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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4996196" data-attributes="member: 4937">I've had an idea for a campaign since about the 6th grade that sounds roughly similar to your idea.  Everyone would be required to create a back ground that makes them the intimate acquintance and childhood friend of the younger of two princes - whether it is a cousin, the child of some prominent servant, a child of a wealthy merchant who had the same tutor, a hunting partner, the maid the prince lost his virginity to, or whatever.  I've never had the oppurtunity to start it up.However, I think your idea for how to start the campaign out is not a good one.  While a session where the party spends time socializing admist scheming nobles and participates in a number of skill challenges might be fun, it's not a good way to start a campaign.  Every campaign needs to start with some intense action to set the stage.  The first chapter of every campaign needs to be some intense hook that wets the appetite of the player for more.  Afterwards, you can slow down and do some exposition to deepen the players understanding of what is going on.For example, my campaign would start with the party being thrown right into the middle of an assasination attempt (while relatively unarmed) which ends up seeing the court look about like the same sort of bloody mess that ends Hamlet.  This throws the court into turmoil, and sets the stage for the first adventure (your friend the prince asks you to investigate a murder mystery he was going to investigate himself, before the attempt on the life of his father forced him to attend to other duties).   So I personally would advise abandoning plans to make this sort of thing be the first session.  Until you've hooked the players into the setting, they are likely to be bored and wonder what your campaign has in store for them.  Hook them first, and then they'll want to do more exploring to see what they can find.As for the sort of challenges one faces at a royal court, someone was right to point out that the rich are generally bored and seldom do anything challenging collectively.  A hunting party is one possibility.  A masked ball is also a traditional setting for fantastic intrigue and offers party members oppurtunities to embarrass themselves individually by failing skill checks they might not have like Diplomacy, Perform (dance), Innuendo, and Knowledge (Nobility and royalty) (using it as an ettiquette roll for court life).  Establish some rituals of the court that the party is expected to negoitaite and then have them blunder through them.  Too much blundering and some one gets offended and tries to provoke a confrontation that leads to a challenge to a dual (in the early morning hour), one which turns murderous when the challenger doesn't show and instead sends thugs to kill the party.  Meanwhile, while they are blundering through these minor challenges, have some minor conspiracy (which may turn lethal if the PC's don't intervene) be going on around them, forcing them to make sense motive and spot (read lips) checks to keep up with what is going on.  I don't much like the skill challenge model, as I'd prefer that they peice together that someone has drugged the dukes daughter's desert wine and plans to rape her (for example) from the clues rather than just telling them the plot after they get 6 successes.  But that's more second or third session sort of stuff than first session, IMO.</blockquote>

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