Keeping the party together?

[Regissoma]

I need a bit of advice as a DM. I am grabbing the reins and going to try and DM for my high power level group, which will be a first for me. The campaign will be incredibly homebrewed. The PCs are able to choose to be from wherever they want and are able to build their characters to be pretty much anything I okay. What I need help with is to improve the plot and ensure that the players have a reason to work together.

The plot for the campaign so far involves an evil Dr. Wily-esque researcher who builds a machine using the magi-tech from his plane to do experiments on an unprecedented scale. When running one of his experiments, something goes awry, and our PCs are ripped from their origin planes through a magic vortex into the middle of a dense rainforest. The PCs will be an Ork Mekboy from Warhammer 40K, a hybrid of Bane from DC and Cable from Marvel from a Marvel/DC crossover plane, and a Warforged Ruby Knight Windicator from Eberron. They will start off at level 7.

Right after they land in the jungle, I am planning on having a painful event occur when they are in the jungle that causes them to be infused with some of the orbs from the machine and gain supernatural abilities. Orbs are the homebrew magi-tech from the researcher’s plane. An unforeseen result of the experiment was the awakening of what I call “void creatures.” In my campaign, the void is essentially a sentient plane that houses all the knowledge that ever was, but no knowledge of what is to come. Immediately after being infused with these orbs, a Voidling will attack them.

Now, the machine is still running, and it’s going to confuse the researcher for a while. Eventually, he’ll figure it out, and will be trying to kill the PCs, both because they are destabilizing the fabric between this plane and the void and wreaking havoc, and because while they are still alive, he can’t continue his experiments.

My question is, how can I give this party of powerful PCs a reason to stay together and work together before the researcher’s hit squads start showing up? And what should I have them be doing before sending in the hit squads to give them a concrete direction, villain, and goal?

[BloodyMartian]

What do you want the theme of the campaign to be? They stray souls in a new land. Are they just trying to get home? Are the destined heroes that have arrived at just the right time to save the poor innocents of the plane from the evil Dr Wily? By being from other worlds and destabilizing the plane are they a blight on the plane posing a greater threat to everyone than the Dr.? Decide on what story you are telling.

This world is full of horrors they have never seen. They'll need to eat and drink and sleep to survive. A group of people is better than being on your own. Make sure they understand that.

Maybe just have an npc from "teh resistance" show up and offer background and assistance to the players. Have someone/something steal from the players and run off into the jungle. They meet the npc and the it's all "Ho yeah, this jungle is lousy with those buggers. Always stealing our stuff. Go that way to get it back."

If you leave them in the middle of the jungle give them a landmark (tower, ruins, mountain, smoke, large glowing thing in the sky) that they can see and head towards. They get to the tower and it's a refuge for creatures that have escaped from Wily. The players might just attack because hey it's monsters. Maybe they try to talk. Maybe after fighting for a while the monsters try to parley.

Maybe it's not a refuge but a concentration camp for rounding up Wily's test subjects. Bam, player liberate the camp and are on their way to being famous heroes. Wily hears about strangers with strange powers messing with his plans and sets out to stop them. He learns about what they are exactly and then really drops the hammer.

Forget all that. Turn this into a horror campaign. They aren't heroes they are the destruction of the plane incarnate. The voidlings are there trying to stop them from making things worse. They are an alien intelligence that isn't capable of communicating through anything but destruction. Everything they touch turns to ash and then disappears. Like rust monsters only worse, and they hunt the players mercilessly. They Void knows everything that ever was and knows "hey you don't cross world boundaries for a reason GET OFF THE PLANE." But it can't say that being an over being and all so it just tries to kill them and Wily since he is responsible. The players just trying to survive defend themselves, of course, but every time they call on their new power a little bit of the plane disappears. Maybe within sight maybe not. Something really subtle that you just hint at every once in a while until the climax with Wily. They're fighting him and throwing out powers left and right and the castle starts to crumble around them they go for the death blow on Wily "You fools you're destroying everything!" And they are. Entire chunks of the landscape start disappearing every where they go but the powers never affect them. Hell maybe they get more powerful the more they consume with this new power. Then Voidling attacks become more viscous and common as the Void realizes things are coming to an end. It's too late, with no way left to get home the players are left with a choice consume the rest of the plane and then the Void and ascend to godhood or kill themselves and spare everyone else.

[Drork]

Assuming your players dont just stick together because its the done thing.

There are two ways to do this the heavy hand of the DM.
A few examples of this is they take damage the further a part they get.
Random monster encounters get more significant as things get further apart (void creatures).

Some other interesting things that come to mind is give each one of them the status spell on each other to show they are interlinked in some way. This would have the advantage of if they do split up once the hit squads show up they will be able to get back together relatively quickly.
Mind link power would work similarly.

A single item that gains strength the longer they are together (healing item would probably work well as your PCs are likely going to need some). Would also work as an anti MacGuffin of keep off the bad guy.

Make sure their names are all friends names from their own plane. If you are trust into a strange new world having friendly names might help bind them a classic trope would also leave for lots of RP in regards to thats not what the X I know would have done. This would also let each player flesh out more of their home world so they can share stories.

As far as what to do put them in a jungle like Xen'Drik from Eberron where distances arnt always the same and things are warped by magic. Just trying to find civilization there is hard work and chances are if you do find it their idea of a civilized meal might be the PCs. Giants, drow and dragons Oh my. Also seems about the power level of your expected campaign also can stop pesky teleport and plane shift magic. If you do actually base the campaign in an eberron like world you can give them dragon mark powers as their curse.

However if you are just looking for a way to keep the party together stick them all in boxers in a jungle nothing makes friends like having no way to defender yourself against the unknown. Its amazing what a group of kobolds can do to 7th level chars who have no armor weapons or magic.

[Regissoma]

I should've clarified a bit more last night on the matter of the PCs. They are in a horror campaign, because the longer the machine runs the bigger the ripples are that go through the planes that are being effected. The only ways to fix the situation is by killing the PCs and destoying the orbs or destroying the machine before its too late. But, I am liking the ideas so far that have been suggested. I know eventually, if the game goes on long enough, the de-stabilizing of the planes will eventually cause them to start randomly plane shifting.

Now I just need some ideas of interesting planes they can go through should that happen... Ofcourse outside of their origin planes.

[Zaxus]

It would be cool if they started plane-shifting because they destroyed the machine. I mean, the PCs would likely see the machine as the cause of why they're there, a not entirely wrong assumption, and assume that the only way to return to their home planes would be to destroy the machine. This could have the unfortunate effect of further tearing reality, and the explosion of the machine could shunt them into another plane, and rain bits of machine parts and orbs into other dimensions. Then, they can have a kind of plane-hopping quest where they have to find the missing pieces of the old machine, and use those to build a new machine to fix everything. Plus, the PCs would have a kind of lightening rod effect on them. Wherever they went, it would draw instability, and therefore the void, after them like a magnet.

Then you can just think of cool places orbs might have ended up. After all, they'd look like pretty interesting items, no matter where they showed up. You could even put multiple orbs or machine bits in the same plane, but in different places. Maybe get them all at once, or skip between them.

Some ideas:
In 40k, you could have them have to break into the The Fang, the fortress of the Space Wolves on Fenris, or the Phalanx, the giant space fortress-city of the Imperial Fists. It might even be under lock and key of some Ordo Xenos inquisitor, or the techpriests of Mars. Heck, you could even have it on an Eldar craftworld, a planet in the Eye of Terror, or a planet being devoured by a Tyranid hive fleet.

In that Marvel/DC plane, you could have it be in Superman's Fortress of Solitude, or the Batcave, or be in the hands of Advanced Idea Mechanics or Hydra.

In Eberron, it might have fallen into the hands of gods (god or evil), or even demon lords, or you could make it be locked in some crazy magic book dimension.

Start them off with planes they're familiar with, and then maybe add in places they aren't, like Star Wars, Gamma World, and Battletech. You can have fun with this, so take advantage of it. Plop them down in the middle of Tokyo while Godzilla is duking it out with something and have the fight be like an environmental backdrop to whatever they're doing. Throw in some Super Sentai as comic relief mini-bosses. Send them to Eternia and have them fight He-Man and Skeletor. Send them to Macross and have them fight the Zentradi. Just make sure wherever you send them, the plane has obstacles difficult enough to challenge them. Sky's the limit, have fun.

As to how they'd know the locations of the orbs, the Void knows everything that was, right? They could learn where the closest one is through the void creatures, somehow. Like, after fighting them, they get a vision of some of the knowledge they contain, specifically where the closest orb or machine part is. You could make it so that getting the orb triggers the next jump, and then some time after they get to the next plane, a big mini-boss type fight of void creatures pops up, and they have to beat them to learn the location of the next piece. Have them fight crazy void infested versions of things from those planes, or something.

[BloodyMartian]

If you want to keep them together make the first fight against the Voidlings brutal and not something they would want to attempt alone. Then just keep dropping hints that something is watching them.

[Regissoma]

@BloodyMartian

Thanks for the replies man. They have been most helpful for getting things started. Now I just have to come up with interesting planes they randomly hop to, but I have a few ideas so far like Brutal Legends, Starship Troopers, and maybe even Full Metal Alchemist where the philospher stone everyone is going after is really an orb that was a piece of the machine causing all the trouble.