So You All Meet In A Bar...

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

In my current game, I had all the PCs in the vicinity of an inn-one was the bookkeeper, one was at the bar drinking, one was outside walking nearby, and one was delivering a message to the innkeeper. There was a fire in the kitchen, and all of them were drafted into an impromptu fire brigade to fight the fire. They have stuck together (more or less) ever since.

 

[The Thayan Menace]

The Dark Flagon

I once ran a 2E solo adventure for a (CE) fighter that began in a seedy tavern known as the Dark Flagon; this locale was frequented by some rather unsavory necromancers ... and the specialty drink was an elixir made from the distilled souls of tortured elves.

-Samir

 

[the Jester]

My entire campaign started in a bar. The pcs (mostly) didn't know each other, and just happened to be sitting at the bar when an npc stood up, screamed "MYNAR!!!" and cast a fireball that killed most of the npcs (at the tables) in the tavern.

 

[Conaill]

My current PCs are all a unit of the town guard. We started "You all meet in the bar, after your shift".

Of course, that town has since been razed, so I guess they are adventurers now.

Or:

Bunch of 1st level adventurers meeet in a bar. While the dwarven cleric is drinking himself under the table, the paladin and the CE sorceror come to blows, and the TN rogue takes advantage of the distraction to start pickpocketing everyone in sight. A bar brawl erups, one thing leads to another, and the whole place burns down, adventurers included.

Then the town guard PC's come to investigate...

 

[shilsen]

It didn't happen to me, but a friend of mine had a DM that asked his players to provide him with their characters' background, including "why you are in jail". Each player had to come-up with a reason why his or her character was in jail (some were guilty, some were not), and the players worked together to find a way to escape as part of their first adventure.

I thought it was rather clever.

I've done a very similar thing, where the players started out in jail and then working for the benefactor who put in a good word and bailed them out. I let the players decide why they ended up in jail and they eventually decided that their PCs had ended up at a bar where they got involved in a bar fight that turned ugly. So those so-and-so's actually worked in the "we met at a bar" line anyway!

But I got them back for it. The benefactor turned out to be the BBEG and he eventually managed to TPK them. And their backup PCs. In the same fight. Vengeance is mine, saith the DM

 

[ARandomGod]

Meeting in a bar (or similiar typical meeting place)

We tend to try to avoid that... however in the last campaign we ran everyone was trying to 'escape' from a particular city-state. Some of them took the route through the trecherous woods (where they were met by elves and given a quest leading them back into the city where they'd get onto a ship). One of them stowed away on a ship (guess which one!) One managed to rescue an elf in the city who knew *something* about his quest (leading him to... a ship), and finally, the one with the least background was just gambling in a bar.

The PC's who managed to book passage on the ship were hired to 'recruit' (shanghai) some extra labor... went into the bar and promptly 'recruited' (thwapped on the back of the head) the final PC> And thus the stage was set.