I did a similar thing. There was a bard playing a song in the forest and somehow, out of nowhere, a guy falls out of the sky next to the bard, sits down and starts listening to the guy, 3 more guys show up through venturing about the forest following the music, or animals or whatevs. The players could roleplay from the start and we kinda improvised from there what the story would become. The party wiped 3 sessions later cause they were idiots thinking they could jump off a cliff without checking its height because "one of them dropped out of the sky so all of em must be able to". needless to say I'm going to drop people out of the sky more often just to see if they might wonder... was that drop some sort of magical ability? did something cushion his fall without them knowing?
your party is in their hometown, spending their days with their families, their friends. at the end of the day, night falls, and everyone, exhausted goes to sleep. everyone roll perception.
18. 17. 12. 6. okay you three start feeling quite cold as you attempt to fall asleep, and no amount of blankets or firewood in the fireplace seems to be helping. 6, you manage to fall asleep just fine. the air grows chilly, and campfires and fireplaces alike start to die off. embers fainly glinting before being extinguished. in the dark of the night, all is quiet, calm. the only thing out of place is how cold it is.
p1: do i hear or see anything? -rolls 12 perception- you hear a faint rustling that sounds like leaves, and the shadows slip trough the town. you hear footsteps as people stand up and walk outside. everyone looks to be still asleep, as if this was a mass sleepwalking event. your own kin, parents, children, neighbors... all trudging outside. everyone stops and stands still, face turned up to the moon.
spikes begin to grow and protrude from their backs, they all awaken, and shrieks of horror, hysteria, panic erupt in the town. they are frozen in place, the spines converge. a bright flash and a loud crack, like lighting, blinds you all, and the townsfolk are lying on the ground, their bodies seemingly drained to skin and bone.
y not? i'm flattered somebody wants to use this opening. it's best preceded by just a normal "you all wake up in your apartments" "just another day" starter where your party members go out, have some fun, relax, go shopping, have some friendly banter. this one relies on establishing emotional connection between the player characters and the player character's NPC friends and family
Well shit. My characters started out in a tavern, preparing to depart as caravan guards. While roaming around the town, they fight off an invasion of northmen raiders. That's 3 of the 6 right there.
These are not so bad once the campaign is underway. The problem with a lot of the first 5 is that they take away agency. If you are tired of the tavern start you can switch it up. The only two things you need is a gathering with opportunities for light conflict. Like for example you could substitute in a country market, a festival, a tourney, a wedding of a major noble, etc.
The characters are commanded by the king to guard a caravan, which stops at a inn, there is a drunken brawl and as a result of drink and or trauma the party all loses their memory and wind up Shang Haied on a ship which subsequently starts to sink they all swim ashore to a island. Adventure is done, everyone eats pizza, drinks beer and watches GoT.
I like to twist these tropes. For instance, my favorite is when my party was on a prison ship, which crashed off the coast. The twist is I let them experience the ship and build relationships and a plan to escape, before I throw there plan overboard and wreck the ship. Now they have a party going on. Also, I like the trope of them chained together, making them stay in a group for a time.
I started a campaign ina tavern, where a group of gnomes planning to retake the gnomish holy land met. I gave the players a year to plan before the gnomes go across the sea to retake the gnome Homeland. They spent that year buying a ship and recruiting gnomes for their cause. No shipwreck when they set sail though.
Sounds like fun! I don't know if the rest of our group would have the patience for something like that though. They tend to just play simple murder hobos.
My group played as creative murder hobos. They would catch kobolds and enslave and torture them. They would convince a tribe of orcs to kill the humans in a fort, help them with it, then either enslave or kill the orcs, and now they have a fort. When they went on their boat, they found a child who came on the ship. They "hired" him as their "trap finder" until he was taken by a tribal people and sacrificed to their turtle god, who was also the island they lived on, later that same session.
I had my characters drafted into the army, dropped into enemy territory (separately, without ever having met each other so that if one of them is caught, the other won't be compromised), and told that by prompting each other with the phrase, "Do you know Oscar Fox?" and replying with, "Yes, he's dead." they would be able to find each other. And they did. In a tavern.
Huh I guess the GM we had that one time WAS creative. He did the whole tavern spill with a twist. The 7 of us, all total strangers, went to said tavern at different times that very day. problem was said tavern was a front for a group of bandits/slavers who laced the drinks and food with some kind of sedative that knocks us out. So we wake up chained in the SURPRISINGLY large basement under the tavern. THERE we meet a sickly dying royal messenger who gives us the quest to warn the king of an invasion of demons who plan to attack in 3 days, and it’s just so happens we were 3 days away from the capital...great way to start a quest. Also yes I know my spelling and punctuation sucks, thank you very much.
My very first table top game, our characters were gladiators fighting enemies to the death. The GM just had us fight a bunch of battles till we eventually figured out how to escape. In a post game he mentioned, he had like 7 different planed ways for us to escape during the first fight, but none of us bothered probing them. It was fun though, because we met all these cool characters in the food hall between fights, and after escaping we spent the rest of the campaign trying to figure out how to break them out too.
My DM had us roll initiative to see how we entered the story. Our Bounty Hunter (Rouge) rolled first and the story started with him chasing some mage who hit a person next to our Paladin with a firebolt intended for the rouge. The chase and sequential battle hooked everyone in and by using the backstory of all players we had a crazy opening to our campaign.
I just started a pathfinder campaign in a tavern yesterday. All the tavern's bards were bandits in disguise, who the party prevented from robbing the place. Long story short, they located the bandits hideout and our bard ripped off the bandit leader's head.
My own personal cliché is "the town doesn't have enough guards, and the king/stewart/etc. is starting a draft. Go kill some bears/goblins/evil people."
OMG! The best way to start a campaign is to give the whole party an amensia from concussion because they wrecked their ship (which has a tavern) in the king's throne room because the archmage teleported it there! #teleport_went_wrong #taven_on_a_ship!
As helpful as shi *cough* sitting on these ways to start a campaign is, I'd love some suggested alternatives, because that's the main line that separates constructive criticism from pointless whining.
We do have an article on our website about less cliche openings that we will probably make a video for. You can read the article here: mfov.magehandpress.com/2016/03/ditching-tavern.html
Most shipwrecks start AFTER the wreck and the players invariably lose all their stuff. It's a way of cheating the players out of gear when the GM is too weak minded not to be Monty Haul in the first place or is just an asshole.
I played my first D&D game in 1979, maybe 1980. We started in a tavern. I stopped playing altogether over 20 years ago. A couple of weeks ago I saw my first RUclips D&D adventure, and they started in a tavern. I just about died laughing! Some things don't change much. Getting ready to come out of retirement. Thanks for the great videos.
I'm glad I found this channel, it's very informative I'm currently working on a campaign start in a tavern where I plan to provide my players with a few adventure opportunities including a man just staring at the group, and another group loudly discussing a game they're going to go play in. I haven't hammered out any details yet, but I'm pretty excited about it.
Im proud to say my first adventure started out by having my party buy a music box that could open a portal. They banded together to outbid the other people at the auction.
I remember I did for a campaign where I did one shot prologues for all of my Players, to help them establish their character's personality and backstory, then I had them start on a boat not knowing each other, then when they go to sleep they wake up to hear a storm, they get up and slowly rise up from below deck, they see a ghost ship appear in a blink and in another second skeletons appear and they then feel a thump against the back of the head and their vision goes dark, they then wake up in a cove with their stuff and they see around them strange unfamiliar faces (the other players). And that's how we started.
my favourite is: you get summoned by someone (the king, in my last game). That guy sends you to do something and defeat the evil guy. By the end (or before, if you're smart) you discover that the one that summoned you is the actual evil, and the evil guy is the actual hero. A variant for high-level characters could be: you got summoned by someone asking you to deliver a letter to some important guy. You cannot read the letter. The letter actually asks the receiver to kill the bearer of the message.
I did something like a combo of "Caravan Guard" and "City under attack". I told the party, before they even made their characters, that their backstory had to have some reason to volunteer to support the human army during an active war. The rulers were providing gold as compensation to any volunteers and nothing more. The group was put into the same unit with some red-shirt NPCs and had one night around a camp fire in a siege camp prior to assaulting a fortress held by orcs. I also did the "Amnesia" bit where everyone came to in cells under a gladiatorial arena. They kept their backstories but had no recollection of the previous week. In both instances I railroaded the hell out of them until all party members had a somewhat common goal/story hook.
My favorite method is the "throw a festival" beginning to a campaign. It's great for new players and low level characters, because it lets you introduce them to the mechanics with a bunch of mini-games and NPCs, without as great a risk of death or danger, making it a stress-free introduction. It also works well for high level and experienced players, since it allows some fun exploitation of higher level mechanics, and experienced players often appreciate innovative explorations of the mechanics they're used to. My very first DM used it in a Rise of the Runelords campaign, and it's been a staple of my DMing ever since. Just have it ambushed by goblins or plot an assassination to occur, and you can end the festival to get the plot rolling whenever you want. (You can also throw in some useful prizes in the festival games, giving your characters some cool tools to use later. At low levels, 1/day cantrip tokens make for powerful gifts.)
I respectfully question the black-white presentations of "problems" with each opening. I think there's something to be said for "how to run" rather than "what to run". A tavern opening can easily be masking lack of preparation on the GM's part, or be a way slower path to getting players onto a railroad. A caravan opening can easily end up being *heavily* about player choice, as the caravan stops at a city and players consider whether to keep guarding them or not, or as challenges present themselves that have multiple solutions possible - not just "roll initiative". The focus on analyzing "what to run" as the problem seems reductive - helpful to completely new GMs but obfuscating what's important for folks who have run more than even a single session. It would be a longer, more difficult video to talk about how each start can go awry or can go wonderfully in terms of player agency - but I think that would speak to a broader audience and run less risk of getting folks to focus on "bad openings" as if there is an inherently bad quality to any of these. As an example - from a GM perspective, I could focus on the "what" of character creation, and tell all my players "no edgelords period" because that is a cliche with a tendency of making the game unfun. However, since I know most of my players personally, I tend to give them carte blanche on character creation, and talk more about the meta of D&D - that it's more fun with more cooperation, and that character interactions should be fulfilling scenes when possible. I introduce rules of improv. As a result, especially since we trust each other, we can have characters that are more edgy...yet they are still compelling and fun to keep within the party, and they enhance rather than detract from scenes, saying "yes, and" creatively to express their angst rather than shutting everything down. At best focusing on "what to run" creates minor misunderstandings that are almost immediately cleared up once you start running your own game. At worst, it can send new GMs off to find the perfect adventure seed or adventure opening, rather than reflecting on how to run the game in a respectful and agency-granting manner...I say that from personal experience, because that is a mistake I made when I first started off.
During the conception phase of the start for a new campaign I weighed the following options: A) Tavern - nope. Sorry. It has been done too often B) Getting implicated during a public execution. Fun stuff C) Being (possibly falsely) accused of a crime. Being shackled together for a while really makes people grow together. I picked this one in the end, since it allowed for a bit of railroading to get things going, but also enough sandbox elements. D) Modified version of "xyz attacks the town" -> Being on the run. A lot less linear than the town defense scenario, but falls into that category. E) Being nominated as a jury. Did not quite fit in with the rest of the scenario, but still has some potential :P
My party has a manor house we turned into a makeshift headquarters for our adventuring party for hire in Luskan. Most of our adventures start with people bringing us job offers. One time a petitioner was acting particularly shady so we turned him down, had our rogue follow him and found out he was from the local thieves guild sent to spy on us in preparation for their attack because they thought we were a competing guild and decided to muscle us out. It was very fun.
I always liked the cohesive type of opening, one where the DM gives the players a place and maybe a general premise before the session, and has the players decide exactly how they become intertwined with the opening events, then have a few tidbits here and there about how their finding their way into the opening affects them in the campaign, or at least the early stages. For example, before the session, you tell everyone that they're on an island that serves as a hub for nefarious underground activity. A player has their something good character end up there because they were captured by pirates, but managed to escape, but now all throughout the opening act, they have to duck out of the way of their captures, or have the group be dragged into a few extra minor scraps on their behalf. And in case it isn't abundantly clear, I'm of the mindset that player and the DM are more or less co-writing the story of a session, with the DM setting the world, and the players acting within it, so lots of "rule of cool", role play, and maybe even refer to players about story direction between sessions, especially if the DM feels that part of their campaign may be a bit lackluster.
Had a mix of a tavern/attack setup. The party members were given desperate starting points in or around the small border town of Blooming Orchard. Depending on their affiliations and professions, they would be introduced to different NPCs and given overlapping quests/jobs to help them seamlessly form together. The Paladin was called in by the local priestess, who was her childhood friend before the Paladin (Geoffrey) became a mercenary. After being sworn in with a well-known Paladin order, he was reconnected with the priestess (Cecily). The town of Blooming Orchard was facing a number of disappearances, and Cecily called him in to aid with the investigation. The Drunken Master Monk (Maxwell) was a wandering performer who set up in the local tavern with his buddy Garett, the mastermind Rogue. They mostly were there to enjoy the final harvest festival that would take place two days from then. The Druid (Claira) and the ranger (Aust) were an eladrin and wood elf traveling with a small group of scouts and a handful of veterans affiliated with the Emerald Enclave tracking down a large number of hyenas that were hunting and scavenging in the area. They tracked the numerous packs to an abandoned part of the town that had been burned down some years ago. Finally, the Fighter (Pyre), the Wizard (Desmond), and the warlock (Juliana) had started outside the town, looking for a place to stay while on their own little objectives of their own. So far, they haven’t gotten to the night of the festival, but have managed to discover the presence of an underground demonic cannibal cult, the members of which have enlarged muscles, overdeveloped nervous systems, shrunken brains, and sharp carnivorous teeth.
#4 Amnesia! I feel called out, lol. The first campaign I run was an amnesia campaign, in a sci-fi setting. I tried to give my players some agency over their characters though. I made a survey of character archetypes, and basically told them "Check every box you think would be fun to play." At the end of the first story arc, I gave them a way to get their memories back fully, though, and let my players flesh out their backstories around the skeletons I had made.
I started my players off with the classic Elder Scrolls "You are prisoners" opening. They were captured by a band of Orcs for some reason and had to make their escape. They started with no equipment and were locked in a cage with only a skeleton. Getting out of the cage was designed to be a relatively easy puzzle and, once out, had to sneak around until they could gather up some equipment and fight their way out.
I used to RP a Kobold True Nutral Druid. I'd bring her into every game I played because we had a guy in our group who would always, Always, play a Paladin. We kept teasing him that he was Lawful Stupid and after a character of mine died because of him, I creatied Rifftikkii to screw with his understanding of RPing a Paladin. On out first introduction, he attacked my cowering Kobold, the party stopped him, he argued that as a Paladin he must destroy every member of evil races he came across or lose his abilities. When his abilities failed, he thought it was because he failed to kill Rifftikkii but the DM told the rest of us it was because he was RPing his paladin as a hate-driven genocidal murder machine... which was what I was trying to show them.
A DM friend recently started a new campaign with all the PCs having just graduated from a religious school (Chauntea, I believe). Some graduated as a cleric, others as a fighter, etc. It gives them a common bond and good explanation for why they are together. It also has built-in storylines for the future: they encounter graduates from other classes when the standards were much higher (or lower) and so there is resentment, dealing with people who have strayed from the faith, returning to the academy to deal with a corrupt official, etc.
In my first campaign, I opened a campaign before a mission where friends of their characters were kidnapped and they were tasked to save them. It had the players create not just their own characters but another character that they have a relationship with.
I had my players walk off a traveler's boat in a strange new country. The reasoning was that they were an artifact hunter, a mercenary, and a thrill seeker each looking for new pastures for wealth. They got through customs and had to find their way around town. After paying their entry tax, they inquired about where to find a cheap tavern. Told them their options, and they picked a middle quality tavern. They encountered a mapmaker's store along the way, who gave them proper direction, to navigate to all the landmarks they needed, and told them more about the surrounding area's features. And when they arrived at the tavern, I had them run in to a group of teenagers who just earlier that day were out on their first training mission with their father to a tourist dungeon, typically only filled with vermin, that happened to be recently occupied by goblins, the lone father got captured and the kids got away. The party has offered to help save the father. This was my first attempt at DMing, so I hope my start wasn't too bad.
My campaign people usually like is all done on a tropical island, and the entire thing starts with me gathering my notes as I let the players discuss and decide how they met up. Their entire opening is theirs, and when I get the whole note gathering done, they get to enter a raffle for the winner and up to five friends to get a free trip to this island. Of course, they are guaranteed to win it, or if they don't even enter in the first place, they just use my other campaign using the mainland.
To me,the 'stuck on an island with amnesia' cliche can actually be quite interesting. The characters have no memory of who they are,their philosophies,values,morals thrown out the window.That helps as the players can flesh out their character on a more obvious level as they adapt to survive with each other,forging the bonds of friendship in the team as they must trust each other to survive. The other end is that it can become a sort of puzzle story where through their activities like hunting,tracking animals and even setting up camp,the qualities and traits of their character before the event slowly come out,giving the other players little hints of that player's backstory.For example,a ranger will naturally be able to distinguish certain animals tracks,naturally able to tell if it is a good place for camp,use the sun and stars as compasses with ease and using a bow effortlessly.A rogue will be able to sneak and hide in the shadows of trees like he had experience of doing it many times before,make traps out of nearby materials like wood that are very effective like he has known how to craft traps since a young age,or even a paladin that will selflessly defend his fellow team mate with nothing more than a rusty iron sword he had and a large but short oak log as a shield against a group of panthers.Even better if they were from a shipwreck,items can wash up on the shore like armor,one of the sailors,weapons,chests and small artifacts like a scrolled up map in a bottle or the captain's diary.The characters themselves can have things like lockets with a picture of their family,a holy symbol or book detailing about their god and religion,a torn and wet mud green hood and a dagger on their belt.This little hints can be pieces of a large puzzle that the other player's must put together to learn more about their fellow party member.
I'm happy to hear my Star Wars RPG avoided the major tropes. It kicked off with all of the players being in the employ of a crime lord, who paired up a smuggler, assassin droid, and two bounty hunters into a kind of "A-Team" to go retrieve a holocron from a rival.
On of my favorite Dnd starters was that I individually took aside every character and had them roleplay getting knocked out, drugged, and even tricked by a band of respected Kobolds trying to gain 'prisoners' to be the entertainment. The story went like this, using clockwork technology found in an ancient dungeon facility, Goblins on this 'Australia' sized continent took over and enslaved the local Kobold population to do their bidding. Using prisoners to fight in an arena for their entertainment. The campaign officially starting in a jail cell, but because of the nature of goblins, their stuff was never confiscated and they had the choice of battling their way to the top in order to gain their freedom, break out and sneak off quietly, or break out themselves as well as the Kobold prince and princess and team up with the Kobolds against the Goblins in a revolt. The jail cell set up gave the party time to RP and I thought the choices on the story were engaging enough and impactful enough to make the players feel like their choices mattered. The party actually had split up in the beginning, wanting to do different things and I enacted a turn order with more flexible times rather than 6 second rounds. Having things play out like the Vantage point movie where while some were trying to sneak out, the others chose to cause a revolt and those taking the sneaking route had managed to disable hazards set for the revolt route.
My homebrew campaign begins with the players building their characters with an extra step. A group discussion of how they relate to each other. My first attempt to run it saw two players decide they were sort of a private investigations duo done in noir style (in a fantasy setting, the jokers) while two OTHER players were elves, one high elf, one wood elf who could only REALLY relate to each other in a town filled with stinky humans. I had to come up with a hook to tie them together bc they weren't really buying into the game of it and opted for a more boring one (the high elf cleric being a client of the PI duo, which played into the table bc that player tends to take lead anyways) The more amusing thing is that they decided all this without knowing my initial adventure hook. A murder mystery. The long game plan was to have them essentially building up a frontier town, playing politics with foreign powers & dealing with the dangers they inevitably unleash sticking their noses into the wider world. Doubt it would have worked, and no table I've tried it on stayed together despite saying they enjoyed the early sessions, but I STILL only have the vague broad brush strokes of "behind the scenes" (local turf wars between monster factions and friendly NPCs, a Wererat (Skaven) invasion of the major human power, a decadent & remote Elven empire & a few "big bads" that are best left undisturbed. I hate to flesh things out bc I like the process to be a collaboration. One of the tables saw a player wanting to play a winged elf. I'd said "no exotics" but she was so excited with her effort I decided to include it, the Elven Empire became a Republic that USED to be super religious and effectively worship an aristocratic elite of winged elves who have been hunted down to near extinction for fear they'd inspire a "royalist" revolution. I love it when my players force me to build the world this way, having to incorporate things they want in ways they don't expect)
A cliche but nice way to start with a new group of characters is being imprisoned somewhere. It gives players a simple understandable motivation (getting out), a chance to explore the place at their leisure, gives the dm a chance to prepare a lot of detail to the place itself without overwhelming them with details of the setting, helps players work as a team without taking them from their characters and it doesn't need to be that long.
Amnesia might be a really fun way to do a one-shot where the players don't actually know who or what their characters are ahead of time. You sit down to play and hand everyone a blank character sheet, while you have the filled-in versions. As they discover who they are, you tell them the information to fill in. Sounds like silly fun.
I've used a variation on the amnesia one crossed with ship wreck and caravan, sort of. Basically, the players woke up in an inn, in beds that they recalled renting, however the entire town was empty. They found various supplies scattered throughout the town, but no sign of where all the people they remembered meeting had gone. Long story short they eventually discovered that the town was an illusion created to trap them, they escaped and headed toward the first villian. Personally I enjoyed starting this way.
I'm planning on starting a campaign where the king sent out notices around the kingdom to ask for strong people to go to the capital for a matter of great importance, what it actually starts at is when their in the phone room and they are being told by the war advisor about the corrupt kingdom which was taken over by a rogue dungeon, allowing all the dungeons to grow in power, and they get told to defeat it after being shown it on a map
Me and my friends just started playing D&D a few weeks ago and are about half way through our first campaign, taking turns as the DM. We decided to write our own mini stories so we had something to play once we finished that, and I've started mine already. I've set it up so the group is outside a jeweler, about to rob it. They can explore town beforehand if they want, but after they steal the jewel inside they have to take a boat out of the town. This can be done by capturing the boat or hiding/blending in. From there I plan on having multiple branching paths set up. I've only gotten as far as setting up half the plot and detailing the town, but I think it'll be fun.
tbh I started a recent campaign with my brother and his friends, and the introduction from our one on ones actually made us converge into 2 cliched ways, in which there is a disaster, and there is a very big reason why we are supposed to be there. We started the Storm Lord's Thunder, in which I started by ardeep, I got chased by a couple of orcs and met a minotaur, which was friendly, weird. We proceed to get kicked out of the woods non-aggressively after killing the orcs because a warband is coming to ardeep. We make haste to nightstone in which we find it being ransacked. We meet our paladin friend mid fight coming through the front gate to see a halfling standing ontop of a 11 foot minotaur. I say in terms of feeling immersed, not so much, but I actually liked the intro to our party members, and our first quest(besides defend the town) which is go rescue 40 civilians.
i've used several different types, the most common being the Home Guard in my Aramar campaign. Everyone (just about) serves a couple of years with the Guard, they meet and form friendships/rivals/antagonists during that time. i can then throw "you remember this git was with a bunch of the highbred elf-types that looked down on you in the second year" as a relationship the players can readily identify with, etc.
I've got an intro where if any of the party players are a rogue, that the game starts with the individual running from the guards with a stolen item and meeting the other players- the guards usually believing the others to be affiliated with them. From there, diplomacy, frantic escape, or violence will set the players into motion. The object chosen can develop into a motive (cursing the party, bringing a wealthy villainous aristocrat to send people after the party, etc.).
I actually started my current campaign with a shipwreck. The point of the campaign was that the characters were all hired by an exploration team to go to a forgotten continent that people rarely come back from. I'd mentioned while pitching the game that the game would focus on exploration and city building, and if they ever leave the island, the campaign would come to a close. After a session zero of everyone making characters to fit such a campaign, session one started with me narrating a shipwreck due to multiple dragon turtles. After the first game, I asked if anyone really was expecting something other than a shipwreck to occur. From there, the characters were free to do as their wished on the island, but the first several sessions involved them looking for other survivors and having said survivors start working on a settlement as they explored. Maybe the opening was cliche, but given the point of the game was essentially a shipwrecked campaign, I think it works.
I actually had a DM who let us experience the shipwreck. 1 of the players managed to actually make it onto a raft, and then of course he was left without a character connected to the party, but it was still an impressive feat
I try to start my campaigns organically. The game we just starte, I had my players all coming to a city for a big festival separately, each with their own goals and had the weirdness set up to draw them to the plot. The city's residents were having all of their magical energies drained away which resulted in lethargy and general disinterest so that while all the various indicators of a festival were present, stands, decorations ect, but no one was engaged in revelry and the effect began to reach the players. They were finally galvanized into action when people began dying from the effect, simply keeling over mid step with no warning.
for a shipwreck start, do this: start when your ship is attacked by a kraken (or whatever you want) attacks the ship, ending 1: players kill the kraken, the adventure starts where they were heading. Ending 2: Adventurers were knocked out by kraken (everybody else killed), they start on the island Ending 3: you save some people on the ship, ending 2 but you have those people with you
My characters started in the middle of nowhere because they were knocked out by some angry villagers, but they remember they were in a dark aria each somewhere random like a dark off to the side road.
My first ever campaign started with the players meeting as they were travelling along the road at sunset. They turn around the bend and find a tavern. The forest around is scary and the tavern is sturdy, so they go in. The rest of the session was them waking up in the middle of the night and slowly realising that the tavern was a trap run by a green hag, who needed blood for a ritual to create a Gulthias tree. So... yay for fresh twist, I guess?
I started off a campaign where all the characters were in the same city. each come across a small square with four intersections which were slightly scewed so they could not see each other. In the middle of the square was a man who was lying on the ground not obviously alive or dead with gold spilling from his purse onto the ground. When they approached him they fell down a pit into an alchemists secret feeding chamber for an abomination they had constructed from dead bodies, you also find an NPC who is apparently investigating this saying that the square was sealed. They offer the adventures money to aid them in defeating the monster. After it was killed they discover the alchemist was adsorbed by it and you find a ring of mind shielding attached to his former arm which contains his soul. The alchemist sets a quest to leave the ring on the desk of his study and will lead the adventures to his house. The house has evidence of a covered up break in, and various possessions of the owners lying around (most of which were improvised). They find a concealed cellar where the alchemist made notes of his experiments and seemed to of left reports. The characters may find out his family were abducted and he was blackmailed into constructing the monster, there is evidence of his depression all around the cellar. There is a room too the side full of sealed barrels from another city associated with magic, inside are dead bodies of various strange creatures (under dark and fae originally) any corpses removed will resurrect in an hour. The NPC was originally a fae knight tracking down abominations, but I'm reusing it for a separate group and gonna play them as a member of he the blackmailing party. This is the most plotted thing I've ever used...most of the games I run are very loose-think kitchen nightmares/bone sandbox. But it turned out really well and had some hooks lying around, as well as setting up a really paranoid tone were the characters had to discuss with each other what things meant and who they could trust-the party ended up bonding well and I set it up so there were things there that would intrigue their characters. I work to a rough outline where I'll set up maps of all locations (I normally use a combination of dungeon painter and the sims) and I'll place in some dynamics and objects of interest but mostly I just work off whatever they enjoyed in the previous session and work to expand that. I sometimes play with a DM who over prepares and after a game he tends to be a bit sad that we didn't find/read everything since it can be hard to continue with out it.
Yea! Some more DMs who enjoy the cliche of starting in a tavern. Honestly there's a good reason opening in a tavern is so cliched, because it's one of the best ways to open an adventure. As you said, plenty of role playing opportunities and a perfect way to introduce everyone's characters.
I used the caravan guards... as a tutorial time where my players get used to the game, their characters and my GMing style. It also served as the bonding experience between the characters so they would trust each other, because from that moment on, it would be more like a Shadowrun game where the players choose a mission for a session. (at least early on until the plot really gets rolling and the players have grown comfortable enough with the game and the home brew setting to strike out on their own) The core meeting and job-handing-out place is a tavern^^ but they only reach after the caravan quest line (about 8 to 12 hours of gameplay respectively 2 to 3 sessions, which is also the time many people need to figure out whether or not my game/GMing is for them, it is the tutorial for many reasons^^)
One idea I've had for awhile now is that you and your group are all apprenticed to a group of master former adventurers. You've all met at least one other group member and may have gone on one or two missions together previously. You mostly know each other by reputation at least. They were a party themselves at one time and now, with your apprenticeships are pretty much done, they're ready to send you off on your final tests to see what you can learn and they bring you all to the town square to meet up before sending you out.
We played a campaign once that started with the king summoning, except we all met in a tavern, saw we all were working for the king, and were like 'Hey, let's work together!" We all got to introduce ourselves and why were were in service of the king.
I am currently running my first ever D&D Campaign with 4 friends and spent over a year trying to figure out a decent start. Being summoned by the head of the local library was my first idea, but I discarded it quickly for being to clichéd (though I at least never thought of him being the bad guy all along :D) Apart from being cliché, my problem with this beginning was the fact, that, as you said, I would rob all of personal agency from my players. I would force them to work together. Why should they immediately like each other? Why should they care for whatever trouble the archmage or whoever that was had? And why would he summon them anyway? They are 1st-level characters! What makes them soo special? My campaign takes place in my own fictional world, so there is also th eproblem of my players experiencing it for the first time, which is always a weird situation, but even weirder when they are the "chosen ones". I finally did settle on the tavern, BUT, while the location may be clichéd, I am pretty proud of my kick-off: They do not know each other. They just happened to stay at the same shitty little town at the same night. And my capaign started off, with them waking up and realizing, that they are missing something valuable. So naturally each of them went to the owner of the tavern, complaining about thievery, find out, that there are 3 other guys who have the same problem and then I gave them (more or less) free reign. Naturally, they decided to go after this together. I mean, yeah, metagaming asks for this, so of course none of my players would have been like "Nope, I am not walking around with these assholes", so yeah, they HAD TO agree to work together, but it was a good reason. Like, even our dragon born rogue, who is, admittedly, a bit of the standard "loner"-type, agreed to join the other 3 without having to act out-of-character. She could keep her (intentionally) arrogant demeanour, scoffing at the thought of having to work with these fools, but she realized, that she would get there much sooner with them and so relucantly agreed. And now they are going after the bandit and will discover all kinds of shit throughout the story and now, after 2 sessions, I decided to have them find the first of the missing items: The one that belonged to the rogue because now she is, whether she herself might realize it or not, part of this thing and won't leave, as she might have done if they found it right away (again, of course she can't leave the group, because her player wants to keep playing, but I meant, that she now had a reason to keep going without having to compromise her character) As a little extra-bonus to not have it feel like I am railroading them, I decided to let them chose the items they are lost. I mean...THEY created their characters (although with my help), so THEY know better, which items are important to them. It also gave me insight into their characters' psyche and keep that in mind for future personal archs. Yes, I could have chosen the items myself and tried to pull a personal arch for each character out of that...but that would have been MY creation, going of what I THINK the characters are like. This way, they basically told me themselves, unknowlingly, bits about their characters, even when all they said was "My character lost one of her favourite twin daggers" or "The thief stole my scroll of pedigree". The only thing I struggle with, as mentioned above, is the lore and how much the characters know. I mean...they all live in this world, so they can't be completely clueless, but I also don't want to give each of my players a Tolkien-style map, so I can keep up surprises and keep myself the benefit of being able to change stuff. Like, RN I have a desert placed somewhere in my world, but we never mentioned it and they never were there, so if I someday decide, that there should be a forest instead, I can do that and they will not notice. I can't do that if they have a map, no matter how crude I also don't want to decide for them where their characters come from. Yes, it woul dmake it easy for me, because I could tell each one individually some bits of information...but their background should be their design. For now, I chose to have each of them write me some kind of biography (not too vast) and then try to place that into my world, give them some tidbits of informations. Like, I won't give our cleric with proficency in "Religion" a table of every god that is in my world, because I don't know that. BUT I will tell him, that he knows many of the gods, so he knows to ask for a religion check on an occasion and then I will tell him what he knows, if the check succeeds. I have a feeling the last thing is basic stuff, but remember...this is my first campaign ever and we only had two sessions. Save for one, the party is all-new to the game as well, hence the lack of sufficient character-bio's so far. We didn't need them until now, but I have to push them to do that. Sorry for the novel :/
- On a ship, being attacked then wrecked on a beach - Prisoners (slaves) on a caravan ship who turn on their captors then need to find land - Magically summoned by a powerful mage who is looking for some people to help, then realizes you're not what the rumors said you to be - Academy students who just get out, and now find themselves (friends) without a job or future - Sold by slavers to a militia - Recently recruited into a guild, and set forth for their entry trials - Planed execution at the end of the week and need to escape - Might quest announced, and you group up instead of all going at it solo Some of few I have used.
I started my campaign with my characters waking up from a long sleep due to an illness that was effecting the land. They had to find away to get out of the hospital, and they went into town looking for supplies. They stumbled into a tavern and the barkeep had a job for them, which was assassinating an imposter who was posing as some bigwig Duke. They did it fairly easy. but their collective power was noticed by a secret agency and captured, and if they didn't help they died (well, not really. I didn't feel right just killing their characters like that.). One refused and he had to find a way to break out and meet with the party. It ended up being quite an enjoyable campaign.
I have an introduction idea..The Party members go to a General store and are shopping for random gear and a member is looking for a map of tresure or an item of immense value. The people in the room(Party Members) scramble for the map until the shopkeeper suggest.." Why don't ya all just look for this treasure together?" (You all say or do what you want during this first interaction with each other) Then he says "Well I only have one map so either ya get along or nobody gets this map."
The amnesia starter could have interesting plots and questions, not just for RPG's, but for stories as well. If your character has no memories, you can bring up the question maybe mid to late in the game/story, "is your character even the same person anymore?" It could create interesting conflict with someone from their past, and with the person themselves.
I can see all of those except the amnesia and summoned by the king openings being fun to run with the right players and play with the right GM. My favorite to play is actually the caravan opening, while my favorite to run is the shipwreck opening.
Three of six are planned for starting my next D&D campaign, coming this fall for anyone in NYC that's interested ... given a quest by a high ranking member of the adventurer's guild the group are member to, guarding a caravan is a favorite for getting players from point A to B, while giving them something to do along the way ... my next campaign will start off with one of these, except that the road is well-traveled, so the caravan master will mostly know what's coming along the road and will inform the players of what to look out for, though there will be a couple unforeseen "random encounters" on the way ... the players will get full control of how the campaign flows after they arrive at their destination, where they'll have choices of a dozen interlocking side quests and a couple main quests ... the town is under attack is another one that's coming up as one of the two main quests that I was just referring to, with the players having a few options for how to proceed ... tavern quests being a couple of those sides ...
Another good one is the "festival" you can get your do spar ate players in a group setting with games and contests to introduce them with a fight, a townsperson in distress, an attack etc. Etc. Etc. Another great intro is the "tournament", for young people think something like ninja warrior and a light dungeon crawl for some small tresure reward and introducing characters then getting them roped into a quest....
I think he best way to start a campaign is to ask your players what their background is and make a start from there ( adjusting it slightly to better make a start or fit it in with your overall storyline if you have one ). I personally started them off separately with different encounters leading them to get captured and put together as a group where their capturers forced them to find magic items in a underground network of caves that are deemed way too dangerous while competing against other groups to be freed.
I'm a beginner DM using the Mines of Phandelver starter campaign, but not only did I find the caravan start boring, but half of my player listen to The Adventure Zone, so I needed to make changes while still allowing myself the crutch of the beginner's guide. I basically cut the caravan, they start in a cell in the goblin cave as imprisoned travelers/locals, since later the gang in Phandalin is also mentioned to be capturing people to sell as slaves or Wave Echo mining labor, and I felt like being imprisoned together was a good way to connect the characters as a party fighting their way out of this goblin cave
My current campaign started with the party entering a small tavern where they met some NPCs and got some of the ideas for the current city. They got into a bar fight, killing a few people. The guards came. Arrested them. Executed them. AND a wizard rezed them. They now feel indebted, so they are helping him.
I listened to a d&d game where they started out in a dungeon. As in the characters woke up in a cell and were arena slaves. It was a pretty cool start considering they all got their weapons and backstories and had a cool way to bond with eachother through escaping together. After they escape the story began to take more shape. XD plus they tried to escape once and failed so they were even more determined to escape again and it made a few characters bond with eachother better.
I started my party in a Toyal prision (my universe's version of goblins) on an island from which they had to scavenge and muster the resources to build a sufficent boat and get off. As it turns out they were summoned from all corners of the globe by a dragon with a spell it had been charging for years stuck in a dungeon of a mad wizard who died at the hands of some scorpions.
I went with Caravan Guards --> Arrested by Faction A ---> Prisoner escort attacked by faction B --> Choose between A/B or invent option C. This all happened in quick successsion though. And I made the attack quite frantic so that they had to make a choice quickly or get caught in the crossfire.
I just started my first campaign as a DM (no real previous experience) and decided to have them regaining consciousness in front of a plump inn keeper thanking them for accepting the job of clearing some mines
What I did: Since my campaign is full of wacky ideas, what i did was start in a tavern, but shortly after a bit of discussion with some of my party members, their chairs shrink and then they realize the tavern is trying to eat them.
I usually have my characters start at distances and meet up as the story goes, they pretty much write their own story until they do get together, i then make something that inspires them to do whatever the quest is.
1:23 "Cant very well say no" HA THATS WHAT YOU THOUGHT! TRY TELLING THAT TO MY CHAOTIC NEUTRAL BARD WITH A BANJO, LONE HARMONICA AND OBSERDLY OVERSIZED TUBA
My current campaign start is basicaly: "A portal to another world has opened. You have been chosen to investigate." And then proceeding to drop them into some backwards rural region with a plan to help them if they get into deep trouble from the begining. However, I am guilty of sending the regent's guard to pick up the party if it stays long enough in the backwaters town, since that regent also is a mystic and had dreams of the "strangers" coming in the World and is supposed to at the very least give them the first pointers towards what they can do now, plus certain useful items Thus, the type of campaign where you fall in a sandbox, get the "follow us to our leader" railroading and meet the "PC Patron" during the first session.
strangely enough i had a weird reverse amnesia for my campaign. All The PC's Awoke In Cells With No Idea How They Got There But They Do Remember Their Past And What They Were Doing Before The Whole Conundrum
The first time we start, I have them start on the road or give some of them an option to start in a city, tavern, etc. if they don't know the party. I throw people on the road to talk to them but it seems like a pretty easy basic way to get things started.
My very first campaign consisted of my players escaping from a jail, fighting three bandits outside the city, getting a scroll that literally transports you to the Void, and fighting a Shadow demon that can only be hurt if you are in the Void. I didint think it would be that original.
I find that what is underestimated is having a campaign where the party is 'coherent'. I know that nowadays everyone wants to have mysterious back stories, but having the party treated as one 'character' makes the quest and motivations a lot more pwoerful. The best example of this is Node's 'call of the wild's' youtube campaign. All the characters are from the same tribe that is attacked, and so all of them are trying to get their family back, get revenge and find out what is going on. You also need to couple the coherent group with a big 'inciting incident' to motivate them all and bind them together. difficult to do though.
So in other words, the "you all meet at an inn" intro is cliche for good reason - *it makes sense in any universe* and is very conductive of good GMing and roleplay habits, and has been done to death as a result.
Mine started with summoned by the queen, however the queen and the PC were long time friends and he was just being sent on yet another quest as per usual and introduced the other PC to him.
I had a job quest for mine. Me and my party separated on opposite sides of the world finds a posting requesting adventures. We arrive in the town/area, met in front of the meeting place, and that’s how our adventure began. There were 3 groups with 3 paths, I was in group 1 so us and the second group are able to choose where to go as the last group got railroad to the last path. I think I only got railroaded once, mostly because I arrived later and our DM had us join a group out of default.
i started dm'ing a homebrew campaign of mostly brand new players and one veteran that i had played games with and dm'd him before, my approach was a little different since i kinda had to basically run tutorial mode for a few sessions which i wrote into the story but i basically had all of them accept a job and meet at a location designated by the job giver and then rp a bit before the person that had hired them showed up and gave them the final details of the job, after they completed that the priest brought them back and introduced a second two part job for 2 1/2 times payment of the first and gave them the option to decline (contingencies were written had they chosen to do so) in this campaign i created a vestige deity that controlled dreams and could materialize creatures and items from dreams and used that to keep their interest until what i would consider the actual opening of the story which was when they found out they were part of a dream and had never truly lived before I then let decide if they wanted to help restore power to that deity or go on their separate way and decide their own destiny. every one is really on board to help the deity so the story moves on :D
Campaigns have to start someplace. And these are all reasonable ways to get people together that may have diversified skills in one place. The player agency begins after the setup. Do you stay on with the caravan or rob it. Do you work together to get off the ship/island or let the others do it? Using a hook, line and sinker is the only way to get started and all the things you liked about the tavern could be applied to the others as well. It is up to you how this works out.
My DM literally dropped us out of the sky
Players fall rocks die?
Rocs*
I did a similar thing. There was a bard playing a song in the forest and somehow, out of nowhere, a guy falls out of the sky next to the bard, sits down and starts listening to the guy, 3 more guys show up through venturing about the forest following the music, or animals or whatevs.
The players could roleplay from the start and we kinda improvised from there what the story would become.
The party wiped 3 sessions later cause they were idiots thinking they could jump off a cliff without checking its height because "one of them dropped out of the sky so all of em must be able to". needless to say I'm going to drop people out of the sky more often just to see if they might wonder... was that drop some sort of magical ability? did something cushion his fall without them knowing?
RythmicComa280 In the future, this will be an oldie but a goodie.
splat.
your party is in their hometown, spending their days with their families, their friends. at the end of the day, night falls, and everyone, exhausted goes to sleep. everyone roll perception.
18.
17.
12.
6.
okay you three start feeling quite cold as you attempt to fall asleep, and no amount of blankets or firewood in the fireplace seems to be helping. 6, you manage to fall asleep just fine.
the air grows chilly, and campfires and fireplaces alike start to die off. embers fainly glinting before being extinguished. in the dark of the night, all is quiet, calm. the only thing out of place is how cold it is.
p1: do i hear or see anything? -rolls 12 perception-
you hear a faint rustling that sounds like leaves, and the shadows slip trough the town. you hear footsteps as people stand up and walk outside.
everyone looks to be still asleep, as if this was a mass sleepwalking event.
your own kin, parents, children, neighbors... all trudging outside. everyone stops and stands still, face turned up to the moon.
spikes begin to grow and protrude from their backs, they all awaken, and shrieks of horror, hysteria, panic erupt in the town. they are frozen in place, the spines converge. a bright flash and a loud crack, like lighting, blinds you all, and the townsfolk are lying on the ground, their bodies seemingly drained to skin and bone.
can i steal this?
y not?
i'm flattered somebody wants to use this opening.
it's best preceded by just a normal "you all wake up in your apartments" "just another day" starter where your party members go out, have some fun, relax, go shopping, have some friendly banter. this one relies on establishing emotional connection between the player characters and the player character's NPC friends and family
Well shit. My characters started out in a tavern, preparing to depart as caravan guards. While roaming around the town, they fight off an invasion of northmen raiders. That's 3 of the 6 right there.
ARR0WMANC3R mine started Ina. tavern, but they get kicked out and found a guy who would pay them to deliver a kid.
These are not so bad once the campaign is underway. The problem with a lot of the first 5 is that they take away agency.
If you are tired of the tavern start you can switch it up. The only two things you need is a gathering with opportunities for light conflict. Like for example you could substitute in a country market, a festival, a tourney, a wedding of a major noble, etc.
3 out of 6 for me too. Summon by the King, Caravan, and attack.
The characters are commanded by the king to guard a caravan, which stops at a inn, there is a drunken brawl and as a result of drink and or trauma the party all loses their memory and wind up Shang Haied on a ship which subsequently starts to sink they all swim ashore to a island. Adventure is done, everyone eats pizza, drinks beer and watches GoT.
Should have had them get a audience with the king too!
I made my players escape a dungeon and one dude kicked a guard in the nuts and killed him.
Nati 20
The most painful way to kill a man
I'm shocked that the "Elder Scrolls special" of "adventure begins in a locked prison cell" wasn't mentioned.
Walter Lopez that's how I started my first one :P
Let's go one step further: Start in a court room.
@@Thes4LT 😂 one step further start in new york
On step further: You start in you cousin's house and he asks you if you want to go bowling
@@victorwagner2423 no thanks. *I walk out*
I like to twist these tropes. For instance, my favorite is when my party was on a prison ship, which crashed off the coast. The twist is I let them experience the ship and build relationships and a plan to escape, before I throw there plan overboard and wreck the ship. Now they have a party going on. Also, I like the trope of them chained together, making them stay in a group for a time.
You should have made skyrim story
I started a campaign ina tavern, where a group of gnomes planning to retake the gnomish holy land met. I gave the players a year to plan before the gnomes go across the sea to retake the gnome Homeland. They spent that year buying a ship and recruiting gnomes for their cause. No shipwreck when they set sail though.
Sounds like fun! I don't know if the rest of our group would have the patience for something like that though. They tend to just play simple murder hobos.
My group played as creative murder hobos. They would catch kobolds and enslave and torture them. They would convince a tribe of orcs to kill the humans in a fort, help them with it, then either enslave or kill the orcs, and now they have a fort. When they went on their boat, they found a child who came on the ship. They "hired" him as their "trap finder" until he was taken by a tribal people and sacrificed to their turtle god, who was also the island they lived on, later that same session.
Smeetheens
That seems fun
What was the homeland of the gnomes called? The gnomeland?
I had my characters drafted into the army, dropped into enemy territory (separately, without ever having met each other so that if one of them is caught, the other won't be compromised), and told that by prompting each other with the phrase, "Do you know Oscar Fox?" and replying with, "Yes, he's dead." they would be able to find each other. And they did. In a tavern.
omg that is awesome how did you do this online so that you talk to them separately so that they did not know how each other looked and stuff?
Connor Duquette taverns...taverns never change
Huh I guess the GM we had that one time WAS creative. He did the whole tavern spill with a twist. The 7 of us, all total strangers, went to said tavern at different times that very day. problem was said tavern was a front for a group of bandits/slavers who laced the drinks and food with some kind of sedative that knocks us out. So we wake up chained in the SURPRISINGLY large basement under the tavern. THERE we meet a sickly dying royal messenger who gives us the quest to warn the king of an invasion of demons who plan to attack in 3 days, and it’s just so happens we were 3 days away from the capital...great way to start a quest.
Also yes I know my spelling and punctuation sucks, thank you very much.
My very first table top game, our characters were gladiators fighting enemies to the death. The GM just had us fight a bunch of battles till we eventually figured out how to escape. In a post game he mentioned, he had like 7 different planed ways for us to escape during the first fight, but none of us bothered probing them.
It was fun though, because we met all these cool characters in the food hall between fights, and after escaping we spent the rest of the campaign trying to figure out how to break them out too.
My DM had us roll initiative to see how we entered the story. Our Bounty Hunter (Rouge) rolled first and the story started with him chasing some mage who hit a person next to our Paladin with a firebolt intended for the rouge. The chase and sequential battle hooked everyone in and by using the backstory of all players we had a crazy opening to our campaign.
I just started a pathfinder campaign in a tavern yesterday. All the tavern's bards were bandits in disguise, who the party prevented from robbing the place. Long story short, they located the bandits hideout and our bard ripped off the bandit leader's head.
Anime ranger Wow... BA bard
That is metal as FLIP
And that's what you get for being a fake bard when a real bard is present.
My own personal cliché is "the town doesn't have enough guards, and the king/stewart/etc. is starting a draft. Go kill some bears/goblins/evil people."
OMG! The best way to start a campaign is to give the whole party an amensia from concussion because they wrecked their ship (which has a tavern) in the king's throne room because the archmage teleported it there! #teleport_went_wrong #taven_on_a_ship!
As helpful as shi *cough* sitting on these ways to start a campaign is, I'd love some suggested alternatives, because that's the main line that separates constructive criticism from pointless whining.
We do have an article on our website about less cliche openings that we will probably make a video for. You can read the article here: mfov.magehandpress.com/2016/03/ditching-tavern.html
Most shipwrecks start AFTER the wreck and the players invariably lose all their stuff. It's a way of cheating the players out of gear when the GM is too weak minded not to be Monty Haul in the first place or is just an asshole.
I had my players start in a prison gladiator arena, once. Everyone legitimately loved it.
I played my first D&D game in 1979, maybe 1980. We started in a tavern. I stopped playing altogether over 20 years ago. A couple of weeks ago I saw my first RUclips D&D adventure, and they started in a tavern. I just about died laughing! Some things don't change much. Getting ready to come out of retirement. Thanks for the great videos.
I'm glad I found this channel, it's very informative
I'm currently working on a campaign start in a tavern where I plan to provide my players with a few adventure opportunities including a man just staring at the group, and another group loudly discussing a game they're going to go play in. I haven't hammered out any details yet, but I'm pretty excited about it.
Im proud to say my first adventure started out by having my party buy a music box that could open a portal. They banded together to outbid the other people at the auction.
Well then, HOW THE HELL DO WE DO IT?!?!?!
Creatively.
"Put on a costume and show up to a D&D session"
Well, what if it's halloween, or if it's my birthday ?
I remember I did for a campaign where I did one shot prologues for all of my Players, to help them establish their character's personality and backstory, then I had them start on a boat not knowing each other, then when they go to sleep they wake up to hear a storm, they get up and slowly rise up from below deck, they see a ghost ship appear in a blink and in another second skeletons appear and they then feel a thump against the back of the head and their vision goes dark, they then wake up in a cove with their stuff and they see around them strange unfamiliar faces (the other players). And that's how we started.
You start in a Tavern... which gets sucked into a ufo and your entire party gets enslaved.
Space DnD
I'm currently attempting to write a campaign that starts of in a construction zone that takes them to another galaxy.
Starting the RP off with a ship in a storm and having the players try and prevent it from wrecking seems like a really exciting opening!
my favourite is: you get summoned by someone (the king, in my last game). That guy sends you to do something and defeat the evil guy. By the end (or before, if you're smart) you discover that the one that summoned you is the actual evil, and the evil guy is the actual hero.
A variant for high-level characters could be: you got summoned by someone asking you to deliver a letter to some important guy. You cannot read the letter. The letter actually asks the receiver to kill the bearer of the message.
I did something like a combo of "Caravan Guard" and "City under attack". I told the party, before they even made their characters, that their backstory had to have some reason to volunteer to support the human army during an active war. The rulers were providing gold as compensation to any volunteers and nothing more. The group was put into the same unit with some red-shirt NPCs and had one night around a camp fire in a siege camp prior to assaulting a fortress held by orcs.
I also did the "Amnesia" bit where everyone came to in cells under a gladiatorial arena. They kept their backstories but had no recollection of the previous week.
In both instances I railroaded the hell out of them until all party members had a somewhat common goal/story hook.
My favorite method is the "throw a festival" beginning to a campaign. It's great for new players and low level characters, because it lets you introduce them to the mechanics with a bunch of mini-games and NPCs, without as great a risk of death or danger, making it a stress-free introduction. It also works well for high level and experienced players, since it allows some fun exploitation of higher level mechanics, and experienced players often appreciate innovative explorations of the mechanics they're used to.
My very first DM used it in a Rise of the Runelords campaign, and it's been a staple of my DMing ever since. Just have it ambushed by goblins or plot an assassination to occur, and you can end the festival to get the plot rolling whenever you want. (You can also throw in some useful prizes in the festival games, giving your characters some cool tools to use later. At low levels, 1/day cantrip tokens make for powerful gifts.)
Wow more people whose favorite D&D villain is Vecna! You guys earned my subscribe!
My first session one of the girls couldn't make it so our campaign started with them going to find her xD
I respectfully question the black-white presentations of "problems" with each opening.
I think there's something to be said for "how to run" rather than "what to run". A tavern opening can easily be masking lack of preparation on the GM's part, or be a way slower path to getting players onto a railroad. A caravan opening can easily end up being *heavily* about player choice, as the caravan stops at a city and players consider whether to keep guarding them or not, or as challenges present themselves that have multiple solutions possible - not just "roll initiative".
The focus on analyzing "what to run" as the problem seems reductive - helpful to completely new GMs but obfuscating what's important for folks who have run more than even a single session.
It would be a longer, more difficult video to talk about how each start can go awry or can go wonderfully in terms of player agency - but I think that would speak to a broader audience and run less risk of getting folks to focus on "bad openings" as if there is an inherently bad quality to any of these.
As an example - from a GM perspective, I could focus on the "what" of character creation, and tell all my players "no edgelords period" because that is a cliche with a tendency of making the game unfun. However, since I know most of my players personally, I tend to give them carte blanche on character creation, and talk more about the meta of D&D - that it's more fun with more cooperation, and that character interactions should be fulfilling scenes when possible. I introduce rules of improv.
As a result, especially since we trust each other, we can have characters that are more edgy...yet they are still compelling and fun to keep within the party, and they enhance rather than detract from scenes, saying "yes, and" creatively to express their angst rather than shutting everything down.
At best focusing on "what to run" creates minor misunderstandings that are almost immediately cleared up once you start running your own game. At worst, it can send new GMs off to find the perfect adventure seed or adventure opening, rather than reflecting on how to run the game in a respectful and agency-granting manner...I say that from personal experience, because that is a mistake I made when I first started off.
During the conception phase of the start for a new campaign I weighed the following options:
A) Tavern - nope. Sorry. It has been done too often
B) Getting implicated during a public execution. Fun stuff
C) Being (possibly falsely) accused of a crime. Being shackled together for a while really makes people grow together. I picked this one in the end, since it allowed for a bit of railroading to get things going, but also enough sandbox elements.
D) Modified version of "xyz attacks the town" -> Being on the run. A lot less linear than the town defense scenario, but falls into that category.
E) Being nominated as a jury. Did not quite fit in with the rest of the scenario, but still has some potential :P
My party has a manor house we turned into a makeshift headquarters for our adventuring party for hire in Luskan. Most of our adventures start with people bringing us job offers. One time a petitioner was acting particularly shady so we turned him down, had our rogue follow him and found out he was from the local thieves guild sent to spy on us in preparation for their attack because they thought we were a competing guild and decided to muscle us out.
It was very fun.
I always liked the cohesive type of opening, one where the DM gives the players a place and maybe a general premise before the session, and has the players decide exactly how they become intertwined with the opening events, then have a few tidbits here and there about how their finding their way into the opening affects them in the campaign, or at least the early stages. For example, before the session, you tell everyone that they're on an island that serves as a hub for nefarious underground activity. A player has their something good character end up there because they were captured by pirates, but managed to escape, but now all throughout the opening act, they have to duck out of the way of their captures, or have the group be dragged into a few extra minor scraps on their behalf. And in case it isn't abundantly clear, I'm of the mindset that player and the DM are more or less co-writing the story of a session, with the DM setting the world, and the players acting within it, so lots of "rule of cool", role play, and maybe even refer to players about story direction between sessions, especially if the DM feels that part of their campaign may be a bit lackluster.
Had a mix of a tavern/attack setup. The party members were given desperate starting points in or around the small border town of Blooming Orchard. Depending on their affiliations and professions, they would be introduced to different NPCs and given overlapping quests/jobs to help them seamlessly form together. The Paladin was called in by the local priestess, who was her childhood friend before the Paladin (Geoffrey) became a mercenary. After being sworn in with a well-known Paladin order, he was reconnected with the priestess (Cecily). The town of Blooming Orchard was facing a number of disappearances, and Cecily called him in to aid with the investigation.
The Drunken Master Monk (Maxwell) was a wandering performer who set up in the local tavern with his buddy Garett, the mastermind Rogue. They mostly were there to enjoy the final harvest festival that would take place two days from then.
The Druid (Claira) and the ranger (Aust) were an eladrin and wood elf traveling with a small group of scouts and a handful of veterans affiliated with the Emerald Enclave tracking down a large number of hyenas that were hunting and scavenging in the area. They tracked the numerous packs to an abandoned part of the town that had been burned down some years ago.
Finally, the Fighter (Pyre), the Wizard (Desmond), and the warlock (Juliana) had started outside the town, looking for a place to stay while on their own little objectives of their own.
So far, they haven’t gotten to the night of the festival, but have managed to discover the presence of an underground demonic cannibal cult, the members of which have enlarged muscles, overdeveloped nervous systems, shrunken brains, and sharp carnivorous teeth.
#4 Amnesia!
I feel called out, lol. The first campaign I run was an amnesia campaign, in a sci-fi setting. I tried to give my players some agency over their characters though. I made a survey of character archetypes, and basically told them "Check every box you think would be fun to play."
At the end of the first story arc, I gave them a way to get their memories back fully, though, and let my players flesh out their backstories around the skeletons I had made.
I started my players off with the classic Elder Scrolls "You are prisoners" opening. They were captured by a band of Orcs for some reason and had to make their escape.
They started with no equipment and were locked in a cage with only a skeleton. Getting out of the cage was designed to be a relatively easy puzzle and, once out, had to sneak around until they could gather up some equipment and fight their way out.
My next campaign is going to start with a flying squid stealing books from a library... Then the fun begins
I used to RP a Kobold True Nutral Druid. I'd bring her into every game I played because we had a guy in our group who would always, Always, play a Paladin. We kept teasing him that he was Lawful Stupid and after a character of mine died because of him, I creatied Rifftikkii to screw with his understanding of RPing a Paladin. On out first introduction, he attacked my cowering Kobold, the party stopped him, he argued that as a Paladin he must destroy every member of evil races he came across or lose his abilities. When his abilities failed, he thought it was because he failed to kill Rifftikkii but the DM told the rest of us it was because he was RPing his paladin as a hate-driven genocidal murder machine... which was what I was trying to show them.
A DM friend recently started a new campaign with all the PCs having just graduated from a religious school (Chauntea, I believe). Some graduated as a cleric, others as a fighter, etc. It gives them a common bond and good explanation for why they are together. It also has built-in storylines for the future: they encounter graduates from other classes when the standards were much higher (or lower) and so there is resentment, dealing with people who have strayed from the faith, returning to the academy to deal with a corrupt official, etc.
In my first campaign, I opened a campaign before a mission where friends of their characters were kidnapped and they were tasked to save them. It had the players create not just their own characters but another character that they have a relationship with.
I had my players walk off a traveler's boat in a strange new country. The reasoning was that they were an artifact hunter, a mercenary, and a thrill seeker each looking for new pastures for wealth. They got through customs and had to find their way around town. After paying their entry tax, they inquired about where to find a cheap tavern. Told them their options, and they picked a middle quality tavern. They encountered a mapmaker's store along the way, who gave them proper direction, to navigate to all the landmarks they needed, and told them more about the surrounding area's features. And when they arrived at the tavern, I had them run in to a group of teenagers who just earlier that day were out on their first training mission with their father to a tourist dungeon, typically only filled with vermin, that happened to be recently occupied by goblins, the lone father got captured and the kids got away. The party has offered to help save the father.
This was my first attempt at DMing, so I hope my start wasn't too bad.
My campaign people usually like is all done on a tropical island, and the entire thing starts with me gathering my notes as I let the players discuss and decide how they met up. Their entire opening is theirs, and when I get the whole note gathering done, they get to enter a raffle for the winner and up to five friends to get a free trip to this island.
Of course, they are guaranteed to win it, or if they don't even enter in the first place, they just use my other campaign using the mainland.
I was in a campaign once where I started in a prison camp.
To me,the 'stuck on an island with amnesia' cliche can actually be quite interesting.
The characters have no memory of who they are,their philosophies,values,morals thrown out the window.That helps as the players can flesh out their character on a more obvious level as they adapt to survive with each other,forging the bonds of friendship in the team as they must trust each other to survive.
The other end is that it can become a sort of puzzle story where through their activities like hunting,tracking animals and even setting up camp,the qualities and traits of their character before the event slowly come out,giving the other players little hints of that player's backstory.For example,a ranger will naturally be able to distinguish certain animals tracks,naturally able to tell if it is a good place for camp,use the sun and stars as compasses with ease and using a bow effortlessly.A rogue will be able to sneak and hide in the shadows of trees like he had experience of doing it many times before,make traps out of nearby materials like wood that are very effective like he has known how to craft traps since a young age,or even a paladin that will selflessly defend his fellow team mate with nothing more than a rusty iron sword he had and a large but short oak log as a shield against a group of panthers.Even better if they were from a shipwreck,items can wash up on the shore like armor,one of the sailors,weapons,chests and small artifacts like a scrolled up map in a bottle or the captain's diary.The characters themselves can have things like lockets with a picture of their family,a holy symbol or book detailing about their god and religion,a torn and wet mud green hood and a dagger on their belt.This little hints can be pieces of a large puzzle that the other player's must put together to learn more about their fellow party member.
I'm happy to hear my Star Wars RPG avoided the major tropes. It kicked off with all of the players being in the employ of a crime lord, who paired up a smuggler, assassin droid, and two bounty hunters into a kind of "A-Team" to go retrieve a holocron from a rival.
On of my favorite Dnd starters was that I individually took aside every character and had them roleplay getting knocked out, drugged, and even tricked by a band of respected Kobolds trying to gain 'prisoners' to be the entertainment. The story went like this, using clockwork technology found in an ancient dungeon facility, Goblins on this 'Australia' sized continent took over and enslaved the local Kobold population to do their bidding. Using prisoners to fight in an arena for their entertainment. The campaign officially starting in a jail cell, but because of the nature of goblins, their stuff was never confiscated and they had the choice of battling their way to the top in order to gain their freedom, break out and sneak off quietly, or break out themselves as well as the Kobold prince and princess and team up with the Kobolds against the Goblins in a revolt.
The jail cell set up gave the party time to RP and I thought the choices on the story were engaging enough and impactful enough to make the players feel like their choices mattered. The party actually had split up in the beginning, wanting to do different things and I enacted a turn order with more flexible times rather than 6 second rounds. Having things play out like the Vantage point movie where while some were trying to sneak out, the others chose to cause a revolt and those taking the sneaking route had managed to disable hazards set for the revolt route.
My homebrew campaign begins with the players building their characters with an extra step. A group discussion of how they relate to each other.
My first attempt to run it saw two players decide they were sort of a private investigations duo done in noir style (in a fantasy setting, the jokers) while two OTHER players were elves, one high elf, one wood elf who could only REALLY relate to each other in a town filled with stinky humans. I had to come up with a hook to tie them together bc they weren't really buying into the game of it and opted for a more boring one (the high elf cleric being a client of the PI duo, which played into the table bc that player tends to take lead anyways)
The more amusing thing is that they decided all this without knowing my initial adventure hook. A murder mystery.
The long game plan was to have them essentially building up a frontier town, playing politics with foreign powers & dealing with the dangers they inevitably unleash sticking their noses into the wider world. Doubt it would have worked, and no table I've tried it on stayed together despite saying they enjoyed the early sessions, but I STILL only have the vague broad brush strokes of "behind the scenes" (local turf wars between monster factions and friendly NPCs, a Wererat (Skaven) invasion of the major human power, a decadent & remote Elven empire & a few "big bads" that are best left undisturbed. I hate to flesh things out bc I like the process to be a collaboration. One of the tables saw a player wanting to play a winged elf. I'd said "no exotics" but she was so excited with her effort I decided to include it, the Elven Empire became a Republic that USED to be super religious and effectively worship an aristocratic elite of winged elves who have been hunted down to near extinction for fear they'd inspire a "royalist" revolution. I love it when my players force me to build the world this way, having to incorporate things they want in ways they don't expect)
A cliche but nice way to start with a new group of characters is being imprisoned somewhere. It gives players a simple understandable motivation (getting out), a chance to explore the place at their leisure, gives the dm a chance to prepare a lot of detail to the place itself without overwhelming them with details of the setting, helps players work as a team without taking them from their characters and it doesn't need to be that long.
When I watched the amnesia setting I was doing something else and thus had to rewatch it as I remembered nothing from that previous minute or so
Amnesia might be a really fun way to do a one-shot where the players don't actually know who or what their characters are ahead of time. You sit down to play and hand everyone a blank character sheet, while you have the filled-in versions. As they discover who they are, you tell them the information to fill in. Sounds like silly fun.
I've used a variation on the amnesia one crossed with ship wreck and caravan, sort of. Basically, the players woke up in an inn, in beds that they recalled renting, however the entire town was empty. They found various supplies scattered throughout the town, but no sign of where all the people they remembered meeting had gone. Long story short they eventually discovered that the town was an illusion created to trap them, they escaped and headed toward the first villian. Personally I enjoyed starting this way.
I'm planning on starting a campaign where the king sent out notices around the kingdom to ask for strong people to go to the capital for a matter of great importance, what it actually starts at is when their in the phone room and they are being told by the war advisor about the corrupt kingdom which was taken over by a rogue dungeon, allowing all the dungeons to grow in power, and they get told to defeat it after being shown it on a map
Me and my friends just started playing D&D a few weeks ago and are about half way through our first campaign, taking turns as the DM. We decided to write our own mini stories so we had something to play once we finished that, and I've started mine already. I've set it up so the group is outside a jeweler, about to rob it. They can explore town beforehand if they want, but after they steal the jewel inside they have to take a boat out of the town. This can be done by capturing the boat or hiding/blending in. From there I plan on having multiple branching paths set up. I've only gotten as far as setting up half the plot and detailing the town, but I think it'll be fun.
tbh I started a recent campaign with my brother and his friends, and the introduction from our one on ones actually made us converge into 2 cliched ways, in which there is a disaster, and there is a very big reason why we are supposed to be there.
We started the Storm Lord's Thunder, in which I started by ardeep, I got chased by a couple of orcs and met a minotaur, which was friendly, weird. We proceed to get kicked out of the woods non-aggressively after killing the orcs because a warband is coming to ardeep. We make haste to nightstone in which we find it being ransacked. We meet our paladin friend mid fight coming through the front gate to see a halfling standing ontop of a 11 foot minotaur.
I say in terms of feeling immersed, not so much, but I actually liked the intro to our party members, and our first quest(besides defend the town) which is go rescue 40 civilians.
i've used several different types, the most common being the Home Guard in my Aramar campaign. Everyone (just about) serves a couple of years with the Guard, they meet and form friendships/rivals/antagonists during that time. i can then throw "you remember this git was with a bunch of the highbred elf-types that looked down on you in the second year" as a relationship the players can readily identify with, etc.
I've got an intro where if any of the party players are a rogue, that the game starts with the individual running from the guards with a stolen item and meeting the other players- the guards usually believing the others to be affiliated with them.
From there, diplomacy, frantic escape, or violence will set the players into motion. The object chosen can develop into a motive (cursing the party, bringing a wealthy villainous aristocrat to send people after the party, etc.).
The party is a band of mercs on a job to quell a threat in a small farming village. Most realistic start.
Jonathan Wells This is actually how Icewind Dale II starts. Perhaps it feels more engaging in a farming rather than fishing environment.
I actually started my current campaign with a shipwreck. The point of the campaign was that the characters were all hired by an exploration team to go to a forgotten continent that people rarely come back from. I'd mentioned while pitching the game that the game would focus on exploration and city building, and if they ever leave the island, the campaign would come to a close. After a session zero of everyone making characters to fit such a campaign, session one started with me narrating a shipwreck due to multiple dragon turtles. After the first game, I asked if anyone really was expecting something other than a shipwreck to occur.
From there, the characters were free to do as their wished on the island, but the first several sessions involved them looking for other survivors and having said survivors start working on a settlement as they explored. Maybe the opening was cliche, but given the point of the game was essentially a shipwrecked campaign, I think it works.
I actually had a DM who let us experience the shipwreck. 1 of the players managed to actually make it onto a raft, and then of course he was left without a character connected to the party, but it was still an impressive feat
I try to start my campaigns organically. The game we just starte, I had my players all coming to a city for a big festival separately, each with their own goals and had the weirdness set up to draw them to the plot. The city's residents were having all of their magical energies drained away which resulted in lethargy and general disinterest so that while all the various indicators of a festival were present, stands, decorations ect, but no one was engaged in revelry and the effect began to reach the players. They were finally galvanized into action when people began dying from the effect, simply keeling over mid step with no warning.
for a shipwreck start, do this: start when your ship is attacked by a kraken (or whatever you want) attacks the ship, ending 1: players kill the kraken, the adventure starts where they were heading. Ending 2: Adventurers were knocked out by kraken (everybody else killed), they start on the island Ending 3: you save some people on the ship, ending 2 but you have those people with you
My characters started in the middle of nowhere because they were knocked out by some angry villagers, but they remember they were in a dark aria each somewhere random like a dark off to the side road.
I started my players out captured on a slaver ship and they got to experience an escape, a fight in a storm and a shipwreck. It was so much fun.
My first ever campaign started with the players meeting as they were travelling along the road at sunset. They turn around the bend and find a tavern. The forest around is scary and the tavern is sturdy, so they go in. The rest of the session was them waking up in the middle of the night and slowly realising that the tavern was a trap run by a green hag, who needed blood for a ritual to create a Gulthias tree. So... yay for fresh twist, I guess?
I started off a campaign where all the characters were in the same city. each come across a small square with four intersections which were slightly scewed so they could not see each other. In the middle of the square was a man who was lying on the ground not obviously alive or dead with gold spilling from his purse onto the ground. When they approached him they fell down a pit into an alchemists secret feeding chamber for an abomination they had constructed from dead bodies, you also find an NPC who is apparently investigating this saying that the square was sealed. They offer the adventures money to aid them in defeating the monster. After it was killed they discover the alchemist was adsorbed by it and you find a ring of mind shielding attached to his former arm which contains his soul. The alchemist sets a quest to leave the ring on the desk of his study and will lead the adventures to his house. The house has evidence of a covered up break in, and various possessions of the owners lying around (most of which were improvised). They find a concealed cellar where the alchemist made notes of his experiments and seemed to of left reports. The characters may find out his family were abducted and he was blackmailed into constructing the monster, there is evidence of his depression all around the cellar. There is a room too the side full of sealed barrels from another city associated with magic, inside are dead bodies of various strange creatures (under dark and fae originally) any corpses removed will resurrect in an hour. The NPC was originally a fae knight tracking down abominations, but I'm reusing it for a separate group and gonna play them as a member of he the blackmailing party.
This is the most plotted thing I've ever used...most of the games I run are very loose-think kitchen nightmares/bone sandbox. But it turned out really well and had some hooks lying around, as well as setting up a really paranoid tone were the characters had to discuss with each other what things meant and who they could trust-the party ended up bonding well and I set it up so there were things there that would intrigue their characters. I work to a rough outline where I'll set up maps of all locations (I normally use a combination of dungeon painter and the sims) and I'll place in some dynamics and objects of interest but mostly I just work off whatever they enjoyed in the previous session and work to expand that. I sometimes play with a DM who over prepares and after a game he tends to be a bit sad that we didn't find/read everything since it can be hard to continue with out it.
Yea! Some more DMs who enjoy the cliche of starting in a tavern. Honestly there's a good reason opening in a tavern is so cliched, because it's one of the best ways to open an adventure. As you said, plenty of role playing opportunities and a perfect way to introduce everyone's characters.
I used the caravan guards... as a tutorial time where my players get used to the game, their characters and my GMing style.
It also served as the bonding experience between the characters so they would trust each other, because from that moment on, it would be more like a Shadowrun game where the players choose a mission for a session. (at least early on until the plot really gets rolling and the players have grown comfortable enough with the game and the home brew setting to strike out on their own)
The core meeting and job-handing-out place is a tavern^^ but they only reach after the caravan quest line (about 8 to 12 hours of gameplay respectively 2 to 3 sessions, which is also the time many people need to figure out whether or not my game/GMing is for them, it is the tutorial for many reasons^^)
One idea I've had for awhile now is that you and your group are all apprenticed to a group of master former adventurers. You've all met at least one other group member and may have gone on one or two missions together previously. You mostly know each other by reputation at least. They were a party themselves at one time and now, with your apprenticeships are pretty much done, they're ready to send you off on your final tests to see what you can learn and they bring you all to the town square to meet up before sending you out.
We played a campaign once that started with the king summoning, except we all met in a tavern, saw we all were working for the king, and were like 'Hey, let's work together!" We all got to introduce ourselves and why were were in service of the king.
I am currently running my first ever D&D Campaign with 4 friends and spent over a year trying to figure out a decent start. Being summoned by the head of the local library was my first idea, but I discarded it quickly for being to clichéd (though I at least never thought of him being the bad guy all along :D)
Apart from being cliché, my problem with this beginning was the fact, that, as you said, I would rob all of personal agency from my players. I would force them to work together. Why should they immediately like each other? Why should they care for whatever trouble the archmage or whoever that was had? And why would he summon them anyway? They are 1st-level characters! What makes them soo special? My campaign takes place in my own fictional world, so there is also th eproblem of my players experiencing it for the first time, which is always a weird situation, but even weirder when they are the "chosen ones".
I finally did settle on the tavern, BUT, while the location may be clichéd, I am pretty proud of my kick-off:
They do not know each other. They just happened to stay at the same shitty little town at the same night. And my capaign started off, with them waking up and realizing, that they are missing something valuable. So naturally each of them went to the owner of the tavern, complaining about thievery, find out, that there are 3 other guys who have the same problem and then I gave them (more or less) free reign.
Naturally, they decided to go after this together. I mean, yeah, metagaming asks for this, so of course none of my players would have been like "Nope, I am not walking around with these assholes", so yeah, they HAD TO agree to work together, but it was a good reason. Like, even our dragon born rogue, who is, admittedly, a bit of the standard "loner"-type, agreed to join the other 3 without having to act out-of-character. She could keep her (intentionally) arrogant demeanour, scoffing at the thought of having to work with these fools, but she realized, that she would get there much sooner with them and so relucantly agreed.
And now they are going after the bandit and will discover all kinds of shit throughout the story and now, after 2 sessions, I decided to have them find the first of the missing items: The one that belonged to the rogue because now she is, whether she herself might realize it or not, part of this thing and won't leave, as she might have done if they found it right away (again, of course she can't leave the group, because her player wants to keep playing, but I meant, that she now had a reason to keep going without having to compromise her character)
As a little extra-bonus to not have it feel like I am railroading them, I decided to let them chose the items they are lost. I mean...THEY created their characters (although with my help), so THEY know better, which items are important to them. It also gave me insight into their characters' psyche and keep that in mind for future personal archs. Yes, I could have chosen the items myself and tried to pull a personal arch for each character out of that...but that would have been MY creation, going of what I THINK the characters are like.
This way, they basically told me themselves, unknowlingly, bits about their characters, even when all they said was "My character lost one of her favourite twin daggers" or "The thief stole my scroll of pedigree".
The only thing I struggle with, as mentioned above, is the lore and how much the characters know. I mean...they all live in this world, so they can't be completely clueless, but I also don't want to give each of my players a Tolkien-style map, so I can keep up surprises and keep myself the benefit of being able to change stuff. Like, RN I have a desert placed somewhere in my world, but we never mentioned it and they never were there, so if I someday decide, that there should be a forest instead, I can do that and they will not notice. I can't do that if they have a map, no matter how crude
I also don't want to decide for them where their characters come from. Yes, it woul dmake it easy for me, because I could tell each one individually some bits of information...but their background should be their design.
For now, I chose to have each of them write me some kind of biography (not too vast) and then try to place that into my world, give them some tidbits of informations. Like, I won't give our cleric with proficency in "Religion" a table of every god that is in my world, because I don't know that. BUT I will tell him, that he knows many of the gods, so he knows to ask for a religion check on an occasion and then I will tell him what he knows, if the check succeeds.
I have a feeling the last thing is basic stuff, but remember...this is my first campaign ever and we only had two sessions. Save for one, the party is all-new to the game as well, hence the lack of sufficient character-bio's so far. We didn't need them until now, but I have to push them to do that.
Sorry for the novel :/
Brabbel93
I read the whole thing 😎
You’re way more thoughtful as a DM than I was for my first two sessions. Keep up the great work!
- On a ship, being attacked then wrecked on a beach
- Prisoners (slaves) on a caravan ship who turn on their captors then need to find land
- Magically summoned by a powerful mage who is looking for some people to help, then realizes you're not what the rumors said you to be
- Academy students who just get out, and now find themselves (friends) without a job or future
- Sold by slavers to a militia
- Recently recruited into a guild, and set forth for their entry trials
- Planed execution at the end of the week and need to escape
- Might quest announced, and you group up instead of all going at it solo
Some of few I have used.
I started my campaign with my characters waking up from a long sleep due to an illness that was effecting the land. They had to find away to get out of the hospital, and they went into town looking for supplies. They stumbled into a tavern and the barkeep had a job for them, which was assassinating an imposter who was posing as some bigwig Duke. They did it fairly easy. but their collective power was noticed by a secret agency and captured, and if they didn't help they died (well, not really. I didn't feel right just killing their characters like that.). One refused and he had to find a way to break out and meet with the party. It ended up being quite an enjoyable campaign.
I have an introduction idea..The Party members go to a General store and are shopping for random gear and a member is looking for a map of tresure or an item of immense value. The people in the room(Party Members) scramble for the map until the shopkeeper suggest.." Why don't ya all just look for this treasure together?" (You all say or do what you want during this first interaction with each other) Then he says "Well I only have one map so either ya get along or nobody gets this map."
The amnesia starter could have interesting plots and questions, not just for RPG's, but for stories as well. If your character has no memories, you can bring up the question maybe mid to late in the game/story, "is your character even the same person anymore?" It could create interesting conflict with someone from their past, and with the person themselves.
I can see all of those except the amnesia and summoned by the king openings being fun to run with the right players and play with the right GM. My favorite to play is actually the caravan opening, while my favorite to run is the shipwreck opening.
Three of six are planned for starting my next D&D campaign, coming this fall for anyone in NYC that's interested ... given a quest by a high ranking member of the adventurer's guild the group are member to, guarding a caravan is a favorite for getting players from point A to B, while giving them something to do along the way ... my next campaign will start off with one of these, except that the road is well-traveled, so the caravan master will mostly know what's coming along the road and will inform the players of what to look out for, though there will be a couple unforeseen "random encounters" on the way ... the players will get full control of how the campaign flows after they arrive at their destination, where they'll have choices of a dozen interlocking side quests and a couple main quests ... the town is under attack is another one that's coming up as one of the two main quests that I was just referring to, with the players having a few options for how to proceed ... tavern quests being a couple of those sides ...
Another good one is the "festival" you can get your do spar ate players in a group setting with games and contests to introduce them with a fight, a townsperson in distress, an attack etc. Etc. Etc. Another great intro is the "tournament", for young people think something like ninja warrior and a light dungeon crawl for some small tresure reward and introducing characters then getting them roped into a quest....
My characters were in the middle of a bathing pond, when the cleric found a message in a bottle while taking a piss. Best game opening ever?
I think he best way to start a campaign is to ask your players what their background is and make a start from there ( adjusting it slightly to better make a start or fit it in with your overall storyline if you have one ).
I personally started them off separately with different encounters leading them to get captured and put together as a group where their capturers forced them to find magic items in a underground network of caves that are deemed way too dangerous while competing against other groups to be freed.
I'm just getting into d&d and these videos I'm sure will help a lot
I'm a beginner DM using the Mines of Phandelver starter campaign, but not only did I find the caravan start boring, but half of my player listen to The Adventure Zone, so I needed to make changes while still allowing myself the crutch of the beginner's guide. I basically cut the caravan, they start in a cell in the goblin cave as imprisoned travelers/locals, since later the gang in Phandalin is also mentioned to be capturing people to sell as slaves or Wave Echo mining labor, and I felt like being imprisoned together was a good way to connect the characters as a party fighting their way out of this goblin cave
My current campaign started with the party entering a small tavern where they met some NPCs and got some of the ideas for the current city. They got into a bar fight, killing a few people. The guards came. Arrested them. Executed them. AND a wizard rezed them. They now feel indebted, so they are helping him.
I listened to a d&d game where they started out in a dungeon. As in the characters woke up in a cell and were arena slaves. It was a pretty cool start considering they all got their weapons and backstories and had a cool way to bond with eachother through escaping together. After they escape the story began to take more shape. XD plus they tried to escape once and failed so they were even more determined to escape again and it made a few characters bond with eachother better.
Most of our sessions started with "The gate lifts and you step out onto the warm sand of the arena ..... "
I started my party in a Toyal prision (my universe's version of goblins) on an island from which they had to scavenge and muster the resources to build a sufficent boat and get off. As it turns out they were summoned from all corners of the globe by a dragon with a spell it had been charging for years stuck in a dungeon of a mad wizard who died at the hands of some scorpions.
I went with Caravan Guards --> Arrested by Faction A ---> Prisoner escort attacked by faction B --> Choose between A/B or invent option C. This all happened in quick successsion though. And I made the attack quite frantic so that they had to make a choice quickly or get caught in the crossfire.
I just started my first campaign as a DM (no real previous experience) and decided to have them regaining consciousness in front of a plump inn keeper thanking them for accepting the job of clearing some mines
What I did:
Since my campaign is full of wacky ideas, what i did was start in a tavern, but shortly after a bit of discussion with some of my party members, their chairs shrink and then they realize the tavern is trying to eat them.
I usually have my characters start at distances and meet up as the story goes, they pretty much write their own story until they do get together, i then make something that inspires them to do whatever the quest is.
1:23 "Cant very well say no" HA THATS WHAT YOU THOUGHT! TRY TELLING THAT TO MY CHAOTIC NEUTRAL BARD WITH A BANJO, LONE HARMONICA AND OBSERDLY OVERSIZED TUBA
My current campaign start is basicaly: "A portal to another world has opened. You have been chosen to investigate." And then proceeding to drop them into some backwards rural region with a plan to help them if they get into deep trouble from the begining.
However, I am guilty of sending the regent's guard to pick up the party if it stays long enough in the backwaters town, since that regent also is a mystic and had dreams of the "strangers" coming in the World and is supposed to at the very least give them the first pointers towards what they can do now, plus certain useful items
Thus, the type of campaign where you fall in a sandbox, get the "follow us to our leader" railroading and meet the "PC Patron" during the first session.
I just noticed those Redwall books in the background! Subbing for that, those books are fantastic.
strangely enough i had a weird reverse amnesia for my campaign.
All The PC's Awoke In Cells With No Idea How They Got There But They Do Remember Their Past And What They Were Doing Before The Whole Conundrum
The first time we start, I have them start on the road or give some of them an option to start in a city, tavern, etc. if they don't know the party. I throw people on the road to talk to them but it seems like a pretty easy basic way to get things started.
My very first campaign consisted of my players escaping from a jail, fighting three bandits outside the city, getting a scroll that literally transports you to the Void, and fighting a Shadow demon that can only be hurt if you are in the Void. I didint think it would be that original.
I find that what is underestimated is having a campaign where the party is 'coherent'.
I know that nowadays everyone wants to have mysterious back stories, but having the party treated as one 'character' makes the quest and motivations a lot more pwoerful.
The best example of this is Node's 'call of the wild's' youtube campaign. All the characters are from the same tribe that is attacked, and so all of them are trying to get their family back, get revenge and find out what is going on.
You also need to couple the coherent group with a big 'inciting incident' to motivate them all and bind them together.
difficult to do though.
So in other words, the "you all meet at an inn" intro is cliche for good reason - *it makes sense in any universe* and is very conductive of good GMing and roleplay habits, and has been done to death as a result.
Mine started with summoned by the queen, however the queen and the PC were long time friends and he was just being sent on yet another quest as per usual and introduced the other PC to him.
I had a job quest for mine. Me and my party separated on opposite sides of the world finds a posting requesting adventures. We arrive in the town/area, met in front of the meeting place, and that’s how our adventure began. There were 3 groups with 3 paths, I was in group 1 so us and the second group are able to choose where to go as the last group got railroad to the last path.
I think I only got railroaded once, mostly because I arrived later and our DM had us join a group out of default.
i started dm'ing a homebrew campaign of mostly brand new players and one veteran that i had played games with and dm'd him before, my approach was a little different since i kinda had to basically run tutorial mode for a few sessions which i wrote into the story but i basically had all of them accept a job and meet at a location designated by the job giver and then rp a bit before the person that had hired them showed up and gave them the final details of the job, after they completed that the priest brought them back and introduced a second two part job for 2 1/2 times payment of the first and gave them the option to decline (contingencies were written had they chosen to do so) in this campaign i created a vestige deity that controlled dreams and could materialize creatures and items from dreams and used that to keep their interest until what i would consider the actual opening of the story which was when they found out they were part of a dream and had never truly lived before I then let decide if they wanted to help restore power to that deity or go on their separate way and decide their own destiny.
every one is really on board to help the deity so the story moves on :D
Campaigns have to start someplace. And these are all reasonable ways to get people together that may have diversified skills in one place. The player agency begins after the setup. Do you stay on with the caravan or rob it. Do you work together to get off the ship/island or let the others do it? Using a hook, line and sinker is the only way to get started and all the things you liked about the tavern could be applied to the others as well. It is up to you how this works out.