How do you like to start a campaign

[TheSword]

I recently re-read Blood of Elves from the Witcher series and was struck by how it started. A dozen travelers sharing a campfire on the roadside for security, warmth and company. Sharing stories of what was going on in the land. Various tensions and themes that were going to crop up in the book.

I thought what a great way to start the campaign. Seed a couple of rumors to each PC based on their background and likely direction of travel, add in a half dozen NPCs to add some more rumors. Then let them have at the sandbox the next morning. Maybe that night something else happens involving the NPCs. Maybe they can be recurring NPCs and contacts as the PCs explore from there. It’s how I’m going to start my Dalelands campaign.

What interesting ways have you previously tried, or would like to try to open a campaign. Assume that session zero has already taken place and characters are generated.

 

[zakael19]

I recently re-read Blood of Elves from the Witcher series and was struck by how it started. A dozen travelers sharing a campfire on the roadside for security, warmth and company. Sharing stories of what was going on in the land. Various tensions and themes that were going to crop up in the book.

I thought what a great way to start the campaign. Seed a couple of rumors to each PC based on their background and likely direction of travel, add in a half dozen NPCs to add some more rumors. Then let them have at the sandbox the next morning. Maybe that night something else happens involving the NPCs. Maybe they can be recurring NPCs and contacts as the PCs explore from there. It’s how I’m going to start my Dalelands campaign.

What interesting ways have you previously tried, or would like to try to open a campaign. Assume that session zero has already taken place and characters are generated.

My two Stonetop campaigns, with a set of provocative questions at a few of the PCs to set the scene ("Judge, when the last kid went missing from town, what made you finally call off the search?"); and then the hook based on the session 0 tensions and threats they had created. Pre-bitten for convenience.

My Daggerheart urban fantasy game with a half-joking hard-framed case ("you pile out of your cars...wait, Callie you don't drive, who did you ride with?... ok yeah, so as you pile out of your cars you see your Council handler waiting impatiently..."), a crotchety old sorceresses's pet cockatrice escaped into the Arboretum.

My last Blades in the Dark game with approaching the house to the score they'd come up with in session 0.

General theme: take stuff pre-established in session 0, drop it on the party, push to action.

 

[prabe]

I've had the PCs show up at a specific place, at a specific time, all having received letters suggesting they should be there, then. The contagious cultists appeared like fifteen minutes into the session, and we were off.

These days, I tend to have the PCs starting as long-term residents of a city, with connections to that city, who know each other; then I put them all somewhere in the city at the same time and throw stuff at a convenient fan.

 

[Celebrim]

Always start a campaign with a BANG!!!

My favorite way to start a campaign is with a massive disaster. Start it with something absolutely nuts. Then once you've got everyone to buy the hook, you can slow down and explore characters and setting.

My last D&D campaign began with a 40-foot-high tsunami flooding a city starting with the PC's all being at the docks (for various reasons) when the tide suddenly goes out. Followed by an invasion of deep ones.

My Star Wars campaign began in media res during an attempt to claim a bounty that had gone wrong and turned into a high-speed chase done a dusty boulder strewn canyon, with the bad guys blasting at them and tossing grenades at them.

I've made mistakes before in slow burning a campaign where players got bored before they got to the big bangs, and then years later they'd talk to me about the campaign and I'd tell them what was going on behind the scenes and where things were going, and they'd go, "That sounds so incredibly cool! I wish we'd got a chance to finish that campaign." So now I don't ever do slow burns or intellectual build ups or try to establish what "normal" is before giving the crazy. Go crazy and then the players will likely be lore hungry enough to absorb what is going on.

 

[zarionofarabel]

I like to have a Session Zero that includes group PC creation wherein the players decide on preexisting relationships between the PCs. I very much dislike having opening scenes where the players are all strangers who have to introduce themselves. I also find it hard on my suspension of disbelief when two people who only met yesterday are suddenly willing to risk life and limb for each other.

As for the particulars of opening scenes, frankly, they vary so much and are so dependent on campaign, system, world, theme, and individual PCs, that it's impossible for me to point to any particular style I prefer.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Nowadays I like my PCs to have connections to one another set up as part of session 0.

The actual starting session will usually be a low stakes sort of thing where players can get the hang of their characters. I'll introduce a couple of recurring NPCs. Maybe a threat or 2.

E.g. My last campaign start (a couple of years ago now) had the PCs all working as teachers at a local technical college. The starting session was NYE 1985. I rad a blurb in the voice of a the pirate radio DJ they all listened to, referencing some key events in 1985 and setting a general tone for the campaign. They met some of the NPCs, some of whom had plot hooks quietly attached, others who were just local colour. I also brought in a couple of low level recurring villains (now deceased.)

 

[The Soloist]

For group play, I like to present strong starting concepts to the players. This is discussed before character creation. It always worked very well:

• PCs are siblings and children of a baron, who has just been assassinated.
• PCs were 'enlisted' by press gangers on a sand gliding pirate ship. They must bide their time and try escape unnoticed.
• PCs are all Werebeasts and part of a travelling circus.

 

[zakael19]

Nowadays I like my PCs to have connections to one another set up as part of session 0.

All but one of the games I’m running right now build this into the core design. It works so well.

 

[bloodtide]

I start with a BANG!

My now classic is to have the PCs meet at a tavern for roughly two minutes..... then have the tavern explode and fall into the Abyss. It is a great way to jump start a game.

To just have the PCs falling through a Vortex of Infinity always works out great.

Having the PCs wake up together after having come back from the dead or frozen in time works out great too. Someone brings them back as pawns.....and the game goes from there.

I often do the "frozen in time' one for the really mixed up groups of wacky races and classes. So they wake up in a world like 500 years from their own time.

 

[Lanefan]

I like to have a Session Zero that includes group PC creation wherein the players decide on preexisting relationships between the PCs. I very much dislike having opening scenes where the players are all strangers who have to introduce themselves. I also find it hard on my suspension of disbelief when two people who only met yesterday are suddenly willing to risk life and limb for each other.

There's ways to make this highly believable in the fiction, however.

One I used was that each of the PCs, being a neophyte looking to break into the adventuring gig, had independently heard that a famous adventuring Company was recruiting. The only buy-in I asked from the players was that their newly-rolled-up PCs for whatever reason would attend the recruitment meeting; the beginning of which was the start of the campaign.

The PCs aren't the only applicants, though; there's about 100 people in the room. About half are rejected as being unqualified, the rest are arbitrarily broken up into adventuring groups (with all the PCs and a couple of NPCs in one group, this being the first time any of them had ever met) and sent out on "this is how adventuring works" training missions. The PC-party's mission was to journey to and explore what was in theory an empty complex (it wasn't!) and come back with a competently-done map of the place as proof they had explored it.

Boom. Now not only do I have a party with a reason to be together, but their first adventure is also set.

That game ran for 12 years.