I have found that, unless you have a group with one or two "leader" types, it is hard to get them going unless you put a hook in front of them.

I am about to start a sort of "free form" Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign where I plan to weave in some of the adventures from the book, and build up to the Isle of Dread. I want the players to feel a connection to the town and its people, so I've sent out a Player Guide with a lot of the town and NPC info from the book, and the directive that they can make any character they want, but the character must have been living in or around the town long enough to have made connections and put down some roots.

I'm going to have them make their characters together during session 0, and use a trick from the Fiasco RPG to forge some connections between them. (Dyson Logos created a PDF sheet for making Fiasco-type connections for D&D. You can get it here: https://dysonlogos.blog/2014/04/10/the-full-fiasco-based-dd-starting-set/)

Then I'm going to throw them right into the mix with no ambiguity in a one shot. Basically: "You are all standing before the rocky entrance to an ancient cairn on a promontory above the sea. This is the location of the crypt you've been sent to find by Arnusta Flynn, the young apprentice of Keledek the Unspoken." Rather than dump them in the town and ask "what do you want to do?" I'm going to start them outside the "dungeon" to get the action going, but this will introduce them immediately to the idea that they are adventurers looking for work, and there are people in town they can go to for jobs.

Quote from AWierdPotato >>

I’m also a fan of a hot start, but, like, I mean a really hot start where they’re already in the dungeon or something. And I like it to be something completely separate from the main adventure, or at least seems completely separate at first until it gets tied in again much, much later as a kind of a twist. You know, the way the Indiana Jones movies always started with something unrelated until it comes back around again in act 2 or 3.

 
The Indy Intro!! I wish I could like this post twice!!

I did a Land of the Lost intro to a campaign a few years back that was well received.  The party were just passengers on a ship that got sucked into a whirlpool that left them stranded in a pocket dimension filled with dinosaurs and strange ruins.

Not to detract from Caerwyn's great question, but I have another to ask. Feel free to answer the starting-the-game question first.

What subclasses would you like to see in One D&D, seeing as each class will have 4 subclasses?

I think the Fighter, for instance, should have the Champion be part of the base class, while the subclasses should be Battle Master, Eldritch Knight, Psi Warrior, and Samurai.

The Rogue (imo) should have the Arcane Trickster, Assassin, Swashbuckler, and Thief. Though the Thief could be part of the base class. In which case, I think the Inquisitor should replace the Thief.

Quote from deadPan_c >>

What subclasses would you like to see in One D&D, seeing as each class will have 4 subclasses?

Personally, I want two things out of OneD&D subclasses: (1) All the starting subclasses to feel sufficiently different from one another (there’s a lot of subclasses in 5e that feel rather repetitive) and (2) at least one brand new subclass so, if older subclasses are still backwards compatible as indicated, I still will get some new toys instead of just fresh paint on old ones.

How exactly that breakdown occurs doesn’t matter to me - I don’t really care about the shape of the options and just like having as many options as possible for my players.

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr >>

Question for the day: How do you like to start a campaign?

 

I usually like finding ways to connect the characters.

In my regular game, a new continent was discovered to have riches and ancient weapons and armor, and people were sailing there; sort of a gold rush feel, except relics were being uncovered. So the party were all on the same boat, and got to know one another, having spent two weeks (game time) on the ship. So when they arrived, they'd formed a friendship and decided to try and stick together to uncover these artifacts, and helping locals along the way in this strange new continent.

In my off week game, they were all victims of being enslaved to a wizard, and did an escape attempt together, and snuck onto a ship (that eventually shipwrecked on a cursed island) where the party is now working together.

The third game is similar to the first game, that they are on a ship heading for the same new continent (I mentioned in the first one). But with that game, I actually had the ship stop at several islands along the way (because a lot of the players were first time players of D&D) so I was using these islands to do various skill checks, hunting animals (easy combat) for food for the ship, etc., to get the players to get a feel for how D&D works, before getting them to the new continent.

(Apparently with 5e, I stopped using taverns and started using ships...)

I've only ever started one campaign, and in that one I had the PCs collected on a cheapass junk ship (like a junk-the-ship-type and also just a really garbage, cheaply/poorly maintained ship).  They had time for a basic intro, then a storm hit the ship.  Gave them a few rounds to try and save it before the ship sunk anyways and they woke up in that 'Coral Colosseum' single-scene thing from DDB way back in the day.  They fought some sharks for the amusement of evil fishment, got a basic nichey magic item, and proceeded into my ultimately failed attempt to make Ghosts of Saltmarsh not suck.  It wasn't bad as openings go, but I do feel a little bad for the imposed futility of trying to save the ship.

I've resolved that next time I start a campaign, I'm going to set up an initiative order and the very first thing players will do - even before introducing their character - is fight.  Like, I'll describe the combat beginning (however it does), have it land right in the lap of the first PC in the order I set, and say "***, you're in initiative and it's your turn - what do you do?"  I read about someone using that sort of start and I think it's brilliant, get people to show their characters in action instead of just recite their name and basic appearance.

Quote from Yurei1453 >>

"***, you're in initiative and it's your turn - what do you do?"

 Why would you call your players that? Seems very rude.

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr >>

Question for the day: How do you like to start a campaign?

Personally, I am a big fan of doing a starter dungeon or mission - something small and on the rails that’ll introduce new players to the skills, traps, combat, and roleplaying.  

 

Let's see, my favorite starts...

"everybody is falling" -- this was for what we would call an isekai game today -- in 1988. They landed on a dragon's back and he was NOT pleased, but things worked out in the end after they got rid of the Mites that were stealing his treasure hoard (mites are a race of two foot tall flight capable bipeds with one eye, one horn, and purple skin,  and if they sacrifice enough treasure to the deity they can get really big).

You wake up on the day of the New Year's Festival in a room that doesn't seem to be quite the same as the one you went to sleep in. You get to go down for breakfast to a bunch of people who started celebrating last night, and there are some vaguely familiar but you can't quite place them other people there...

That one is the traditional opening to my It adventure. Tavern opening, and I get to do the dinner scene from It -- except at breakfast.  The underlying hook is that they all knew each other as children, and It has drawn them all back for revenge from when they beat him then.

because I was asked to reintroduce a warforged variant, I have to scrap a lot of that.

and my last favorite:

You can't remember the last time you had a drink of water. It was days ago. The sun scalds your exposed skin, the sand is coarse and bruising, burning and somehow unyielding. you can smell yourself, possibly for the first time in your entire life, and it is not a good smell; you cannot recall any longer how you got here, why you are on your knees in a sea of sand, what you were supposed to be doing, mayhaps even your name.  You feel as if the hope has been squeezed out of you and all you have left to do is simply survive, one more foot, one more motion, even as the hunger gnaws at you.

You rest for a moment, your eyes closed so that all you can see is a red haze, for blackness is too far away even now, and your eyes feel like someone has ground the sand into the very sockets themselves.  When you open them, in the distance, you see something that every bit of you refuses to believe in -- you've heard the tales of those lost in a desert seeing mirages, and you can vaguely recall glimpses of them, your ashen and filthy mouth still reeling from the sand you tried drink earlier.

It looks like a great and grand ship, sail aflutter, surrounding it in an arc, crashing through the dunes like through the waves of the sea as it moves, and now you can feel the wind yourself, carrying with it more grit, and you find yourself beginning to tremble because that can only mean a sandstorm, and you catch a brief vision of a horse you knew being flayed to the bone. The ship is coming ever closer now, not aiming at you, and you can just barely make out the sight of people moving around the deck as your body begins to list from exhaustion.

You think that maybe it isn't a mirage as the sound of creaking timbers reaches your ears, the snap of sails, the shouts of women, the shush of sand being cleaved...

What will you do now, lost wanderer?

That is the new start. I stole it from roughly 1990 when I did a bunch of the old desert modules and several ideas from Dark Sun and mixed them together with some stuff from both a Moorcock novel and an Alan Dean Foster series. In the original, they were plucked by a goddess who was attacked and ended up dropping them in the wrong world, lol. One of the RP parts was slowly remembering things about their past.

Quote from deadPan_c >>

 

What subclasses would you like to see in One D&D, seeing as each class will have 4 subclasses?

 

I...

I don't want subclasses, lol. I just want classes, and would make all of them a given class, lol. I am old though, and still stuck in 1e and 2e thought patterns and need to update.

That said, for 6e, I suppose the best answer I can give is Go with more general and give the subclasses options within the subclass to take it into different directions.  I have spent the last year nailing down the 20 classes I have for my new game, so my brain is off, but they are made up from certain subclasses that exist already: gladiators, arcane tricksters, assassins, swordmages.

I would love to see an attempt officially at a magical girl as a flavor of warlock, at a Jedi as either a Druid or Wizard, and a Shaman for the Cleric that gives them more depth and focuses on a more animistic basis.

And dammit, I want a freaking Witch. Hedge, highway or hearth, I dinnae care which kind. The cunning folk are underrepresented.

Quote from AEDorsay >>

I would love to see an attempt officially at a magical girl as a flavor of warlock

I found Circle of Stars druid made for an excellent magical girl, with the transformations and all 

Quote from AntonSirius >>

Quote from AEDorsay >>

I would love to see an attempt officially at a magical girl as a flavor of warlock

 

I found Circle of Stars druid made for an excellent magical girl, with the transformations and all 

Oooh -- I will look more closely at them then.

I appreciate reading these answers to the "starting the campaign" question. I've been thinking about this a lot for the campaign I'm hoping to run in the summer. Right now my idea is that the players meet in a tavern, but with their rooms already paid for by a mysterious benefactor who leaves them a letter calling them to action. I'm also going back and forth on them having dreams telling them they need to go to this place and find each other as a way to explain why they're all there, but that may change or not even be necessary as I work out backstories with the players.

Quote from deadPan_c >>

Not to detract from Caerwyn's great question, but I have another to ask. Feel free to answer the starting-the-game question first.

What subclasses would you like to see in One D&D, seeing as each class will have 4 subclasses?

 

 Wizard:

As has been discussed in another thread recently, I am hoping that the OneD&D wizard subclasses move away from the specialized schools of magic and make that sort of discipline a secondary customization option within the base class. So for the Wizard subclasses, I am hoping to see revised versions of War Magic, Bladesinger, and Scribe become the main pillars of the class.

For the 4th option, Id love to see a revival of the Onomancy wizard from the old UA OR a wizard focuses on extraplanar magic (called something like a Cosmology or Great Wheel wizard) OR a wizard that has a strong focus on ritual casting. Maybe they could even adapt a subclass that combines aspects of Graviturgy and Chronurgy into a "Dunamancy" subclass with multiple features to choose from. Another idea would be some sort of "cantrip specialist" (a conjurer of cheap tricks, if you will). 

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr >>

Question for the day: How do you like to start a campaign?

 

 Again, purely from a player standpoint :

We always start with a setting for a bit of character intro, then a couple of short little escapades that let everyone sort of feel out how the party is going to fill roles and the like. For example, the campaign I'm in right now is a very tweaked Tomb of Annihilation (and the start is one area that I know has been modified substantially). We were all boarding a vessel that my character served on as first mate in order to travel and obtain the opal crown for a foreign noble. It started at his home, where a small bandit group attempted to steal an artifact that was a major lead for us figuring out where the crown was. We fought them (but who hired them? And why?), then immediately departed. There were a few little events during the voyage, then we finished up at the royal docks (one of our characters is the son of a Merchant Prince) and had to fight an out of control Ankylosaurus that had been pressed into duty as a labour animal. In the fight, a few dockworkers were killed and then rose from the dead (Why? How?).

So we all get to show off what we can do, and we have multiple story threads already unraveling before we've even entered the jungle for the first time. It worked out especially well for our group since we hadn't all been able to get together for character creation and discussion at one time thanks to scheduling conflicts,

I think I've mentioned this before, but my favorite intro I've been involved in to this day was the DM asking us each what our character's ordinary morning routine might look like. Essentially, we opened by running a short scene for each PC, of the hours before the party meets up. Our Paladin described how he awoke at the crack of dawn in his penthouse suite, did his Patrick Bateman workout, came down to the combination church and bank that served as his place of work, and received his collections assignment from his supervisor, which he was sure he'd have no trouble completing in time to meet at the location mentioned in the anonymous note. My Sorcerer woke up at his desk, collected his thermos of stale coffee from the night before, and went out to the quad to sit under the famous electricity machine and get zapped. After which he found the energy to meet with his dwindling research staff and check on the status of the project, lament the lack of funding from the board, and decide that he might as well follow up on the anonymous note. Etc.

I ripped it off for the last campaign I ran, and it went well. Players get a chance to feature their backstory, establish points of contact with the setting, and give the DM a sense of how they view their own character. I'll do it again!

Quote from AntonSirius >>

Quote from AEDorsay >>

I would love to see an attempt officially at a magical girl as a flavor of warlock

 

I found Circle of Stars druid made for an excellent magical girl, with the transformations and all 

Yeah, yeah I can work with this, lol.

I tend toward the deconstruction side of the spectrum in my group, so adding a darker aspect here is going to be really easy, lol. And I can do a tweak to guiding light...

I still want to use my table of all the things they have to say when doing certain things, though...

Thank You!

Quote from Quar1on >>

Quote from Yurei1453 >>

"***, you're in initiative and it's your turn - what do you do?"

 Why would you call your players that? Seems very rude.

Oh, don't blame her.  That's what the PC was named. Long story...

Quote from AEDorsay >>

I still want to use my table of all the things they have to say when doing certain things, though...

LOL, I did exactly the same thing. I reskinned the Archer/Chalice/Dragon to correspond to gem colors (Topaz/Emerald/Amethyst) and had inspirational phrases she would shout for each form, plus one for the guiding bolt. (I also had four sister-druids in my backstory, of course)

This was in the Scooby-Doo party made up, after rolling randomly for race/class/background, of three bards and my yuan-ti magical girl druid with the Entertainer background (plus a grumpy dragonborn fighter with zero musical ability at all who was essentially our roadie) -- we formed a band and toured the realm solving mysteries

Quote from AntonSirius >>

Quote from AEDorsay >>

I still want to use my table of all the things they have to say when doing certain things, though...

 

LOL, I did exactly the same thing. I reskinned the Archer/Chalice/Dragon to correspond to gem colors (Topaz/Emerald/Amethyst) and had inspirational phrases she would shout for each form, plus one for the guiding bolt. (I also had four sister-druids in my backstory, of course)

This was in the Scooby-Doo party made up, after rolling randomly for race/class/background, of three bards and my yuan-ti magical girl druid with the Entertainer background (plus a grumpy dragonborn fighter with zero musical ability at all who was essentially our roadie) -- we formed a band and toured the realm solving mysteries

OMG, I LOVE this, lol. totally natch on the four sister druids, I mean, come on!.

The player who asked me to include magical Girls wants to do an Enby version, and recently said they wanted them to be a maidbot (based on warforged) and is only 14 so how can I say no?

I can grouse and mutter, but I can't say no to an idea that i love. The initial playtesting (with other players doing the class) has had me rejiggering my original effort, so this is going to be a trip and I like the earlier suggestion a lot. I can totally work with it.