D&D 5E How the party gets formed.

[Uller]

Sounds like you have a plan. I agree...I wouldn't worry about rewards for good backstory...I've aleays found that if a player wants to have a detailed backstory then they will do it. If they don't then they won't and why should I care as the DM?

As DM, in a homebrew campaign I will use PC backstories for hooks. (You hear rumors that your uncle was last seen heading toward a ruin nearby to look for lost relics belonging to your family). So the players that bother to do it will get custom hooks that motivate their PC. For those that don't I just use generic hooks (The monsters that threaten the village lair in this ruin).

No big deal...if they are having fun, I'm having fun.

In published adventures there are usually decent hooks available for everyone.

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[Wednesday Boy]

I think that's a good start but if conflict or bickering is an issue I highly recommend having a frank discussion about it. Instead of guessing about people's feelings and desires for the game, ask them directly. If you and they are cool with the level of conflict, that's great--play like normal. If anyone (including you) has issues with it, talk it out and if needed make some out of character rules for the group to follow. Then based on the rules you establish, let the players decide if they want to be part of your game or not. In my experience being direct is the quickest, easiest, and most productive way to resolve these potential issues.

 

[Mort]

In the last year or so, anytime someone has a question on how to run a game, one of my go-to pieces of advice has been watch an episode or two of Critical Role and see how one of the best DMs currently running a game does it.

Interestingly, they just started their new campaign so this is exactly relevant.

But in this case, I'd say DON'T do what Matt (the DM) did. He split the players in three groups and started them all at a slightly different point, the group didn't actually get fully together until well after an hour into the session. This means that he had to switch around and that 2/3rds of the group were just sitting there doing nothing for 2/3rds of the time. With a new group, you're going to get bored/annoyed players!

That said, it seems pretty clear that that the DM here had run the groups through some intro stuff already, prior to the first session, to get them comfortable with their characters (a very good idea) AND this is not a new group so the players were clearly fine with the way he did it. But in a new group and with new players, never focus so much one a character or characters to the point where the majority of the group is just sitting around twiddling their thumbs!

 

[toucanbuzz]

I once did a Session 0 flashback for 5 players to kick things off, worked well. In a flashback, we bypass the hook and are already into the adventure. The players role-play, no dice, how they got there. In our campaign, they were chartered to explore the frontier and had already picked background bonds linking them to major NPCs. One story, for the players to invent in a flashback, was why, out of all the adventuring companies and likely higher-level folks out there, did they get the charter.

In the flashback of how, I provided framework: a noble's wedding (the family that is backing their expedition was the groom). From there, I went around the table asking how they got in the wedding. Some had a natural background (e.g. I knew the bride during childhood). Others had to invent (I'm crashing the wedding, I'm working security with my background as a soldier).

The players had to invent the reasons we got from A to B, instead of the DM, including why they ended up cooperating with another player during the flashback. I provided the framework (someone tries to assassinate the bride, there's a fire, what did you do that saved the bride, what did you do that caught the assassin), players filled in the gaps based on their characters.

In the end, we got to know the personalities of each character (even how they got into the wedding was key) in a much better fashion than everyone going around the table and saying "This is Grimli. He's a dwarf fighter with an axe who hates orcs."