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Beeba17
2018-03-26, 01:02 AM
Not every story begins in a tavern

Tell your favorite story of how a party in any game came together


In my D&D group our adventure began like this

Pele (a tiefling sorcerer) and Rai-jin (a human rogue) work together they have a common scam of
Get with the noble of the towns daughter and steal all the **** which was the plan in neverwinter

But this time Rai-Jin got to woo the lady. Which Pele didn't like. So he instead tried to burn the place down but was SO drunk he couldn't use his Magic's

So when the nobleman arrived he saw a drunk tiefling trying to use his fingers like a lighter on his house. And then saw what Raijin was... doing. Hah. And had them both thrown in prison

There they met Lynn (me a half elf bard)a who was playing at the prison but he played such inspirational tunes he accidentally started a prison riot The inmates wanted out cuz of Lynn's music and then. Bandits attacked! In the chaos the party breaks out and bails. The prison catches fire thanks to Pele. Everyone's running and Raijin. Pele and Lynn end up at the same bar with a elf named Cyndar and A dwarf named Gundrin Rockseeker nwho offered them work... and well. After this it wasn't like they were employed anywhere else. In the wake of this Neverwinter hired Alpheus the Dragonborn and his partner Big Ounce (professional street gnome) to investigate the prison fire and it tied back to the party. But... Alpheus was chill and rather than bring them in joined them on their quest

And yea

How have your teams joined forces?

FreddyNoNose
2018-03-26, 01:23 AM
Tired of trying to come up with a new and exciting ways to describe how
a party of adventurers meet? Don't sweat anymore! Below is a system for
determinging how they met.

Part one: Each character in the party rolls once on one of the tables below.
The number rolled is recorded and saved as that character's working number.
Consult the charts for the appropriate character class. After each character
has rolled once, go to part two.

Cleric: Roll 1d10
1: Worked with a political party
2: Worked with a charity organization
3: Worked with a mortuary
4: Was an altar boy/girl
5: Worked with local government
6: Member of a secret society
7: Local hero
8: Worked with local military
9: Was a child prodigy
10: Embarassed in public

Fighter: Roll 1d10
1: Worked with a political party
2: Worked with a charity organization
3: Member of hunting club
4: Member of fighters guild
5: Worked with local government
6: Member of a secret society
7: Local hero
8: Worked with local military
9: Had a duel in public
10: Embarrassed in public

Thief: Roll 1d10
1: Worked with a political party (and other criminals)
2: Worked with local mob organization
3: Member of thieves guild
4: Worked with a local fence
5: Worked with local government
6: Member of a secret society
7: Famous with your skills (prince of theives)
8: Worked with local military
9: Considered a philanthropist (false identity)
10: Suspect in a major theft

Mage: Roll 1d10
1: Worked with a political party
2: Worked with local church
3: Member of wizard guild
4: Member of wizards cabal
5: Worked with local government
6: Member of a secret society
7: Famous with your skills
8: Worked with local military
9: Won a wizards duel
10: Public fear (Rumored to have made pacts with demons)

Part two: In part one, each character rolled and recorded his/her working
number. Now is the time that we will use that number.

Using the written form for each character's working number (ten not 10)
count the number of letters in the word. This number now becomes the
new working number (ten would become three). Count the number of letters
in this word and consider this the new working number (three would become
five). Continue this procedure until the same number comes up three times
in a row. Using the final working number, look at the "Table of Destiny" to
determine how the party meets.

Table of Destiny.

1: Party meets at a political function.
2: Party is magically summoned from another demension.
3: Party meets at an interguild function.
4: Party meets in a bar.
5: Party members ordered to work together by the King.
6: Party members are all members in the same secret society!
7: Party is drawn together by mutual admiration and respect.
8: Party is shipwrecked together.
9: Party is brought together my their mentors/teachers.
10: Game Masters choice.

Hope this helps create new and exciting introductions for your player
characters! I know I am having fun with it.


Wayne J. Rasmussen

Copyright Wayne J. Rasmussen 1994 All rights reserved

RFLS
2018-03-26, 01:40 AM
Honestly, my favorite meet-up might be the one from the campaign I just started (Star Wars). A teacher asks her young, Force-sensitive student to go off-world to hunt down some (bad people selling bad things). He accepts, bound by a sense of justice. His teacher hires a ship and its pilot to get him where he's going, and he's off on his adventure.

The pilot is a smuggler that stole the ship (which has the Imperial equivalent of an APB out for it) because his boss was planning to off him. Meanwhile, the teacher's other student (a 16 year old girl) decides she's had enough of being stuck on Dantooine and decides to stow away. They all leave under a hail of blaster fire as the local government tries to apprehend the ship-thief.

Capt Spanner
2018-03-26, 03:43 AM
I like Out of the Abyss, where you all start off in jail together, and the first session is a jailbreak.

Concrete
2018-03-26, 06:15 AM
My favorite meetup was in a tavern. In the middle of nowhere. Completely snowed in.
The players had all prepared a story each to be told by their characters.

The Cleric told a parable from his religion, which turned into a dirty joke because he had had too much to drink.
The Rogue told a story about getting lost in the sewers and being chased by rats that screamed like children.
The Sorcerer recited a real neat poem which sounded too Frostian not to be stolen.
And the Barbarian regaled them with the tale about how she once got into a fistfight with a horse over a woman.

The barkeep, the only other person snowed in with them had just finished his own story about when a group of players came by, only to disappear during the night, leaving everything behind from their shoes to their carts, when someone started scraping at the door. And the windows. And the roof.
And then all hell broke loose.

Wraith
2018-03-26, 06:54 AM
The one that sticks out for me was in Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play, wherein the Players were all sitting upon, or walking along-side, a baggage train. They're all there for their own reasons - some are hired as guards, some are refugees migrating across the Empire, one is just hitching a lift to the next tavern - and then the group are attacked by Beastmen and mutants from out of the depths forest.

Circle the wagons, ready yourselves, try not to die; whoever survives gets to be the party who now has to walk to Altdorf. Memorable because, sadly, none of us did - WFRP 3rd edition was not soft on it's players! :smalltongue:

Corsair14
2018-03-26, 08:15 AM
Hehe back in my Star Wars days we often ended up starting the nights adventure in odd situations. My favorite odd one was "You wake up tied to a pole surrounded by the jungle, you are naked and have had blood rubbed on you and the body of a dead creature lies at your feet.. you see each other on similar poles...."

Jay R
2018-03-26, 09:41 AM
For the first adventure, unless they define their characters as already knowing each other, you need several plot hooks. I used the following for a superhero game.

To PC1: Listening to your car radio, you hear about a building on fire downtown.

To PC2: You see a column of smoke to your north.

To PC3: A couple of firetrucks drive by you will their sirens on.

To PC4: Relaxing at home with a good book, you say to yourself, "It certainly is warm in here."

----------------

I once started a Flashing Blades campaign with five players very straightforwardly.

"You are walking alone through Paris. One street over, you hear a woman's scream."

Lord Torath
2018-03-26, 02:25 PM
Tired of trying to come up with a new and exciting ways to describe how
a party of adventurers meet? Don't sweat anymore! Below is a system for
determinging how they met.

*snip*That's just mean! Er. Uh. I mean... Thanks! I was getting tired of always starting in a Tavern. Always starting in a bar is MUCH better! :smalltongue:

Knaight
2018-03-26, 04:11 PM
I'm still fond of how I started my steampunk/cyberpunk hybrid game. The PCs all woke up in the hospital, while owing a great deal of medical debt to the same sketchy mega-corporation, which offered them a way to work it off.

RFLS
2018-03-26, 04:19 PM
I'm still fond of how I started my steampunk/cyberpunk hybrid game. The PCs all woke up in the hospital, while owing a great deal of medical debt to the same sketchy mega-corporation, which offered them a way to work it off.

That sounds horrifyingly plausible.

Beeba17
2018-03-26, 04:20 PM
I'm still fond of how I started my steampunk/cyberpunk hybrid game. The PCs all woke up in the hospital, while owing a great deal of medical debt to the same sketchy mega-corporation, which offered them a way to work it off.

Sounds super cool!
Can I ask what system you used
I’ve been trying to start a Steampunk story myself
And there’s just so many steampunk styled games idk which to pick from. Which is a good problem to have I guess but still :smallconfused:

FreddyNoNose
2018-03-26, 04:37 PM
I'm still fond of how I started my steampunk/cyberpunk hybrid game. The PCs all woke up in the hospital, while owing a great deal of medical debt to the same sketchy mega-corporation, which offered them a way to work it off.

That would be time to breakout the fake group who wants to take out the mega-corporation that we can save them from or destroy them if they don't forgive the remaining debt.....

Beeba17
2018-03-26, 04:45 PM
Honestly, my favorite meet-up might be the one from the campaign I just started (Star Wars). A teacher asks her young, Force-sensitive student to go off-world to hunt down some (bad people selling bad things). He accepts, bound by a sense of justice. His teacher hires a ship and its pilot to get him where he's going, and he's off on his adventure.

The pilot is a smuggler that stole the ship (which has the Imperial equivalent of an APB out for it) because his boss was planning to off him. Meanwhile, the teacher's other student (a 16 year old girl) decides she's had enough of being stuck on Dantooine and decides to stow away. They all leave under a hail of blaster fire as the local government tries to apprehend the ship-thief.


Sounds awesome and intense!
I’ve heard lots about Starwars RPGs!

Beeba17
2018-03-26, 04:47 PM
My favorite meetup was in a tavern. In the middle of nowhere. Completely snowed in.
The players had all prepared a story each to be told by their characters.

The Cleric told a parable from his religion, which turned into a dirty joke because he had had too much to drink.
The Rogue told a story about getting lost in the sewers and being chased by rats that screamed like children.
The Sorcerer recited a real neat poem which sounded too Frostian not to be stolen.
And the Barbarian regaled them with the tale about how she once got into a fistfight with a horse over a woman.

The barkeep, the only other person snowed in with them had just finished his own story about when a group of players came by, only to disappear during the night, leaving everything behind from their shoes to their carts, when someone started scraping at the door. And the windows. And the roof.
And then all hell broke loose.

Super unique! May have to steal this at some point!
OOC did the players write their own stories or take them from the internet? I can see why they’d do both I just wanna know for ....ahem... if I use this idea :smalltongue:

Beeba17
2018-03-26, 04:48 PM
The one that sticks out for me was in Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play, wherein the Players were all sitting upon, or walking along-side, a baggage train. They're all there for their own reasons - some are hired as guards, some are refugees migrating across the Empire, one is just hitching a lift to the next tavern - and then the group are attacked by Beastmen and mutants from out of the depths forest.

Circle the wagons, ready yourselves, try not to die; whoever survives gets to be the party who now has to walk to Altdorf. Memorable because, sadly, none of us did - WFRP 3rd edition was not soft on it's players! :smalltongue:

Ouch...
Ah well it wasn’t fun while it lasted I suppose XD
Did ya have to make new characters? Or did you get to save the ones who died. Couldn’t imagine putting in the time to making a character and then die before they’re even in the party

Knaight
2018-03-26, 04:50 PM
Sounds super cool!
Can I ask what system you used
I’ve been trying to start a Steampunk story myself
And there’s just so many steampunk styled games idk which to pick from. Which is a good problem to have I guess but still :smallconfused:
Fudge. Multi-genre hybrids basically call for generic systems, and it's what I know best.


That would be time to breakout the fake group who wants to take out the mega-corporation that we can save them from or destroy them if they don't forgive the remaining debt.....

That would be a fun way to handle things; though a little superfluous given that the real group ended up turning against the mega-corporation. You can't have debt without a creditor, and that's before getting into the sketchiness the mega-corp involved the PCs in on false pretenses.

RFLS
2018-03-26, 04:55 PM
Sounds awesome and intense!
I’ve heard lots about Starwars RPGs!

They're pretty great (the FFG ones; I can't speak for the others)! The dice system takes a little getting used to, but the fact that it's not binary and the rules really leverage that makes for some fantastic scenes.

Side note: You can quote multiple replies in one go by clicking the "+ in the very bottom of the relevant posts, and then hitting "Reply to Thread" at the bottom.

Beeba17
2018-03-26, 05:18 PM
Fudge. Multi-genre hybrids basically call for generic systems, and it's what I know best.

Ah! If you don’t mind I’d love to see what you’d made. If you’re willing. I just kinda don’t know what I’m looking for. Lol

Concrete
2018-03-27, 01:12 AM
Super unique! May have to steal this at some point!
OOC did the players write their own stories or take them from the internet? I can see why they’d do both I just wanna know for ....ahem... if I use this idea :smalltongue:

I think the barbarian player made hers up on the fly, and I'm pretty sure I remembered the poem from somewhere else... But the two others were probably written by themselves beforehand.
But it shouldn't really matter. The story just has to be something the characters would tell themselves, and if the best example of such a story is something you'd find somewhere else, that's totally fine according to me.

Wraith
2018-03-27, 02:59 AM
Ouch...
Ah well it wasn’t fun while it lasted I suppose XD
Did ya have to make new characters? Or did you get to save the ones who died. Couldn’t imagine putting in the time to making a character and then die before they’re even in the party

We did have fun - the fight was so hilariously one-sided that it lives on as a legend in my gaming group, and fortunately it was the first time that we were playing 3rd Edition, so all of the characters were pre-generated in the book and we didn't lose much in the way of time.

We did, however, go back to 2nd Edition for the next game. While 3rd had a lot of potential, we lost the fight so badly and comprehensively that we had no idea what we did wrong - we didn't roll badly or have a bad party make-up, we just got wiped out somehow - and although we laugh about it now, it did put us off trying again.

Cespenar
2018-03-27, 06:44 AM
Heh, I remember one, back some 15+ years.

To cut a long story short:

-They are all in a tavern, not knowing each other.
-Something happens, the Barbarian insults the wizard.
-Wizard pours his tankard into the former's plate.
-Barbarian punches the wizard, crits, wizard is down.
-The Knight sees this, challenges the Barbarian to a duel.
-Another crit, this time with an axe: Knight is at negatives.
-Ranger gets up, sighs, carries everyone to the healer.

The actual campaign started in the healer, with me, the DM, mainly laughing. The barb's player is also grinning like a fool.

Cue some months later, the Wizard and the Barbarian is standing across a young dragon's corpse, deciding the best way to bring it to the town.

Seto
2018-03-27, 10:41 AM
There they met Lynn (me a half elf bard)a who was playing at the prison but he played such inspirational tunes he accidentally started a prison riot
...I also played a Half-Elf Bard named Lynn! (Short for Lindowin). She was female, though.

Florian
2018-03-27, 10:55 AM
The best start and meet-up I ever had was pretty much in-media-res. We build characters and our gm back then noticed that we lack a rogue.

"It´s a cloudy day in Calimshan, as the four of you bear the coffin of your party rogue, Hassan, to the grave. Now tell me why that happened and how Hassan died".

The four of us ended up narrating a heist gone wrong. T´was a blast and a good start at party cohesion building.

Beeba17
2018-03-27, 11:06 AM
...I also played a Half-Elf Bard named Lynn! (Short for Lindowin). She was female, though.

HAH! That’s awesome!... Mine was the fem wording but in his story it was a name he chose since he was part of a traveling group of performing orphan kids. It’s weird.. but OOC. I named him Lynn. Because if i named him Lin. Then everyone would get I was inspired by the legend Lin Manuel Miranda... (Who played a bard character himself on The Adventure Zone)

MintyNinja
2018-03-27, 12:51 PM
Cast: Paladin, Wizard, and Rogue (Folk Hero)

In the game I'm GMing now, the party "meets" when the Paladin arrives to investigate rumors of a Warlock terrorizing a small village. Instead he finds the very drunk Wizard with an outstanding tab. Also in the tavern is a young local man known for slaying pirates and was somewhat of a Folk Hero in these parts. Well, as the PC's are story-circling each other, trying to come up with reasons to willingly go with the Paladin, the Wizard chucks a Fire Bolt at another patron in the bar and does enough damage to kill the man. With the entire tavern going hushed, the Wizard blindly continues to drink away, unaware of the murder he just committed. The Paladin persuades the barkeep to let the outstanding tab drop and recruits the young Rogue to help him haul the Wizard away. As they quickly bound his hands, his spellcasting fails him and he's suddenly nothing more than another drunk old man.

The Paladin is the only surviving member at the moment, and they just hit Level 4. The Rogue has a song about him, and the Wizard "repented" and multiclassed Cleric, only to die to a Fire Ball a week later.

Jay R
2018-03-27, 04:49 PM
I was the GM trying to introduce a new character in a game of Flashing Blades (roleplaying in Paris in the time of the musketeers). I arranged that the group was trying to find a contact in the secret organization. Both the original party and the new PC had signs and countersigns. They were supposed to meet in a tavern.

The new PC started by trying to pick the pocket of a wealthy-looking gentleman, who, as it happened, was a PC. He got caught, they fought, and they chased him out of the tavern. Then they tried to make their contact - whom they had just run off.

Every time the new PC tried to get back into the tavern so he could meet up with them, the group threw him out - through the window, and then went back to annoying the other patrons and trying to find their contact, whom they had just defenestrated.

They eventually annoyed one drunk man enough that they got into a duel, which their guy lost. (They were convinced he could beat any drunk fencer. Yes, the guy was drunk. He was also Athos.)

Only after Athos had wounded their best fencer, and still wouldn't respond to their code words, was the would-be pickpocket able to sneak up and give the countersign without being attacked.

FreddyNoNose
2018-03-27, 05:18 PM
That's just mean! Er. Uh. I mean... Thanks! I was getting tired of always starting in a Tavern. Always starting in a bar is MUCH better! :smalltongue:

It could be worse, they all wake up with out any memories of their past!

Aneurin
2018-03-28, 06:57 AM
The last game I ran started with the characters waking up in an alley after they finished their basic training, with massive hang overs and discovering someone has stolen both their boots and their pocket change. Then they had to work out where they were, what time it is, and walk across the city barefoot in order to get to their ship before it left without them.

Knaight
2018-03-28, 12:31 PM
It could be worse, they all wake up with out any memories of their past!

I used something similar for a one shot recently - more specifically, it started with them all being thrown through a portal to what was basically fantasy Australia, then having a mage blow their memories away before closing the portal. Everything before said memories being stripped was removed, and the one shot was about first getting their memories back, then confronting the differences between the people they were (which got them thrown through the portal) and the people they are after having gone through. With a side of how some of the people who went through were mortal enemies before the memory wipe.

FreddyNoNose
2018-03-28, 02:27 PM
I used something similar for a one shot recently - more specifically, it started with them all being thrown through a portal to what was basically fantasy Australia, then having a mage blow their memories away before closing the portal. Everything before said memories being stripped was removed, and the one shot was about first getting their memories back, then confronting the differences between the people they were (which got them thrown through the portal) and the people they are after having gone through. With a side of how some of the people who went through were mortal enemies before the memory wipe.

I've used it too! Makes things easier and gives a mystery if someone wants to lookup their past....