Ideas for how to hold a party together

[WarKitty]

I'm planning to run a sandbox game in a few months. Each player has completed a specific quest in the past for a powerful entity. At the end of this quest each received a small magical tattoo. The second quest takes place a year after the first. It really is supposed to be a sandbox game - I want to give them a world map and tell them to have fun. They are pretty good about well-developed characters with agendas, so that shouldn't be an issue.

My problem: how do I give them a plausible excuse to stick together? They all have homes and lives of various sorts.

[Dr.Epic]

"Hey, cool! You got the same tattoo as me! Wanna be pals?"

[WarKitty]

"Hey, cool! You got the same tattoo as me! Wanna be pals?"

Just...no. I *would* like to use the tattoos somehow, but it's going to have to be more than a simple marker for it to work.

[snoopy13a]

This idea seems a bit cliche but:

In the course of completing their quest together, the party made an unknown powerful enemy. This powerful enemy has decided to get revenge and launched attacks on the PCs. While the PCs were able to escape and/or defeat the initial attack, some of their friends/family were captured/killed. The PCs learn that each other has been attacked and they decide to find out together who wants them dead.

Yeah, it's sort of lame but it was the first idea that popped into my head.

[Shenanigans]

Maybe have the tattoo have some heretofore unknown compulsion effect, like a kind of geas or something. Or it could be an anchor for some kind of pain effect if they get too far away from each other, although that could become troublesome.

Alternatively, tell the players "Hey, if you want to play together, then adventure as a party." I know this sounds tongue in cheek, and is to an extent, but I've played in groups that did such a thing, and it worked.

[The Big Dice]

Hire them. Seriously, if they all work for the same person in some capacity, say a powerful noble or a rich wizard, they've got the perfect reason to stick together.

[WarKitty]

The problem is this is a SANDBOX game. The idea is that the players aren't on any overarching quest, or if they are it's extremely vague. There are lots of quests for them to complete, but there should never be any time where they absolutely need to go somewhere or do something or attempt something specific. I'd rather not use OOC stuff if I can help it, because I think it would ruin the realism for my players.

[Starbuck_II]

I'm planning to run a sandbox game in a few months. Each player has completed a specific quest in the past for a powerful entity. At the end of this quest each received a small magical tattoo. The second quest takes place a year after the first. It really is supposed to be a sandbox game - I want to give them a world map and tell them to have fun. They are pretty good about well-developed characters with agendas, so that shouldn't be an issue.

My problem: how do I give them a plausible excuse to stick together? They all have homes and lives of various sorts.

The god of death has marked them for death. Unless they do a favor for him. He won't tell them when he'll require it, but he will say they need the other marked ones to finish the favor.

Granted, it requires gods actively meddling with lives for giggles.

[Lhurgyof]

Sovereign Glue?

[Dr.Epic]

Just...no. I *would* like to use the tattoos somehow, but it's going to have to be more than a simple marker for it to work.

"Come on bro! It's a sweet tat!"

[WarKitty]

"Come on bro! It's a sweet tat!"

Yeah...part of the problem is that several are not adventurers by trade. So they need a motivation, not only to go adventuring, but to stick with a rather conflicted party (some of them know and don't particularly like each other).

[Dralnu]

They're related to each other.

They're all at the same inn and someone offers a job to any able adventurer.

They're all working for the same employee.

They're all at the same town when BAM, zombies / mindflayers / kittens attack and they all end up working together to save the town.

They get captured by goblins / mindflayers / kittens and put in the slave pens, have to work together to break free.

Mindrape.

[Lhurgyof]

Mindrape.

The obvious option.

[Tyndmyr]

Sovereign Glue?

Aw, you beat me to it.

[WarKitty]

They're related to each other.

They're all at the same inn and someone offers a job to any able adventurer.

They're all working for the same employee.

They're all at the same town when BAM, zombies / mindflayers / kittens attack and they all end up working together to save the town.

They get captured by goblins / mindflayers / kittens and put in the slave pens, have to work together to break free.

Mindrape.

Pre-created characters across vastly different locations.

Although...a post-apocalyptic world might work well. The previous quest was tied to the master of good fate. Somehow he could no longer hold things together, so he called together his former servants to one sheltered location. They then have to cope in a shattered world.

[grarrrg]

The tattoos are a one use 'mark of calling' or something, and everyone just magically appears in the same place, all are miles (or worse) away from home.
None have a clue what they were summoned for, and here's the best part...

You don't tell them why.

Let them discuss it amongst themselves, don't get involved. After many sessions (it was/is a campaign right?) pick whichever of their crazy ideas you like, adjust it slightly, and say that was you're plan all along.
It's flexible, it requires no overall 'quest commitment' so the SANDBOX is preserved, and you can mess with them a little...

[Vemynal]

Maybe these tattoo's are like the cursed ring in lord of the rings? A wonderfully powerful artifact that we all love turns out to be the source of evil.

A simple way to get them together is for an unconscious gaes affect drawing them to each other. Even if they separate the strings of fate draw them back towards each other.

As the players grow on this quest they unknowingly are making an evil entity more powerful

You can keep the game sandbox by keeping him in the background a la Prof. Moriarty from Sherlock Homes

(unknown to the players the whole time- this character was causing/enacting all the problems the heroes quested to stop. Thus powering the main villain)

As mentioned- it keeps the game sandbox because you don't even have to introduce this until the very last quest. But it gives the game a latent over-arching theme at the end

[Coidzor]

Somebody's killing masks.

[Leon]

Sovereign Glue?

Aw, you beat me to it.

Ive been beaten to it twice

[Zen Master]

We once played a troupe of travelling performers on Athas. All were multi-class bard elves - quintublets, actually. That campaign involved a warwagon transformed into a mobile theater, and quite an amount of poison (bards in Dark Sun being assasins).

Another time we played as members of a trading house in Eberron.

We've played the crew of a ship.

In another group I play with the players are attached to a military regiment.

But mostly we kinda just stick together because we want to - with no fluff reason.

[Greenish]

The lazy DM's patented solution is to just tell your players to figure out why they'd want to stick together. Have 'em write the reasons into their backstories.

[Kiero]

Make sure everyone creates characters together, in the same room, at the same time. Set them the task that chargen doesn't end until they all have plausible links to each other. PC A and B rode caravans together. PC B and C are half-siblings. PC A and D lived in the same city for a while. PC B and D were once rivals for the romantic attentions of the same person. And so on.

I think individual links like that, which form a web of relationships, are far more interesting than everyone just having the same background/motivation.

You could even create a random relationship table, something like:

Relationship to another PC (Roll 2d6)
2=Closely related (sibling, half-sibling, etc)
3=Related (cousins, in-laws, etc)
4=Served in a war together
5=Rode caravan guard together
6=Childhood friends
7=Lived in the same settlement
8=Romantic rivals for the same person
9=Hired for a previous job together
10=Families have a long-running feud
11=Families have a long-running alliance
12=Linked by fate/destiny/magic

[WarKitty]

Make sure everyone creates characters together, in the same room, at the same time. Set them the task that chargen doesn't end until they all have plausible links to each other. PC A and B rode caravans together. PC B and C are half-siblings. PC A and D lived in the same city for a while. PC B and D were once rivals for the romantic attentions of the same person. And so on.

I think individual links like that, which form a web of relationships, are far more interesting than everyone just having the same background/motivation.

You could even create a random relationship table, something like:

Relationship to another PC (Roll 2d6)
2=Closely related (sibling, half-sibling, etc)
3=Related (cousins, in-laws, etc)
4=Served in a war together
5=Rode caravan guard together
6=Childhood friends
7=Lived in the same settlement
8=Romantic rivals for the same person
9=Hired for a previous job together
10=Families have a long-running feud
11=Families have a long-running alliance
12=Linked by fate/destiny/magic

The characters have already been created. They wanted to re-use old characters that were designed for a different campaign.

[Coidzor]

The characters have already been created. They wanted to re-use old characters that were designed for a different campaign.

Ok, so, what, if anything do they already have in common?

And what level range they fall in, Mid-level? Upper? Prepic? Low-mid?

[Morph Bark]

The characters have already been created. They wanted to re-use old characters that were designed for a different campaign.

Have an overseeing power gather them because of their expertise in various areas for a dangerous mission only they are likely to complete - or they are likely enough to do so but still expendable rather than the higher-level experts they want to keep alive?

Behold, the League of Extraordinary Adventurers.

If they all come from the same campaign from before, this probably wouldn't be necessary though. How many of them are from the same old campaign? How many of them are there in total?

[Malbordeus]

teleport them all to the same location within your sandbox world which is in a closed demiplane, and tell them that they are all from the same world.

hopefully that should be enough to encourage them to start speaking to each other.

[WarKitty]

Ok, so, what, if anything do they already have in common?

And what level range they fall in, Mid-level? Upper? Prepic? Low-mid?

Level 10 pseudo-gestalt (full gestalt on lower tiers, half on mid tiers, etc.). Only real commonality is that they were all magically teleported into the last quest, although not all of them have completed it at the same time. PC's are from vastly different parts of the world. Good to Neutral aligned. Not all of them that played the last campaign got along too well. 4 have played last campaign together, getting 2 or 3 more.

I'm really thinking I'll run with a post-apocolyptic game. The FateMaster (previous questgiver) has finally been unable to keep the world in balance. Foreseeing the coming catastrophe, he calls the players together to a single sheltered spot. They ride out 24h of a magical, world-wide storm, then have to pick up the pieces afterward.

[pffh]

They are hired by each other. For example in my last campaign I had a baron that hired a ships captain that in turn hired the baron as his first mate and both of them worked for the sorcerer that was also the ships cook.

[Kiero]

The characters have already been created. They wanted to re-use old characters that were designed for a different campaign.

And you're telling me all these relationships were defined last time around and so couldn't be used here?

If they're re-using characters, don't they have ties to each other from the other campaign?

[Shenanigans]

I'm really thinking I'll run with a post-apocolyptic game. The FateMaster (previous questgiver) has finally been unable to keep the world in balance. Foreseeing the coming catastrophe, he calls the players together to a single sheltered spot. They ride out 24h of a magical, world-wide storm, then have to pick up the pieces afterward.

Well, there's nothing like a shared catastrophe to bring people together, especially if they all have at least some streak of altruism in them.