Exactly what I meant when I said you don’t want to create a group, you want to have a group which you have previously created. If you’re not interested in actually spending game time recruiting a group of individuals, writing a belief about “gathering a group of bold and capable individuals, who will fight alongside me to prevent this grim future vision from coming to pass” is a strange way to begin.
I don’t want this to be a Suicide-Squad thing, where we give everyone a cool backstory and highlight how cool everyone is, and then we wait and pray that the time-investment pays off later.
Who’s talking about that? We don’t care about these NPCs, except to the extent that you do as a player. That’s all their good for. Showcasing the choices you are forced to make in play.
To do this, I’ll visit people who fit the bill, and tell them of the grim future that lies in wait. I’m talking knights, I’m talking rangers, guildsmen, and of course, who are more known to stand in bold defiance of the insurmountable, than adventurers and local heroes. I’ll visit these people, present myself as a sorceress(as you know, we’re somewhat rare in this world), and tell them that I have foreseen great calamity, and I want them to join me in fighting back. And so we shall form a fellowship against fate.
And the GM should be putting complications in your way to challenge your Beliefs and find out what your character is willing to do to fulfill them. Fail while Circling up a Knight and your enemies know you’re whereabouts. The guildsmen don’t trust you and think your part of the Burgher’s plan to charge them with Blaspheming against the holy prophets. An apostate priest offers you the mystical aid of an ancient god of pestilence, but first you have to be bound to him in a blood ritual. Or first, you have to sacrifice an innocent. Who knows? Something. Anything. Anything but, this trite “we have a chat and the party is formed.”
I’d rather have it be a fellowship of the ring thing, where everyone is brought together, there’s a bit of talking, not alot, but just enough, and then we can start caring about the characters later, as they start doing stuff.
Oh, the Fellowship of the ring, where Frodo gets the quest from a Wizard he’s known all of his life and sets off with the son of the Family’s faithful servant who he’s known all of his life, is joined by a couple of distant relatives from another part of the shire who he’s known most of his life, travels to another town where he’s met by a guide sent by the first Wizard dude, fights spectral riders and is almost killed, travels through a dark wood to an elven kingdom where they meet with a council of minor deities and picks up an Elf Lordling a Dwarf Prince and the son of the Steward of a fabled empire. I’m not sure how that qualifies as coming together with little talking.
This is why I’m asking you fine fellows what’s the best way of handling the forging of such a group on a more abstract level. Not so I can avoid complication, but so we can cut to the chase in the game. Make sense?
The game is about complications in pursuit of your Beliefs. That is the chase in the game. There is no other chase.