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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Andre" data-source="post: 2251484" data-attributes="member: 25930">Here's an idea I stole from these boards a couple years ago: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 their 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 permanently 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 permanent. 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.This turned out to be great fun as an adventure because the party was on a tight timetable and had to keep moving forward (which is what I want when I'm running a one shot). They were immediately faced with the dilemma of heading for the fortress with all due haste or trying to kill the garrison of bugbears that the Stone Lord had stationed at the town to keep them from sending word about their "escape".This is an excellent example of starting the campaign by forcing the characters to cooperate to survive. The idea is that this will forge bonds that will hold up for the rest of the campaign. Though the original idea assumes the party members already adventured together, there's no reason it couldn't be used before the PC's actually meet, immediately after they've bumped into each other, or whatever.When I used the idea, I had a hundred years go by, but that was far too much time - it split the characters from their backgrounds. If I was to do it over, I'd only have a year or two go by. Also, IMC the party didn't have to find the Stone Lord. They instead had to seek out a mysterious shaman who lived in a dark forest. The shaman turned out to be a rather nice, if lonely, troll who enjoyed tea and wore a shawl to keep out the cold. The shaman agreed to help, but the party had to collect the obscure ingredients needed before the temporary cure ran out. To heighten the tension, I had it wear off somewhat randomly, so the players never knew who would be next (one character made it back to the shaman with everything and was able to un-stone the others). Very memorable beginning to the campaign.</blockquote>

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