Cliche Character Introductions?

[Mark]

Who has suggestions on how to avoid cliche character introductions? What are the cliche character introdutions to avoid? When might they be appropriate?

 

[ExploderWizard]

Are you talking about introducing new PC's, NPC's or both?

 

[Doug McCrae]

I guess 'You all meet in an inn' is the most cliched. Another common one is that the new PC was a prisoner of the orcs/goblins/xvarts/flinds the party is currently killing.

I got no problem with either. Both of them make sense. Inns are good places for strangers to meet. Evil humanoids do keep prisoners.

The modern alternative is the 'friend-of-a-friend'. PC A knows PC B who knows PC C.

 

[Mark]

Are you talking about introducing new PC's, NPC's or both?

Either/or, though I guess I had PCs in mind. I do think that the thread could benefit from the same examination extending to NPCs.

 

[Dykstrav]

Right behind the "meeting-in-a-tavern" cliche is the inexplicable magical phenomenon that teleports them all to the first dungeon or the powerful NPC who forces the characters to work together for the first adventure.

Personally, I usually make the players tell me how the party got together. Putting the ball into their court not only takes some of the load off of me as the DM, but it also gets the players to think about how their characters relate to each other and the setting.

In my current group, two of our primal characters (shaman and a warden) are cousins, who met up with our bard during a harvest festival. The bard met the wizard at an arcane symposium. Our fighter met the warden while they worked guard duty together with the town watch. Our barbarian joined the party when he met the warden on a hunting trip.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Did y'all see this?

http://www.enworld.org/forum/plots-places/260572-you-all-start.html

In addition, it helps if you encourage players to give you good backgrounds for their PCs. Sometimes, they'll give you a hook to hang an intro or even a plot on.

For instance, they may deliver PCs with a prior relation. In a GURPS campaign, my buddy Scott and I played identical twin sisters...barbarian warrior/sorceresses.

In a D&D campaign, my buddy Richard and I delivered a giant Dwarf (5'7, 350 lbs) and a dwarf Giant (6'2, 450 lbs). Both effectively outcast from their respective societies due to their sizes, the "Bash Brothers" became fast buddies at a bar (before the campaign started).

 

[Hjorimir]

I just started a new campaign two days ago and here is how I got the characters together:

• Two of the characters (a paladin/fighter and a warden) shared a common background and were on the lam from some vampiric city-states I have in the far north of my campaign.
• As they were coming to a city, they happened upon a couple of peasants who were being accosted by some cultist of a dark religion which is sweeping the land (long story, I won't bore you with details).
• The peasants invited the PCs who saved them to follow them to a safe place within the city (because the dark religion will be searching for whoever killed some of their men) and at the safe house introduced them to another PC of the group, a rogue.
• The peasants also carried a message to said rogue that she needed to make her way to an ancient set of standing stones outside the city to escort an eladrin envoy to help with the situation.
• The rogue quickly enlists the aid of the first two characters and the three of them make their way out to the standing stones to greet a fourth PC, an eladrin wizard.
• As the four of them arrive back in the city, they can see that a lot of cultists and crusaders of the dark religion are gathering in strategic points in the south ward of the city, near a hidden temple to one of the gods of light (part of my campaign metaplot).
• When the attack starts, the four players get involved. The fifth PC of the group is a cleric within this hidden church, who is fighting the cultists on the far side of the battlefield (city streets complete with peasant folk).
• The cleric was isolated and hard pressed against the strongest of opponents and when it seemed like he was outmatched, the last PC arrived in a stroke of green lightning...a deva avenger (in my campaing deva are 'returned' to the world by the gods to fulfill a purpose and apparently part of her purpose was to save this lone priest).

So what I try to do is link characters together through events and story. As the events gain momentum, they sweep up more and more PCs into the action. The PCs won the day (as intended), but had to flee the city (as intended) and are now bound together. There's a lot more there (motivations, visions, and quests) driving the PCs that I didn't go into, but I just wanted to illustrated how I approach getting characters together.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

So what I try to do is link characters together through events and story. As the events gain momentum, they sweep up more and more PCs into the action. The PCs won the day (as intended), but had to flee the city (as intended) and are now bound together. There's a lot more there (motivations, visions, and quests) driving the PCs that I didn't go into, but I just wanted to illustrated how I approach getting characters together.

That's essentially what I did in what I described in post #2 in that thread I linked to above.

The main advantages are:

1) The action starts quickly.

2) The players get involved quickly.

The main disadvantage is that you really need to know your players' PCs before you start, so that you can come up with PC appropriate hooks into the adventure. That means work for the DM and cooperation from (occasionally lazy) players.

 

[NaturalZero]

Im not sure how cliche it is, but ive found that an easy way to get everyone working together right away without having them meet in some contrived manner is to simply have them all belong to the same organization. Belonging to the same church, adventuring guild, town guard, royal court, street gang, etc...gives them all a reason to know each other and work towards the same ends.

 

[Hjorimir]

The main disadvantage is that you really need to know your players' PCs before you start, so that you can come up with PC appropriate hooks into the adventure. That means work for the DM and cooperation from (occasionally lazy) players.

Yeah, it's certainly more work, but it is exactly the work I enjoy as a DM. Cranking out encounters is okay, I guess, but I really love developing story and setting and watching it all work together. All of my campaigns feel like a story more than they feel like what I'd consider a typical D&D model of moving from dungeon to dungeon.