Did your campaign have a fantastic first adventure?

[Morrow]

Everyone has a lame 'party gathering' story. Many of us have been in games where the party first met in a tavern. Others have been in games where the characters were brought together by a mysterious benefactor. We're not so forthcoming about the campaigns that started really well.

Let's hear some really cool party gathering stories. DMs out there, you must have one you're particularly proud of, a first adventure that got your campaign off on the right foot. Players, tell us about the time you knew in the first twenty minutes of the first game that it was going to be a great campaign.

Morrow

 

[I'm A Banana]

The Journey

A new continent has been discovered...and the PC's are the ones recruited by the king to explore it. Morning comes. They board the ship. They set out...

...only to be attacked by demons, thrown into a cage on a giant turtle, and meet a hyperactive fairy with a penchant for rotted cheese.

Mwahaha! It was great!

 

[Dalenthas]

One PC tried to pickpocket the other, they ended up doing jailtime together (street brawl and all) and they're still a bit against each other....

 

[Crothian]

We all were in the same tavern when the worse thing possible happened: They ran out of Ale!! Someone was stopping the Ale shipments (and other less desirable things like basic food stuff) from reaching the town. We immediately set out to find the missing Ale. That was the start to a great 4 year campaign that ended about 7 months ago. It started in AD&D and was transfered to d20.

 

[Ruined]

I was beginning a ToEE campaign, but wanted something to bind the characters together. So they each made 1st level characters, gave them to me a week before game. When time to play came, I handed each their character, but the ones they had were 9th-10th level, prestige classes and all.

They were investigating a tower that had appeared from out of the mists, along with a respected wizard they all knew for one reason or another. One character was his former apprentice, returned to assist with this task, etc. Enough roleplay at the start to make him a wise, likeable fellow.

Up through the tower, past some puzzles, combat with powerful undead creatures. They reach the top chamber of the tower, and are confronted by a withered necromancer that the wizard knows. The necromancer summons wraith-like creatures to assist him and combat ensues. At one point, the necro-guy casts a deadly spell that sends tendrils of negative energy through all living creatures in the room. As the characters watch, they see the wraiths they fight begin to take form, begin to look like them. The wizard sacrifices himself to stop the spell and send the evil wizard away. And the tower fades, leaving the weakened characters to fall down into the snow.

This leaves them with an elder mage in a coma, and all of them greatly weakened. I take the new characters, and hand them their first level versions. Now part of their shared agenda is to battle the necromancer's forces and reclaim their lost life force.

And the first few sessions went _very_ well.

 

[The Oracle]

Taverns are cliched

I only use taverns for rumor dispersement. My party were in a caravan on the way to another town, when they were attacked by goblins. They had to act quickly, and learn what each other might do in combat, with no warning. Helps make them a team. I have found less satisfactory methods for introducing new characters (new players entering) or replacement characters (characters killed and not raised for whatever reason).

As I take my party from Hepmonaland, to other crystal spheres far away, they will have almost no reason to find standard characters, so players will have the chance to be exotic things from the Monster Manual and from other D20 products and older 2nd edition settings which have been converted. I plan to visit about five completely different environments, but we shall see if that works out.

 

[UofMDude]

I am currently running a campaign where two of the characters are holy warriors named Jesus and Mohammed. They wrote up a very intricate story of how they (and the rest of the party) met. No, I really don't want to talk about it.


UofMDude

 

[noretoc]

My fave was one of my first. MY players were all contestants in a tournament. They each won thier compitions, and were later captured, to be released on an island and hunted by a madman ranger who got tired of hunting creature, and wanted humans. He was a member of a traveling circus run by a demon, ringmastered by a doppleganger, and each performer was a thief/monster type.

 

[Trevalon Moonleirion]

In my latest campaign, all of the adventurers had traveled to a big city up north because of a big summer festival. To introduce all of the PCs, I had them all become contestants in a few carnival-style games, let them roll some skill checks etc. to play the games and then had a melee break out after a mugging gone wrong right in the middle of the town square--and that's really where the PCs got together to get the thief. Later on, the city contracted them to find out why a formerly upstanding citizen tried to murder someone right in the middle of the festival.

Most of my other campaigns have started with the cliche "so you're all in this bar, right, and all of a sudden...." (So i'm not the most creative sometimes... LOL)

 

[kenjib]

I'm thinking of starting a campaign with the Burning of Ta'er Medain (a major port city in a vassal state of an Empire). The characters can pick from a bunch of options, the only real requirement being that at the end they have a reason to back the secessionist side of a certain civil war in a the vassal state of the Empire, which is the force that will bind them together.

As retribution for a daring pirate raid on one of the Empire's cities, the Empire has sent it's fleet and an invasive force to teach a lesson to the inhabitants of Ta'er Medain, which has a thriving black market and is generally known to harbor the leaders of the rebellion hidden amongst it's underclass. Unfortunately, the Emperor's men are not very discriminating between rebels and innocents so the attrocities committed during this event will become a rallying cry for the rebels for the rest of the campaign.

Some examples of ways they could start:

1. A young recruit in the rebel underground. Characters who choose this will be trying to do as much as they can against the imperial troops, mostly helping people escape and evacuate the city and disrupting some of the attrocities when possible. The forces are far too overwhelming to fight head on.

2. A prisoner, due to either a real crime or a political crime. A storming of the prison by rebels will take place during the attack before they flee the city. Freed prisoners will flee the city with the rebels.

3. An innocent citizen of the city. Subjected to the attrocities of the attack, they join with the rebels during the Burning and escape the city with them. They might be forced to act against imperial soldiers, thus getting in trouble and having to flee from the city.

etc...

I won't be starting for a while, but there will be lots of chaos, and little goals for them to try and accomplish during the attack and the subsequent flight from the city. They will have a chance to see some of their long term enemies and will gain reasons to hate them. The ruthless imperial ambassador will be in charge. He will be aboard the legendary Steelhammer "the Unsinkable", an iron reinforced ship that belches magical fire from it's prow, the devastating power of which will be fully demonstrated during the opening.

Now I just need to flesh it out so I can eventually run it.