How did your favorite Campaign start out?

[Dash Dannigan]

This is a question for both players and DMs. I'm starting a campaign next week and I just wanted to hear how other campaigns "started". There are several techniques to doing this and I want to hear what you folks out there do, though I do realize the "type'" of campaign will in many ways determine how a campaign is begun.

I am considering several different ways myself, starting a pirate-esk game on the Sea of Fallen Stars (FR).

(1) 1st lvl - Shipwrecked.

(2) 1st lvl - Village island youngsters that lose home to marauding orc pirates.

(3) 2nd lvl - Mariners put in awkward situation and forced to mutiny or die.

(4) 2nd lvl - Prisoners who are made by government to become corsairs (pirate-hunters) for their freedom.

Or a combo of any of these was my thoughts. Any other creative ways that were notable about your fav campaign?

 

[DiFier]

We sorta started my favorite campaign in the middle. The charachters already knew each other. this was just thier first big investigation. Did I mention that they were members of the Freeport city watch. So we started off busting bad guys. But I sorta like the ship wreck idea. just so long as your players get to keep their stuff. They might get a bit miffed if they don't.

Al of your ideas are ood for getting the charachters to work together. (At least a bit) I like #3 the least.

 

[d4]

one of our best campaigns started in a brothel.

i was playing a priest.

 

[jollyninja]

the best campaign i was ever involved in began with a minotaur and a ninja meeting on the road and not killing each other because the two players didn't know eachother verry well and didn't want to start anything. they travelled to the nearest town and had some drinks. it got much better after a year or so. my fondest memory gaming may be of that minotaur charging a flind ranger in a duel and criticalling with his horns for max damage and killing the big jerk as he fled directly therafter by throwing a club and routing his dozen gnoll buddies without a fight. the ninja stood there menacingly glaring.

 

[thundershot]

I run 3 campaigns, but two of them take place in the same world. The other (the reality hopping exiles) have been to the world and ended up with someone from one of the other groups as part of their group (yes, it was planned).

As to how they STARTED? Well... um... I can't really remember all the details.

The original group started out doing the Keep on the Borderlands, but none of them are in that group anymore. Either retired, died, or just disappeared. Currently, the main group is divided into 3 "squads". One group is doing some of the adventures is FFE's Treasure Quests (with MUCH adjustments, since the maps were done by monkeys), and another is doing a Perpetrated Press' Arsenal beefed-up Sunless Citadel (the magical weapons were from a long-lost civilization), and the other group is at "home", an old abandoned temple of Pelor that they acquired (from "Theives in the Forest").

The second group started with Night Below, but a lot of side-tracking kept them from actually entering the Underdark, and they ended up in Spelljammer instead. They just recently completed the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil.

The third group is the most unique, and I put a lot of pride in the fact that the group WORKS. I took each player individually and ran them through a short scenerio, each one ending with them arriving in the demiplane that serves as the "home base" for the group. Each of them from a different reality, they leap from world to world performing missions...


Hm.. sorry for the babblings...



Chris

 

[Wycen]

The best I remember started in Greyhawk at the Temple of Elemental Evil and either Sigil or Pandemonium, I can't quite remember now.

The best part about the Pandemonium game was that I had not originally intended to join, but then my psycho roommate struck and I suddenly felt the need to get out of the house more often. But by that time they had a full house. A few weeks later the DM asked if I still wanted to join, they had an opening or two for various non game related reasons. I remember the DM telling me, "you might feel a little left out as right now the story is focusing on so and so". Turns out, I ended up being one of the stable guys and got my own story bits later on.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

My previous (FR) campaign started as the PCs being the proteges of the previous campaigns' characters, who set up the party as mercenaries (complete with a small HQ and adventuring charter).


The one I'm starting up next week (homebrew) will begin with the PCs having been arrested and sitting in jail...whether they've been framed, are guilty or were accused and lost the trial. Their first "mission" will be to escape.

 

[Crothian]

THe characters meet at the local pub, buty to their horror the ale never arrived. So, they had to find out why the Ale shipments were disappearing....

 

[Anubus]

My favorite campaign is the one I'm running now. It started with all the PC's waking up on a beach in a pile of debris. None of them had any idea how thry got there or who they were. They've since had to discover who they were, and what happened to then that caused the memory loss, all with varying degrees of success. The really fun part at the beginning was dealing with the Shaman in the group's tiger companion, if only they had remembered that the tiger was on their side, it would have saved the rogue a lot of grief..... Anyway the shipwreck thing worked really well for me.

 

[carrot]

Odd - this seems to be a bit of a theme - my favourite campaign started with the group waking up naked on a beach, with no memory of how or why we got there. It got stranger as we walked up the beach to find a small door in a tree with a pile of gear behind it...