How do you Start your new adventures or campains?

[Lancil]

So what I mean is how do you get the ball rolling so to speak. How do you normally connect your characters so that they want to need to be out together.
Personally none of my players ever want to be part of the rebel alliance. So I'm going to have to come up with something creative to get them together. I'm planning on running Tatooine Manhunt, and I haven't run anything in a while. Just looking for some ideas from some of you out there that have been doing this for like ever.

[Bren]

[ZzaphodD]

My groups often consists of different kinds of weird characters. Coming up with a 'sensible' story to put them all together is nigh impossible.

A hardened mercenary with a serious temper problem on the run, a teen force prodigy gone 'tramp slut', a short tempered 'space dwarf' tech, a twilek armsdealer and a hunted 'failed jedi'...all playing after their own agenda. And this is an unusually normal lot. The only way to make them work together is to first put them together, and then make them need each other to survice.
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My Biggest Beard Retard award goes to: The Admiral of course..

[Bren]

[Praxian]

If they don't want to be a part of the Rebellion, I'll tell them to figure out how they know each other by the time game starts. If they fail, I go along one of a few routes:

1) They used to work together back when the republic was in control. Usually one person always takes a ship, and another usually is always a Jedi, so one used to cart the other around all the time.

2) They work for a common planetary government which has just contracted all of them and put them together. (a common one I use)

3) They're related! In the case that all of them play humans, they're all related! Cousins, second cousins, etc. This one usually works pretty well too.

[Hellcat]

One way would be to hold a mission breifing at the beginning of the mission. The team is just being thrown together without a reason to be a team, but their given their mission so they have to go. They can come together as a team on the mission.

Another, similar way is to have the team imprisoned and those imprisoning them forcing them to go out and do something for them. Or they have to band together to break out of prison.

Yet another way to start a campaign is to just throw the PCs right into the action at the very beginning, have them have to fight for their lives. Just don't kill them at the very beginning.
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FLUFFY for President!!!!

Wanted Poster

[Urban Spaceman]

I went through this problem recently, when getting my campaign off the ground.

I've found that having all the players together when talking about character concepts helps, as sometimes they feed off of each other, and join some dots themselves.

In my game one player had the idea that she kept moving all the time (young Jedi) by working as a mechanic on various ships.
Another was a former slave, turned smuggler.
The idea organically grew that the Jedi ended up working on a ship belonging to a rather cruel smuggler, and so wanted to escape. Turns out she was escaping at the same time as the smugglers poorly treated slave girl. Easy job!


As for bringing all the characters together, I struggled. Eventually I did a variation of the ond "prison escape" scenario, by having it written in to each character background that they had been captured by slavers.
The game started when the ship was shot out of the sky, and they all worked together to escape the sinking wreckage.

It's worked so far. One of the characters is convinced he was set up (they all were, but he's the only one for whom it was obvious), and has already persuaded the other characters to help him settle the score. So they're all ready planning to stay together once they escape the immediate situation.
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"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't."

[garhkal]

[ZzaphodD]

[Bren]

[Hellcat]

What was that line again? "Kill the pig, eat his flesh." Can't remember, was almost twenty years ago. Didn't much care for the book, course I wasn't a big fan of being forced to read in school. It was one thing when I had to read and it was my choice, it was another entirely when I was told "this is what you will read." Even when it was my choice I still resented it because of the fact that it was for school. The only teacher I ever had in high school who got me to willingly read what they assigned was my 10th grade English teacher, but then he made it interesting to read what he assigned (save for the first book in the Foundation series which about 95% of the class couldn't get through the first five pages of). Ironically I'd go home, pick up a book, and sit down for an hour or so before bed and read.
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FLUFFY for President!!!!

Wanted Poster

[Barrataria]

[Rerun941]

I've opened a campaign in media res of a prison break, it was quite enjoyable.
My most recent campaign, the PCs were pirates aboard a Corellian Corvette during the Battle of Khuiumin (where the Empire routed a group of pirates) and have to find a way to escape. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Khuiumin

Other ideas I've tossed around include:
The PCs all start mid-hand of a high-stakes game of Sabacc. Cue the authorities to bust in and break up the illegal game.
The PCs are all victims of a biological attack in a public place and have to find a cure.
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Han - "How're we doin'?"
Luke - "Same as always."
Han - "That bad, huh?"

[Trusty]

This is one of those areas where the GM can sometimes forget that he or she is the GM.

Characters can determine their back stories for as far as that can go, but the GM not only gets to veto nonsense (someone says that his character has 50,000,000,000 credits hidden or whatever), but also gets to fill in voids as he or she sees fit.

So, when it comes to the first game, it can be asked why do the characters find themselves all on ship X, in bar Y, or on planet Z somewhere?

Because the GM says so!
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Growing old is inevitable. Growing up is optional!

[garhkal]

One of the 'stranger' intros i have seen.. Everyone owed money, and had little work capacity/were hobos/down on their luck etc, and had accepted an invitation by a company for 'testing'....
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!