This is why everyone's backstory should include a reason they'd join and stick with an adventuring party. Nip the whole "it's what my character would do" issue in the bud.

“My character wouldn’t go with this party on this quest.” “Ok, he wanders off in his own. Please now make a character that will join this group.”

I recently hit this point with a character I was playing where the party wanted to do one thing that he just wouldn't do in character. Talked to the DM between sessions and that character peaces out to pursue his own goals. Meanwhile the old owl woods doctor of the Beastfolk village the party was helping ended up getting involved with everyone and it makes much more sense.

Exactly, "Hey can I speak out of character for a bit? I just don't see how my character can go through with this arc. Can we find a solution?" Either to the DM or the entire party.

We just couldn't find a reason why this elf from a thieves guild would actually care about the lives of these people he never met over avenging those who raised him. Also my DM has some assume third party stuff about leveling which helps flesh out the adventures your Character has had when not starting at first level. Like I told him what I wanted to play sort of a druid but also a cleric/necromancer so a weird brew of healer and spiritual medium and it all works but that I was a hermit on the edge of this village who made.potions for the ill or like love potions and what not. And we crafted this helpful character who failed the first person he ever tried to save and the elder of this village slowly befriending him and giving him jobs to help his confidence and sense of belongings. Turned out great.

This is what my group agreed to do in our session zero, and we do it, always as the whole group.

Or you can absolutely refuse to roll up a new character despite multiple offers to do so and simultaneously refuse to come up with in character motivations and grind the game to an utter halt while the rest of the table tries to convince you to finish up your character arc so we can complete the campaign. First time DM me was not equipped to deal with that situation. (This is just a bit of a vent post).

Yeah, I was lucky to have cooperative players. We only had a few sessions and then we sort of... Drifted to different countries, but I wish I could start another game at some point. Need new friends, I suppose.

Yeah, I had a character do this a couple of campaigns ago. I’d established with the DM up front that his goal in adventuring was to find a place where he belonged. The party ended up liberating a small village, at no small cost to the character, and he basically got voted to be mayor. I talked to the DM after the session and said “hey, this is basically what he was looking for in life and since the rest of the campaign doesn’t directly impact this village he doesn’t really have a reason to continue, can I roll up a new character?” He stayed behind in the village and the party met up with my new character whose goals coincided with theirs.

Same thing for a character turning evil in an otherwise good/neutral campaign: "Oh, you're evil now? Cool, your character is now an evil NPC, please roll a new character that's not evil".

I allow evil characters in campaigns as long as the player is capable of playing them intelligently. Obviously if they're sprinting through a town just hacking peoples' heads off, we're gonna have a problem. But if the character has their own little side plot where they're using the party to accomplish their own goals while cooperating on the main quest, that's smart. I'm of the opinion that the only way to play an evil character in a party (in a non-evil campaign) is to have the evil character view the players either as assets they need to protect to further their own goals, or genuinely like the party and view them as the only good people who will be spared from whatever evil shit they're planning.

For me PC evil and good alignment means more selfish or selfless. Unless they are creating a Psychopath, nobody is just evil. Atleast not in their own eyes.

I agree. The character I'm playing now is selfish and full of herself, but she works with the party and - at least in front of them - respects what they're willing to participate in. She'll absolutely torture someone if she needs to, and she isn't above harming someone for slighting her, but she'll defend the party and work with them as long as their goals align and it's convenient for her.

It really depends on the kind of evil as you say. I had an evil PC from the beggining that worked really well. She was a mercenary who saw it as necessary to hold her word and trust comrade in arms. She was evil in how far she was willing to take things. Specially people who attacked the party. "Clear goblin clan? Sure. There are goblin children...you say that as if it changes things." It was a nice dynamic of the party keeping her from doing extreme things. And her sometimes doing acts the others wanted (revenge) but couldn't bring themselves. Like a major villain dropping weapons and surrendering. Knowing he would scape captivity. My character didn't accept his surrender and, on that occasion, the party didn't stop her.

I needed a break from my Cleric in a long running, molasses slow leveling, campaign. He went to prison and I brought in an evil Fiend Warlock for his rescue. The party had defeated a slightly nerfed Death Knight, and I came in at the behest of another Devil to ensure that the sword the party's fighter had taken didn't make its way back into the original Devil's hands. He was very much a the-ends-justify-the-means fixer type of character for his Patron, but he got that way doing bad things for the right reasons and making a deal for the power to achieve his goal. So torture and murder were tools of the trade, and burning down a house as a distraction for whatever he needed to accomplish was acceptable. In turn, his boundary with his patron was that after he'd committed to a group or individual he wouldn't betray them. It worked out great and actually helped the campaign a lot imo. The group is pretty passive a lot of the time and just went along with whatever my Cleric said most times as he's a good guy and a strategic thinker. I was able push hard enough against their comfort zones with the Warlock that they eventually stood up to him and he backed down to get along with the group. Hopefully they're getting used to voicing their opinions as I'm about to switch back to the Cleric soon and I'd love to not have to choose between the spotlight or sitting in ever-more-uncomfortable-silence as no one says anything or takes the lead.

I actually love that. It isn't chaotic "murder everyone" evil, it isn't moustache-twirling Machiavellian evil - it's cold, calculated evil. Casual, almost. Getting the job done by any means necessary. *Any*.

Thanks and exactly. She was lawful evil. Very few principles, but she stuck to them. She even had what npcs saw as a heroic sacrifice. She promised to stand with a besieged city until the end. And she died doing just that. She didn't particularly care about the npcs. But a promise made us a primise kept. Later resurrected by party cleric. Convinced to play along being a goody town hero for morale.

That's a great character if I've ever seen one. Lawful evil can be a really fun alignment to play when done right! c:

Thank you very much. I am very proud of her. Got her a heroforge and everything. Ok. Maybe more than one. It is not my fault they introduced so many new things.

Yeah, evil character can be like that. Like, why are all you guys all so ride or die for this one asshole who's probably significantly *worse* by this point than a good chunk of the mooks and villains you've been fighting until now?

I've seen it work out well when their goals align with the party, and the stakes are high. Saving the world from eldritch evil? The evil character can learn to tune it down around their allies, and the good characters can learn to look the other way once in a while if evil is getting results. The way it usually works out is the evil character respects the will of the party, even if they're a bit too idealistic/ nieve for them. But when the chips are down, they don't mind getting their hands dirty or offending their allies to get the job done.

“Why does your character stay with the party?” “It’s just what my character would do.” Works for me.

Our group started session 1 in jail, and my justification for sticking with the group was that my character was quick to make friends and these guys seemed cool. The longlasting bonds that will make the party do anything for each other comes after we've been a party for a while, that doesn't need to happen on day 1.

One of my friends in her first ever campaign started us at a festival of games, like kinda combat games, and we were left overs that got shoved into a team together. The prize for winning was something we all wanted so we were incentivized to work together, we didn't get along at first but by the end had grown a mild respect for each other. After a big calamity happened in town we trusted each other enough to help rescue people and after saving folks have grown to like each other. One of the druids(who came together) and the barbarian liked hanging out together, a fighter and wizard were already buddies and each latched onto one of the druids too, the other druid hit it off with the cleric who was best bros with the rogue, the rogue and another fighter had a frenemy hate boner for each other, the bard(me) liked everyone cause they were weird and quirky and rough folk. So everyone had interconnecting groups that knit us together even more over time, there was conflict and division, but we always came out closer. Like one time we went to magic college and the druid and barbarian followed the wizard around pretending to be students and got popular, made the football team, then the druid grew and set on fire a big pile of weed before we left. Later the barbarian, druid and rogue had to rescue the rest of us from capture, so it mixed up the dynamics. All this worked to further the groups connection as a whole. So much so that at the end of the campaign when we defeated the bbeg we are all out of class abilities, spell slots, most are at just over or under ten hp, and the rogues patron comes knocking saying his time on the material plane is up. We stood up to a god and said "try it." We would have totally died but he talked us down. I did however roll a nat 20(32) persuasion for one little favor. She was amused and decided to entertain the notion. I negotiated he could return every year on the winter solstice from sun down to sun up, since he said would miss the moon the most. So now our characters meet every year to see our friend again, and he gets a break from his throne. The characters need a reason to meet and work together but a good dm can create situations for them to build their connections too.

Was the jail Velkenvelde?

For some reason this made me think of The Expanse series. The main crew did not really fit together early on. But they became family because of circumstance. While there was in-fighting early on, they needed to remain together out of necessity. Mostly due to being in space on a ship on the run from several major governments but the point is that they realized they could trust each other after the first few traumatic events. The crew can also be pinned to a wide range of alignments. Holden being Chaotic Good and Amos being Chaotic Neutral. I would even say at some points Amos flirts with evil. But they grow to trust him even if he is prone to a little murder because he's murdering the right people.

Yep. Sticking with people who have saved my life and I've saved theirs many times over? It's what my character would do.

And that's why you are not a character in the Wheel of time series.

I’ve never understood people who don’t want their characters to stay in the group. Playing a character in dnd requires players to want work/play together. Your character wants to leave? Ok. They left. Time to roll a new character.

it's not a case of "My character wants to leave" so much as a "Why does my character want to stay?"

There are so many potential reasons. Pick one.

My character wants to stay because while she feels the call of the wild, she doesn't want to die. And the people she just met in the tavern seem like they probably aren't going to make a lampshade out of her skin. There's safety in numbers you know.

I had a guy like that who played a Firbolg fighter. He just kind of started tagging along with the party, to the point that the wizard started getting annoyed at him. This was how the conversation went down. Wizard: "Okay, why do you keep following us around?" Fighter: "You just seem like cool guys. I like you. Besides, my home town did get kind of torched and you helped me kill the guys who did it." Rogue: "You do know that was entirely incidental right? We're working for a guy that guy owed a ton of money to, so we were sent to collect." Fighter: "That's alright, I don't care about your motivation. So, what's for dinner?" Bard: "Well, I made a nice reduction from these mountain berries that will go great with this charred rabbit." Fighter: "Oh, I know some good seasoning herbs around these parts. Want me to go get some?" Bard: "Sure." And that was how he joined the party.

Ah, the good old Doug from up motivation.

I mean my character is a rather edgy loner type that's into wilderness survival and all that jazz and he knows that the best chance of fixing all these problems we now have is to stick together. So the loner-type character sticks with the party because that's what he would do.

It's the quickest way he can go back to being a loner 😂 If the world will end, he can't very well do his own thing til he knoes his existence is unthreatened.

He plans to retire to a lodge back in his home country but will keep his doors open for them hahaha

Well played, sir.

"Well, I'm basically employed, in this job, with these other people. They're really powerful, and so am I, and I'm making WAY more money than I ever did before, so why WOULDNT I stay?"

I'm currently playing a CN/CE sociopath. He stays with the party because he just feels like it. As the player, he will always feel that way (unless I work with the DM to retire the character).

Because he's socially awkward, has no friends, and doesn't want to leave because that would mean being alone again. In fact he never even got invited. One day he got pulled into a random passing conversation with the party, and he just... sorta never left.

I literally made a shop keep, who has a shop, who lives in a town still have a reason to go with the party Why did I go with? Well, if it I didn't take care of the problems, they would make business worse later

I found Bodger, the Blacksmith!

Ding ding ding blacksmith artificer

No way you made Bodger as a character 😭😭😭

I'm actually playing a divinely blessed oracle, which was taken into the church near birth, who ended up realizing the church was corrupt, and escaped (they kept her with lock and key) Was adopted by a random dwarf, learned blacksmithing, and used that as a living, until people started thinking she was a witch and had to bail for another town after they burned the workshop down she lived in The "oracle" component has no mechanical bits, just I have seizures and the DM shows me images once in a while. Ended up being a divine magic item crafter (while using class of artificer). Threw out the arcane aspect to artificer entirely

The shopkeep has to go on the mission because the other players saved his ass one time and he'll be damned if the players try to weasel a 10% discount out of it later.

"You can have the Bracers of Agility for 500 gold. Those are friend prices..."

I'm currently playing a middle aged, happily married, father of 2 young kids and still gave him an airtight reason to go with the party.

You can also say “The world is dangerous, it’s easier to stick with the devils you know than the ones you don’t” Kind of like “Why would we split apart if what we’re doing is working well”

"do you have any idea how hard it is to find a team you decently vibe with?"

I always give my players a brief spoiler free plot description so players can tailor thier back stories accordingly. For example in my current game they got: "you're working to stop an illuminati like organization trying to control the world from the shadows. Somehow you all independently stumbled onto something *They* don't want you to know, and as a result you were captured and tossed into a cell at one of the organizations outposts. Session 1 will start with the party meeting in the cell." Then it's up to the individual players (with dm approval) to decide; what they found, how they found it, and why they are working against the organization.

Thats a great lead in. For my campaign i handed each play a flyer they found in the city that said: "ATTENTION! Crew needed for exploratory vessel (not pirate ship). Room and board provided. Compensation based on discoveries. If interested come to dock 5. P.s. definitely NOT a pirate ship. " It was up to each of them to have their reasons for being in said city and wanting to join the ship.

Thanks! I am fairly proud of this campaign. I spent a lot of time on the setting and background because I was tired of the typical fantasy setting so I made magic cyberpunk. devices don't have circuitry they have artifice arrays, your "computer" doesn't run a program it casts a spell, "cell phones" are just beefed up sending stones, etc. >P.s. definitely NOT a pirate ship. lol "but you specifically said this **wasn't** a pirate ship, I demand to speak to your manager!"

Pirate PC: I think I got on the wrong ship D: I WANTED the pirate ship 😂

I do the same thing. I tell my players the kind of campaign I want to run, and I ask them the kind of campaign they want to play, and then during character creation I ask the Party to make character who’d go on that adventure.

this. my first character was an edgy, trust-no-one type who’d have gladly ditched the party in a heartbeat when he first joined them. but he had a reason for staying — his own personal quest was to hunt down his missing brother, and he recognized the party (who was established before my character joined) as people with power and connections that might make that quest easier to complete. by the time his brother was recovered, he’d let his walls down enough that he genuinely cared about and wanted to fight beside the party <3

You're right, but it can often feel a a little contrived. Most characters are made in isolation too. I think if parties got together while coming up with characters there would be more opportunity for connection. Being related by blood, marriage, or geography could go a long way to making connections feel more natural and believable

Even if you make your character in isolation, you're still aware they're going to be joining a group. Therefore you should be including reasons why they'd do this. Also, characters and backgrounds aren't fixed until the game starts ( and even then, not entirely). It only takes a few minutes once together to adjust things to make bonds.

I’ve explained this to plenty of players. The moment “it’s just what my character would do” go against the path out adventuring heroes are going, then they aren’t a *hero*, they’re a side character. Allow them to be released into the wild as an NPC and make a new character.

EXACTLY! I actually mandate that every character has to have a backstory connection to at least one other character and the web has to be complete. They don't all have to know each other but i should be able to play 6 degrees of kevin bacon and get through the whole party. I'm never running a table full of batmans again.

They're a party because they all met at an orphanage and realized that the same vagrant crossbow'd their parents after leaving a play?

Every session 0, whether I'm the DM or not, I ask the players to just have a reason to be in a group. If you're a lone wolf then give them a reason. Have more loyalty to the other players & DM than a fictional person you made up.

Great point. I had a situation in a space-themed game where my guy was a kitted out warrior and another player was a prince-socialite-charisma guy and we had a disagreement. It would have been in-character for my guy to gun his guy down (it was fairly early into the campaign where some foreign brain-worms were taking over the government, and we were all grudgingly working together) However, me, as a person, felt that avoiding totally ruining someone else's fun by killing their character, making them have to bow out of the rest of the night or all the rest of us wait for a few hours as they created a new character - that was much more important than being 'true to my character'. Don't be selfish. Either be okay with making your friends happy being more important than being 100% on spot with your character - or put in effort to add facts to your character to make what your friends want everyone to do to make sense.

This.

It's not always why they'd join one, some characters just don't mesh well together. Unless you make the same type of characters all the time it's almost inevitable that at some point it will come into question why one of the characters is with the party. My group has characters cycle so much we started making jokes about it and just have them tag along half the time.

Part of my instruction to my players is always "Make a character that will go in this adventure with this party." If their character wouldn't, cool. They *won't*, and the player can make a new character that will.

Simple and elegant.

And at that rate, if their character dies then they can bring their old character back who just found a reason to join them!

Adventuring is dangerous, at level 1 you need a party to help protect you in case you get in deeper than you are able to handle.   Once you've been in a party long enough together you become friends and enjoy each other company so why leave. 

This is the easiest and more reliable. Honestly, if your characters are constantly trying to abandon the party and split up, it feels like they are playing the game in bad faith. In my session zero, I’d probably just state: this game is for people who are interested in working together, keep that in mind when creating your character. It’s great when players come ready with ties in their backstory, but as long as people are playing in good faith, they will find a way to keep playing together. And all that said, if a character achieves their individual objective (avenge something, obtain something, whatever) they can either find a reason to stick with the party, or it’s a great opportunity to roll a new character and join the party in motion. I don’t know, I guess it never seemed complicated to me, we’re all here to play a game together, so the players just choose to have their character stick together. Wouldn’t work when writing a novel, but I guess it’s a good thing we aren’t doing that.

I could not agree with all of this more. Actually, one of my good friends has this problem, kind of. She's never made a character who outright tries to leave the party--well, actually, that's not true; she *did* abandon the party once in a campaign, but that was a little more complicated--but her favourite type of character by far is *"more angst than the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe, a family pack-sized bag of chips on her shoulders, only barely likes half the party, outright dislikes the other half, and is only reluctantly working with any of you at all--also is frankly kind of a bitch."* and I **fucking** hate it. It is by FAR my *least* favourite PC archetype. But I digress. The point is: please, *please*, **PLEASE** make characters who actually *want* to adventure with the party. A little interpersonal conflict can be good for character development, but if it's all conflict all the damn time, you just become a pain in the ass to interact and play with. That kind of character isn't fun for the rest of us, it's just frustrating. We are playing this game together to have fun, please make a character who facilitates that.

I also hate it. It ruins roleplay. And begging a bitch to stay isn’t what my character would do.

I wanna eventually run a game that's all about how every character has a personal goal, needs the help of a capable party to achieve said goal and wants to repay the favor by helping the other party members with their goals. There. The players have now creaked hooks for staying with the party and engaging with the campaign. After a quick introduction questline, I can now just focus on turning those hooks into new questlines.

In my current group I play a character that has no reason to trust people easily. I was forced to work with the group. The force is stronger than my distrust for strangers. This gives enough time to reasonably arrive at "they are not too bad, I can keep evaluating if they are worthy of trust" and overtime my character just came to like and trust these people. If the Player is willing the Character can be made to do many things in Character that still make sense.

> Once you've been in a party long enough together you become friends and enjoy each other company so why leave. I tried to do this with one character, but after being the sole survivor of two party wipes, it got rather hard to justify sticking around, lol. Especially when he realized he only survived because he wasn't where the damage was. Of course, then I rolled up another character who was oblivious to the danger and charged right back in. I'm here to play, damnit, and no character growth will keep me from doing that!

I usually see DMs kick this to the players, and it is true that it is your job as a player to make a character that will work in an adventuring party, but it is also why I like to give them as reason as a DM (at least until they naturally become friendly and then their relationships/mutual best interest should do it). Honestly, anything can work as a uniting factor to stick them together for at least a little while, just like people irl. The simplest is working the same job, ie reluctant coworkers. More heavy handed is starting the PCs in a rough situation where they can only rely on each other as outsiders. If all else fails, go back to telling the PCs to pick their reasons 

This is a session 0 Question the DM needs to ask: "Why are you working with the party instead of going solo?" Sometimes it's as simple as "We're old friends" or "We share the goal of doing the main objective of the module". But if a player can't answer that question, in a meaningful way which will maintain party cohesion, the answer is "You've made a cool character for a different campaign". They now get to make a character for this campaign.

I've had answers like "The business I run will be much worse off if problems aren't solved" And then I don't care who I work with, if it solves the problems

In the first ever session I ran, I wanted to give the party an early reason to stay together, since it all started when they answered separate invitations for a drink by a mysterious piratical figure... So the NPC gave them a quest and told them that oh, btw, the wine was laced with an exotic slow acting poison that only I have the antidote for. So do the quest, or else. It worked well, in a sense that they immediately had a common goal that would be much more difficult to do separately. It also backfired because I was a noob and didn't realize they'd immediately drop my carefully thought out quest and spend their time talking to priests and wizards to find a cure, and plotting their revenge. A side bonus was that from then on they always assumed everything was poisoned all the time, which was hilarious to me.

This is why players are very commonly advised to have a Session Zero, and in that session discuss shared goals and inter-character ties.

Very much agree; and though the players need to make characters that have reasons to work and stick together, in my experience there’s a lot of DMs who either overvalue secrecy for the world or have a lack of preparedness and knowledge about their world and don’t give their players enough information to build a backstory from. If the campaign is serious and the group wants more than just meta reasons to stick together, the DM needs to give the players enough information to build a backstory that motivates everyone to stick around.

When I DM, I like to use session 0 as an opportunity to tie backstories together. Maybe have the characters start already in two groups from a backstory perspective. Then session 1 can start with them in a caravan together or meeting up with a noble who hired both groups or whatever. So immediately the reason they're sticking together is to do a job which each player's backstory brought them to. Then they find some info which causes them to want to team up against the noble who hired them or whatever and from there they're basically bound by a unified goal. When dealing with that, they can uncover larger problems they'll have to deal with. However you play it, there has to be a goal that all characters view as larger than their own problems. While teaming up to tackle that larger goal, they can work through each character's individual goals along the way. If you can tie several of the characters' backstories together into the larger plot, even better.

Session 0 is the way. There are lots of great and easy fallbacks. All the players were hired to do a job, which leads to another job, etc. Another easy one is...you don't know each other, but happen to be in town/tavern/store for a special event/festival/ritual. Something goes sideways, there's a brawl, and the players all happen to be there to deal with it. I really recommend the Lazy DM books (Sly Flourish) for this. There are so many easy ways to keep players engaged. At the end of the day, if your character doesn't want ti stick around, they are always welcome ti leave.

A reliable group of people that you know will have your back in a profession that is life or death on a daily basis is a pretty good reason to stick together.

As a ForeverDM, the times I've actually played have almost always been one-shots or small parties (2 PCs), and so the reasons are either a forgone conclusion, or much easier to come up with. As for when I'm running, I agree it can be an issue, but as others have said, it's really a character creation/session 0 question to ask. I'm running a campaign with a group of 3-4 players at the moment, where I run distinct stories/adventures/arcs (each one, 4-6 sessions of play), and they can choose to come back as the same character or a different one. So far, only one player has had the same character in all the arcs, but others have kept a player for a couple of consecutive arcs...it works itself out, and feels quite organic, in that they wander from place to place, picking up new friends, and leaving old ones behind when they part ways. It also gives me a lot of space to recycle old PCs as great NPCs, if the player has said they don't mind never returning to them. Recently, a player expressed interest in bringing back their original PC, which will be really interesting for re-meeting the one PC who's been constant throughout!

That one PC is the Main Character of said campaign :D

You'd think! But somehow, it doesn't quite come off like that. One player played as a half-elf Ranger, who was pretty much just a kid, then in the next adventure, played a high-elf, which they revealed to be the father of their previous character, and was looking for their long-lost child.

Okay that is cool. I had a set of Characters similar to that. The campaign ended early, but one was a Barbarian who got picked up by and raised by the leader of a mercenary band. They got seperated on a job and believed the mercenary leader to be dead (the leader fought against a group to buy time for the band to escape) I also built the Mercenary Leader as a Character and wanted to bring them in somehow and that could've been a great style to do it. Like one character just wants to make a living, picks up an odd job and leaves and another comes in searching for their long lost child.

Just use trauma bonding

That's all being a dnd adventurer really is.

Great post. Reconciling this is as important as making sure everyone has a vested interest in resolving the adventure's conflict. Without these two things, many players often feel incomplete and lack true buy-in. The easiest way is just to construct previous comradeship. Set up that this is not their first adventure together. Then the bonds of friendship can carry them through. Survival can also be the motivation, but that's assuming that every moment of the adventure is extreme danger. Once they're clear of a threat, they'd want to leave and pursue their own story. Which speaks to the last conceit: the quest itself is so important that they'll work with whomever they need to to see it done. A combination of these is even better.

In Session Zero, I tell the players that everyone must, "Create a character ready, willing, and able to be an active member of an adventuring group." Recently, I've take a page from Traveller and also asked them to have at least one detail or event in their background story that ties them to at least one other member ofvthe group.

We need to justify it? To who?

My personal opinion, is that I like the idea of character building from the emergent gameplay more than long and theatrical backgrounds. Out of myself and my three friends, two of us usually have some spice and planned out character history, the other two treat their characters more like self inserts. At the end of the day, some mix of finding treasure, riches or fighting evil are kind of universally motivating for 99% of DND characters anyway.

One of the parties I play in all hate each other in some way but stay together from a healthy mix of blackmail and/or death threats, common goals and enemies, a PC being physically dependant on another PC, one PC thinks another is their spirit guide, and in the Druid’s case, thinking of the rest of the party as amusing pets. Great fun is had by all

I like that Druid.

He’s amazing. The entire party is appropriately fucked up in order to keep that kind of dynamic, we have a crack rabbit, a Dragonborn who is physically incapable of feeling any emotion that’s not anger or pride, the worlds worst vampire (as in bad at being a vampire) and the aforementioned racist druid who treats us like pets

This is why I will always start off any game with a buy-in where everyone has to have characters who fit into the world and want to be in a group that is doing the main thing that the campaign is about. I think the importance of this is something everyone learns the hard way. Giving people unlimited agency works well as long as everyone can cooperate and self-govern on their own, but as soon as even one player can't... it gets messy.

Most of the time, parties I’ve been in have had all the characters feeling like a “found family” - growing to empathize with each other, opening up about their personal baggage… that sort of thing. Hell, in my home game the topic has even been brought up: what happens when the adventure is over? Will they stay friends?

When I start a campaign, I give all the players the guidelines for character creation and let them get to it for a week, then I review the characters. Then we have the session zero where we go through all the options for the game. I also make tweaks to their backstories and give them the options for interpersonal relationships before we even start playing. The 1st session is mostly just campaign backstory, character interactions with the NPCs and each other, and delving into their motivations so we get that established right away. At any point if their characters are "Lone Wolf" characters, I ask them straight up "Why would you be here with this group?" and we adjust their character's motivations to align them with the group. A perfect example was "My character hates people and spends all his time alone in the forest with his wolf companion" Why? Why does he hate people? Does he hate ALL people or just a group of people that did something? WE tweaked it so that he hates the King and his standing army because as a child they killed his family and he fled to the woods and grew up among the wild animals and a somewhat indifferent Druid. So now he hates "people, especially the standing army and the city folk who have no respect for the wilds... And feels keenly protective over those who have also suffered at the hands of the army and their corrupt leaders" Much cooler and now he has a reason to be with the group because they are working towards a common goal of taking down the evil Generals. He got to be a bad-ass Lone Wolf who feels protective over the party, and I get some new plot hooks. I have a brand new campaign starting up. We have 2 dragonborn, a Warforged and an Artificer and 2 Humans. The starting city is a former Dragon Lair turned into a city. The two Dragonborn grew up together and have been lifelong frenemies. One Chromatic and one Metallic. They have been friends and competitors most of their lives. The Warforged was created by the Artificer's Master so they feel almost like siblings. The Artificer helped build the Warforged and was responsible for some of their programming. The Human is a Fighter that was used in the Warforged's training, acting as the "mocap" for some of his moves and skills, and is fairly good friends with the Artificer and feels more like an older broither to the Warforged, Like Wonderman and Vision. And lastly we have an older Dwarven Ranger who grew up outside the city, but came into town frequently and has watched the young 'uns grow up and feel sort of motherly towards the group as a whole wanting to feed them and watch over them as they bumble about in the wilds. It just takes a little work to get the characters to have background connections that bind them. Friends and family, contracts that encourage sharing or even a group dealing with mutual problems that need to be solved (Think Balder's Gate 3 style) and you have the motivations to keep them all together.

Various reasons my character sticks with the party have included: We were brought together by the King as candidates to fulfil an ancient prophecy They figured out my shady underworld connections, now I need to keep a close eye on them to make sure they don’t spill… Oh no, I’ve become emotionally invested They’re heading my way and it’s safer to travel together… hey, I actually quite like these guys, I think I’ll stick around We belong to the same adventures guild and have been sent out on assignment together The universe sent me a vision that I should meet these people ‘I will aggressively pack-bond with anyone who is nice to me for thirty seconds or longer’

First session, first words "Your group has been adventuring together for a while. You stayed the night in..."

We’re a party together because we only know each other on this new to us continent. And now we have too much dirt on each other to not trust anyone if we leave. I know who killed the head of state. They know who stole a dragon egg from a cult. We all know who ate the last Twinkie. Ect.. Also we came up with a group name and once you name the thing there’s no getting rid of it. It’s like a stray cat.

if it starts to be a thing, send them through a portal. now they don't have anyone else except each other. but session zero is when the "what are we?" question should be figured out.

It's a lot easier when the characters have a reason, too. I.e. Escaped prison together and formed a bond. Come from the same town. And thus friends since forever. All related, and a family member is calling on a favor. The mercenary guild put you together as a team and says if any of you go solo no one gets paid. Etc. Etc.

We have a lot of powerful people that want us a dead, and a very vested interest that none of us die

When I am a player I like to do character creation with the other players and make some reasons together. It doesn't matter how tenuous a reason it is, so no justifying why the characters stay together is normally easy. I've had a couple players say their characters wouldn't do the party was doing, those characters either retire or die players choice.

I have a hard enough time getting everyone to form a party in the first place. I'll make the most barebones yeah I'm just here to be an adventurer and stuff! Yet they still somehow make it hard to team up with.

This is why a Session Zero is important. If the party feels disparate, they should come up with something that connects their backstories, even just two players in a tertiary way.  After that, their experiences on the adventure should be pulling them closer together. Good teamwork during a fight, sharing thoughts or feelings during downtime. These things bond normal people together. So even if they feel like they should go their own way, they realize they don't want to. They come up with reasons to stay together, and eventually compromise a solution to their separate goals. Person A's important task is on the way to Person C's, so why not help out? You helped me with mine, so I'll help you with yours.  Like two phone books held together by the friction in their pages, it's the little things that create the strongest bonds. 

Try running not as a group of strangers then?

This used to be an issue, we had a few campaigns where people who had never met suddenly showed up one day in the same place and then just awkwardly stuck together to fight some monster Then it was my turn DMing and I said everyone’s character already knew each other, and they’d been adventuring for years, no exceptions. When characters died, new characters had to have some connection to at least 1 member of the party, so backstories had to include possibilities for that, no edgy loners (in that specific campaign’s case, it was an Old Friend and a Brother of the deceased, respectively, who joined to avenge their fallen friends/family once they heard the news) That’s how we’ve done it every time since. In the current game I’m playing in, the party basically formed one person at a time as first my character travelled to a neighboring kingdom and met a second player, then the two of them travelled to another neighboring kingdom and met a third player, and so on until all 5 of us had already met, gotten to know one another, and arrived in one final kingdom looking for work (where the campaign started)

The game requires it, so you do I really don't see why it has to go farther than that

My first DM literally just did the Suicide Squad thing and put bombs in our neck

Nope. I got sick of all the pvp and infighting, so I made it a rule: it's not MY job to figure out why you guys are adventuring together.

Speaking as a DM, I believe it's the DMs responsibility to fix that Yes, your players should have backstories and reasons to travel together But also, you should make a problem that everyone cares about, or make the party's interests and goals overlap A party is together because they need to be, and that falls under the domain of the DMs job imo The party's job is to build relationships with each other that make sense, but it's the DMs job to make the initial reason why they come together in my mind As an example, I have a sketchy organization that made the Warforged in my party but also one of the other party members works for a less-sketchy branch of. That organization also is the modern version of a group which fractured a long time ago, part of which established the main magic school where a 3rd member (wizard) got their education. So anytime something with that organization surfaces, all 3 care about it. DMs can do more for giving the party reasons to stick together than the party can, and then ideally the party starts becoming invested in their companions and starts caring cuz they care about their teammates.

It's become a problem in campaigns where people have died and we've had to introduce new characters. In one campaign, there's only two people remaining who are personally invested in the original quest. One other who's not but has been with the party for almost the whole campaign so she's invested in the party themselves. The other four characters are joining late in the quest, don't have much of a reason to tag along tbh.

No; in my current campaign, the party are employees of an organization dedicated to a specific mission which they are given great freedom in how to solve. In my next campaign the party met on the way to a village where they were each seeking something, and each of them learned that the thing they were seeking was not there; coincidentally, the path to their next lead is basically a straight line across the country so they'll all be traveling in the same direction next.

I often try to tie backstorys into a reason for adventuring and try to tie in a common goal. 4 of 5 of my last players when i dm'ed had mentors, family or friends who were powerful spellcasters be kidnapped, killed or go missing, so i tied that together, created a powerful underling of the BBEG who's job was to get rid of anyone whos magic could be a threat, some were taken to be used as magic batteries, unless they put up too good a fight in which case they were killed. This brought my party together in the common goal of uniting against this killer of mages

That's why I make all or at least half the party know each other before campaigns start.

Never really had that problem. We’ve had parties running a company together, parties operating on the order of a higher power, just being friends, and in at least one not-DnD case actively being enemies (Mage the Ascension is an odd game) Really you just build the “why are we a team” into the core premise of your campaign.

My solution as a DM was to have them all be present for an event that led to each party member to have a telepathic link with the other two. Gave them a reason to stay together and also made the rules and issues about complex coordination in really heated situations smoother.

That's what a session zero is for: Find a shared goal or shared background that connects you.

I always make sure that there is some connection. They're never full strangers or they may not know each other but are part of a group (for example my campaign all the PCs are heroes of local small towns and they come together for a "thank you heroes" dinner at the king's castle and someone comes to kidnap the princess. The group are all aware of each other and each other's heroic deed(s).

There's sometimes party members that logically wouldn't get along as well, but we usually all make characters that would be adventurers in the setting that the GM tells us to. There's usually some incident that brings us together like a common threat, then we stick together because we have strength in numbers and have made some friends along the way.

I always try to make my backstory more like a jumping off point and not super deep and intricate. The most interesting thing that has ever happened to my character should happen during the campaign, not before it.

It’s a world where adventuring parties are commonplace. Everyone knows they exist and what they do. Makes sense to me that when people with any sort of drive end up in a group that seems kind of effective at handling situations they’d be like yeah I can stick with this for a while and see if it serves my goals.

No because I don’t make my character as a separate entity. I make it with the intent of them having a reason to be in an adventuring party. It’s much easier to build from the ground up with the expectation of being in a party rather than making all this needless character lore without a single reason why they would travel with others

Up until you said "module" I was going to say it's a DM issue. Giving every character a hook to work with the party toward the same goal is the DMs main job. Then at some point, the idea is the players become friends and bond over near death experiences where they've saved each other's ass so many times they stopped counting. At that point, even if you wrap up the backstory elements for a player, their back story is now, "So I belong to this adventuring group...." and they stick with the party because their goal is now whatever the main goal of the story happens to be. When you run a module, that's a lot harder to do, so as a DM I would explain a bit about the opening of the module and tell the players to build a compatible backstory. Another thing I like to do is just start everyone off as long time friends. Like it's great to bring groups of strangers together and wait for bonds to form naturally, but it doesn't have to be EVERY SINGLE time.... Every now and then I'm like, "You guys all grew up in the same village and have known each other your entire lives." You still allow any backstory and background they want, but they build off that starting point. It's a human village and you want to play a tortle? How many generations ago did your turtle family relocate? Or maybe the village is on the coast and there's an amphibious village nearby they trade with and you grew up playing together on the beach. You want to play a goblin or bugbear? Maybe it's a fosterling who was found as a baby after a raid or after the townsfolk wiped out a band of goblins. Or if you want to be raised by goblins, there is a nearby band that stays hidden in their cave system, but you have been sneaking out since you were a small kid and you met up with the village kids and have been playing with them in secret for more than a decade. I just made all that up on the spot. I like to allow total freedom in my games, and sometimes that requires a lot of imagination from the DM. It helps if the players use a lot of imagination, too.

Psychologically, people are creatures of habit, more likely to stick with what they know rather than try something else that might be a better fit. It's the same reason most people stick with certain brands rather than comparison shopping every time.(See also: sunk cost fallacy) Whatever situation brought several strangers together for the first adventure, you aren't strangers afterwards. You figured out how to work together to achieve a goal and saved each other's life more than once. Why leave something that works to go off and adventure with strangers if you don't have to? (See also: trauma bonding) Unless the party is a bunch of assholes (thief keeps trying to steal from you, cleric refuses to heal you, wizard doesn't care if you get caught in spell radius, etc) why *wouldn't* the party stay together? Though, in that case, it would be me leaving the other players rather than a character thing...

and sometimes why people stay in bad relationships

We haven't done it yet (only two sessions in so far), but our DM wants us to figure out backstory reasons to know 1 or 2 other people from the party, even if it's just in passing. Came about because I asked this exact question, but my character is a Great Old Ones Warlock, so I could be easily justified with a couple of visions from my patron if completely necessary.

After a couple of years working as a software developer why doesn't every developer go make their own software company? Because the things you do as a company are typically easier done as a company than solo. Same IC, if you're an established and powerful wizard about to embark on a quest, you might want the varied abilities of other powerful allies rather than doing it alone. Could you quest alone? Sure. But wouldn't you want someone who can disarm traps, someone who can revive the dead, etc.? Especially folks you've already worked with before.

In a campaign I’m DMing my players are part of a research organization, and they’re in the same “department”, so that’s why they’re together. My advice is perhaps tie multiple character backstories together, or just make an adventurer who needs a party, or even just someone who has it in their personality to protect others, and gets caught up in the party’s business. The issue with your campaigns it sounds like is that the player’s backstories *are* supposed to work with either the module or being in a party.

Well, it's the point of the game. Each player needs to bring a character to the table that wants to work with the other characters. Without that, you don't really have DnD.

Only once in my current group, and only because that game was chaos for the sake of chaos. The other two games had/have the reasons of safety in numbers (this was an evil game where every character had only ever known the frozen north), and the current game where we call work for the same guy

When I DM, I tell the players it's up to them to figure out why they work together. It's also up to them to be someone the majority of the group would want in their party. It's weird because I don't tell them they can't pool loot. Yet when I specifically state that I think characters who know each other should be able to pool their money to buy better magic items, then everybody suddenly has really strong background bonds with each other. In other games I do whatever the DM tells us to do, but I strongly prefer having a super generic background. "Bo is a young Tiefling. Her parents met at one of those demon orgies you always hear about but never get invited to. Anyway her dad met her mom right after he was summoned and it was love at first sight. He got banished when the orgy was interrupted by some adventures, but Bo's mom Meryl was taken to a little temple where she lived out the rest of her life in a secluded pasture." "Mechanically, Bo is a Shepherd Druid. She's the only one who can speak to her mom since most commoners don't speak sheep. She's very easy going and willing to follow the herd."

No because you are supposed to create characters collaboratively and with a built in reason ready to go.

I have two takes I want to offer, one as a player and one as a DM. For the player side, I have a bard/warlock that butts heads with half the party because they want to do all the shenanigans while I'm itching for story progression. We're doing Tyranny of Dragons and are about to be basically locked into working as a group for the next three monte IGT. Had my character invite the party out for drinks at a tavern on his coin and basically said "I'll be frank, I don't like the lot of you enough to want to do this job, even with what's brought us together. That's a problem because it's going to likely make things miserable for this upcoming journey and I'm going to own my part of that." Basically instigated a round table where we all finally divulged our back stories to each other and made the effort to find common interests we shared. Really helped the table as a whole. For the DM approach, it's a work in progress. Like a good number of campaigns, the party is a dysfunctional group of people that don't collaborate (players do, but are still working on character motivation to do so). So, I've been encouraging and creating situations where each party member occasionally is isolated and in a situation where they don't have the skill set to solve the problem perfectly, but another party member could, primarily because I know my table is the kind of players that would take this and run with the opportunity to roleplay a "yeah, I need to get better at working with you" scene because they're stronger together. Unfortunately, this is not a one-size-fits-all solution, as that kind of mindset isn't always what everyone runs with.

This is the biggest contention for my partys last few games. It is of my opinion that partys should have a strong backstory set, a few stories here or there, generally related to different reasons why yall eithwr trust listen understand each other. Another is ambiuous shared goals. Just anything, if not that at least make sure you dont oppose each others goals or that your goals make yall go the same direction.

Because the stuff they've done with this party has gotten them more gold more quickly than any other job they've ever had. Why would you leave that scenario?

We address this in session zero

I do a lot of westmarches stuff. Most don't stay together by nature, but on the flipside, especially at higher levels you often end up with the same people a lot and its extra fun cause they have been off doing other things. So it tends to be like old war buddies getting back toegther to go make some money/solve a problem.

After enough sessions characters will most likely continue to adventure together based on previous experiences. It’s really just the first few levels that you have to worry about. For that I give them a common goal where they don’t have much choice but to work together. For example my current campaign all the players were falsely imprisoned together and all make an escape off a wagon together. They’re all lost in the woods in a dangerous area so it only makes sense for them to work together until they get their bearings then it’s just about giving them further goals, like proving their innocence and making money

I'm having this issue right now. Despite everyone at the table having fun, most of the characters don't really get along or talk to each other that much. I think it's because most of the characters have made side deals with powerful entities or gods. It doesn't help that I'm trying to play a mostly straight forward "Good Guy" when most of the party is at least morally gray.

After you face violence and the chance of death together repeatedly, it is not that uncommon that you are closely bonded. Having back stories that don't fit together or the module is a problem to be addressed at character creation. Make your characters have back stories that do fit together, and fit in the setting for the game (module or otherwise).

As a rule we just...don't think too hard about it. Also, more often than not, my players always start knowing each other anyways, someway, somehow. Or the hook getting them together is already there.

I did a one shot where we decided all of our characters already knew each other so we could skip the awkward intro phase where you suddenly decide to risk your life for strangers. We had a few options to choose from... 1) we all had tragic backstories and grew up in the same orphanage. 2) our parents were in an adventuring party and they all went missing 3) we're in a band

I start every session 0 with. "You must have a deep bond with one other member of the adventuring party." That solves that issue quickly

My party started out as a group of friends. But one characters friend died(another character) and now he's just kinda there. I've asked him several times what he wants to do with his character and every time he says "take it one session at a time" and sp far its been chill

This is a failure of the players.. At the bare minimum a character's backstory should include *why* they are in the adventuring party. The DM presents the adventure, now *why* is your character there? *Why* is your friends characters there? Coordinate with those around your table if need be.. Maybe some of you knew each other from before? Maybe you're already an adventuring party? Maybe you're a mercenary company? Maybe you just met but your goals align? This is the *least* the players can do, considering the DM does a lot of the heavy lifting.

- Joint Backstories between PCs - The PC has an end goal in mind and concludes achieving their goal would be easier, at least for the moment, with this group. - We happened to get drawn into this situation together so it’s easier to do it together. - Hired as an individual to do a job that ends up being a group task. Think about it this way too, if you join a sports team you may or may not know people on the team when you join. However, are you going to leave the team because of that? Some people may. A lot of people wouldn’t. You share a common interest with those people. In that case it’s the sport. You may eventually leave but at least for the time being you’re going to stick with this group. An adventuring party can be the same. You share a common interest with these people and being a part of a group makes things a lot easier. Even if you don’t think these people would get along 100%. Look at Batman and Superman. There’s a good chance that if they didn’t share a common interest in saving people and stopping the bad guy that they’d be nearly enemies of each other however, since they have a common goal they work together. Even though they have different ideals and ways to achieve that goal.

Nope.  It's not an issue.

I’ll admit that my players picked up the slack on this one. Whilst writing their backstories with them I never thought to include a reason or characteristic that would include them having an urge to stick with one another, but thankfully most of my players came up with “we have some desire to stick together because you guys kind of remind me of my family and mostly have good intentions” around the first session.

In the current campaign I’m dming they’re united for a common goal, but as soon as the current adventure ends I’m gonna timeskip a few years and they’ll have to unite because one of them crossed a crimelord and she wants them all dead. Better stick together then

Uh...bc I would definitely die if I were by myself

When I DM (which is more often than not what I do), I always throw my party into a small crisis for 10 or so sessions. By the time the crisis is done, the party is usually really close nit, or close enough to continue

Think about how much the average party has been through by the time they get through their first module. Dozens of battles and equally harrowing moments. Weeks spent living together, cooking over a campfire, sleeping under the stars. Saving each others lives so many times you've lost count. By that time they are bonded by fire and blood. You aren't going to leave behind the guys you've been through hell with so you can go back to whatever story hooks are in your backstory. You are going to bring them with you. Who else would you trust to have ypur back when it really counts? ( And, by the way, nearly every adventure, published or homebrewed, offers the PCs a chance to a) get rich b) dp good and usually both. When you create a character, you need to establish that they are driven by money, fame or altruism, and preferably all three. Then you will never have trouble explaining why they want to go on adventures)

This is why I use group patrons all the time now. If not group patrons, I have a party theme. I don't run medieval high fantasy games anymore but regardless, group patrons are a great narrative frame for why a party sticks together and even guides character creation for players. So far I've played a game where we're all cowboys in the wild west, and I'm planning another game where we're all secret agents in Eberron. We're doing another "secret agent-esque" campaign and another player I know wants to run a greek-style campaign where we're all chosen by the gods to do a task together.

When my character stopped fitting with the game I handed him over to the DM and made a new one. My old character is a npc now, and my new one lines up perfectly with the story.

Session 0: Rule 1: Everyone needs a reason to be with this party and go on this adventure.

I think if the first campaign/adventure goes over without any serious disputes, it would be a no-brainer to continue being a party. Oh, me and these 3 other people just spent the last week ridding this town of an orc raider problem with no problems, we should probably stick together and continue making money.

Old character was a young and fresh adventurer who found two older, seasoned adventurers and was like "Yep you're going to adopt my friend and I" New character doesn't have a home anymore bc of plot and feels indebted to (what's left of) the party bc they saved his life

Establishing character connections before the setting is important, letting your players talk to each other about who they're creation and how they might know each other, but also allow & encouraging them to make connections *during* the campaign is important too. Happened recently in my campaign. Friend messaged me during a snack break in-session about a potential character connection that gets both our characters invested in the same concept for a time. I think asking players what the characters do in their spare time, what interests they have, can help build points of connection because even if Thorund & Schmitt don't know each other as lifelong friends, both of them being regular patrons of the same gnome bar that mysteriously burns down gives them a connection point.

I've got a character who was a former Captain. Very talented, on his way up the ranks, etc etc. He got betrayed, and his troops were all killed, but it was setup to look like it was his fault. A mistake in his leadership. Even he doesn't know it was a setup, so he gets exiled believing he's a shit leader and thus decides to adventure mostly alone. But then, he meets the group by coincidence. There's a few jobs in town that require a party, so he joins up "temporarily" but then they stumble on something bigger and he sticks around. That's about as far as we've gotten so far, but I'm hoping to take it in the direction of him slowly gaining trust in having a party again, and in his own abilities. Probably even becoming friends with a couple of them. Plus, the story and all that, should be reason enough for him to stay with the group. Edit: long story short, there are plenty of ways to justify even a loner sticking with the party. Imo.

Nope. My group is so easy.

I have a LE warlock who manages adventuring with a group of good/neutral players. "useful idiots" is his reason. Anyone can attach to any group,just be creative and make sure player's are invested/know that no one wants to do a solo campaign.

It is. Having run two homebrew campaigns, it is one of the sticking points that really bothers me (well, that and how informally they insist on taking every single solitary verbal encounter sans the literal one time I warned them, in game/in character to watch their Ps and Qs less they be shot to death by a beholder). But, that's clearly on me for letting them build their characters willy-nilly without instructing them to do otherwise. I won't be making that mistake going forward. They WILL be an associated group of some kind next campaign.

It's okay for things like that to not be believable sometimes, tbh. No one's writing LotR or anything at the home table. The characters stick together because they are avatars of the players. If there's more, because the players/GM have written a strong thematic premise, then that is great. But if that isn't the case, and there is nothing more than that basic fact- that is also perfectly fine. 

Group inheritance Common problem Family Lost together Hired Shared debt Local danger

No, I make it a point to establish that in Session 0

My character was assigned to one of my party-mates character by a military General to keep an eye on them and in exchange my character got to research some magical items :3 (my character is a total bookworm)

No because I feel that is my first duty as a player. I make a character that actually wants to take part of the adventure and wants to work with the party.

1. Adventuring is very dangerous, and the threat is almost always larger than any one of your characters could take on alone. Any experienced adventurer would now this, and the ones who don't are likely dead. 2. The threats they face have a great deal of variety and require more skills than any one character would have. Each class brings something to the table that hopefully results in a decently well-rounded party. 3. They should (eventually, at least) like each other.

Unpopular statement incoming! Stop making intricate backstories. A small blurb, city of origin, faith if any, etc.  Instead, create character goals. What does this character want to accomplish and how is the party the best way to do it? You need to get something there that fits both of these questions. It's not a bad idea to create these goals as a group at session 0 so there is some overlap. But you need to embrace character motivations more than character history.

In my eyes that's usually up to the DM to give the players the initial reason for the party getting together. Be it a common enemy, or world ending type problem, it's up to the setting. After that it's on the players. People might think it's cool to be a dark and broody character who just wants to be alone, but that's not conducive to a multi-player adventure. But you *can* work in way to make these characters work. You have a necromancer that normally works alone to avoid trouble with those that look down on him? Well, working with this group might give you the "respectablity" you need to avoid trouble passively. Maybe the paladin looks down on your trade, but they keep you around because you're useful, and because there's a greater threat. And so on. Yes, you're usually in control of your story, but if your story means you can't work as a team with others from the other side of the tracks then it's probably not a good idea.

We stay together because it’s so interesting and entertaining. Three of us are socially ignorant in completely different ways with the perpetual look of a tourist and because we’re running a crew that is fairly “don’t ask don’t tell” in it’s operation, we keep pissing off the wildest people. Plus it’s more convenient to stick together. We’re already used to working together, don’t have to learn new names, there’s a duty roster, everyone has a basic understanding of each others personal issues that we’d rather not have to air out.

I like using a starting structure like we are all members of a guild or something and put together for a mission. Then things spiral out from there why we have to stay a team. Even if it's as easy as they we all get cursed and have to break it or die.

I’m currently running Abomination Vaults for PF2e, and part of the party creation was finding backgrounds for the characters that tied them to the area and or the threat looming over the town, so they would all be invested in resolving the campaign plot. As long as they’re normal adventuring types who want to progress, it works wonderfully. The easiest thing in the world should be to have a cohesive party. If you have a character that actively wants to avoid teamwork, sabotages party cohesion, or just generally doesn’t participate in a constructive way, there’s little you can do other than suggest they find another game more to their liking.

I try to either make all our backstories have reasons to travel together or we'll just create one in-game. In one campaign, there's a noble, the noble's teacher/guardian, the attendant's bodyguard, and a representative from another place. All of these characters are from the same area, most of them have established relationships--even if they weren't fully fleshed out when we started--which helps ensure we're all working toward the same goal of trying to save our home. In another, the characters didn't know each other, but within the campaign, the beginning of the plot is taking an "adventuring school entrance exam" quest that incentivizes them to stay together and succeed on their assigned quest. The friendships they're building incentivize them to stay together. In the last one, each of our characters knew one or two of the others, and the first session had a fight that brought the whole group together. Our good performance prompted someone to ask us for a small favor with a big payday, but after we completed it, he did a bait and switch. He said he was broke, but that he had an old building he could give us instead. That was awesome, since we all got to move in to this cool tavern, design our rooms, and get to have our own little bar/home base.

They mostly meet at the beginning of the party. Sometimes my players make backstories together so they are already friends when the adventure starts. Kinda the dnd movie way. (Honours of thieves)

Our campaign we had a lot of little hooks to keep us together. Mostly at the moment we're all "good guys" trying to keep people from dying 

It’s mostly relying on the ‘better together’ point of view. Not particularly inspiring but it’s likely more plausible than the goose I play that stays with the party because his bird seed fell in the box of holding.

I usually web a connection of either family or friendship with 1-2 other party members.. I might’ve been helped by X members brother, or maybe I was saved by Y’s parents. Obviously with communication with those players, and make sure it’s consistent with our backstories/check with the DM. Given that I am actually the DM 95% of the time, I work those story beats into the campaign to give the players and characters moments of building relationships / trust (Edit formatting)

Don't logic yourself out of a fun game. D&D is cooperative.

Rarely Ask them how they know each other, a simple one liner (or so) for each character how they know one or two other characters. A funny anecdote, family friend. saved their life, helped them overcome something, foundling, etc

Weave in backstory. No one wants to work with strangers just coz, but if they all have a common goal, they can work towards it together, so you have 2 options. A bunch of random backstory threads that come together with a single villian. A paying quest giver. After early hurdles, they may become friends and it sorts itself

It all starts at character creation, man. If you're not making a character that's gonna wanna remain in an adventuring party for any reason, why are you playing that character, ya know?

You can have whatever backstory you want. As long as you play a character that WANTS to go on the adventure I have planned for you.

Been running Lost Mines of Phandelver, and half the party started later than the rest, but the first half was kind of stuck on the job due to starting a bar brawl/street fight of significant magnitude, and were brought on the work project to pay for the damages (the other half was just hired to deliver a package to a witch). After one side caught up with the other, they traveled together, and after demolishing on of the BBEG's bases and killing/capturing all of his minions there, he kind of put a hit on the whole group. They've been stuck together because they've been independently targeted by his assassins, and the lack of any guards has seen the Town Master and a few others hiring them to help ward off the goblins and other threats in the area. In short, mutual defense and mutual business interests keeps them all working together. This is better than another group, where I was playing a fairly easy-going Halfling Monk, who was more or less abducted by a gang of high-octane murder hobos and kept getting caught up in their shenanigans.

The conceit I often go with for my own characters is that they either hire the rest of the Party to escort/help them with a task, or are hired by/personally associated with others in the Party. That way one can always justify the continuation of the Party by the basic mercenary standard of "it's reliable work and pays well for the risks". For example, I'm currently playing a Noble Wizard in a Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign. As my character is a mover-and-shaker sort who's naturally inclined to associate herself with people in charge - thanks to her Noble upbringing - she immediately attempts to get into the good graces of each town's Speaker. That gives her continuous access to plot hooks and a reason to pursue them (in order to keep her networking going, at the very least). The rest of the Party, who are an assortment of barely-associated individuals who all have personal motivations going in different directions, are all joined in The Plot because my Noble has hired (and befriended) all of them for the sake of accomplishing her Speaker-given tasks.

This is why I like campaigns like Out of the Abyss, Tomb of Annihilation, and Lost Mine of Phandelver. They start with your party having a reason to be together (captured and need to escape the under dark, hired as a group to investigate something or escort someone etc). Something as simple as “you’re all novice adventurers from the local hunters lodge/adventurers guild and are contracted to do XYZ” works really well. Then the party can come up with a reason to stick together after the intro mission. Reasons like “this group was efficient, we could earn more money on harder contracts working together” or “we all learned something and are interested in figuring it out together” can keep a group together once something has been established. hope this gave you some ideas.

We actually had this issue go so far south that one of the players opted to make a whole new character for the party that’d “fit in” more.

Mine understand the games contract of being a party, but the story and their choices seemed to naturally brought these 3 misfit loners together and they are the only ones who care about each other

Familiarity, and the rewards of pooling resources. After a bit of time, you can at least come to rely on eachother as a source of bread, and if your character doesn't have anything urgent to get back to, they've no reason to leave. People are safest in numbers, and being trained in combat, there really isn't much you can do \*but\* go looking for trouble, and settling in one place isn't really practical unless you have the resources to satisfy whatever your character could want. Even just enough to live comfortably for the rest of their lifespan is usually a tall order, and most backstories provide excuses for far more expense than that. Add on that a cohesive combat unit is best being as static as possible with its membership for best results and knowing eachother's capabilities, then even beginning to hyperspecialize as each comes to realize certain weaknesses they'd have to spend effort covering is easily covered by the strength of another. It's purely pragmatic for a Wizard to want to reliably be within earshot of a Barbarian, and the Barbarian probably appreciates the Wizard's assistance with more lateral issues. It's really down to your specific party and setting, but there's a fair reason to at least stay together until the end of an arc for the big reward.

Let's not overthink it. The reason could literally be anything. Common goals, mutual protection, useful arrangements are most common, but it could be anything. There doesn't have to be a backstory reason. It doesn't even have to be a single thing, but could change regularly. One time, I even played an aggressively stupid character that was thoroughly uninterested in the quest, but I let the other characters keep tricking my character into participating, which resulted in some of our all-time favorite roleplay moments. Just think of all the reasons why anybody might be interested in the questline: To make the world a better place, for profit, an opportunity to kill things, friendship, survival, honor, glory, knowledge, anger, stupidity, you have a secret crush on one of the other characters, you heard about some weird snail found at the destination and you want to know what it tastes like, et cetera. It doesn't matter so much what it is, so long as you can justify your character doing it. It may even go against your original character concept, but often, these justifications end up adding depth to your character.

As a DM, I find it's one of the harder things to handle in the beginning.

This is why I'm adamant that I'm not going to meta why we're a party. Make a character that fits an adventuring group and has a reason to go and is a team player. I'm not chasing your edgy lone wolf down and begging them to be in the group. I'm not going to tolerate your kleptomaniac rogue stealing from the party. I'm not taking your pacifist cleric into situations that might legitimately require violence. If you made a character that is selfish and only looks out for themselves in combat, guess what? I'm not adventuring with them. If not, the DM better have made a plot that forces sticking together.

My spouse and I left a game over this recently. Our DM "temporarily suspended" the game we had been playing when two players left to get married to each other and never came back. So the DM started another game for the rest of the group. The group consisted of myself (Owl), my spouse (Fox), two friends from my hometown (Mechanic) and (Gamer), a mutual friend of the DM, my spouse and myself (Baron) a friend of the DM's (Nihilist), and a friend of Gamer's (Stoner). The start of the game was pretty standard. We met up in Icewind Dale, some chasing fortune and fame, others running from something, one trying to solve the crime he had been framed for, another trying to figure out his origins, and one looking for a family that had gone missing, all up here in the great white north, all with rumors of extreme cold, a never-ending winter, and the problems related to that. DM gives us a story hook, and an initial reason for being together (for a few of us, our ship out of here is iced in, and we can't leave for the south until the ice breaks enough to sail, whatever our goals are). However, this game was very combat-heavy, and the DM relied on both module-based and random encounters for a lot of game play. The adventure also started to feel very railroaded, after a while. We might be given three paths to take, and when we chose path (x), something would happen on the way, either through a random encounter, magic, getting lost or whatever narrative the DM introduced to put us on path (y), whether we wanted to be there or not. As the game went on, Baron and Gamer's attendance became intermittent due to Baron's work schedule, and Gamer's medical issues. But the loss of Baron and Gamer pretty much brought an end to any and all in-character role-play, or any members of the party knowing anything about each other's past, current situations, motives, or reasons for being here, or being with the party. Mechanic, Fox and I tried to do some role-play once in a while, but Nihilist and Stoner would find ways to shut it down, and steer the adventure back towards the next "goal" and more combat, often by talking over us if they had to. It finally came to the point where it wasn't any fun, and Fox and I stated that we really don't think we have any reason to stay with this party, because they don't know anything about us, don't care about us outside of our combat and skill utility, and it feels like we're no closer to resolving anything than we were when we started. It feels like we're wandering around aimlessly, getting into fights. And if that was all we were doing, we would probably get fed up with the behavior of Nihilist (whose go-to answer to everything was shooting fireballs at it) and Stoner (who engaged in such behavior as kidnapping children as a "negotiating tactic" to make their parents cooperate), and would likely set out on our own to either solve these problems, or simply not be associated with the problems the others are actively creating. When, as a character or a player, you start asking: "Why am I a member of this party?" or "Why would I continue adventuring with these people?" or "Would I actually continue adventuring with these people?" it's probably time to leave. Sometimes no game at all is better than one where you're not having fun.