rmcoen
Adventurer
I have to echo others' posts: Start with a Bang! Start with something that gets the blood pumping, and start the Action rather than hope they pull on the Hook.
Additionally... give the PCs a reason to know each other and care about staying together. It doesn't have to be "all of them" to "all of them", but everyone should have a connection to at least 1 or two of the others, so everyone is included somehow.
Two campaigns ago, the PCs were all "kids" from a frontier village. Someone came into the tavern where one of them worked, and asked for help finding "old Mattie Birdo", the village crazy woman who wandered off into the hills again, but this time didn't come back. It led to a goblin ambush, then an old ruin...
Last campaign, the PCs were all students/apprentices of a group of mentors that knew each other (the mentors did), and gave their apprentices a field assignment to investigate an odd magical emmenation from a lost elven city. The PCs met at the teleporter on the Temple of Ioun (where one PC was an acolyte), and then headed into the jungle. One PC had been assigned ("built" - a warforged) as a bodyguard to the actual student, and one PC was the elven ranger assigned to lead them.
The current campaign began with 4 of the 6 PCs being the non-heir children of Frontier Barons, meeting in their favorite bar while their parents were having "serious talks". The 5th PC was the bard that performed there - and was a good friend of one of the baronial scions, who sometimes joined him on stage. The 6th PC was a foreign "military advisor", who came running into the bar - conveniently located near the Barracks - desperately looking for someone to come help: his patrol had been ambushed by goblins, and being a foreigner, the local Guards were blaming him! (Eventually, he was assigned as a bodyguard/liaison for the scions as they kept getting into trouble.)
(The one campaign I played in, which started with Phandelver, we started in meda res - at the goblin ambush of the caravan apparently all of us had joined in order to make some "easy money"...)
Additionally... give the PCs a reason to know each other and care about staying together. It doesn't have to be "all of them" to "all of them", but everyone should have a connection to at least 1 or two of the others, so everyone is included somehow.
Two campaigns ago, the PCs were all "kids" from a frontier village. Someone came into the tavern where one of them worked, and asked for help finding "old Mattie Birdo", the village crazy woman who wandered off into the hills again, but this time didn't come back. It led to a goblin ambush, then an old ruin...
Last campaign, the PCs were all students/apprentices of a group of mentors that knew each other (the mentors did), and gave their apprentices a field assignment to investigate an odd magical emmenation from a lost elven city. The PCs met at the teleporter on the Temple of Ioun (where one PC was an acolyte), and then headed into the jungle. One PC had been assigned ("built" - a warforged) as a bodyguard to the actual student, and one PC was the elven ranger assigned to lead them.
The current campaign began with 4 of the 6 PCs being the non-heir children of Frontier Barons, meeting in their favorite bar while their parents were having "serious talks". The 5th PC was the bard that performed there - and was a good friend of one of the baronial scions, who sometimes joined him on stage. The 6th PC was a foreign "military advisor", who came running into the bar - conveniently located near the Barracks - desperately looking for someone to come help: his patrol had been ambushed by goblins, and being a foreigner, the local Guards were blaming him! (Eventually, he was assigned as a bodyguard/liaison for the scions as they kept getting into trouble.)
(The one campaign I played in, which started with Phandelver, we started in meda res - at the goblin ambush of the caravan apparently all of us had joined in order to make some "easy money"...)
