Offering and looking for framework concepts within which to set adventures. Or a reason for the party formation, which can then be used to springboard random or progressive modules.
Here are a handful I’ll throw down:
The Legacy
The PC’s are acolytes to an established order of more powerful adventurers, who disappear leaving the PCs to pick up their formidable duties (example Pete Maranci’s ‘The Grey Company’).
The Watchmen
The PC’s are recruited individually to work together as city watchmen, leading from a deceptively mundane start to more epic and far-reaching stories.
The Prisoners
The PC’s are slaves, gladiators or prisoners, thrown together by the evil schemes of others. Or possibly the unwilling henchmen of an ‘evil overlord’.
The Corrupted Legacy
The PC’s are the inheritors of a base, faction, title or calling that has a poor/negative reputation which must be turned around.
The Regulators
The PC’s share a grievance and desire for retribution after a dire crime has been committed which affects them all.
The Fellowship
The PC’s are the respective champions of different interested parties/families/factions/races, required to intervene in far-reaching events.
More ideas welcome : )
One of my betters in here will hopefully link to the old threads on this topic, I just can't recall what they're called myself.
The Inheritance.
PCs are called together for an inheritance... but it isn't money, it's a map (or whatever hook you want to throw in).
The Kids.
Twist on the above. If you've got a group that's played a few campaigns together banging out some characters that are the descendants of the old PCs can be fun.
All good intros. One of my favorite games I DMed involved the Watchdog gambit. The PCs were members of a holy fighting order (kinda like the Templars, but a little more frontiersy rather than smite the infidel type) and the church had ordered them to report to a new posting over a mountain in a new-settled land. Since they had to travel there they had to watch over a caravan of new settlers as they went. Having them responsible for the caravan was a great shakedown adventure for the game, and the frontier guardian angle let me send them on whatever mission I had created without cajolery (it worked well because all the players were military at the time, and they are used to accepting orders from superiors, more chaotic folks might feel railroaded)
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The Childhood Friends: A group of people mostly all from the same town, one of whom is saddled with a great responsibility or duty; his/her friends come along to help, maybe seeing it as a chance to see a little more of the world. Note: I'll be using this on my eventually-coming campaign.
The Squad: A group of individuals with various backgrounds who are placed together as a small strike force for a military or similar organization. They are sent out on missions which further their organizations goals. Possible Twist- They discover half way or later in the campaign that their organization is the enemy, and they were just being used. They must now undo all they have done.
The Destined Heroes: These individuals are touched by destiny, which has brought them together in a time and place to act as a balancing force against someone or something. Their actions and inactions decide the fates of many.
hehe; the all too common shipwreck
the somewhat common "survivors of a caravan that was attacked and nearly wiped out.
Freedom fighters put together by a local lord or hero after some disaster or invasion. Any variation of being drafted.
Mage, alchemist or other businessman hiring people and paying cash for collected items that are dangerous or difficult to get; said mage is looking for a special team that after a few successful ventures will invite the pc's together if they are not already; to go after something really special. NPC's that hire special help can get just about any difficult party together.
The old vision and dream to go somewhere or any other diefic intervention.
I once ran a PBP in which all the PC's were some how connected to an NPC. I made a Prince and each of the PC had an important role. One was a wizard, the princes tutor. Another was a fighter who was a bodygaurd. One was a cleric who was from the Princes religion and his spirtual advisor. I even let one be a psuedodragon, the wizards familiar and one PC actually played the intelligent sword of the prince. It worked pretty good for a while until I had to give up the group because of time constraints.
A previous thread related to this same subject (New Group Concepts--Creative ideas for new groups to have formed).
My current band of PCs were all travelers on the same ship, sailing across the new ocean, the Crater Sea. They didn't work well together for a while, but when their ship sank, and they were stranded on a desert island for a while, they learned to work really well together. Now they're the proud owners of a trading company with 2 ships, and are the go-to people when the colonial governor needs help.
THE TAVERN!!!
Wait...oops.
I do not understand why more players do not invest in this. I like Spirit of the Century’s approach where you come up with your own first novel and then have to link into another PC’s novel.
I am not sure what you mean; could you expand this a bit and explain a bit more please? thx
I do not understand why more players do not invest in this. I like Spirit of the Century’s approach where you come up with your own first novel and then have to link into another PC’s novel.
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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I once started a campaign using a variant on the Prisoners. The PCs were the "lucky" lottery winners for their homeland, which had to provide a yearly tribute in young adults to their evil overlord, similar to the tribute that was owed Crete that King Minos used to feed the minotaur.
The player characters are the last of a decimated military unit and are withdrawing to safety or trying to seek revenge for their fallen comrades.
The player characters are the children of a famous band of adventurers or bandits and are now trying to make a name for themselves.
The player characters wrongfully or possibly justified were all imprisioned together at the same mine...labor camp.... and have just been released or made a run for freedom.
Well, in my pbp am doing this:
one player is sent by his guild to deliver a message to a npc/pc (means the npc is played by the guy who played him in my tabletop game but wont be a part of the group)then do what he asks you to do.
Another player is a noble who is sent by the king to deliver gifts and invite the same npc/pc to dine with said king and talk of an alliance.
Another player is investigating a idol given to him by his diety and finds out the npc/pc has info; and the armor worn by the player was made by the npc/pc's brother as a side thread.
one player nursed another player back to health after finding him a survivor of a massive battle; the healed player is now guarding the helpful player who is on a journey to consult the oracle; these two will meet the other players soon.
Another player has been drafted by a powerful npc and is sent to make sure these pc's dont blow up the world; like the last adventure group that nearly did which included the npc/pc.
Been there; done that; there is a module out of this, a couple actually; still; it works.
hehe I once had all the pc's meet for the same blood rite; they all brought individual sacrifices and it was their coming of age party :) evil campaign of course.
As I posted in previously linked thread...
I want to play a GAME...
The PCs are abducted by a powerful wizard and forced to run his diabolical gauntlet to survive.
In my latest rl game, we all started out as graduates of the same university on a road trip... who then got thrown in the poor house!
Never used it, but if I ever had players that really wanted to be from wildly different backgrounds, I always thought it would be fun to use the old Gladitorial Slaves campaign beginning, of course with the option of escaping fairly early on.
My current campaign, all of the PCs were either wards of, or members of, the local temple (two orphans, an indentured servant, a paladin, and a cleric).
When my kids started playing the Age of Worms AP, all of them but the paladin were "freaks" that had their "contracts" purchased and were set free if they investigated the Whispering Cairn. Of course, my kids were playing creatures from Savage Species as well.
The "evil" campaign I ran in Skullport I used the "easy" origin and had the Skulls from the city forcibly shove the PCs together to investigate something for them. One does not say no to the Skulls.
Before that, the PCs started out as war survivors just after the Devil Dragon had sent her hordes into Cormyr, with the PCs being people that were in Arabel when it was sacked, and had to help out the evacuation.
I also ran a campaign where one PC would inherit a ship if he could perform certain tasks before the time limit was up, and so he had to recruit the other PCs from the down and out dock area of the city to help him man the ship.
As a PC, I was in a campaign where all of us were agents in the church of Pholtus in the Theocracy of the Pale. Paladin, cleric, and cavalier in that group. Not much stealth involved in that campaign.
The same group, as a PC, we all played dwarves from the same clan. We also played an Oriental Adventures campaign were all of us were ninja from the same clan.
I cheated in my homebrew campaign. The adventurers got together to keep their favorite tavern from being bought out by the Mean Old Rich Guy who was putting the competition out of business.
So very 80's.
Did they have a black and red van and shoot bullets at the feet of the bad guys? Now THAT would be 80s!
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Survival The PC's are all from, or traveling through, the same region when it is attacked by the horde. These strangers must band together to fight the rampaging Orcs (or Hobgoblins, or Githyanke, or whatever) to survive.
I have used this one before with wave after wave of low level goblins and then a Hobgoblin with a few goblins as bodyguards as a first encounter. Worked really well. The PC's had to find out that it was a major invasion, and that even the dwarf couldn't rightfully go home since even he leagues away did not have a home to go back to. Then who banded the Goblins and their strange creatures together and then how to stop the mad world dominating Lich, and then finally to be freedom fighters to band together these independent minded races to form a unified group to fight off this horde who had taken over the "Known world." It even ended up making a new kingdom in our campaign because of the actions of the PCs.
The PCs are all scions of villains, and seek to adventure to redeem themselves and their bloodlines.
The PCs are all from a little, isolated village. The heroes of the past age are too old to adventure and the PCs are the new generation of heroes. They need to push the boundaries of their valley, and investigate the strange happenings. (I did this one with my last campaign. The level 2 PCs took out a CR 8 cave troll through the wise use of archery (fighter 2) and an oversized lance charge (goliath ranger 1 and human paladin 2 with Monkey Grip). The cave troll had been lairing under a bridge for 20 years, eating unwary travelers and the occassional town guardsman. My PCs got SO arrogant! It doesn't help they all critted....)
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16
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I read something like the idea below somewhere may have been a Dragon Magazine. Any way in the time since I read it I've thought about several ways to make it the start of a campaign. What follows is one of the more generic versions.
Heroes of Old: The PC's are awakened by an aged scholar from centuries of petrification. An ancient evil has taken control of the realm and the scholar has located the PC's because according to prophecy it is these heroes of the past that may be the downfall of the enemy.
Thanks so much friends - these have really got my imagination rolling : )
(Thanks for the link to the old thread as well, enjoyed that too)
I have to share one other I did in a sci-fi campaign.
The 'Big Brother' approach
The heroes are ordinary people who are chosen by the general public as interesting personalities to enter a reality TV situation.
They met in a Starbuck's?
They met chained and thrice buggered in the basement of shack inhabited by hillbilly ogres in a module written by Nic Logue.
Yessssss!
We've done these:
The PCs are family members of a gypsy caravan, traveling through an area where interesting things are due to happen shortly. We had the matriarch with a dark secret, the good-for-nothing uncle, the two rival brothers (the campaign culminated in the marriage of one of the brothers to the BBG's beautiful daughter), the tag-along little girl.... It was fun.
The PCs all represent different breeds of elves, called together by a prophecy to stop a threat to elfkind in general.
The PCs are a goblin "princess" and her buddies, determined to increase the reach of their tribe.
The PCs are all children of the BBG who need to learn about their powers and situation before he puts them to the (bloody and fatal) use he originally intended. (That was SCAP. The GM was tickled pink that he had a party pitched to him which fit the scenario so frighteningly well.)
We also did the "PCs are ancient heroes awakened from stasis" one just as another poster described it. The idea's just out there, I guess!
Thinking of trying someday:
The PCs are fay creatures protecting their native woodlands.
The PCs are halfblood drow/surface elves, not fitting well into elven society, and driven to seek out their darker heritage. (Three guesses what campaign the player is thinking of there!)
Mary
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Interesting twist here:
It's a kind of game that can only take place on the boards (or in separate rooms, perhaps).
I started each PC off with their own thread, and they each encountered a ring that opened up a telepathic channel between every other ring-wearer. Forcing them to meet up and figure s%~! out.
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Politics
The PCs are all people with a stake in a political game. This can work on a local level (using a tribal/village elder theme, completing quests as prerequisite for membership) or on a larger scale (each PC is a member of a major house, possibly with spheres of influence - very good for Eberron).
Villagers
The PCs all grew up together in the same small town or community within a larger town (like an orphanage or academy). I find this works really well for getting new players to get along - saying they have been friends for ages is an easy excuse to play nice.
I'll come up with some more.
~takes my pen and a pad of paper and starts to write all these good ideas down... Then my brain kicks in and I realize that I can "Copy and Paste", then print all of this out~ Ok. Time to start a file titled "Poor PCs".
One thing I've seen tried several times which, in our hands, does *not* work well is building PCs for one premise and then pitching them into a completely different one. It sounds great in theory, but often the PCs turn out not to be fun in the new situation.
I had some friends involved in a campaign where the GM had the players create small-time crime figures and then gave them superpowers. Perhaps it should have been obvious that this would result in small, petty people with superpowers. The players were upset; they didn't get the campaign they'd been expecting, nor did they get a fun superhero campaign, since their PCs made crappy superheroes.
My husband played in one where the GM pitched a this-world, play-yourself scenario and then teleported the PCs to the Land of the Lost. They never bonded with the situation or setting at all; they wanted nothing but to go home. I think the GM would have done better to ask for frustrated loners with a strong desire for adventure, not settled family guys with good careers!
I have seen this approach work well once--the PCs became vampires in the first session--but I've seen it fail so many times that I don't try it anymore. I try to make the initial setup strongly suggestive of the kind of campaign I want.
Mary
I suggest in media res.
-Robert E. Howard
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In my current campaign the PCs all grew up together in a small village, then it was attacked and overrun by "Black Knights" and the PCs are being sent secretly to the local town in the hope of finding someone willing to liberate their village. They all met in the forest outside of their village. We've been playing for a while now and they haven't even seen a tavern.
I once ran an all-wizard campaign where all of the PCs graduated from the same academy. An old classmate contacted each of them so that they would take on a seemingly minor quest for his lord.
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My husband played in one where the GM pitched a this-world, play-yourself scenario and then teleported the PCs to the Land of the Lost. They never bonded with the situation or setting at all; they wanted nothing but to go home. I think the GM would have done better to ask for frustrated loners with a strong desire for adventure, not settled family guys with good careers!
My friends have done this before(and I may have mentioned it elsewhere on this forum), but not in D&D. The idea behind it was it was supposed to surprise us as soon as we sat down for a game. Virtually nobody was ready for this, which added a little excitement to it. The whole thing was us trying to survive this little game world we created and escape it back to ours. The only items our us-characters had where whatever things we had on us when we stepped through the door.
We knew all the characters, because we'd made them, but they didn't know us. The powergamer of the group walked up to the queen of the empire in a land his main character(not the Himself-character) ran and informally said "Hi, how's it goin'?", began ordering the empire's soldiers about, and tried to start running things.
Keith as the Empress: "Who are you?"
Dave as Dave: "What do you mean Shano?"
Keith: "Guards, arrest him."
Dave: "But, I..."
Heh, it was priceless.
These games are fine as long as you know the PCs are going to want to go home, and run things with that in mind.
A powerful retired adventurer patron can be a great way to get a disparate group together. They have the connections to hear about promising up and comers, old debts to pay off by taking on the not so promising ones, and a wealth of maps, trinkets and memories to ask the party to check into. Also, it gives you the chance to set up everything from a vast overarching storyline (as the patron uses the party to tie up loose ends) to a simple adventure of the week set-up, for groups with a short attention span.
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Organized by a mysterious benefactor.
In one game, the 'mysterious benefactor' kept leaving them notes. Instead of being some behind-the-scenes power, the 'boss' was a familiar whose wizard had been Imprisoned. It retained intelligence, and better-than-average gear (a Ring of Invisibility! Woo!), but was otherwise pretty darn hapless. What it was real good at was finding out what was going on in town, and leaving cryptic messages for adventurous sorts.
In another game I played in, the characters were brought together by a shared dream, which turns out to have been the result of a haunting. After solving the initial mystery, they stuck together for mutual benefit.
But the most bog-standard one we seem to have is, 'You were all hired to guard this caravan / ship / building / snotty princeling / exotic and dangerous monster for exhibition, and then, three days into the job...'