Adventure begins! So how do the PCs know each other?

[mr_accipitres]

In my limited D&D experience, I've required the players to work out how exactly they know each other as well as the tried and true mysterious individiual with their own agenda hires all the PCs.

I prefer that the players figure it out as it allows me to be more involved in fitting the characters into the world. If I run again, then I will likely use this method.

 

[Vymair]

I try to interweave some of the backstories so that portions of the party know each other before the actual mission. I usually have some official type gather people to investigate some minor event which ties into the greater campaign plot in some minor way.

 

[Tonguez]

I basically tell the PCs the situation and then ask them to come up with how they fit in

So for instance in one campaign I told them
All PCs are associated with the same Temple from this the half-giant fighter decided that he was a temple guard, the Scorcerer and the rogue were orphans raised in the Temple Orphanage and the cleric was trained at the Temple

Other hooks I've used are
- you are all attending a National Festival in the Capital City
- you are all members of a travelling circus troupe (that was fun and somewhat ironically noone was a bard!)

As a player I usually talk to the other players and see how we can be related - so I have sometimes been the father, brother, friend, old school mate of, or served in the same military sompany as other PCs. Its fun - the trick is to leave enough wiggle room for independent development as well (for instance when I agreed to be the father of another PC it was estranged father who had not seen his daughter (the other PC) since she was in her teens and was only now getting to know her as an adult...)

 

[Kurashu]

In the last quest, my original character (a halfling rouge/cleric) had befriended a dwarf who was exiled from clan for one reason or another (we never did decide why xD) and they traveled as merchant (terrible merchants), but it gave my character an excuse not to donate money to his church (I ain't got none, the business takes a lot more money than you think!"). We met another player (a pixie) when he started to sell his wares in "our territory" (e.g. litterally across the street from us). The last player for a while we met while attempting to recover some moss for a necromancer (well, the pixie wasn't helping us so much as being an annoying tag alone), the Paladin. The perfect character to unwittingly help an evil insane necromancer. xD

The next players we met were a human druid and a human weretiger, that was outside Hillsfar (some what ironically). When we found out the dwarf my halfling had befriended was dead, he was angry. So angry that when faced with the chance to back down from the weretiger or continue fighting with 2 HP, he continued fighting and died. In all fairness, he critted like 3 times with a scythe. That'll hurt, alot.

After that, the paladin retired after witnessing the Necromancer pwn Hillsfar (something about not wanting to fight evil that powerful) with some backup from the Pixie. The druid also retired (called home or something). So at this point there's the weretiger and the Pixie, no characters from the original group (HEY! We're like Zao!).

In the next session, all the new characters met with the pixie and weretiger through one means or another. The druid player became a half-orc monk who met mine and the dwarf's new characters (Thunder Twin dwarfs sent to find the dwarf that died) while fighting an Ettin and we travled to the nearest town. There we met the Pixie by asking around the pub/inn if anybody had met or known a dwarf named Moobs. There also just happened to be an Air Gensai who demanded a stack of flapjacks in return for his services. We met a ranger a few sessions later. And in the very last session, we met another halfing rouge/cleric. Who was alright, but esstenitally useless in fighting the Lich other than saving use from a fireball trap.

The quest I'm in right now is a pseudo-continuation of the last, except all the characters met during the wedding of the other dwarf in Daggerfalls. Two dwarfs who are related by marriage and a raptorian who met my last dwarf while he was returning from Waterdeep to the Spine, so the Raptorian was invited to the wedding as well and got looped into this quest when my old dwarf said I can't go. However, he is playing another rouge/cleric who is the worst rogue and the worst cleric I have ever played with (I don't want to use my staff of power, I'll have less charges). And my brother is the worst fighter ever (I'll just stand back and take popshots with my crossbow instead of using my +1 Holy Bane of Orc Greatsword). At least his crossbow is +1 Shocking. Worst dwarf ever. xD At least we all get along, except for me saying that a rogue without ANY ranks in escape artist is useless even if he can fly. That made him upset. He repaid the favor when the two dwarfs in full armor couldn't climb up a rope due to a waterfall. Then his character lied to mine, which got him smacked in the face with a set of studded armor.

 

[Duo Maxwell]

The one that my players enjoyed the most was the one where they were spectating a fight in a small arena in town and all of the players were shoved to the center - forced to defend themselves against their new opponent!

Another one that worked well was written in NeMoren's Vault, where each of the players was given a small key at one point in their life and the person watching the mansion (its ownder now deceased) summoned the keyholders to let them have the treasure that was buried in the tomb beneath it.

 

[Squire James]

I normally start out with a "you guys know each other somehow, and you work it out". Sometimes it's "we're childhood friends, let's go" and sometimes it's "We're what's left of a three-sided skirmish of a Great War that suddenly ended. We found ourselves together with no reason to fight each other, so we decided to kick monster sphincter-muscle instead!"

The quality of the start has nothing to do with how the campaign turns out. The childhood friends is a long-running camapign that still runs today. The former enemies were TPK'd in their third playing session. I shake my head at these promising starts seemingly wasted, go back to the childhood friends until we burn out on it again, then start another one for a while...

 

[Tolen Mar]

I started my recent Planescape campaign In Media Res. The first session started with them fleeing a temple under Indiana Jones style circumstances. They had to fight their way out, relying on these PC's who know very little about each other. After that, of course, they had to fence the stolen...ahem...appropriated gold idol. By the time the fights were over and the negotiations done, they were a well-oiled machine. Well, sort of. They are all suspicious of the rogue in the group.

Of course, he's not the one they have to worry about...

 

[genshou]

In my latest Urban Arcana game, two of the PCs know one another (well, they will if one of the players quits procrastinating and makes a PC), because one is an occult bookstore owner and the other is his researcher. The other PCs don't know one another, but they'll all happen to be in the same place when an encounter with shadowkind occurs.

I've started the PCs out in a variety of situations, including having two PCs be hostages that the other three were hired to rescue in the first adventure. The opening scene was the confrontation with the orcs who had captured them (with the Rogue PC conveniently placed in hiding ready to free the hostages once the guard charged the other two PCs), so I guess that counts as in medias res.

Usually, I prefer the PCs to be more or less strangers when they start out (preferably at 1st-level for this kind of start), and let their relationships develop over time until they form the close bonds that keep them together.

 

[Evilhalfling]

I tend to work with the players to create logical groups based on background.
Then work out a single meeting between groups and indivuals as necessasry.
I have used - In service to the court wizard for favors done, members of a military group, growing up togeather in a small town, and everyone finishing a quest at the same place and time (mystic pond @ full moon -4th lvl start)

My problem is integrating new high level charatcers.
How do you integrate a 17th level PC into an established group (with one recently disintigrated member) If the players are near the top of the chain how do others fit in?

 

[Lanefan]

A famous adventuring company, not heard from in several years before this summer, holds a widely-advertised recruitment meeting for brave new adventurers. A pile o' people turn up (including our intrepid heroes, natch) and are divided into groups (with of course all the PC's in the same group), given basic missions to complete, so as prove their worth, and sent on their way. The PC's mission was to go to a long-ago-cleaned-out dungeon complex and map it.

That's how I started my current campaign. I wrote up short back-stories for each PC on how they heard of and-or got to the meeting; the campaign began at the start of the meeting.

Of course, it's all a fraud; the people respresenting this "famous adventuring company" have never in fact had anything to do with it. The idea is to rid the land of most of its promising low-level adventurers (the missions are thinly-disguised suicide runs; the PC's weren't informed the place they'd been sent to map had become quite active again...) so that in a few years when all the plots come to fruition there's not as many mid-level types to deal with as there otherwise would be. 'Twixt one thing and another, I got years of mileage out of that story arc before the PC's...by now their own company...finally managed to defeat the bad guys' plots.

Lanefan