Name some of your best Party Origin methods

[John Dallman]

I've had good success with "You've been hired as new members of the city police."

I've also done well in a steampunk campaign with "The inventor PC has come to visit the inventor NPC. The widowed young aristocratic lady was visiting the inventor NPC's wife." The huge-DEX acrobat got hired to pilot the world's first aircraft when it proved difficult to control, and that was the core party.

 

[MatthewJHanson]

My main issue with that sort of idea is that while you might start out with a party of friends and acquaintances, soon enough the inevitable casualties will lead to turnover and the recruitment of strangers - which means the friends-and-acquaintances model goes out the window.

It sounds like you games are more lethal than mine. We're at level 20 with the same characters (they started at level 6 admittedly). Some temporary deaths, but they've had access to raise dead for a while.

 

[Lanefan]

It sounds like you games are more lethal than mine. We're at level 20 with the same characters (they started at level 6 admittedly). Some temporary deaths, but they've had access to raise dead for a while.

By 6th level they're often able to get people revived (though it's not 100% guaranteed to work); but the first few levels often see a lot of turnover.

 

[Richards]

My first campaign with my current group started out as a simple "beer and pretzels" game to introduce a coworker's so to the game, so there was nothing fancy - the PCs met up on the road and decided to adventure together. Only later, when everyone created a backup PC, did I tie the whole group together by having them compete in a "Challenge of Champions" adventure and end up as a cohesive team in an Adventurers Guild.

For my second campaign, I had the PCs all living in the same small kingdom when the king, a former adventurer himself (a retired PC from the previous campaign, as a matter of fact) decide the kingdom needed a dedicated band of adventurers and the PCs were the chosen result. They didn't volunteer - they were "voluntold."

In my current campaign, the PCs all have ties to the Dreamlands - they can each cast one specific 0-level spell (chosen at character creation) and are some of the only people in the word who wake up with perfect memories of their dreams. As such, that made them perfect candidates to be trained by the staff of the Queen of Dreams as dreamwalkers - people who could enter another's dream and interact with it. This was necessary because there was an unexplained "dream plague" going across the continent, where people would be trapped in their dreams while their bodies entered a state of suspended animation, needing neither food nor drink while their minds continued dreaming. That particular plotline just finished up, having taken over half of the 100-adventure campaign.

I've also been a player in three campaigns, two run by my son and one by my co-worker. In the first, the PCs all entered a newly-opened bar and were pressed into service by the king's advisor - they'd be performing tasks the king needed done but needed to have plausible deniability about (kind of like the Suicide Squad, only without us being hardened criminals).

For his next campaign, we all started out as slaves to the drow: four of the five PCs had just been captured, while I ran a lizardfolk PC whose egg had been stolen from the surface and thus slavery was all he knew.

In the current campaign run by my coworker, our PCs all started in Greyhawk City but hired on as security for a caravan heading west for 19 days.

Johnathan

 

[Jd Smith1]

In a Harn setting using the Zweihander setting I had the PCs get caught up in the peasant levy (They weren't peasants, but rather outsiders). Since they were clearly better than peasants, they were formed into a scout section, and the first couple scenarios involved the beastman incursion that prompted the call-up.

When those scenarios were done, the PCs has a basis for sticking together.

In Flames of Freedom, I started the game on January 1 1776; the PCs has served together in the same militia comp[any (the entire Continental Army was routinely discharged on December 31 until 1777), and a Chief of Scouts (intelligence officer recruited them for anti-occult duty.

 

[GuyBoy]

The characters had all fought in the Greyhawk Wars as young soldiers, just as the wars were ending.
About eight months later, their former commander, now marshal of the much-depleted forces of Sterich, called upon them to assist with some raids by hill giants.

 

[Wolfpack48]

I think I may be looking for a hook other than X person hires the group, or you are all just standing around when you are swept up by X. I guess I'm looking for a party of widely varying backgrounds suddenly tossed together by their first adventure, but enough glue to make it stick for a long running campaign. I really like the idea of a seed event or even a high action event kicking things off, and then running with it from there. Not sure I even want characters to know each other beforehand. It's surprisingly hard to do without being forced or awkward.

 

[Corinnguard]

The glue that makes the party stick together for a long running campaign would have to be the players themselves IMO. If the players have been together for a lengthy period of time, you get to know their playing style and they get to know yours. Everyone gets to know each other's RL personalities and habits. And if the party likes having their characters being tossed in together by their first adventure, then you will get some pretty neat, amusing and interesting species/class combos to boot.

 

[rgard]

The 4 new PCs are sitting in a backroom of the thieves' guild in a large meeting where everybody is getting yelled at for not earning enough. The 4 PCs are assigned to the same crew.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

I'm a fan of "You already know each other. Please tell me how you met."