1001 Ways To Get Characters Together

[Ralif Redhammer]

The PC are all members of a city guard / mercenery company / army / etc. After a massive fight, they are the only ones left standing. In hostile territory.

In a kingdom ruled by a corrupt regime, they are all prisoners chained in a cell. It's pretty cliche, but it can be fun if you let each PC pick why they're in jail. I did this once and get a variety of responses ranging from the heroic (freedom fighter) to the obvious (theft) to the crass (buggery).

 

[smootrk]

I generally start with:

ROLL INITIATIVE.

Then I describe the general area they are in and who/what is threatening them. They always fall into a group mentality and start working together.

It helps that the character creation process is done with a lot of group discussion so everyone already knows the general jist of each character before we ever start.

 

[Bront]

I like giving the PCs a general background that they work for some organization, letting them background themselves into it, and then throwing them togeather with that common bond.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Let the players do the work for you, ask them how that came to be together.

I have used you wake up after a tavern fight the judge looks at you and assigns your to either a cleric/wizard/paladin as a work detail to clean a dungeon.

 

[ajanders]

Other thoughts

Press gangs. Everybody loves to hate a press gang, and it always unites the party: they either work together for the local authorities, or they work together to get away from the local authorities.

Followers of an adventurer. The knight goes into the dragon lair and doesn't come back. All of a sudden the porters, equerries, and squires need to leave, if nothing else. And then settle the estate. And possibly answer for murder charges...

Ducking out of the rain in the same cave. Provides a handy first dungeon experience, too.

 

[Vonlok The Bold]

One that might work and falls into the wedding category would be based on the St. Bartholemew's day massacre. Two rival noble families are having a marriage of alliance. The wedding is huge. Every ally of both noble families is in the city for the ceremony. The PC's can come from either faction as a relative or a guest, a hired man at arms, a bard out for a good tale, a Cleric asked to take part in the ceremony, etc. They could all just be in town for the wedding, and meet at a get together, market, smithy, tournament, night of gambling etc. Or it could be more involved.

Some in one of the noble's faction see the opportunity to wipe out a bunch of enemies who are all gathered together. One, if not all of the PC's find out about the plot. It could be that their patron discovers it, and fears for his life, or is even murdered, or perhaps they are approached to help massacre the other party. It could unfold as a revenge, stop the massacre, start the massacre, protect one particular NPC from being massacred scenario depending on your taste.

 

[babomb]

Let the players do the work for you, ask them how that came to be together.

This is my favorite way. I like to have the players all work on backgrounds together, and this leads naturally from that. I find it's often more interesting, because they'll usually have varied reasons for being in the group. You might get something like 3 of them are slaves, one is a sympathetic slave driver, and another is a paladin who stumbles upon them when they escape and helps them get away. To me, that's more engaging than them all being hired by the same patron.

I have, however, had good success with "You're all on a boat going from here to there. You make up why." One might be a trader, one a stowaway, and so forth. Then the boat is attacked by pirates or wrecked on an island or blown off course or whatever. Or, even if nothing out of the ordinary happens, they can spend the trip getting to know each other. Then they "coincidentally" get involved in the same plot later.

 

[Hussar]

In my current campaign, the players all started out as followers of the same person. That limited alignments somewhat (the person was Neutral) which did in turn close out a couple of classes, but, it worked really well. They've really come to like and feel like a part of the household.

 

[Yair]

Let the players do the work for you, ask them how that came to be together.

As a variant, I give them the general gist of the first adventure's hook and let them figure out how they fit in. For example, for my latest campaign I told them they would be approached by Baroness Utaraux's agents, and should be amicable to agreeing to aid her. They asked if money would be offered, I answered yes, and so everyone was greedy (Well, we had one pure-hearted guy.)

My players usually work up a common-background that relates them to each other, especially if we begin the campaign at high level.

 

[eris404]

The characters are performers in a circus - the fighter is the strongman or sharpshooter, the druid the animal tamer, etc.