Getting Characters Together
- Thread starter Ruined
- Start date
der_kluge
Adventurer
What kind of game is this? Traditional? What is her campaign going to be like?
I've always been in favor of bringing them together quickly, otherwise you've got people twiddling their thumbs until their character is introduced.
Or, she could run them all in a solo game on a one-on-one basis before the first game, and then have them meet after the events unfold for their individual character.
I had a DM do this, and it worked pretty well. He was a master of getting us to go right where he wanted to. Having a PhD in Pscyhology probably helped. My character fled from some orcs, and managed to hide away in a copse of trees in a field.
When we started the game, I found out that there were others in the same copse of trees - the rest of the party!
I've always been in favor of bringing them together quickly, otherwise you've got people twiddling their thumbs until their character is introduced.
Or, she could run them all in a solo game on a one-on-one basis before the first game, and then have them meet after the events unfold for their individual character.
I had a DM do this, and it worked pretty well. He was a master of getting us to go right where he wanted to. Having a PhD in Pscyhology probably helped. My character fled from some orcs, and managed to hide away in a copse of trees in a field.
When we started the game, I found out that there were others in the same copse of trees - the rest of the party!
DonTadow
First Post
The Inn is always the usual good stable. But there are other things you can do.Ruined said:
There's always the "chosen one" thing where adventures all receive a note from someone whom has chosen them for something.
There's the scenerio where all of the pcs wake up somewhere and none of them no why.
There's the scenerios where all of the pcs are already members of a group or legion. With this you want the pcs to construct there pcs together and how they're group operates and such.
There's the prisoner scenerio, where there all fugitives anyway and there is saftey in numbers.
Mark
CreativeMountainGames.com
Hiya Ruined! (Girlfriend DMing, ehhhhhh? You are soo screwed... 
)
http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=47525
)http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=47525
Here's an idea I stole from these boards a couple years ago:
The party is sitting at an inn, celebrating their latest adventure success. The door opens and they turn to see who it is...and everything goes black.
Next thing they know, it is cold and something wet is on their skin.
What has happened is this: The person entering the inn was a medusa and they were turned to stone. 12 years have passed and it is now winter (which is why it turned cold all of a sudden). They have been transformed back to flesh by the mayor of the town they once aided (the town where the inn was located). He has spent the last several years trying to amass enough money to have them permanently transformed back to flesh, but he has failed.
All he could manage was to acquire enough money to buy a salve that turns them to flesh for one week (which is why their skin is wet). But if they can drink an elixir made from the blood of the "Stone Lord" (the medusa), the change to flesh will be permanent. So, they must find the medusa, kill him and drink his blood.
The problem is that in the dozen years that have passed, the "Stone Lord" has managed to overthrow the entire region and set himself up as dictator. He lives a couple of days away in a fortress.
To further complicate matters, the "statues" of the party were left at the inn as a display of what happens to those who would oppose the will of the Stone Lord. When they go missing, word will get back to the Stone Lord fairly quickly and he will be prepared for them.
This turned out to be great fun as an adventure because the party was on a tight timetable and had to keep moving forward (which is what I want when I'm running a one shot). They were immediately faced with the dilemma of heading for the fortress with all due haste or trying to kill the garrison of bugbears that the Stone Lord had stationed at the town to keep them from sending word about their "escape".
This is an excellent example of starting the campaign by forcing the characters to cooperate to survive. The idea is that this will forge bonds that will hold up for the rest of the campaign. Though the original idea assumes the party members already adventured together, there's no reason it couldn't be used before the PC's actually meet, immediately after they've bumped into each other, or whatever.
When I used the idea, I had a hundred years go by, but that was far too much time - it split the characters from their backgrounds. If I was to do it over, I'd only have a year or two go by. Also, IMC the party didn't have to find the Stone Lord. They instead had to seek out a mysterious shaman who lived in a dark forest. The shaman turned out to be a rather nice, if lonely, troll who enjoyed tea and wore a shawl to keep out the cold. The shaman agreed to help, but the party had to collect the obscure ingredients needed before the temporary cure ran out. To heighten the tension, I had it wear off somewhat randomly, so the players never knew who would be next (one character made it back to the shaman with everything and was able to un-stone the others). Very memorable beginning to the campaign.
The party is sitting at an inn, celebrating their latest adventure success. The door opens and they turn to see who it is...and everything goes black.
Next thing they know, it is cold and something wet is on their skin.
What has happened is this: The person entering the inn was a medusa and they were turned to stone. 12 years have passed and it is now winter (which is why it turned cold all of a sudden). They have been transformed back to flesh by the mayor of the town they once aided (the town where the inn was located). He has spent the last several years trying to amass enough money to have them permanently transformed back to flesh, but he has failed.
All he could manage was to acquire enough money to buy a salve that turns them to flesh for one week (which is why their skin is wet). But if they can drink an elixir made from the blood of the "Stone Lord" (the medusa), the change to flesh will be permanent. So, they must find the medusa, kill him and drink his blood.
The problem is that in the dozen years that have passed, the "Stone Lord" has managed to overthrow the entire region and set himself up as dictator. He lives a couple of days away in a fortress.
To further complicate matters, the "statues" of the party were left at the inn as a display of what happens to those who would oppose the will of the Stone Lord. When they go missing, word will get back to the Stone Lord fairly quickly and he will be prepared for them.
This turned out to be great fun as an adventure because the party was on a tight timetable and had to keep moving forward (which is what I want when I'm running a one shot). They were immediately faced with the dilemma of heading for the fortress with all due haste or trying to kill the garrison of bugbears that the Stone Lord had stationed at the town to keep them from sending word about their "escape".
This is an excellent example of starting the campaign by forcing the characters to cooperate to survive. The idea is that this will forge bonds that will hold up for the rest of the campaign. Though the original idea assumes the party members already adventured together, there's no reason it couldn't be used before the PC's actually meet, immediately after they've bumped into each other, or whatever.
When I used the idea, I had a hundred years go by, but that was far too much time - it split the characters from their backgrounds. If I was to do it over, I'd only have a year or two go by. Also, IMC the party didn't have to find the Stone Lord. They instead had to seek out a mysterious shaman who lived in a dark forest. The shaman turned out to be a rather nice, if lonely, troll who enjoyed tea and wore a shawl to keep out the cold. The shaman agreed to help, but the party had to collect the obscure ingredients needed before the temporary cure ran out. To heighten the tension, I had it wear off somewhat randomly, so the players never knew who would be next (one character made it back to the shaman with everything and was able to un-stone the others). Very memorable beginning to the campaign.
You can always use the meet in a bar thing. Or, they can be slaves that have just freed themselves from the same prison.
They can also be the sole survivors of a town that was caught in a raid of some kind. Perhaps some of them were just passing through, and some of them just lived there. The town could be in a remote part of the world where getting back to a more civilized place would require them to work together.
Some of them could be bounty hunters looking for the people that will later compose part of the party. When they find that their employer betrayed them they can team up together to go seek revenge.
They can also be the sole survivors of a town that was caught in a raid of some kind. Perhaps some of them were just passing through, and some of them just lived there. The town could be in a remote part of the world where getting back to a more civilized place would require them to work together.
Some of them could be bounty hunters looking for the people that will later compose part of the party. When they find that their employer betrayed them they can team up together to go seek revenge.
Options I used other than Inns
Have the party meet in prison after a big riot like after you'd see when a sports team loses the big championship. Essentially, they're in the "drunk tank" for a day to think about their bad behavior (whether or not they were actually guilty- they were in the wrong place at the wrong time). Then something happens in the prison...a mysterious death, a prison break by someone else...
"The Snowball"- takes work, but its worth it. Start an encounter with a single PC...a mugging, a brawl, or working on a thief job, buying something in the market, whatever... As the single PC progresses through the encounter, introduce the second PC into the mix, repeat ad infinitum until the entire party has met. Think of it as a running adventure. The first time I did this, it started with an arm-wrestling competition in a bar with 1 PC, who won but was accused of cheating- PC2 was in the bar watching the match. Brawl broke out, PC1 and PC2 wound up fighting back to back. The city Watch barged in to break up the brawl, and the 2 PCs went out the back. As they fled the Watch, they stumbled over PC3 who was coming back from a hot date. Watch sees them and charged- all 3 flee in the same direction. They busted through a door in a dead-end alley, only to encounter PC4 (a thief) trying to do his Indiana Jones impression with a statue. The invading 3 set off the traps that PC4 had avoided, and everyone got dumped into the sewers via a trap door. They start working their way out, only to encounter PC5 being kidnapped- bound and gagged in a smuggler's boat. After a fight with the smugglers, PC5 got rescued, and they worked their way out of the sewers (past some sewer-dwellers) into the town square, where they encountered a mysterious stranger who was recruiting for a job... In the process of the adventure, everyone gets introduced, everyone gets XP, and the entire evening is rapidly paced.
When I ran that first "Snowball," the recruiter was hiring for a caravan. I like caravans. They work just like Inns, except they can also fill the role of the adventure itself. Each day of travel, you can have random encounters. You can have the party be assigned outrider duties- where they encounter brigands or a dungeon or an "abandoned" keep. You can have a murder mystery where someone is killing members of the caravan. And if/when the caravan reaches its destination, you can do it all over again.
A combination the "Snowball"/Prison/Caravan is the "Pirate Attack." All of the party are aboard a single ship as passengers. Pirates attack the ship (I used Interplaner Raiders who wanted slaves/prey last time), and all hands must fight to fend off the pirates. If they lose, they're taken captive and get sold into slavery (see Prison above). If the party wins, you still have the issue of whether either ship is able to make it back to land, and you can have the Voyager/Maqis situation where pirate and party must cooperate... Heck- PCs could be on either/both sides of the attack!
Have the party meet in prison after a big riot like after you'd see when a sports team loses the big championship. Essentially, they're in the "drunk tank" for a day to think about their bad behavior (whether or not they were actually guilty- they were in the wrong place at the wrong time). Then something happens in the prison...a mysterious death, a prison break by someone else...
"The Snowball"- takes work, but its worth it. Start an encounter with a single PC...a mugging, a brawl, or working on a thief job, buying something in the market, whatever... As the single PC progresses through the encounter, introduce the second PC into the mix, repeat ad infinitum until the entire party has met. Think of it as a running adventure. The first time I did this, it started with an arm-wrestling competition in a bar with 1 PC, who won but was accused of cheating- PC2 was in the bar watching the match. Brawl broke out, PC1 and PC2 wound up fighting back to back. The city Watch barged in to break up the brawl, and the 2 PCs went out the back. As they fled the Watch, they stumbled over PC3 who was coming back from a hot date. Watch sees them and charged- all 3 flee in the same direction. They busted through a door in a dead-end alley, only to encounter PC4 (a thief) trying to do his Indiana Jones impression with a statue. The invading 3 set off the traps that PC4 had avoided, and everyone got dumped into the sewers via a trap door. They start working their way out, only to encounter PC5 being kidnapped- bound and gagged in a smuggler's boat. After a fight with the smugglers, PC5 got rescued, and they worked their way out of the sewers (past some sewer-dwellers) into the town square, where they encountered a mysterious stranger who was recruiting for a job... In the process of the adventure, everyone gets introduced, everyone gets XP, and the entire evening is rapidly paced.
When I ran that first "Snowball," the recruiter was hiring for a caravan. I like caravans. They work just like Inns, except they can also fill the role of the adventure itself. Each day of travel, you can have random encounters. You can have the party be assigned outrider duties- where they encounter brigands or a dungeon or an "abandoned" keep. You can have a murder mystery where someone is killing members of the caravan. And if/when the caravan reaches its destination, you can do it all over again.
A combination the "Snowball"/Prison/Caravan is the "Pirate Attack." All of the party are aboard a single ship as passengers. Pirates attack the ship (I used Interplaner Raiders who wanted slaves/prey last time), and all hands must fight to fend off the pirates. If they lose, they're taken captive and get sold into slavery (see Prison above). If the party wins, you still have the issue of whether either ship is able to make it back to land, and you can have the Voyager/Maqis situation where pirate and party must cooperate... Heck- PCs could be on either/both sides of the attack!
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