What are some interesting/unconventional ways to gather an adventuring party on the first session...

What are some interesting/unconventional ways to gather an adventuring party on the first session? Anyone have good examples?

Can't go wrong with a slave rebellion/breakout. If it's a thing that's legal in your setting, just have the players all start out in the hands of a very powerful... "collector" of sorts. Whether it's for the purposes of arena combat, or just to show off the variety of "product" being offered to potential customers.

Just be sure to have the escape happen rather quickly before things get into some sort of S&M magical realm, OK?

>You find yourself in the bottom level of a dungeon. Some of your are injured; some of your resources are expended [roll dice as appropriate]. You have no idea how you got down here, but one of you has a drawing attached to his shirt, of something that looks like a dog with tentacles instead of a nose.
>It's labelled, "Alabaster Hound- not strong, but amnesia powers- find, kill, reward"
>You think you saw it vanish around that corner just as you came to.

this works really well actually

I've had a DM start us out as slaves who were purchased by a bandit/mercenary who forced us to raid villages. When we decided to stop killing innocent people we made a run for it and spent the rest of the game being hunted by the bandit leader and trying to find out how to bring him down

The party is, for various reasons, in a part of town where the crown prince is touring with his wife, when all of a sudden assassins attack. How the party reacts to this is up to them.

If all the players are willing to go along with it, make all their characters childhood friends. From there you only have to give one of them a plothook that they'll need the help/talents of their friends to follow.

>Players all live in a crappy village out in the middle of nowhere
>Despite being level 2, they're the most powerful/educated/competant people in the village
>X thing happens to threaten village
>Players have a vested interest in protecting their home
>BOOM, PARTY GET

- players were all captured and chained together and then thrown in a gladiator pit to fight 4v4 battles (or however large the party size is vs the same amount of guys)
- players used to be roommates back at Adventurer Academy
- players all were chased individually by monsters and all end up back to back on high ground/in an abandoned shack and have to team up to survive the night
- players are contestants in a fantasy gameshow where your prize is based on reaching the bottom of the dungeon and returning with the macguffin; losing party members results in a penalty applied to your reward
- players are all on a boat sailing somewhere and their class-specific talents are required
- players have been outfitted with bomb collars/brain bombs/whatever that explode if they stray too far from the majortity of the other bombs
- players are all actually part of one super being that was split apart by jealous rival super beings and sometimes they can fuse together and become a horrible multi-limbed creature that shoots spatial beams

>travelling together by ship or caravan
>bad thing occurs
>they survive and are naturally inclined to start an adventure in order to get back what was stolen by thing/get revenge on thing/discover origin of thing

The players are visited by a time-travelling doppelganger bard who reveals that he is actually all of their dads, and that their adventuring ability is the result of being 50% doppelganger, regardless of whatever dumb race they picked. They can't shapeshift or do anything cool, but it's why they're adventurers and everyone else is a shitty NPC.

The party then becomes embroiled in doppelganger politics and adventurers to prove that they're worthy heirs of his massive, space-time spanning estate.

They're all siamese siblings

>Surely, a portal was not exactly something you were expecting
>As you regain your senses, you see you've arrived into a strange room. The walls are made of stone, with a chandelier hanging from the ceiling. You see a wooden door before you.
>You still have your trusty longsword and armour, which is nice.
>You see five other people standing. You all form a circle around a table, and look immensely confused.
>The first one appears to be an elf. It wields a longbow and wears a blue brigandine. She has long black hair and seems quite surprised.
>The second is human. His clothes are quite strange: greens and light browns, arranged in a confusing manner, adorn his shirt and pants, and a round helmet covers his bald head. He holds a black wand in his hand, and looks slightly frightened.
>The third is a giant in enormous green armour. He towers above all of you, and holds another wand, similar to the one the human is carrying, but much larger. He also has a sword on his back, emitting a strange blue glow. The armour covers him from head to toe, but his helmet looks angry.
>You recognise the fourth as your friend Joseph, a fellow knight. You were trying to enter inside a cave, when the portal appeared. He looks at you, uncertain of what to do.
>The fifth looks like a dwarf. He wears glasses and his right arm appears to be made of metal. He carries a small wand in his left hand, a strange, illuminated tablet in his right, where you see symbols and a painting.

They all first meet at a blowjob party.

>Wait, I thought I was in the "Receiving Line"
>Well, this is awkward
>Wanna go kill some monsters?
>Yep. Let's never speak of this again.

... You twisted bastard. Now I have to try to put together a group. Thanks.

I was running a western game. Started with everyone on a chain gang, breakin' rocks in the hot sun.

I gave them an opportunity to kill the overseer and escape. I did NOT give them an opportunity to get out of the ankle chain linking them all together, not for the first session at least.

Everyone, by one means or another, has one a martial arts tournament, and has been invited/pressganged into attending a gala for victors.

Thats not how a blowjob party works...

A demigod plucks them from wherever they are, tells them that they are going to be working together for a goal, and shakes his fist in warning if they disobey his edict.

Current Campaign. Party is still working together out of fear of constantly meddling demigod.

That is fucking great.

>Everyone at the party are in X location looking for artifact Y, each of them for a different reason
>They find out they need to stick together in order to make it to its holding chamber
>artifact is actually very ebul and puts a curse on all of them
>party races against time in order to remove the curse before it completly screws them over

I really do like this.

>I did NOT give them an opportunity to get out of the ankle chain linking them all together, not for the first session at least.
Fucking fantastic.

Nice and brilliant.

This is really cool, but I can't find any stats for any so-called "Alabaster Hounds," are they a real thing or should I just make something up?

So, you just make everybody go through a portal, and then they're a party?
That's not really interesting at all. I mean, that's practically just a handwave. "You're all in the same place now, go do D&D things." Lame.

One that I saw in a thread like this a while ago that I've been dying to use ever since was this:

>You all meet on a tavern.
>the surrounding countryside has been hit by a massive flood, and the rest of the tavern has been submerged

>Start off my campaign as 1st level characters.
>Each character is separated from the others.
>Characters wake up in oppressing darkness.
>Feel around only to discover they're each in a stone coffin.
>PC's have no memories of anything before.
>One PC has crushing fear of closed spaces and darkness.
>Strongest PC manages to get the lid open on his sarcophagus.
>Players discover they have all been entombed.
>Everyone is naked and no equipment.
>Find a pile of dust with note and map.
>Map with writing all over it and note with message.
>Note: "They are looking for you, they will kill you, get to (Insert City)"
>Thus began the God Emperor Campaign for 17 months.

Party members as exceptional residents or representatives of important guilds are invited to a banquet at the local lords pallace.
Some social interaction later a band of mercenaries crash the party in an assassination attempt and the party members are in their way.

The OP asked for interesting and unconventional, user. These are all tropey and aged as fuck.

Rolled 12 (1d12)

1. meet up after being separately tricked inside an evil stage magician's hat

2. literally gathered by a foraging party of giants looking to garnish their big upcoming feast with some special treats

3. all swallowed by the same enormous whale several years apart

4. summoned as equally distant and last surviving relatives of an eccentric old great-grandmother who left mysterious clues to her vast hidden fortune in her will great-grandmother almost definitely still around, now undead

5. wake up in a pile after a crazy drug orgy, each still experiencing the effects of a different drug

6. entombed still living as soldiers and civil servants of the recently deceased pharaoh - must escape tomb complex

7. get together while each being hunted by a different mad witch cult who require one of their body parts for some prophesied ritual

8. each summoned by one of the others (then both summoned, then all three summoned, etc) in individual summoning rituals which have gone wrong in a curious way that speaks of sabotage

9. mind-swapped into each other's bodies as part of a mass mind-switch done on two opposing armies by a powerful wizard seeking to enforce peace

10. the minds of ancient adventurers imprisoned inside their equipment take over the bodies of four newbies who pick up the gear, and meet each other embodied for the first time

11. all of the PCs are related to every other PC, but each PC is only aware of one of their relatives in the party

12. each PC is a talented performer in some particular art or craft (engraving, weaving, dancing, oratory, etc) and all are forced to go on the run when the mad prince is so insulted by their performances he sentences them to death

Not sure if bad post or clever meta post.

Thanks for reminding me of this.

They'd have to do a little solo session, each in their own world doing stuff. They start to notice strange events, and then they see each other in the room.
The room is not in the middle of nowhere. Just behind the door, there's an alley. There are doors every 10 m, each connected to a room like the one they start off in. Most of the time, they are empty, besides an oaken table, five chairs arranged in a circle and a silver chandelier. Sometimes, people appear inside a room. They mostly come from different universes. You could end up with a 2089 US Marine, a Kasrkin and a Lone Star agent.
They exit, but end up being hunted by something quite horrifying. They end up discovering a wizard's attempt to reverse-engineer tech from captured specimens, and use it to conquer the land. He didn't get far because he only got things from earlier eras, or things so advanced he broke them the moment he touched them.
They must stop him before it's too late, AND find a way to get back home when they kill him.
Sorry if I'm bad at this, I'm doing this on the fly and it's my first attempt.

>Party crossing a large body of water for one reason or another
>Warn them not to get attached to starting gear
>Boat goes down in the storm, no survivors
>Transcending afterlife, party ambushed by demons. Fight them off
>Stuck in limbo, plucked up by [Insert god] to assist in the demonic rule breaking

You could have them be plucked by heaven and offered a sweeter deal by Asmodious later since it's rebels doing the rule breaking. You could have the god of the sea take them and put them on a ghost ship to track down the faction on the mortal side (that caused the violent localized storm).

Have them all be transferred to the same cell block in a sex dungeon and have to plan their escape before everyone is impregnated and/or egg implanted.

The plothook? Or the fact that Dungeon Meshi exists?

Sex dungeon?

>the fact that Dungeon Meshi exists

New chapter in... 3 days I think.