We had a campaign where we were all part of separate caravans that were attacked by overwhelming numbers. When we regained consciousness we found our selves in a dark chamber that smelled of sweat, urine and old straw. Dust and sand trickled down from the ceiling as some not too distant crowd cheer and stomped. All of our gear was taken, but there were scraps of armor and discarded weapons in poor repair scattered around the small chamber. A set of heavy doors swung open letting in the blinding desert sunlight.
We spent a few sessions fighting for the entertainment of the crowds before escaping into the desert.
I saw a session 0 where there starts was everyone woke up together in an Underdark prison, having no idea how they ended up there.
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I’m also a big fan of the “hot start” where you basically just drop the already assembled party smack dab in front of a dungeon about to walk in. A good pop culture example is the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
I've started a campaign in the middle of combat. Right after we got everyone's PCs set up, I deducted a couple of HP from each, and we rolled initiative. Then I described the disorienting effects of the stun bomb that just went off (this was a heavily homebrewed 3e game). It had a amnesia effect, so one could remember what was going on or how they got there, or even who they were fighting or why. Meanwhile, the enemies pressed the attack, so the players fought back (they could have retreated or tried to negotiate, I had plans for different choices). They put the pieces together after the dust settled.
I think it's the Feng Shui RPG that has all the characters start in an inn (or more like, pub or restaurant) and it's up to the players to justify why they are there. "I'm just popping in to use the bathroom", "I'm there to rob the place", "My character has just been fire and is looking for a new job", etc.
Otherwise, depending on the kind of people I play with I might prefer if they know each other before hand and then anything can be easily justified. "You've all been invited to your old friend Dr Tubesock" or "as you're packing your cart to go up to Amy's sumemrhouse for the weekend, your all draw a sigh of releif. Vacation is here!"
As for just throwing a bunch of strangers together, here are some ideas.
The brutal regime is doing one of their random roundups again and you all happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
It's the opening of a new art gallery and all of you have recieved invitations or won a lottery to be allowed to attend. Sure, art might not be your thing but you hear the food is excellent.
The new fantastic void ship/spelljammer/luxury cruise ship/navy war ship/steamtrain is open for the public just before launch.
A political rally of some sort. Are you for, against, or just a random passer-by?
Alumni of a school or college or gathering for some sort of anniversary.
The basic idea is to have an event where lots of different people have a reason to all meet up. I like the idea of a funeral, that's a really interesting one.
an earthquake opened up and swallowed us into the Underdark where the party was captured by a Drow Priestess and cursed, required to complete a task for her or the curse would kill us.
Sounds pretty forced, can't imagine a movie starting like that unless it was a comedy.
Dragon lance every already knew each other, which makes more sense than everyone randomly meeting up and for some reason deciding to be adventuring friends forever.
I’m also a big fan of the “hot start” where you basically just drop the already assembled party smack dab in front of a dungeon about to walk in. A good pop culture example is the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Or pretty much every James Bond movie =)
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
So starting my first DM campaign next week. The starting city is hosting a festival/tournament which attracts people from all over the land, including our PCs. They are all there for different reasons. some may live in the city, others may just be passing through.
Starting individually asking each PC how they have come to be in that city, and guide the towards the market. Once everybody is there a group of bandits/cultists attack some of the local populace in the market square. Roll Initiative.
I was watching Girls Guts and glory and really liked how that DM started the group out, they were all dead and standing in line in a building awaiting to see what their fate was. The players introduced themselves as well as met other groups of dead adventurers while waiting in line. Lots of RP indeed.
Alternatives to the classical Meeting on a Tavern ??? Easy, here I suggest some other possibilities:
* The party starts being prisoners in a Jail. The meeting begins while they are in the garden's Jail... hahaha.
* The party starts the Campaign inside a lonely house located on an unknown Mountain. The House is near the top of that Mountain.
* The party starts at a ship that goes to......... ¿¿ a random city from Sword Coast region ??
* The party is spreaded along the Faerun Continent, and they have to meet themselves to start the Campaign..... ( It's weird, but who knows if it can happen ).
The last time I Dm'ed, i had everyone wake up in the middle of a storm to find that the ship they had all happened to book passage on was sinking. Something big was attacking the ship and they were taking on water fast. it didn't take them long before they realized there were not enough lifeboats for everyone.
honestly i think that was everyone's favorite opening so far. it gave everyone a reason to group up and work together right off the bat and from that point on they all felt like they were in it for the long haul as they tried to get back to familiar shores. We quickly got an introduction to the characters morality as they were forced to choose between risking themselves to help the crew/ allow more people to get in the rafts vrs making a clean getaway themselves, and having something massive churning in the waters and pulling down unlucky swimmers gave things a real sense of danger early on.
If you need to get the strangers to work together, you could always lay down a kind of railroad plot that goes off a cliff and leaves the group in peril - meaning they work together to get out of their predicament which is only setting the stage for the start of the campaign but doesn't strictly dictate where things go once they're stuck together. A railroad can be useful if used wisely and sparingly. (A good railroad is one that isn't noticeable in the moment.)
There was a one-shot where it started with just villagers and strangers in a town - the two villagers bickering, the two strangers passing through after finishing a task - and some entity ends up riding through the local material plane from another plane into another plane and the four people in the vicinity were pulled into another place through the portal the fiendish rider had used.
Similar to the prior, I know of a campaign that began at dawn for a pair of villagers, a traveler who passed out drunk the night prior, and a powerful sorcerer from a temple far away that liked to antagonize one of the villagers for grins. It all started as normal for them until three (villagers and traveller) found a bunch of their stuff was missing and the sorcerer was attacked and robbed of almost all of his power (making him level 1 after being level 20 at the start) and managed to jump through a portal to an insignificant place where his attacker would never think to look - the village where he liked to pester one of the residents. ...and just as everyone was getting their bearings on what was going on, the amphibious Humanoid thieves show up and try to take the people, too. Essentially, no tavern was involved - just a normal day that started getting weird then went all outright pear-shaped and has only gotten them in deeper trouble since.
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
One that I quite liked that an old DM of mine did was to have the PCs summoned by a powerful mage's conjuration spell and then instructed to fight his foe's horde. A short time after the fighting started the mage was slain while attempting to cast a powerful spell which caused a magical surge and all of the PCs got knocked unconscious by the concussive force of the surge. They all woke up stranded in the place they'd been summoned to, nothing but bodies, body parts, and rubble around them.
Granted, this was a 2e campaign and wouldn't work, I think, with the RAW summon spells. As the DM, though, some rules get broken in order to drive the story.
I am just working on a new campaign for later next year and I will be starting in a similar vein to that of a funeral but starting at the reading of the will
The characters may know the deceased or maybe they don't but this provides opportunities for bequeathing of items and quests.
Potentially gives opportunities for adventures on the way to the reading and interaction between party members; perhaps they compete against each other initially and later they realize they will need to work together
In the early stages atm but will post something to the DM channel if I get something that I think works
I like the idea of a ‘hot start’ (Matt McConville detailed this in one of his videos), you dump the characters into a hectic combat-filled ‘encounter’ to start things off, then fill in the background after, e.g.:
You are passengers on a flying ship, the ship is on fire and dropping rapidly as wyverns with archer riders attack
An eldritch hurricane rips through the town, the players help marshal the limited resources
A massive swarm of <insert creature> is moving towards the City, an outpost is about to be overrun
As they individually fall prey to captors of some kind? Doesn't have to be a tavern in that case - anything where they'd leave individually - not even necessarily from the same place.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
We had a campaign where we were all part of separate caravans that were attacked by overwhelming numbers. When we regained consciousness we found our selves in a dark chamber that smelled of sweat, urine and old straw. Dust and sand trickled down from the ceiling as some not too distant crowd cheer and stomped. All of our gear was taken, but there were scraps of armor and discarded weapons in poor repair scattered around the small chamber. A set of heavy doors swung open letting in the blinding desert sunlight.
We spent a few sessions fighting for the entertainment of the crowds before escaping into the desert.
good times.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
I saw a session 0 where there starts was everyone woke up together in an Underdark prison, having no idea how they ended up there.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I've started a campaign in the middle of combat. Right after we got everyone's PCs set up, I deducted a couple of HP from each, and we rolled initiative. Then I described the disorienting effects of the stun bomb that just went off (this was a heavily homebrewed 3e game). It had a amnesia effect, so one could remember what was going on or how they got there, or even who they were fighting or why. Meanwhile, the enemies pressed the attack, so the players fought back (they could have retreated or tried to negotiate, I had plans for different choices). They put the pieces together after the dust settled.
I think it's the Feng Shui RPG that has all the characters start in an inn (or more like, pub or restaurant) and it's up to the players to justify why they are there. "I'm just popping in to use the bathroom", "I'm there to rob the place", "My character has just been fire and is looking for a new job", etc.
Otherwise, depending on the kind of people I play with I might prefer if they know each other before hand and then anything can be easily justified. "You've all been invited to your old friend Dr Tubesock" or "as you're packing your cart to go up to Amy's sumemrhouse for the weekend, your all draw a sigh of releif. Vacation is here!"
As for just throwing a bunch of strangers together, here are some ideas.
The basic idea is to have an event where lots of different people have a reason to all meet up. I like the idea of a funeral, that's a really interesting one.
Sounds pretty forced, can't imagine a movie starting like that unless it was a comedy.
Dragon lance every already knew each other, which makes more sense than everyone randomly meeting up and for some reason deciding to be adventuring friends forever.
Honestly there was more to it than that, but I simplified the details to keep from turning into a whole story-time thing
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The campaign that i'm currently playing in had us start off as survivors of a shipwreck on a strange foreign island.
my god KooKoo this is some fourth wall breaking shit
Or pretty much every James Bond movie =)
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
So starting my first DM campaign next week. The starting city is hosting a festival/tournament which attracts people from all over the land, including our PCs. They are all there for different reasons. some may live in the city, others may just be passing through.
Starting individually asking each PC how they have come to be in that city, and guide the towards the market. Once everybody is there a group of bandits/cultists attack some of the local populace in the market square. Roll Initiative.
I was watching Girls Guts and glory and really liked how that DM started the group out, they were all dead and standing in line in a building awaiting to see what their fate was. The players introduced themselves as well as met other groups of dead adventurers while waiting in line. Lots of RP indeed.
Alternatives to the classical Meeting on a Tavern ??? Easy, here I suggest some other possibilities:
* The party starts being prisoners in a Jail. The meeting begins while they are in the garden's Jail... hahaha.
* The party starts the Campaign inside a lonely house located on an unknown Mountain. The House is near the top of that Mountain.
* The party starts at a ship that goes to......... ¿¿ a random city from Sword Coast region ??
* The party is spreaded along the Faerun Continent, and they have to meet themselves to start the Campaign..... ( It's weird, but who knows if it can happen ).
My Ready-to-rock&roll chars:
Dertinus Tristany // Amilcar Barca // Vicenç Sacrarius // Oriol Deulofeu // Grovtuk
The last time I Dm'ed, i had everyone wake up in the middle of a storm to find that the ship they had all happened to book passage on was sinking. Something big was attacking the ship and they were taking on water fast. it didn't take them long before they realized there were not enough lifeboats for everyone.
honestly i think that was everyone's favorite opening so far. it gave everyone a reason to group up and work together right off the bat and from that point on they all felt like they were in it for the long haul as they tried to get back to familiar shores. We quickly got an introduction to the characters morality as they were forced to choose between risking themselves to help the crew/ allow more people to get in the rafts vrs making a clean getaway themselves, and having something massive churning in the waters and pulling down unlucky swimmers gave things a real sense of danger early on.
If you need to get the strangers to work together, you could always lay down a kind of railroad plot that goes off a cliff and leaves the group in peril - meaning they work together to get out of their predicament which is only setting the stage for the start of the campaign but doesn't strictly dictate where things go once they're stuck together. A railroad can be useful if used wisely and sparingly. (A good railroad is one that isn't noticeable in the moment.)
There was a one-shot where it started with just villagers and strangers in a town - the two villagers bickering, the two strangers passing through after finishing a task - and some entity ends up riding through the local material plane from another plane into another plane and the four people in the vicinity were pulled into another place through the portal the fiendish rider had used.
Similar to the prior, I know of a campaign that began at dawn for a pair of villagers, a traveler who passed out drunk the night prior, and a powerful sorcerer from a temple far away that liked to antagonize one of the villagers for grins. It all started as normal for them until three (villagers and traveller) found a bunch of their stuff was missing and the sorcerer was attacked and robbed of almost all of his power (making him level 1 after being level 20 at the start) and managed to jump through a portal to an insignificant place where his attacker would never think to look - the village where he liked to pester one of the residents. ...and just as everyone was getting their bearings on what was going on, the amphibious Humanoid thieves show up and try to take the people, too. Essentially, no tavern was involved - just a normal day that started getting weird then went all outright pear-shaped and has only gotten them in deeper trouble since.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
One that I quite liked that an old DM of mine did was to have the PCs summoned by a powerful mage's conjuration spell and then instructed to fight his foe's horde. A short time after the fighting started the mage was slain while attempting to cast a powerful spell which caused a magical surge and all of the PCs got knocked unconscious by the concussive force of the surge. They all woke up stranded in the place they'd been summoned to, nothing but bodies, body parts, and rubble around them.
Granted, this was a 2e campaign and wouldn't work, I think, with the RAW summon spells. As the DM, though, some rules get broken in order to drive the story.
I am just working on a new campaign for later next year and I will be starting in a similar vein to that of a funeral but starting at the reading of the will
The characters may know the deceased or maybe they don't but this provides opportunities for bequeathing of items and quests.
Potentially gives opportunities for adventures on the way to the reading and interaction between party members; perhaps they compete against each other initially and later they realize they will need to work together
In the early stages atm but will post something to the DM channel if I get something that I think works
---
Jay
If starting in a port city, characters could meet on the voyage there!
I like the idea of a ‘hot start’ (Matt McConville detailed this in one of his videos), you dump the characters into a hectic combat-filled ‘encounter’ to start things off, then fill in the background after, e.g.:
You are passengers on a flying ship, the ship is on fire and dropping rapidly as wyverns with archer riders attack
An eldritch hurricane rips through the town, the players help marshal the limited resources
A massive swarm of <insert creature> is moving towards the City, an outpost is about to be overrun
And so on...
As they individually fall prey to captors of some kind? Doesn't have to be a tavern in that case - anything where they'd leave individually - not even necessarily from the same place.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
My DM just throws us all in jail lol.
Another DM I know had us all at a event but this has prolly already been mentioned.
Mystic v3 should be official, nuff said.