Start with Tragedy

[Kassoon]

https://i.*****.com/r47355Z.png

Let's write a memorable campaign intro together in 20 minutes.
https://www.kassoon.com/dnd/start-with-tragedy/

 

[jayoungr]

I like your basic principle, but I think you may have taken it a smidge too far. At least for my taste.

Man, did you ever squander a lot of plot hooks that the players were interested in, just to make them want to kill that dragon. You developed the solid beginnings of a potential campaign that your players would probably even have enjoyed, just to throw it all away for the sake of a big, shocking moment.

Isn't that an awful lot of wasted work, not to mention that it almost smacks of bait-and-switch?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

In Vecna Lives!, the players start the adventure either by playing the great mages of the setting or seeing what happened to them.

In a homebrew of my own, the PCs spent the first part of the initial evening at a citywide wedding party that sealed a truce and alliance ending a decades-long war...only to be snatched up by interdimensional pirates looking for “game” to be put in a hunting preserve...

So I’m familiar with and use the technique you describe. But I also think you took it a bit far. In a Godzilla flick, he and the other kaiju rarely destroy the WHOLE city. A sizable or key portion thereof is sufficient to demonstrate the stakes and get the players oriented on the scaly flying bastard’s demise. Imagine if the dragon had destroyed that city’s main church- the campaign world’s analogue of Notre Dame cathedral...

Because the total destruction of the city, among other things, begs the question of WHY the dragon would utterly destroy a city. Even if chaotic in nature, dragons are intelligent, cunning beings, and would have a motivating force behind laying a town to waste that he or she could otherwise raid and terrorize for decades with a bit of restraint.

 

[jgsugden]

I have to disagree with a core of your approach. You're giving YOUR story to the players rather than building one WITH the players.

In this scenario, you dictated everything. The players walked through YOUR story hooks, followed YOUR script and felt what YOU dictated. You're playing with yourself, and the PCs are essentially just watching. That is ... awkward.

I've done this. I started a campaign with the Tarrasque waking up and killing everyone - including the PCs - in a true Godzilla style rampage. The heroes were raised by a cleric following a prophesy... and it was one of the least successfuly campaigns I ran over the years. The players were never invested. They wanted to ignore the Tarrasque rampaging across the land. The entire reason for the game that I'd set up became this annoying burden they'd have to deal with sometime, but for the meantime they wanted to ignore it and do other things. I had far more interest from the same players in the campaigns where I considered the characters, the character motivations, and the stories the players enjoyed.... and built for those.

You're better off working with the players to craft the storylines and adventures. Look to their character origins for THEIR story hooks. Look for ways to cross THEIR hooks in interesting ways. Is the mentor of character A secretly the nemesis of character B's father? Let them help you craft the personal stakes for their PCs.

Does this mean that you can't start with a tragedy (either at the start of a campaign or a chapter of one)? No. The goal of your article works. I'm just noting that the underlying approach can be improved. In fact, there is a great example of how to use a tragedy to advance a story in the first Critical Role campaign. However, it uses the established connections rather than forcing new connections and hoping the players feel about it the way you want them to feel. It uses what the PCs and players gave the DM rather than Mercer dictating it all to the players.

 

[jayoungr]

I had far more interest from the same players in the campaigns where I considered the characters, the character motivations, and the stories the players enjoyed.... and built for those.

To be fair to the OP, I think he intends for the whole opening segment to be this kind of setup--for the DM to design a village tailored to catch both the PCs' and players interest by giving them tastes of what they would most enjoy. For example, he mentions that the wizard might be learning about some rare artifacts for sale in the market; I think there's an implied assumption that this is the kind of story that would really excite the wizard's player.

So basically, the OP wants you to dangle a campaign perfectly tailored to interest both the PCs and the players ... and then to cruelly yank it away to make them mad so that they'll want to kill his BBEG.

 

[MarkB]

So basically, the OP wants you to dangle a campaign perfectly tailored to interest both the PCs and the players ... and then to cruelly yank it away to make them mad so that they'll want to kill his BBEG.

That always carries the inherent risk of making the players more angry at the DM than the BBEG.

 

[S'mon]

I don't think bait & switch ever works.

If you're GMing John Wick, start the game when he wakes up looking at his dead dog. Everything before that is backstory.

 

[S'mon]

In Vecna Lives!, the players start the adventure either by playing the great mages of the setting or seeing what happened to them.

One of the most reviled adventure openings in the history of D&D!

 

[jayoungr]

That always carries the inherent risk of making the players more angry at the DM than the BBEG.

Yep. As I said in my first post above, I think this article advocates taking a decent idea just a bit too far.

 

[Immortal Sun]

I don't really have time to figure out what the players are interested in by letting them roam around town for a while. And I'm not really interested in playing that out, figuring out if they want to save puppies, read books, or kill monsters.

So I just assign the party a quest. They've already met. The premise: they're broke. The setting: the "adventurer line". The motivation: they need money and the government needs some job done. Oh yeah: a bunch of other broke people are competing with you to get the job done first.

Ready! Set! Go!