D&D General Your favorite way to start a D&D campaign?

[BookTenTiger]

What's your favorite way to start a D&D campaign?

After Session 0, once all the characters are created and the group has sat down, the pizza is ordered and the Witcher Soundtrack is playing...

Classic: we meet in a tavern, and someone asks for help.

Action: roll initiative! Combat starts right away.

Mysterious: you find yourselves walking along a fog-bound road, no memory of how you got here...

What are your favorite ways to start Adventure 1?

What are some of the great, or not so great, ways you have started campaigns?

 

[Swarmkeeper]

After walking through the mists, you wake up, confused, in a holding cell with none of your weapons, armor, or equipment. The sounds of merriment, music, and clinking steins surround you. The holding cell is... in the middle of a tavern! A cloaked stranger in the corner of the holding cell draws your attention: "have I got a job for the lot of you..."

 

[BookTenTiger]

After walking through the mists, you wake up, confused, in a holding cell with none of your weapons, armor, or equipment. The sounds of merriment, music, and clinking steins surround you. The holding cell is... in the middle of a tavern! A cloaked stranger in the corner of the holding cell draws your attention: "have I got a job for the lot of you..."

This is like my idea of an entire campaign that's just set inside a tavern.

 

[prabe]

Put all the PCs in the same place and time. Throw s[tuff] at a nearby fan. Helps if there are non-combatants to consider. Then it turns out there's something behind that, which the PCs can find; and something behind that; and something behind that. Weave in things from the PCs' backstories. When they get to the end of the initial chain, they have options for what to do next.

 

[aco175]

The last few campaigns from 5e days all start with a fight. Like LMoP, have the group quickly introduce themselves and then roll dice. The last campaign started in Phandalin with nobody knowing themselves but all milling around the common when some old urns fell off a wagon and several mephits jumped out attacking everyone. The players now had to decide to help and who and then found who was who when they started rolling dice and I wanted them to describe themselves in the first bit of action with the some introduction.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I tend to prefer starting with a fight. It gives a sort of soft intro to the characters (by seeing what they can do) before trying to do any deep roleplay.

 

[Steampunkette]

I generally set up all the PCs in private discussions in the days or weeks leading up to the first session to establish their character's recent history, goals, some rumors about their particular characters, and things of that nature. When I do that, there's generally a reason they're all going to be working together. Sometimes there's a central agency directing them (Local Lord, School, Etc) but usually each character has their own directive to join.

In a recent campaign, two players were guards for a mining consortium who sent workers cross-nation to work in a dangerous place. One was an agent of the king, himself, a secret bastard relative given a mission that would take him far from court, and a druid in a campaign setting where druids are basically terrorists came to learn what happened when a Circle near the city, who had been keeping the locals from expanding their town out into the surrounding swampland, had gone silent...

 

[BookTenTiger]

I generally set up all the PCs in private discussions in the days or weeks leading up to the first session to establish their character's recent history, goals, some rumors about their particular characters, and things of that nature. When I do that, there's generally a reason they're all going to be working together. Sometimes there's a central agency directing them (Local Lord, School, Etc) but usually each character has their own directive to join.

In a recent campaign, two players were guards for a mining consortium who sent workers cross-nation to work in a dangerous place. One was an agent of the king, himself, a secret bastard relative given a mission that would take him far from court, and a druid in a campaign setting where druids are basically terrorists came to learn what happened when a Circle near the city, who had been keeping the locals from expanding their town out into the surrounding swampland, had gone silent...

This is such a great way to start.

I feel like all my recent campaigns have started with brand new characters or uncertain attendance, so I just plop them in a small dungeon and let the players start figuring out how to play. Kind of like a starting level in a Mario or Zelda game.

 

[Steampunkette]

This is such a great way to start.

I feel like all my recent campaigns have started with brand new characters or uncertain attendance, so I just plop them in a small dungeon and let the players start figuring out how to play. Kind of like a starting level in a Mario or Zelda game.

Also a big fan of Rumors.

3 Good
3 Bad
2 Lies that are either good or bad

Each player gets to know 1 rumor about each other player in the game, not always the same rumors. And then NPCs will reveal other ones based on their biases, goals, and history.

"You murdered the Contessa de la Roche!"
"That's a slanderous lie!"
"We'll let the -law- sort that matter out! GUARDS! GUAAAAAARDS!"
party flees
"Did you really kill the Contessa?"
"NO! How could you ask me that? I was... we were... in love. Assassins came and I couldn't... I couldn't save her... It's why I took up the sword!"

CHARACTER DEVELOPMEEEEEEENT

 

[Musing Mage]

Starting with a (sort of) fight is how I like to do it.

If players are new to my style of DMing, or new to D&D in general, I like to start them out with a scenario in which they are a posse on the trail of a band of goblins that have kidnapped a local. There's a little bit of tracking and decision making, a bunch of options and then into the encounter.

Most groups that I've done this with have gotten TPK'd or close to it, (only one in 20 years since I started doing this actually beat the encounter without heavy losses or complete TPK), even though it's generally scaled to them.

After the shock of being killed in the first five minutes of the game wears off, I reveal that the whole thing was a training exercise and the 'goblins' are merely militia. It's not a cheat where as DM I have 'saved' the team, as this is always the intent even if they win, but it does outline how fragile characters can be, even strong ones. I have found that players are often appreciative of how fickle the dice are and tend to approach combat with a little more caution after that.

edit What I assumed was self-evident, but appears unclear is that the characters are not actually killed in the training scenario, the 'deaths' are part of the simulation. Players don't know this at first, but it becomes evident in short order.

Obviously, once I've done this trick it doesn't work again with players who know.

After that training scenario, as well as for new campaigns where players are used to my style and familiar, I will generally either start them already on the path of a quick adventure to get them going, and from there let them take full agency... or have a ton of scenarios ready to roll and give out rumours to each player separately then let them debate the merits and potential rewards of each.