Hi all

My group are currently making their characters for a new campaign, and one of the things they've asked for is that they aren't just "together" at the beginning of the session "because reasons". They want their individual characters to come together more naturally, as a result of the game.

This seems like it's doable, but it also seems like there's plenty of difficulties. I've never run a campaign this way before, and I just wondered whether anyone had any tips on bringing a party together. At the moment I'm thinking of giving the players overlapping objectives (like all needing to get the same town/planet, but all for different reasons), but if anyone has any particular thoughts on this that would be great.

Thanks in advance.

What do they mean by "not together"?

For example I've been trying to find tune a game where the PCs are brought together by a Fixer they owe quite a lot to who offers them a way to repay the debt and earn a fairly decent pay if they retrieve a package aboard a drone transport circumventing customs in the process.

Please note I was viewing this as a flashback as they start off aboard a shuttle that's about to dock with the transport letting them explain how they're reacting to this and each other knowing this is a Leverage style game set in the near future.

Is this anything like what you think they want?

This is how it went in our first game:

In the operning sequence, all the PCs were part of the crew, or passengers, or mercenaries on board of a Rebel Corvette.

The ship was chased and shot down by Imperials and the PCs found themselves in the last escape pod.

Crashed to a planet in the outer rim, with nothing but themselves, they HAD TO work together to survive, regardless of their previous dispositions.

If you substitute the "because reasons" with narrative circumstances they become "actual reasons".

If that is not enough for them, you can also easily embrace the Star Wars in Star Wars and say the force has brought them together, or something.

At least that's better than "You meet in a bar."

Either way, one has to start somewhere.

There's always the typical "we were all double-crossed/betrayed by the same organization" scenario.

It's an easy way to introduce the campaign's antagonist faction, and gives the characters an immediate and understandable excuse to work together - they're all chasing down the agent (or agents) that betrayed them, only to discover themselves facing down an enemy larger than they could take on individually.

Another typical scenario is "Recruitment." Think Mission Impossible or A-Team: a bunch of highly-skilled individuals (or even established professionals) who have absolutely no relation to each other are employed by a group for a specific mission needing their specific specialties.

typical ways to get a group together in an RP system.....

1 Bar fight.

2 Prison comrades.

3 All assignment lead to here.

4 That guy crossed you as well.

5 Fate.

6 Assembled team.

OK these are all generic and fairly common (read boring). The trick is to alter one of these so that it does not feel that way.

The other really good option is to start em together and do a "flashback episode", this to me seems better as not all crew need to join at the same time. See Firefly for this the episode I think is Out of gas.

While this only applied to some of my current party, three of them started the game as being an ARC 170 crew in the Republic (Pilot, Gunner, "Astromech" (He just filled that role)) that was reassigned to the party. They came up with a backstory for the "Brown Town", their ARC, and a little bit about when they met up in the field years back.
Granted that's for an AoR campaign, but the concept would work just fine for EotE. Maybe some of them have been part of a freighter crew for the last 5 years or so, the 'owner' hired them on off of Nar Shadda after his last crew got fed up with his taste in music (or something) and they were desperate for a job. Since then he's been picking up more and more crew as his jobs got increasingly threatening during the Empire's reign.

I mean, that could also be the events of day 1, but it sounds like they just want you to have a back story for them, rather than them coming up with it on their own?

If you're going to get them to meet up over the course of the first few sessions, you'd really need solid info on their backstory first, so you knew where they were, why they were there, and how you can tie them together. Say the above was a day 1 thing rather than a 'back in the day' thing, Your pilot would be docking up on Nar Shadda about the same time your slicer was doing a job off the books in an alley, stack that against him so he fails and has to evade his employers and hopefully get off planet, while not having the funds to. Have your bounty hunter's credit line run dry at the bar and overhear the pilot arguing with his crew, saying they aren't welcome on his ship anymore if that's how they're going to react to him sleep walking in his boxers (or something). Stuff like that.

Another typical scenario is "Recruitment." Think Mission Impossible or A-Team: a bunch of highly-skilled individuals (or even established professionals) who have absolutely no relation to each other are employed by a group for a specific mission needing their specific specialties.

Exactly what my AoR game did, while considering that ARC 170 crew as 1 member recruited together, everyone else was hauled in from other posts or from civilian posts (the colonist doctor got a visit from a man in a suit, the archaeologist had crazy things happen to her on the dig site and our man in a suit said "we fix that, come with", so she did.) Everyone officially met in a briefing room with dossiers of each other laid out on the table and a "You've been brought here today because you all have special talents.. etc etc" speech. Except the archeologist, who joined later. Oh and the spy was hauled out of prison by a man in a suit who said "We'll vouch for this one, we need his skills".

My campaign that I'm currently writting has my players start as prisoners on a transport ship heading for an enslavement planet.

Write small encounters for each of them individually, all based around a single location, and thus start the party entirely split. Have them all be in need of something, a service one of the other party members can provide is a particularly good choice. Give each a natural reason to search out an "expert" in that service, the expert they find is of course one of the other PC's.

These scenes should be short, a couple of minutes each at most, in this way you skip around the group as if it was a combat encounter and everyone is talking turns, but everyone is doing entirely different things.

This is tricky to explain, especially without a group of PC's with back stories to use. Some movies do this, where different seemingly unrelated characters have "by chance" meetings which lead to life changing adventures.

Here is a random group as an example.

Perhaps the Pilot needs a Mechanic to fix a complex part of the Hyperdrive, the Mechanic is looking for a new speciality tool. The Scoundrel just did a solid deal on some stolen proprietary tools but kept a couple for himself to sell on the side, the scoundrel probably doesn't want to hang around much longer either. The Assasin has a lead on their next target, but needs to travel incognito to get to the next location, which happens to be where the Pilots next shipment is headed.

One technique I like to use is to ask each of the players to make one connection to another PC in their backstory. Maybe they did a job together once or used to date. Maybe one's a minor celebrity and the other once helped them organize an event, etc. That way, when the group assembles, every PC is familiar to at least one other person for an established narrative reason and can be vouched for, helping to overcome the "You're all complete strangers, but you're also PCs, so I will trust you because reasons" disconnect. From there you can have them start out in separate groups and gradually weave together, or go the route of having a third party assemble them for their own reasons.

The Usual Suspects (film) might be an interesting model to follow. Each of the characters is at least known to the others by reputation, so when they are pushed into working together by a 3rd party, they know that the others are competent enough to pull their weight.

To add to what Kaigen said; there was a form here that basically used the FATE background system to weave players together. Each player writes their background as far as mannerisms, behavior, and old history (childhood and before the campaign starts, but leaves holes in it). Then each player passes that sheet to their right. Then they write their character into the other character's back ground and returns the sheet to the original player. This is then repeated, but with passing to the left.

So assuming you have 3 players, A, B, & C. They each write their own back ground, then A passes to B, B to C, and C to A. Player A incorporates themselves into C's past and so on.

With 4 or more people, you will have friend of a friend situation. So with A, B, C, and D. Player A, would get cross over with B and D, but not C, while B would cross over with A and C, but not D, and so on.

I'd have them be crew members or passengers aboard a ship that is attacked by pirates; they need to come together to defend themselves.

-Nate

Obligation is a beautiful tool for this.

All your players may owe something to the same person. The debts were accrued independently, but it's one person/organization holding the chits.

Remember also the terms 'debt' and 'owe' above are just to refer to the Obligation. It doesn't have to be money.

RicoD's escape pod scenario is very similar to how I started my old Star Wars D6 campaign way back in oh my goodness has it really been over two decades already?! It's a variant of the old 'shipwreck' scenario and it's a good way to get an eclectic bunch together.

My current campaign began with the city that the PC's were all in (for different reasons) getting sacked by a Hutt cartel. They each happened to be in the same restaurant at the time, and a wealthy NPC stood up and offered a big cash reward to anyone who would help him get off the planet and get home safely.

Obligation is a beautiful tool for this.

All your players may owe something to the same person. The debts were accrued independently, but it's one person/organization holding the chits.

Remember also the terms 'debt' and 'owe' above are just to refer to the Obligation. It doesn't have to be money.

I think this is the very best advice for an Edge game. I just straight up told my players that their characters' Obligations must include a 5 point Obligation tied to their being employees of the same salvage company. Their boss sends them out for work, but now they might be starting their own company...

We had a session 0 thing. We all chose our roles and made characters together. Then we had a brainstorming discussion where we talked about our backgrounds, mostly driven by our Obligations, and tied our characters together.

It wasn't hard for them to know me since they were all borderline murderhobos and I was a doctor. They needed someone to patch them up. So I started with the idea of having an unregistered clinic for treating people that would get substandard or no care otherwise. It evolved to me funding that operation by accepting patients who paid a premium to have their injuries treated, "no questions asked."

Since we started with a ship, when the owner was putting his crew together, he requested she come along to keep everyone patched up promising we'd return to Ryloth to treat her people and all the extra money meant better equipment, medicine and care for them. And all that started with just a single sentence I said at Session 0.

I really don't have much to compare my experience to but this just seemed to work so well that, at the time, I thought it was how everyone always did it.

How much time at the table do they actually want to spend playing before the group draws together? If it's a significant amount of time and you don't have the time for individual/subgroup sessions, then just tell them no because it'll eat up too much table time. Sure, it's "reasons" but they're good ones.

Go for the gusto. All of them wake up on a ship together with no memories, not even their names. If you really want to be interesting, don't even let them have character sheets at the beginning. They have to try things to see whether they know how to do it (with a few hints...the sword feels familiar in your hands).

Check out the Dark Matter TV series for a great example of this.

Go for the gusto. All of them wake up on a ship together with no memories, not even their names. If you really want to be interesting, don't even let them have character sheets at the beginning. They have to try things to see whether they know how to do it (with a few hints...the sword feels familiar in your hands).

Check out the Dark Matter TV series for a great example of this.

I swear that Dark Matter must have been written by someone who decided to turn his RPG campaign into a TV show.

Also that crew really reminds me of our EotE crew...

If they are against initially aligning with each other because "you meet in a bar" troupe is too tiring, congratulations on having an experienced gaming group that wants a bigger challenge.

This is Star WARS, after all, and galactic warfare can make for strange bedfellows. While Obligation can snag 'em, so can Morality (if using this option).

However, I realize this ploy can also feel like railroading. May I offer this idea, in the spirit of communal support?

Appeal to their inherent selfish nature. Each character and its associated player has certain goal, and some of these goals may involve 'things.' or commercial/black market goods. Any location, from Outer Rim to highly civilized urban planets will have stuff your party will want. Identify what it is each player (not character) wants.

Now, throw ONE encounter at ONE player, in front of everyone. The smuggler gets busted, perhaps by small customs agents or bigger threats like Imperials. A shopkeeper loudly proclaims (for everyone - Imperial agents/sympathizers- to hear), "You-sa want a LIGHSABER?! They-sa bombad illegal, and we-sa don't have any!" to the Force-using character. A rival bounty hunter calls out the party's biggest weaponized threat for a high-noon showdown for street credit. Each character should have a reasonable rival/opposition with which to tangle.

How does the party respond? Treat this initial encounter with the PC like an NPC- they are free to act, and players will soon see that if they want any game time, they (read: NOT you) will need to find their niche in the game...and it's their choice on how to act. Does the Force-user have a high-enough Morality to check if they ignore a plea for help? Does the smuggler struggle with social situations (because they invested in Piloting and other ship-based skills), but still brag about how fast they made the Kessel Run in front of other prospective PARTY members (i.e.: "I would have made it through the customs inspection if I could afford a DECENT crew!").

I submit that the players balk at too-common introductory methods that strip them of independent freedom to act and be part of the story. Your fist session should have enough of these individual encounters prepared, so any Johnny-Come-Lately will feel compelled to act on behalf of their character's best and often selfish interests. THEY guide themselves to inclusion of the story. Remind them that they agreed to play a cooperative, narrative dice, storytelling game. This isn't a 1:1 game, as you are running it.

I hope this helps!

How about some kind of monster that covers its food (the PCs and a couple other NPCs) in slime that keeps them in a state of hibernasis. The slime also causes certain brain functions to shut down. Short term memory is toast.

The PCs wake up in the beast's lair, covered in slime, and with no memory of how they got there or where they are. They know who they are, though, and what their skills are. But they have no idea who each other are.

The PCs wake up in the beast's lair, covered in slime, and with no memory of how they got there or where they are. They know who they are, though, and what their skills are. But they have no idea who each other are.

So, no “Dark Matters”?

Isn't the whole, "Wake up covered in slime with no idea who the people around you are," thing pretty much every morning in college?

At least, for normal people? That wasn't my college experience, but the data suggests that it was for a lot of the people around me.

My sophomore year roommates in particular...

Isn't the whole, "Wake up covered in slime with no idea who the people around you are," thing pretty much every morning in college?

At least, for normal people? That wasn't my college experience, but the data suggests that it was for a lot of the people around me.

My sophomore year roommates in particular...

That spurs another idea for me... Start your campaign like The Hangover.

The players have all been invited and/or crashed a party or other event. They get smashed, maybe they overindulge, maybe somebody slips them something. They wake up the next morning having no idea what happened, and they all now have to deal with the consequences of one night of craziness. Maybe they smashed up a Hutt's throne room? They stole an airspeeder with a huge quantity of spice that both Imperial enforcement and the gang that was going to sell it are after? One of them has a Sith artifact in their backpack that gives them weird visions and nobody knows where it came from?

What I sometimes do when I need a hook for the characters is letting them describe it and go from there.

• "Ah, you guys remember your old friend, the card-shark, wasn't he a green dude or blue or something bright?...
• What was his name again?...
• Aah, of course, good old [ blank ] What did he look like?...
• How did each of you meet him?...
• You remember that story he never got tired of telling everyone about that mining outpost in the outer rim he swindled from that one sullustan governor, where was that?...
• Ah, exactly. Well, sadly he has gotten pretty ill in last year and he needs urgent help with maintaining order on the outpost since a rival mining syndicate has taken interest in the planet..."

et voilá.

You can do the same thing in the prep session or at the beginning of the first session, who was that guy that brought them to the rebellion?

PS: One day I will start a gaming group with the hangover scenario. Complete with small sullustan in the trunk, Hutt baby and Rancor in the bathroom