What's the most amazing start to a new campaign you've ever done?

[lobsterGun]

The PCs are a mercenary company.

They are contacted by the agent of a powerful client that has two desires: first - to remain anonymous, second that they will perform a dangerous and possibly illegal task for him. For this, they will be paid an astronomical amount of money.

The PCs are presented with the contract to sign to accept the assignment. They sign. The agent hands them their money , thanks them for their services, and leaves. To protect the anonymity of the customer, the memories of all actions they performed while bound by the contract have been erased. The goal of the game is to figure out what the hell they've been doing for the last year.

 

[roguerouge]

Start the players in control of high level enemy NPCs, and let them come to the brink of achieving some eeeeeeeeeevil goal (freeing the imprisoned demon, or whatever). But, just then, the door bursts open and...

Abrupt cutaway, to... the 1st level protagonist PCs, some months/years in the past, who must become the heroes who will stop this terrible event from happening.

That's a good one!

 

[Bullgrit]

Here's intros to two of my campaigns.

This one only lasted two game sessions:

They awakened from a deep sleep feeling invigorated and immediately alert. As they sat up from where they were lying on the ground, three things surprised and confused them: the sky was a deep and unnatural crimson; all around them were the remains of some recent great battle; and they were sure they were dead just a moment ago.

See Fiendish Oerth Game Story for the story hour write up.


This one is ongoing; the PCs are 8-9th level, now:

You awake in a large, round, domed chamber of stone. You are standing, naked, but alive. There are others with you, and you vaguely recognize them. You think they were your old comrades, in a previous life.

The chamber is bare but for a stone door in the wall, with a large stone plaque above it. The plaque reads [in Common]: "This chamber is the solemn shrine dedicated to the fallen hero-gods who ended the Great Evil. Divinations say they will rise again when Great Evil threatens the world. May their souls live forever. You are our world's Eternal Heroes."

See Eternal Heroes for blog notes on the game. (I'll be updating it soon.)

Bullgrit
Total Bullgrit

 

[roguerouge]

The best start I ever engineered was for a course on Fantasy Gaming at a summer academic camp which had four classes of 6 to 12 students in grades 4-8. I chose to introduce them to 3rd edition.

The beginning to each class was exactly the same. Elderly wizard: "Welcome, children. You are the best and brightest here at Frogwarts. These are your final exams."

Each class at the summer camp was competing against the other classes in categories like enemies defeated, secrets discovered (and kept!), treasure accumulated, problems solved, people saved, fewest character deaths, and character goals achieved. There was a leader board, both for team goals and individual goals. And you could lose points for being in last place in a category.

When you "died", you were yanked out by the deans at -9.5, healed, then sent back in again. Every time this happened, you were in time out for longer and longer periods. For some of the kids, this was actually worse than character death: to watch your classmates having fun while you waited to get back into the combat.

Every 1st level character had a super power, a weakness, and either a secret to keep or a goal to achieve. Examples.... one kid was a plant by the thieves' guild to make sure his team finished second so that they could make a killing betting on the outcome of the final exams, another was a cleric of the trickster god posing as someone of the sun and goodness faith, a third was the ordinary extraordinary (no power but his excellent ability scores), and a fourth was modelled on professor Xavier (as a wizard riding a permanent Tenser's Floating Disc).

The last day of camp... the first class knew what they needed to do to get into the lead. The second class knew what they needed to do... and fearing what the third class was going to do....

And the fourth class had the kid whose character was trying to make sure his team came in second....

 

[Lanefan]

A famous adventuring Company, not heard from in years, shows up in town and holds a widely-advertised public recruitment session. For whatever reasons they may have, each new PC has come to this meeting, as have a pile of other people; the campaign begins at the start of the meeting.

The Company types assess everybody, then call aside about half of what's there as "requiring further training", and go through a sham of kicking a few people out as dangerous or untrustworthy. The remainder are broken up into parties (with all the PCs in one group, natch) and sent into the field on assignment to prove their worth.

At least, that's what they're told. The "Company" isn't the Company at all, but are in fact imposters trying to rid the land of all its low-level adventurers (the "assignments" are all suicide missions; the PC party is the only group with a chance of survival) so that they won't grow up into high-level adventurers later. The ones taken aside for further training were all captured and sold into slavery once the various proto-parties had left town...

That's how I started Riveria; I got about 15 adventures over 4 years out of that one false-Company story line alone (interspersed with other non-related adventures), and the campaign went on for 12 years overall.

Lanefan

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

I tried the "you wake up with no memory" schtick once. Spent a long time writing up the two page intro to read to the players. The game itself was disastrous. Killed the PC's left and right which they hated so I was never really sure if they thought the intro in and of itself was any good. When you wind up replacing half the memory-drained party every session the no-memory thing sorta falls apart.

One start I did use (in fact in the next campaign) was to have all the PC's snowbound at an inn. When the blizzard finally breaks several days later the woman who runs the inn tasks them to fetch some food and other supplies from the mill on the other side of the village. They get a few blocks and then I hit them with a few wolf fights - and an appearance by a mysterious man in rather heavy green and red furs leaving presents (who made several reappearances over the course of the campaign).

 

[roguerouge]

Never used this one before, but I often wonder if it would work with the right group....

Get the players spend the first session role playing by having them tell tall stories in character of their amazing individual exploits and the group's inspiring adventures... that they'd had when they were young whippersnappers decades ago.

Session two, cut to when the characters were the young whippersnappers.

They've given you oodles of plot. You've given them the sense of control over the narrative... and they're the ones that got them into it!

And, best yet, anything you don't like were the parts of the stories that their first session characters misremember due to their senility, their tall tales, or due to their particular perspective on events.

 

[Ringan]

Swashbuckler adventuring in the mountains comes upon a lower level noble/knight leading a hunting party, and a reclusive barbarian prowling the woods. They find several murdered victims, and the barbarian leads them to the killer, a demon...

 

[White Whale]

I tried the "you wake up with no memory" schtick once. Spent a long time writing up the two page intro to read to the players. The game itself was disastrous. Killed the PC's left and right which they hated so I was never really sure if they thought the intro in and of itself was any good. When you wind up replacing half the memory-drained party every session the no-memory thing sorta falls apart.

I hate the "you wake up in [insert creepy location]" intro. To me this is heavy railroading, and I would be very suspicious of the DM. When the DM has to create high-level NPCs to force the PCs where he wants them, things already look bad.

In a similar way, our DM once started a campaign where we were prisoners. However, this was ok, because he told us in advance and asked us to explain in our background stories how we ended up there.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I started a Feng Shui game with all the PCs in free fall. . . without parachutes.

And then? Come on Pkitty, you can't just leave me hanging like that (pun intended). What happened next?

Olaf the Stout