Sisko_md: Try good ole 'prisoners' routine. It's not new, but it works every time. Or maybe you can have the entire party captured, the ones who left tortured to death, and the new ones inmates that old chars just met in the prison/dungeon/bugbear caves/whatever. OR they might be fans of older characters who just decided to follow their idols and join them.

Laurence G. Tilley :  If you're not going to start the new characters off as 1st level, the least you can do is start them off as poor and ill-equipped. Yes, a cell full of prisoners in the next dungeon is good, particularly since these prisoners will realistically have been stripped of all they own. This gives you a top class opportunity to thin out the equipment and magic items on your existing characters - they are either going to have to lead round a bunch of prisoners dressed in loin cloths as dead weight, or they're going to have to equip them from their own backpacks. Presumably, you have lost some characters as well then?

Perhaps your reduced party is in town, and is given a quest/adventure with some indication that more hands will be needed. Their first job will be to recruit the newcomers. Enjoy having them as two sub-groups to begin within the employers and the employed, and where alignments allow, encourage them to exploit each other - "Surely these newcomers don't deserve the same share of the treasure as we "founders" of the company?"

Thirdly, you could work a pause into your timeline. Tell the party that 6 months have passed since the last adventure, and what each of them have been doing. Then work in the new characters each with an individual tale - one is romantically entangled with your old characters, one is a new servant employed by your most prosperous or pompous old characters, one is a young cousin, sent by relatives to be "looked after", one is the protagonist of the next adventure, and will stick with the party after it...

Array 50 :
Well, first things first. Figure out how to deal with thouse that have left. There tend to be alot of ways to deal with this problem, esspecially if they arnt comming back. Death is a large, but unpleasint one, a job offer someware (court mage, Becooming the head of the cops, ect) and leaves them open to return as NPC's, famly demands are another (messenger arrives and tells the character that there father, mother, sister, ect, was killed, and they must return as the famly needs them..)

One this is delt with and out of the way (or altelst you have a good idea what you are going to do..) what holes are left by the characters leaving? can they be filled by the new incoming character, Example: the thief gets hired by a local king to become a member o the casle security (who knows better how to protect the famly treasure than they guy wo can git into it in 30 secs?) well, one possablity to replace him is another thief, someone of equal level, but has suddenly become very unpopulare in town (The local thiefs guild is tired of this maveric stealing form them to, so has put a small reward for his or her left hand, not enough to make anyone follow him, but enough to make leaving town more healthy..)

But other possibiltys abound, esspecially in a world of magic, the wizard of the party miscasts a powerful spell, and his personalty is changed (basically an excuse for the new player to lay this characer in there own way..) or the local mage school has an exlose, and the young but powerful student has to leave town for a few years and learn more about the world around him. Get creative, let your wildest ideas flow, and you will find th etools you need.


SCA Bard: Tolkien manadged to work in Eomer, Eowyn, and Faramir partway through his epic adventure. I'm sure it's possible. You could even steal inspirations from there, if you like.

Your new players do know about the epic, right? Make sure they create characters who will fit into this adventure. A mage seeking the Sphere of Ultimate Knowledge as a character goal will have few reasons to stay with the group unless the Sphere is part of the game.

- One of the new PCs might help some of the older ones out of a sticky situation (tailor an encounter where the new PC's abilities will shine). S/he asks to travel with the party 'just a bit down the road' and gets sucked into the quest.

- The old PCs might rescue the new PC from some hazard, preferably one relating to the epic adventure. Maybe the soldiers of the epic's villian are burning a village or somesuch - the PCs are only able to rescue the new PC. S/he wants to seek vengeance and so joins the party.

- The new PC may be impressed with the party and sneak after them. Only when the party is far from any hospitable place will the new PC turn up, so they can't just return him/her home. Works especially well for young characters. By the time a suitable drop-off point is found, hopefully the PC will have proven their ability to handle adventuring life.

- "I had a dream/omen/prophecy that I should seek out a band of travellers like yourselves" is, well, kind of overdone. But it generally works, especially if gods are prone to sending messages in this way in your game.

- Maybe the party was going to pick up a PC like the new one all along and they just didn't know it until now. "After Zarla the Thief ran off, you decided you needed a new lockpicker. Yes, you did. Trust me."

- If the new PC is of the romantic, questing sort, they might join up with the party on a lark. If s/he has a clue or other information/abilities useful to the party, they have a reason to let him/her stay.

Marijan: Party taking prisoners? Who mentioned that?

Madteuton: I even give new players the option of playing certain existing NPCs, if they prefer. One PC was killed during an enormous battle last game, and there's no immediate opportunity to res him. A headhunter even went to so far as to lop off the PC's head and run hooting and whooping into the jungle with it.

The PC was not amused. The other PCs were joking about who got to loot his body and he just sat at the table smoldering. I offered to let him play an NPC (a very good one at that), but he refused, explaining that it wouldn't be *his* PC. I guess I can understand that. But the PCs are in the middle of a remote tropical island chain and there won't be an opportunity for a res for IG months. He doesn't want to be reincarnated ... an option available to him on the islands.

We play this coming Friday. I want him to play, but I don't like having new PCs pop-up in the middle of nowhere, and from out of nowhere unless it makes some modicum of sense. He may be temporarily screwed. Hey, I didn't tell the party to charge into the Erythnul cult's stronghold!

Sean Gernant: Are you kidding? reincarnation would be GREAT! he could even come back as the very headhunter who took his head. maybe they headhunter does a ritual to take the power of his soul, and the players soul is so powerful that it takes over the body. if i were a player i would think that was REALLY COOL. of course, i'm a bit weird. whatever.

Fiona: Well I have a player who made his character have a BIG problem with resurrection and reincarnation and the like. SO that's a no go for him. It isn't like that with your player? I can imagine him wanting to create his own character though. I think I would do that too.

XUSMC: I have two ways of handling this: 1) The "Last Man" from another adventureing party. If you are near a coast, could be a shipwrecked sailor. 2) A local. Head hunters? Maybe one of them was impressed by the fighting and decided to switch sides. Maybe a slave from another tribe thought this was a great time to escape. The party could be told that the tribe would provide a safe haven. hehehe. Then you could either have the tribe all be dead, or want to kill the foreign devils. Or you could just be nice and give them safty. Either one give the new PC a reason to stay with the party AND a reason to leave it. Good luck. I had a NPC ship captain become a PC once. It was interesting.

Astraldrake: Without knowing a lot of the specifics, I would have to say one solution might be to do it as an "in media res" opening. Perhaps the old characters have died, gone off to join a convent, whatever and the continuing (old) characters in their current pursuits just happen to bumble across the new characters, who are perhaps engaged in similar pursuits.

It's a little hackneyed, but it does tend to work. The bad guys could even be holding the new characters prisoner for whatever reason when the old characters come bounding into the room, in pursuit of their old interests. TV shows drop characters in and out all of the time. Sometimes they just appear (like on Star Trek when a new ensign just transfers in.) Basically, just drop the old characters out and the new characters in at the beginning of the season, no questions asked or answered. They just kinda appeared there. There are more hackneyed shennanigans than the one I mentioned.

For example: "I'm uhhh... the long lost brother of 'x' (old character.) He mentioned you guys on the way to join the convent. Can I hook up with you guys?" Or better yet, "I'm YOUR long lost brother. Mom had me during a previous marraige to the villain you're now pursuing. Oh, she forgot to tell you?" You could always have the new guys bail the old guys out of a jam, too. "Well, we were on our way to the capitol when we noticed you'd been ambushed by the half-dragon demon ogres. Of course, we had to wait until they were asleep before we rescued you. Sorry about that. So what were you guys doing before they jumped you? Do you know these guys?" (It's kinda Xena/Hercules, but it does work.) Then there's the classic "You're at the inn/tavern, when suddenly..."

Only use this if you're really desperate, as it will probably get a groan from the players. It never hurts to examine the old ways of doing things, on the off chance we can discover a new way of using them.

More93630: Under the best of circumstances the PCs will always do exactly what you don't want them to when you don't need them to do it...

That being said, if you have any hope of getting a "new" group to take on an adventure at any point you have to get them to buy into it. They have to feel some sense of ownership to really get into the process. If you lead them by the nose too much, they get really bored because they feel as if all of the decisions for them were made in advance and they have no control over their destiny. Personally I just did something like this with my friday night group when we went into 3rd ed. for the first time.

I had a bunch of mid level stuff from an undermountain campaign that I never had a chance to develop. I did not want to just start everyone at 5-6th level, so I started them from scratch with some canned "predone" adventures that I ripped apart and added all kind of goodies into.

The goal was to allow the PCs a chance to bond, and slowly over the course of about 3 mini-modules work them up high enough and give them a reason to go into the big campaign I had set up. I still had to go through and convert everything over to 3rd. ed.... and they are still in the middle of it now about level 10 and loving it. Some of them want to take over the town (Waterdeep - yeah right- actually one of them wants to make a name big enough to be asked to be a lord at some point....) Some of them want to go as deep as the shafts below go and see what is there.... The key is they want to... not me.

They tell me the stuff they want to do in and around the area now and I work up the scenario... just be careful not to have everything spelled out because it takes away the choices from the PCs... oh yeah,.... have some fun...