Trying to get the players all starting in the same place believably

[Greg K]

(Edit: both of the following campaigns had a group character generation session)

Campaign 1:
1. Druid and Barbarian: Druid was sent to try and negotiate the release of the Jarl's daughter, who was abducted by wizards. The Barbarian, seeking reknown and hoping to become a Jarl and marry the daughter, volunteered to be the Druid's bodyguard

2. Paladin: He is searching for his sister. He had a dream regarding her and the island ruled by wizards*.

3. Knight: He was seeking the people responsible for ambushing his border patrol. He had leads bringing him to the island.*

4. Rogue: He grew up on the island. As a mundane, he was on the bottom rung of society and hated the wizards. He wanted nothing more than to get off the island and, if possible, stick it to the wizards that ran it. He spent his morning on the docks looking for marks among the disembarking passengers.**

* the lead to the island for both of the players was given by myself.
** I fed the rogue's player info that his character had heard that the wizards had a noble woman as a hostage.

Knowing the above, I started them on the island with the rogue spotting the PCs among the disembarking passengers and set the players loose to bring themselves together.


Campaign 2:
A magical plague had driven survivors underground among various scattered locations. The PCs had grown up in one such community. Word had, now, come that it was now safe to return to the surface world

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Have a back-up plan to the pre-planning session. If your players are not used to it, you may find it doesn't work well. That was my experience when I last tried doing it.

The players sat in a room creating their PCs and discussing options. They were good at creating a diverse group, but when I tried to get them to draw the common link or links between them, they all sat there with blank looks on their faces. I had been asking them for a couple of weeks to talk about it and come up with some ideas prior to the session. In the end they came up with a rather weak explaination about how they played poker together when they happened to be in the same town.

Two sessions into the game and we were right back to PCs who really had no reason to be working together.

 

[darkseraphim]

(Note - this was for an advanced campaign with a dark world and experienced characters.)

I had a group of obstinate players who insisted on playing their favorites (half-ogre, assassin, paladin, etc.) with no care toward party viability. So I gave them a 30-second intro, in which I revealed that they were in a world where evil was winning, and a massive orc invasion had just taken place, forcing disparate survivors from every other race into a labyrinth of caves beneath the mountains.

First sentence before they even meet each other: "You are wakened from exhausted sleep by the screams of the dying. Orcs are swarming into the cave, butchering everyone in their path."

It was a memorable campaign.

 

[Shoe]

- Second: Is this "a" Shoe, or "THE" Shoe?

That all depends on WHICH Shoe you are speaking of...Certainly it is not just a random loafer or sneaker typing on a computer......OR IS IT...

But seriously:
I will probably try some combo of all the listed ideas...My campaign world is currently working on being overrun by Yuan-Ti so maybe i can work that in to the game i am having them play/be a good starting point. Thier campaign isnt relevant to the yuang-ti but they are getting hard to ignore ad thier goddess just broke free of milennia of entrapment, slew the god of death and took over as goddess of death...now how to make that a starting point without overshadowing the ACUTAL plot....?

 

[Pierson_Lowgal]

The wonderful podcasters at feartheboot.com invented the group template.
This is my explanation:
A group template is a set of pre-existing relationships between party members that explains why these characters are together as a group. It serves to avoid the “a dwarf, an elf and a peg-legged half-orc walk into a bar, having never met before, they agree to go camping in the woods and put their lives in each others hands.” The prior-relationships makes possible a party of divergent personalities, while avoiding groupings of character with unresolvable personal conflicts or goals. The template can also be used to create a common motivation for the first story arc. For example, all the characters are childhood friends from the same neighborhood, newly reunited, with the first story arc centered on the deteriorating condition of the neighborhood.