Idea: You’re On The Same Team!

probablyrpgmechanicsideas:

So, I’ve been seeing a lot of talk of DMs complaining about “Alpha gamers,” the tabletop gamers who pride themselves on being the best player in some way: highest DPS, best healer, etc.

Fortunately, there are some easy ways to reduce this activity: by forcing the individual PCs to regard that they’re a team and, thus, forcing them to act like they’re a team.

Some ideas:

• Mutual Puzzle: Think something along the lines of Crash: Twinsanity or Legend of Zelda: Tri-Force Heroes. Set up puzzles that require the players to work together, affecting each others’ paths and possibilities through their own actions.
• Cooperative Combat: Make up different attack types that could only be done with two or more individuals working together. Like, a simultaneous attack from the ground and the sky by means of a small character climbing up a medium or large character’s back, jumping up, and striking down as the med/large one attacks from ground-level. Then design encounters that could only be harmed or defeated with these teamwork attacks. For the sky-ground attack example, maybe a knight who’s nigh-invincible due to an automatically aiming shield… but that shield only knows what to do against one attacker at a time.
• ‘Til Kingdom Come: For a more expansive campaign idea, have your PCs start as the leaders of kingdoms, religions, etc. Have their societies be like characters, where the stats could represent details of the entire society or the stats of a basic member of the society. The societies don’t have “experience,” they level up and grow by gold and “influence.” There are various ways to gain influence, but the most efficient ways (or the ways that don’t require getting on another PC’s bad side) is to join up into alliances, merging two PCs’ societies.

 … Happy gaming~!