If you're part of the Wednesday night group I run, go away. Really, go away.

Ok, now that they're gone, last night was my first time running an online game and if I'm honest with myself it didn't go as well as I had hoped.

First, I thought I had expressed my desire to create characters together and work out stories. When I asked for a high concept from everyone, I was read two page histories of their characters, with almost no way for them to be tied together. I would have asked them to start from scratch, but it was quite obvious that they had their hearts set on playing the characters they had already created. What was worse, when it came time to figure out backstories and figure out how to get everyone together, why they stay together etc., NO ONE but me and one other person shared any ideas and he stopped, because it was obvious no one wanted to change or add to their background. Honestly, they just didn't care.

I don't want to put this on them entirely. When they asked me what kind of characters they should make I told them to make the type of character they'd like to play. I followed that up with, but I want to spend time working out backstories that somehow hold you guys together. They had no interest in this last part.

It also became obvious that at least one player was annoyed with another from the get go. I even got an email today about it. I'm not a counselor. I have no desire to work out people's personal issues. If it's a game or rules thing then by all means let's talk. I'm a grown up. I handle my own problems I expect others to handle theirs.

Here's the thing, after character creation I had fun and I think most of the players did as well, even though it was a pretty light adventure. It seems as if they all want to come back. So I got that right anyway.

Please, if you have any advice, I'll gladly take it. I think most of this was due to a group of total strangers getting together and my inexperience online.

I know you mentioned that you wanted to try and figure out how the group came together after the characters were made, but I'd suggest that if you gave them the ability to choose how the group came together, to tell them to keep that in mind in the first place (with specific details of what they're all heading off to do and why) when generating their characters. It's easier to work backwards and make something that leads to a set end point, than to just make the stand-alones and then try and piece them together that way.

Alternatively, depending on how important the reason for them being together is, it could be suitable to just say they just happened to be together. Doesn't take too much. Like with the Benginner's Game - premise is everyone made Teemo mad, and now they're all working together to get away. They're pretty much brought together by necessity, and circumstances keep them together until they ideally decide for themselves to stick together.

In regards to the player not liking another player. It might just be a normal thing - different people coming together and trying to get used to cooperating/having fun with somebody they normally wouldn't. Best bet is to tell the person to just try and get along, or you'll have to kick them out.

I gave my group the same sort of freedom, but we did all our char gen together. So I ended up with two BH (one assassin and a Gadgeteer), an E/BGH, a Col/Pol and an outlaw tech/Doc.

I saw this as a combat heavy party, and to a certain extent it has been, but we enjoy all of the other stuff too, so we are moving away from the fight/loot/fight and violence solves everything mentality.

When it came time to put the party together, I ran Under a Black Sun (free dl on edge support page), and had them all hired by the Pyke family and assigned to each other. It was a similar solution to the BBox set up.

That solved that problem and got the ball rolling. After that, I looked at their obligations and started to draw parallels or possible links between them. The easiest example is the two OBs of my tech and Pol.

The tech had obligation based on the idea that he had been hired to slice a hutt's servers and acquire sensitive information. Ultimately he wasn't caught, but he was found out, and it was only a matter of time before they found him physically.

The Politico had helped a group of his Toydarian brethren liberate themselves from the same Hutt (I decided it was the same Hutt), but flight information on the smuggling operation was still stored on said Hutt's shuttle.

To top it all off, I decided that the Pyke family had hired the tech, AND had aided in the toydarian liberation. Thus, the two PCs "owed" them, and Bam, we started their adventure. I linked Debts to Pay to UaBS, and made the Hutt the same Hutt that the PCs had wronged, giving them a great espionage encounter while they were hired to go to Gavos. It was tense.

Anyways, people are people and don't always get along, but it was only session zero, so whoever writes emails about it should just try and give it a shot. They may become besties.

Sadly, party dynamics don't just exist for the PCs, and it can be the GMs job to hand hold a little. We have all had to deal with problem players from time to time. I'm sure if you give some specifics, plenty of posters here could help you deal with it, but if your group frequents these forums, perhaps you shouldn't, as you risk alienating your players.

Hope all of this helps!

Easiest way to start off is say you're all waiting at the spaceport for your contact and milling around whether having purchased a takeaway meal to eat whilst you're waiting or bought a caf to drink and maybe checking out a news release on either a datapad or a view screen inside the spaceport intended to provide information and pr for the local government.

So... ask each player in turn to introduce themselves and then explain to you why they're there.

Be willing to turn darkside destiny points if they come up with a good introduction especially if they involve part of the previous player's introduction so they have a reason to have met and spoken to each other for some reason.

That part is probably worth mentioning in advance.

Whoever owns the ship should be made clear that they need crew and getting a job would be easier if they got the help of the others... that's if they haven't already agreed with another player to serve as their Chewie...

Worst case scenario I can imagine would be if their character backgrounds are so counter to each other that it would turn into a bar room brawl which has happened to me but that's because they read everybody else's character sheets and wasn't interested in gaming at the time...

So are you able to post what their backgrounds are if we can help tie them together?

Or would it be better to private post someone you know instead if you don't want your players finding out?

Copperbell has some good advice.

My games usually start in 2 camps. Either the players know each other (sometimes because I told them they do), or they don't and the first session is largely around gathering the party and then throwing them into the plot at the very end.

Gathering the party is very difficult, especially if the players are mostly reacting to what you are giving them. It's difficulty to give general advice because it's very different from campaign to campaign. The best advice I can give you is focus on one player at first, and think about how you can have him meetup with the second player, then have them meetup with the third. Eventually the party will be formed.

The biggest piece of advice I can give to you is to tell your players that Metagaming can sometimes be okay. Shocking, I know. If a player doesn't think their character would stick around in a group, then the player should find some way of justifying it. Everyone wants to play wolverine, but his character archetype is terrible for RPGs (generally speaking).

I threw my guys in prison. That's where they met. All sorts of folks from different backgrounds....

Put them all on the same ship and then crash it into a remote, deserted planet that has a smoke monster and a polar bear on it. They can then spend the next six years figuring out how their backstories actually are connected and how none of it matters.

Like people have said, you can either have the group be connected from the get-go, or have them all meet in the game itself. The latter can be pretty hard to do if your group isn't roleplaying well, and you often get the uncomfortable "well my character just wouldn't like this other character so why would they work together." Generally, that's a pretty hard party dynamic to manage. One thing I like is the History/Bonds from Apocalypse World and Dungeon World. They work by giving players lines like "____ is weak but I'll make him strong" to fill in with the other PC names, and which you can then ask them why that is the case.

I think you could do something similar by Taking the player's Obligation and Motivation and making lines like that for each of them. Addiction could be "when I really need a fix, I can always go to _____." Motivation of Droids Rights could be "I know I can trust ____ after what he did for that droid," which you can follow up by asking what he did for the droid. If the players refuse to be forthcoming with suggestions, feel free to assign your own things. Hell, make a game of it and just randomly throw out bonds to different players and have them come up with explanations for them. You could go with that, or even create more generic bonds and have the players apply them to other characters based on how they interacted in their first game.

Also, here's a general rule for roleplaying games. No one gives a **** what happened to your character in the past, beyond how it affects the present. That two pages of backstory is useless beyond what it does for the game itself and the other players. Something else you could do to these pages of backstory. Take a highlighter, and highlight one or two of your favorite lines that you think are cool or usable. Give that to the player and tell them to highlight one other line they really want to see with their character or think is important/cool. That's all you'll need. This is one of those few times when GM fiat is important, because your players sound like they're more interested in writing a short story than playing the game. This isn't being unfair to the players. It's the same principle as if you found that they decided to just start with an extra 100 xp. You play the game to develop your character both mechanically AND narratively.

As far as the player conflict goes, take a read through of this http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html

Those are the geek social fallacies, and they are way too common at the table. #1 and #5 seem especially important. You won't be a jerk if you kick someone out for causing problems. You also are not obligated as a friend to invite them if they don't enjoy themselves. If the player is comfortable with it, find out what the problem with the other player is. If it's related to the game, talk about it with both of them, making sure the person with the problem initiates (if you agree with him, you may want to initiate, though). If it's unrelated to your game, then have the players talk it out themselves. If it's something like one player being a huge jerk or doing something horrible, it's perfectly fine to just not have them at the game if it makes you uncomfortable or is justifiably making another player uncomfortable.

Shoehorn them together someway. I don't know why you think they need to change their backgrounds to fit together.

Being on a crashed transport, do it "Usual suspects" way and have them all brought together for questioning on a recent crime that happened.

A similar question came up several months ago. I write the following post, It might help if you have decent roleplayers:

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/91116-created-my-first-session-review-and-critique-please/#entry876418