So, you all meet in a bar and decide to start adventuring together...

[Erky]

Why did they meet up. Well there's a host of reasons I can think up for sure. Basically they fall into three categories though.

A. Dumb luck and sheer coincidence
B. Known ties between the players
C. Unknown ties between the players (but naturally known to DM)

So by category I can think of the following one-liners why they would group:

A. Dumb luck

1. Everyone happens to be at some gathering place (think inn, marketplace, harbor) when some event (think someone asking for people for hire, a discussion or brawl of kinds where the PC's agree with "their" side) causes them to become a team.
2. They're the only survivors in some "disaster" (think ship wreck, town slaughter, caravan robbery).
3. They were seperate smaller teams or pairs maybe (formed by any of these reasons) and ran into each other en-route to some well known adventuring site and decided to group up.
4. They were all "picked" by some evil being(s) (think captured by robbers, beslaved by bugbears, used as gladiators in some barbarian city) then they fight out as a group with what little resources they have.
5. They were grouped together by a superior and thus became a team (patrol in some nations or mercenary force).

B. Known ties between players

1. They all share some kind of relative with each other making them (possibly distant) family to each other (brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces, father/mother and son/daughter you name it).
2. They all grew up in a certain area (neighborhood, farm village, woods) and have been a "gang" since childhood.
3. They all shared a common interest or place to visit (school, a job at a farmer, fighting school, the arena, stable boys in the royal stables) since childhood and were always close because of it.
4. They all strive to aid the same deity, church or movement and were made a team in that way.
5. They are all of the same race and are (probably) the stoutest and boldest of the younglings thus being banded together.


C. Unknown ties between players

1. They all have a (probably far) relative and for some reason (revenge, a "taste" of the far shared relative's power through his blood, wiping out the bloodline to prevent them to get some right from the relative (wealth, power what not) so said person gets the benefit.) wants to slay them all causing them to band up.
2. They all have been sent there by some superior (deity, king, commander) to investigate and bump into each other there seemingly dumb luck.
3. They all have gotten in possession something (necklace with an odd piece hanging from it, rare ingredient inside some kind of jewelry, piece of lore or knowledge that is useless individually) somehow (stolen, inherited, bought, traded, found, obtained through killing) that together make a special thing (powerful evil item, key to some ancient evil place, ancient evil spell) causing the evil person to want them all together bad hunting them all.


And undoubtedly a ton more but this is what I could come up with on the fly. Actually the last one's might work with your evil dude lures them all to the same spot. If you don't make the tie too obvious that should work out. I mean if you have them write "1/6'th of a piece of parchment" on their sheets the 6 of them will have figured out in no-time what the tie is. But if they each have their "own items" and you just decide it's in there without them knowing that might keep it up a while. Then spill some hints like the evil guy saying "Lay down your belongings and you may go freely" and so on giving them hints that he's after something they have. Might work.

Erky

 

[Olaf the Stout]

To start off my current campaign I had the players come up with a reason why they were in the city of Freeport and how they were related to at least 2 other members of the party. We just went from there.

The GM has enough on his plate. Let the players do some of the work for a change.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Felix]

The BBEG captures all of them to use them as hostages and leverage against their families.

But they escape (somehow)! And now they're on the run from the BBEG knowing that they are both pawns (1st level characters) and intimately tied to each other (through whatever it is their families may have in common).

You can describe the initial phases of their escape and then turn the ball over to them to get out of whatever holding facility the BBEG might have. Then they can go figure out what it is the BBEG wants.

 

[nyjm]

i usually find it convenient - but still very rewarding for the players - for the PCs to be members of the same organization: deputies of the local constable, members of a temple/monastery/guild, something along those lines. this is provides an easy motivation if i need it (your boss says "go"), but it also provides for a set of community resources and a whole hierarchy for players to explore as the campaign develops.

for example, in my latest campaign, the PCs began as members of the Avtali, effectly the sheriff of their territory. early adventures were point and shoot: find the missing girl, figure out who's stealing from the local mine, protect the borders from formians. but the Avtali work closely with the Church of Sardior, which in turn works closely with the Illesine (the ruling but mostly hidden oligarchy). the PCs effectively began the campaign as soldiers of a Mind Flayer theocracy. bit by bit, they gathered more clues about the nature and identity of their rulers, and joined the resistance (drow), but then discovered the resistance wasn't just as evil and corrupt; they spent a couple of adventures just constantly switching sides, true mercernaries.

finally, around 10-11th level, they decided to take up their own fates. they've each assumed an item of legacy and are going on various quests to fulfill their artifacts' power. not initially planned this way, my strong-armed approach early on has blossomed into a really interesting and pretty much player-driven campaign.

- njm

 

[Ibram]

I've had the party start off as caravan guards, hired on seperately but who stick together after the job is done.

I've had campaings start out assuming that the party was already together and had been adventuring for some time.

My current campaign one of the party is a is a member of a merchant clan, the rest of the party being his body guards (one being his "advisor in matters mystical")

 

[Agback]

I'll be starting a new campaign soon, and need clever ideas on how to get a group together. All I have now are some vague not even half-baked ideas. Tell me the clever ideas you have used, and it may inspire me.

Well, I often ask players not to generate individual characters separately, but to get together and design a team. Or else I specify that they are to generate characters who all happen to be such-and-such.

In my SF games, I often ask that the players generate a team of investigtors in the Imperial Justice Department (sort of like the FBI), or a mission team for the Imperial Secret Service, or field researchers etc. on an Imperial Navy survey frigate.

In campaigns inspired by film noir I sometimes ask that they generate characters who make up a small firm of private investigators in San Francisco in the '20s, '30s, or '50s.

In conventional fantasy campaigns I sometimes ask the players to generate characters who make up a half-file of the local militia, or who are all members of the military retinue of a specified NPC official, or who constitute a dining-club of gentlemen who became friends while on military service. I have on occasion asked that all the PCs be students of the same martial arts instructor. Once I asked them to generate characters who were all children of the wives of the same polygamous noble. Another time I asked them all to generate demigods who were sons of the same volcano-god. These are all variations on the theme of playing characters who have a pre-existing link and pre-existing connections.

In an urban fantasy campaign I ran once I asked the players to each generate a character who was immune from age and able to recover completely from any injury, and who had been born in some historical culture at its height (Periclean Athens, late republican or early Imperial Rome, Renaissance Italy, Tang China, Happaran or Gupta India, etc.) and who had survived ever since. That done, I asked them each to make up an omen that his character would interpret to meant that he ought to be at Delphi on the Autumnal equinox.

On another occasion I asked the players to generate characters who all happen to be riding up the right bank of the Rhône one cold and windy day in late autumn 1122, with no really pressing reason to be anywhere in particular at any particular time, who fall in to ride together for company and mutual protection. And on another, characters who had some sort of connection to the Order of Knights of the Hospital of St John, who either escaped or came too late for the fall of Acre, and who met in Limmasol on St John's Day, 1291. On yet another, I asked them all to generte professional military consultants who had come to a recruiting seminar for a nascent mercenary company.

Once I had the players generate their characters, then started the campaign in media res with the character having all been captured by evil monsters and finding themselves in the same cell.

These are examples of characters brought together by chance, and whom I undertook as GM to sweep up together with a campaign hook and forge into party.

But then, it has been a very long time since I did the classic 'adventurers' thing or the string of unconnected adventures (except in PI or detective campaigns, where the PCs had to take the clients or investigate the cases that came their way in teh course of their work).

 

[Agback]

Oh yeah, one more:

The players were asked to generate hopeful young courtiers, clinging to the fringes of the Imperial Court at Thekla, who all come from the same little city (Pangborn), in the further reaches of the second-most-remote province (Mela) of the Empire. I provided a six-page briefing on Pangborn and its leading families. The characters would all have known one another growing up (thought he details were up to the players), and had a mutual interest in concealing from the sophisticates at court just what a hick background they all really had.

After a few adventures at Court, establishing the status quo and letting the players settle into stride with their characters, they were all recalled home by their families (set-up for The Mark of Zorro).

 

[Agback]

The GM has enough on his plate. Let the players do some of the work for a change.

Hear! Hear!

Make party cohesion the responsibility of the character-players, and if they muck it up, let them pick up the pieces. It is actually much easier for them to handle it from the inside than for the GM to attempt it from the outside. So as long as the division of responsibility is clear it works much better that way.

 

[Agback]

What's floating in my head at the moment is that a bad guy wants each of the PCs killed for some reason, and does something to lure them all to the same spot, and then tries to have them killed there. This will have the advantage of starting off with action right away, and having the PCs have a common cause of finding-out why they were singled-out like that to begin with.

There are a couple of problems. First, the rational thing for any particular member of this group to do is to bolt and hide, and hope he can get far enough away while the BBEG is busy with the ones who stay in a clump. Second, this party premise makes it difficult to introduce a new PC (eg. to replace a ftality or if someone joins the campaign.)

 

[MavrickWeirdo]

How about the opposit. How about the BBEG has pissed off each of the players seperately, and they are each hunting him for their own reasons. (He stole from someone, got a second imprisoned, killed a family member of another, got somebody's sister pregnant, etc.)