Introductory Session

[Gwaihir]

when starting a new campaign, has anyone ever conducted an introductory session to introduce the players to a new setting? Other than rolling up characters, what would you do during this session?

I'm thinking of using one of these to help, er, encourage my players to better integrate their characters and backgrounds into the setting.

 

[Raloc]

Maybe have them do some solo sessions or group sessions doing various one shots of pre-made characters/NPCs in the game world to give them some backstory (you could set them up as the PCs mentors or something like that, or just set it up in the past so their exploits can be heard of by the PCs).

 

[HellHound]

I've been bouncing around a system to make all players semi-familiar with a setting prior to starting play in it.

Basically, a background generator that actually takes into account major events in the setting and determine (by random roll) what the character's involvement in those events were.

Background generators (like in CyberPunk, for instance) help players to get a feel for their characters. By tying the background generator to the game world (like in the Pendragon RPG), you can provide each player with some basic setting information in the process.