[Reaver]

well, I use a lot of little tricks to throw a party together, and most of them start like this:

"So, the [insert number of players here] have pulled a few bitsy runs together and feel that you mesh as a team, and Now decide to see if you can hack it in the big leagues..."



(yes, I am extremely lazy, I don't like PC infighting right off the cusp and I FORCE my players to try to build their characters together so they have an idea of what everyone is playing)

[Ricochet]

For our current mission party, every character knew at least one other character in the party, forming a daisy chain so every runner was at least the friend of a friend of every other runner in the group.

[Coi]

In my most recent campaign they were all noobs to shadowrun, none of them could be bothered learning about the world beforehand... so they started off escaping from a medical facility that was hidden beneth an abandoned morgue in the barrens, with no memory of who they are or what they can do. They had a chart at their feet some said more than others, and were all wearing one of those backless hospital gowns. That's how they began... knowing only that one of them was given no name but a description 'The Driver', one of them was aka Charles Findley, ect... They have progressed from there and it's been a hell of a ride

[I_V_Saur]

In my most recent campaign they were all noobs to shadowrun, none of them could be bothered learning about the world beforehand... so they started off escaping from a medical facility that was hidden beneth an abandoned morgue in the barrens, with no memory of who they are or what they can do. They had a chart at their feet some said more than others, and were all wearing one of those backless hospital gowns. That's how they began... knowing only that one of them was given no name but a description 'The Driver', one of them was aka Charles Findley, ect... They have progressed from there and it's been a hell of a ride

Okay, that's pretty awesome. I just might have to do this some time.

With their existing characters.

[GiraffeShaman]

There's a grand tradition of starting in morgues in SR. You start in a Morgue in the SN SR video game and supposedly there is a morgue near the start of SR Returns.

[RHat]

Does aka Charles Findley look anything like Bruce Campbell?

[GiraffeShaman]

Does aka Charles Findley look anything like Bruce Campbell?

Aha, good catch.

[Nacho]

Not my current campaign, but a previous one - two players played as brothers in the game.  They wanted to seek revenge for the senseless slaying of their younger sister.  One brother was a wage slave at the company which was found to be behind the murder.  So he quit and joined his brother who he hated for years for being a nobody hood-rat.  So, they then needed to hire someone else to do some other work (Mage).  So they met Mr. Johnson and were told to go meet the mage character.  So, cut to, I start the Mage character out In Media Res - middle of a fight.  The brothers save him and they join up.  On the second scenario, another friend wanted to join the gaming so, we said that he was an old contact of the street-rat brother, ex-military type who needed some money.  So, I had those four players for about 20+ scenarios.  Always lingering in the background was the revenge plot, which I had worked into some of the published adventures by either adding a side quest, or dropping some info along the way or changing one of the baddies to one of my perennial baddies.

It was fun.

Still working on my new SR5 campaign meet-up scenario.

[Pyromaster13]

In a campaign I played in I was a PC face mage.  The GM at the time had the same issue trying to integrate the players, and my character wasn't done in time for the first session, so I gave him a basic run for the team "A Mr. Johnson wanted a silver watch stolen back from a talismonger, and they the team was hired because they were all new and therefore cheap, and roughly covered every role." but in reality it was to add a little back story into how I acquired my silver watch force 3 power focus.  Everyone enjoyed the session, and I got to add some spice into my character as a cloak and dagger Johnson when it suits him.

[phydaux42]

Have a contact in common[b/, if the players are amenable to that. I have found that helpful when bringing new characters into existing groups. It's obviously in the player's interests to start working together (so that the run can get going) and having a mutually known and (perhaps) trusted contact helps to explain why their characters would team up with someone they just met.

That's a great idea.  I maintain a list of "standard contacts" for all my PCs to share.  Your character has a Yakuza contact?  Harmony Wa runs a traditional Japanese tea house just outside the Corp District.  Mafia contact?  Nicky Fingers has a pizza, subs, bookmaking & loan sharking operation down at the docks.  Lone Star contact?  Bucktooth Becky, aka "The ork who pops like a cork," works in the down town Lone Star records department and happens to be a HUGE shadow runner groupie.  A bottle of wine and an evening of vigorous, athletic shagging (or as the local shadow runner community calls it, "death by snoo snoo") and Becky will turn over whatever the runner is looking for.

The only thing I don't like seeing is when one player is a decker and the other player says "Oh, I have a decker contact.  You can be my contact."  The second player effectively robs himself of a useful source of information.

[phydaux42]

One of my favorite campaigns as a player started with all of us as collage students in our senior year at U W.  Most of us were members of the football team, one was a cheerleader, so we were all cybered to the gils with top level alphaware and paid for via student loans.  None of us  were picked up in the NFL draft, and suddenly our student loans were coming due.  We needed money fast, and there was "this guy" who was willing to pay us a lot of money, and all we had to do was thump a few people, same like we thumped people every Saturday night during football season.  Harmless, right?  Maybe even have a laugh, right?  What could go wrong?

Yeah, what could possibly go wrong....

Shit, that was a fun campaign.

[Coi]

Does aka Charles Findley look anything like Bruce Campbell?

Aha, good catch.

Yes as a matter of fact he does... he's a face adept with the ability to change his face at will. He chose Mr. findley as one of his alias's

[raggedhalo]

One campaign, I had the PCs all start as prisoners about to be transferred to a much worse prison.  The players got to decide why they were in jail, and whether it was something they'd done, a miscarriage of justice, or a frame job*.  They were put in the van along with a Vory prisoner, and when the van got attacked by the Vor's allies, the PCs were able to escape.

*: my favourite was the serial killer who was in there for prescription fraud!