Please Allow Me To Introduce Myself
Wait a minute… Is Assassin literally clawing his way up from the underworld to network? That’s some out of the frying pan into the fire BS! If it were me I’d have just stayed in Hell.
In any case, this particular trope is one that tends to get glossed over. As per usual, The Gamers did it first. But then again, I suspect that random PCs joining the party without explanation is as old as Castle Blackmoor.
This is a subject that has only recently reentered my brains space. You see, I’ve recently embarked on an E6 West Marches PF1e Hex Crawl in the Weird West. (And if you understood every word in that sentence, congrats on being a huge nerd.) In any case, the episodic nature of the campaign style means that random alts popping out of the woodwork is de rigueur. It follows that there is a certain amount of suspension of disbelief necessary to sustain the fiction.
For example, take my buddy’s latest addition. She’s a red dragon bloodline sorcerer who joined up for today’s session. She looks like Dragon Half and wears a potato sack instead of normal people clothes.
“I wanna be a hero!” she told us. “Just like you guys!”
And that is apparently all it takes to get a job in a fantasy world. Bunch of lucky pricks. Gods know I’d gladly accept the risk of orc raids and extraplanar mishap if it meant I never had to fill another application with all the same info that’s ALREADY ON MY FREAKIN’ RESUME. She got let into the club though, where she promptly set everything on fire.
Even so, if you’re anything like me you like a bit more explanation than, “I wanna be a hero too!” So for today’s discussion, why don’t we talk about introducing new PCs mid-campaign? What’s the best excuse you’ve ever invented to insert a new party member into an established dynamic? Give us all your best “suddenly a wizard appears” and “I’m a wandering hero in need of employment” stories down in the comments!
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My character in my current campaign literally owns a tavern. Between the assorted barflys, his brother, and various “business partners”, I’m pretty much set as far as backups go.
Well then let’s game it out. Your tavern-owner dies. Who steps up to take their place? How are they roped into joining the party for shenanigans?
OOC: I roll 1d4 and use that character.
IC: my current character dies, a funeral is held in his tavern in the city where our monster-hunting organisation is based (Uppsala, Sweden). The various backups are in attendence and one of them swears to carry on his work, whether to avenge his brother’s death or repay a debt/bartab.
When I joined a D&D party at level 9 we had my character stop at the monastery that one of the other party members grew up at due to background reasons and then get asked to deliver a letter to that character.
Back in college, I joined a DnD campaign in progress. The party had just defeated some evil wizard and were exploring his tower. And, in this tower, locked up with all the wizard’s other experiments, the party found a barbarian who just so happened to be the same level as the rest of the party, and would be more than happy to aid the adventuring party who rescues him.
Hm. If Assassin is going to join up with Artificer, he’s going to need a bit of a makeover. We all know how seriously she takes her theming. And Assassin just crawled out of Hell… I think I know where this is going: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118475/mediaviewer/rm2926190081?ref_=ttmi_mi_all_pos_20
Nah, Artificer might insist on a steampunk aesthetic. And skulls. Lots of skulls.
Which means the former Demon Queen might find a new job as a figure-head.
Knowing Artificer’s general response to mutiny, this truly is a match made in the Demonweb Pits. ^^;
We had our rogue die to a Devilfish a few sessions ago in our Pirate-themed game, whilst attempting to rescue some NPCs. His replacement, an inquisitor, arrived to the island we were exploring on top of a door drifting in the sea, having survived a storm shipwreck. We quickly accepted him as he was (conveniently) also a follower of Besmara, the pirate goddess, and cause we needed the help.
My favorite was having the party open a chest that they’d found in a room, only to have the new party member roll out of it, unconscious because there wasn’t enough air inside. Alas, my genius was underappreciated.
Hmm… two relatively recent examples come to mind (different campaigns).
In the first, a new barbarian just showed up when he was needed. Why? Because the seers who guided his clan told him that destiny required him to be there at that time. They hadn’t told him any more than that, and being a relatively unimaginative type, he hadn’t asked too many questions but had just headed off on the road…. a journey of several thousand miles from his home.
In the second, a down-on-their-luck mercenary (a warrior-mage) struck up a conversation in a tavern… her company had disbanded after being nearly wiped out, and she wanted to know if adventuring paid as well as she’d heard. She wasn’t initially sold on the irregular nature of adventuring income, but given that she wasn’t getting a paycheck anyway at that time, decided to tag along with the party.
Wow, Dragon Half! Haven’t heard that reference in FOREVER! Even more so outside of a certain rules-focused website…
A) You arrive to explore an abandoned temple complex, only to find a multi-classed gnome of roughly the same HD as the other party members who claims to be establishing his rights to occupy the property before converting it into resort condominiums and that all of you are illegally trespassing under gnomish law. (He later proves amenable to “hiring” the party to clear the property of monsters.)
B) Three new party members were formerly members of a rival party (Team Rocket/ recurring comedy foil) that has always been less successful and two steps behind the PCs’ party. Fed up with the poor leadership and continued lack of success, they’ve ditched the old group and seek to join the heroes who obviously know what they’re doing since they always get paid.
Generally, my game worlds work off the logic that Adventuring Parties are an established “thing”, and it’s understood that if one of your group dies, you need to fill the now vacant position. Therefore, if it happens at the end of a quest, I usually tell the players that the standard is to head to the different taverns and put out an ad at each of them, and wait for a response.
If the character died in the middle of a dungeon, then the players either retreat back, or sometimes I’ll have a PC have a plausible reason to oppose the enemy that the party is facing. For example, once I had a PC be a prisoner in the Bandit camp the players were raiding. No one stuck in a cage is going to be working for the bandits.
I think a useful thing is to find a way to be able to connect backstories or history or an associate organization of the new character with the group.
Spoilers for Dimension 20’s ‘A Crown Of Candy’ campaign;
So the party was in the middle of combat, middle of the ocean middle of a storm on a sinking ship and the ship that was filled with people trying to kill everybody.
Then a cloud of cotton candy, which was a player’s new monk character, suddenly flew in and joined in the fight.
Now it was pretty easy for the characters to trust the new guy cause (besides helping them beat up the people trying to kill them) he established himself as part of an organization that one of the character’s sisters had established.
Not my character, but my wizard’s 13 y/o sister (wizard rogue multiclass) joined the party part way through a city. She’d been stealing bread from a merchant, and when my wizard and the battle master went to investigate the commotion she used the distraction to cast Cause Fear on the merchant and declared the party her “accomplices”. She joined the party by getting caught up in the team’s shenanigans (causing some of her own) and because my wizard was/is still currently trying to reconnect with her.
Well, as usual KAP (King Arthur Pendragon) has a way of dealing with that. If a PC dies, then you usually play the next of kin (son, brother, uncle, cousin, nephew, wife, daughter, niece, aunt, whatever) as that will be the heir to the manor that the now dead PC was the lord of. If there is no manor, or there are other things that prevent this, the lord of the PC, usually a Duke or a Count, or even a/the (petty) King, will assign another knight to the Eschille (your party, but also your fighting gang/crew/unit, with which you train at least three times a week).
Of course there are exceptions. But then there is the very Arthurian thing called “The Wandering/Questing Knight”, which you can encounter during your own wandering/questing, and who may/will/can have the same goal/quest/destination as your knights. And who then will accompany you along the way, and then become part of the group.
I have encountered, and used, the methods above, both of as a GM and as a player.
Another game that I play, FASA Star Trek, has another method. As Star Trek is a more or less military/government angehaugt organization, in case of any (command) crew fatality, or debilitating injury, they can/will be replaced by a promotion from one of the present crew, or re-assignment from other parts of Star Fleet. Which is also a good way to introduce new players, not just characters, in the game. And again, both as a player and a GM, I have seen/ done this. And as all PC’s have to go through a live-path character creation, it can well be that the new arrival encountered some of the crew at an earlier posting. With all the good, or ill, that come with that. Which is also very much in character with the TOS show (or most of ST for that matter) in which a former crew/classmates comes onboard with instant interpersonal relations/history. Especially it the former class/crewmate is now lower (or higher) in rank than the existing crew.
“With all the good, or ill, that come with that.”
The first thing that comes into my mind is Sisko telling Picard where the two of them had met before…
Also, can I ask you what “angehaugt” means here? When I put it into Google Translate, it tells me that it’s either German for “breathed on” or Dutch for “appetised”. I think machine-translation cannot help me here.
Angehaught is indeed “Breathed on”. But not literal but figuratively (? sorry, my English is failing me here). It means that is has “a wisp of” the thing (That is actually almost the same meaning). So angehaugt in this case means that Star Fleer is portrayed as a sort of civilian/government organization but has some (or a lot, in later incarnations) of the trappings of a military one. Appetised is also a good word for that. It’s civilian cake, that has some military taste added. Hope this helps
“The fifth guest is an unknown. The hosts have just thrown us together for a favour, ’cause this girl’s just arrived from Australia and she’s moved to North London and she’s the sister of someone or has some connection.”
Tim Minchin, “Storm”
Okay, Tim Minchin was telling about a dinner party rather than an adventuring party, but it still works. In an ongoing campaign full of colorful allies or enemies, any player who wants to invent a connection (as opposed to insisting, “No; my character burst fully-formed out of my head like Athena from Zeus, and knows no one who the rest of you know because that would dilute my vision!”) will have endless options. The new guy is a member of that plucky rebel band we helped out, or she’s working on her PhD with the same archaeologist who brought us to the Weird Scary Ruins, or he’s a housemate of the Barmaid Who We All Trust With Our Lives Because She Made Fun Of That One Guy We Can’t Stand.
My players were trapped in the desert when they suddenly see a catgirl/tabaxi riding in on a camel, bearing a bunch of food and water.
My players were trapped in the jungle, when a goblin suddenly poked his head up from their bag of holding, having snuck his way onboard several sessions ago.
My players were trapped in a mind flayer hive, when they suddenly find a paladin trapped in a mind flayer pod, asking them to please release him.
My players were trapped in the astral sea, when a magic planar boat suddenly appeared, sailed by a magic-robot man.
…You know, writing it out like this I am starting to notice a theme in my DM´ing.
Man do I feel the thinly veiled ‘job hunting sucks ass’ feels right there! >:( its been crummy last 3 months and still nothing……
At any rate for the question of the day I have a particularly fond memory of joining a game mid-run. One of my friends started a game for his younger brother’s first time playing, and the other player was a good friend also. I hadn’t met the brother before. When I found out about the game and they needed a third party member, preferably with some healing capabilities, I was quite eager to roll up!
My first time joining the session was possibly the most fun I ever had introducing a character. The kitsune race in his world were basically gypsies/romanies so I made a travelling fortuneteller (mechanically, pathfinder 1e oracle with the ancestor mystery and haunted curse, using a tarot deck possessed by her family’s spirits as conduit for her magic) I rolled up with a physical tarot deck and roleplayed readings for the other two party members. The setup in my book actually does not have me, the reader, knowing the *question* they ask. The petitioner thinks it silently to the deck as they shuffle. Afterwards the two of them looked at me all buggy-eyed because unknown to me and at the mercy of card rng, the readings actually came out ACCURATE to in game irl.
That character didn’t get as long of a run as I would have liked, we all know how that goes, but she has since become a standard NPC for my forays into DMing now and is just a fun person and potential ally for people to encounter.
Didn’t knew Assassin was a man of wealth and taste 😉
My Character started ‘dating’ one of the PCs… so, longish story:
Okay, so I once created a twinky little Mystic Theurge (Sorc/Fav Soul), in a vaguely Roman empire, who had the hots for the local top gladiator… until that gladiator was taken down by the Party’s Monk. The party was trying to worm it’s way into the local political scene, and my Cha based PC was introduced as being perfectly poised to assist, he literally knew everyone, was just far enough from the seats of power to not be threatening, but close enough that he was related to most people in power.
It was a Roman based society, and he was just “unfavorable enough” that it was actually beneficial to be seen in his presence, as you couldn’t possibly be a “social climber”* if you were associated with him.
So when the Cleric (Party Leader) asked for my help, I said sure I’d help, “if he got me a ‘date’ with his hunky bodyguard” (the Monk).
Everyone in the party (including the GM) except the Monk (who was my best friend and knew it was coming) was rendered speechless. After a moment the Cleric (who was LE† and actually owned the Monk as a slave‡), said “Of course,” and he waved him over to give him the good news…
* The group was trying to move laterally rather than up, and was just trying to make connections and build a power base, but they didn’t want to actually upset anyone in power.
† That was the Lawful Evil game we played in the very early 00s. Everyone had to be within “one alignment step of LE”. So we started with a LE Cleric/Party Leader who owned the LE Rogue, LN Monk, my NE Ranger (Fighter/Barb/Ranger/Rog), and CE Wizard. The CN Bard kid was a side kick who we’d rescued from orcs and just followed us acting as the Cleric’s personal herald/PR person/etc, kinda a cross between Jaskier from the Witcher and Chaucer from A Knight’s Tale.. despite being made before either of those show/movies existed. I went through a few PCs before getting to the Mystic Theurge…
‡ As a party we were trying to figure out why we’d all be together and as I’d had slavery and being sold to the military in my ‘Ranger’s’ background, I suggested we were slaves assigned to the Cleric, everyone agreed… and we ended up being a ‘vaguely’ military unit (mostly int eh “dirty tricks/sabotage/behind ‘enemy’ lines department) that was a remnant of the failed God Emperor in the last civil war (which had just ended a year prior). When play started we were coming back from having been on the outskirts of the Empire, basically avoiding the “round them up patrols” hunting those who’d backed the wrong half-god trying to ascend to become the New Emperor Of Man (it was a vaguely Roman society with a vaguely Warhammer 40Kesque religion). Our Cleric had just started getting his powers back and was being urged to return by the aspect of the Emperor he worshiped… and there were problems that required our continued service.
I remember the way I introduced a player character into my Battle Network game.
One of the players had called the cops to deal with a situation. Luckily for me, there was somebody in the space looking for a game to play. Things worked out.
My first-ever PC joined her party when the party assaulted a goblin fortress and found her (as well as two other PCs) tied up in a closet. Obviously, everyone teamed up to secure the rest of the fortress. Funnily enough, one of the new players wasn’t liking his character as much as he thought and made a new one, so as soon as the party left the goblin fortress, his old character summoned her horse, flipped everyone off and rode away, never to be seen again. The party, slightly confused but with two new members, went back to town where the local tavernkeeper was tossing out a total weirdo (the replacement PC), who she insisted the party keep an eye on so he wouldn’t cause any more trouble.
I think the most interesting PC introduction I did as a DM was in the stranded-on-a-cursed-island campaign. The party was pretty far into the abandoned mad science facility when a new player joined. I worked out with that player that her character had been shipwrecked a while back and she was hiding out in this area. The session starts and the party comes along, but the new PC hides because everything else she’s encountered was hostile. When the party gets close and makes enough noise, she opens the door and promptly hits another PC in the face, starting a brief combat between them. Though it got settled pretty quickly with no hard feelings, the new PC did hit another character with an Unnatural Lust spell which, while it failed, left them with lingering… confusions for the rest of the campaign.
What’s written on that banner? Adventurers… Something?
I assume “Adventurers Mixer,” per the title text.
Never actually used this, but in the Greyhawk setting any adventure with the minions of Iuz, Iggwilv, and/or Grazzt as the villains has a built-in excuse for a wizard of House Yragerne to join the party as they’ve been feuding with Iggwilv et al. for centuries
I had my Bard fall out of the sky and conveniently land next to the party. He was working for a wizard, the wizard refused to pay, words were said, and then I was plummeting towards the ground. I took just enough damage to hurt but not enough to die outright.
My scout joined a game where the party had just seized a githyanki ship. While investigating the lower decks, they found my elf prisoner there. The GM hadn’t given me much to work with prior to joining the group so I used the same explanation as above to explain what I was doing in the Astral Sea.
I have a habit of wanting to know the backstory of the campaign and having my character written in. So my first session with a new campaign that’s already going is me listening in and deciding what to play while feeding the DM ideas for him/her to use as plot hooks. I’ve also stated that I don’t mind being a plot device if the DM needs to do something. It also gives me time to listen to what the Party has already in it and what role I can play to help out.
This is what I like to call “Prosocial metagaming”: You want to get the other player involved in the game and get adventuring as fast as possible so you act slightly out of character to accommodate their character.
This phenomena is also present in most videogame RPGs. A sane person would kill Astarion after he tried to feed on you, but he’s obviously a party member so you let him join because you need a Rogue. I first noticed this phenomenon when I acted out of character to let Zevran join me in Dragon Age.
My introduction to a game- and the group playing it- was my smartaleck parrot familiar following them, then striking up conversation with the befuddled group about their recent adventures- including a bounty on their heads recently placed by some douche bag chief of police in the city who didn’t like them investigating the local serial killer (plot twist his brother).
After getting a short bit of info from the wary group and enough to go ‘yeah the charges are clearly fake’ (read: one of them took the nuts out their rations and fed him), he called to his Magus master who was hiding nearby in one of the canals (Undine) to come out (she wasn’t entirely happy about the potential ambush being ruined and knew dang well from the time spent that he hadn’t learned nearly enough to make that call).
My character decided to offer her services to help them find the serial killer, in part because she wanted to not test her luck with escaping or trying to 3v1 the potentially dangerous possible murderhobos, and they agreed despite her then-wreaking of the unmentionable contents of the canals in that city (and thanking the Gods that she prepared Prestidigitation that day). Staying perched on the party bard’s shoulder to avoid the stench, her parrot happily opined: “See Marina, told you my plans are great!”
A long suffering sigh accompanied the imaginary “Marina has joined the party!” text box. She wound up sticking with them after seeing they were legit, and some guilt when a party member bit the big one during the fight with said serial killer (she got better but that didn’t alleviate the feelings of ‘gotta make it up to her’). It helped that the group mostly shared a hatred of undead and necromancers, two party members belonging to a larger group that took in people orphaned or otherwise left with nothing in the wake of undead-related tragedies, and Marina having received some training and turned to a bounty hunter/Witcher-with-the-numbers-filed-off way of life after a necromancer’s undead crew sank the boat she was on.
Just today I was playing a game of Mutant Epoch with some friends, including a person who couldn’t attend the first session. Their introduction was running for their life from a bear into the midst of an ongoing fight and deciding the mostly human party was a safer bet to hide among than the not-orcs. Safety in numbers was the thought that got the group together, so a hearty ‘welcome to the team’ to the scared and mildly confused man saw him join the ranks, reluctantly. This being a once in a blue moon game with a very short period to work with, it was likely for the best.
Ideally, the first circumstance is the best- give the new player (or player with the new character) a little info surrounding the circumstances of their team and when they’ll be inserted in, and let them have a short character moment- possibly provide a new plot hook as they come in. But sometimes you just gotta wing it and let people form bonds after the fact.
New Lore Bard PC was on only road through the Dreadwood when he came upon the party fighting a shadow-corrupted treant and two shadow drakes. Seemed a clear good/bad.
Party was going to close close a portal to Shadowfell and then go find a wizard to get some book of lore. Party would have to fight him off at that point. Repeatedly.
Serendipitously, all of that was in the adventure running well before the new player even had a character.
I can’t take credit for it, but the best example of adding in new players to an existing campaign that I’ve run across occurred in the Grand Temple of Jing dungeon. The whole idea of the temple is that an extremely chaotic god invites adventurers to come loot his extraplanar temple. Those that survive and amuse him are allowed to leave with their treasures. If at anytime while they travel in the Grand Temple, the PCs consider that they might need another adventurer’s help, a hidden doorway nearby is revealed that leads to the “Meat Market”. Inside are rows of dozens of vats, with different adventurers floating in them. The party chooses one, performs a ritual to join them to their “Jing-linked group”, and the adventurer is decanted. The in-game explanation for the whole set-up is that these adventurers are ones who died in the temple but whom Jing found entertaining. So he revived them and placed them in storage until another group comes along to recruit them. Built in, easy explanation for new PCs joining.
Hmm… DnD loot boxes… EA, is that you?
Heh, that would be entirely in keeping with Jing’s personality, trade your hard-earned cash for a randomly rolled magic item ; )
If I’m being honest, 90% of the reason I stay with the job I have now is that I don’t want to go through the job application process again