You’re in a tavern. (Well, not you personally. Or maybe you are! If you are, I wish I were you.)
The trope of starting your adventure in a tavern is overused because it works, and works very well. A D&D tavern is a public space where anything could happen, where anyone might be found, and where the elements presented are basically safe and well understood by both players and characters. And that’s very much the heart of storytelling: you start your reader in the known, where they feel safe and grounded, then you move them into the unknown, where the conflict and the drama can be fully expressed.
The “you start in a tavern” trope gets used for good reasons, but it gets overused to the point of being a satire of itself. How can we take the best parts of the trope, give them a little pizzazz, and make an adventure opening that resonates with players and DMs alike while still being functional?
You May Ask Yourself, How Did I Get Here?
A major problem with starting in that ubiquitous tavern? It’s too easy and too comfortable. That’s the problem with any so-called “no brainer”: it requires no brains at all, and that’s dangerous territory to be in when you’re creating. If no thought goes into it, it’s far too easy to miss things that go wrong, or to lose sight of new elements that could make your creation unique and memorable.
One of the most sobering things I was ever told in my creative writing classes was this: when you write a short story, unless you hook the reader in the first half-page, they’re unlikely to finish. With a novel you might have a few pages instead of a few sentences, but the same holds true. That tension of creating the perfect opening is one of the challenges and thrills of fiction writing, and while the same sort of razor’s edge audience-grabbing might not be necessary in adventure writing, it’s still important to start as strongly as you can.
When you’re writing your adventure opening, remind yourself that players and their characters are likely going to need to answer two questions when they sit down to play your adventure:
- Where am I?
- Why am I here?
When we think about typical adventure design and game play, those two questions are generally answered by the DM or the adventure designer. The “where” is the opening scene, and the “why” is the adventure hook. “You’re at the Inn of the Welcome Wench, and you’re here seeking your fortune amid rumors of strange goings-on in the area”: this is my distilled version of the hook and the opening for one of the most famous introductory adventures in D&D history, The Village of Hommlet.
Hommlet, like countless adventures of its time, hands the players the hook and the opening like a parent handing a hungry kid a piece of buttered bread. It’s not very exciting or particularly nutritious, but it holds them over until dinnertime. When we think about adventure openings and hooks in our current D&D climate, we don’t want to think bread and butter. We want to think more creatively. Not only do we want our players eating better, we want them to help make their own snacks.
The Hook Should Bring You Back
So how can we get players to make their own hooks? Let’s start by being honest: as a DM, maybe your home group cares only about the “where” for their characters and not about the “why.” And if you’re writing only for your home group, that’s totally fine. They’re just sitting there waiting for any old piece of bread before they dig into dinner later. They just want to be told where the first fight is, and they’ll get there using any reason you tell them. There’s nothing wrong with that.
However, if you are writing an adventure for publication or distribution, you never know what the characters want—or more terrifying, what their players want. As an adventure designer, be prepared to help the DM running your adventure with a variety of hooks, even if you are the DM. And better yet, let the characters create their own hooks.
If you are still paying attention, you are probably asking, “How in the name of Tymora can I know what every player wants or what makes every character tick?” Good question, intrepid reader. The fact is, you don’t. However, you have tools provided by the friendly and keen creators of fifth edition D&D to help you help DMs.
Backgrounds are a great option for creating a hook that adds a personal touch to an adventure you’re creating. Take a look at chapter 4 of the Player’s Handbook and imagine how someone with that background might have a pre-existing connection to the adventure you’re writing. You can even group them together to cover a wider range, as a charlatan, criminal, and urchin might have similar experiences coming into the adventure. If you can think of a hook for every background in the Player’s Handbook, you have a hook for practically any character in D&D—or enough of one that a DM could work with.
Another set of wonderful tools are the factions. The core rules describe a number of factions important to the Forgotten Realms that characters can join. These factions are more than just organizations, of course. They represent a typical mindset and goal set that are common to many adventurers. If a PC is all goodness and light, that player might place the character in the Order of the Gauntlet. If a PC tends to walk the grey line between good and evil, the Zhentarim is a likely group for them. As you write your adventure, think about how characters belonging to these groups might be introduced to the adventure at hand. The players are telling you what they want when they join those factions. You simply need to create a hook for the faction, not for each individual character. If a character cares about nature at all, they would be hooked by any opening that would interest the Emerald Enclave.
If you aren’t adventuring in the Forgotten Realms, these factions are still useful. They likely have analogous groups in a different world. They might need only slight alterations to be useful in Eberron, Ravenloft, or any of the other game worlds out there, including homebrew ones. Any homebrewed world might have an organization like the Harpers. Moreover, every world has its own factions. The Dragonmarked houses of Eberron make great patrons for adventuring parties, for instance.
If you translate these factions’ goals into potential character goals, and create information these factions might have into rumors that your characters know heading into the story, you have ready-made adventure hooks to provide the characters. While they are not as personal as saying, “Hey there, Betty the Barbarian, the mayor of this town killed your brother,” these hooks are more personal than, “You’re looking for adventure.” The mayor may be suspected of killing a member of a character’s faction, and that hook can carry a lot of narrative and motivational weight as the adventure starts.
Show Don’t Tell (or Tell, Don’t Show)
Now let’s talk about opening scenes. Your adventure’s opening scene is the first impression you’re making on the DM, and by extension the players. These opening scenes are powerful simply by their placement at the start of the adventure, in terms of not only the story that is unfolding, but the tone of adventure as well. As I have mentioned many times already, that tone is vital to the DM’s understanding of your adventure and the players’ enjoyment of the adventure.
One of the most common pieces of writing advice is “show, don’t tell.” Like most advice, this is solid advice… until it’s not. In most cases in fiction writing, showing is more powerful than telling. However, telling has a power to it as well, making it an essential part of a writer’s toolkit. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” is one of the most famous openings in literature, and it’s memorable for telling the reader that the story to follow is complex and simple and heroic and tragic all at once. Twelve short words carry so much narrative weight because they tell the reader rather than attempt to show.
More valuable writing advice, even for adventure writing, is this: “show if you can, tell if you must, but don’t do both.” Because we must remember, as we write our adventures, that despite my earlier advice, we are not writing fiction. D&D adventures are more like technical writing than creative writing, because it is important that the reader (the DM) understands the intentions and mechanics of the work, in addition to the potential for the stories that may unfold.
Describing a troll’s lairs with poetic language might be fun, but it doesn’t help the DM understand the layout and the mechanical elements of the area. Setting forth logical connections between encounters is more important than writing entertaining text. That doesn’t mean, of course, you can’t write entertaining and evocative prose; however, if you can tell the DM something in 20 words rather than showing them in 100, use the former approach rather than the latter.
All of this advice goes for any part of the adventure, but the adventure’s opening is particularly crucial. You want to set the stage, as quickly and efficiently as possible, without leaving too many gaping holes that the DM is then forced to fill in. Of course, some DMs like that flexibility and have no trouble adding their own flavor to your adventure, but just as many DMs buy a published adventure exactly so they don’t have to fill in those gaps. Those former DMs can always cut things out, but the latter have a harder time adding things. Serve the largest audience you can.
Finding the right level of completeness versus ease-of-use is always a moving target, from adventure to adventure and audience to audience. It’s most crucial in this opening scene, where attention is most focused. So, what are some shoulds and should nots in opening scenes?
Set the scene, but get the characters making choices and telling their own stories as quickly as possible.
This is another reason why the tavern is so tempting. You say, “You’re in a tavern,” and the scene is set pretty well in many players’ minds. Unfortunately, that scene is probably different in each player’s mind, but at least it’s a comfortable place for them. In as few words as possible, tell the characters where they are; show them some details that are important to plot, scene, character, etc.; give them a reason to be where they are; and then get to the most important question in gaming as soon as you can: “what do you do?”
Establish tone and theme quickly.
If you’re writing a mystery, let your opening create a sense of mystery. If your adventure is taking on a horror theme, add details that are disquieting and move the characters quickly out of their comfort zones. This doesn’t have to be over-the-top, but details matter. If an adventure is going to be particularly bloody and violent, have the characters see a townsperson with a bloody nose pass them on the street. That might take you an additional 15 or 20 words to add, but it is memorable and sets a tone. It’s a big payoff for a short investment of words.
Don’t give every detail within the first three minutes.
Even if you have created the most brilliant and elaborate plot for your adventure, which the players are going to adore, let them tease out those details with their actions and questions rather than getting it in large chunks of exposition. Presenting the scene is good; bludgeoning players with endless details is not. I’ve heard that the human brain can only remember 10 things at once. Sub-human brains like mine? More like three things. Give the basics, and then provide a path to learn more.
Provide differing paths, or types of paths, to learn the same information.
If it’s important that the characters playing your adventure know the town’s special laws right at the start, and also quickly know the names and personalities of the town councilmembers, and the exact locations of murder sites, and the current motivations and alibis of the suspects in those murders, use different vehicles for transmitting that information.
The laws can be put on a handout for easy reference, and the locations of the murder sites can be provided on a map handout. The sheriff with a unique accent can speak the names of all the suspects and describe their alibis, while the town councilmembers can be introduced through roleplaying with the party at a public event (and also provided in a handout). These varied approaches to introducing details has a better chance of sticking in the players’ minds than just hearing them listed by the DM in a monotone reading voice.
Get to the action as soon as you can, whatever that action might be.
If you need to start in media res, do that!
Oops, Latin is a Dead Language
In media res is a Latin phrase meaning, “I don’t want to create fancy hooks and openings for my D&D adventure.” My translation might be a little off, since the days of my college Latin classes are long gone, but I think that’s a pretty accurate translation.
Or maybe it means, “in the middle of things.” Either way, the idea is a sound one. All of the advice I’ve given leads in that direction anyway. If you start with the players in the middle of some action, where they are talking and making decisions rather than just listening and absorbing information, their minds are likely in a better place to absorb that information actively rather than passively. Educational theory backs this up. Active learning often matches or outperforms passive learning, and multiple modes of learning are generally better than a single mode.
If you think the players of your adventure appreciate a good combat, start your adventure with “Roll initiative.” Players who prefer to have tons of information before making decisions may feel lost for a moment, but there are ways to alleviate that. Allow each character to ask one question as they take their turn in combat, such as “where are we?” or “who are we fighting?” Before the end of the combat, the characters will not only know the situation, they’ll have paid better attention than they would have if you’d started with, “You’re in a tavern.”
In the next article, we’ll create an opening for our in-progress adventure, and we’ll talk about one of the most controversial topics in adventure design: boxed text!
What's your favorite opening scene from an adventure you've run? Let us know in the comments.
Shawn Merwin's professional design, development, and editing work in D&D has spanned 20 years and over 4 million words of content, ranging from third to fifth edition. His most recent credits include the Acquisitions Incorporated book, Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus, and Storm Lord’s Wrath. He is also the Resource Manager for the D&D Adventurers League’s Eberron: Oracle of War campaign. Shawn hosts a weekly D&D podcast called Down with D&D, and he holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. You can follow his ramblings and musing on Twitter at @shawnmerwin.
Want to read more of this series? Click on the "Let's Design an Adventure!" tag to see the full series.
This is going to be a useful set of articles.
My current go to opening is starting with a traveling caravan that has been crossing a long stretch terrain and is pulling into the next market or town. Once they get to the town, they will find that they are not allowed to leave for some reason or another... I like how this allows each player to create a reason to be with the group outside of just adventuring. Why had they been in the caravan? When did they join? Perhaps they are running from the law or traveling as protection for a tradesman. Once that is all worked out, it is much easier to work them into a cohesive party.
Thank you.
Love these Posts!
Another great article!
You asked, so here is one of my favorite opening scenes.
In a Living Spycraft adventure, the game began in media res with our party driving a military vehicle, chasing another one through a jungle in Southeast Asia. A loudspeaker in the car is our boss, reminding us what we are doing (get the high-tech item the other car stole). The DM tells us we can see the person in the car ahead of us arming a rocket launcher. DM asks us which one of us is the driver! (Yeah, it was me)
That was so much fun. I stole the idea blatantly for one of our Ashes of Athas adventures. In that Dark Sun adventure the party started on a chariot, chasing the bad guy who was getting away from the end of the previous adventure. The bad guy casts lightning at a stone pillar and it begins to topple towards the party. Players and DMs alike really liked that action-packed start.
My favourite thus far, from a DM roundtable group:
One of our party was playing a Moon Circle Druid who, at lower levels, didn't always control their Wild Shape. The character had some great backstory around some of these events. It would happen by surprise, often in response to strong visual and emotional stimilus.
During a festival, a large flock of birds suddenly filled the sky; the druid uncontrollably shaped into a bird and flew off! We chased him around until he crashed through a window of a tavern, where we found him with a strange mushroom growing out of the cut in his shoulder caused by breaking through the glass.
The mission to save our friend, and to protect ourselves being infected by this same fungus, was launched without hesitation.
I opened a recent campaign with what I call a "usual suspects" opening. The characters find themselves in prison together, arrested at various times and places the previous evening. A short bit from the captain of the guard who realises "none of these i the one we're looking for" lets me set up the bad guy, intro them to the town, put them on their guard about the guard and bring them together as a group all in a couple of minutes at the start, and pretty much all delivered in RP as dialogue. When they are released with apologies for mistaken identity (but warned to behave themselves) the adventure begins.
Aah, all of this makes sense.
I just have one question: writing advice tends to tell me to avoid infodumps. But let's say someone is with scholarly backgrounds, being a wizard or a hermit.
Wouldn't it be a good puzzle-hook to allow such a player to find text or have it from their background that has, basically, a puzzle in it where the players could figure out a lead from reading said text instead of just "roll intelligence check. Yes, you gotta go here and do a thing." ?
Hello!
Do you guys maybe know where is this image of lizardfolk from? One with the horses and rogue on the roof.
Nvm, found it in Hoard of the Dragon Queen!
Question: how would a hermit, criminal, sage, and sailor best meet up?
Magickes most darke and terrible. Heh heh heh...
Seriously though, having characters suddenly appear together in a dark room with no memory and a strange silver circle set in the floor is a very fun intro to run, as it gives the characters a reason to hunt the main villain, as well as providing suspense and perhaps a small dungeon crawl to escape wherever they now are.
A similar approach I like is the party wake up from a drunken-/beating-/poison-induced slumber to find themselves imprisoned and guarded. Step 1 is to break out and in their attempt you reveal a devious plot that sets the real point of the campaign into motion.
The opening I'm taking players through now finds all the characters on a ship making for a new continent. Whether running from or running toward, each character had a reason to leave all they had known. After the ship is attacked by a superior pirate force, players have some choices to make about what their characters are willing to do to survive..
I'm writing an adventure. The party (before the characters know they're forming one, really), happens upon a tavern in the starting town, but it's boarded up with a sign which reads, "closed for repairs". Ideally, this should encourace them to walk around and find either the temple or the apothecary to get on with things, but I'm preparing for the possibility this won't be the case. Rather than having the PC's go straight to those locales, it's more entertaining to have them first go to the tavern, which they may find out was closed due to- wait for it- a ruinous group of rowdy adventurers. ;)
The criminal just got finished robbing the hermit, bumps into the sailor-- who is just trying to head back to his ship-- and is startled by the appearance of the sage spouting some philosophical line about "earning your wages." A chase ensues with the criminal trying to get away with his coin/item(s)/trinkets and the other three are trying to wrangle him. I would say that the town guard catches wind of this if a town guard exists in this settlement. This would definitely create a plot hook, get your players invested in each others' characters, and allow you, the DM/writer, to create a sense of consequence.
I will warn you, however, that this is not usually a good idea. I would talk to your players about this kind of opening to see whether or not this would work at your table. Furthermore, this opening could be explained away as happenstance rather than anything that their characters would do naturally. Even more condemningly, it could create a sense of rivalry between the members of your party, which might cause them to do hostile things to each other.
If you and your table decide to use this, however, it may be wise to tweak it. The sage may not show up, or the criminal may be robbing from the sailor. Or, maybe, the criminal may be a clean person and falsely accused of robbing from the other party member. Just keep in mind your players, the party, and the setting as you open with this. Failure to do so may lead to more pain than intrigue.
Thanks for this! My wife has been roughing out ideas for her first campaign and was feeling really lost with how to start off (and end things but that's an article for a different day). I know she'll find this really handy.
That would be fantastic...for that PC. Not everyone will get a kick out that challenge, especially if it’s meant to be solved piecemeal. One of the best things I did for a studious player and their PC was give them a handout I had written representing a journal they had found. They were allowed to study it as much as they wanted, with each session giving them more and more clues. No one who wasn’t invested was bothered, the PC who had it was intrigued by it, and I can still use it to move the plot along.
Shimmering light and a disorientating wave of nausea, slowly fade enough for you to make out what's about you. You stand in the middle of an epic battle. A bald, robed man faces off against a huge horned demon. He raises his glowing staff to deflect the infernal blade of the monster and then commands you forward. You all feel compelled to attack the terrifying creature from the abyss. As you launch forward, the wizard points his staff and a thing green ray blasts forth. Unexpectedly, the ray reflects back on itself and strikes the old mage...and both mage and demon are abruptly gone. You stop, free of the spell and look about yourself wondering who these strange people are standing along side you and where the hell you are?