New Town, New Gaming Group--Need Some Ideas


Dungeon Magazine General Discussion

Scarab Sages

I'm an experienced GM of 10 yrs+ and I find myself having GMs block, so I figured I'd come here to ask my fellows in gaming for help.

Here's the situation I'm in: I have recently moved to a new town several hours away from my old gaming group, and as such am having to start over in terms of players. I have NPCs and plaotlines to spare, but it's been FOREVER and a day since I have dealt with players who dont know each other in game AND out. So I find myself in a situation I dont have any ieas on how to fix: getting a group of players as well as characters to begin bonding as a team and maybe building some friendships. I really DONT want to do the "a dark-robed stranger approaches you in a bar" or things like that; I'd like to do something unique or at least very memorable to get the players in on the action immediately. I'm running a fairly generic homebrew world, nothing too out there and I'm running very few house rules because I have two neophyte players.

What I need help on are the "party gathering" ideas. Any assistance would be appreciated.


This is just one example, from a past campaign I ran.

The party members were all teenagers from the same tribe that had to undergo a "coming of age" ritual that the tribe's customs required....a dangerous journey to visit the tribe's elder holy man in the mountains.


My players have just started a new campigien and I want to try something new. This new world is controled by demon slavers and the 'Free Races' must stay underground to survive. The base races are human, illumians, gnomes and halflings. Once a character gets to a high enough lvl, they can perform The Crossing. Thats when they must escape the Undercity, sneek past the demons and traval to an above city of free people. Sound cool?


My campaign's players met through a "Help Wanted" ad. :-P

Scarab Sages

My campaign's players met through a "Help Wanted" ad. :-P

This is kind of what I'm talking about... the other ideas are good, but both are really campaign specific and I dont really want that; I'm giving the PCs pretty much freedom within the PHB to make a standard fantasy character and dont want to restrain their creativity.


daysoftheking wrote:

My campaign's players met through a "Help Wanted" ad. :-P

This is kind of what I'm talking about... the other ideas are good, but both are really campaign specific and I dont really want that; I'm giving the PCs pretty much freedom within the PHB to make a standard fantasy character and dont want to restrain their creativity.

In that case the Right of Passage may be good, or you can go with the typical dungeon grind, maybe let them decide were to go.


Give us something to work with. Whats the first adventure hook? Quick synopsis of what the adventure is going to be about. Where are they at start? In a City? A town? The wilderness?


When I started the campain I'm running right now I was fairly up front with the players as to where I wanted the game to go. I had this dungeon that I thought was cool, gave the players a few juicy tidbits and then asked them to come up with there own motivations.
"Why would your charater want to andventure here?" This allowed each player to find his/her own motivation and thus the team may have different starting points, but they gel in the fact that they have pointed themselves at the same objective.


In my campaing the group got drafted into the military.
There they had some training together :), was fun
as our 0.96 m Halfling tried to climb the wall in the training
parcour.
The dwarfes solved the problem to meet the timelimits and throw him over the Wall.
After that training they got an assignment as scouting force.

Kraschyn.


You could try running "A Dark Knight" (or whatever it was called), the free WotC adventure from their site. It was specifically designed to introduce new characters (and, therefore, players) to each other... I least I recall reading that when I downloaded it.


One of my veteran players from the city I moved from 3years ago had a great start for players who were unacquainted:

- For 1st level characters: "You are all apprentices, assistants and trainees for your respective elders; one day, your village came under a fierce attack by a huge band of {insert goblinoid villain here}. Your mentors sent you to escort masses of women and children along with the elderly and infirm as you sought refuge from the assault; by sunrise, you and all the other refugees look down from a hilltop, down on the smoldering ruins of your village, as it is picked over by the victors - you take to the road, before the remaining mob decides to hunt you all down..."

Here's a great one, used to start out a handwritten module run by my old friend over 20 years ago:

- For high level characters: "...You have all been arrested for a variety of crimes ranging from small misdemeanors and petty crimes, to capital offenses against the crown; you have been brought before the magistrate to be offered an alternative and a chance at redemtion before being sentenced to whatever duration of hard labor you are destined..."

Hope these work!

M


Saern wrote:
You could try running "A Dark Knight" (or whatever it was called), the free WotC adventure from their site. It was specifically designed to introduce new characters (and, therefore, players) to each other... I least I recall reading that when I downloaded it.

I wanted to chime in and say that "A Dark and Stormy Knight" was a great way to introduce characters to each other or to an already established party (we ran the adventure at 3rd level instead of first). The mutual need of taking shelter from the storm reallly gets the process started.

Quote from the adventure-

Cleric-"What kind of a sword is it?"

DM-"hmmm... It's a great sword."

Warmage-"You bet it's a great sword! I just saw it burst into flames and beat the crap out of the ranger!"

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