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

[Elder-Basilisk]

Some of the better ones I have used:
(Star Wars game) Had all the characters imprisoned on an Imperial Inquisition ship as known Force users. Ship was attacked and crippled in transit and the characters had to escape from the burning wreck.

This one reminds me a little bit of Blake's Seven.

"You're all convicts of one kind of another on a ship headed towards the Terran Federation's gulag planet. On the way there, you encounter a mysterious derelict. After ascertaining that may have sophisticated defensive systems the jailors push some expendable prisoners on board first. You are those expendable prisoners. . . ."

 

[Crowe9107]

This one reminds me a little bit of Blake's Seven.

"You're all convicts of one kind of another on a ship headed towards the Terran Federation's gulag planet. On the way there, you encounter a mysterious derelict. After ascertaining that may have sophisticated defensive systems the jailors push some expendable prisoners on board first. You are those expendable prisoners. . . ."

Actually, it was an adaptation of the WEG adventure "Starfall", but that works too.

 

[Black Omega]

I've always enjoyed letting the players come with with previous relationships to help groups come together.

In my RISK game the group was brought together by a mysterious intelligence agent from Russian who wanted them to recover something, the idea of course being a group like that gave plausible deniability if things went bad.

For my supernatural game everyone worked for the Department of Praeternatural studies at a major university.

And in my Rokugan game the group started in two parts. One was Crab Clan samurai who'd been joined by a Vanara who was led to help one of the samurai by his ancestors. That group was sent to serve under a certain lord as part of an interclan alliance.

The otherhalf of the group came to town as part of a caravan from far far off, and were left to come up with how they go along with each other while traveling with the caravan. It worked pretty well.

 

[s/LaSH]

I kinda used a combination... the characters were created fairly much independantly and didn't meet for a while.

The first was a priest who, belonging to an organised religion, was sent on a mission to deliver an important message in a distant land. So off he goes, fights some undead on the way, then lets a whole tribe of goblins sneak up on him. He surrendered and wasn't heard of again for a while.

The second was a peasant who was working with a scythe when his farm was attacked by a certain tribe of goblins. After the community saw the raiders off, he went after them for vengeance. He found the priest tied up in the back of the dungeon; despite hating each other's guts, they had to work together to survive on the way out.

And because I only had two players, that was that for the first adventure. But I introduced a couple of extra characters in the second adventure under DM control (they later shifted to player control, becoming PCs). Strangely, the NPCs were the most reluctant to go adventuring...

Oh, and the previous paragraph is the only part not yet chronicled in my webcomic (linked below). So I won't give details. It's quite fun, though. Let's just say that finding someone else's hand in your pocket can have unexpected consequences for all parties involved.

The origins of the first two characters were player-generated, by the way. Their intersection was my idea.

 

[Berserker King]

This is critical

IMHO, how you bring the PCs together sets the tone for the rest of the campaign. If it is well thought out and detailed, the players can tell they are in a serious campaign and will likely put more effort into the development of the story.

That being said, two I have used with good success:

1. Escape as a group from a gladiatorial-style arena fight (you have to make sure that the PCs can tell who is supposed to be in the party without forcing meta-gaming).

2. Have all the PCs take a few ranks in a Craft Skill and start them out as apprentices in a castle that's gonna need saving real soon.

Take this part seriously and you and your players will be rewarded.

Peter

 

[Ace]

Some methods I have used is

The PC's are all from the same village

The party meets on the same conveyance (Train, Boat <usually> or Airship)

Let the party figure it out, often they are more creative than I would be in the same situation

 

[Kesh]

One I plan on stealing from an old 2e adventure is to have the PCs all embark on a sailing voyage from somewhere. Of course, shortly out to sea, a storm comes up and wrecks the vessel. Now they have to survive in a new land.

 

[Chimera]

IMN(ext)C; The PCs are all promising students of various Masters, from all over the region. They are sent however far (depending on their home town) to meet a contact at the Brown Mug Inn, a famous (but disappointing) Inn on a ford just outside Freetown (pop 4,000). My own world setting.

They individually meet the contact, who sends them to a house in town. There they meet each other and find out that they have been recruited by a secret organization known as the Jade Dragon.

The Jade Dragon knows that a huge war is coming in approximately 3 years. Most of the people in the region will be killed, the major cities all burned. The land needs more champions. So the Jade Dragon recruits the most promising students they can find and assembles them into Adventurer groups and Companies, which they then subsidize...in return for service.

Even if they turn it down, they can still "choose" to stay together as a group. Freetown laws might tend to encourage it if they want to keep their weapons and magic items...

 

[Caedrel]

What's wrong with the classic?

Hey, what's wrong with the classic party genesis of:
PC1:"I go into the tavern, do I see anyone there?"
DM:"There are several people eating & drinking. One of them is a large man in chainmail with an axe."
PC1:"I go up to the guy with the axe and say hello."
PC2:"Hello"
PC1:"You look dangerous and heavily armed; let's go rob tombs and camp together for the rest of our lives."
PC2:"OK"

I laughed and laughed when a player in my group sent this to me: he'd seen it on someone else's e-mail. I'm not qualified enough otherwise: we haven't had enough new parties start for it to be a problem. My players are still figuring out their background stories as they go, and we've been able to weave that into our campaign nicely - but that's just serendipity mostly

 

[FireLance]

I tend to use either or both of the "circumstance throws you together - deal with it" approach and the "you are strongarmed into knowing each other" approach when starting campaigns.

Variously, my PCs have been: members of a mercenary company for hire, marked by various powers to be their chosen champions, a knight and his entourage, in the same place at the same time when something odd happens, etc.

Sometimes, the players' own spontaneous creativity helps. The set-up for the first session of one campaign was that the PCs just happened to be in a village during market day when a dog (the familiar of a gnomish transmuter) ran into the village and started barking excitedly, trying to get likely-looking people to follow it (his master was hiding in a rope trick from a band of goblins that had attacked his house). The PCs were simply the ones that happened to be curious or bored enough to follow the dog.

However, the human fighter, elven rogue, half-elven paladin and dwarven cleric decided to add to this by announcing that they were cousins in town for a family reunion (the dwarf was adopted). Didn't change the storyline much, but it added an interesting dimension to the group interaction.