How to Use an Orphanage and Get Adventures for Days

[Xenonnonex]

"THE GREAT XENO IS HERE! THE GREAT XENO IS HERE!" Kids start diving under beds, climbing fire escapes, hide in the chamber pot.
Jasper, "No! No! I don't want to be a sidekick, I want to be a merchant. Please no!"
Xeno, " Shut up. I need a sidekick!"
Nun counting the gp, "Hmm that the third sidekick this month. The next one will be a little bit more!"

If I could put the fear of being made a sidekick into orphans that would make my day.

 

[StormbringerAUS]

In my campaign the Church (a pantheon of nine gods) have a school for orphaned youngsters which they use to indoctrinate them into an armed force with the most talented (zealots?) being Paladins that enforce the church dogma (roughly based on Children of the Light from The Wheel of Time Novels. They tend to over officious and constantly give the player characters a hard time - especially the Fighter whose background is they were a trainee who left under a could but whose best friend is now rising rapidly through the ranks. There will be some more sub plots around this in the future as well.

 

[TarionzCousin]

I ran a campaign with four players where immediately upon settling in a city, two of the PC's secretly became involved with the local orphanage; they both believed "something" was up with the place.

One of the PC's actively funneled money into the orphanage. The other, seeing that changes were taking place, watched it very closely.

It was like a magnet; everyone suspected that it was worth investigating.