Need advice on building a story and characters(My players stay out!)

[blackshirt5]

OK, I'm going to run this by my players soon(probably not today because I'm about to be an uncle and my parents want me to watch the house and my brother while they go down to see my sister), but I figured I'd get some basic opinions first.

I have an anime/fighting game RPG called Thrash. It's very good, and I want to run another campaign in it, based around an idea that I sketched out for a comic book series a while back. However, whenever we play Thrash I end up with a group of disparate characters that I have a hard time building a compelling story around, let alone an entire campaign.

What should I do about this? I don't want to strangle creativity, but at the same time I want to be able to tell a good story; so while one option would be to work very closely with them on their characters, another that I thought of would be to offer or make them play pregenned characters who already fit into the story, or have them gen up replacements; however, the genning is where the strangling of creativity comes in; last year another player accused me of doing that(although he's a jack...rabbit) in the same game because I didn't want a guntoting captain america clone.

Help me ENWorld Kenobi, you're my only hope.

 

[Greatwyrm]

There are a couple of things you might try to pull things together a bit. You might start with giving them a little background on the story and asking them to fit themselves in somehow during character creation. Don't give away any plot points, but let them know you might veto any character that can't reasonably be part of the story.

Alternatively, let the players generate their PCs in a vacuum as usual. Then, give them 30 minutes (and not a second more) to figure out how they came to know each other and end up at the beginning of the story. Let them know you'll award xp based on their decisions. If the Cap. America guy can come up with a really good reason for being there, great. If not, no bonus xp. You want to keep this time frame short. Put the background in the back and get down to playing.

 

[BiggusGeekus@Work]

I am a huge believer in having the players come up with their own reasons why they are together. It involves them in the process and you aren't railroading them.

 

[Shallown]

In my last campaign I made it a rule that each character must know at least one other character and to know more would be useful. It was more a request but I vetoed players who didn't even make the effort. It was enough to hook them all together and start forming the bonds that hold a group together.

later

 

[Macbeth]

I would recommend giving each player a general role, something that they contribute to the group. Then let them build the character as they see fit, but they must fill that role in the group. Then every character fits in, and you don't end up with a completely disparate group, just a sort of wierd one.