Bring in new PC's midgame

[beldar1215]

Hello All,
Just wondering how people have handled bringing in new players during a game. I have one example of how I brought in a new PC.
The PC was in another dungeon and was being chased by <insert nasty> and ran around the corner of a hallway. There was only a wall there and the PC was going so fast that he ended up running through the wall. The wall was a one way portal into my current dungeon.
It worked very well. I took the player aside and told him what had happened to his character and he just ran with it.
If anyone else has any good ideas or stories, I'm sure people would get use out of them.

Beldar

 

[Sodalis]

I usually ask the PC on how he would like to be introduced, giving him a brief synopsis of what the players will be facing soon (without giving details)

he will say that he is either a wandering monk, a prisoner of the dungeon, or just another guy in the tavern that is looking for adv.
*if he says he was imprisoned in the dungeon, i have no problem taking away all his gear and forcing him to work with whatthe group gives him. If I place him in the dungeon, it gets kinda weird cause he will feel stripped of his stuff- and it is kinda odd to find a guy imprisoned and still carrying his sword and shield and armor... so by him saying it- he chose to be stripped of his things....

takes a lot of stress from me and puts it on him. If he doesnt come up witha good excuse as to why hewants to join the group, they would kill him, thinkin he was a spy or asssassin or something- and that is perfectly fine by me...

But they usually just ask his name and what class he is- and "welcome aboard..."

 

[Akhkharu]

The rogue and halfling left the party to travel to the next town, to warn them of an army about 1 day away. The druid turned into a horse and the rogue rode him to town. On the way to town, a character fall from the sky, nearly missing the rogue, who failed his ride check and fell off and landing on the druid. The character, a human fighter in full plate, broke the druid's back who then blacked out. The fall nearly killed the fighter as well, dropped him to -4 who stabilized at -8.
After the shock wore off, the rogue killed the druid and picked pocked the fighter.
The other characters soon caught up to the inncedent and saw the dead druid and an unconcious fighter lying on the group, a the rogue lying on the group, appearing all beaten up.
Immediately the cleric healed the rogue and the fighter then all welcomed a new character to their party.

 

[Cor Azer]

I usually try to run games that use the PCs' backgrounds a lot, so I get my players to determine a link between their character and the rest of the group, and then I play on that link to work the character into the game.

 

[Alaska Roberts]

I dumped our current Archer on an island with a portal that dumped demons out. The PC's ship took alot of damage in a storm and had to stop at the island to make repairs. He not only got off the Island, but saved the PC's from being eaten by large nasty demon types.

Tada new char.

Worked well.

 

[UniversalMonster]

I just look for an opening

I just look for an opening and bring them on into the group. It isn't perfect, but I cover it up with action.

In the next session I will be bringing in my very last player (6 is my absolute limit!). The players are about to go down into a tomb on a 'sanctioned retrieval' mission, and the sponsor of the trip is going to assign the new player to go with the group. Hopefully they just bond after that.