I was once the "old friend of a character", but the DM chose the character of the only player in the table i didn't met before, so we had the funniest first interaction of "long time no see old friend, who are these new friends you have".
Your content is so wonderful. I especially love know non-judgmental you are. You don't ascribe to the idea that there is a "right" or "wrong" way to play D&D. Just ways that work for your campaign and ways that don't work for your campaign. It's refreshing to see a DM help channel like that.
My plan for the next time I join an ongoing party is "What do you mean who am I? We've been traveling together for months! Ha ha, very funny. Seriously!? I saved your life that one time! Why can't any of you remember me?"
This is so true, this happened to me once but even worse. I ended up waiting about an hour before I pulled the dm to the side and was like “hey when am I going to be introduced” and he was like “oh shoot! I forgot to introduce your character!!! I’m so sorry!!!” But to be fair this was like his 1st time doing a full campaign, not just a once shot
or worse yet, do what Matt Mercer did to ND Stephenson: roleplay for 2 hours, go to a 15 minute break, roleplay for ANOTHER HOUR before introducing your new PC because you have a specific place for said new player to be and your regular players are more focused on roleplaying shopping than...doing the plot you planned because you forgot to be flexible in your story planning
Had this happen recently. The DMs wife had to wait for a fight (our table is sloooow), cave search, and a special magic feature discovery before we got to the temp PC
Yeah, you don't want to be too precious with it. If it's been more than 20 mins, just bring em in somehow. Also, if you can give your new players some lead in for what they are up to/have going on right then and there. I've had DM's just go over backstory and general stuff, and keep me out of the loop for what the hell I'm doing in the cool set piece they wanted to start me with. Really ruins the dramatic entrance when I've got no idea wtf is going on and I start running from the cool (weakened) enemy you threw down so I'd look like a bad ass when I met the party.
The new character can be a defector from the villain. That way they might have some useful info and fun roleplay opportunities. Though distrust will likely be an element. Or for something funny from various media the players, not understanding local culture, accidentally married, adopted, or paladin oathed the new character (with player consent) and the new character takes that bond very seriously.
Most of my campaigns have a group patron. An adventurer guild, rift hunters or just a rich noble. This way when adding new players (or characters after a death etc) they can just go from being in another team in the organisation to the "main team". Thinking about it, that's very anime with the usual A and B teams those shows often have in action adventure genre
The primary theme for my campaign right now is a rags to riches type story. Sort of a classical rise to fame for the party of soon-to-be-heroes. One of the aspects of it is them running their own adventurer's guild, while another is basically a friendly NPC that is tied to most of the party and is the one who brought them all together so far. So, a few ways I have for new players is being brought in by the friendly npc, the other is someone who's taken notice of the guild's rising glory and is seeking to join their ranks. Those are the primary ones but, depending on a player's backstory or session 0, I could absolutely build off of those aspects to create new entry points to fit them.
As we've been playing through our second campaign, I inserted a few NPCs that could serve as either backup characters or for if another friend of ours ever wanted to join. Also they work for a mercenary company, so another member joining them wouldn't be out of the question, most of the time. We are going through a modified Tyranny of Dragons and we've reached the skycastle. Kinda hard for someone to just show up there, lol.
I somewhat used the dream sequence, information resource, and good samaritan strategies for the same character last night. One of the party members recognized them in a dream. The new player got pushed during a chase sequence the existing party was engaged in with a target NPC, and that's how they crossed paths. Another thing I did was focus on the new player for the first 15 minutes because the others had been the focus of the previous one. It then took the whole session, but we succeeded in linking them up, finding more knowledge, and preparing for a major event happening at the location. As the event began, I ended the session so they can be hyped for the next one.
So far I have had (in order) 1. You meet someone at the job board. 2. There is a plague in this town, and the local healer will join the adventurers to find the cure 3. This is the bodyguard of an NPC who the party has to escort. 2 was definitely the most organic and worked best for the story, especially as I knew the character would only stay for that arc in the story
I recently had a character join a campaign about 10-12 sessions in. I decided to have a creature attack the campsite of the main party, but run off after a smash-and-grab that left one character injured. The party followed the creature into the forest, where it was attempting a similar attack on the new character's encampment. They saved him from the creature and decided to travel together to the next town!
This might just be my over indulgant DM style but whenever I'm introducing a new character to a pre-estabished party I always run what I call a Background session basically just a small 1 on 1 DnD session with the new player where we play though the reason why they get their motivations, usually via text chat or on voice call in some way for convience. I find this works really well for a bunch of reasons, like: - Players don't have to write their own motivations and it gives the player a bit of room to actually know their motivation before going in. - It's generally less intimidating for a new player getting into a pre-establish group since they already know what to expect in terms of my DMing come the first session. - the player get's a chance to roleplay their character before really having to commit to anything - I get to see how they play as a player before the first session - Because of how I set these up I usually get to give their character a small spot in the world and lore that hasn't been super established yet that they can mold to better fit their character and come the time of the session they have some cool information or lore knowledge usually that the other players don't have. - If they're really toxic I can find out before they even get into the game - And it generally just allows for more complicated and intresting motivations for characters and generally more confident players in the first session they play in.
I’ve done this before and it worked pretty well. I actually had the two new characters meet first and establish their own trust, and then they met the rest of the party.
Great, broad suggestions that certainly cover a lot of scenarios. I think that when the new player(s) are available to play, and what's going on in the campaign at that point definitely influences what approach works best. For example, if the PCs are mid-dungoen, the "crashed hot air balloon" would be very difficult to implement. Same with the "friend of a friend sent me". Regardless of which one you attempt, I think there's going to be a modicum of handwaving going on.
Relatively early on in a campaign we had to replace two characters because they drowned in the mines beneath a dwarven city that had been flooded. When the rest of us went back down there, we rescued a couple of people who were going to be sacrificed to the God of the Uko'tao that had captured them. They demonstrated their abilities during the escape so the rest of us decided that they could tag along (though one of them, being a young teenager, was mostly brought along so he couldn't get himself into any more trouble).
"Hey, you're not bad in a fight! Where're you from?" Have some relatively minor (but loud and interesting) dust-up happen near whatever tavern or inn everyone's hanging out in. Multiple groups of adventurers come running to help, and the new player(s) get to show off their combat style right away.
Our newest player was introduced in the town we just arrived in; there was a ship on the pier that had a symbol associated with our BBEG on it, and when we investigated, the new character was talking to the crew, who were a band of Totally Not Smugglers, investigating some missing magic items from the local museum, I think. The Totally Not Smugglers started making threats to her, and we stepped in to fight. Nothing like a good fight/rescue attempt to create friendships. (it also helped that she's a white kenku in a babushka. You could practically hear the entire party falling in love with her in the instant she was described.)
The specific way I did it was a time I also had to teach the newcomer how to play. In the previous session, the NPCs, the party was traveling with, had stayed behind. So I had the newcomer meet one of these NPCs. I gave my brother that NPCs stats (Clyde) and had the two of them play a 1 hour session. The next session started with Clyde introducing this helpful new person that can join them.
My second session to Lost Mine of Phandelver I had to write in 2 characters one had ties with another member the other did not. I wrote that the familiar one had some loose ends to tie up in Neverwinter before departure so they were a couple hours behind everyone and managed to catch up (we also made a comment to leave a note for them as it was a scheduling error irl). The other player I wrote was trying to steal from the goblin cave but was captured and they encountered him bound in the room with the wolves. Neither of these players ended up sticking around but a few months later I was asked if someone could sit in and watch a few sessions before possibly joining to which I agreed and the first session after he sat in I was told an hour before the game he had a character made and was looking to join. The party was already deep into Wave Echo Cave, so I told them that while they were resting in a safe structure they saw a flash of light and heard a loud crash from a neighboring room that they had searched the session prior and explained the character had gone to rest on a roadside and his deity had telephoned him into the dungeon as he was sleeping.
In one of my games my DM introduced a player who was in danger, being flanked by gnolls. Basically the ‘side of the road’ intro. The twist was that this new player character was working for the enemy. I’m someone that takes for granted introducing someone new into the party so I didn’t question them. It feels bad to be betrayed. I’ll definitely be a lot more aware next time.
I had a character join a Spelljammer game (different system) while the PCs were exploring space and first discovering the ship. The new PC was stored in the animal intelligence Spell jammer ship's belly/jail cell in suspended animation. The new "captain" was exploring the helm (inspired by iron man's display) and saw a red mark listing an extra person in the ship stores and tells the ship to release them. HiJinks begin and he stayed with the adventure the whole rest of the game. His wife later joined the game and played a pc with abilities that could join with the ships body where the helm interacted with the ships computer like brain. One of the best campaigns I ever ran.
Used basically #5 to introduce a new character (and player) into an email game I am running. It is a 3.5 game, the new PC is a multiclass rogue/hexblade/warlock. He grew up in the small capital city of the isolated barony the party is all from. The party is heading north through the wilderness towards the ruins of an old fort located in the forested hills between two areas of mountainous terrain. The fort is a ways off to the southwest of the capital city, with a large lake, a village on the opposite shore of the lake, and some woods and hills between the city and the ruins. I have the new PC's recent backstory as follows. He had joined a small group of would-be adventurers in the capital led by a ranger who had acquired a map showing the fort, and was putting the group together to go check it out, look for loot. But when they got close to the fort, they were attacked by a small band of ogres, and the fight had gone poorly. He got separated from the group and was chased south by one wounded ogre, but managed to get out of sight of the ogre, hide, and then sneak attacked the ogre and managed to defeat it, getting somewhat wounded in the process. Night was falling, so he climbed up into a tree to hide ahd get some sleep. In the morning, he had the (correct) idea that it would be faster to get back to civilization by heading south and southeast rather than trying to retrace his steps and risk running into the other ogres. So in the late morning, the party, led by their own ranger, encounter this hungry and wounded fellow heading in their direction. Getting his story, the location of the ruins matches where they were heading, and they heal him up, and offer him a place in the party until they get back to civilization themselves. Their party is already 6 strong, including a mounted knight type and a pack mule, but they offer him a full share if he "pulls his weight" - these guys look like they can handle those ogres... They do clear out the fort, and have a few other encounters before arriving at the village on the lake, where some of them decide to stay while the others take a boat over to the capital to sell loot, get supplies, etc. The new player is interacting well with the original players, so the party gains a 7th PC permanently. :)
One that I've used is a group of people are being lined up for execution by the BBEG's goons so the party has a reason to save the new character and the new character is invested in the party
love this video. I often don't have anything insightful to say, but just a "love this video" is always appreciated by creators, and RUclips's algorithm eats comments to stay happy so, birds, stone, you know the drill ^^
I once joined a table at my local gaming store where all of the player characters were planeswalkers in the style of Magic the Gathering. However I was joining them the week that they were fighting an Ancient Red Dragon that was one of many dragons that they needed to deal with for the plot. The DM just had me accidentally waken my Planeswalker spark and land myself in the middle of this battle, but I also didn't entirely know how to control planes walking enough to get myself home. I ended up climbing to safety and taking ranged pot shots at anyone who scared me. I stayed with them because as as I said I didn't really know how to get home, and I had a natural thirst for adventure.
One way I’ve introduced a new party member was by having them already be friends with the quest giving npc. (So I suppose it’s similar to the quest board idea) The PC was a cleric who had been spending time in the town the party just arrived in, and got to know the local holy-person a week ago (in the absence of a temple). So when the party saw the person of interest, he introduced the new player to them like “help these guys out with this quest cause I trust you” The player then had valuable information about the town and the current quest. And because his personal quest involves seeking answers about something in his backstory, the following quest gave him a lead so he’ll want to stick with them.
I added a player by having their character already mixed up in an encounter with monsters, which the others jumped in and helped with. Maybe it wasn’t true to the character’s wisdom score that they had decided to enter a dangerous area alone, but it worked out. When that player had to leave a few months later, I had their character begin self-defense training for a group of NPC pilgrims who had to regularly send people through the same area. There was another player who was just playing with us for a session and another regular was away, so I had the guest reveal that they had already been in with the group for about a day, but disguised as the one who was absent. Both were rogues with the assassin subclass, but the regular was a bugbear and the guest was a changeling, so I decided that the local thieves’s guild had kidnapped the regular for a few hours and left the changeling in his place until another goal had been accomplished. I play in another game that has about three regulars who make every session and three more who are more occasional. The DM of that game will sometimes have a magic item of one regular just absorb or spit out characters who weren’t always there. The item is owned by a Great Old One warlock, so I guess the unpredictable and bizarre fits, though the campaign is generally quite silly.
I don't want to think about including more people, to soon. But I guess it would depend on where they are. If they're in town some of your input is really helpful, if they're in the middle of a dungeon perhaps I'll play the bounty hunter card, perhaps I'll play the old friend card you explained. Maybe I can think of another way if it comes to that.
Had a guest character for a table. The party had recently killed a yeti and taken it's fur but didn't know how to properly treat it. They left it w my character and insisted on him joining them later in a city a few days walk away for a festival. By the time he got there two of the players had to leave the game for life stuff, leaving the party deplete of ranks. So my character helped out in a pinch and when the festival was over they asked if he would stay. Felt really organic. A chance meeting followed by a promise kept followed by a growing trust
Local Militia is a good one. At one point I accidentally wrote myself into a corner - tl;Dr the players were all present but the party *had* to split in half for a while, 2 doing vital research while 2 went to defend an important city halfway across the world (they're high enough to Teleport 1x/day) . Easy to bring in 2 new conscripts for the defense effort!
We once had a new character join our adventure, and they introduced themselves by jumping us on a roadside, threatening us at knife point and demanding we take them along. No reason, just "take me or else." The DM went around the table asking us if we'd take the new character along. I was the only one who said no. I asked "why would we take you along if you're threatening us? How can I trust you? Why should I trust you if you start out by threatening my friends?" They said they were a divination wizard and "saw" that they were destined to go to X place with us. Not the best reasoning, but it was better than none at all.
one small introduction i had once, i had a roguish charakter run into the tavern, getting right to the party asking for help saying something like "´guards looking for me coz *whatever*, i assure you it wasn´t me me but i need help to prove my innocence, if you help me my talents belong to you but i have no time to go into more detail unless you help me lose my chasers!" this worked, but the GM also had a failsave like if they say no they would also be brought to jail, and then someone else would come to get us all out of there with the truth and my talents would still be in service of the group because of the inconvienience and me wanting to make up for it. the general idea was not bring my charakter in by tying it to the parties goals, but tie the party to my chars BS for a moment, creating the debt my charakter would feel for the help he recieved. of course it only works if there is room for that, in the middle of a dungeon it wouldn´t work that well ;)
For my campaign, my friends wanted to join after the first session so I thought of a plan. They had this really big bad boss who was fighting against my two players and a npc named Bob. They realise they can’t beat the boss so they run away, while Bob holds him off. After Bob dies offscreen a scientist said he knew some people to save the village and the creek so he introduced those two people.
I think the best experience I had was when we returned to town, and a pivotal NPC introduced the new PC when we visited to share our findings. The new PC also happened to have a complicated romantic history with another PC.
I think I've relied upon the "waylaid wanderer" a tad too often, but as I am not running any campaign currently and my prospective players have never played a campaign I have run before, I figure it won't be a problem if I end up using it again.
A recent addition was introduced by just us in the market place at the same time and both having high enough passive perceptions to notice each other. My character, seeing the other seemed lost and having high enough perception to be able to tell this, stepped up to offer advice to an obvious new arrival, especially given the last mission wrapped up and I had nothing left to do as I just finished my shopping (I kept this part quick and informed the dm as to my intentions before the session began so we could cover this quickly). So my character is now the guide to this other player’s character which gives us a good reason to stick together, especially given it’s dangerous to traverse the wilds alone or in too small a group. So yeah, that’s how it is. Nothing too abnormal for either of our characters to do and a smooth transition. Boring? Maybe but it vibes with both our characters and is a smooth transition so neither of us are upset. Besides, this is kinda how all the intros happened in my group. Exits are a bit dramatic but most intros are meeting at a tavern and taking on the same job because it looks to difficult to try alone or running into a childhood friend in another tavern who you haven’t seen in decades. Smooth and nothing you have to suspend your belief about. As for exits, well one died in the night from a blizzard and the other three got bamfed to another dimension by a celestial parent of the warlock. It was wild and the NPCs are still filling the rumor mill with it. Makes it difficult for my npc to find jobs, lol. And yes this is one reason I made my npc have such a high perception. He eavesdrops a lot with it looking for leads for jobs and sharing his findings with the group.
A Suicide Squad style DnD game?! Oo, now that's the type of game I wanna join! I have a plethora of character ideas, from a Harley inspired Warlock, to my Celestial hunting fallen Aasimar Ranger to a crazy Kobold!
I been using a variation of Mists of Ravenloft since before I6 but Ravenloft did given the Chaos Mists a big flavor bump. But D&D is game. If the group is not in combat. Bamf, there they are. The Story comes from what happen AT the Table, not what is supposed to happen to the table. 3.I have used the bounty board. 5.Stuck until rescue I have used. 7. I have used an old friend.
I usually point out to the players "This is the new PC, play nice" and my players know that even if IC they show some light mistrust they don't openly reject the new PC from travelling with them
I had a character who wanted to retire her character and play another. The party was about to be summoned by one character's backstory villain, and be given a chance to rid that character's family of obligation to the villain, if only they'll help him slay a certain hag. So it was easy. I asked the player switching characters to make whatever, as long as she has a beef with the hag. I introduce the family villain, and right behind him, the new PC ally of his, also looking for the hag for her own score to settle.
5:11 ...Wait, is this something that actually happens? I mean, I understand that everyone at the table wants an introduction that doesn't destroy their immersion. But the DM has introduced this player to all the existing players, and they're spending a few hours of their free time with you. And you're telling me the players would see the "this is clearly the new character being introduced" scene and then ignore them? I don't care how shady the guy on the side of the road looks. They're a fellow player and you make their player feel included. That's just basic table etiquette.
In the past three or so years I've been introduced into three campaigns that were mid-action. In the first one, my character was looking for one of his possessions that had been stolen by some bandits and stored in a warehouse. In the session prior to my arrival, another PC fireballed had the place to the ground, and at the start of my introductory session, my character emerged from the destruction singed but mostly unharmed. The second instance wasn't as extraordinary; the party was between jobs and was getting set up for their next big quest, and my character was forced to go alongside them by the town guard under duress. The third was a lot more bombastic. I wanted to play a warforged in a world where constructs operated on a previously established set of logic and rules, so I had to come from another crystal sphere. (The party was running the Lost Mines of Phandelver; I'm not familiar with modules and apparently crystal spheres an in-universe thing? I don't know much about them, but that's what the DM suggested so I rolled with it.) My PC was traveling through the astral sea, enslaved to gith on a spelljammer. The gith got into a tussle with another spelljammer and were forced into the prime material plane, crashing outside of Phandalin as the battle between the two factions began to spill out towards the town. My character slipped away in the carnage and joined the rest of the party in desperation, willing to fight for their freedom.
In my current campaign (in which I am a player), the DM has used the "sent by fave NPC" two or three times, though a slightly different flavouring and time in between each meant I didn't exactly go "hey, wait a minute..." any time. She even flavoured it as "you know of/have seen this character around" one time, to help facilitate some trust. Just don't do what I did as a first time DM who was also using an unbalanced fanmade system: I put the new PC in a bar where the party was about to have a fight (actually, I may be misremembering - the start of the fight might've been the cliffhanger from the last session, so I thought "great time to just slip in a new character") and then accidentally kill her in an AoE attack before she really meets the party. She ended up leaving the game after that (she wasn't terribly interested in the first place, wasn't her genre) and it died a few sessions later for interpersonal player reasons. She still teases me for that, though.
I switched characters part way through our campaign and my dm and i discussed a few different methods of introducing my new character. dm settled on introducing the new pc at the wake for my old pc. reason for joining was "matter of convince"
What’s your favorite way a new character has been introduced in one of your games? Thanks so much to WorldAnvil for sponsoring this video! Visit www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike and use the promo code SUPERGEEK to get 40% off any annual membership! www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike
I'm playing in a curse of strahd campaign right now so when my character died I tied my new character to the party by saying he was the ancestor of the original wielder of the spear my party had found set on claiming it for his own.
While I agree with your point about Quinn's actor on Sliders, there was one other time in which one of his doubles looked different: the time when his double was a woman. To answer your question, yes, I remember Sliders.
A new 5th player will be joining my group of 4 soon. Plan is to have #5 learn that his previous adventuring buddy went missing while exploring a specific place. He was last seen working as a guide for 2 mysterious folk. The party of 4 happen to be chasing the 2 mysterious folk. So thier paths have conveniently crossed. #5 will partner with the 4 to find his buddy and stop the mysterious folk. What happens from there, is yet to be ...
I have had to introduce multiple PCs to a an ongoing campaign, be it to replace a dead character, or to bring in a new player. It's fun to think and plan with the player how and why their new character would be joining the party. But when that doesn't happen... It's just so jarring. I've started a campaign as a player, and the character introduction made no sense. My character should not have been where they were, and it just took me right out of the roleplay. Please DMs, make new character introductions make sense!
Lol I don't get that pronunciation either. If I remember correctly, most people in Star Wars say his name Han, with an open A, but there was... I think Lando says Han like Ham.
@@ncpolley I remember now, he doesn’t in A New Hope but he does correct Lando in Solo. That’s why I thought that. Pretty sure Disney was just fixing a continuity error, but Lando calls him Han like ham and Han corrects him.
Frustrating livng in an area so far away (hours) from communities that play. I don't want to hire people to play either online. HMU if anyone interested in an online player joining.
Play a world, not a campaign, its a old school thing. You did your Westmarch, make that part of your world. why get rid of stuff, locations dont disappear, they get repopulated, and you didn't really let them kill the main antagonist did you?
I was once the "old friend of a character", but the DM chose the character of the only player in the table i didn't met before, so we had the funniest first interaction of "long time no see old friend, who are these new friends you have".
Your content is so wonderful. I especially love know non-judgmental you are. You don't ascribe to the idea that there is a "right" or "wrong" way to play D&D. Just ways that work for your campaign and ways that don't work for your campaign. It's refreshing to see a DM help channel like that.
I try! ☺️
@@SupergeekMike you succeed!
My plan for the next time I join an ongoing party is "What do you mean who am I? We've been traveling together for months! Ha ha, very funny. Seriously!? I saved your life that one time! Why can't any of you remember me?"
This is brilliant! With DM buy-in this could launch a whole new campaign arc or even be the major mid-campaign plot twist.
Whatever you do, make it fast. You don't want a player to wait 30 minutes or more to join the game
This is so true, this happened to me once but even worse. I ended up waiting about an hour before I pulled the dm to the side and was like “hey when am I going to be introduced” and he was like “oh shoot! I forgot to introduce your character!!! I’m so sorry!!!” But to be fair this was like his 1st time doing a full campaign, not just a once shot
or worse yet, do what Matt Mercer did to ND Stephenson: roleplay for 2 hours, go to a 15 minute break, roleplay for ANOTHER HOUR before introducing your new PC because you have a specific place for said new player to be and your regular players are more focused on roleplaying shopping than...doing the plot you planned because you forgot to be flexible in your story planning
Had this happen recently. The DMs wife had to wait for a fight (our table is sloooow), cave search, and a special magic feature discovery before we got to the temp PC
I once waited 4 hours to join a campaign 🤣
Yeah, you don't want to be too precious with it. If it's been more than 20 mins, just bring em in somehow. Also, if you can give your new players some lead in for what they are up to/have going on right then and there. I've had DM's just go over backstory and general stuff, and keep me out of the loop for what the hell I'm doing in the cool set piece they wanted to start me with. Really ruins the dramatic entrance when I've got no idea wtf is going on and I start running from the cool (weakened) enemy you threw down so I'd look like a bad ass when I met the party.
The new character can be a defector from the villain. That way they might have some useful info and fun roleplay opportunities. Though distrust will likely be an element. Or for something funny from various media the players, not understanding local culture, accidentally married, adopted, or paladin oathed the new character (with player consent) and the new character takes that bond very seriously.
Great vid, and very helpful, but that deep dive on bounty board style play sounds really intriguing
Definitely going to use this. Thank you for the video.
Most of my campaigns have a group patron. An adventurer guild, rift hunters or just a rich noble. This way when adding new players (or characters after a death etc) they can just go from being in another team in the organisation to the "main team". Thinking about it, that's very anime with the usual A and B teams those shows often have in action adventure genre
The primary theme for my campaign right now is a rags to riches type story. Sort of a classical rise to fame for the party of soon-to-be-heroes. One of the aspects of it is them running their own adventurer's guild, while another is basically a friendly NPC that is tied to most of the party and is the one who brought them all together so far. So, a few ways I have for new players is being brought in by the friendly npc, the other is someone who's taken notice of the guild's rising glory and is seeking to join their ranks. Those are the primary ones but, depending on a player's backstory or session 0, I could absolutely build off of those aspects to create new entry points to fit them.
As we've been playing through our second campaign, I inserted a few NPCs that could serve as either backup characters or for if another friend of ours ever wanted to join. Also they work for a mercenary company, so another member joining them wouldn't be out of the question, most of the time. We are going through a modified Tyranny of Dragons and we've reached the skycastle. Kinda hard for someone to just show up there, lol.
I somewhat used the dream sequence, information resource, and good samaritan strategies for the same character last night. One of the party members recognized them in a dream. The new player got pushed during a chase sequence the existing party was engaged in with a target NPC, and that's how they crossed paths.
Another thing I did was focus on the new player for the first 15 minutes because the others had been the focus of the previous one. It then took the whole session, but we succeeded in linking them up, finding more knowledge, and preparing for a major event happening at the location. As the event began, I ended the session so they can be hyped for the next one.
So far I have had (in order)
1. You meet someone at the job board.
2. There is a plague in this town, and the local healer will join the adventurers to find the cure
3. This is the bodyguard of an NPC who the party has to escort.
2 was definitely the most organic and worked best for the story, especially as I knew the character would only stay for that arc in the story
I recently had a character join a campaign about 10-12 sessions in. I decided to have a creature attack the campsite of the main party, but run off after a smash-and-grab that left one character injured. The party followed the creature into the forest, where it was attempting a similar attack on the new character's encampment. They saved him from the creature and decided to travel together to the next town!
This might just be my over indulgant DM style but whenever I'm introducing a new character to a pre-estabished party I always run what I call a Background session basically just a small 1 on 1 DnD session with the new player where we play though the reason why they get their motivations, usually via text chat or on voice call in some way for convience. I find this works really well for a bunch of reasons, like:
- Players don't have to write their own motivations and it gives the player a bit of room to actually know their motivation before going in.
- It's generally less intimidating for a new player getting into a pre-establish group since they already know what to expect in terms of my DMing come the first session.
- the player get's a chance to roleplay their character before really having to commit to anything
- I get to see how they play as a player before the first session
- Because of how I set these up I usually get to give their character a small spot in the world and lore that hasn't been super established yet that they can mold to better fit their character and come the time of the session they have some cool information or lore knowledge usually that the other players don't have.
- If they're really toxic I can find out before they even get into the game
- And it generally just allows for more complicated and intresting motivations for characters and generally more confident players in the first session they play in.
I’ve done this before and it worked pretty well. I actually had the two new characters meet first and establish their own trust, and then they met the rest of the party.
Great, broad suggestions that certainly cover a lot of scenarios. I think that when the new player(s) are available to play, and what's going on in the campaign at that point definitely influences what approach works best.
For example, if the PCs are mid-dungoen, the "crashed hot air balloon" would be very difficult to implement. Same with the "friend of a friend sent me".
Regardless of which one you attempt, I think there's going to be a modicum of handwaving going on.
Relatively early on in a campaign we had to replace two characters because they drowned in the mines beneath a dwarven city that had been flooded. When the rest of us went back down there, we rescued a couple of people who were going to be sacrificed to the God of the Uko'tao that had captured them. They demonstrated their abilities during the escape so the rest of us decided that they could tag along (though one of them, being a young teenager, was mostly brought along so he couldn't get himself into any more trouble).
Sounds pretty good to me, the rescued prisoner is a classic.
Great video, I've got a player about to join mid campaign so I'm very glad you made this video at the perfect time for me!
"Hey, you're not bad in a fight! Where're you from?"
Have some relatively minor (but loud and interesting) dust-up happen near whatever tavern or inn everyone's hanging out in. Multiple groups of adventurers come running to help, and the new player(s) get to show off their combat style right away.
Our newest player was introduced in the town we just arrived in; there was a ship on the pier that had a symbol associated with our BBEG on it, and when we investigated, the new character was talking to the crew, who were a band of Totally Not Smugglers, investigating some missing magic items from the local museum, I think. The Totally Not Smugglers started making threats to her, and we stepped in to fight. Nothing like a good fight/rescue attempt to create friendships.
(it also helped that she's a white kenku in a babushka. You could practically hear the entire party falling in love with her in the instant she was described.)
The specific way I did it was a time I also had to teach the newcomer how to play. In the previous session, the NPCs, the party was traveling with, had stayed behind. So I had the newcomer meet one of these NPCs. I gave my brother that NPCs stats (Clyde) and had the two of them play a 1 hour session. The next session started with Clyde introducing this helpful new person that can join them.
My second session to Lost Mine of Phandelver I had to write in 2 characters one had ties with another member the other did not. I wrote that the familiar one had some loose ends to tie up in Neverwinter before departure so they were a couple hours behind everyone and managed to catch up (we also made a comment to leave a note for them as it was a scheduling error irl). The other player I wrote was trying to steal from the goblin cave but was captured and they encountered him bound in the room with the wolves. Neither of these players ended up sticking around but a few months later I was asked if someone could sit in and watch a few sessions before possibly joining to which I agreed and the first session after he sat in I was told an hour before the game he had a character made and was looking to join. The party was already deep into Wave Echo Cave, so I told them that while they were resting in a safe structure they saw a flash of light and heard a loud crash from a neighboring room that they had searched the session prior and explained the character had gone to rest on a roadside and his deity had telephoned him into the dungeon as he was sleeping.
In one of my games my DM introduced a player who was in danger, being flanked by gnolls. Basically the ‘side of the road’ intro.
The twist was that this new player character was working for the enemy. I’m someone that takes for granted introducing someone new into the party so I didn’t question them.
It feels bad to be betrayed. I’ll definitely be a lot more aware next time.
thanks for making this 2 days after i needed it.
How did you handle it at your table?
I had a character join a Spelljammer game (different system) while the PCs were exploring space and first discovering the ship. The new PC was stored in the animal intelligence Spell jammer ship's belly/jail cell in suspended animation. The new "captain" was exploring the helm (inspired by iron man's display) and saw a red mark listing an extra person in the ship stores and tells the ship to release them. HiJinks begin and he stayed with the adventure the whole rest of the game. His wife later joined the game and played a pc with abilities that could join with the ships body where the helm interacted with the ships computer like brain. One of the best campaigns I ever ran.
Used basically #5 to introduce a new character (and player) into an email game I am running.
It is a 3.5 game, the new PC is a multiclass rogue/hexblade/warlock. He grew up in the small capital city of the isolated barony the party is all from. The party is heading north through the wilderness towards the ruins of an old fort located in the forested hills between two areas of mountainous terrain. The fort is a ways off to the southwest of the capital city, with a large lake, a village on the opposite shore of the lake, and some woods and hills between the city and the ruins.
I have the new PC's recent backstory as follows. He had joined a small group of would-be adventurers in the capital led by a ranger who had acquired a map showing the fort, and was putting the group together to go check it out, look for loot. But when they got close to the fort, they were attacked by a small band of ogres, and the fight had gone poorly. He got separated from the group and was chased south by one wounded ogre, but managed to get out of sight of the ogre, hide, and then sneak attacked the ogre and managed to defeat it, getting somewhat wounded in the process. Night was falling, so he climbed up into a tree to hide ahd get some sleep. In the morning, he had the (correct) idea that it would be faster to get back to civilization by heading south and southeast rather than trying to retrace his steps and risk running into the other ogres.
So in the late morning, the party, led by their own ranger, encounter this hungry and wounded fellow heading in their direction. Getting his story, the location of the ruins matches where they were heading, and they heal him up, and offer him a place in the party until they get back to civilization themselves. Their party is already 6 strong, including a mounted knight type and a pack mule, but they offer him a full share if he "pulls his weight" - these guys look like they can handle those ogres...
They do clear out the fort, and have a few other encounters before arriving at the village on the lake, where some of them decide to stay while the others take a boat over to the capital to sell loot, get supplies, etc. The new player is interacting well with the original players, so the party gains a 7th PC permanently. :)
One that I've used is a group of people are being lined up for execution by the BBEG's goons so the party has a reason to save the new character and the new character is invested in the party
love this video.
I often don't have anything insightful to say, but just a "love this video" is always appreciated by creators, and RUclips's algorithm eats comments to stay happy so, birds, stone, you know the drill ^^
Thank you!!
I once joined a table at my local gaming store where all of the player characters were planeswalkers in the style of Magic the Gathering. However I was joining them the week that they were fighting an Ancient Red Dragon that was one of many dragons that they needed to deal with for the plot. The DM just had me accidentally waken my Planeswalker spark and land myself in the middle of this battle, but I also didn't entirely know how to control planes walking enough to get myself home. I ended up climbing to safety and taking ranged pot shots at anyone who scared me. I stayed with them because as as I said I didn't really know how to get home, and I had a natural thirst for adventure.
One way I’ve introduced a new party member was by having them already be friends with the quest giving npc. (So I suppose it’s similar to the quest board idea)
The PC was a cleric who had been spending time in the town the party just arrived in, and got to know the local holy-person a week ago (in the absence of a temple). So when the party saw the person of interest, he introduced the new player to them like “help these guys out with this quest cause I trust you”
The player then had valuable information about the town and the current quest. And because his personal quest involves seeking answers about something in his backstory, the following quest gave him a lead so he’ll want to stick with them.
I added a player by having their character already mixed up in an encounter with monsters, which the others jumped in and helped with. Maybe it wasn’t true to the character’s wisdom score that they had decided to enter a dangerous area alone, but it worked out. When that player had to leave a few months later, I had their character begin self-defense training for a group of NPC pilgrims who had to regularly send people through the same area.
There was another player who was just playing with us for a session and another regular was away, so I had the guest reveal that they had already been in with the group for about a day, but disguised as the one who was absent. Both were rogues with the assassin subclass, but the regular was a bugbear and the guest was a changeling, so I decided that the local thieves’s guild had kidnapped the regular for a few hours and left the changeling in his place until another goal had been accomplished.
I play in another game that has about three regulars who make every session and three more who are more occasional. The DM of that game will sometimes have a magic item of one regular just absorb or spit out characters who weren’t always there. The item is owned by a Great Old One warlock, so I guess the unpredictable and bizarre fits, though the campaign is generally quite silly.
SLIDERS DRAMA man I feel ya on all that nonsense
I don't want to think about including more people, to soon. But I guess it would depend on where they are. If they're in town some of your input is really helpful, if they're in the middle of a dungeon perhaps I'll play the bounty hunter card, perhaps I'll play the old friend card you explained. Maybe I can think of another way if it comes to that.
Had a guest character for a table. The party had recently killed a yeti and taken it's fur but didn't know how to properly treat it. They left it w my character and insisted on him joining them later in a city a few days walk away for a festival. By the time he got there two of the players had to leave the game for life stuff, leaving the party deplete of ranks. So my character helped out in a pinch and when the festival was over they asked if he would stay. Felt really organic. A chance meeting followed by a promise kept followed by a growing trust
Local Militia is a good one. At one point I accidentally wrote myself into a corner - tl;Dr the players were all present but the party *had* to split in half for a while, 2 doing vital research while 2 went to defend an important city halfway across the world (they're high enough to Teleport 1x/day) . Easy to bring in 2 new conscripts for the defense effort!
We once had a new character join our adventure, and they introduced themselves by jumping us on a roadside, threatening us at knife point and demanding we take them along. No reason, just "take me or else."
The DM went around the table asking us if we'd take the new character along. I was the only one who said no. I asked "why would we take you along if you're threatening us? How can I trust you? Why should I trust you if you start out by threatening my friends?"
They said they were a divination wizard and "saw" that they were destined to go to X place with us. Not the best reasoning, but it was better than none at all.
one small introduction i had once, i had a roguish charakter run into the tavern, getting right to the party asking for help saying something like "´guards looking for me coz *whatever*, i assure you it wasn´t me me but i need help to prove my innocence, if you help me my talents belong to you but i have no time to go into more detail unless you help me lose my chasers!"
this worked, but the GM also had a failsave like if they say no they would also be brought to jail, and then someone else would come to get us all out of there with the truth and my talents would still be in service of the group because of the inconvienience and me wanting to make up for it.
the general idea was not bring my charakter in by tying it to the parties goals, but tie the party to my chars BS for a moment, creating the debt my charakter would feel for the help he recieved.
of course it only works if there is room for that, in the middle of a dungeon it wouldn´t work that well ;)
For my campaign, my friends wanted to join after the first session so I thought of a plan. They had this really big bad boss who was fighting against my two players and a npc named Bob. They realise they can’t beat the boss so they run away, while Bob holds him off. After Bob dies offscreen a scientist said he knew some people to save the village and the creek so he introduced those two people.
1:14 I have plans to use both crashed spell-jammer, and broken android assembled by another party member
This is a good channel. I like Mike.
I think the best experience I had was when we returned to town, and a pivotal NPC introduced the new PC when we visited to share our findings. The new PC also happened to have a complicated romantic history with another PC.
I think I've relied upon the "waylaid wanderer" a tad too often, but as I am not running any campaign currently and my prospective players have never played a campaign I have run before, I figure it won't be a problem if I end up using it again.
A recent addition was introduced by just us in the market place at the same time and both having high enough passive perceptions to notice each other. My character, seeing the other seemed lost and having high enough perception to be able to tell this, stepped up to offer advice to an obvious new arrival, especially given the last mission wrapped up and I had nothing left to do as I just finished my shopping (I kept this part quick and informed the dm as to my intentions before the session began so we could cover this quickly). So my character is now the guide to this other player’s character which gives us a good reason to stick together, especially given it’s dangerous to traverse the wilds alone or in too small a group. So yeah, that’s how it is. Nothing too abnormal for either of our characters to do and a smooth transition. Boring? Maybe but it vibes with both our characters and is a smooth transition so neither of us are upset. Besides, this is kinda how all the intros happened in my group. Exits are a bit dramatic but most intros are meeting at a tavern and taking on the same job because it looks to difficult to try alone or running into a childhood friend in another tavern who you haven’t seen in decades. Smooth and nothing you have to suspend your belief about. As for exits, well one died in the night from a blizzard and the other three got bamfed to another dimension by a celestial parent of the warlock. It was wild and the NPCs are still filling the rumor mill with it. Makes it difficult for my npc to find jobs, lol. And yes this is one reason I made my npc have such a high perception. He eavesdrops a lot with it looking for leads for jobs and sharing his findings with the group.
A Suicide Squad style DnD game?! Oo, now that's the type of game I wanna join! I have a plethora of character ideas, from a Harley inspired Warlock, to my Celestial hunting fallen Aasimar Ranger to a crazy Kobold!
"Suicide Squad"...
You said suicide twice... ;)
It’s such a fun opportunity for people to just go off the chain in character creation 😁
@@SupergeekMike And the perfect opportunity for evil aligned characters!
I been using a variation of Mists of Ravenloft since before I6 but Ravenloft did given the Chaos Mists a big flavor bump. But D&D is game. If the group is not in combat. Bamf, there they are. The Story comes from what happen AT the Table, not what is supposed to happen to the table.
3.I have used the bounty board. 5.Stuck until rescue I have used. 7. I have used an old friend.
I usually point out to the players "This is the new PC, play nice" and my players know that even if IC they show some light mistrust they don't openly reject the new PC from travelling with them
I had a character who wanted to retire her character and play another. The party was about to be summoned by one character's backstory villain, and be given a chance to rid that character's family of obligation to the villain, if only they'll help him slay a certain hag.
So it was easy. I asked the player switching characters to make whatever, as long as she has a beef with the hag. I introduce the family villain, and right behind him, the new PC ally of his, also looking for the hag for her own score to settle.
5:11 ...Wait, is this something that actually happens? I mean, I understand that everyone at the table wants an introduction that doesn't destroy their immersion. But the DM has introduced this player to all the existing players, and they're spending a few hours of their free time with you. And you're telling me the players would see the "this is clearly the new character being introduced" scene and then ignore them?
I don't care how shady the guy on the side of the road looks. They're a fellow player and you make their player feel included. That's just basic table etiquette.
In the past three or so years I've been introduced into three campaigns that were mid-action. In the first one, my character was looking for one of his possessions that had been stolen by some bandits and stored in a warehouse. In the session prior to my arrival, another PC fireballed had the place to the ground, and at the start of my introductory session, my character emerged from the destruction singed but mostly unharmed.
The second instance wasn't as extraordinary; the party was between jobs and was getting set up for their next big quest, and my character was forced to go alongside them by the town guard under duress.
The third was a lot more bombastic. I wanted to play a warforged in a world where constructs operated on a previously established set of logic and rules, so I had to come from another crystal sphere. (The party was running the Lost Mines of Phandelver; I'm not familiar with modules and apparently crystal spheres an in-universe thing? I don't know much about them, but that's what the DM suggested so I rolled with it.) My PC was traveling through the astral sea, enslaved to gith on a spelljammer. The gith got into a tussle with another spelljammer and were forced into the prime material plane, crashing outside of Phandalin as the battle between the two factions began to spill out towards the town. My character slipped away in the carnage and joined the rest of the party in desperation, willing to fight for their freedom.
In my current campaign (in which I am a player), the DM has used the "sent by fave NPC" two or three times, though a slightly different flavouring and time in between each meant I didn't exactly go "hey, wait a minute..." any time. She even flavoured it as "you know of/have seen this character around" one time, to help facilitate some trust.
Just don't do what I did as a first time DM who was also using an unbalanced fanmade system: I put the new PC in a bar where the party was about to have a fight (actually, I may be misremembering - the start of the fight might've been the cliffhanger from the last session, so I thought "great time to just slip in a new character") and then accidentally kill her in an AoE attack before she really meets the party. She ended up leaving the game after that (she wasn't terribly interested in the first place, wasn't her genre) and it died a few sessions later for interpersonal player reasons. She still teases me for that, though.
I switched characters part way through our campaign and my dm and i discussed a few different methods of introducing my new character. dm settled on introducing the new pc at the wake for my old pc. reason for joining was "matter of convince"
What’s your favorite way a new character has been introduced in one of your games?
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Oh. My. Gods. Sliders used to be one of my FAVORITE shows when I was younger! I kinda wish someone would reboot it.
With all the multiverse stuff in media, it seems like now is the perfect time! Or we missed our window lol
Ah good old Sliders..... Man did it go.... Places.
I'm playing in a curse of strahd campaign right now so when my character died I tied my new character to the party by saying he was the ancestor of the original wielder of the spear my party had found set on claiming it for his own.
While I agree with your point about Quinn's actor on Sliders, there was one other time in which one of his doubles looked different: the time when his double was a woman. To answer your question, yes, I remember Sliders.
A new 5th player will be joining my group of 4 soon. Plan is to have #5 learn that his previous adventuring buddy went missing while exploring a specific place. He was last seen working as a guide for 2 mysterious folk.
The party of 4 happen to be chasing the 2 mysterious folk. So thier paths have conveniently crossed. #5 will partner with the 4 to find his buddy and stop the mysterious folk. What happens from there, is yet to be ...
Sliders was great show. I agree with the final season..........AND IT ENDED ON CLIFFHANGER :(
I have had to introduce multiple PCs to a an ongoing campaign, be it to replace a dead character, or to bring in a new player. It's fun to think and plan with the player how and why their new character would be joining the party.
But when that doesn't happen... It's just so jarring. I've started a campaign as a player, and the character introduction made no sense. My character should not have been where they were, and it just took me right out of the roleplay.
Please DMs, make new character introductions make sense!
Barely remember Sliders eh? That was a great show. Until that last season, cause yea..
I’m sorry did you just say… “haan”? Like how you would say Ham? Like Haan Solo?
Lol I don't get that pronunciation either. If I remember correctly, most people in Star Wars say his name Han, with an open A, but there was... I think Lando says Han like Ham.
@@ncpolley yeah but then doesn’t Han correct him? Maybe a joke on the part of Supergeekmike. Or maybe I’m wrong.
@@TalonWolf1313 He doesn't correct him, actually.
@@ncpolley I remember now, he doesn’t in A New Hope but he does correct Lando in Solo. That’s why I thought that. Pretty sure Disney was just fixing a continuity error, but Lando calls him Han like ham and Han corrects him.
Frustrating livng in an area so far away (hours) from communities that play. I don't want to hire people to play either online. HMU if anyone interested in an online player joining.
Play a world, not a campaign, its a old school thing. You did your Westmarch, make that part of your world. why get rid of stuff, locations dont disappear, they get repopulated, and you didn't really let them kill the main antagonist did you?
Huh?