This first, I suspect most common, variety of patron is of the temporary type. This is an individual in need, and to acquire that which the patron desires... a special set of skills is required. To be crass about it, it's the character that delivers a scenario hook, who presents the adventure, or at least an option for adventure. PCs live their lives, going from place to place, and either there is some formal way they can seek a patron (Traveller bulletins in the space port, etc.), or, like "Murder She Wrote" or the "A-Team" (can you tell I'm an '80s kid?) some crazy situation just happens to pop up where they can be useful. Shadowrun and "Mr. Johnson" also come to mind as a default scenario structure, where "Mr. Johnson" acts as a go-between for a patron seeking Shadowrunners to get into some kind of trouble. There is a chance characters deal with this patron once and then never see them again. Of course, they could always be brought more deeply into the campaign as well.
The second kind of patron is more central to the game. This is the patron that has brought the characters together, or the organization the characters all work for. Going back to personal games, I remember in Street Fighter I had a character who was a member of a fight team, sponsored by a company. We had to do little promotions and advertisements on occasion, but mostly were just sponsored and kept on as long as we performed well on the fight circuit. This same character later hooked up with another set of characters who all had, of all things, a Chilean copper magnate as a patron. He was rich, and to an extent we acted as his security apparatus, but for the most part... he just took care of us, his compound served as a home base, we entertained him, and it was a reason to keep the characters together until they built a history and developed reasons of their own to stick together. Other examples are really any PC group centered around an organization that has leaders that the PCs aid. Government agents, agents of an international or interstellar organization, militaries, religions. Also individuals that bring the PCs together, all part of the same family, all have the same sensei and so on. These sorts of patrons are a powerful organizing force for the game.
Not all, but many RPGs run in a way where PCs are a group somehow, not just individuals whose stories overlap. Without communication between players, just showing up to game night and everyone introducing characters they produced independently... it can be rough or a big "suspension of disbelief" leap to imagine these characters are together for any particular reason other than "they are supposed to be for the game." The second kind of patron I describe can be that reason characters are together. Even the first kind of patron can bring the characters together for a single adventure, perhaps time enough for players to sensibly bind their characters into a unit for further adventure. If a patron is not in the cards, or even if they are, I think there is a lot of value in communication about building characters between players and the GM before session one kicks off. It at least opens the possibility of linking characters more intentionally before play begins. If nobody wants to go to all of that trouble though, a central patron can do some good work and players can improvise the rest all in play.
Now, the presentation of missions or jobs for characters to engage in, by a patron, also gets into sandbox vs. "mission of the week" questions. Maybe I'll find a prompt down the line that will get me into that. In the meantime, I hope you're finding some entertainment somewhere out there in the #RPGaDay2021 jamboree.
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