DMs, how did you bring the party together?

[Ashrem Bayle]

For me, this is always one of the toughest parts of getting a game together. So how did you get all the characters together for the first time?

Me? What have I used?

1. All of the characters began as mercenaries and where guarding the same caravan.

2. "You are all sitting in a tavern..."

3. All of the characters where about the same age and lived in the same village when it was attacked by looting, pillaging, slaver orcs.

A possibility for my next game:

Somewhere, deep with an underground cavern, a small chamber houses a set of four metallic sarcophagi. Suddenly they all open in unison. Green smoke boils forth revealing four sleeping bodies. As one, their eyes pop open. They know not who they are, how long they have been here, or where they came from.

..er.. or something like that.

What about you?

 

[EricNoah]

Ah, yes, the "amnesia beginning." I know it well.

In the current campaign, the PCs all work for the same employer.

 

[Tetsubo]

My current campaign is a version of your third choice. The party are survivors of an orc attack that happened ten years in the past. They all lived on the same farm, having been "adopted" by the farmer.

Other ideas I have used:

The PC's are members of the same Thieves Guild.

PC's work for the same patron.

PC's are members of the same faith.

No real back story, the PC's just knew each other and have similar interests. Much like real life.

 

[Mark]

Depends mostly on the level of the PCs when the game/campaign is starting.

 

[Crothian]

Last one I used is they all worked for the same employer. However the one I like is to tell the PCs to figure it out for themselves as they create the characters. This has them talking about their characters and interacting before anything starts up.

 

[Drawmack]

I usually have everyone come to the first session character in hand and a three - seven page background written.

I sit them down and say okay now figure out how you met.

My games tend to be heavy role playing and I find that this initial exercise really gets people into the game on the right foot for that.

 

[seasong]

My most recent methods...

Light Against the Dark: Served in the same squad of the military, all had similar birthmarks, got to be friends. When their term of Service was up, stuck together - mostly relied on "adventuring as a profession" coupled with "strength in numbers", but has gradually developed stickier bonds.

The New Pantheon: Happenstance - all of the PCs were in the same neighborhood (for a plethora of reasons) when the bad stuff went down. I then wove everyone's backgrounds into reasons to fight the bad stuff in the long term.

Kronologos 2 (superhero soap opera): After the disbanding of the Avengers 20 years ago, someone has an idea to recreate them, only with prettier, more PR-friendly people. The PCs are those pretty, PR-friendly superheroes. Enter the angst of being young, rich, beautiful, and superpowered in a world that hates you.

AO: All farm kids from the same clump of villages and farming communities that got drafted into a distant war. Bonding reigned supreme - they would have killed for each other, and buried the bodies together.

 

[dshai527]

I have used the standards

Friends

Family (This one was a blast...all the members of a certain family are called home when someone dies...limits races but I had adoptions and close family friends in this one.)

All on the same boat

Tavern Scene

All hired by the same man who dies before the adventure begins leaving the party with an odd map and people hunting for it

Fated or God chosen

Same village (Current campaign)

Same faith or owed a favor to the temple

One member hires or recruits the rest (This one was hard because each player had to interview for a position and if they didn't make the cut they had to create a new charcater and try again, but it was a good time)

All hired to do a duty...guard a caravan or whatever

Amnesia scene

All knew a guy who left clues to a great treasure in 6 small bits that each character possesed one small bit.

others that I can't remember...

 

[Samothdm]

I had everyone e-mail before the game with a character background (as short as a paragraph or as long as 6 pages in one guy's case). Then, I asked them how much of their background was "secret".

Then I e-mailed the entire group, told them where they were going to be starting the campaign (which country/city) and they needed to discuss amongst themselves what brought them to the city.

I got copied on most of the e-mails and the stuff they came up with was fantastic - several of the characters ended up decided that they were following other characters to the city in secret, some of them "met" because one character tried to steal something from an another character, etc.

Gave me tons of ideas for role-playing hooks within the actual story that I had set up.

 

[Carnifex]

Since one of my current campaigns is online, I didn't need to bring them all together at the very beginning, instead working in some 'in-game backstory' for how they end up coming together - it actually ends up taking a fair while, I think they all reached lvl 3 and 4 ebfore they ended up as one big group (though long before that they were in two groups). Check my Story Hour (link in sig) to see what I mean.