Starting a new campaign. Need help.

[JVisgaitis]

A friend of mine is a somewhat novice DM and he's starting a new campaign. He's looking for ideas on how to get the party together. I know I used to be able to turn up tons of stuff like this online, but my Google Fu is apparently weak. Anyone have any links on this type of stuff?

 

[Family]

The standards are:

1.) You meet in a taven one night and start discussing an opportunity.

2.) You are all in one place during an attack.

3.) A patron summons all you people of talent, there is a task that he would like done.

 

[Rechan]

4) You all wake up in the same place that is strange (a tomb, a sealed room, an island).

5) You all have wronged this man, who has summoned you to fix your errors (See: The Usual Suspects).

6) Make all the characters be familiar with eachother (i.e. brothers, friends, rivals).

 

[Mallus]

Anyone have any links on this type of stuff?

Better than a link, I have the easiest, not to mention best, way to handle this. Advise your friend to make the players come up how they know each other and why they're already adventuring together.

Running meet-up scenarios where the PC's begin as strangers can be fun, but there's no reason campaign have to start that way.

 

[autumnfyr]

I turn it over to the players, asking them how they know each other. Give them some background on the setting, and let them provide their own reasons. What usually happens in my games is that they group up, these two are related, and those two studied under the same mentor, while these guys worked for the local militia etc. Then I give each "group" a dfifferent hook or clue into the introductory adventure

 

[Emirikol]

I'm a somewhat experienced DM (only been doing it sinc 1981), and I can tell you with certainty that the best way to do it is to give the group a little local background and history and have the players get a littlebackground and history for their character AND THEN TELL THE PLAYERS THIS:

You guys all know each other, tell me how and why. I've never seen a player who doesn't love this part of the game.

Rather than haphazardly throwing PC's together and having a weak reason, this stuff works practially to the end of the campaign.

jh

 

[Crothian]

Yes, have the players figure it out. This works very well and gets the players involved. When the DM does it sometimes the palyers will forget what brought them all together because it is just something they are told. I have found that getting the players involved a little more helps with the overall game.

 

[Painfully]

1. Use a social event

Weddings, funerals, a coming of age ceremony, the crowning of a new king, the list goes on. Give each PC a tie into the event, and then bring them together with something like the reading of a will, the quest for a perfect wedding gift, a trial of adulthood that involves the group, or the new king's first order to rid the land of some trouble.

2. Victims of circumstance

I once had each of the players name a relative...as the campaign began, I told them they were each looking for their lost relative and it had led each of them into the same particular town...eventually, as they crossed each others paths in town, they joined forces (gradually, not all at once) and discovered at the conclusion of the adventure that their relatives were turned into ghouls. The adventure brought them all closer because they now had something tying them together.

3. Home sweet home

Just let them start in the same town, and put the town in danger. Who wants to let their families go unprotected?

4. It's a clan thing

I had a great success when I asked all the players to choose the same race. It could be any race they wanted, but it had to be the same one. I also had them choose their classes like normal, but had them all put one level of another class as their 1st class level.

When my players chose dwarves as the race, I told them to all put one level of barbarian as their first character level, and placed them in the snowy mountains. They still got to choose their own class as their 2nd level, but the fact that they were all part of a barbarian dwarf clan really added a lot of flavor right at the beginning of the campaign.

5. Divinations

I have mixed feelings about divinations. I think they get overused sometimes, especially at higher levels. But, the pursuit of some relic, or a simple quest can always be a good intro for a campaign.

Ultimately, I think a combination of any or all of the above options can make for an excellent start to a campaign.

Good luck with yours!