Hello my fellow Roleplayers. I am an experienced player, looking to be a DM, I'm mostly nervous about starting my own campaign mostly because the story will need the players mostly in my situation. It's practically going to be a Choose Your Own Adventure type story, but with my own effects tinkered into the plots. Mostly I was thinking of having a dungeon run open up the campaign for the first episode, and then jump into plot twists at the end of the first session that would somehow include each players background. The good thing (or bad thing) about this is that I have yet to run my campaign so I don't have characters to develop a story around how would you go off about this? Especially when you're a part of a really good playing group of people?

A little bit about Moonrift: it was a room created when an alignment of the spirit reasons and material realms had wild magic surge through a day in a Lunar Eclipse, and as that was all happening a right in space was opening up a unique gas that caused a few starts to both into a new planet as well as conjure up enough energy to create it's own structured realm. Known as Moonrift. The Gods have soon discovered this reason and started to develop it as well, but after a million years or do, the Moon Goddess whom was also the Gatekeeper to Hell: Moirana, didn't fancy waiting her turn in the cycle so she creatures creatures of her own and devasted the realm of Moonrift. It took at least a century to rebuild what has been lost, but Moirana's creatures and followers still remain, but hidden in the bellows o the darkest shadows.

If your intention is to leave hooks at the end of your first session that relate to your player characters (PC) then what you need to do is get their characters, backgrounds included, ahead of time. You can have a session zero with your players to introduce them to the world they are in without getting into more detail than you want to help them establish a background. It can be a session of mostly planning or creating and then letting them test them out ending with them arriving at this dungeon or at whatever town you intend for them to start in. Once you have their backgrounds figured out, then you can start writing up those plot twists and hooks. It would probably be beneficial to have general ideas of where each of those plot twists could go depending on what the players choose to do. But if it is your intention to have player character based plot twists, then it is really important to have their backgrounds

I would like to have story arch’s revolved around characters, but mostly relate to the main story for the first season which is the Hunt for the Dark Creatures. I was thinking of going along with what you mentioned @doublec15  which was to introduce them into the campaign, but was thinking of using a dungeon escape of some sort, but need to build a good map, maybe it’ll be their “base” to start out with and then as you mentioned we can go on from their backgrounds. :)

      I agree entirely with doublec15. Having a player-based story practically demands a session 0. Also, in my experience, players (especially good ones) will be just as excited to build the story as you, so I wouldn't fret too much about molding the story around them. You have a cool idea for a plot, so go for it! All you need to do is give the players space to, well... play. They'll help you drive the story forward in regards to their characters.