My RoW party members:
My witch, changeling of elven heritage who has been raised by...
The elven slayer from my party. They both met before the game started...
A druid who was traveling to the same place they were going and convinced the ship's captain to take them in the ship...
They rescued Lady Argentea, unrelated to them, but she became my character's romantic interest...
Then Nadya joined, unrelated again, and later...
Lord Arthur, a wizard and Argentea's cousin joined too. He's also married to an NPC from a previous campaign...
We are a big family xD
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Our Hell's Rebels and Carrion Crown parties were discussed before the game started, with interconnected relationships designed for just that purpose. Not everyone knew each other, but through their different relationships, the entire party was webbed together.
What this has meant is that characters already have established dynamics to roleplay, and spontaneous backstory elements have come up in play when one character references something that the player just made up, and the other player runs with. It certainly helps immersion, but requires much more improvisation skills from the players.
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We do a session zero for Traveller mostly because of how chargen happens in that system. Long story short, there is a contact section that randomly assigns allies/rivals/enemies. We have often went around the table making characters based on these relationships. So the players always know each other, but their relationships vary greatly. Often, they start the game as shipmates too.
For D&D/PF I actually prefer the players be connected on some level. Sure the unknown strangers coming together to form a group is an old standard, but it often leads to inefficient and dysfunctional parties. I really like the AP player's guides for helping in this manner. I find connected PCs makes for a smoother more cohesive party. Ultimately, player type and playstyle will dictate how the group preforms.
The most restrictive campaign chargen I've enforced in this manner, was a modified Curse of the Crimson Throne AP. I thought the players guide was bunk and rewrote much of the first installment of the AP. In my version, the players all grew up in the same orphanage. They could be close or they could be acquaintances but they all had the same upbringing in common. I reworked the campaign traits in a manner to facilitate things. Worked out splendidly.
For our face to face Zeitgeist game, we had an elf and her half-elven son. That led to some interesting roleplaying. We figured that since elves live so long, their culture would have adapted to deal with children as adults. At least better than humans did.
In Eberron, the kalashtar race are all descended from a few quori spirits. The last part of people's names refer to the quori spirit they share. We randomly chose the same quora spirit - Liashana and Norkashana. This made us spirit sisters.
I agree that the AP player's guides help lead to more connected parties.
Yes, the player's guides are great. I like having some kind of connection to the story, so it's more personal for my character.
I think it's a good starting point to insist, as a GM, that each PC knows at least one or two of the other PC's in the party (depending on its size), and to encourage them to cooperate on their backgrounds, unless that's not practical for the setting (to my knowledge only the Strange Aeons AP really prevents this sort of thing).
Some of Paizo's AP's are better at this than others. The 3.5 version of Rise of the Runelords, for instance, was literally "find an excuse to be in Sandpoint for the Swallowtail Festival". There was nothing really encouraging characters to be from there or to have a history together. Consequently, none of our party knew one other (which is as much our fault as it was the GM's and the AP's).
Jade Regent, our current AP, does a better job. You all have a starting relationship with one of the four main NPC's and this pretty much guarantees that all the party members have a reason to be there. It also means that many of them end up having some shared history. In our party, three of our characters grew up together, and two others were regular visitors to Sandpoint. It's the most engaged in role play and character building we've been in the 15 years we've been playing together. About half our group journals, and many of us also have been writing little side stories as we go.
But just because an AP doesn't provide an easy or obvious hook like this, that doesn't mean the GM can't encourage it.
Some APs can be more interesting without connections. Skull and Shackles is interesting as a group of strangers having to work together and developing tight bonds because they have to stick together against abusive crew members.
But in most stories I like having some kind of previous bond with another character.
Have you ever asked your players to make characters that already know each other as a a DM? Have you ever played characters that know each other?
Almost always?
While I have run a few games where people are just thrown together at random, I start from the other direction much more often.
Last year, for instance, I had a game where all the party members were from the same religious organization and had all grown up together, to one degree or another. One of the characters had a long-standing crush on one of the others (although she hadn't noticed/was intentionally ignoring it). A late-arriving character was a member of the order who had been captured by the enemies (and had been presumed dead - his "death" being one of the motivators for another character in the party).