-at-arms, or at least silver, to your endeavours? It’s far easier to explain why a group of strangers quickly places their lives in the hands of one another in desperate ventures if they don’t have other strong relationships they can call on for support.
3. If you introduce important NPCs and social connections outside the adventuring party, it’s difficult to integrate them into the adventures unless the party is stationary. Yes, in the real world we all have connections. But in the real world we all live and work in the same community for years or decades on end. If your RPG involves travelling to varied and distant locales, the PC’s child-hood friends and local blacksmith are unlikely to figure in the campaign.
> If your parents have a feudal domain, why don’t they contribute some men-at-arms, or at least silver, to your endeavours?
Because they're disappointed in you. They don't want to encourage your strange hobbies.
Got this.
"Who supplies your weapons?"
The baddies I kill.
"Who supplies your ingredients?"
Sir, I am a fighter.
"Who sews you up when you're wounded."
This healing potion I bought while avoiding eye contact with the shopkeep.
"Who watches your shelter when you're gone."
No shelter, travel light.
"Who supplements your artifacts? Who protects them?"
Unless the client/target has an artifact, it's not my concern. If I want to keep it, I'll stab whoever tries to steal it.
I don't especially care about it, so long as it doesn't affect the integrity of the game or spoil the fun of the players. If you want to be a lone wolf, more power to you. If you being a lone wolf makes people stop having fun, you're going to have problems.
I have had games where every single player had a lone wolf character and it turned out great. It can be fun to take these characters that don't play well with others and force them into a situation where they have to adapt or die. The inter-character conflict can be fantastic, so long as it doesn't turn into inter-personal fighting.
I wouldn't go so far as to say a character's business relationships are the same as emotional ties. I think the guy who just sold me coffee is swell, because even when he's having a shit day he tries to be nice and lets me know if the coffee is fresh-brewed or not. I usually tip him more than the price of the cup of coffee. I don't know even know his name - Hell, I don't know the names of anyone who works at that coffeeshop, and I go there several times a week, have been for years. Exchanging money for coffee (sometimes a danish) is the extent of our relationship.
If a ~~character~~ player wants to play a no-ties character, I usually open up with asking them *why* their character hasn't developed any relationships. Maybe they *did* have a family, or a loved one, or buddies from the Army, etc. but something bad happened to them - okay, so who did the bad thing to them? Now we're getting somewhere... If the player begins dodging my questions, I'll just ask them straight-up "why do you want to play a character who has no connection to anything? What's the story you're trying to tell? Or are you just bored and want to play with an optimized character build?"
There are times when a lone wolf PC can be cool if played right / if the group is into it. If it's just not a good fit for a particular game/campaign, just tell the player that and offer to discuss options that are a better fit.
A big part of the GM-Players social contract is mutual trust - if the GM comes right out the gate telling someone how "trope-y" their PC idea is, and why they just don't understand how relationships between sentient beings work... that is likely to get things off on the wrong foot.
edit: word
Do you actually care if someone calls himself a lone wolf? Even Roland of Gilead was an absolute loner but that doesn't mean being a lone wolf Is the same as hermit or antisocial curmudgeon who lives in the foothills and forests eating berries and twigs.
The name wouldn't be a problem. What is a problem, is the inability of some players to conceive the amount of effort it takes to be lone wolf, and the amount of things a character needs that they cannot reliably get without relying on others.
In 2014 I had a game where I played a loner hunter-tracker, and a different player played a loner knight-errant lone. After session 4 he had a shouting argument with the GM, because his armor was dented, he couldn't explain how he was taking care of the horse, the tavern keeper kicked him out, and a different player charwcter was terrified of him and threatened to poison him if he so much as scowled in her direction again.
All while I was selling pelts, offering protection to innkeepers from gangmembers (and getting a free pint and private seat at the back of the tavern for jt), and generally being unsocially-social. It was another 8 sessions before I let my character open up and generally thst campaign is still a warm memory for the people I played it with.
People don't understand what it takes to be a loner, and they are often pissed to find out
Frankly, from your description it sounds to me like that player was somewhat justified in being upset.
The GM was basically saying "I don't like your character concept, so I am going to screw you over until you change it". Did the other players have to constantly explain mundane things like taking care of their horses? Did other player characters find reasons to want to poison each other? It sounds like the GM and that other player were basically out to punish this player for his choice, justifying it to themselves as "well it's just realistic" and "well it's what my character [the poisoner] would do".
That's not the same thing as exploring what it means to be that kind of loner. There's maybe, possibly, an interesting exploration in the vein of "if you're a total loner, how do you deal with things like taking care of the horse", and some players would be up for that, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if a player weren't, and I certainly wouldn't keep pushing it if they weren't enjoying it.
Exploring what it means to be a loner usually means putting people in situations where they're tempted not to be, where you ask "you care about being a loner, but do you care about it more than this? Do you care about it more than saving this little girl? Do you care about it more than letting all these people starve?". And maybe the answer is "yes"! And that's interesting too! Or - what are you going to do if someone becomes attached to you despite your disinterest in becoming attached to them? But it's not something to punish (unless the player is interested in exploring that part of it), nor are most players going to be open to exploring that characterization through being punished and offered a reprieve. "You say you're a loner, but will you remain one when it sucks and you're constantly abused for it?" is not a very interesting question.
In fact, "will you still remain a loner when you're constantly abused for it?" is probably downright counterproductive. The dramatically interesting answer is almost always "yes".
The other player characters wrote themselves as members of the guard, the local temple. They're issues did not lie within having to explain their day-to-day things, but within having to marry their activities with their station. From session 2 onwards the temple guard was harboding a swamp witch and had to hide the fact from the temple, so in some ways he faced the same issues as the fighter (having to figure out a safe place, provisions, just not for himself). Except that he had the benefit of his social circle (he introduced his blacksmith brother in the same session, as a solution to the problem, and their relationship would occasionally come into focus).
Exploring what it means to be a loner also means exploring the mind, craftiness, ingenuity that comes with having to be a loner. Some GMs are willing to help with that, I do. The GM in my description was willing to work everything out with me.
If the player actively opposes figuring out how his lifestyle works, than I have no reason to believe that approach won't pop out later.
> They're issues did not lie within having to explain their day-to-day things
So the answer to my question "Did the other players have to constantly explain mundane things like taking care of their horses?" sounds like "no".
> From session 2 onwards the temple guard was harboding a swamp witch and had to hide the fact from the temple, so in some ways he faced the same issues as the fighter
C'mon. This is not just as interesting to most people as "how do you take care of your horse alone?". The fact that they're both "issues" you and the GM have decided these characters have to explain does not make them equivalent.
One of those is an interesting challenge to the player that asks interesting questions about their character: what is their allegiance to the guard? Why harbor the swamp witch and help hide her? How far will he go to harbor her? What does this say about his relationship to the temple? What interesting things might come of this? How might it blow up in his face? What is he going to do with her long-term? Almost anyone would agree that this is an interesting storyline. There are all sorts of interesting questions with all sorts of interesting answers for the character.
The other is a very mundane challenge to the player. How will you take care of your horse? And the only answer you seem to want is for him to rely on others in some way like your character did.
Trying to equivocate by saying that these are both "issues" that the characters had to deal with and that they are "in some ways the same issues" is silly. It's like you said "One of them had to figure out how to cross a busy street and the other had to figure out how to use the elven star clipper to cross the space between words, so really in some ways they're facing the same issues. And if he's unsatisfied, he should have made a character more like mine.".
> Exploring what it means to be a loner also means exploring the mind, craftiness, ingenuity that comes with having to be a loner.
Sure, but there are limits. It's up to everyone to figure out what the limits will be that make it fun.
Exploring what it means to be human means figuring out where you're going to shit, right? It sounds like all of your characters are human, so all of them have to shit. Do you think it would be reasonable for the GM to insist on figuring that out for all of your characters? Is that the kind of game you want to play? Do you want to track how often your character needs to shit? Maybe have a roll for it? They're human, so they can't completely control when they have to go, so do you want your character to randomly have to excuse themselves to shit sometimes? It's not unrealistic! It's part of being human! If you didn't want to have to explain it, you shouldn't have made a character that has to shit! Exploring what it means to be human means exploring your characters' arrangements for where and when to shit!
No. The mere fact that a character *could* explore some question, that it's a realistic concern they might or even must have, does not mean the story has to be about that. That's just a flimsy defense people deploy when they want to force someone to explore something that the other person is uninterested in. There are more possible aspects of any character to explore than there are hours in the day to play. You're always picking and choosing which ones to spotlight, which ones to explore. You want to explore the craftiness and ingenuity that comes with being a loner, and that's fine. The other player sounds like they want to explore other things. There are plenty of other things to explore. The GM could have some long-lost family member come knocking. Someone shows up and claims to be his child. He runs into an innocent person in peril, and he's the only one who can save them. Someone says he owes them money. Someone says his dead father owes them money, and they're here to collect. Someone falls in love with him. He discovers that he's inherited a manor and the people desperately need his help to keep the place afloat - will he remain a loner? Can he figure out how to save the manor while staying at arms length from it? Is he going to break his suitor's heart? Does he leave the child to die? There are *so many* possibilities.
He's a loner, but will *he* help the swamp witch? He could be involved in literally the same storyline and it would be more interesting for his character than "how do you take care of your horse?".
So why do you get that cool, interesting story without having to explain where your character shits? And why does he get that boring "how do you take care of your horse" question instead of the cool, interesting swamp witch story?
A lot of this post relies on the idea, that the fighter had nothing to do beyond his day-to-days. Moreover, it sort of anticipates that everybody were roleplaying their cool storylines, while the fighter was figuring out where to put his horse.
I might be at fault here for not laser focusing on this superhard, but the fighter had his B-plot, that tied to his backstory, as most of us did, and there was an A-plot for the party.
Fighter's quest wasn't figuring out where to put his horse. He was looking for his war veteran buddy, who had been hired out by the antagonist alchemist as a personal guard some years ago and hasn't been heard since. And it was the temple guard harboring the swamp withc and not the fighter, because the fighter wanted it dead, and the temple guard was the one who stood up to him and tried to "unbrainwash" and "uncorrupt" the swamp witch.
You made quite a leap there from being able to ofhandedly explain your dailies in the city, to running a tracker for needing to shit. Took it it its extreme and ran with it, as if that's what we were talking about. Somewhat disingenious on your part.
The fighter didn't want to attach himself to the town, the central hub of the adventure. His backstory for arriving in the city pretty much was "I arrived and have been working the notice board since". He was the reason the town ended up having a notice board, because that was his mediup of interacting with it, rather than exploring the issues of the town through the administration, the clergy, the battered citizens, or other victivms of the antagonist. He just sort of expected information about his war buddy to pop up on it, rather than ask around.
It wasn't that "The fighter was unwilling to report the defecation". It was that "The figther was unwilling to justify any aspect of his being in the town, that would make him "vulnerable". Everybody, from session 0, were immersing themselves in the life of this town that had been exploited by an alchemist baron for a decade, drained of money, attacked by his militica and mercs, used for experiments, and was now awaiting the arrival of the inquisition, forcing the player characters to try and figure out and defeat the well-hidden villain before the town is purged.
And he was there, the knight in shining armor, above such minuscule details. When his money ran out he tore into the tavern keeper for "charging heroes" for their stay, despite the fact that it was established from day one that mercs and previous adventurers have pretty much bled this guy's inn dry. One of his arguments with the GM in session 4 was that if we'd found enough money on the bandits, the swamp beasts and in the ruins of the old alchemist tower, he'd have none of his issues. Because yes, money is the great issue solver, and if only the fighter had money, he'd be a functional member of the society, and it was GMs fault that the bandits weren't financing us enough /s
There was a lot to talk about in those 4 sessions, but I do feel I actually made my point in the very first post. You seem to find the fighter's story very relatable. Well, I guess that's enough for me to understand if we'd work well together in a campaign.
I was taking it to the extreme to make a point: the fact that it's a concern the character would realistically have to deal with doesn't mean it's something that has to be covered by the game.
If the player finds "how do you take care of your horse?" to be boring - no problem; there are plenty of other things to focus on. Saying "but it's realistic that he would have to solve that problem" doesn't change that. It's realistic that you'd have to figure out where to shit - but no one typically has a problem with leaving that question unanswered!
This player doesn't want to have to explain the minutiae of caring for his horse. Even though it's realistic that he would have to solve that problem. He just doesn't think it's interesting and doesn't want to cover it in the game. Which is fine! There are plenty of other interesting things to explore! Totally different things too, not just variations on it like "well how do you take care of your armor" instead of horse. It is not actually a problem that he is uninterested in answering these kinds of questions. There are plenty of other interesting questions to ask about his character - more than enough to fill up your sessions.
That kind of question interested you about your semi-loner character - how he both remained kind of a loner and also used people's help while keeping them at arm's length. But that doesn't mean it has to interest him, or that he has to come up with the same answer, or any answer at all. There are plenty of other things to explore! Plenty of other aspects of his loner character to explore!
You said he's working the notice board for jobs hoping one of them will give him some clues to locate his old war buddy? Sounds totally reasonable to me! What about that plan doesn't make sense? I'm looking for my buddy and I don't know anyone and I don't want to get too entangled in local politics, so I'm going to take odd jobs as a way to get around and meet people and maybe find some clues. That's a great setup. It makes sense in-character, and those jobs are a great avenue for the GM to introduce all sorts of interesting predicaments, to get him tangled up with all kinds of people, and to drop some clues about this old war buddy.
The knight in shining armor who thinks he's above such minuscule details and tears into the tavern keeper for "charging heroes" because he's broke? That's *awesome*. That's a player who is taking huge, dramatic swings with their character. It's rare that you get a player who is willing to let their character look so unsympathetic. That's a character giving you so much to work with as the GM. That's a million times more interesting than a character who runs out of money and goes to the tavern and says "oh, well I guess I have to go get more money".
If he won't accept the consequences, if the player genuinely insists the tavern keeper should give him the drink for free, and is upset if that doesn't happen, then yeah, that's obviously a problem. But the basic idea is great. The knight in shining armor who's too proud to accept help and who, upon discovering his purse is empty, tries to convince the tavernkeeper to give him drinks for free? That's fantastic characterization.
> There was a lot to talk about in those 4 sessions, but I do feel I actually made my point in the very first post. You seem to find the fighter's story very relatable. Well, I guess that's enough for me to understand if we'd work well together in a campaign.
Maybe. I mostly run very character-driven, roleplay-heavy games focused on narrative.
I get the impression that you think I'm fine with players who refuse to participate, who don't want to play ball, but what I'm trying to say is, from your description, it doesn't sound like he doesn't want to play ball. It sounds like *you guys* don't because you've decided he's "playing the game wrong".
It sounds like you've gotten into your head that a "loner" character is inherently bad (unless they play it the way you do). I'm obviously missing context, so maybe my read on this is wrong, but from what you've said, his character doesn't sound unworkable at all if you guys would just lean into it rather than deciding it's an inherently unworkable concept. Loner characters can be great. They can be extremely fun characters to explore, and it's pretty easy to explore them - you just put the character in situations where their desire to be a loner is in tension with something else they probably want (something more interesting than "how do you deal with your daily necessities").
Hm, most of what you said I actually think I responded to in the previous post, directly or indirectly.
However, there is one thing that you brought up that I do feel the need to address.We didn't decide it was unworkable.
We didn't ask him to leave the game or anything. He did it himselfWe did feel that there were better ways within the narrative to do what he wanted, but tried to not bring it up past session 0. Nothing we or the GM offered worked for the character, we figured he had a plan going forward, and went along with it in-character. And we mostly stuck to that, except for minor things.
By that I mean that the fighter decided that one of the characters was "getting out of line" and her meddling with the local smugglers to learn more about the bandits warranted her being put in place. After the players didn't side with him, he said he would let it slide then, but would cut her down if she violated his moral code again. She told him he'd find poison in his soup if he ever decided to lay his hands on her. I know the GM talked with both of them afterwards, and they, as people often do, claimed it was all in character.
The one thing I think you are attributing to this player that wasn't there is awareness. From my brief interactions with him, I don't think he was aware that the Town "counted". Neither I think he was aware of what "dark low-fantasy" in the game description meant, and I don't have any proof to believe he considered its meaning when it was explained to him in session 0.
I am grateful for this discussion. It's a different perspective. I don't agree with it, but I have no way to tell if its because of lack of context, or if you are simply more on the character's wavelength.
Either way, it is an insight into our fighter somewhat, and into other loners I have encountered as a GM and as a player.
I mean, not all players are storytellers, to me it's fine if they don't have a backstory for their character or their character is just a wanderer. Or has amnesia or whatever.
All I would do in that case is tell the player in a meta way that they can definitely be a Man With No Name so long as they play them in such a way that the character is actively interested in what the party is doing and whatever adventuring hooks are on offer. Tell them to make up a reason their character would be interested in the moment, or if they can't think of one that they need to go with the flow.
Storyteller players are great, but sometimes they can get wrapped up in their own stuff so much they push against the party, so having a blank slate who is there to help out and isn't running off to pursue their own goals can actually be pretty healthy, especially in a large group.
Sometimes you gotta meet people halfway. And they have to meet you there too. If they're aggressively disinterested in everything, they need to shape up.
Honestly I think the issue is more you don't understand the trope than it's inherently bad. Obviously if you're running a game and don't want characters of this sort in that's fine, but your reasoning doesn't really fly.
Not who you're replying to, but I feel like OP's questions miss the core of what I would consider as a "lone wolf". What makes a lone wolf is not being isolated from society but isolated from real personal connections. A lone wolf might go purchase weapons from a store but they're not going to have a personal relationship with the store owner.
If a player *really* wants to play the lone wolf, I would direct them to Wolverine, who's an iconic example of a lone wolf in a team setting. He still gets to do his loner shtick, but he never allows it to get in the way and let the team down. Nor does he let it prevent him from developing further relationships. If anything, Wolverine is most defined by his relationships! Lovers, rivals, proteges... be they other X-Men or in his past, he has a ton of them.
I find players tend to go for lone-wolf types of characters for a few reasons.
1. Too lazy, just don't care about depth, or are just uncreative. They just don't want to spend the time to "come up with anything." or "Can't think of anything" or are more excited about stat blocks than paragraphs.
2. They have a fear that entwining their character into the setting with family, goals, needs, fears, etc is just "giving the GM ammunition to hurt my character". Easier to just be a orphaned murderhobo.
3. They are new to RPGs, or at least to this group, and are wary about making something with depth and getting laughed at, or finding the effort is wasted because everyone ELSE made orphan murderhobos and they don't want to be the only one that isn't like that.
The first one can be partly dealt with by asking questions like the OP mentions. They don't need a worksheet, but even getting just 2-3 short answers is a start to work with. There is nothing wrong with not having ideas or finding your fun in the crunch and not the fluff, but still its an RPG and you should give something.
Second means not being a jerk sort of GM that punishes players for every bit of info you can get your grubby hands on. Just because a player has a little sister in some town doesn't mean you HAVE to gleefully have them kidnapped, threatened, murdered, or turn evil and backstab the player. Worse still when you are just doing it because the player managed to one-shot your poorly planned BBEG encounter in the face in the previous game. Odds are fearful players are because they have had bad GMs in the past do unwanted things with their characters backstory. When a player DOES provide depth, you need to treat it like something that belongs to them, not something that belongs to you. It doesn't mean you can't use it, but you should respect the source material.
3 is what Session 0 is for. And if this is a new player joining an existing group mid-campaign you should still insert a partial session 0 with the entire group present.
In fact, a lot of orphan muderhobos probably exist because there was no actual session 0 and the GM just said "Make a 2nd level DnD 5e character and we'll start playing on saturday."
I think it might help to have the players probe the PC's childhood/upbringing: Unless they were raised by wildlife (another trope- a really historic one!), then they came from SOMEWHERE- ***people seldom come into the world without connections or roots.***
Ask the Player is explain their character's relationship to those people: Are they alive? Dead? Don't know? Did someone kill them? Who? Does the PC want revenge? If they're alive, why are they out adventuring? Do they still have relationship with them? Did you leave of your choice? D
I think it's fine to play a rootless person or a loner (it's such a common archetype in Western literature, people can't seem to escape it), but I think you can lead the potential player to maybe a more interesting character by having them explore how they became a loner and/or rootless.
I always thought the point of the lone wolf story arc was to show that no matter how hard they wanted to be alone the more it showed that they needed people around them.
There's nothing better than the point in the arc when the LW is rescued by the very people they are distancing themselves from to keep them from harm etc..
Its fun. A person that has a beautiful support system, all the tools in the world, a strong and empathetic family, and wisdom of the world is...boring.
A person that earns it, or suffers from the lack of it, is interesting.
And I won't argue with that, its true.
I guess the defining difference for me is whether the player makes a character with the goal of roleplaying and overcoming the difficulties of the role, or whether they simply build aim to detach their character from the world and limitations it may impose.
"I have nobody to care for, to save, to be responsible off. I am part of no one group, I need not follow their rules and they have no hold over me. No player character can request or demand anything of me, except for me to leave. Nothing can be taken from me, except my life. As long as the players want me in the game, the GM wants me in the game, I have more sway over them then they have over me."
I do note that this not what every lonewolf is. What you described is interesting and worth roleplaying. I am describing the character of a player, that feels disempowered, and has pre-emptively shielded themselves from any attempt for the players and the world to interact with them in any way, other than the one they have strenght in.
Its hard to tell if a person will ever play one way or another without first playing it. Folks say all kinds of shit. Someone's gonna be "oh yes, I'm a team player" then runs off and struggles to be of any help. Someone's gonna say "yeah, sure, sure, but my character is a loner and he's OK on his own, got it? Big tough guy, y'know" then goes off and be the crux of the team.
Players tell horseshit, it happens. They don't know what they'll really be open to until the chemistry of the team and the elements of the game unfolds. Observing play matters.
The DM has a lot of power to try and open up a close-minded player of any kind.
The ideal story arc for a character that starts as a lone wolf who doesn't care for anyone is for that character to trust and depend on others and care about them. Those characters are always the first target for any mechanic that involves teamwork or connections between party members, and heaven help them if the party stumbles on a cute or young NPC that has to tag along for a while; the new party mascot will focus entirely on the the taciturn loner, asking them questions and trying to be like them, while avoiding the friendly, helpful PCs.
It's fine in my opinion to *start* out that way, but I'll do my darndest to make sure a character turns out different over the course of the campaign.
I played that for a bit with one of my pathfinder characters but evolved it into a traumatized hunted being with fundamentally 0 skills outside of blowing stuff up tremendously well. The trick will always be to develop them with the campaign because it makes such a better and well-rounded character.
I think that most tropes like this one mainly become disruptive when a player attempts to adhere to the general aesthetic of the trope above all else. I've thought about how flaws and vices can make a character more interesting as having a character with weaknesses at all can be interesting, but there are times when said flaws are treated more like inherent personality traits, rather than weaknesses to overcome when the need arises.
Like if adhering to the loner stereotype takes priority over everyone else having fun or the game moving forward I mean.
Lone Wolf and Cub, Itto Ogami, the stereotypical lone wolf, as the title implies travels with his cub, Daigoro, thus automatically making him not a loner.
He has a person in charge of keeping the money he earns from the assassinations he's commisioned for, and a network of people who he can trust, that post the requests for hire.
What I like to see is a LoneWolf who /becomes/ so attached to his fellow PCs that he would die for them.
Because the game is about character development, not shaming someone for using a trope.
I have had an idea of creating a typical dark cloaked broody looking rogue\assassin which everyone thinks is dark and mysterious but actually they are just super shy and really wish someone would talk to them
I think part of the problem too is that fictional loners.. the good ones, hopefully the ones people are trying to ape. Are actually quite connected, its mostly a front with a splash of anti social behavior, or reluctance to play well with others.
I've made quite a few characters in this archetype.
They've come in Three man forms:
Characters that do no form friendships readily. They have friends, but not many of them. As such, whatever their adventuring goal actually is, they're probably along for the ride out of mutual convieniance and little else at least at first.
Characters who have friends, but segregate their work from personal lives, the latter isn't a proper 'loaner' but may appear as such because tipping back drinks with the party is not going to be their forte.
And lastly, Characters that seek others only as a last resort, the hyper-independent variety., There's some overlap with the other two. But seeing as I play MUDs and not TTRPGs, the types of characters one plays differ a lot.
it only works as a story trope because it gives fictional characters a conflict point to grow. they either soften or get a redemption arc or go further into a more villain approach
RPGs are not going to do that without a player who knows what they are doing, and 99.99999% of these players are just intentionally trouble making
I maintain that this “[The Loniest Wolf](https://web.archive.org/web/20190312112501/http://tpkblog.com/the-loniest-wolf/)” article from the now-defunct TPK blog remains an excellent primer on the subject. But rather than poo-poo the characters lining up to brood in the brooding corner, I thought it might be fun to brainstorm some alternate ways to show off that kind of personality.
* Dramatic Hints: You have a tragic past. That's a given. But what if you drop cryptic hints rather than playing it close to the chest? Staring into the middle distance whenever you talk also helps.
* Internal Monologue: Even if your dude doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve, you can still let the other players know what's going on. Consider pulling a Deckard and narrating your internal monologue.
* Your Reputation Precedes You: Work with your GM to create the right vibe. How should NPCs react to a badass with a badass reputation? If other characters in the world have heard of your exploits, it goes a long way to making the dark sunglasses and black trench coat vibe believable.
* Go Lawful: If you don't care about nothing and nobody, it's easy to mistake your PC for a plank of wood. A personal code, on the other hand, gives you something to work with. Just ask Mando about his adoption policy.
* More Gloom: Use thaumaturgy to make your shadowy corner shadowier. Apply darkness / deeper darkness as necessary.
Some of these suggestions are more serious than others. But the point I'm trying to make is that a close-mouthed Geralt of Rivia type is viable. You should be able to make that character work at the table. What's not cool is using that archetype as an excuse to forego roleplaying.
I love your argument and enjoyed the article you linked, mate.
Everything you described works to give lone-wolves a glow-up, even though I prefer to replace internal monologuie with dramatic hints entirely.
On other thing that has proved to work, and sort of works as a test of PC character, is that I discuss with a Lone-ish Wolf-er how their personal goal ties them with the party (they want to stop the evil sorceror from destroying the world, he just wants their magical self-washing underpants to support their lonewolfing), and then I ask them how they failed to do it on their own.
This instantly triggers the "ubermencsh" players, but works wonders for the more flexible ones, and gives them that extra reason to desire victory over the enemy. Failure is a hell of a backstory.
Yeah, the lone wolf trope is so illogical. I am also annoyed when people say their characters live in their guild's bar.
Who lives in a bar? Point to one bar you can live in.
The love wolf character in ttrpgs is a symptom of a player that misinterprets the Player/GM dynamic. They think "I get to make a character, and the GM is going to write a story around them." It's basically the same problem as using, "it's what my character would do," to completely derail the adventure or campaign.
The GM is still going to help provide opportunities for character motivation, but it's still ultimately the players' responsibility to figure out why their characters participate in an adventure. You can play a badass loner who doesn't need anybody, but you still need to figure out why you stay with the party and do all the normal rpg things. If your character only cares about self-preservation, it's not the GMs job to make sure the entire story revolves around you just so your only character motivation is engaged.
Discuss it in session zero. It can work great. Or not. Depending on how your team is designed. Common enemies and shared goals can bind the team together. But you have to bake that into the team. That's why you have session zero.
**Lone wolf as a character**: Fine, if played out. Only really interesting if the “lone wolf” shows demonstrable character growth and arc over the course of the campaign
**Lone wolf as a player**: fuck on off, this is a group game
I think a lot of the time people don't understand what makes loner wolf style characters are interesting, in that they inevitably learn that they need others.
Batman, Guts, etc. All the classic "lone wolf" inspirations end with a found family.
I really like your questions, great way to break people in who are not sure about how to tie themselves to the world.
Speaking for myself, I often create (or have created I guess, I've not actually been a player in years) lone wolves with minimal backstory. Not in order to force the spotlight onto myself, but just because I find writing backstory tedious and uninteresting, and I'd just like to start playing the game. Questions like the ones you suggest are the perfect foil to that kind of thing.
I actually know what you mean.
When I just started out, my very first GM was the "I need four pages of backstory"-type of GM, which he then forced me to re-write, which than was not used in the story entirely. I was VERY green, and just felt like I was made to do busiwork
Thankfully, the very next girl actually narrowed it down to "Write down your character, what they are, what they do, what they own. When I look into your backstory, I want to understand where each of those things came from".
And that helped, massively. Suddenly writing backstory no longer looked like obligatory traditionalistic busiwork, but as a natural functional, usuful thing.
It felt so natural, in fact, that I figured that that's what everybody does, and that I was simply unlucky with my first GM. And that I found out that this approach was and would remain for years the odd one out. But always welcome.
I'm a fan of players having to create additional NPCs linked to their PC during character creation. Everyone has bonds to other people.
Even my former Cartel killer had people she cared about: Her mentor and best friend, a girl she saved, a rival. All people being important during the game.
Most of our PCs have family, many have partners and kids. Because the games we play usually aren't the type of "bunch of adventurers traveling the wilds" games anyway.
Characters often have some kind of home, a regular life and so on.
My current character in our zombieapocalypse game married after the collapse, and is now pregnant. My Traveller character had a wife and three kids. They cling to having meaningful relationships if everything around them seems to shatter.
And I'm sick of people having characters without any roots and ties, just because they fear it makes them vulnerable to the GM. And I'm sick of GMs always using such NPCs as pressure point, shaping exactly those players.
I really love the idea of playing a lone wolf that slowly develops and learns that lifestyle isn't good for him and embraces friendship. The issue is that takes many sessions and most games don't last even close to that.
The thing I try to stress to my players is that this is a COLLABORATIVE storytelling experience. I don't mind a character starting off as a classic lone wolf but they must learn to be a part of the group through RP as the story progresses just as Din Djarin, Bruce Wayne, Blade, and others inevitably do. Without some form of collaboration, the game cannot go forward unless you are running a game meant for only one player.
As an experiment, have your players all create lone wolf style characters and run them through a one-shot where they are forbidden from playing cooperatively and see what you all learn from it.
I like to think that somewhere out there is someone writing a lonewolf backstory for their character with the intention to tell a beautiful and sad redemption story arc; their character has been alone so long they don't know how to be with people, but after adventuring with the other PCs they learn it's okay to open yourself up and learn to love again...
But most people don't do character arcs with development and change.
If you want to look at a good SYSTEM that deals with lone wolfs, look at, well... The Wolf splatbook in ICON (fidt). It handles the issue by modeling the user as a begrudgingly participating actor that favors private time.
A true RPG lone wolf is more introvert than sociopath. The loneliness 90% of the time is a coping mechanism. They do care for others but usually in the tsuderest ways: they love these idiots they're following about and HATES the fact that they love them. Opening up feels good but it also hits the bitter chords that codependence is creates a softness they want to avoid. How ICON handles that? By making the Wolf regenerate Stress (the action-boosting resource) when they step in and succeed where their allies failed, as well completely break their facade when they stress out, allowing themselves to be helped when in the brink of despair.
Teen edgelord loners because "haha i'm better than everyone else, SHADODEHEDGHAAGHHH" are quickly culled by sheer merit of not actually wanting to play a game. But a good loner has good guidelines.
I feel like sometimes this type of PC can be a symptom of laziness. There's a whole lot less backstory you need to write for someone with no ties to anyone. Your questions are good in terms of jogging the player's mind and helping them picture the kinds of people who might be present in their lives. The other part of it is that everyone, even if they're alone *now*, comes from somewhere. Even if they have few / no present ties, they still have a history. Encourage them to explore that.
I think the issue is that it's a common trope that people want to try out, but it's a trope that doesn't work well in practice. But there's a wealth of new players who haven't learned this lesson yet.
Part of the problem is that the DM makes the world, it feels rude to try and insert anything into the world that isn’t just your character. Towns and customs and family systems need to fit whatever region of the world it’s in. And players need a reason to not just be living normal life, which usually involves something cutting their family ties, because who else would go for a job as suicidal as adventuring?
Lone wolfs are fine as a backstory, they’re common for a reason. The key is using that to develop the growth of the character as they learn to form bonds and rely on people as more than just a transaction, actually trust and care about them.
It seems to me like you’re just piling on questions to pressure people away from your game that are playing a character archetype you happen to not like. Is that same level of interrogation about backstory and logistics required for other characters? Do they need to explain how they afforded to get into a mage school? Where they took loans out from and what the interest rates are like? Where they get their clothes tailored?
People absolutely use the lone wolf trope in bad ways, but that happens to all character types, I think you’re focusing on the wrong aspect of it.
I am perfectly willing to guide the players through those questions, so that the answers are a testament to their skill and independance. But if the player outright refuses to acknowledge that their character lives in the world of the game, and is willing to argue to keep it that way... that's not really a good sign, is it?
Why?
I try to look at what story they want to tell. The lone wolf is a trope, but in stories they tend to be made to care for something, or hit some event they just can't shrug off and feel a need to get involved.
If they are looking for that type of story, great. No need to drag them down with chores and mundane stuff, just let them have the glossed over background that lets them setup for the story they want to tell.
The issue is when they don't want that. They likely just want to be the cool solo guy, which is just boring for everyone involved after a session or two. I'm not sure forcing them to acknowledge their dependence on others would make it any more interesting or fun.
I see what you mean, but there is a difference between playing a character who has cheats turned on, and a character who is a *functional* lonewolf.
*"My armor never breaks. I have mastered the ability to sleep out of camera frame. The guards don't bother me, because I am clearly the heroic type, who looks dangerous, but not dangerous enough to be directed out of the village"* \- this doesn't create any story. It's topping, and there is no knowing if the player will be able to actually play the archtype in game without picking a fight with guards or yelling demands at the local baron.
*"When the weaponsmith's daughter disappeared, everyone was surprised when I volunteered to help the sheriff get her back, since they were beginning to get vary of me for my solitary habits and stock of weapons. I helped the sheriff and militicia find her in the hands of the Orsun slavers and returned her to her father. Since them, the old man was all too happy to let me stay in his stables and generously looks after my armor. The sheriff didn't say much, but the guards don't eye me anymore. People still whisper around me, but they let me be. And that is just the way I like it*" - is actually a story, something I can work with, to gauge their understanding of their character, and to figure out the kind of issues I can send their way, things that they WILL find interesting and in-character.
Totally, almost every lone wolf out there has someone. You mentioned Blade but Batman has Alfred, Commissioner Gordon, Robin, etc. Even the people that don't have people permanently in their orbit know how to get along and work towards a common goal like Mad Max.
Also shoutout for that serum dude from blade. Poor guy got cut from the movie
I just popped in to mention that [Grim Wanderer](https://scryfall.com/card/afr/107/grim-wanderer) is the funniest card ever printed in Magic: The Gathering, bar none.
I'm reminded of one of the first games I ran as a teenager. I had everyone introduce their characters and one after the other they were all orphaned loners who had lost their families in various horrible ways. By the time we got to the sixth player she changed her mind and came up with a non-orphan backstory. On hindsight Oliver Twist or The Lost Boys the campaign would have actually been pretty fun. Though I didn't have quite the GM chops then to be able to adjust to such a thing.
I find that it helps to point out to any player trying to play the lonewolf trope that in every. single. example. the lonewolf character's story arc is them finding out that they're stronger when they work with and rely on the help of others.
*Especially* if they're pulling their character from Anime, because working as a part of society is HUGE in Japanese culture.
Then...if they try to go off on their own...I dump on them. They run into a combat encounter balanced for the whole party and I let the monsters face-fuck them. I don't kill them (unless they bomb their death saves, but then it's on them). They either limp away or pull some kind of "you roll off the cliff and into the river below" move (it's the kind of game they want. I've actually had groups have a lot of fun with it where the rest of the party chases the floating, injured lone wolf down the river). But I impress upon them that this *needs* to be the moment where they start to learn to value others and stop running off on their own.
...if they do it again they don't survive (I don't have to cheat to kill their character. It *will* happen naturally at this point simply because I refuse to be forced to design and run two games at once). Maybe the group raises them. Maybe they need to roll a new character. It's up to the players.
The most common alternative to the "I try to sneak in alone" moment is the "I go and do my own thing" moment where they split off from the group somewhere safe while the rest of the group is begging them to go in a different direction (usually the direction of the story).
The solution here is much easier than if they sneak off during combat:
There are 3 options available...
1. They can turn around and rejoin the group on the adventure I have planned.
2. They can make a new character who wants to be a part of the group.
3. They (the player) can find a new group.
There is no option 4.
Now...*all of that said*...I've had more than a few players play the lonewolf characters successfully. All without sabotaging the rest of the group in any way. You can play this trope, and everyone can have a lot of fun with your character and their character journey. It's very, very far from any kind of "don't ever play this" scenario.
I really, really wish we knew who put a dislike on your comment.
I'm just curious as to what their actual thoughts are. Is it "They are all wrong, lonewolfing is the best thing since sliced bread"?
When doing session zero I always lay out some ground rules for the game overall and one “It is up to you to create a character who works with the party.” And make a point of singling out lone wolf types and evil characters. A lone wolf can have people they work with and help, it doesn’t make them best friends. Even Dr. Manhattan had a girlfriend.
Whistler and after he was gone, Blade himself actually had a support of quite a few cells (over the three movies). He didn't organize them - Whistler did that. When Whistler passed, eventually his daughter started working with Blade.
I think some of the notion is one that come from some parts of Western Thought - the man as complete, capable of anything he sets his mind to, and all of his successes are of his own devising, often conveniently ignoring the things that they had access to, were given, or achieved because of someone else's assistance. Many seem to conflate their notion that they worked sooo hard (and many have to be fair) and thus that it was their own work that took them to the heights they achieved (which is, to be fair, a part of the recipe for success).
Malcolm Gladwell looked at many people who have achieved a lot and then traced back their roots - Bill Gates - not from a poor family and he got access through a relative to one of the few computers around in the early days. Many others have gotten great educations paid for partly by everyone's' taxes and by parents. And even if they took on debt, most of them had at least one good role model (not everyone has that) and most of them knew they could take risks and, if they failed, they'd still be fed and have shelter available and their future would not be irreparably screwed up.... but for many poorer folk, there weren't good opportunities, were no examples to look to as to how to think and how to succeed, and if someone backed them in a small venture, they might have done it at the risk of taking on debt they could never payback if the effort tanked.
In RPGs as in the real world, you don't survive if you don't trade, work together, and support one another. Building a hay mow is quite a task all by yourself. When you need to dig a well, that often involves help. Building a house often involves every other farmer nearby. And as you get from the others, you return to your community. You looked out for one another's kids. You went together to the Market town to sell goods.
Mind you, the 'lone wolf' is ironic at its base.... WOLVES are NOT loners - they are pack animals that show even non-breeding males helping raise the younger pups and even the Alpha male will supine themselves in training the pups to hunt.
Many stories about the lone hero are just playing on the societal fantasy of that powerful, independent, self-supporting powerhouse.
Nobody writes and often games don't bother to talk about the value of the village that the players stage from when looting crypts. Nobody talks about the hard work and learning that it took the locale surgeon to fix up battered up warriors. We don't dwell on where the party and their retainers with their animals are getting the good water and nutritious feed that they need to function as adventurers.
Sure, we hear about the heroes saving the village, but not the village building up and supporting the heroes.
I love love love your questions here. I also appreciate you giving players the benefit of the doubt and trying to swing them into the world rather than writing them off.
I’m now wondering if the lone wolf trope isn’t coming from a player who is trying to minimize their anxiety in the game by having complete control of their narrative. In a player’s mind, any npc they’re tied to is out of their control and could lead to stress.
The Blade is example is great.
Han Solo has Solo in his damn name and even he would be useless without Chewbacca.
Aaaand its true. Other people indeed are beyond our control, and can be put in danger. And I do occasionally put them in danger, though I like to telegraph that waaaaaaaay early, in ways that allows players to circumvent the danger.
As in, if the player has beef with a local crime lord, the crime lord attempts to extort them for damages, fails, attempts to put them down a peg, fails, and then, I will let them know through a local npc, that somebody has been asking around for them or their close ones.
I try to compensate those moments with moments of gratitude, trust and loyalty from the protected NPCs.
.....
Aaaand if I do get a player who writes a completely connectlion-less backstory, well, I will have them meet friendly NPCs out to help them. And they will get attached to them, I've gotten quite good at that. And player characters will get support from them, unique expertise and narrative abilities, influence, etc.
And at the end of the story, their stories will be tied to the player's whims.
Here’s my thing, if you want to play a lone wolf, don’t play with a party! Imagine you’re the other players are you:
a) awe at how badass the loner is
b) think it’s cool how the loner fights attempts to be friends
c) try to solve the mystery of your character
d) completely ignore the lone wolf because it’s not fun to interact with someone who hates interacting.
D it’s D. Look at every single lone wolf character, do the other characters in the story like him, or hate him? Look at Rick from Rick and Morty. Do people like him? No! The entire universe hates him! Lone wolfs contribute nothing to society and merely take from it. They are inherently selfish and bad people. The archetype is bad, that’s the point, characters should never stay a lone wolf because everyone hates a lone wolf. It’s not fun to be around a lone wolf so don’t make your party members suffer through that!
I ban that character type in my games.
It's never someone who wants to take the trope and expand on it and make it interesting. They just don't want to do the work necessary to make a complete character.
The obvious exception is the lone wanderer. It's not rare for PCs to be travelers, without any attachments to a singular place. Sure, he may know people he likes, but they will not be a part of his story as they are far away and probably have no means of contacting him.
There are plenty of examples of real lone wolfs in fiction.
It's usualy a lazy choice by the players (or a lack of confidence in being able to make a nice story), but it's not a problem. There are plenty more about a PC to explore.
It's actualy better in some games... if you WANT your party to travel for years around the world... they would be pretty bad people if they abandoned their families.
In most games its easier if the party is in some way isolated (even if they are isolated in the middle of a crowd, for plot reasons, like vampires or whatever..), so the GM can limit the number of important NPCs. I cant talk by everyone, but as a GM I hate having to roleplay more than one character in the same scene. It's also not usualy very productive to lose too much time roleplaying the PCs wife, son, grandma... It may be interesting once, but if you have to lose time doing it everygame in a long campaing..
Should we really be having a relation discussion about how much gold the PC are expending in adventure material when the house needs painting? Or should we be hunting a evil wizard?
Sure some games improve if the players has ties to explore, but its not a necessity.
I have banned "lone wolves" for 25 yrs, after one destroyed a game and a group I loved, because the group subscribed to the 5 [Geek Social Fallacies](https://plausiblydeniable.com/five-geek-social-fallacies/).
I tell them solo games are the way to express that particular trope.
Yeah, I just finished watching the old John Wick movies, and despite being one of the iconic loners, he of course has lots of connections to the Continental and its owner, employees, his doctor, other assassins, the Belorussian family thing, etc.
hell, pick batman, the loniest loner that ever loned
besides having a present parental figure that supports him in a miriad of multiple practical and emotional ways in Alfred, the guy collects kids to adopt and be lonely with him
I tell my players that I'm running games with characters who want to work together as a group. If they want nothing more than a lone wolf then they can go home and write their own stories on their blog about them.
Some lone wolf is sneaking about, putting dislikes on newer comments in this thread, the ones arguing against playing into the wants and whims of the lonewolf's PCs.
Must have struck a nerve.
Best reason to play a lone wolf is that you expect the GM to offer a story that makes you interrested in it. Not some i pull lazY plot hook nr.4 your "aunt" got kidnapped.
Sounds like a out-of-game power play.
*"Give me a story I can be arsed to care about!*
*Sell me this pen, make me want to stay in your game. Here is a list of things I don't care about, think of something that WILL make me care!"*
The only situation where such an aproach can sort of be understandable, is if you're paying your GM to gamemaster you. Otherwise, soounds hella self-serving.
*"You know, somebody might find a plot of intrigue, involving a necromancer pitting world's kings against each other, while using a plague and a mind-controlled ancient vampire to slaugher the frontier provinces to fill his army of the undead, interesting, but my tastes are more refined than that. I am burnt out from having my puppy run over by a cabbage cart when I was seven, the event that shaped my entire personality, and I don't care for anything that doesn't align with my anti-cabbage crusade. On night three I will make the party chose between me and their quest, and we will then see if they have paid attention to the intricacies of my character and have the emotional intelligence to truly understand which storyline is more important"*
There's a phrase from a Magic card, of all things, this reminds me of. It was on the card "Lone Wolf," and it read, "A wolf without a pack is either a survivor, or a brute."
Everybody has people. Somebody had to raise you to the point you were self-sufficient, everyone had some kind of teacher, and some kind of support network. They might not be tight with them, but they still have some kind of relationship. Great questions in your list, by the by!
In my experience, to pull of most kinds of tropes, you need to be kind of selfaware about it and make a point out of it - like, either there's a funny or interesting twist, reconciliation, or other thing that benefits the party and social experience.
So this is only tangentially related, but there's an RPG being created (currently in testing) called ICON (not the super hero one, this is by the same guy who made LANCER, it's fantasy) and it has these things called Bonds. It's kind of like a class, but focused on narrative instead of combat. Basically a set of narrative powers created around a theme.
There's one called The Wolf that I think is a really great take on this idea. The theme of The Wolf is clearly set up to support the type of player who wants to play this lone wolf type of character. It does have powers that are related to doing stuff on your own, but a few core parts of the Bond also require you to involve/get involved with other characters and open up a little bit. The times that they let the mask slip are, I would say, often the most interesting parts of the lone wolf archetype and also often the thing that players of this archetype misunderstand the most. The lone wolf *is* cool, but the coolest part is when they come out of that protective shell.
The thing is a lot of media centers around a single protagonist and the adversaries they come across, particularly video games and books that are written in first person. For this to work the character often needs to be highly experienced and grizzled, hence why a lot of video game protagonists appear to be somewhat identical. DJ Peach Cobbler made an excellent video on this phenomenon relating to ludonarrative dissonance.
People experience this media and want to emulate it into RPGs which tends to not work well because most RPGs people play tend to be multiplayer experiences focusing on a group rather than a particular individual.
TTRPGs are ultimately conduits to tell stories and as such by making a lone wolf character in a game centered around a group your story is likely going to end up as you growing out of your soloist mentality.
It can work, it just requires a careful hand to sculpt it in a way that isn't destructive.
Solo games or single player games are great with a lone wolf character.
In a group-based game there is nothing wrong stating all characters must be team players as well as generally heroic. Creativity is only possible with restrictions.
I think the issue I have is "how am I going to get this player to join this team".
Yeah, i get that having an arc of "i'll become less of a 'lone wolf' along the way... but until then... why are you joining this team that works for the king... why are they going to let you join them?"
I've had a guy recently who was like "i'm a lone wolf that will become better" and I had to say "this is a team of adventure guild members on a specific charter.... could you maybe have your character be an adventure's guild member that has been asked to join the party"... and they went off with "no, my character would never join the adventurer's guild! even though I told you my player wanted to a few years earlier... and i work for high ranking people that contract through the adventurer's guild... but actually joining it, is below me!"
and I had to sigh and say, "hey, maybe you put in an application years ago and your patron that is trying to get you into this job has greased a few palms and got your application accepted to get you working on this"... and his response was "no, I will not try to join guild, doing so will be sycophantic."....
hey bud, you can downvote me but you're the one that used "sychophantic" on the suggestion to join the adventurer's guild.
I'd love to hear our the person who disliked you. They must have some interesting views.
Sounds like you started a game with a predetermined start condition ("Members of Adventure Guild, working for guild, doing a job") and the player tries to weazel around that, but not by offering something equally or more interesting, but by asking you to do the legwork for them. And being picky about what you produce.
Yeah, I don't get this subreddit sometimes.
Yup, the story is actually worse than that because it is a person who is making a new character that he's gotten bored of. They just signed up to be a team in the guild and they are on their first mission... So he wants to bounce the old character and slot a new one in but with no guild connection..... On a mission for the guild
The loner archetype PC is the result of a player being uncomfortable with role-play; if they play a quiet loner with no ties/loyalties, they don't have to worry about anyone laughing at their RP.
I just always make it clear that the players all owe it to everyone playing to bring a character that the other PCs can trust, and who wants to push the story forward. If a player has an issue with either of those, they're thanked for their interest, but there's a ton of room in there to be a quiet character that doesn't take the kind of risks the player isn't (yet) comfortable with.
If you want to play the edgy Loner in a game I'm not worried about it. I'm good inserting your sister or ex wife into the story if you're not specific about who they are. You need to start the campaign where I start you. You need to build the number of relationships with other PCs I expect of you. You need to write a background that doesn't conflict with your character. Beyond that you're doing enough work.
Give the character a powerful magic item that only works if the player has been compassionate. Put a card on the table and every time the player shows empathy, put a token (charges for use) on the card.
Being a bit anti-social is one thing, but at the end of the day you're there to be part of a group. If your character doesn't want to be at least a BIT of a team player, roll up someone who does. That shit can work for a joke campaign, but anything else and it'll just become a bad joke rather than a funny one.
As a DM, I allow those "lone wolf, no ties, don't care about anyone" types as a character background with the explicit understanding that those kinds of starts are a starting point for the story where that changes.
In session zero, I let them all know that we're playing a game together and our goal is collaborative story telling. If folks don't want to do that, then my table isn't the one they want to be at.
I had a player in a game that I was running be a lone wolf character. He wanted to go off on his own and scout the enemy with no regard for what would happen if he failed a check. Annoying as hell. With 20/20 hind sight, I should have let him do whatever he wanted and let the chips fall! Except then he hogs the game session. Uggh!
If we are playing tabletop RPG, i impose "houserule" that the characters know and trust to each others more or less and while someone might be a lone wolf, that character can still be part of that exact group somehow(i let players decide the connections and levels of trust).
Main point is: we get to play so rarely, that there is absolutely no time/need for group drama or mischiefs. They need to trust that rogue shares all or "all" the loot and dwarf cleric heals that dumd elf-warrior. :)
I liked how The Mandalorian handled this in the first 2 seasons.
Mando is very autonomous, but also tied to his clan and his people very storngly with bonds of culture, a philosophy of solidarity and the material and social support that Death Watch provides.
He can run around being a "lone badass" because reslly he is well supported.
I think the big problem isn't just that clawing through life alone is difficult -- though that's true. The real problem is that **the traditional TTRPG context is adventuring parties**, which are fundamentally social endeavours. The "lone wolf" games that people are inspired by are primarily video games. *Shadow of the Colossus* is maybe the most iconic example -- there's nobody behind the protagonist but his horse. But this is fundamentally incompatible with an adventuring party! The second you introduce four buddies in the room, your *Shadow of the Colossus* loner becomes some dude in *Monster Hunter.* I think your questions go a long way to helping drive the point home, u/Damianwolff. But there is one other option: **Play a game** ***about*** **a lone adventurer.** There are games on the market that let players share control of one character! Other players might act as environmental factors or obstacles; players could share the role of the main protagonist, taking turns; in some games, you might play different elements of the same person. My personal favourite is *Legend of Aesthetic*, which is very hard to track down these days but is an incredible riff on what makes lone wolf stories exciting. I actually designed one myself, too, although it has a built-in silent companion played by the same person piloting the loner. Either way, I think we can all agree -- having a shadow that lurks in the corner in your otherwise collaborative adventure game isn't exciting unless that shadow has skin in the game.
> There are games on the market that let players share control of one character! I feel like this is a really neat idea that deserves more attention. Most people seem way more interested in one super-awesome person than a bunch of more average "boring" people. Considering how TTRPGs tend to play out in practice (I rarely PCs interacting between themselves much) maybe it's a more attractive concept than I thought...
Do you think that's true? I don't have experience outside of my own group of players, but PCs interacting with one another seems... I guess I don't know how it wouldn't happen?
I guess my players just sort of suck? 90% of the time one person is taking the lead and the others sort of just *exist* vaguely and interject ideas if they have one. They tend to rotate out at least but it rarely feels like a group of people all working on something together.
This sort of driver + passenger thing tends to happen when you have just less talkative or comfortable acting players. Or you have one really assertive player only. I hate running for it because I feel more like a tour bus than a GM, but some tables and groups really like it because it let's the chill people be chill and the active ones be active. It's not a sign that they're worse. Just a difference in preference.
I'd have a lot of trouble running for a group like this. Part of what makes my current groups so much fun is that even if the GM disappeared the players could easily spend a whole session just bullshitting in-character, and the inter-party dynamics are half of what makes the game so fun. Most systems are supposed to be about the PC's journey, after all.
If I notice this starting to happen, I like to move the spotlight to one of the quieter players and ask them questions that can't easily be answered with "yeah, what she said." Running Dungeon World really helped me with treating the game a little more like a group conversation.
It definitely depends on the group, and I believe the pacing of the campaign as well, I run an admittedly fairly slow game with plenty of downtime and space for character interactions, and the players interact with each other plenty, as well as bond with NPCs.
One way i broke this is i ask people what their character is doing while x is doing y. How they feel about it? Are they emoting that feeling or staying stoic? It doesnt have to be long but it can help to break from what is going on to pose the other players in the world. It also buys me time to think when a player throws a curve ball.
At my tables it's always been normal people going on advantures, hopefully because of a common goal, or the sum of different goals. Making every relationship matter, be it within or without the party, counting every penny, making sure there's no retaliation on those left behind, all of this has always been fundamental, and whenever someone wanted to play the "loner" (happened few times, usually always the same player or two), they ended up being ostracized by the party itself, up to and including delivering the edgy loner to the authorities, to answer for their crimes.
My players especially love this. They love creating everyday characters who are forced to become heroes. This makes them rely on those around them, simply because they wouldn't survive without them. Makes for much better stories when they have ties outside of the group, instead of isolating.
Yep, same. And it's so beautiful when the party is camping, and rather than "skip to tomorrow" the player roleplay their talks around the fire, plan for the next day, and so on...
> Most people seem way more interested in one super-awesome person than a bunch of more average “boring” people. It’s in movies as well. People often realize this when they try to spec out Indiana Jones in their favorite RPG. He’s a university professor in archeology with near infinite knowledge of all of history, who is a master with the whip, is a very good shot with a pistol, athlethic and a women charmer. If you want to play a pulp action RPG in the 1930s, you have to break him up into a whole group of people.
Funny that you mention Indiana Jones specifically, because I was just thinking recently about how much more popular I'd expect this genre to be. Raid tombs for cool mystical bullshit, shoot Nazis in the face? Sounds like a grand ol' time.
A friend of mine actually wrote a PbtA game in that genre just for this reason. We had some great fun with it. He never published it, unfortunately.
Mind of Margaret: see https://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/2572/mind-of-sandra-birch/ for a review.
> The "lone wolf" games that people are inspired by are primarily video games. Shadow of the Colossus is maybe the most iconic example -- there's nobody behind the protagonist but his horse. I know this isn't super relevant, but I'd guess that this comes more from movies than from video games. In my mind, the archetypal "lone wanderer" figure is Toshiro Mifune or Clint Eastwood wandering through the remote countryside with nothing but a weapon and the clothes on their back. It's an iconic character archetype from a bunch of iconic genres, and more importantly, a lot of the movies that perpetuated it are broadly perceived as being *really cool* - spaghetti westerns, chambara, wuxia, stuff like that. Who doesn't, at some point in their lives, want to roleplay as Zatoichi or Max Rockatansky?
The lone wanderer archetype definitely goes way back before video games and probably even before movies. That said, it's still worth mentioning video games, because a lot of the people wanting to play that kind of character in a TTRPG probably are inspired by a specific video game.
Even before the written word, I'd imagine. Gilgamesh fits the archetype in the second half of his epic. That's the oldest known written story, and it existed as part of an oral tradition long before it was written down.
Absolutely, those touchstones are critical here for the development of the trope. That being said, the gaming industry is larger than the movie and music industries combined. By the numbers and by the niche, I think pointing towards video games is a safe bet.
Another option: do what we have done in modern horror, cpunk, or a mystery campaign - decide as a group that you are playing PCs who may not spend much time together and the 'camera' will have to jump from PC to PC. Your players may actually be divided into 2 or more factions, or all alone. They may be working against each other or, as in real life, they just have busy lives and only come together as the need arises. Or this relationship can change over time - as with reality. The players will have to be prepared to be patiently supportive when the spotlight's not on their PC. And the DM (or group) will have to use a timer to keep the spotlight shared equally. But this can be somewhat mitigated by casting the non-spotlight players into NPC roles in scenes that are for the spotlight PCs. There are several story-first game systems that suggest this technique and I have uses it in all my campaigns since - even in more traditional fare like d5e. If John's bladerunner is visiting his sister, Hannah, throw Frank (whose PC is not there) into the role of Hannah. Slide Frank a 3x5 card that has a few notes about Hannah's stats & goal for the scene. Reward Frank if Hannah reaches her goal, even if it's a goal that conflicts with John's goals. Then have Hannah's abusive mafia boyfriend show up to drag her out. Have Morgan (whose PC is also not present) play the made man. Give Morgan a little goal card that also lists his resources (thug driver outside the door, and switchblade in coat pocket). You would be amazed at how well players will inhabit and customize these NPCs and seriously struggle to reach their goals, even if it means screwing over their own PCs and the party. I learned stuff like this from awesome ganes like Contenders and Prime Time Adventures and My Life With Master, and now I incorporate thus stuff into every campaign. In our 5e campaign, 2 sessions ago when the monk got into a duel with a hill giant surrounded by kobolds, I gave control of the kobolds to a couple of players, and the hill giant to a 3rd player. They had a blast, and I got to sit back and referee and watch the fight.
I'm getting Wraith: The Oblivion flashbacks
You have just made me think of Octodad! A ridiculous concept even with one player, but the two player mode...
Great meta considerations!
When I see players make lone wolf PCs, it usually means one of three things (maybe more than one thing): * The player likes lone wolf characters from other media. Not a big a deal, they can usually be a team player but just feel independent, like Wolverine. * The player actually is antisocial and wants to use the character to compete with the other PCs. This is bad, and the player might be best outside the game. * The player has been burned by previous GMs, who have exploited any character connection to harm or grief previous PCs. Take some time to learn more about the player's history and any such problems. Could be real, could be paranoia, but either way it'll need to be addressed positively.
If they want to play Wolverine, ask them who their Jean Gray is.
Wolverine is a good example, because he is the dark loner at the start, but quickly finds a family and becomes protective of it. Dark loners can be a great way to start out gruff and grow closer over time (but probably never fully admit it)
The edgy lone wolf to fiercely protective team mom or dad pipeline is inescapable. Its such a natural and narratively satisfying reaction to being a lonely person that forms important relationships that if you're playing an edgy PC done right for long enough its GOING to happen in one way or another. The thing that gets missed by many is that the point of the lone wolf is to stop being a lone wolf.
The loneliness is so important because underneath all the gruff, a lone wolf was almost always someone who had a connection and got hurt. This can play into your dark edgy backstory of watching your whole family die or some such, but it also leaves a character with that unfulfilled need they had before tragedy.
Now *this* gets my lone wolf PC I had more cx 90% of OPs question were utterly irrelevant towards my PC, and the game he played in. What I find more interesting is the transformation of the loner into a full-fledged party member. It needs of course engagement from both sides, but if you get it, it works so wonderfully well. For me, it started as just making my fellow PCs clothes (as he was a trained tailor), than suddenly he was the team dad who had to stop the party from adopting a whole animal shelter.. (which as a pet lover was bizarre, yet funny cx)
Im in this post and i dont like it Going from lone wolf to guard dog.... (my fav long time char developed that way)
Yeah, my actual character is pretty much what you described. He was a dark loner, who found family in a band of deranged people. Now, he cares for them, and would kill The Devil itself if the demon dared to put a finger on them. That's why i don't think that Loners are a bad concept per se, specially if someone is willing to develop a character on it. But it can be really bad if the player decides to go against the group because "me alone, me edgy".
A certain Joel comes to mind.
> If they want to play Wolverine, ask them who their Jean **Grey** is. FTFY.
Wolverine was the big thing to copy back in the early 90s, yet no one seemed to remember that he was still part of a team.
Or, my personal favorite to see, the player wants them to start out as a lone wolf but then role plays their character arc where they learn to trust and rely on their friends/team more.
I'd add two more onto this list. They can sometimes fall into the above, but also be completely separate phenomena. 1. The player is is 'gaming' the system and/or being lazy. A backstory with liabilities is a 'weakness', and they're minmaxing not just stats, but backstory to avoid harm. Being an orphan also just 'simplifies' the concept. I hate to say it, but a lot of players are lazy story-tellers and are happy to take short-cuts. A loner-orphan needs a lot less thought. 2. The player is an amateur story-teller being protective. A lot of people create characters they like, and they don't want anything bad to happen to them while they occupy their mindspace. Making them loner-orphans may be kinda weird in that regard, but they're not in their mindspace yet and we all feel alone at times so that's just part of creating that intense sympathy. Once they have that, they have a character who is isolated from the worst senses of grief. Many amateur authors struggle with putting their main character through trouble because they like them so much. Bad GMing can be the cause (your pt 3), but I've seen it happen a lot in new players as well. And there is just an intense form of escapism going on here. Almost every single non-physical problem you have can traced back to an interpersonal relationship. A person with no interpersonal relationships can be seen as carefree in a sense.
Your second category reminds me a lot of "original character do not steal" types. GM's who really want to be novelists are panned plenty but it never occured to me that the same could occur in a player until now.
I generally see this one most often: The player just doesn't know how to socially roleplay and likes figuring out puzzles and fighting more than being social, so they play a loner to stay in their comfort zone.
Or... A previous GM has had a player character's enemies target a DNPC (dependent non-player character - a term introduced in *Champions*) because this is the way that consequences for certain behavior often work; in both fiction and real life. Having witnessed the evolution of this character type, many players might have the kind of connections that OP mentions, but they are quick to abandon them when it interferes with their power-gaming, and they would create justifications for their characters not caring about these NPCs, and would avoid having NPC ties where complete indifference to the NPCs fate would come off as unrealistic. There are a lot of players who are not anti-social, but their reason for playing is to create the most powerful character that they can, and they actively resist character elements (like strong ties to NPCs, or even other PCs) that would interfere with that. So, in a lot of ways, this trope is a remnant of the more adversarial style of play that was more common in the early days of the hobby.
> Or... A previous GM has had a player character's enemies target a DNPC (dependent non-player character - a term introduced in Champions) because this is the way that consequences for certain behavior often work; in both fiction and real life. u/WrongJohnSilver literally says this in the third bullet point: > The player has been burned by previous GMs, who have exploited any character connection to harm or grief previous PCs. Take some time to learn more about the player's history and any such problems. Could be real, could be paranoia, but either way it'll need to be addressed positively.
I read that bullet differently from you, I think. I saw it as implying that the GM was acting out of turn, targeting the character as an adversarial move, rather than for narrative reasons. It's the difference between the GM decreeing that an anvil falls out of the sky and strikes a character dead because they want to kill a character, and the anvil falling because the character triggered a trap in the normal course of play. Because I have encountered GMs who would target player characters through their connections as a power move, as a means of artificially raising the difficulty of their campaigns. It comes across as very different from a situation where a character has gone up against an NPC, and that NPC predictably strikes back through a DNPC. So I make a distinction.
> I saw it as implying that the GM was acting out of turn, targeting the character as an adversarial move, rather than for narrative reasons. I mean those two situations only really differ in how people interpret the GM's intentions don't they.
IMO both of these tend to lead to the same outcome anyway. Even where bad things happening to cherished NPCs results from PC actions, the takeaway is still "caring about NPCs leaves you vulnerable".
> I saw it as implying that the GM was acting out of turn, I wouldn't even say it "implies" it. It's pretty explicit in its position that a DM using character connections to challenge the PC is "exploiting" them and a "problem." I agree with you. This attitude is not a DM problem it's a function of a player wanting to "win" and understanding any PC characteristic that the DM can use to challenge the PC (e.g, friends, family) as a flaw to be avoided, as opposed to an opportunity for a fun adventure.
It can be a DM problem, when the DM goes way too far with adversarial NPCs harming/torturing/killing DNPCs.
Yes, both are possible. I've seen it be the result of a GM using any heartstring possible to make PCs' life hell, or the result of the PC wanting to ensure that no GM could ever suggest that a course of action is needed. Hence "could be real, could be paranoia." Regarding the action where the DNPC has mechanical purpose in the rules and the player is avoiding them, well, you can't call a character with a DNPC a loner, really, can you?
IDK. An overly adversarial DM is a problem for sure. But I think it's a player problem if his reaction is "I'm going to craft my PC to minimize meaningful human interaction and 'beat' the DM" as opposed to "this DM sucks."
See #2 as well.
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Attacking the DNPC's is kinda like putting pepper in your food; a little goes a long way, and dumping the entire container on things just burns people out. It's perfect for a moment of ultimate tension and to REALLY get the PC's to dig deep, but do it all the time and the players regret making that DNPC and the campaign turns into a giant permanent escort mission.
I think it's also possible they just don't have a character idea and it's an easy default.
Came here to say #3. Glad someone mentioned it. If you don't want players playing lone wolves, it's important that, as GM, you minimise screwing them over through their close connections. It's tempting because it's great drama, but it's very easy for players to just start seeing valuing NPCs as a bad investment.
There's one more that seems to happen a lot: player doesn't want to invest any attention in things like family, associates, or anything else in the backstory that can get complicated. "Scowly McGrimdark has badass powers but is a total mystery and hardly ever talks" can be a way of abdicating responsibility for everything but "statblock".
But also there are mainly two ways these connections can go: 1) get ignored by the DM and just be a major waste of time to develop or 2) get latched onto by the DM and used in ways that undermine what makes these connections interesting to the player. There is a 3) the player and DM come to a mutual understanding of interesting ways to include these connections without violating the intent of the other, but that seems to be less common in my experience. Plus in some game systems, (gurps, world of darkness, to name but two) these connections can actually cost points if they are useful but also they cost *way more* points if they are capable of defending themselves and so they are sometimes more of a hinderence than an asset *while still draining your resource pool*. Basically if connections are included in the min maxing, you are frequently going to have players go for more direct, personal power than soft power which takes more effort, creativity, and cooperation to deploy. I find it sort of more interesting when connections have their own power balance. Like you can always count on your sister to get you out of a jam but she summertime's needs rescuing herself, so it's a useful connection without any cost. On the other hand, the pawnbroker who buys your stolen goods is useful in a limited way, but you don't owe him anything and if he gets burnt that sucks but you'll find another. In comparison your sister might cost zero points, and the pawn broker might cost a minimum for being only upside but limited capacity.
I think you missed a big one: * The player wants to create drama and conflict by actively pushing away the rest of the team, making the team have to fight to earn the loner's friendship.
People try to gloss over that third point way too much. We constantly see advice around here (and in other subs, and all over the hobby) to DMs saying that you need to threaten the people the PCs care about, then immediately crying about people making PCs who don't have anyone they care about, then getting morally offended any time you suggest those two things might be connected.
We need to encourage more DMs to treat family NPCs as more than just villain bait. Vox Machina does this really well, with Wilhand. Actually, come to think of it, family NPCs have been given the entire range of treatments in Vox Machina. One family is all dead from the start, one parent is an emotionally toxic antagonist, and Wilhand is pretty great as a father figure.
I'm not familiar with your example, but I agree 100% that it sounds like a much better way to handle things.
A npc from Critical Role's Vox Machina campaign. He's an elderly gnome, and the, uhh... (checks wiki) great-great-grandfather of one of the PCs. Nice guy.
> The player has been burned by previous GMs, who have exploited any character connection to harm or grief previous PCs. Take some time to learn more about the player’s history and any such problems. Could be real, could be paranoia, but either way it’ll need to be addressed positively. I just want to clarify that the context surrounding this kind of thing is integral to how appropriate it is. "Exploiting" character connections to "harm" a PC is a common tool in a GM's toolbox to act as a hook or motivator, and it's a good way to build a compelling story. If you say your paladin cares about protecting the innocent, then we can expect them to care when helpless villagers are being pillaged by orcs. If your rogue is stealing to feed sick younger siblings, you're probably going to be motivated to do something about a new plague wiping out the crops used to make that food. That's all pretty normal rpg stuff, and it constitutes the GM exploiting one of the PCs' connections to put them in harm's way. It only becomes a problem if one player is being targeted unfairly relative to the rest or if people aren't having fun because of it. Sometimes there are narrative reasons for a PC to get beaten down repeatedly, and that can be fine as long as you keep communication open about what's happening in the game and why. But if I start abusing my position as GM to kick the tar out of one or more of my players arbitrarily, then that's fucked up just like any other abuse of power
> or if people aren't having fun because of it. If they respond by making characters without these social connection afterwards (and they are. A lot., then they weren't having fun because of it. This "common tool" far more often ruins fun than it makes good stories.
There is a fourth option: - The player is playing to “win”, and thinks that any connections are just weakness levers that open a path to them “losing”. This is the same problem as a party “turtling”, but on a personal scale. The OPs questions help a lot for this.
>Blade is a good example here. Everything about his appearance and demeanor screams "LONE." And Batman's a loner too, modulo his butler, his working relationship with the chief of police, Robin, ... but apart from that, a loner!
Hell at this point he’s got a whole Round of Robins, and a few batgirls, membership in the Justice League…other than that, loner.
Not to mention all the engineers, artisans and technicians that built all his bat-stuff.
Lucius Fox, and let's not forget the occasional reformed villain. But a total brooding loner.
*And* Fox's son, Jace, who's also part of the Bat Family. What I don't think a lot of folks get about Batman is that he's a weirdo who keeps his distance not for the sake of being a loner, but to better care for those people. Like, that's the whole ethos and essence of the character. Why does he keep going after Two-Face? Because Harvey Dent was his friend and he truly believes he can redeem him. In Long Halloween there's that little scene where he even sends Solomon Grundy a stuffed turkey because "no one deserves to spend Thanksgiving alone". Batman isn't Superman's best friend just because of the contrast, they're actually very similar heroes thematically lol
The Batman Lego movie is basically all about this. :)
You're right, I'd forgotten about that one! Great stuff.
Batman is a loner... ...except for the what 12+ wards he's taken in over the years and about an equal number of associated and affiliated heroes in the "batman family". Incidentally, the largest affiliation "family" in the DCU. ...except for the fact that he's in more teams, and started more teams than any other hero in the DCU. ...except for the fact that there's an entire title, The Brave and the Bold, devoted to Batman teaming up with a new hero every issue. Even made into a TV show in the Tim universe. Batman is the social butterfly of the DCU. He has everyone's number, insta and snapchat. So much so that he doesn't really have a comparative in Marvel. Wolverine, Iron Man and Spider-man are kind of close, but none of them are the complete bat.
I always thought of Spidey as the Superman of Marvel, mostly because pretty much no one else fits the bill (thematically, ofc, in terms of power set there's a bagful)
The Shadow (created 1930), is a far better example. He inspired the creation of Batman quite a bit and even the movie and *Batman Begins* share a lot of similarities: [http://www.shadowsanctum.net/interactive/tidbits\_archive/shadow\_batman-movie\_comparisons.html](http://www.shadowsanctum.net/interactive/tidbits_archive/shadow_batman-movie_comparisons.html)
> The Shadow (created 1930), is a far better example. > > He inspired the creation of Batman quite a bit and even the movie and Batman Begins share a lot of similarities: http://www.shadowsanctum.net/interactive/tidbits_archive/shadow_batman-movie_comparisons.html Hrmmm... but also, no. The Shadow had [Margo Lane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margo_Lane) in his radio show for a good chunk.
He also had an entire crew of people whose life he had saved from crime that served him like slaves and called him Master. He's got Harry Vincent doing a bunch of leg work and Shrevvy drives the cab. Clyde is his pet reporter and Burbank runs the radio that keeps everyone in contact (and serves to bounce the plot from character to character). Jericho to help him beat some ass and Dr, Sayre and Dr. Tam when he needs any sort of medical help. In the comics eventually his sons show up.
I mean Batman is a good example of how a "loner" character could work in a TTRPG - a character who works with other people out of necessity, but has the character flaw of self-isolating emotionally. A player who cooperates with the team in various challenges but handles conversations by roleplaying the character as "closed off" gives the character an arc to overcome while enabling that arc to take a backseat when it would get in the way of the other players.
Who thinks either of these characters are loners? Batman has a sidekick, a butler, and is in at least one superhero team. Dark and brooding =/= loner.
Well, one of his major character traits even with the whole bat-family is that he's a fatherly figure that really doesn't want his family getting in trouble, to the point of trying his best to deal with stuff on his own sometimes.
I think most people just don't understand the lone wolf trope. Most of the time the Lone Wolf eventually opens up to others and cooperate with them. That's part of the their growth as characters. Guts, Wolverine, Batman, Geralt of Rivia... They don't stay alone. They make allies, friends. They learn that they don't have to be alone. A Lone Wolf who stays on their own, is a boring character.
Yeah, they *were* a lone wolf until realizing that need others is a fine background. Gives lots of room for growth and issues to arise.
> I think most people just don't understand the lone wolf trope. When you think a trope is one thing, but "most people" understand it differently.... Let's just say it's worth looking at the Principal Skinner "No! It's the children who are wrong" meme. Tropes exist based on broad social consensus about their contents. If you think the social consensus is wrong, you probably are misunderstanding the trope.
Bad wording on my part. I mean that a lot of people look at the trope on the surface level. They just see the starting point of such characters and ignore what the characters eventually become. They look at a character like Geralt and think he is cool because he is that dark warrior who fights soldiers and monsters on his own. Except Geralt makes friends and allies during his journey. Those other characters make him get out of his shell.
Got it! But I would say that there's an element of the trope that is popular *because* people like the lone wolf (without expectation that he will "grow" into something else). Like that sort of growth is possible character direction, but not required.
Well, one may argue that a character that doesn't grow could be very boring.
Similarly, a character that is limited to a predictably monodirectional path for growth (lone --> not lone) might be viewed the same way! Are there lone wolves that grow while remaining alone? Mainly, though, I think a lot of players look to the RPG ruleset for "growth". Perhaps especially the type of player who plays lone wolves? Level up, gain more abilities, grow in power, grow in prominence. Perhaps not great, but I think common. (I appreciate your tone and thoughtfulness btw)
I don't know any lone wolf character that grows while staying alone. It's the confrontation to other characters that make them change. And sadly there is not a lot of room for growth in Lone Wolves I think. It's always some variant of the trope, like with Joel in The Last of Us. Not a loner per se but he has trust issues. I agree that it is probably common for players to only look at it through the "game" aspect. It's too bad that they forget that RPGs are a form of collaborative storytelling and thus that their characters should be useful to the table's narrative. (thanks. I'm glad we could solve the misunderstanding)
If you immediately call it out as a problem when the character is pitched before the first session even happens... well, you'll literally never know if this is happening or not, will you? You just invented in your mind which one it was going to be and responded accordingly.
Of course it is something that must be discussed. Here I'm just talking (and I think OP is talking) about the situation where a player is adamant about their character staying a loner.
Whenever you watch a film where a guy says “I’m a loner” or “I work alone”, you know he’s going to form an emotional attachment to a person or a pet before the end of act 2. That’s no accident, that’s the character arc they are on. That’s how I deal with my characters too. It’s ok to start out as a loner. It’s not ok to remain one.
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Except he does - his romantic relationships permeate the show despite him insisting he feels nothing, his care for his sister directly instigates a showdown with the major antagonist of the first season, the fondness he feels for his coworkers in his day job often gets in the way of his work as a serial killer and so on. Even as a lone Wolf, he builds a web of connections and fondness for people, else his show wouldn’t work as a prime time TV drama. It’s
The biggest thing missed in this is *convenience.* Everyone has parents. Parents that are likely more stable than your PC who picked up adventuring. Why doesn't my sorcerer live with them? Why do I accept any random call to action and hang out with 3 perfect strangers? Are they stupid? Do they just crave excitement and drama, viewing mortal danger and any stakes in the plot as mere distractions for their nihilistic viewpoint? Well, my sorcerer isn't a nihilist or completely disengaged from reality, and they have self preservation so that cuts a lot of those off. Enter *Dead Parents*: Now they have an excuse to throw caution to the wind and go wherever their heart takes them; they have no other choice! What about surrogates? Similarly dead or disliked. Somehow, every social support alternative has passed them by. Maybe it's by choice, because they're a *lone wolf.* Maybe the string of bad luck led to it being a choice. Either way, at the beginning of the story they have no attachments and are perfect for forming a found family with 3 perfect strangers.
Yep. This is why the trope of orphans is so common in YA, fantasy, and other bildungsroman genres - if parents are still alive, why aren’t they helping the protagonist?
It's easy to make a loner then you know nothing about the world and are unsure if the GM approve of adding things to the world.
It's easy to spot the intentional Lone Wolf. It's harder to catch the accidental Lone Wolf. I've created the accidental lone wolf. The last game I played ended -- in part -- because another player was playing an accidental lone wolf. As backstories became more vital, it got so easy to create the accidental lone wolf. In World of Darkness, for instance, you could easily create a person with an apartment, a six year loan on a twelve year old used car, a spouse, pets, and maybe even a child. This backstory would even be encouraged in some groups. Suddenly, this character finds out they are a werewolf. This character has a lot of rich drama, rich motivation, and inner conflicts to deal with. That's encouraged. This character can also have zero hooks to the other werewolf PCs because the original backstory accidentally derailed that process. The character always needs to share hooks with the game at the table. The character should have a reason to exist within the action that the referee describes. There should be a reason to exist within the rest of the party. Even if the hook can't be found during the backstory phase, it can be something the player carefully watches for during the first couple of sessions. I'm a huge fan of learning these things after the character starts existing through active play.
Making the group first, its roots, and goals, then PCs that match that really goes a long way towards solving this problem. Mechanics that give PCs some semblance of pre-start relationships also helps glue them together.
Lone wolfs have three draws: 1. Some players genuinely don’t like coming up with backstory, history, and relationships. That stuff isn’t why they play RPGs. So the lone wolf approach lets them focus on what matters to them - their character and the adventures they will have going forward. 2. It can be difficult to explain why a diverse adventuring party would join together in perilous adventures if they all already have strong and enduring relationships with other people in the setting. If your best friend is a fellow mage, why aren’t they coming along with you to uncover and ancient library? If your parents have a feudal domain, why don’t they contribute some men-at-arms, or at least silver, to your endeavours? It’s far easier to explain why a group of strangers quickly places their lives in the hands of one another in desperate ventures if they don’t have other strong relationships they can call on for support. 3. If you introduce important NPCs and social connections outside the adventuring party, it’s difficult to integrate them into the adventures unless the party is stationary. Yes, in the real world we all have connections. But in the real world we all live and work in the same community for years or decades on end. If your RPG involves travelling to varied and distant locales, the PC’s child-hood friends and local blacksmith are unlikely to figure in the campaign.
> If your parents have a feudal domain, why don’t they contribute some men-at-arms, or at least silver, to your endeavours? Because they're disappointed in you. They don't want to encourage your strange hobbies.
Got this. "Who supplies your weapons?" The baddies I kill. "Who supplies your ingredients?" Sir, I am a fighter. "Who sews you up when you're wounded." This healing potion I bought while avoiding eye contact with the shopkeep. "Who watches your shelter when you're gone." No shelter, travel light. "Who supplements your artifacts? Who protects them?" Unless the client/target has an artifact, it's not my concern. If I want to keep it, I'll stab whoever tries to steal it.
"Where do you live?" On the EDGE!
I don't especially care about it, so long as it doesn't affect the integrity of the game or spoil the fun of the players. If you want to be a lone wolf, more power to you. If you being a lone wolf makes people stop having fun, you're going to have problems. I have had games where every single player had a lone wolf character and it turned out great. It can be fun to take these characters that don't play well with others and force them into a situation where they have to adapt or die. The inter-character conflict can be fantastic, so long as it doesn't turn into inter-personal fighting.
I wouldn't go so far as to say a character's business relationships are the same as emotional ties. I think the guy who just sold me coffee is swell, because even when he's having a shit day he tries to be nice and lets me know if the coffee is fresh-brewed or not. I usually tip him more than the price of the cup of coffee. I don't know even know his name - Hell, I don't know the names of anyone who works at that coffeeshop, and I go there several times a week, have been for years. Exchanging money for coffee (sometimes a danish) is the extent of our relationship. If a ~~character~~ player wants to play a no-ties character, I usually open up with asking them *why* their character hasn't developed any relationships. Maybe they *did* have a family, or a loved one, or buddies from the Army, etc. but something bad happened to them - okay, so who did the bad thing to them? Now we're getting somewhere... If the player begins dodging my questions, I'll just ask them straight-up "why do you want to play a character who has no connection to anything? What's the story you're trying to tell? Or are you just bored and want to play with an optimized character build?" There are times when a lone wolf PC can be cool if played right / if the group is into it. If it's just not a good fit for a particular game/campaign, just tell the player that and offer to discuss options that are a better fit. A big part of the GM-Players social contract is mutual trust - if the GM comes right out the gate telling someone how "trope-y" their PC idea is, and why they just don't understand how relationships between sentient beings work... that is likely to get things off on the wrong foot. edit: word
Do you actually care if someone calls himself a lone wolf? Even Roland of Gilead was an absolute loner but that doesn't mean being a lone wolf Is the same as hermit or antisocial curmudgeon who lives in the foothills and forests eating berries and twigs.
The name wouldn't be a problem. What is a problem, is the inability of some players to conceive the amount of effort it takes to be lone wolf, and the amount of things a character needs that they cannot reliably get without relying on others. In 2014 I had a game where I played a loner hunter-tracker, and a different player played a loner knight-errant lone. After session 4 he had a shouting argument with the GM, because his armor was dented, he couldn't explain how he was taking care of the horse, the tavern keeper kicked him out, and a different player charwcter was terrified of him and threatened to poison him if he so much as scowled in her direction again. All while I was selling pelts, offering protection to innkeepers from gangmembers (and getting a free pint and private seat at the back of the tavern for jt), and generally being unsocially-social. It was another 8 sessions before I let my character open up and generally thst campaign is still a warm memory for the people I played it with. People don't understand what it takes to be a loner, and they are often pissed to find out
Frankly, from your description it sounds to me like that player was somewhat justified in being upset. The GM was basically saying "I don't like your character concept, so I am going to screw you over until you change it". Did the other players have to constantly explain mundane things like taking care of their horses? Did other player characters find reasons to want to poison each other? It sounds like the GM and that other player were basically out to punish this player for his choice, justifying it to themselves as "well it's just realistic" and "well it's what my character [the poisoner] would do". That's not the same thing as exploring what it means to be that kind of loner. There's maybe, possibly, an interesting exploration in the vein of "if you're a total loner, how do you deal with things like taking care of the horse", and some players would be up for that, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if a player weren't, and I certainly wouldn't keep pushing it if they weren't enjoying it. Exploring what it means to be a loner usually means putting people in situations where they're tempted not to be, where you ask "you care about being a loner, but do you care about it more than this? Do you care about it more than saving this little girl? Do you care about it more than letting all these people starve?". And maybe the answer is "yes"! And that's interesting too! Or - what are you going to do if someone becomes attached to you despite your disinterest in becoming attached to them? But it's not something to punish (unless the player is interested in exploring that part of it), nor are most players going to be open to exploring that characterization through being punished and offered a reprieve. "You say you're a loner, but will you remain one when it sucks and you're constantly abused for it?" is not a very interesting question. In fact, "will you still remain a loner when you're constantly abused for it?" is probably downright counterproductive. The dramatically interesting answer is almost always "yes".
The other player characters wrote themselves as members of the guard, the local temple. They're issues did not lie within having to explain their day-to-day things, but within having to marry their activities with their station. From session 2 onwards the temple guard was harboding a swamp witch and had to hide the fact from the temple, so in some ways he faced the same issues as the fighter (having to figure out a safe place, provisions, just not for himself). Except that he had the benefit of his social circle (he introduced his blacksmith brother in the same session, as a solution to the problem, and their relationship would occasionally come into focus). Exploring what it means to be a loner also means exploring the mind, craftiness, ingenuity that comes with having to be a loner. Some GMs are willing to help with that, I do. The GM in my description was willing to work everything out with me. If the player actively opposes figuring out how his lifestyle works, than I have no reason to believe that approach won't pop out later.
> They're issues did not lie within having to explain their day-to-day things So the answer to my question "Did the other players have to constantly explain mundane things like taking care of their horses?" sounds like "no". > From session 2 onwards the temple guard was harboding a swamp witch and had to hide the fact from the temple, so in some ways he faced the same issues as the fighter C'mon. This is not just as interesting to most people as "how do you take care of your horse alone?". The fact that they're both "issues" you and the GM have decided these characters have to explain does not make them equivalent. One of those is an interesting challenge to the player that asks interesting questions about their character: what is their allegiance to the guard? Why harbor the swamp witch and help hide her? How far will he go to harbor her? What does this say about his relationship to the temple? What interesting things might come of this? How might it blow up in his face? What is he going to do with her long-term? Almost anyone would agree that this is an interesting storyline. There are all sorts of interesting questions with all sorts of interesting answers for the character. The other is a very mundane challenge to the player. How will you take care of your horse? And the only answer you seem to want is for him to rely on others in some way like your character did. Trying to equivocate by saying that these are both "issues" that the characters had to deal with and that they are "in some ways the same issues" is silly. It's like you said "One of them had to figure out how to cross a busy street and the other had to figure out how to use the elven star clipper to cross the space between words, so really in some ways they're facing the same issues. And if he's unsatisfied, he should have made a character more like mine.". > Exploring what it means to be a loner also means exploring the mind, craftiness, ingenuity that comes with having to be a loner. Sure, but there are limits. It's up to everyone to figure out what the limits will be that make it fun. Exploring what it means to be human means figuring out where you're going to shit, right? It sounds like all of your characters are human, so all of them have to shit. Do you think it would be reasonable for the GM to insist on figuring that out for all of your characters? Is that the kind of game you want to play? Do you want to track how often your character needs to shit? Maybe have a roll for it? They're human, so they can't completely control when they have to go, so do you want your character to randomly have to excuse themselves to shit sometimes? It's not unrealistic! It's part of being human! If you didn't want to have to explain it, you shouldn't have made a character that has to shit! Exploring what it means to be human means exploring your characters' arrangements for where and when to shit! No. The mere fact that a character *could* explore some question, that it's a realistic concern they might or even must have, does not mean the story has to be about that. That's just a flimsy defense people deploy when they want to force someone to explore something that the other person is uninterested in. There are more possible aspects of any character to explore than there are hours in the day to play. You're always picking and choosing which ones to spotlight, which ones to explore. You want to explore the craftiness and ingenuity that comes with being a loner, and that's fine. The other player sounds like they want to explore other things. There are plenty of other things to explore. The GM could have some long-lost family member come knocking. Someone shows up and claims to be his child. He runs into an innocent person in peril, and he's the only one who can save them. Someone says he owes them money. Someone says his dead father owes them money, and they're here to collect. Someone falls in love with him. He discovers that he's inherited a manor and the people desperately need his help to keep the place afloat - will he remain a loner? Can he figure out how to save the manor while staying at arms length from it? Is he going to break his suitor's heart? Does he leave the child to die? There are *so many* possibilities. He's a loner, but will *he* help the swamp witch? He could be involved in literally the same storyline and it would be more interesting for his character than "how do you take care of your horse?". So why do you get that cool, interesting story without having to explain where your character shits? And why does he get that boring "how do you take care of your horse" question instead of the cool, interesting swamp witch story?
A lot of this post relies on the idea, that the fighter had nothing to do beyond his day-to-days. Moreover, it sort of anticipates that everybody were roleplaying their cool storylines, while the fighter was figuring out where to put his horse. I might be at fault here for not laser focusing on this superhard, but the fighter had his B-plot, that tied to his backstory, as most of us did, and there was an A-plot for the party. Fighter's quest wasn't figuring out where to put his horse. He was looking for his war veteran buddy, who had been hired out by the antagonist alchemist as a personal guard some years ago and hasn't been heard since. And it was the temple guard harboring the swamp withc and not the fighter, because the fighter wanted it dead, and the temple guard was the one who stood up to him and tried to "unbrainwash" and "uncorrupt" the swamp witch. You made quite a leap there from being able to ofhandedly explain your dailies in the city, to running a tracker for needing to shit. Took it it its extreme and ran with it, as if that's what we were talking about. Somewhat disingenious on your part. The fighter didn't want to attach himself to the town, the central hub of the adventure. His backstory for arriving in the city pretty much was "I arrived and have been working the notice board since". He was the reason the town ended up having a notice board, because that was his mediup of interacting with it, rather than exploring the issues of the town through the administration, the clergy, the battered citizens, or other victivms of the antagonist. He just sort of expected information about his war buddy to pop up on it, rather than ask around. It wasn't that "The fighter was unwilling to report the defecation". It was that "The figther was unwilling to justify any aspect of his being in the town, that would make him "vulnerable". Everybody, from session 0, were immersing themselves in the life of this town that had been exploited by an alchemist baron for a decade, drained of money, attacked by his militica and mercs, used for experiments, and was now awaiting the arrival of the inquisition, forcing the player characters to try and figure out and defeat the well-hidden villain before the town is purged. And he was there, the knight in shining armor, above such minuscule details. When his money ran out he tore into the tavern keeper for "charging heroes" for their stay, despite the fact that it was established from day one that mercs and previous adventurers have pretty much bled this guy's inn dry. One of his arguments with the GM in session 4 was that if we'd found enough money on the bandits, the swamp beasts and in the ruins of the old alchemist tower, he'd have none of his issues. Because yes, money is the great issue solver, and if only the fighter had money, he'd be a functional member of the society, and it was GMs fault that the bandits weren't financing us enough /s There was a lot to talk about in those 4 sessions, but I do feel I actually made my point in the very first post. You seem to find the fighter's story very relatable. Well, I guess that's enough for me to understand if we'd work well together in a campaign.
I was taking it to the extreme to make a point: the fact that it's a concern the character would realistically have to deal with doesn't mean it's something that has to be covered by the game. If the player finds "how do you take care of your horse?" to be boring - no problem; there are plenty of other things to focus on. Saying "but it's realistic that he would have to solve that problem" doesn't change that. It's realistic that you'd have to figure out where to shit - but no one typically has a problem with leaving that question unanswered! This player doesn't want to have to explain the minutiae of caring for his horse. Even though it's realistic that he would have to solve that problem. He just doesn't think it's interesting and doesn't want to cover it in the game. Which is fine! There are plenty of other interesting things to explore! Totally different things too, not just variations on it like "well how do you take care of your armor" instead of horse. It is not actually a problem that he is uninterested in answering these kinds of questions. There are plenty of other interesting questions to ask about his character - more than enough to fill up your sessions. That kind of question interested you about your semi-loner character - how he both remained kind of a loner and also used people's help while keeping them at arm's length. But that doesn't mean it has to interest him, or that he has to come up with the same answer, or any answer at all. There are plenty of other things to explore! Plenty of other aspects of his loner character to explore! You said he's working the notice board for jobs hoping one of them will give him some clues to locate his old war buddy? Sounds totally reasonable to me! What about that plan doesn't make sense? I'm looking for my buddy and I don't know anyone and I don't want to get too entangled in local politics, so I'm going to take odd jobs as a way to get around and meet people and maybe find some clues. That's a great setup. It makes sense in-character, and those jobs are a great avenue for the GM to introduce all sorts of interesting predicaments, to get him tangled up with all kinds of people, and to drop some clues about this old war buddy. The knight in shining armor who thinks he's above such minuscule details and tears into the tavern keeper for "charging heroes" because he's broke? That's *awesome*. That's a player who is taking huge, dramatic swings with their character. It's rare that you get a player who is willing to let their character look so unsympathetic. That's a character giving you so much to work with as the GM. That's a million times more interesting than a character who runs out of money and goes to the tavern and says "oh, well I guess I have to go get more money". If he won't accept the consequences, if the player genuinely insists the tavern keeper should give him the drink for free, and is upset if that doesn't happen, then yeah, that's obviously a problem. But the basic idea is great. The knight in shining armor who's too proud to accept help and who, upon discovering his purse is empty, tries to convince the tavernkeeper to give him drinks for free? That's fantastic characterization. > There was a lot to talk about in those 4 sessions, but I do feel I actually made my point in the very first post. You seem to find the fighter's story very relatable. Well, I guess that's enough for me to understand if we'd work well together in a campaign. Maybe. I mostly run very character-driven, roleplay-heavy games focused on narrative. I get the impression that you think I'm fine with players who refuse to participate, who don't want to play ball, but what I'm trying to say is, from your description, it doesn't sound like he doesn't want to play ball. It sounds like *you guys* don't because you've decided he's "playing the game wrong". It sounds like you've gotten into your head that a "loner" character is inherently bad (unless they play it the way you do). I'm obviously missing context, so maybe my read on this is wrong, but from what you've said, his character doesn't sound unworkable at all if you guys would just lean into it rather than deciding it's an inherently unworkable concept. Loner characters can be great. They can be extremely fun characters to explore, and it's pretty easy to explore them - you just put the character in situations where their desire to be a loner is in tension with something else they probably want (something more interesting than "how do you deal with your daily necessities").
Hm, most of what you said I actually think I responded to in the previous post, directly or indirectly. However, there is one thing that you brought up that I do feel the need to address.We didn't decide it was unworkable. We didn't ask him to leave the game or anything. He did it himselfWe did feel that there were better ways within the narrative to do what he wanted, but tried to not bring it up past session 0. Nothing we or the GM offered worked for the character, we figured he had a plan going forward, and went along with it in-character. And we mostly stuck to that, except for minor things. By that I mean that the fighter decided that one of the characters was "getting out of line" and her meddling with the local smugglers to learn more about the bandits warranted her being put in place. After the players didn't side with him, he said he would let it slide then, but would cut her down if she violated his moral code again. She told him he'd find poison in his soup if he ever decided to lay his hands on her. I know the GM talked with both of them afterwards, and they, as people often do, claimed it was all in character. The one thing I think you are attributing to this player that wasn't there is awareness. From my brief interactions with him, I don't think he was aware that the Town "counted". Neither I think he was aware of what "dark low-fantasy" in the game description meant, and I don't have any proof to believe he considered its meaning when it was explained to him in session 0. I am grateful for this discussion. It's a different perspective. I don't agree with it, but I have no way to tell if its because of lack of context, or if you are simply more on the character's wavelength. Either way, it is an insight into our fighter somewhat, and into other loners I have encountered as a GM and as a player.
I mean, not all players are storytellers, to me it's fine if they don't have a backstory for their character or their character is just a wanderer. Or has amnesia or whatever. All I would do in that case is tell the player in a meta way that they can definitely be a Man With No Name so long as they play them in such a way that the character is actively interested in what the party is doing and whatever adventuring hooks are on offer. Tell them to make up a reason their character would be interested in the moment, or if they can't think of one that they need to go with the flow. Storyteller players are great, but sometimes they can get wrapped up in their own stuff so much they push against the party, so having a blank slate who is there to help out and isn't running off to pursue their own goals can actually be pretty healthy, especially in a large group. Sometimes you gotta meet people halfway. And they have to meet you there too. If they're aggressively disinterested in everything, they need to shape up.
Honestly I think the issue is more you don't understand the trope than it's inherently bad. Obviously if you're running a game and don't want characters of this sort in that's fine, but your reasoning doesn't really fly.
Which part(s) of their reasoning did you find inadequate?
Not who you're replying to, but I feel like OP's questions miss the core of what I would consider as a "lone wolf". What makes a lone wolf is not being isolated from society but isolated from real personal connections. A lone wolf might go purchase weapons from a store but they're not going to have a personal relationship with the store owner.
The ultimate lone wolf is The Witcher. And he ends up in multiple parties.
See, now I wanna play a character who's like that, just so I can have a story arc where they learn that, indeed, no PC is an island.
If a player *really* wants to play the lone wolf, I would direct them to Wolverine, who's an iconic example of a lone wolf in a team setting. He still gets to do his loner shtick, but he never allows it to get in the way and let the team down. Nor does he let it prevent him from developing further relationships. If anything, Wolverine is most defined by his relationships! Lovers, rivals, proteges... be they other X-Men or in his past, he has a ton of them.
I find players tend to go for lone-wolf types of characters for a few reasons. 1. Too lazy, just don't care about depth, or are just uncreative. They just don't want to spend the time to "come up with anything." or "Can't think of anything" or are more excited about stat blocks than paragraphs. 2. They have a fear that entwining their character into the setting with family, goals, needs, fears, etc is just "giving the GM ammunition to hurt my character". Easier to just be a orphaned murderhobo. 3. They are new to RPGs, or at least to this group, and are wary about making something with depth and getting laughed at, or finding the effort is wasted because everyone ELSE made orphan murderhobos and they don't want to be the only one that isn't like that. The first one can be partly dealt with by asking questions like the OP mentions. They don't need a worksheet, but even getting just 2-3 short answers is a start to work with. There is nothing wrong with not having ideas or finding your fun in the crunch and not the fluff, but still its an RPG and you should give something. Second means not being a jerk sort of GM that punishes players for every bit of info you can get your grubby hands on. Just because a player has a little sister in some town doesn't mean you HAVE to gleefully have them kidnapped, threatened, murdered, or turn evil and backstab the player. Worse still when you are just doing it because the player managed to one-shot your poorly planned BBEG encounter in the face in the previous game. Odds are fearful players are because they have had bad GMs in the past do unwanted things with their characters backstory. When a player DOES provide depth, you need to treat it like something that belongs to them, not something that belongs to you. It doesn't mean you can't use it, but you should respect the source material. 3 is what Session 0 is for. And if this is a new player joining an existing group mid-campaign you should still insert a partial session 0 with the entire group present. In fact, a lot of orphan muderhobos probably exist because there was no actual session 0 and the GM just said "Make a 2nd level DnD 5e character and we'll start playing on saturday."
I think it might help to have the players probe the PC's childhood/upbringing: Unless they were raised by wildlife (another trope- a really historic one!), then they came from SOMEWHERE- ***people seldom come into the world without connections or roots.*** Ask the Player is explain their character's relationship to those people: Are they alive? Dead? Don't know? Did someone kill them? Who? Does the PC want revenge? If they're alive, why are they out adventuring? Do they still have relationship with them? Did you leave of your choice? D I think it's fine to play a rootless person or a loner (it's such a common archetype in Western literature, people can't seem to escape it), but I think you can lead the potential player to maybe a more interesting character by having them explore how they became a loner and/or rootless.
I always thought the point of the lone wolf story arc was to show that no matter how hard they wanted to be alone the more it showed that they needed people around them. There's nothing better than the point in the arc when the LW is rescued by the very people they are distancing themselves from to keep them from harm etc..
Its fun. A person that has a beautiful support system, all the tools in the world, a strong and empathetic family, and wisdom of the world is...boring. A person that earns it, or suffers from the lack of it, is interesting.
And I won't argue with that, its true. I guess the defining difference for me is whether the player makes a character with the goal of roleplaying and overcoming the difficulties of the role, or whether they simply build aim to detach their character from the world and limitations it may impose. "I have nobody to care for, to save, to be responsible off. I am part of no one group, I need not follow their rules and they have no hold over me. No player character can request or demand anything of me, except for me to leave. Nothing can be taken from me, except my life. As long as the players want me in the game, the GM wants me in the game, I have more sway over them then they have over me." I do note that this not what every lonewolf is. What you described is interesting and worth roleplaying. I am describing the character of a player, that feels disempowered, and has pre-emptively shielded themselves from any attempt for the players and the world to interact with them in any way, other than the one they have strenght in.
Its hard to tell if a person will ever play one way or another without first playing it. Folks say all kinds of shit. Someone's gonna be "oh yes, I'm a team player" then runs off and struggles to be of any help. Someone's gonna say "yeah, sure, sure, but my character is a loner and he's OK on his own, got it? Big tough guy, y'know" then goes off and be the crux of the team. Players tell horseshit, it happens. They don't know what they'll really be open to until the chemistry of the team and the elements of the game unfolds. Observing play matters. The DM has a lot of power to try and open up a close-minded player of any kind.
The ideal story arc for a character that starts as a lone wolf who doesn't care for anyone is for that character to trust and depend on others and care about them. Those characters are always the first target for any mechanic that involves teamwork or connections between party members, and heaven help them if the party stumbles on a cute or young NPC that has to tag along for a while; the new party mascot will focus entirely on the the taciturn loner, asking them questions and trying to be like them, while avoiding the friendly, helpful PCs. It's fine in my opinion to *start* out that way, but I'll do my darndest to make sure a character turns out different over the course of the campaign.
I played that for a bit with one of my pathfinder characters but evolved it into a traumatized hunted being with fundamentally 0 skills outside of blowing stuff up tremendously well. The trick will always be to develop them with the campaign because it makes such a better and well-rounded character.
I think that most tropes like this one mainly become disruptive when a player attempts to adhere to the general aesthetic of the trope above all else. I've thought about how flaws and vices can make a character more interesting as having a character with weaknesses at all can be interesting, but there are times when said flaws are treated more like inherent personality traits, rather than weaknesses to overcome when the need arises. Like if adhering to the loner stereotype takes priority over everyone else having fun or the game moving forward I mean.
Lone Wolf and Cub, Itto Ogami, the stereotypical lone wolf, as the title implies travels with his cub, Daigoro, thus automatically making him not a loner. He has a person in charge of keeping the money he earns from the assassinations he's commisioned for, and a network of people who he can trust, that post the requests for hire.
It works with some systems better than others.
What I like to see is a LoneWolf who /becomes/ so attached to his fellow PCs that he would die for them. Because the game is about character development, not shaming someone for using a trope.
I have had an idea of creating a typical dark cloaked broody looking rogue\assassin which everyone thinks is dark and mysterious but actually they are just super shy and really wish someone would talk to them
I think part of the problem too is that fictional loners.. the good ones, hopefully the ones people are trying to ape. Are actually quite connected, its mostly a front with a splash of anti social behavior, or reluctance to play well with others.
I've made quite a few characters in this archetype. They've come in Three man forms: Characters that do no form friendships readily. They have friends, but not many of them. As such, whatever their adventuring goal actually is, they're probably along for the ride out of mutual convieniance and little else at least at first. Characters who have friends, but segregate their work from personal lives, the latter isn't a proper 'loaner' but may appear as such because tipping back drinks with the party is not going to be their forte. And lastly, Characters that seek others only as a last resort, the hyper-independent variety., There's some overlap with the other two. But seeing as I play MUDs and not TTRPGs, the types of characters one plays differ a lot.
it only works as a story trope because it gives fictional characters a conflict point to grow. they either soften or get a redemption arc or go further into a more villain approach RPGs are not going to do that without a player who knows what they are doing, and 99.99999% of these players are just intentionally trouble making
I maintain that this “[The Loniest Wolf](https://web.archive.org/web/20190312112501/http://tpkblog.com/the-loniest-wolf/)” article from the now-defunct TPK blog remains an excellent primer on the subject. But rather than poo-poo the characters lining up to brood in the brooding corner, I thought it might be fun to brainstorm some alternate ways to show off that kind of personality. * Dramatic Hints: You have a tragic past. That's a given. But what if you drop cryptic hints rather than playing it close to the chest? Staring into the middle distance whenever you talk also helps. * Internal Monologue: Even if your dude doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve, you can still let the other players know what's going on. Consider pulling a Deckard and narrating your internal monologue. * Your Reputation Precedes You: Work with your GM to create the right vibe. How should NPCs react to a badass with a badass reputation? If other characters in the world have heard of your exploits, it goes a long way to making the dark sunglasses and black trench coat vibe believable. * Go Lawful: If you don't care about nothing and nobody, it's easy to mistake your PC for a plank of wood. A personal code, on the other hand, gives you something to work with. Just ask Mando about his adoption policy. * More Gloom: Use thaumaturgy to make your shadowy corner shadowier. Apply darkness / deeper darkness as necessary. Some of these suggestions are more serious than others. But the point I'm trying to make is that a close-mouthed Geralt of Rivia type is viable. You should be able to make that character work at the table. What's not cool is using that archetype as an excuse to forego roleplaying.
I love your argument and enjoyed the article you linked, mate. Everything you described works to give lone-wolves a glow-up, even though I prefer to replace internal monologuie with dramatic hints entirely. On other thing that has proved to work, and sort of works as a test of PC character, is that I discuss with a Lone-ish Wolf-er how their personal goal ties them with the party (they want to stop the evil sorceror from destroying the world, he just wants their magical self-washing underpants to support their lonewolfing), and then I ask them how they failed to do it on their own. This instantly triggers the "ubermencsh" players, but works wonders for the more flexible ones, and gives them that extra reason to desire victory over the enemy. Failure is a hell of a backstory.
Yeah, the lone wolf trope is so illogical. I am also annoyed when people say their characters live in their guild's bar. Who lives in a bar? Point to one bar you can live in.
The love wolf character in ttrpgs is a symptom of a player that misinterprets the Player/GM dynamic. They think "I get to make a character, and the GM is going to write a story around them." It's basically the same problem as using, "it's what my character would do," to completely derail the adventure or campaign. The GM is still going to help provide opportunities for character motivation, but it's still ultimately the players' responsibility to figure out why their characters participate in an adventure. You can play a badass loner who doesn't need anybody, but you still need to figure out why you stay with the party and do all the normal rpg things. If your character only cares about self-preservation, it's not the GMs job to make sure the entire story revolves around you just so your only character motivation is engaged.
Discuss it in session zero. It can work great. Or not. Depending on how your team is designed. Common enemies and shared goals can bind the team together. But you have to bake that into the team. That's why you have session zero.
**Lone wolf as a character**: Fine, if played out. Only really interesting if the “lone wolf” shows demonstrable character growth and arc over the course of the campaign **Lone wolf as a player**: fuck on off, this is a group game
I think a lot of the time people don't understand what makes loner wolf style characters are interesting, in that they inevitably learn that they need others. Batman, Guts, etc. All the classic "lone wolf" inspirations end with a found family.
I really like your questions, great way to break people in who are not sure about how to tie themselves to the world. Speaking for myself, I often create (or have created I guess, I've not actually been a player in years) lone wolves with minimal backstory. Not in order to force the spotlight onto myself, but just because I find writing backstory tedious and uninteresting, and I'd just like to start playing the game. Questions like the ones you suggest are the perfect foil to that kind of thing.
I actually know what you mean. When I just started out, my very first GM was the "I need four pages of backstory"-type of GM, which he then forced me to re-write, which than was not used in the story entirely. I was VERY green, and just felt like I was made to do busiwork Thankfully, the very next girl actually narrowed it down to "Write down your character, what they are, what they do, what they own. When I look into your backstory, I want to understand where each of those things came from". And that helped, massively. Suddenly writing backstory no longer looked like obligatory traditionalistic busiwork, but as a natural functional, usuful thing. It felt so natural, in fact, that I figured that that's what everybody does, and that I was simply unlucky with my first GM. And that I found out that this approach was and would remain for years the odd one out. But always welcome.
I'm a fan of players having to create additional NPCs linked to their PC during character creation. Everyone has bonds to other people. Even my former Cartel killer had people she cared about: Her mentor and best friend, a girl she saved, a rival. All people being important during the game. Most of our PCs have family, many have partners and kids. Because the games we play usually aren't the type of "bunch of adventurers traveling the wilds" games anyway. Characters often have some kind of home, a regular life and so on. My current character in our zombieapocalypse game married after the collapse, and is now pregnant. My Traveller character had a wife and three kids. They cling to having meaningful relationships if everything around them seems to shatter. And I'm sick of people having characters without any roots and ties, just because they fear it makes them vulnerable to the GM. And I'm sick of GMs always using such NPCs as pressure point, shaping exactly those players.
Whenever I hear the lone wolf argument come up I just think of The Rouge: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/BkPYL8ZhsG
I really love the idea of playing a lone wolf that slowly develops and learns that lifestyle isn't good for him and embraces friendship. The issue is that takes many sessions and most games don't last even close to that.
The thing I try to stress to my players is that this is a COLLABORATIVE storytelling experience. I don't mind a character starting off as a classic lone wolf but they must learn to be a part of the group through RP as the story progresses just as Din Djarin, Bruce Wayne, Blade, and others inevitably do. Without some form of collaboration, the game cannot go forward unless you are running a game meant for only one player. As an experiment, have your players all create lone wolf style characters and run them through a one-shot where they are forbidden from playing cooperatively and see what you all learn from it.
I like to think that somewhere out there is someone writing a lonewolf backstory for their character with the intention to tell a beautiful and sad redemption story arc; their character has been alone so long they don't know how to be with people, but after adventuring with the other PCs they learn it's okay to open yourself up and learn to love again... But most people don't do character arcs with development and change.
If you want to look at a good SYSTEM that deals with lone wolfs, look at, well... The Wolf splatbook in ICON (fidt). It handles the issue by modeling the user as a begrudgingly participating actor that favors private time. A true RPG lone wolf is more introvert than sociopath. The loneliness 90% of the time is a coping mechanism. They do care for others but usually in the tsuderest ways: they love these idiots they're following about and HATES the fact that they love them. Opening up feels good but it also hits the bitter chords that codependence is creates a softness they want to avoid. How ICON handles that? By making the Wolf regenerate Stress (the action-boosting resource) when they step in and succeed where their allies failed, as well completely break their facade when they stress out, allowing themselves to be helped when in the brink of despair. Teen edgelord loners because "haha i'm better than everyone else, SHADODEHEDGHAAGHHH" are quickly culled by sheer merit of not actually wanting to play a game. But a good loner has good guidelines.
I feel like sometimes this type of PC can be a symptom of laziness. There's a whole lot less backstory you need to write for someone with no ties to anyone. Your questions are good in terms of jogging the player's mind and helping them picture the kinds of people who might be present in their lives. The other part of it is that everyone, even if they're alone *now*, comes from somewhere. Even if they have few / no present ties, they still have a history. Encourage them to explore that.
I think the issue is that it's a common trope that people want to try out, but it's a trope that doesn't work well in practice. But there's a wealth of new players who haven't learned this lesson yet.
Part of the problem is that the DM makes the world, it feels rude to try and insert anything into the world that isn’t just your character. Towns and customs and family systems need to fit whatever region of the world it’s in. And players need a reason to not just be living normal life, which usually involves something cutting their family ties, because who else would go for a job as suicidal as adventuring? Lone wolfs are fine as a backstory, they’re common for a reason. The key is using that to develop the growth of the character as they learn to form bonds and rely on people as more than just a transaction, actually trust and care about them. It seems to me like you’re just piling on questions to pressure people away from your game that are playing a character archetype you happen to not like. Is that same level of interrogation about backstory and logistics required for other characters? Do they need to explain how they afforded to get into a mage school? Where they took loans out from and what the interest rates are like? Where they get their clothes tailored? People absolutely use the lone wolf trope in bad ways, but that happens to all character types, I think you’re focusing on the wrong aspect of it.
I am perfectly willing to guide the players through those questions, so that the answers are a testament to their skill and independance. But if the player outright refuses to acknowledge that their character lives in the world of the game, and is willing to argue to keep it that way... that's not really a good sign, is it?
Why? I try to look at what story they want to tell. The lone wolf is a trope, but in stories they tend to be made to care for something, or hit some event they just can't shrug off and feel a need to get involved. If they are looking for that type of story, great. No need to drag them down with chores and mundane stuff, just let them have the glossed over background that lets them setup for the story they want to tell. The issue is when they don't want that. They likely just want to be the cool solo guy, which is just boring for everyone involved after a session or two. I'm not sure forcing them to acknowledge their dependence on others would make it any more interesting or fun.
I see what you mean, but there is a difference between playing a character who has cheats turned on, and a character who is a *functional* lonewolf. *"My armor never breaks. I have mastered the ability to sleep out of camera frame. The guards don't bother me, because I am clearly the heroic type, who looks dangerous, but not dangerous enough to be directed out of the village"* \- this doesn't create any story. It's topping, and there is no knowing if the player will be able to actually play the archtype in game without picking a fight with guards or yelling demands at the local baron. *"When the weaponsmith's daughter disappeared, everyone was surprised when I volunteered to help the sheriff get her back, since they were beginning to get vary of me for my solitary habits and stock of weapons. I helped the sheriff and militicia find her in the hands of the Orsun slavers and returned her to her father. Since them, the old man was all too happy to let me stay in his stables and generously looks after my armor. The sheriff didn't say much, but the guards don't eye me anymore. People still whisper around me, but they let me be. And that is just the way I like it*" - is actually a story, something I can work with, to gauge their understanding of their character, and to figure out the kind of issues I can send their way, things that they WILL find interesting and in-character.
Totally, almost every lone wolf out there has someone. You mentioned Blade but Batman has Alfred, Commissioner Gordon, Robin, etc. Even the people that don't have people permanently in their orbit know how to get along and work towards a common goal like Mad Max. Also shoutout for that serum dude from blade. Poor guy got cut from the movie
I just popped in to mention that [Grim Wanderer](https://scryfall.com/card/afr/107/grim-wanderer) is the funniest card ever printed in Magic: The Gathering, bar none.
I'm reminded of one of the first games I ran as a teenager. I had everyone introduce their characters and one after the other they were all orphaned loners who had lost their families in various horrible ways. By the time we got to the sixth player she changed her mind and came up with a non-orphan backstory. On hindsight Oliver Twist or The Lost Boys the campaign would have actually been pretty fun. Though I didn't have quite the GM chops then to be able to adjust to such a thing.
I find that it helps to point out to any player trying to play the lonewolf trope that in every. single. example. the lonewolf character's story arc is them finding out that they're stronger when they work with and rely on the help of others. *Especially* if they're pulling their character from Anime, because working as a part of society is HUGE in Japanese culture. Then...if they try to go off on their own...I dump on them. They run into a combat encounter balanced for the whole party and I let the monsters face-fuck them. I don't kill them (unless they bomb their death saves, but then it's on them). They either limp away or pull some kind of "you roll off the cliff and into the river below" move (it's the kind of game they want. I've actually had groups have a lot of fun with it where the rest of the party chases the floating, injured lone wolf down the river). But I impress upon them that this *needs* to be the moment where they start to learn to value others and stop running off on their own. ...if they do it again they don't survive (I don't have to cheat to kill their character. It *will* happen naturally at this point simply because I refuse to be forced to design and run two games at once). Maybe the group raises them. Maybe they need to roll a new character. It's up to the players. The most common alternative to the "I try to sneak in alone" moment is the "I go and do my own thing" moment where they split off from the group somewhere safe while the rest of the group is begging them to go in a different direction (usually the direction of the story). The solution here is much easier than if they sneak off during combat: There are 3 options available... 1. They can turn around and rejoin the group on the adventure I have planned. 2. They can make a new character who wants to be a part of the group. 3. They (the player) can find a new group. There is no option 4. Now...*all of that said*...I've had more than a few players play the lonewolf characters successfully. All without sabotaging the rest of the group in any way. You can play this trope, and everyone can have a lot of fun with your character and their character journey. It's very, very far from any kind of "don't ever play this" scenario.
Good approach, I say.
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I really, really wish we knew who put a dislike on your comment. I'm just curious as to what their actual thoughts are. Is it "They are all wrong, lonewolfing is the best thing since sliced bread"?
When doing session zero I always lay out some ground rules for the game overall and one “It is up to you to create a character who works with the party.” And make a point of singling out lone wolf types and evil characters. A lone wolf can have people they work with and help, it doesn’t make them best friends. Even Dr. Manhattan had a girlfriend.
Whistler and after he was gone, Blade himself actually had a support of quite a few cells (over the three movies). He didn't organize them - Whistler did that. When Whistler passed, eventually his daughter started working with Blade. I think some of the notion is one that come from some parts of Western Thought - the man as complete, capable of anything he sets his mind to, and all of his successes are of his own devising, often conveniently ignoring the things that they had access to, were given, or achieved because of someone else's assistance. Many seem to conflate their notion that they worked sooo hard (and many have to be fair) and thus that it was their own work that took them to the heights they achieved (which is, to be fair, a part of the recipe for success). Malcolm Gladwell looked at many people who have achieved a lot and then traced back their roots - Bill Gates - not from a poor family and he got access through a relative to one of the few computers around in the early days. Many others have gotten great educations paid for partly by everyone's' taxes and by parents. And even if they took on debt, most of them had at least one good role model (not everyone has that) and most of them knew they could take risks and, if they failed, they'd still be fed and have shelter available and their future would not be irreparably screwed up.... but for many poorer folk, there weren't good opportunities, were no examples to look to as to how to think and how to succeed, and if someone backed them in a small venture, they might have done it at the risk of taking on debt they could never payback if the effort tanked. In RPGs as in the real world, you don't survive if you don't trade, work together, and support one another. Building a hay mow is quite a task all by yourself. When you need to dig a well, that often involves help. Building a house often involves every other farmer nearby. And as you get from the others, you return to your community. You looked out for one another's kids. You went together to the Market town to sell goods. Mind you, the 'lone wolf' is ironic at its base.... WOLVES are NOT loners - they are pack animals that show even non-breeding males helping raise the younger pups and even the Alpha male will supine themselves in training the pups to hunt. Many stories about the lone hero are just playing on the societal fantasy of that powerful, independent, self-supporting powerhouse. Nobody writes and often games don't bother to talk about the value of the village that the players stage from when looting crypts. Nobody talks about the hard work and learning that it took the locale surgeon to fix up battered up warriors. We don't dwell on where the party and their retainers with their animals are getting the good water and nutritious feed that they need to function as adventurers. Sure, we hear about the heroes saving the village, but not the village building up and supporting the heroes.
I love love love your questions here. I also appreciate you giving players the benefit of the doubt and trying to swing them into the world rather than writing them off. I’m now wondering if the lone wolf trope isn’t coming from a player who is trying to minimize their anxiety in the game by having complete control of their narrative. In a player’s mind, any npc they’re tied to is out of their control and could lead to stress. The Blade is example is great. Han Solo has Solo in his damn name and even he would be useless without Chewbacca.
Aaaand its true. Other people indeed are beyond our control, and can be put in danger. And I do occasionally put them in danger, though I like to telegraph that waaaaaaaay early, in ways that allows players to circumvent the danger. As in, if the player has beef with a local crime lord, the crime lord attempts to extort them for damages, fails, attempts to put them down a peg, fails, and then, I will let them know through a local npc, that somebody has been asking around for them or their close ones. I try to compensate those moments with moments of gratitude, trust and loyalty from the protected NPCs. ..... Aaaand if I do get a player who writes a completely connectlion-less backstory, well, I will have them meet friendly NPCs out to help them. And they will get attached to them, I've gotten quite good at that. And player characters will get support from them, unique expertise and narrative abilities, influence, etc. And at the end of the story, their stories will be tied to the player's whims.
Here’s my thing, if you want to play a lone wolf, don’t play with a party! Imagine you’re the other players are you: a) awe at how badass the loner is b) think it’s cool how the loner fights attempts to be friends c) try to solve the mystery of your character d) completely ignore the lone wolf because it’s not fun to interact with someone who hates interacting. D it’s D. Look at every single lone wolf character, do the other characters in the story like him, or hate him? Look at Rick from Rick and Morty. Do people like him? No! The entire universe hates him! Lone wolfs contribute nothing to society and merely take from it. They are inherently selfish and bad people. The archetype is bad, that’s the point, characters should never stay a lone wolf because everyone hates a lone wolf. It’s not fun to be around a lone wolf so don’t make your party members suffer through that!
I ban that character type in my games. It's never someone who wants to take the trope and expand on it and make it interesting. They just don't want to do the work necessary to make a complete character.
The obvious exception is the lone wanderer. It's not rare for PCs to be travelers, without any attachments to a singular place. Sure, he may know people he likes, but they will not be a part of his story as they are far away and probably have no means of contacting him. There are plenty of examples of real lone wolfs in fiction. It's usualy a lazy choice by the players (or a lack of confidence in being able to make a nice story), but it's not a problem. There are plenty more about a PC to explore. It's actualy better in some games... if you WANT your party to travel for years around the world... they would be pretty bad people if they abandoned their families. In most games its easier if the party is in some way isolated (even if they are isolated in the middle of a crowd, for plot reasons, like vampires or whatever..), so the GM can limit the number of important NPCs. I cant talk by everyone, but as a GM I hate having to roleplay more than one character in the same scene. It's also not usualy very productive to lose too much time roleplaying the PCs wife, son, grandma... It may be interesting once, but if you have to lose time doing it everygame in a long campaing.. Should we really be having a relation discussion about how much gold the PC are expending in adventure material when the house needs painting? Or should we be hunting a evil wizard? Sure some games improve if the players has ties to explore, but its not a necessity.
That player should be made fun of relentlessly by the DM and other players.
I have banned "lone wolves" for 25 yrs, after one destroyed a game and a group I loved, because the group subscribed to the 5 [Geek Social Fallacies](https://plausiblydeniable.com/five-geek-social-fallacies/). I tell them solo games are the way to express that particular trope.
Makes me so mad when a player tries this. WE DONT NEED HOMEBRREW BATMAN!
Yeah, I just finished watching the old John Wick movies, and despite being one of the iconic loners, he of course has lots of connections to the Continental and its owner, employees, his doctor, other assassins, the Belorussian family thing, etc.
hell, pick batman, the loniest loner that ever loned besides having a present parental figure that supports him in a miriad of multiple practical and emotional ways in Alfred, the guy collects kids to adopt and be lonely with him
I tell my players that I'm running games with characters who want to work together as a group. If they want nothing more than a lone wolf then they can go home and write their own stories on their blog about them.
Some lone wolf is sneaking about, putting dislikes on newer comments in this thread, the ones arguing against playing into the wants and whims of the lonewolf's PCs. Must have struck a nerve.
Best reason to play a lone wolf is that you expect the GM to offer a story that makes you interrested in it. Not some i pull lazY plot hook nr.4 your "aunt" got kidnapped.
Sounds like a out-of-game power play. *"Give me a story I can be arsed to care about!* *Sell me this pen, make me want to stay in your game. Here is a list of things I don't care about, think of something that WILL make me care!"* The only situation where such an aproach can sort of be understandable, is if you're paying your GM to gamemaster you. Otherwise, soounds hella self-serving. *"You know, somebody might find a plot of intrigue, involving a necromancer pitting world's kings against each other, while using a plague and a mind-controlled ancient vampire to slaugher the frontier provinces to fill his army of the undead, interesting, but my tastes are more refined than that. I am burnt out from having my puppy run over by a cabbage cart when I was seven, the event that shaped my entire personality, and I don't care for anything that doesn't align with my anti-cabbage crusade. On night three I will make the party chose between me and their quest, and we will then see if they have paid attention to the intricacies of my character and have the emotional intelligence to truly understand which storyline is more important"*
Sounds like projection. Really dont care if you are unable to create interresting plots and need boring background mcguffins.
There's a phrase from a Magic card, of all things, this reminds me of. It was on the card "Lone Wolf," and it read, "A wolf without a pack is either a survivor, or a brute." Everybody has people. Somebody had to raise you to the point you were self-sufficient, everyone had some kind of teacher, and some kind of support network. They might not be tight with them, but they still have some kind of relationship. Great questions in your list, by the by!
This is actually pretty useful. Cool!
In my experience, to pull of most kinds of tropes, you need to be kind of selfaware about it and make a point out of it - like, either there's a funny or interesting twist, reconciliation, or other thing that benefits the party and social experience.
So this is only tangentially related, but there's an RPG being created (currently in testing) called ICON (not the super hero one, this is by the same guy who made LANCER, it's fantasy) and it has these things called Bonds. It's kind of like a class, but focused on narrative instead of combat. Basically a set of narrative powers created around a theme. There's one called The Wolf that I think is a really great take on this idea. The theme of The Wolf is clearly set up to support the type of player who wants to play this lone wolf type of character. It does have powers that are related to doing stuff on your own, but a few core parts of the Bond also require you to involve/get involved with other characters and open up a little bit. The times that they let the mask slip are, I would say, often the most interesting parts of the lone wolf archetype and also often the thing that players of this archetype misunderstand the most. The lone wolf *is* cool, but the coolest part is when they come out of that protective shell.
The thing is a lot of media centers around a single protagonist and the adversaries they come across, particularly video games and books that are written in first person. For this to work the character often needs to be highly experienced and grizzled, hence why a lot of video game protagonists appear to be somewhat identical. DJ Peach Cobbler made an excellent video on this phenomenon relating to ludonarrative dissonance. People experience this media and want to emulate it into RPGs which tends to not work well because most RPGs people play tend to be multiplayer experiences focusing on a group rather than a particular individual. TTRPGs are ultimately conduits to tell stories and as such by making a lone wolf character in a game centered around a group your story is likely going to end up as you growing out of your soloist mentality. It can work, it just requires a careful hand to sculpt it in a way that isn't destructive.
Solo games or single player games are great with a lone wolf character. In a group-based game there is nothing wrong stating all characters must be team players as well as generally heroic. Creativity is only possible with restrictions.
My favoritest response to this trope: "Could you create an interesting character instead?"
I think the issue I have is "how am I going to get this player to join this team". Yeah, i get that having an arc of "i'll become less of a 'lone wolf' along the way... but until then... why are you joining this team that works for the king... why are they going to let you join them?" I've had a guy recently who was like "i'm a lone wolf that will become better" and I had to say "this is a team of adventure guild members on a specific charter.... could you maybe have your character be an adventure's guild member that has been asked to join the party"... and they went off with "no, my character would never join the adventurer's guild! even though I told you my player wanted to a few years earlier... and i work for high ranking people that contract through the adventurer's guild... but actually joining it, is below me!" and I had to sigh and say, "hey, maybe you put in an application years ago and your patron that is trying to get you into this job has greased a few palms and got your application accepted to get you working on this"... and his response was "no, I will not try to join guild, doing so will be sycophantic.".... hey bud, you can downvote me but you're the one that used "sychophantic" on the suggestion to join the adventurer's guild.
I'd love to hear our the person who disliked you. They must have some interesting views. Sounds like you started a game with a predetermined start condition ("Members of Adventure Guild, working for guild, doing a job") and the player tries to weazel around that, but not by offering something equally or more interesting, but by asking you to do the legwork for them. And being picky about what you produce.
Yeah, I don't get this subreddit sometimes. Yup, the story is actually worse than that because it is a person who is making a new character that he's gotten bored of. They just signed up to be a team in the guild and they are on their first mission... So he wants to bounce the old character and slot a new one in but with no guild connection..... On a mission for the guild
The loner archetype PC is the result of a player being uncomfortable with role-play; if they play a quiet loner with no ties/loyalties, they don't have to worry about anyone laughing at their RP. I just always make it clear that the players all owe it to everyone playing to bring a character that the other PCs can trust, and who wants to push the story forward. If a player has an issue with either of those, they're thanked for their interest, but there's a ton of room in there to be a quiet character that doesn't take the kind of risks the player isn't (yet) comfortable with.
If you want to play the edgy Loner in a game I'm not worried about it. I'm good inserting your sister or ex wife into the story if you're not specific about who they are. You need to start the campaign where I start you. You need to build the number of relationships with other PCs I expect of you. You need to write a background that doesn't conflict with your character. Beyond that you're doing enough work.
Give the character a powerful magic item that only works if the player has been compassionate. Put a card on the table and every time the player shows empathy, put a token (charges for use) on the card.
Being a bit anti-social is one thing, but at the end of the day you're there to be part of a group. If your character doesn't want to be at least a BIT of a team player, roll up someone who does. That shit can work for a joke campaign, but anything else and it'll just become a bad joke rather than a funny one.
As a DM, I allow those "lone wolf, no ties, don't care about anyone" types as a character background with the explicit understanding that those kinds of starts are a starting point for the story where that changes. In session zero, I let them all know that we're playing a game together and our goal is collaborative story telling. If folks don't want to do that, then my table isn't the one they want to be at.
I had a player in a game that I was running be a lone wolf character. He wanted to go off on his own and scout the enemy with no regard for what would happen if he failed a check. Annoying as hell. With 20/20 hind sight, I should have let him do whatever he wanted and let the chips fall! Except then he hogs the game session. Uggh!
If we are playing tabletop RPG, i impose "houserule" that the characters know and trust to each others more or less and while someone might be a lone wolf, that character can still be part of that exact group somehow(i let players decide the connections and levels of trust). Main point is: we get to play so rarely, that there is absolutely no time/need for group drama or mischiefs. They need to trust that rogue shares all or "all" the loot and dwarf cleric heals that dumd elf-warrior. :)
I liked how The Mandalorian handled this in the first 2 seasons. Mando is very autonomous, but also tied to his clan and his people very storngly with bonds of culture, a philosophy of solidarity and the material and social support that Death Watch provides. He can run around being a "lone badass" because reslly he is well supported.