What innovative ways have you come up with for PCs to get together

[Buttercup]

Other than the old, tired meeting in a tavern, how have you gotten your party together for their first adventure?

Personally, I'd love some better ideas than the three I've used so far.
1. They all heard rumor of a job, came to town and...met in the tavern. (yawn)
2. They were all transported magically into the presence of their employer.
3. They all took a job because they were bored or wanted money, things went bad, and the crazy wizard who hired them shoved them through a portal to another world.

 

[Thanee]

Well, just make it individual (and different) for each PC.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Thanee]

You could also use the cheesy, you know each other for quite some time now... approach!

Better yet, you could work something into their individual background stories together with the players.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Xarlen]

The only campaign I've ran, all the PCs knew one another previously (We started at 5th), so they had a carreer, some longer then others. Then old PCs left, and New ones were worked into the plot. But, I can think of several...

1) Bastians of the church.
2) Different classes discovering one another working on a common goal, and banding forces.
3) Slaves (Yawn).
3b) Prisoners needing to excape.
4) Mafia/Thieves guild trainees, put together to see how they work as a team.
5) Dreams/visions/divinations drawing them all together at a spesific place.
6) Coming in possession of magical items that, at a spesific time, draw towards it's other pieces (Each PC has a piece).

And a favorite:

7) Ala Usual Suspects, all of the characters have (inadvertantly) screwed a highly powerful NPC who works from the shadows. Instead of being Erased, the NPC has the PCs work for him, until their depth is payed. Works for PCs of vastly different backgrounds, classes, and Aligments.

 

[Furn_Darkside]

Hmm- I have used:

1) falsely accused of the same crime.
2) marked by a powerful being.
3) joined an adventure guild in a far away land
4) all in a merchant caravan (that goes awry)
5) all going to a college

I will be using:

1) they serve nobility
2) a time i describe the world and they come up with the answer (when I have the right players for that kind of experiment)

FD

 

[Cedric]

Pick the most charismatic player...tell him that he has an inclination to go to the town of so-and-so and find such-and-such person. When he does, he feels the need to do his best to convince them that he needs their help to <insert plot device here - save a woman or town, find something, etc>

Whether the player is under a geas, subjected to the powers of a god or demon, or just possessed, is up to you the GM to decide.

The player will continue to do this for each individual character until they are all together.

Cedric

 

[Femerus the Gnecro]

They all meet while competing individually in a tournament. After they win their respective events, they are all brought together to get their awards from the mayor, only suddenly be enveloped in a sphere of magical darkness.

When it disappears, the mayor is dead, and the players are thrown in jail together for murder.

Take that and run with it

-F

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I make the players decide how they know each other. It puts the burden of "getting along" on them.

 

[Thanee]

One thing I used once (was for an Earthdawn campaign following (and building on) a previously run Shadowrun campaign, tho)...

The party woke up in the same common room in a tavern. They all didn't know each other, but everyone felt some vague familiarity with the other party members.

In the case of the aforementioned campaign, this familiarity was based on the fact, that it was the souls of the player's Shadowrun characters that inhabited there new Earthdawn characters (of course they had no direct association to or memory of their former selves), which have been sent far into history (Earthdawn plays in the history of Shadowrun) by a very powerful being (Harlequin, for those familiar with the background) to correct something (not that they knew that initially)... eventually they received some hints on their task, to stop the still young elf, that will later be the one, that sent them back, from doing one nasty mistake, whose fatality would only show several millenniums later.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Dragongirl]

hmmm how about they were all on the same ship, the ship sunk, the party were the only survivors and their experience surviving whererver they turned up congeals them into an adventuring party.