Our last campaign ended in an anti-climactic fashion, so the group wanted to do something different. Our last campaign was an open-ended, and with 2 players that were new to the game, the group did a lot of wandering around and weren't able to create their own story. I threw plot hook after plot hook, but the campaign felt very disconnected and the players wanted more direction. They wanted a more cinematic feel to the game so I came up with this idea.
The metaplot of the campaign is that dragons were put into a comatose state 300 years before the birth of PC's. The dragons were abusing the Weave and Mystra decided to punish them by sending a shockwave through the Weave that would only affect the dragons. They were to be punished for 1000 years. Unfortunately, a group of zealots found a couple of the sleeping dragons and decided to try and help them break free from their curse in the hopes that the dragons would reward them and join forces together. This group, called The Dragonhand (modified the original FR group), is bent on finding a way to awaken the dragons.
This leads to the PC's. When Mystra sent the shockwave, it had some undesirable side-effects, the most notable of which is that it essentially cut the gods off from the Material Plane. It also made magic a little more unstable than usual. Mystra suddenly realized that eventually someone would discover the dragons and want to interfere, so she used up much of the last of her ability to "meddle" and she created a safety net. It was a prophecy that stated that if anyone were to interfere with the dragons punishment and attempt to revive them, heroes would be created stop them. These heroes are called Dragonhunters, and their job is to keep the world safe from recently awakened dragons looking to take revenge for their imprisonment.
So with that metaplot, I wanted to come up with an interesting way to not only connect the PC's, but introduce the metaplot in an interesting way. So here's what I did.
I created the PC's with the players individually. The players were not to tell anyone else what they were playing. This was to help with the storyline. I also encouraged them to select any region in FR they wanted as their homeland. This was also important to the metaplot. Once the characters were created, I worked up their backstories so that all of the characters had 2 things in common; they had the exact same birthday, and they all had a strange birthmark. The birthmark was the mark of the dragonhunter, but during their childhood, were told different things by different people that were merely speculating on what it meant. Another thing that I built into each of their backstories were these strange dreams they had of playing with children they've never met before that were all from far off lands. Not only were these dreams recurring, but the dreams actually aged along with the PC's. And to make it even more interesting, they all spoke a strange language to each other in their dreams. It was a language that nobody had ever heard of. In truth, they were speaking Aragrakh, an ancient draconic language and was part of their grooming for their destiny.
Once all of the characters were created, I ran 1st level as solo games. Basically, I used 1st level to play out important events in their childhood, to add some real memories to their backstory. Once everyone made it to second level, we were ready to begin.
What made this really run and made for great roleplaying was how we started the campaign. All of the PC's woke up in a glade in an unfamiliar forest. This was the first time the players were able to get a look at other characters in the party in person. I described it so that they realized that these people all looked like the people in their dreams. The other interesting dynamic was that they were from all over the Realms. Since I don't use Common in my games, they didn't know how to speak to each other. Before they had a chance to recall their "dream language", they suddenly realized that they weren't alone. A large band of goblins was moving very quickly through this forest, seemingly either after something, or trying to get away from something. The party found itself in the middle of a small skirmish, with a bunch of mountain men hunting these goblins in the forest and apparently trying to get them out of the forest. It was really fun and really chaotic as the players were trying to figure out ways to communicate with each other using hand signals until the coast was clear. Once things settled down, the sorcerer in the group remembered the language from the dreams and spoke using that language. Everyone understood and were relieved. But they still had problems. Where were they? How did they get here? Who are these strange men trying to talk to them? What has happened to their friends and family?
It was really fun watching things unfold. While the party was getting to know each other, one of them remarked about their birthmark. Once they realized that they shared the same birthmark, they figured that they must be part of something very special, handed down from the gods themselves.
We are on our 12th session now and the story is getting really exciting. They have unlocked the power in their birthmarks, which gave them the Dragonhunter feat which I modified to make it even better. They are at 5th level about to go to 6th, and at 6th, they are going to learn that both the good and evil dragons were punished, and the characters are each bonded to 1 type of good dragon. The idea is that eventually they will learn that they have to awaken a dragon of their bond and these dragons will serve as cohorts to defeat the Dragonhand and the evil dragons. The good dragons, while bitter for being punished for the actions of their cousins, will see the awakening as a chance to prove they didn't deserve the punishment and believe that they can earn their freedom by helping the Dragonhunters to succeed in defeating the Dragonhand.
I'm sorry that this got so long, but I wanted to give a decent explanation of how I tied the characters together in a way that wasn't instantly obvious to the players. They started out the game not even knowing what kind of character anyone else was running. To make things even more disorienting, it took them the entire first session to find a way to communicate with each other. While there is a metaplot in place, I didn't give the characters much to go on in terms of figuring anything out, so they had to do that on their own. It gave them a sense of freedom in regards to decision making, but they also had a sense of purpose, sharing the birthmark, that gave the campaign direction. In addition to the metaplot, they all have their own personal motives and goals that were built into their backstories. This allowed the players to come up with some ideas on things they would like to see their characters involved in, and also gives us plenty of side quests if the party hits a dead end.
My very first game ever was as a player in the dreaded, "you are sitting around at a tavern looking at the help wanted posters......". This was in 1980. I didn't like that style of game set up even back then.
I feel like one of the most important parts of a campaign is how you tie the characters together. I try to run what I call "cinepic" style games, a combination of cinematic and epic game style. Having a creative backstory that ties the characters together in some way really helps me keep a consistency and verisimilitude to the game.
I REALLY like the OP's way of doing that! And I really like the method that (Psi)SeveredHead mentioned.
This is a really interesting thread, and I'm looking foward to seeing other ideas from others!
