DMs, how did you bring the party together?

[Kool-Aid Man]

You want to know how to bring the party together? That's simple: don't.

Is it really necessary to work out and plan how the party gets together? I've never found this to be true. Back in the day when I still gamed and was the DM, I found it to be useless to try to coerce the players into meeting each other. It was a waste of time that, in some cases, could not logically work.

DM: "You're a wanderer, and you look about the busy inn to see several other shady out-of-place characters."

PLAYER: "What ho! Shall we form a pact and kill beasties!?"

What the hell!? The player has a better chance of being blasted where he stands by a massive fireball than forming an adventuring group. I understand that most gamers criticize the tavern method, but it is a good example of the folly of trying to coerce the gamers into forming a party.

My solution: don't even try. I let the players figure it out for themselves. How and why they came together is useless information as far as I'm concerned. All I need to know is that the group is a unified party at the beginning of the campaign. From there they can flesh out their own backstory and play out their relationships any way they like.

This is simply another method you can consider. Hope this helps!

Oh, and by the way, I'm new to these boards so. . . HI!

 

[xrpsuzi]

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.)

My husband and I ran a game like this with our siblings and their spouses. The great thing was that we could really get into character I'll never forget my little brother (an elven wizard with a long sword) charging into battle because I was being eaten by a large alligator. He charging chant was "you owe me... big"

I'm fond of creating groups of associations. Like these two know each other and one of them knows this other guy. It's great if you have players who can roleplay it. Interparty questions of loyalty and background always spice things up. This method is often employed if we are adding a new member to our gaming party though.

suzi

 

[xrpsuzi]

Another thing I like to do is to have a solo adventure for each PC to ghet them all to the same point together. THis allows me to work out some individual stuff with them and build background and history.

Very cool idea... I'll have to drop this nugget into my DM's lap.

suzi

 

[Doppleganger]

For one recent campaign, there were 3 players and they created:

- a Druid/Ranger (tribal mastodon hunter)
- an Aristocrat/Rogue (from a renaissance/hightech society)
- a Monk

I decided to have them all meet simultaneously under unique circumstances, and set it up to individually roleplay the last "day" before they met.


The druid started 1000 years beforehand, and was caught in a snow avalanche while exploring a stonehenge type ring of monoliths. His body was preserved by the magic of this druidic circle, but remained frozen for eons.

The monk started in an secret mountain monastery of isolationists. After some stereotypical training scenes (ala the old Kung Fu TV show), he was told by a mystic that he was to meditate in the rock garden until he saw a "sign" and then seek it out and use it to help determine his destiny in the outside world.

The rogue and few other royal dignitaries fled their rapidly collapsing society in a floating airship, and flew across the oceans to seek out a new continent. Once there, sabotage or some other mystery event caused the ship's balloon to explode and the craft caught fire and plummeted towards the snowy mountains below. The rogue managed to activate one of the emergency feather fall floatation devices onboard and watched helplessly as his kin and their crew fell to explode on the ground.



So, the monk saw a fire streaking down from the heavens and took it as his sign. He set out from his monastery across the mountains towards the spot where the falling mystic fire apparently went. On the ground at the fiery crash site, the heat melted the druid from his preserved state. He slowly climbed out of the melting ice and snow onto the surface, where he spotted the monk approaching, just as the rogue gently floated down from the sky. Thus, all three met simultaneously from different directions.

*edit

Oh yea, I wanted to create the "stage" and let the players work out their relationships and reasons for staying together on their own. The players usually like to roleplay this stuff themselves according to their individual character personalities and personal goals. In this case, they had plenty to talk about at first and found themselves together in the middle of nowhere. The monk believed the other two had something to do with his destiny and his place in life so he wanted to stay with them wherever they went. The druid felt lost and full of questions, and was busy trying to acclimate to the changes in the environment/divine-order over time and find clues/remnants of his people. The rogue used the others as guards/servants and immediately used them to help seek out civilization. I took it from there with the usual DM complications/adventures thrown in their path.

 

[Seule]

My character creation guidelines for my current campaign: You will be a member of the City Watch. You may therefore not be Evil or Chaotic. You must have a reason for being in the Watch, even if it is just for the pay.
From there, everything fell into place.

--Seule

 

[hammymchamham]

Not sure if anyone brought this way, and its what I did with my group. Their where 5 people at the time:

"You have been adventuring together for quite some time, when you were told of buried treasure, after spending a week digging amongst some ruins and investigating cattacombs, you are left empty handed (that is they found nothing), and decide to head south. You have come to the first town, (insert towns name here), and a trio of gaurds lead by a dwarf aproach......"

 

[SamuraiY]

Currently we have the symbol of Azuth tatooed on our wrists and no memory. Can you say Deus ex machina?

In the last game we had all contracted the same disease and were looking for an herb that could cure us. I liked this one a lot more.