D&D, especially in the current edition, seems focused on large 1-13 level campaign adventures. I'm not inherently against starting at Level 1 (especially for new players), but when you've been playing for years, Level 1 adventures take on a sameness: goblin ambushes, lesser undead in the cemetery, rats in the tavern basement, etc. Unfortunately, this design paradigm means that some players (and DMs) get bored before the campaign gets around to "the good stuff."
The question I pose is this: Is there an assumption of mundane, trite adventures baked into the D&D experience? If so, what should one do about that? Start at higher levels? Somehow try to make beginning levels more interesting and impactful on the campaign?
Consider a few examples.
"The Red Hand of Doom" (3.5 ed, levels 6-12): This is considered one of the best officially produced adventures from the 3.x era. It doesn't start at 1st level with rat infestations in basements. Instead, the characters are thrust in a regional conflict and war. It jumps ahead to "start at the good stuff."
"Tomb of Annihilation" and "Curse of Strahd" (5e, levels 1-13*): These two regularly come up as the best officially produced 5e adventures. While both start nominally at 1st level, they each encourage the DMs to quickly skip through the first few levels or present a short intro quest that has little to do with the plot (and isn't considered a strong part of the adventure.)
I was thinking about this experience when I was reading a Savage World Point Plot Campaign that starts off with the heroes being told an asteroid is on a trajectory to hit their planet, so they must charter a ship and fly to the asteroid and destroy it with a nuclear warhead to save the planet. This is the opening of the campaign, and really starts it with a (literal) bang. But in D&D our heroes are killing rats in basements?!! Fighting goblins who rob merchants on the road?
Why is D&D so miserly about giving characters an epic beginning to their stories? Is it because the default assumption is that you're going to be playing in a campaign that will last months (or years), so you've got to keep from getting too big too fast?
