Campaign/party paradigms

Asmor

First Post
I think it'd be an interesting exercise to come up with the different models one might structure a party or campaign after. I'll give a few examples to get the ball rolling.

Mercenaries
Party is usually loosely connected, often just because they're all PCs. Tend to take whatever job is put in front of them.

Patronage
Party is generally providing their services to a particular patron, which may change from time to time, but is more consistent at any given time than as with mercenaries.

Teenage Mutant Ninja-Turtles
A more extreme form of patronage, party is arranged almost like a family with a particular character at the "head" of the family, acting almost like a mother or father. This character may or may not be a PC.

Military
Similar to patronage, but more focused towards a particular organization. Advancement and chain of command are usually important aspects.

So... Feel free to add more!
 

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Chosen Ones vs Chosen One and Companions- One or more members of the party have been chosen to fulfill a great destiny (i.e. restore balance to the force).

Fugitives- The party members all happen to be on the wrong side of the law, rightly or wrongly. The y quest to clear their names or stay ahead of the law.
 

Why me?
A bunch of people with no apparent connection are thrust into a dangerous situation, and must band together to overcome it because there's nobody else to do so.
 


Mutual convienience: Adventurers get together for a mission or two, find that their talents mesh well together, and decide to stay together on a more permanent basis. There's greater security and potential for wealth and power in pooling one's resources than acting alone.

Old friends: Adventurers are childhood friends, who knew each other for years before becoming adventurers. They stick together because they know they can trust one another.

A guy knows a guy, who knows a guy...: Adventurers are interlinked through mutual friendships-character A knew character B from their army days, who knows character C when they saved those halflings, while character D knows B and C because she was part of the church who hired them to save the halflings, character E was the one-time lover of character D, while character F is A's cousin, who took up the adventuring life for himself and eventually came to work with character A.
 

Misfits

The members of the party are unwelcome, unable, or unwilling to fit into their native cultures and the roles set for them therein. They adventure together to achieve what they could not at home, or just to escape it.

The Cursed One and Companions.

The flipside of the Chosen One and Companions. My current FR game has slowly turned into this. I didn't set out to make a protagonist out of one of the PCs, but through a combination of dumb luck and bravery on his part one arose. He got himself cursed by a major artifact of Tharizdun. He's slowly going insane, turning into Something Else, falling into evil, and has speculated about whether he's getting spells from his declared patron or from Tharizdun from time to time. The PC is a druid, but he's gone non-casting for the last three levels because he doesn't trust those abilities anymore. The others have gone from being thrown together by circumstance to trying to keep him alive and sane long enough to save the world. The protagonist's cohort is actually an LG cleric/monk/sacred fist on a mission to chronicle his sufferings and perseverance as an inspiration for future generations of faithful.
 

blargney the second said:
Psychopaths
Wander around, kill some sentient creatures because they have green skin and fangs and you don't, and then take their stuff.

This is probably the most common party 'paradigm' I've seen.

Motivation for tolerating each others company seems to be that each belongs to the most prestigious club in the campaign world: the PC club (and this had nothing to do with political correctness), and the motivation for adventuring is killing, looting and gaining personal power.
 

The single 'class' paradigm - all the PCs are of the same 'type' i.e. all arcane casters, all warriors, all with divine powers; and belong to an organization for which they cary out missions or have some limited autonomy. Examples: religious order, thieves' guild/crime family/secret society, wizards college

The Cops - the characters are all members of the local constabulary. Either they are special 'detectives' or regular beat cops.

Back to School - difficult to pull off well I should imagine in D&D, but a campaign (which at least in the beginning) the characters are all students (young adults) - although they of course would be able to pursue adventures in the wider university town as well as on the college grounds. e.g. Lyra and the street children in His Dark Materials; Harry Potter; Unseen University; um... High School Musical?

You fear me now, Time Lord! - the PCs are all companions of a powerful outsider who travels round the universe in a magical vehicle. He has a habit of getting into trouble, being locked up in prison etc The characters usually have to solve the endemic problems of the world/plane they arrive in and/or extricate "The Stranger" from his predicaments.
 


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