We investigate numerically the possibility for surface plasmon polariton (SPP) guiding by chains of strongly interacting nanoparticles located near a metal surface. The model employed is based on the Green's function formalism and the dipole approximation for field scattering by nanoparticles. We demonstrate that the SPP confinement and guiding by chains of nanoparticles is feasible but crucially dependent on the scattering cross-section magnitude of individual particles and inter-particle distances. SPP guiding along bent chains of nanoparticles is also discussed.