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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 239250" data-attributes="member: 4937">Alot of good advice here.  Some that stood out:"The best beginning to a game I've played in was where the PCs were standing before a huge evil army."That _is_ a great beginning and that or similar devices are great ways to get low levels working together.  Perhaps they are all stragglers from the same army that was defeated in battle.  Cool.  Now they have history and a reason to work together.   Moreover, the future campaign has purpose.  Perhaps they all have a mutual friend who is in danger and needs thier help.   Perhaps they are all members of the same small village when it becomes besieged (right in front of thier eyes) by some agent of evil.  This is particularly cool if you spend some time introducing NPC's close to the characters and then suddenly start bumping them off (this also gives low levels some needed backup).  Perhaps they are all pilgrims journeying together (for various reasons) to some holy place.  The fighter is a guard, the cleric a guide, the thief a merchant plying wares along the way, one has a sick relative seeking healing and so forth.All of the above are of course imaginative variations on "You have all agreed to perform job X for NPC Y, and you are now on your way to remote wilderness location Z. And here come the goblins!".Some of the ways I've started campaigns:One player is unjustly accused of a crime and needs help clearing his name from the witnesses.  (This is going to work best if the PC's are good aligned.)One player recieves a vision from his diety of an impending disaster and must get help from other members of the village to avert it.The players are all street persons in a major city (I altered starting money). You know: the thief is a gamon, the bard a street performer, the cleric a pious and poor holy man, the fighter a rowdy for the theives guild, the mage an apprentice whose aged master has died.  After a session to set the feel, they were all shang-haied and forced to serve as sailors in the navy. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />The players village was destroyed by invading goblins and they are the only survivors.Do help work up those PC's backgrounds.  That in itself will give you ideas.It is important to give PC's the illusion of choices.  For instance, you can prepare a module so that the players are either the protagonists or antagonists in the story line depending on whose offer for help they accept.  Or you can prepare two or three small modules that you can easily scale up a level or three before the campaign, and add one additional short option each week reflecting last weeks desicion.  Small events can occur that show the progress of the story in areas that the PC's were not or could not take interest in during each session.  "I also like to start off with COMBAT! It helps everyone get into the game."That's really good advice too.  You may want to spend sometime setting the mood (especially if you don't want a hack and slash campaign), but combat is a great ice breaker - even if its only a brawl (which is also important since it shows you don't expect every encounter to be lethal).   It might be a good idea to put a negotiation early in the course of affairs too.  However, by the end of the first night you definately want to have at least one really tense rowsing combat - even if you are the sort of DM that expects some sessions to go by without a blade being drawn."Even if it means, that there are three doors, and i pick the wrong one, but the Dm has the same description behind all thre doors....I did that once- the players noticed when I wouldnt let them into the other two doors..."I thought this was an old trick (no matter which way you go on the map you go where I want you to), but the devious DM has boring descriptions or simple traps prepared for the unchosen rooms.  (Look disappointed and say things like, "Are you sure you don't want to try door #2?  Oh, well.  *sigh*  OR  "Gee! How lucky can you get.  Uou chose the right way first off!")</blockquote>

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