What to do with new PCs in an old campaign?

[Oryan77]

I may be running some new players in my existing group. I feel bad that I have all these ongoing scenarios with the current players and I don't want the new guys to feel left out.

These players haven't written any history for me to feed off of. But they did give a little background about their characters. A Human Soulknife that wanders the planes just to see where life takes him. The other is a Human Cleric of Pelor that fought a powerful wizard that had him trapped in a magic mirror. The mirror was destroyed and the PC was thrown into the planes.

I've just started running the Dead Gods adventure so luckily they haven't missed much of it. But I'm trying to think up some personalized scenarios that I can quickly use in the game so the new guys get some instant attention to their PCs.

Anyone have any ideas or scenarios they have used that would work for these characters? They would be starting out on the Beastlands and won't have met any NPCs yet. Without histories, it's hard for me to know what direction I should take when coming up with plotlines for these guys. I just want to make them feel like a part of the campaign ASAP.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

For the cleric you could have the evil wizard come back. Borrow a "The Master Returns" plot line from Dr Who. (in short: the Master is back for revenge but is working from hiding, using catspaws and the Doctor doesn't suspect he's there until it's almost too late!)

The soul knife on the other hand has given you nothing. Rather specifically given you nothing. The classic lone wanderer. I suspect the player is not much of a role player and will be happy to hit anything that comes along, just so as s/he gets to look good doing it. If you really want to you could have the thing (event, enemy, lost love, whatever) that set him wandering make an appearance. How about a threat to his home dimension to make him consider why he has left it and his responibilities to it. Even if in the end he just says: "I always hated that place, let it go to hell."

just a couple of thoughts, hope they help.

 

[DonTadow]

For the cleric you could have the evil wizard come back. Borrow a "The Master Returns" plot line from Dr Who. (in short: the Master is back for revenge but is working from hiding, using catspaws and the Doctor doesn't suspect he's there until it's almost too late!)

The soul knife on the other hand has given you nothing. Rather specifically given you nothing. The classic lone wanderer. I suspect the player is not much of a role player and will be happy to hit anything that comes along, just so as s/he gets to look good doing it. If you really want to you could have the thing (event, enemy, lost love, whatever) that set him wandering make an appearance. How about a threat to his home dimension to make him consider why he has left it and his responibilities to it. Even if in the end he just says: "I always hated that place, let it go to hell."

just a couple of thoughts, hope they help.

I always like playing with exactly what the pcs give me.

first the mirror cleric. Great scenerio. HOwever, how does he know the wizard was evil. How does he know it was a prison. How does he not know that it was not for his own good? Imprisoning takes so much effort for it not to be important.

As for the soulknife... i agree with the other poster, he sounds like the typical loner character. The problem is if you leave him alone you may see that he never really blends with the party and at some point may oppose them because that's his character nature.

INstead embrace this character. Link him somehow to one of the pcs. Perhaps while he was wandering he killed or helped a favorite npc or his wandering has acttracted to the same enemies as the pcs. Perhaps you mention how he recognizes one of the pcs. Turns out their the relative of somoene he encountered who still need help. Everytime he looks at this face he is riddled with guilt for not going back.

 

[Deekin]

For the soulknife, give him a chance to join the Sensates when they get to Sigil.

 

[Oryan77]

Yeah I'm trying to figure out a spinoff for the Cleric involving the wizard. I'm thinking that the cleric & his adventuring party fought the wizard and he fell victim to the wizards mirror trap during a battle. His friends thought he died by the trap and one of them shattered the mirror before it could kill another one of them. Destroying it caused the trapped cleric to be dumped on the planes. What the cleric doesn't know is that his friends failed and the wizard killed them all. I'm just trying to think of a reason why this wizard would look for the cleric on the planes.

Any ideas? I may take another look at his magic items and see if maybe I can use one as a plot device. Maybe he took it from the wizards tower and it's much more than what the player thinks it is...so the wizard wants it back.

As for the wandering character...boy did I brain fart! I completely forgot that he wrote me up a history the same night he created his PC. That was 2 months ago and I totally forgot. I actually checked my email to see if he did in fact write one and sure enough I found it. I feel stupid too, because it's quite a detailed history and a good one. Long story short; this PC ended up serving in the Blood War and was left for dead. He survived and is now roaming the planes.

I like the idea of connecting him with one of the other PCs. Preferably, I'd like to connect him with the player using a Swordsage who is also a member of the Planewalker's Guild. This Swordsage player also doesn't have much connection to the campaign since he's fairly new (his old PC died over the summer). The first thought I had is to make the Soulknife recognize the Swordsage but the Swordsage has no idea what he's talking about. Perhaps the Swordsage learns down the road that everything he knew about his life is false and maybe he really served in the Blood War with the Soulknife. I could even come up with a whole scenario about how both of those PCs worked together as assassins for the Baatezu and then had their minds wiped out or something. Anyone wanna help me play off that idea?