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Message: <blockquote data-quote="steeldragons" data-source="post: 5559595" data-attributes="member: 92511">For character creation, my preferred method is the "creation session" you mention. Get everyone together...get some pizza (or chinese or whatever) and let everyone roll up together, discuss things in a relaxed evening.When I've been in long-time groups of experienced players, having everyone roll up separately and come together just to play has worked too. But, especially, with new groups and/or inexperienced players, I very much like generating that sense of "this should be a fun and social gathering" as well as a sense of unity/comradery among the characters with a session for creation. Familiarize the players with the setting and/or campaign premise (if there is going to be one) as far as their characters would know, anyway. Work out backgrounds (which I really only require a bare minimum, but I've had many players who like to get very in depth...and they are welcome to).If it goes quickly/smoothly, then I also like to get in a quicky "meeting scene" or start the first adventure that first night....so it's not like a week (or more) goes by of "Ok, well I made this character now what do I do with it/when do I get to actually use it?"I'm there and on hand to fill in world details like places of origin or naming conventions in various races/nations and just generally answer game related questions.But I let the players talk out the types of characters they each want to play...sometimes they have pre-formed ideas that they'd like. Some people are content to say "well, if you're going for 'fighter type' and you're doing the mage, I'll go for a thief...", but I let them create their party as diverse or uniform as the players decide they want...and ideally, everyone gets a character they are excited about (and/or interested in developing).For the "coming together", sometimes certain players might work out mutual backgrounds/have met before (I once had a group with a couple of guys who were best friends. They usually insisted their characters were either related somehow-cousins, step-brothers, some kind of blood relation or had, at least, "worked" together in the past.) Or a real life couple who merges their backgrounds' to include a romance of their own (Unfortunately, this always ends up a mess when that real life relationship hits the rocks...)Most commonly, though, most of the PCs are not familiar with each other and so we have the "common enemy" scenario to bring them together...or, clicheed or not, I still am a fan of "You're all hanging out at the tavern." It's just a simple smooth beginning that gets forgotten as soon as the adventure starts anyway...and gives the group, at least subconsciously, a common "home base."...I've done the "town gets raided on a random night of drinking" thing. I've done "the PCs are all invited to a party by some mutual NPC friend, who then has something he'd like his friends to take care of for him/her." I've done the "you are all there to sign up for this job you saw/heard about in/at a posting in town." Or "you're all passing through this village en route to a common destination." I've brought parties together in a variety of scenes.But generally, it seems, causing them to fight together pretty much immediately cements the "we're a party now" mentality. Knowing that it is, pretty much the premise for the whole game, I rarely have had players put up an argument about this or deliberately say, "Well my character is going this way. See you guys later."Have fun and happy character creation.--Steel Dragons</blockquote>

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