How do your Rifts PC's normally meet?

[Shorty Lickens]

Hotel?
Bar?
Club?
Restaurant?
Job fair?
Mutual friends?
Employer?
Secret mercenary message boards?
Slave auction?
Gladiator ring?
Middle of combat?
Middle of a natural disaster?
Chosen by the gods?
Chosen by alien intelligence?
Chosen by military dictator?
Childhood friends?
Family?
They always knew each other with no detailed explanation?
They came off the same assembly line?
They came out of the same test tube?


In my groups the most common beginning is usually similarly ranked mercenaries in a small army who get assigned to a big mission together. Most Common as in we've done that more than once.
I think we may also have done the slave/gladiator thing two times.

[Warshield73]

When I started GMing in high school I always did the employers thing. It was easiest, gave them a starting set of missions and a reason to be together. After a while you kill off the employers and the group is together to fight off mutual enemies and then habit.

But the groups I created recently I have had the players create there reasons why. They are responsible for creating a group back story and there purpose for adventuring is something we discuss.

No matter what I do I just try to avoid the group meeting in a bar.

[eliakon]

I have done it a few ways.
The current game I am in is a mercenary game. We all started out as being hired to do the job. As the game as progressed new characters are simply 'picked up' along the way and hired on as specialists, or local guides, or what have you. Thus the group has an organic feel to it that makes it actually feel like a mercenary force instead of "a Mage, a Cleric, a Thief, two Fighters and a Ranger/Bard/Druid". Other times I have been in, or use, the trope of having everyone in the vicinity when Plot Happens <tm>. Thus the group might be a mixed batch of people who are all in the town of Two Springs in the New West for different reasons: The Gunslinger is there chasing this other gunslinger to have a duel, the bounty hunter has heard that Blue Lou is in the area, the Barmaid works at the tavern, the saddletramp is just passing through, the mage is spending the night because the stage coach stopped here, and the mining borg is in to have his ore assayed. When suddenly the marshal runs in and yells "By the power invested in me by this township I herby deputize anyone in this building as can shoot!". Presto, something big is happening and they all grab their gear and go off to aid the Marshal as his posse for whatever it is that needs doing. In the process they can decide if they want to work together or not...

[Curbludgeon]

If the group doesn't want to come up with an idea on their own I in media res the sucka.

[wyrmraker]

These days, I am usually playing the character with travelling facilities, like large trucks and such. Generally, my characters end up picking up hitchhikers.

[Blue_Lion]

It is not something I worry to much about, if they players want to worry about it they can put it in the backstory. Typically when the games starts the players are already together. How the met is not part of my GM narrative going forward but mater for the players if they care to decide.(RPing first meets of random PCs has a high chance of the group not fully forming some one will do something that some one elses charter disagrees with resulting in one or more PCs if role played right not joining up.) The only time it becomes a issue is when some one joins midgame. Then I need to provide the in game back drop to support it based on the players input. Unlike the gamers where the PC just automatically is accepted into a group.

[Tiree]

My favorite thing to do is: Put them in the middle of combat/mission... It gets them to start acting like a group, and an immediate pay day at the end.

Otherwise I use the tried and true version of an Employer that hires them all and sticks them in a room ala the movie Ronin.

[Warshield73]

My favorite thing to do is: Put them in the middle of combat/mission... It gets them to start acting like a group, and an immediate pay day at the end.

I did this a few times except I made it more of a crisis then combat. In Phase World I had a group start out on a space craft, a mid sized cargo ship, where some are crew and others are passengers then the ship is attacked and crippled. They have to fight off the the attackers, some of whom are boarding the ship, and repair enough of the ship to survive. Then there is a series of adventures getting back to some "civilized" area.

Having them kidnapped by Gene-Splicers is great for this too as it works in Phase World or Rifts Earth. On Rifts Earth it works great if players want to play characters from all over the world and then when they escape and kill the GS you crash them anywhere in the world that you want.