Classic Campaign Starts?

[Amaroq]

One of my best campaigns started as follows:

-All the PCs start off as adolescent friends and lived in the same small village.
-I would "fast forward" the years and describe things of importance that happened in the town.
-The party would pick a few skills or proficiencies that would eventually become skills and abilities of the class they wanted to play (the fighter would hang out at the barracks and practice with weapons, the rogue would sneak around the town getting into mischief).

Wow! I'm working on a "start of a campaign" currently, and that is exactly how I see the first session starting. I've been working on ways to flesh that out. I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one with that idea, and that someone else whose been down that path decided it was a successful start!

Very neat.

 

[The Spectrum Rider]

Start 1: A duke wants to find his son, missing for 20 years. (Unbenownst to the duke, the son has been changed into a werespider, and is hiding out in shame.) He gathers together a team of adventurers who don't know each other. But they have this in common: he has a hold over each one of them.

A different hold in each case. One of them, a thief, tried to rob him and was caught. He's not pressing charges... yet. The wizard is an apprentice of a man whose life the duke saved during their adventuring days; the master requires the apprentice to serve the duke as part of his education. One's the daughter of a family friend; one's the scion of a noble family that has fallen upon hard times, and taht the duke can help politically; and so on....

(Comic-book readers may recall the similar premise of a DC comic book called "The Secret Six.")

As they adventure, the characters get caught up in a conflict between the anicent spider goddess and the more recent goddess who replaced her. But they always had their primary mission - find the duke's son, or his fate - to give shape to their motivations.

Start 2: An isolated, little-known archipelago is opening up trade and cultural relations with the mainland. The powerful Church of Baldur on the mainland learns that their co-religionists on the archipelago - who, a century ago, were in a position of great political power - are now a decaying and decadent sect. They gather together a group of adventurers to be a "trade delegation," secretly tasked with learning the history of the Baldurans on the island. As the campaign continues, the party becomes, first, aware of, and second, involved in, the political struggles of the islands, and have to choose sides.

These both worked pretty well for me.

The Spectrum Rider

 

[The Goblin King]

My most memorable and longest running game I've ever played in started out with all our characters being taken into custody by the local authorities. None of us wanted to be there in the morning so we broke out of the jail and made our way to the next town (which was across a trackless desert, over a forbidden mountain range, and through a mysterious forest) Adventure and hilarity ensues as the characters try to survive.

The 'freak squad' consisted of:
A Furry Fighter/Sorcerer (my character)
A Elvish Warrior-Princess
An Albino Human Mage (found out later was a Godling)
A hard drinking Centaur
A Human from a technologically advanced future
An Orc Fighter that could regenerate
A Human Archer who could fly

We were sorely lacking the the sneaky and diplomacy department. We pretty much just powered our way through encounters until we met the Albino Mages evil half-brother who was working his way up to becoming a full fledged Evil God.

 

[Sir Whiskers]

I stole this idea from another poster on the boards. It's certainly the most memorable campaign start my players have seen.

The party is sitting at an inn, celebrating their latest adventure success. The door opens and they turn to see who it is...and everything goes black.

Next thing they know, it is cold and something wet is on thier skin.

What has happened is this: The person entering the inn was a medusa and they were turned to stone. 12 years have passed and it is now winter (which is why it turned cold all of a sudden). They have been transformed back to flesh by the mayor of the town they once aided (the town where the inn was located). He has spent the last several years trying to amass enough money to have them permenantly transformed back to flesh, but he has failed.

All he could manage was to acquire enough money to buy a salve that turns them to flesh for one week (which is why their skin is wet). But if they can drink an elixir made from the blood of the "Stone Lord" (the medusa), the change to flesh will be permenant. So, they must find the medusa, kill him and drink his blood.

The problem is that in the dozen years that have passed, the "Stone Lord" has managed to overthrow the entire region and set himself up as dictator. He lives a couple of days away in a fortress.

To further complicate matters, the "statues" of the party were left at the inn as a display of what happens to those who would oppose the will of the Stone Lord. When they go missing, word will get back to the Stone Lord fairly quickly and he will be prepared for them.

I modified the idea to have a longer period of time pass, and the party needed the help of a neutral-good troll shaman to brew up a potion to cure themselves. The time-limit was somewhat random, so each week, one party member would revert to stone. It really added to the suspense as they rushed to collect the needed ingredients before the last character reverted. BTW - the last ingredient was the stone finger of a stoned creature...

 

[Amaroq]

The party is sitting at an inn, celebrating their latest adventure success. The door opens and they turn to see who it is...and everything goes black...

Beautiful! I like it! It covers a number of good points: why the party has to work together, why there is urgency about it, and even why the players aren't 100% familiar with the world: a lot can have changed in 12 years...

That sounds very memorable!

 

[Morpheus]

The party did not know each other and each of them had found their way to a frontier town. After a couple of days, in come the forces of the "Black Eagle" who are looking for some conscripts for the army. Each town is required to send 20 able-bodied men and if enough men don't want to join, a lottery is held. Well, not enough men joined, a lottery was held and, lo and behold, the PCs are selected (I actually had a bag with stones in it and the PCs got to reach and and pick-white stone was bad...all the stones in the bag were white ).
Later, as they are traveling to the army outpost, the caravan is attacked by goblins and almost everyone is killed. The PCs band together and escape and, thus, the campaign began...

 

[Pbartender]

In Media Res...

What are the best starts to a campaign which you've ever been in, either as a player or as the DM? What campaign starts have you participated in which beat "You're all sitting in a bar one evening, when...." cold?

I'm looking for detail, setting multiple plot hooks, and explaining why the characters are a "group" rather than a collection of individuals: preferably first session only.

You might think of this as "What was the most memorable start to a campagin you've ever seen?"

AHEM!

"Roll for initiative."

 

[James Heard]

AHEM!

"Roll for initiative."

That's up there with my "Roll a save or die" start. Then I placed everyone on the battlemat in the bar and let them all stir around wondering why everyone in the city almost died (or did). They were pretty ticked off about that one, but I told them to make up two characters...

 

[FireLance]

In a previous campaign, two of the PCs (a human and a half-orc) were secretly (the players knew this, but not the characters) the illegitimate children of a womanizing baron. The third PC declined to play a half-elf (alas) and instead elected to play an elf that the baron had a soft spot for.

The barony was under attack from armies of troglodytes, and the baron decided to send the PCs away on a trumped-up mission to investigate rumors of a "demon hound" in a remote village far away from the battle front.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

One:
The previous campaign's party sponsored and set up the (then) current campaign's adventuring party.

Two:
The entire party had been jailed (either legitimately or were framed). Suddenly, the jail went into lockdown mode and the PCs were the only prisoners who not only got out of their cells, but also the prison as a whole.