One of the ways I have addressed this recently is by asking the players to start off not by thinking of their individual characters, but of a "group identity" which binds them together and gives them a reason to cooperate, and indeed to care about each others fates. Then I attempt to find a reason to involve those characters in the plot.. In the first run of Saturday Night Fevered (a scenario featured in this book) I started off by explaining it was a bout a group of folks going on vacation together to a holiday cottage. Rather than have a PI, a Waitress, a Historian and a Mechanic, I wanted them to think of how they knew each other, and came to be going away together.
The first group, Group A we shall call them, decided that as the game setting was rural they would play urban types – very much part of what I wanted, so I was happy with that. They decided it would be amusing to have wildly differing backgrounds, yet all me members of a Wiccan Coven, who practice their Nature Rites in the local park in the city where thy all worked, and had very little real exposure to anything other than city environments – so part of the game would be about their responses to actually finding themselves in a rural setting. They would not really know each other that well, and be drawn together more by their similar faiths than by any personality issues – the cottage was to act as a spiritual retreat. This led to much fun roleplaying, as they all had totally different backgrounds and expectations, and also their Wiccan background gave them an interest in supernatural mystery.
Group B wanted to play different characters to those they usually tried. It was therefore decided by them they were part of a Travelling Circus, but a routine Health and Safety inspection had closed the Circus for a few days while the Big Top was fireproofed to bring it in line with required legal standards. On a whim one of the performers hired the cottage, and loading their menagerie of a parrot, dog and two trained horses they set off of a few days of what they hoped would be drinking and getting away from work. They faced the social prejudices which carnival folk often find, but they dealt with the adventure in a totally different way to Group A, and their unusual background really coloured how the adventure developed!
I think if you do use the group identity method, it's very important to let the players come up with the concept. We spent a while defining the group, talking about interaction between members, and their shared past. The idea was that the characters entered the story with something in common, and bonds which could be tested, yet would hold them together when things got sticky.
All kinds of group backgrounds can be used – I won't list them – but bear in mind the obvious can include a group of college buddies, as in FRIENDS, ex-service personnel who served together, members of a rock band, people who work at the same place, family members, or anything else which draws folks together – Church, Politics,
Sports…. It's not hard to think of a group concept.. When defining the group, feel free to include potential sources of conflict, as well as things which draw the characters together.
The Keeper knows what kind of story they are going to tell, so also try to think of suggestions that will make the story more fun to tell – but most importantly, make sure there are good reasons why they should be involved in the plot you have devised. If there is an NPC who might have figured in the characters past – fine, make it so. Try to find ways to draw the characters in, and to make them central to the story. Think of what aspects of the story there characters will be interested in, and ways to make them more important.
And equallly, encourage the players to make each character unique, interesting and a powerful and vivid personality in their own right. There is no point in telling a story about just a PI – what makes this P.I. interesting? Encourage the players to create story ideas, conflicts, issues and motifs relating to their character they can explore in play. Each should be interestingly interesting – the rule I use is, if this was a TV drama, would the character warrant a spin off series o their own? Be supportive, but ask the players to really try to come up with something believable, "real" and fascinating. Cthulhu lacks the merits and flaws systems which many other games use to make their characters fascinating and different – but if you encourage the players to breathe life in to their creations, and tailor san loss descriptions to reflect the characters personal obsessions and interests.
Before the game starts, take a hint from other game systems, and if you can stage a back story session – maybe just ten minutes, maybe a whole night of one to one play. In one memorable game my friend Luke decided to play a Michigan based character, who had grown up as a child in a Hardware Shop in a tiny often snowbound community, and was a fine hunter but lacking in street smarts. We discussed his upbringing, and I improvised a story set ion Christmas Eve when he was 12. His grandmother he declared was a Spiritualist – in fact the whole family was, but they kept it quiet to avoid antagonising the neighbours, and went to Church anyway as the good Christian Spiritualists they were.
I turned the lights off, and Luke lay on the sofa with his eyes closed. We quietly talked through that Christmas night, and his friend coming over to ask him to go up to the old sawmill which had closed down…. And by the end of the session, we had defined a lot about the character, his relationships, and his one uncanny ghost story which was central to his later interests. No dice were rolled, but it was a very intense episode, an one which Luke was to refer back to throughout the campaign. Kevin's character lost his wife in a car crash – his trauma, and guilt as to why he alone survived that night was to define a lot about how and why he functioned, and was why he never once in the whole game, even when it was desperate, allowed himself to use his Drive Auto skill.
Don't neglect the characters – Cthulhu is an investigative game, but in all the best ghost stories, the characters matter as much as the revealed horror – in fact to my mind at the heart of all horror lays the contrast between the mundane, everyday world and the fearful terror of things that lay outside…