Starting Hook to a Dark Sun campaign

[toucanbuzz]

I'm looking for input and improvements on a "hook" for a Dark Sun campaign I'm working on. My players have never done the setting, which is a savage desert world where magic defiles life, halflings are cannibals, and psionics is common. They like semi-structured adventure path campaigns, such as Curse of Strahd. I want to capture the flavor of the setting, do something more novel than "you meet in a tavern," and give us a chance to work this into a Session 0: Prologue.[sblock] This is where we start with the hook and then roleplay our way backwards, no dice, making our group history up and building off one another's story. It's a fantastic way to start a group. For example, in Curse of Strahd, we began with the Duchess invitation to clear out gypsies, and we roleplayed back why each player was invited. By the time we were done, one player was the daughter tasked with her first important duty, one was the bastard son that the duchess just wanted out of the house, one was the older half-elf tutor who treated these two like his own children, whether they wanted it or not, and the last was a dwarf forester who had served the family for two generations and knew the parents just as well as the children.[/sblock]
The campaign premise from which we'll make backgrounds is: [sblock] opposing the despotic sorcerer King Kalak, who is bleeding the city's resources and slaves dry building a monumental ziggurat for the last 20 years. To speed it up, he is now commandeering any and all slaves and promising a massive arena gates to commemorate it all. A resistance has recruited the party in a plan to take down the king (details aren't fully shared in case someone gets caught and the King's mindbenders go to work). Although many have tried over the centuries and failed, the resistance believes the time will never be better to act than now (they don't explain why to keep the party from again, if caught, giving up secrets). The party's role will be to pose as slaves and be taken by the King's templars. An operative will ensure they are redirected to the gladiator pits. They will get more orders once inside, and this will direct them to help smuggle resources and assist a gladiator, to be named (for purposes not yet known). If the party fails, there's a good chance a lot of good people will die. Everyone has to do their part.[/sblock]
Hook #1. Find a way to get arrested on purpose. Most crimes are now being punished with a slavery sentence, and the King is taking them all. We'd roleplay how each player gets arrested, using the format from the 2E Freedom module. In that module, the arrest scenes are simply no-win farces to get the players captured. I've found if players know the premise to begin with, it's lame to stat up a no-win scenario for them. It appears all is going well, but something goes wrong (maybe a corrupt slaver is tired of losing his profits and cuts a deal to get some slaves "on the sly" to sell to the neighboring city-state of Urik). The party ends up on a mekillot-drawn slave fortress crossing the desert. They'll have to escape and find a way back to Tyr in time to hopefully salvage the mission. Wherein we play the excellent introductory adventure from the 2E box set where the party escapes with little but a bone dagger and jug of water, having to worry more about water than monsters, and learning the flora and fauna of the desert are just as dangerous as any monster.

#2. Alternatively, the party starts already taken, having posed as slaves on a resistance friendly farm that is visited for "voluntary donations" by the king's templars. We could use the same hook (corrupt slaver), or someone panics (the templars put it down and these slaves are deemed problematic, so they are traded at a loss to a Urik dealer), and so on. Same escape, but we save the "find a way to get arrested" hook for later as the way they can salvage the mission.

Or a 3rd way?

 

[Satyrn]

As a player, I'd prefer number 2.

Hook #1 just looks like heavy handed railroading if I don't know it's coming. And if I do know it's coming, I'd rather just skip past the scene.

 

[toucanbuzz]

Good point. While roleplaying prologues are fun, if we end up using a "getting arrested" plan later, leaves me room for unexpected curve-balls, such as the guards being in a violent mood when they arrive, or stealing food from a vendor under protection of a local gang that doesn't call for the guard and instead calls for a beatdown.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

All Dark Sun campaigns should start with characters being arena slaves. Much like an Elder Scrolls game, how they got there doesn't matter, because that's not what they'll be remembered for. You might want to fill in back stories gradually during the campaign, with flashback scenes for each character and such, because that would be awesome.

Some might think an arena slave start in Dark Sun is some sort of cliche, but it isn't until your players have already done it once.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Don't forget the option of a invasion by genies' armies from a elemental plane. Maybe these genies are kindred of fallen titans or deities, and they are searching people to be their new idols.

Other idea is the spynewyrns are true dragons, and somebody (from the past?) want to create something like a humanoid parasite to controll them.

 

[toucanbuzz]

Some might think an arena slave start in Dark Sun is some sort of cliche, but it isn't until your players have already done it once.

They've never started this way in any of my campaigns so it'd be fresh. They have started as prisoners/slaves (Out of the Abyss) who had to escape and survive a foreign and hostile wilderness, which was 2 campaigns ago for us, so I do worry I'd be doing it again.