The Campaign Builder's Guild

One time, I was playing a Rogue in a party heading back from a dungeon. We met a mounted knight coming towards us, and a battle ensued.

At one point in the fight, the knight turned tail and started running away. We got off a few parting crossbow shots, but he was too far and the next round he was but a speck in the distance. We were worried, because now the people he worked for would know we were an enemy, and I wished he would come back so we could kill him.

Luckily, he did come back... charging, with his lance pointed straight at me! He gored me down to -22 hit points.

So far, I've run two campaigns and therefore had two chances to break out of the tavern cliche.

For my first campaign, I talked to all four players (paladin, scout, rogue, and wizard) and worked out that they would all end up in the small backwater village of Virtue. When one of them (the paladin) accepted a mission to retrieve some stolen merchandise, he went around town talking to people in order to get some leads. He met the other players at the various places he stopped, and they all happened to be looking for work.

For my second campaign, all of the players ended up in the same dungeon (an abandoned ruin turned into a bandit base) for their own individual reasons. They all teamed up to conquer the place, which did a good job of attaching them to each other.