The good ol’ fashioned “You all meet in a tavern, answering a poster offering gold for help…”? The action-scene, “You’re all engaged in mutual mundane task, when suddenly a band of thugs/goblins/whatever bust in looking for the plot coupon and chaos breaks out”? The “Elder Scrolls classic” - all being prisoners thrown in together? Tie it in to a character’s backstory and let them lead the other party members in?
What have you found interesting or successful, and why?
So far my best campaign start was I told the group: Look, until I say so, everything you try works. No rolls. Your bad asses. Something will go wrong at some point, but it’s imposable for you to die until this opening is over.
They proceed to pull off an amazing heist where they had to break in and tamper with some evidence. Just add they do their NPC teammates betray them, set off a chain reaction that kills a bunch of civilians, and leave them to take the blame. The law is on their trail, they are running out of friends, and finally they dive out of a high rise building and land in a trash heap. Then the campaign starts.
That’s definitely a new one; I’d not heard of that strategy before. It’s certainly interesting if you have players who are into actually playing their characters. Did you find the group got bored with being bumped back to Level 1 after being effectively action-movie stars for the opening?
My favorite one-shot I ever played in began with
“You wake up. It is a dark and stormy night. You realize you are dead.”
The group had all been raised from the dead by a mediocre necromancer, and the plot went from following his commands, to breaking free from his command and earning our freedom.
Somewhere on the Sword Coast there is still a little pub between towns that’s staffed by two skeletons, a ghost, and a ghoul.
I try to have each character know at least 2 other characters in the game, this creates some overlap.
I ran a game (and after almost 11 months) finished a campaign with a bunch of teens who had never played any RPG of any kind prior to this, and while making characters they created a traveling circus or carnival kind of thing and every character had some ties to it. So even when they did not know one another they would see the troupe’s emblem and become instant friends.
The other method I enjoy is trial by fire, starting the game with an intense situation and they have to work together to survive. I used this to start the other d&d game I am running. It also inadvertently happened when I was introducing two new characters to my Werewolf The Apocalypse game.
I like having a goal already set. The party has been hired to do X, so they have an established relationship and at least one shared objective.
Wouldn’t say that I have a favourite, but one DM I had started the campaign mid-adventure in an old but recently rediscovered ruin. Our characters, who were adventurers, explorers or treasure hunters, just randomly bumped into each other, and after some negotiation decided that there were safety in numbers and joined forces.
Really depends on the general theme of the campaign imo :3
Taverns are a good set up for a mercenary style campaign, getting ambushed and having to work together sets up a nice destiny plot, meeting at a town by happenstance sets up a nice mishmashed family all traveling for their own goals, but finding it helpful to stick together etc.
See, this answer I like because you actually differentiate by the style of campaign. I’ll definitely take this advice under consideration!
I haven’t done it yet, but ideas I’ve thought about are:
- on a flying ship (party, traveling, etc) and it’s attacked and crashes
- they are part of a town and witnessing an execution, coronation, etc, and someone attacks or stops the event scattering those watching and forcing people to fight for their lives
- dead and in a hell when they are given the opportunity to return to life and avenge their deaths
- plucked from their lives and brought to limbo where they are informed that their destiny must be fulfilled as they are now awakened souls who were sent to the realm to fulfill their duty as agents of good to stop a rising darkness and then they are sent back to reality with a drive to meet up at a certain place to gather their group and begin their duty
All good ideas. It sounds like you’re definitely a fan of the “action scene” starter.
Depends on the characters, but my favorite was a prison break. Some party members were visitors, others were hired as support guards due to a dangerous inmate being transferred (BBEG) and one was a prisoner. Large boom and suddenly the prisoners are escaping and as the characters are all fighting to get out they get funneled together.
session 0.
make sure we’re all on the same page about how we want to play the game, alignments, character cohesion, RP vs. combat…
that kind of stuff.
Even better that the one player who showed up super late has an arrow in his knee. No worries, though, he forgot his character sheet, so he’s just running a pregen -but he’s making up for it with a catchphrase. All the time.
