Name some of your best Party Origin methods

[Corinnguard]

We have also done the typical origin of all of us happening to enter a town where something goes horribly wrong and our characters end up forming a makeshift team to try and fix said problem.

This is sort of like what had happened in the adventure I am currently playing in. Each character in the party came to the town of Greenest for reasons known only to them at the time. The introductions came well after the town had been invaded by bandits. My Bugbear Ranger character came to Greenest to pay a debt to a wandering Half-Elf monk who had saved him when he was very young. Prior to the adventure beginning, he had received a burnt letter from the monk that had dark stains on it that asked him to travel to Greenest. On the way to town, he befriends a Goblin Druid and watches the antics of a human Wildmage/Diviner (?) as he tries to tell a Half-Elf paladin their fortune. These three characters plus two other characters they met a pub in town then find themselves in the middle of a bandit invasion. They are later asked by the town leaders to track down the bandits and free their hostages.

 

[Voadam]

My favorite that I have done was when I was running a conversion of the pathfinder gothic horror themed Carrion Crown adventure path.

"I regret to inform you that Professor Lorrimor Jones, noted Professor of Archaeology at Lepidstadt University has died. In recognition of your relationship with Professor Jones you are asked to be a pall bearer at his funeral and the professor's daughter, the Lady Jessica, invites you to stay at the Jones estate in the Canterwall town of Ravengro during the funeral [the town is next door to the assuredly not-at-all haunted former prison that burned down fifty years ago]. You are a named beneficiary in the will. My office will hold the reading of the will one week after the funeral is completed.
Your humble servant, Mathias Murdock barrister at law."

I asked everybody to come up with a connection to Jones to establish why they would be asked to be pallbearers.

I got the professor's butler, his college secretary, his archaeology rival, his professional grave digger, the professor's on again off again love interest, and a junior professor he had mentored.

I also suggested that I would be using a bunch of famous characters as NPC roles throughout the campaign so they were invited to pick their own as a partial basis for their characters if desired, about half did.

The rival was a sort of Belloq from Indiana Jones, the love interest was a bit of Ilsa from Last Crusade, and the junior professor was based on Daniel Jackson from Stargate, complete with odd theories about ancient elven Osirian alien connections.

It tied in well to the adventure path, gave people some interesting hooks to work off of, their backgrounds gave me hooks to integrated into the adventure path and play off of, and everybody had a great time with it.

 

[Committed Hero]

I did a game where one PC broke into a security station and was watching the other PC on monitors, stumbling towards an ambush.

 

[Lanefan]

A famous adventuring Company has put out a general call for fresh new recruits, advertised with posters, town criers, the lot. The aspiring PCs (plus lots of others) respond*. All the dozens of respondents are gathered in a meeting hall and weeded out, with those who look competent broken out into proto-parties (with, of course, all the proto-PCs in the same party), given "training missions", and sent on their way.

The training mission I used was to explore an old and (supposedly) long-since-cleared-out dungeon complex, and return with a detailed map of the place.

* - using whatever motivation to do so that their players can dream up; the actual campaign begins at the start of the big meeting.

 

[jdrakeh]

The Party Backstory Generator by Severed Books is a pretty neat solution to this for fantasy campaigns.

 

[Corinnguard]

A member of the Flaming Fists mercenary company in Baldur's Gate walked amongst the refugees of Elturel and drafted a Dragonborn fighter, a Changeling Wild Mage sorcerer, an Elven Bladesinger Wizard, a Halfling Bard, a Wildfire Druid and a Human Teleporter to find out what had happened to the other city. During their time on Avernus, they decide to call themselves the Hellchasers.

 

[Reynard]

A member of the Flaming Fists mercenary company in Baldur's Gate walked amongst the refugees of Elturel and drafted a Dragonborn fighter, a Changeling Wild Mage sorcerer, an Elven Bladesinger Wizard, a Halfling Bard, a Wildfire Druid and a Human Teleporter to find out what had happened to the other city. During their time on Avernus, they decide to call themselves the Hellchasers.

That "hook" is the absolute worst, most ham fisted ever.

 

[Corinnguard]

That "hook" is the absolute worst, most ham fisted ever.

In hindsight, I have to agree. But at the time, it was my first 5e adventure, and the first time I played in a VTTRPG.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I always ask my players to tell me how they got together while working with them in session 0. Warhammer start, do not remember the character names.

The graverobber character found the pit fighter in a shallow grave, beat up and with no memory. He was so close to death; he took him to the surgeon as fresh meat for experiments, but he got better. Which started the adventure to find out who he was and lead to press gangs and skaven labs.

 

[Golden Bee]

I like the hook backgrounds of Powered by the Apocalypse games. it creates different dynamics among everybody while ensuring the relationships have ways to change and evolve naturally. I also like systems they give you experience for making the relationship significantly different, even if they aren’t better!