Beyond the Tavern: Inventive Ways to Bring an Adventuring Party Together

By Lynn | The DM Corner — Killer Bee Press

"You all meet in a tavern..."

There's nothing wrong with it.

Taverns are useful. They have food, rooms, rumors, shady strangers sitting in dark corners, and an apparently unlimited supply of people willing to pay armed strangers to investigate abandoned ruins.

But we've been meeting there for a long time.

When starting a new campaign, one of the first challenges a Dungeon Master faces is bringing several completely different characters together and giving them a believable reason to stay together.

You can always put them around the same tavern table.

Or you can make meeting each other part of the adventure.

1. Start With the Disaster

Don't introduce the characters.

Introduce the problem.

The characters happen to be aboard the same ship when something enormous strikes it from below.

They're shopping in a crowded marketplace when an explosion tears through a nearby building.

They're traveling with the same caravan when someone screams from the lead wagon.

They're attending a festival when the dead begin climbing out of the cemetery.

Nobody needs to ask why the characters are cooperating. An immediate problem arises, and they're the ones standing there when it happens.

Better yet, their first impressions of one another are formed through action.

The fighter sees the cleric run toward the wounded. The wizard watches the rogue disappear into the smoke. The rogue sees the barbarian lift an overturned wagon so someone trapped beneath it can escape.

Within minutes, the players know something about each other's characters without exchanging biographies.

2. Give Them the Same Enemy

Nothing creates friendship quite like mutual hatred.

Perhaps every character has been cheated by the same merchant prince. Maybe a crime lord has independently hurt each of their families. They could all be hunting the same monster for completely different reasons.

The paladin wants justice.

The rogue wants revenge.

The wizard wants something the creature stole.

The barbarian simply wants to know whether the stories about it are true.

Their motivations don't need to match.

Their destination does.

This works particularly well because the relationship can evolve naturally. They begin as allies of convenience and, after enough shared victories and disasters, might actually become friends.

Assuming they don't kill each other first.

3. Put Them on the Wrong Side of the Law

The campaign begins in a prison wagon.

None of the characters know each other.

Some are guilty.

Some aren't.

Then the wagon crashes.

Maybe bandits attack the guards. Maybe a dragon passes overhead, and the horses panic. Maybe something in the forest was waiting specifically for the prisoners.

Now several strangers are standing beside a wrecked wagon with broken chains, unconscious guards, and approximately thirty seconds to decide what happens next.

Instant party.

This opening also gives a DM something wonderful to use later:

Consequences.

4. Give Them Something They All Inherited

Each character receives a letter.

They have inherited something from someone they may—or may not—have known.

Unfortunately, so have several other people.

The inheritance could be an old manor, a ship, a failing adventurers' guild, a map, a strange artifact, or even an enormous debt.

Now the characters are connected before they've even met.

The real question becomes:

Why?

Why were these particular people named? What did the deceased know about them? And why does someone else desperately want what they inherited?

You've brought the party together and created your first mystery at the same time.

5. Begin at the Funeral

There's a coffin.

Everyone knows the person inside it.

But nobody knows each other.

Let each player decide how their character knew the deceased. A former commander. A childhood friend. A teacher. A rival. Someone who once saved their life.

Then, during the funeral, something happens.

An assassin fires from a rooftop.

A stranger places an unusual object on the grave.

The corpse whispers something from inside the coffin.

Suddenly everyone has the same question:

What was this person involved in?

This opening is especially effective for mysteries because the characters begin with an emotional connection to the story instead of simply accepting a job from a stranger.

6. Make Them the Only Survivors

Sometimes the bond isn't what happened before the campaign.

It's what happens during the first ten minutes.

The characters wake among the wreckage of an airship.

They crawl from a collapsed mine.

They wash ashore after a shipwreck.

They emerge from magical darkness to discover everyone else in the village has disappeared.

Whatever happened, they survived it together.

Survival gives them an immediate reason to cooperate, at least long enough to figure out what happened.

That shared experience can become part of the party's identity for the entire campaign.

7. Let the Players Decide

Here's one of the easiest techniques, and DMs sometimes overlook it because we're so accustomed to believing we have to create everything.

Ask the players.

During Session Zero, turn to one player and ask:

"How do you know the character sitting to your left?"

Then continue around the table.

One saved another's life.

Two served together.

Someone owes another character money.

Two characters are siblings.

One insists they're best friends.

The other strongly disagrees.

Suddenly you have relationships you didn't have to write. Better yet, because the players created them, they're usually invested in seeing where those relationships go.

Take notes. Your players just gave you campaign material.

The Real Trick: Give Them a Reason to Stay

Getting the characters into the same room is actually the easy part.

Keeping them together is harder.

Whatever opening you choose, give the characters something that extends beyond the first encounter.

The shipwreck survivors discover the wreck wasn't an accident.

The prisoners learn they were deliberately placed in the same wagon.

The inheritance contains a map with each character's name written on it.

The funeral reveals that the deceased left each of them one piece of the same message.

Now the question isn't:

"Why would my character travel with these people?"

It's:

"What happens if we don't figure this out?"

That's a much better way to start an adventure.

From Behind the Screen

The tavern isn't the problem.

Starting without a reason to care is.

A great campaign opening gives the characters something to do, something to wonder about, and—most importantly—a reason to look at the strangers standing beside them and think:

I might need these people.

Start with a disaster. Give them an enemy. Put them in chains. Hand them an inheritance. Invite them to a funeral.

Or come up with something even stranger.

You can always visit the tavern afterward.

After all, surviving your first adventure together is probably worth buying a round.

Roll well.

— Lynn

The DM Corner | Killer Bee Press

Continue Your Adventure

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