The tavern is an iconic location to kick-start an adventure and get player characters to meet one another. As a hub of activity in towns and cities, it's easy as a Dungeon Master to drop in NPCs with quests and to introduce conflict. But with the arrival of Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, your typical tavern might not be the best introduction to your adventure. If you're looking to shake things up, here are other locations for your player characters to meet.

Start with the session zero

One of the easiest ways to brainstorm opening scenes for your adventure is to take a gander at your players' character sheets. If your party's fighter has the Athlete background, you can host a sporting event or bodybuilding competition where they can (literally) flex their stuff. Such an event could draw your rogue with the Urchin background, as it presents an opportunity to pickpocket onlookers or to take bets on the victor. If there's a bard in your party, the announcer for the competition could have lost their voice and be seeking a replacement. To bring the party together, introduce a shared enemy. The arena could have been built over the den of an ogre who attacks when they are awakened by the ruckus of the competition. 

Ask for your player characters' backstories, as well, and use this information to add conflict that matters to your players. If your party's sorcerer accidentally burned down their village when they first discovered their magic, you could narrate that they have been pursued by bounty hunters for over a week. This could push them to seek aid from a local church or guild, where another player character could be working.

You can also avoid the awkwardness of having to get total strangers to team up by suggesting at session zero that the player characters already know one another. In one campaign I ran that was inspired by Ghosts of Saltmarsh, I told my players that their characters were all part of a ship's crew, had known each other for months, and would dock in a familiar city in our first session. This steered player conversation from "Why would my character team up with yours?" to "What kinds of memories have our characters made?" and "How would my character spend their free time?" This shakeup allowed us to jump straight into the action in our first session.

7 other places for your players to meet

1. On a busy street

While taverns are a common place to start an adventure, they can feel disconnected from the town or city they are in, especially after you've spent an hour or more of game time inside of one establishing the adventure and who the player characters are. Making your start on a bustling city street or in the questionable part of a town offers more locales for your player characters to explore and to get a feel for the setting. It can also set the tone for the adventure. If your game takes place during a time of war, for example, you can describe a war-torn city whose streets are buried in rubble. Few residents would wander the streets, but the adventurers would easily find city guards and healers helping city folk to clear rubble or tend to the wounded.

Waterdeep: Dragon Heist offers a guide on the city's wards, with in-depth details on what you can find and do in each of them. This is the kind of detail I seek out when I want to bring a city to life. If you have a player whose character has the Noble background, starting the adventure in the Sea Ward or Castle Ward can draw that player into the game more easily while creating a roleplay opportunity for them to introduce the area to player characters who are out of place.

In one game I played in, my Dungeon Master lured the player characters to the town square by describing how the local people were excitedly gathering there, with rumors abound about the mayor's coming announcement. There, we learned how an adventuring party had gone missing and, presumably, failed in a quest that would have kept the town protected from local threats. He then called on brave adventurers to find out what happened and to pick up where the previous party had left off in their quest. I liked this adventure start because it quickly accomplished the following:

• Created tension via the announcement of the missing adventuring party
• Established why the quest dropped on the party members was important
• Drew the player characters together with a clear goal and reward

The Dungeon Master's Guide has a table of random urban encounters that can draw your player characters to a certain location:

Source: Dungeon Master's Guide

2. At a festival

A sprawling field dotted with games of chance and skill is a fun way to bring your players into the game. Include a variety of options so each of your player characters have a moment to shine. For player characters with high Strength, include a high striker. For dexterous characters, drop in a dunk tank.

Finding ways to get player characters to compete in a friendly way can help them build rapport. When running Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, I planned a Midwinter Festival with two main events: a donkey race and a snowball battle royale. My players got a kick out of finding ways to cheat in the donkey race and in narrating how they took out competitors during the snowball fight.

In these kinds of settings, it's helpful to have the action come to the player characters. For instance, you can interrupt the festivities with a shrill scream as someone declares their child has gone missing in the hall of mirrors. Or the sun could darken and chaos could erupt as the angry spirit of a barbarian warlord declares the festival a bore, and thus requires a sacrifice!

3. On the road or in the wild

If you're hoping to get your players dungeon-delving far from civilization or to explore a forest guarded by dryads, having them meet on the road or at a camp where they'll receive a mission briefing can make for an effective introduction to the adventure. As with meeting in a city, the descriptions you provide for the wilderness where party characters meet can set the adventure's tone.

To encourage player characters to work together, or to simply come up with ideas for complications while traveling outdoors, take a look at the rules and suggestions for wilderness survival in the Dungeon Master's Guide. The random monuments table (shown below) in the same chapter could be a good way to establish a point of interest. A toppled obelisk that was built in dedication to a good-aligned god could have clues that cultists are in the area. These clues could be discovered with a successful Intelligence (Investigation) check. A Wisdom (Survival) check could lead the way to the cultists' camp. 

 Source: Dungeon Master's Guide

4. In media res

If you find that introductions are difficult for your players or disrupt the flow of the game, you can throw your player characters straight into the action.

After my latest campaign ended, my players requested that our next adventure start them at level 7. I decided to run them through Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frost Maiden but begin the campaign at the top of Chapter 4, when ...

That moment will be a shock and raise questions that kick off the adventure. My player characters will also get to establish themselves in-game as heroes worthy of a quest — and maybe a bit of exposition!

Consider the following hook to throw your player characters right into the action:

Bandit attack!

You find yourselves on a less-frequented road leading the carriage of a rich merchant through a dense patch of trees. The merchant who hired you to work as their personal guard tells you that this area is rumored to be haunted. Folk have gone missing in recent days. Suddenly, you hear a twig snap nearby and then the battle cry of bandits who charge the carriage and begin firing arrows from behind the cover of trees! What do you do?

5. At the fighting pits

Pit fighting is an action-packed way to bring player characters together — and to get them to show off in combat. (If you haven't read our guide on running pit fighting, I recommend adding it to your reading list!) Having your player characters go up against easy opponents can help them get into the game quickly as they focus more on having fun over playing optimally. To help drive the adventure forward, have an opponent of theirs be an NPC who is relevant to the plot. Or, an NPC with a quest could approach the player characters after the brawl.

Your player characters don't need to jump in the ring to make this setting work for your adventure, though. There's plenty of fun to be had betting on combatants, finding out who's cheating, and maybe even pickpocketing a bit of coin off some distracted audience members. Once your players have had their fun, it's time to drop in some conflict. For example, a guild could be using the fighting pits as a front for illegal business, and someone needs help in sniffing them out!

6. In jail

Having your player characters wake up in jail or in the back of a carriage shackled to one another is an invitation for roleplay. You can throw a wild card at your players by asking them how their characters could have ended up in shackles.

I played in a one-shot where the Dungeon Master had the player characters awaken in a shared cell, hanging by their wrists from the ceiling. After a few minutes of speaking to one another — and finding out that some of us were innocent of any wrongdoing — the floor below us collapsed into a spiked pit. This set off a puzzle- and trap-filled adventure that required our characters to work as a team.

If you go this route for the opening scene to your adventure, have a failsafe handy. If your player characters are afraid of breaking out of jail in fear of getting into trouble, a friendly NPC could break into their cell to explain why they need to escape and to provide assistance.

7. In a dream

Over the course of campaign two of Critical Role, Matt Mercer has made me fall in love with dream sequences. They're a great way to give the spotlight to one or more player characters while also building tension and nudging them along.

You can also use a dream to build trust between player characters. Perhaps they are all in the same dream at the start of your session and witness a future that the gods have tasked them with stopping. Or, you might have a player character catch a glimpse of an evil entity preparing an attack on the town where they are staying. This could drive them to seek out adventurers for aid in defending against the coming onslaught. 

Starting the adventure

When planning your next adventure, consider what works best for your table. If your players are shy when it comes to roleplay, introduce an excitable NPC who has an insatiable curiosity and a tendency to spill all of the town's rumors. If your players enjoy D&D for the combat, throwing them straight into the heat of battle could be just what they need to get engaged in your story.

As a Dungeon Master, you have a lot of control over the tone and pace of the game. Keep story beats in mind as you prep for your game's first session. If you find your players are struggling for a reason to team up, a common enemy and the promise of gold from a local lord or barkeep could be just what they need.

What are some fun ways you or a Dungeon Master have kicked off an adventure?

Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft is available for preorder now in the D&D Beyond Marketplace! All preorders come with digital dice, as well as character themes, frames, and backdrops! Master-tier subscribers are able to share all of their purchased content with their table!

Michael Galvis (@michaelgalvis) is a tabletop content producer for D&D Beyond. He is a longtime Dungeon Master who enjoys horror films and all things fantasy and sci-fi. When he isn’t in the DM’s seat or rolling dice as his anxious halfling sorcerer, he’s playing League of Legends and Magic: The Gathering with his husband. They live together in Los Angeles with their adorable dog, Quentin.