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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7324516" data-attributes="member: 42582">Well, I can answer give two answers to this question.Here's one: I told the players that I wanted to GM a game set in the default 4e setting, as it is described in the 4e PHB (mostly in the entries for the races and the gods, but with various bits also implied in some of the class descriptions).I also told each player that (i) I wanted them to identify one loyalty for their PC; (ii) I wanted them to come up with a reason for their PC to be ready to fight goblins; and (iii) that, being D&D, we were going to be starting in a tavern. The reason for (ii) was that I wanted to use B10 Night's Dark Terror, which seemed like it had some nice encounter ideas that would work well in 4e, one of which is defending a homestead from a goblin attack. The reason for (iii) I hope is self-evident.The PCs came up with various ideas for their PCs. One was a dwarf from the mountain dwarfholds, and - as the player explained - a dwarf does not come of age until s/he kills a goblin. But this particular dwarf had never killed a goblin. Despite serving in the dwarven army for longer than most other dwarves, he had always been in the wrong place at the wrong time whenever the goblins attacked (on leave, on kitchen duty or, as one of the other players suggested with the intention of ribbing him, on latrine duty). So he had set out to find himself a goblin to fight - and had ended up at a tavern in Kelven favoured by dwarves.Another was a half-elven warlock. The player decided that this character had had two formative experiences prior to day 1 of the campaign: (1) he had been wandering in the forest when he received a vision of Corellon (who was his patron as a fey pact warlock); (2) when he came back to his village, it had been wiped out by raiding goblins. Having headed off to Kelven to look for work and/or guidance, he found himself at a tavern that served the find dwarven beers for which he had a certain preference.A third was a middle-aged human mage. The player came up with the name of this mage's home city - Entekash. But Entekash was no more, having been razed by hordes of humanoids (inlcuding goblins, it seemed, although this particular player was pretty relaxed in his backstory as far as the difference between goblins, hobgoblins, orcs, gnolls etc was concerned). The mage, Malstaph, was a devotee of the Raven Queen (I can't remember if that had been true before Entekash's fall, or whether he had turned to the Raven Queen as a response to the destruction of his home). Entekash's suriving populuation was scattered. And so he found himself at a tavern in Kelven.(There were several other PCs - two also Raven Queen devotees, plus a cleric and a paladin of Kord - but the one's I've described are the ones I recall best, with the richest backstory.)This was all worked out before the first session, and mabye during the course of it. I showed the players the map on the inside cover of B10, so they could see where Kelven was, where the forest was that elf-y types could come from, where the mountains were, etc. Becaue I had ideas about the western mountains, as suggested by parts of the module, I told the dwarf player that he was from the eastern mountains. Entekash, we agreed, was further north and east of those mountains, a trading city that had been wiped out as the humanoids spread and the old Nerathi trade routes dried up.With it being established, already, that the PCs were in the tavern, we did a bit of free roleplaying so they could meet one another - some of this in character, some of it out of character as people told one another about their PCs - and then I described a man entering the tavern and striking up a conversation with (as best I recall) the mage. This NPC was Stephen from B10. He was looking for some recruits for a fairly straightforward droving job (I think - its' been a while - and in any event it's just a plot device, and obviously so). He had known the mage's uncle - I can't remember whether it was me or the player who introduced the uncle into the situation, but this was a way of establishing some trust betwen the patron and one of the PCs, thus making the plot device work.The PCs then set off by boat, and the first encounter was with Iron Ring raiders attacking their boat on the river - I had established the Iron Ring as a Bane-ite organisation, which provided some context in relation to the two Kord worshippers. And things went from there.The other answer is from a subsequent campaign, whose first session is written up as an actual play post <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?490456-Repost-first-session-of-Dark-Sun-campaign" target="_blank">here</a>. In this case, the agree setting was not default 4e, but Dark Sun. In an email I sent some stuff to the players about psionics and defiling, plus the basic ideas of the setting: sword & sandals, sword & planet, gladiators, city states, sorcerer kings, evil templars, etc.We made PCs and chose themes together. One of the PCs was an eladrin bard (who I had said counted as psionic rather than arcane) with wizard multiclass (and had spent a background option to be a preserver - I had already said that I was not using the WotC versions "preserving for free"). He was an envoy trying to meet with the veiled alliance.Another PC was a half-giant barbarian wilder gladiator.I asked each player to come up with a "kicker" - ie a starting situation for their PC - which would fit into the idea of starting in Tyr following the overthrow of the sorcerer king. One player asked "How much after?" and the barbarian player decided his kicker was that, as he was about to behead his opponent in the arena, earning the adulation of the crowd, the cries of revolution and the death of the tyrant suddenly broke out, and  so he was deprived of his moment of glory.  So that established the timeline - the campaign begins at the moment of the tyrant's death - and also the location - at least that PC was in the arena.The eladrin player's kicker was that, as he about to meet his Veiled Alliance contact - the secret signal having been given and acknowledged - the contact dropped dead just feet away from him. I set this in the arena, and - together with the kicker for a third PC - it established further context for the opening scene. (They ended up killing some templars and escaping from the arena as rebel fugitives.)Another player who couldn't join us to the second session also played an eladrin, but wrote into his backstory that he had been taken by the templars at a young age and turned into a thrall assassin - and it was he who had killed the Veiled Alliance contact! This provided material that was a main focus for the next couple of sessions.What I think both examples have in common is that the initial establishment of the setting is relatively light touch, based on a few key sources that the players have been pointed to, and with the group coming up with ideas (the players, naturally enough, focusing on their PCs) which are melded together (with the GM, I think unsurprisingly, taking the lead in this melding). I have no idea whether in canonical Dark Sun the eladrin send envoys to the Veiled Alliance, and whether the templars create thrall assassins from young waifs (I christened them "Shadow Templars") - just as with the map from B10 which became our Nerath, we're using the setting as a source of ideas and themes and tropes which we'll then build on in actual play.EDIT: to give another illustration of that last point - when the shadow templar PC, having now repented of his wrongdoing when he saw the devastation caused to his fellow eladrin, led the PCs to his safe house so they could hide from the templars hunting them, we didn't resolve this by consulting established Dark Sun lore about templar safe houses in Tyr. We pulled out the map, and I explained the different "quarters" including the slumm-y one where an assassin was likely to have his safe house, and then we used  a Streetwise skill check to determine whether the PCs got there safely. The check was a success, which established that they did indeed find their way safely to his safehouse, which (in virtue of the successful check) was not immediately swarmed by templars -  which itself suggests new fiction, like that only his Shadow Templar handler knows where his safehouse is, and so they won't be attacked there until the handler learns that his thrall has turned, and then gets a team together to assault them.</blockquote>

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