Your First Campaign

[Jjeinn-tae]

I see a lot that the first campaign begins in a tavern more times than not. This has made me curious if that's really the case. So, where did your first campaign start?

My first, and first D&D:
My very first was an EQRPG game, the players were investigating a murder of an Elven politician... and quickly got themselves instigated in the crime... Though they did make up one of the more amusing characters in my games, the drunken limbless dwarf with an obsession with beavers...

My first actual D&D campaign though, began in the Orog Chieftains tent (underground orcs of Forgotten Realms) on their test to be recognized as members of the military.

[Hiro Protagonest]

My first campaign started in...

A tavern. Yeah.

[SilverLeaf167]

My first campaign started in the fanciest restaurant of a large city, which despite being the best only served milk, steak and fried potatos. 5 minutes into the session, two of the PCs are being chased by guards for trying to choke an old man and the third PC has fallen asleep on his food.

[dsmiles]

On a road, in the woods.

[Thomo]

Heh, I've never started in a tavern. We went to the tavern quickly a few times, but never started in a tavern.

My first D&D game (3e) was just myself, a halfling rogue/ranger (I can't remember now) and my friends elf monk. We started at the gates of a town, listening in on a conversation about ambushed caravans and goblin activity nearby. We offered our services, found out that the goblins were raiding the caravans under orders of some orcs, killed the orcs, took over the goblin tribe and started using them in a mine and continue raiding caravans only occasionally, then we went back to town and got the reward for stopping the raids! Only played a few sessions, but we were slowly building an army and working on a smear campaign against the current mayor of the town, with a view to take that over as well. I miss those days...

[EccentricCircle]

the first D&D game I wrote started with the characters walking through the forest and encountering a very large hedge.

that said back then we used to alternate who was DM, and I believe the DM before me who ran the first adventure in the series actually did start in a tavern.

I later wrote a short story about how the characters met... in a tavern of course!

[DontEatRawHagis]

My first campaign I GMed started off like this:

"This is an S.O.S. distress call from the mining ship Red Dwarf. The crew are dead, killed by a radiation leak. The only survivors are 101, who was in suspended animation during the disaster, and his pregnant Iguanna, who was safely sealed in the hold. Revived three million years later, 101's only companions are a life-form who evolved from his iguanna, a drunk/explosive Simulant, blind sharp shooter, a robot servo unit, and Zerone, a hologram simulation of one of the dead crew. Message ends."
-Holly
They all met at the navigations room.

The first game I was a player in started like this.


GM: Where are all of you?
Me: I'm at an internet cafe hacking.
Fayt: You won't know where I am, I stay on the move.
GM: So in the park sleeping on a bench.
Grant: I'll be at the strip club.
...
GM: So you all got the message and are headed towards the HQ for your first mission briefing.
Grant: I'm not.
GM: Why?
Grant: I only speak Russian.
GM: What?
Grant: I seduce one the strippers and head towards my car.
GM: Okay three men in suits come and try to bring you to the meeting place.
Grant: I run.
GM: They shoot tranq darts *Rolls all three separately*. Okay one misses and hits nothing, the other *rolls* hits the stripper by accident, and last *rolls 1* shoots himself in the neck.
Grant: I am amazing!


This is why all our characters have to have English as a language.

[Silus]

Let's see...Started on Ysgard on the Plains of Ida, then moved to Carceri, then into a Genius Loci on Carceri, then apparently jumped to the Wheel of Time world, then Azeroth, then back to their organizations HQ (where they stayed for about three months), only to find out that they really didn't go to those worlds and were stuck inside the Genius Loci all along.

[olthar]

I've never started in a tavern.

First campaign (as opposed to short one-quest game) started in a dungeon.

First campaign as DM started in a village that had just been decimated by an orc raid.

[Loki_42]

My first campaign started on the road to town. I like using that.

[onthetown]

Sunless Citadel module, with a very silly DM to indoctrinate us into D&D 3.0. It was pretty fun. Main party was my half-elf rogue who was obsessed with anything shiny to the point of running vertically up walls (we decided she must be half-kender or something, so that in itself was a joke); a moon elf raised by sun elves and pranced around and basically acted like a hippy; some guy (I think a druid) who had been trapped in a statue, so we put a chain around the statue while he was in that form and used him as a gigantic flail; and an emo half-drow whose name was Tal, but we liked to call him Towel, which gave him a bit of a pathological hatred of towels...

And yes, it began in a tavern. More specifically, we walked into town and then walked into the tavern.

[DontEatRawHagis]

I just realized that I never started in a tavern or inn, most of the time I'm off doing my own thing and then decide to get drunk.

Exception is in Serenity where I owned the bar that the party decided to pick a fight in with seven alliance soldiers.

[zorba1994]

My first campaign started with the duke of the town calling everyone to his chambers and giving them a mission.

I have never, ever, used a tavern.

[Solaris]

My first campaign started off in a dungeon. We skipped the talky bits.

The first campaign I actually had a storyline in, though, started off on a road. A group of hobgoblins ambushed the party, and that's how they discovered an invading army, picked a fight with the god of the undead, and accidentally doomed the world.
Pity a deployment got in the way. I would've liked to play them through the wightocalypse.

[comicshorse]

In a lawyers office (I started with a Call of Cthulhu campaign)

[Remmirath]

I believe that the first campaign I played in started on a road, but I'm not entirely sure any more if that was the start - it was the first place I came into the campaign, certainly.

The first campaign that I ran started on a dock, I believe, from which they fairly quickly progressed to a ship.

I think I've only started a campaign in a tavern once.

[Lurkmoar]

My first campaign was a solo one shot. Started in a church where I got a quest to slay a vampire.

It didn't turn out too well for me.

[Yukitsu]

Boat, boot camp, hardboiled film noire detective office, home recieving letters (unlike most DMs, if a player struggles to avoid plot hooks, I just let them, then pay attention to everyone else instead.) boat, merc office then boat. I like to start them off on boats.

[Katana_Geldar]

My first D&D session started outside a tavern, as they'd burned it down in the previous session.

My first game I GMed ever started on a YT-1300 above Kessel. The players had to fight to take over the ship and free this Jedi who had been captured.

[NeoSeraphi]

My first campaign started with everyone arriving in the first town, but at different gates. I did some info.gathering from guard npcs before heading to the tavern to wait for the rest of the group to show up. Before I entered the tavern, a thought occurred to me. If I went into the tavern and had a nice rest, it would waste my prepared spells for the day. Not wanting my magic to go to waste, I turned and fired a magic missile at a random homeless woman on the street. She didn't die and ran off to get the guards. They raised an alarm, which the monk pc heard and came running. My wizard panicked and ignored the DM PC calling him to follow her. He rushed into the bar, grabbed a drunk, broke her bottle and held it to her throat. The guards and monk showed up and my wizard brandished his hostage. The monk came anyway. I threw the drunk at him, trying to trip him but it didn't work. The monk threw one punch and my wizard went down. He spent the night in jail. A fond memory of how awful I used to be at rping

[Dienekes]

My first campaign I played in started in a docking bay, it was Star Wars d6. I was charged with being a guard of this docking bay, thank goodness the GMPC showed up and refused to follow any of the rules, and ended up destroying the docking bay and knocking my character unconscious and probably killing my partners. Then I woke up and was told to work with the guy.

Freaking GMPCs.

[Katana_Geldar]

My first campaign started with everyone arriving in the first town, but at different gates. I did some info.gathering from guard npcs before heading to the tavern to wait for the rest of the group to show up. Before I entered the tavern, a thought occurred to me. If I went into the tavern and had a nice rest, it would waste my prepared spells for the day. Not wanting my magic to go to waste, I turned and fired a magic missile at a random homeless woman on the street. She didn't die and ran off to get the guards. They raised an alarm, which the monk pc heard and came running. My wizard panicked and ignored the DM PC calling him to follow her. He rushed into the bar, grabbed a drunk, broke her bottle and held it to her throat. The guards and monk showed up and my wizard brandished his hostage. The monk came anyway. I threw the drunk at him, trying to trip him but it didn't work. The monk threw one punch and my wizard went down. He spent the night in jail. A fond memory of how awful I used to be at rping

That sounds like a typical night with my group. :smallbiggrin:

[NeoSeraphi]

That sounds like a typical night with my group. :smallbiggrin:

Haha. Now my characters are only that thick and needlessly violent if its part of their character

[Serpentine]

My very, very first game... I don't actually remember. I remember a weird temple thing, and a giant DMPC, and a cranky dragon... but I don't remember where we started.
The first good campaign (the next after that), we started at Montgomery Snake's Elevated Academy for Adventurers.
The first game I DMed, which came directly off that one, started on a lonely road one dark and stormy night, with a shadowy figure through the rain.

Once started, I like introducing characters from a height... One of mine fell off a roof in front of the party, and another fell through the road into the sewer we were exploring. I should remember to stick with that theme...

[Jay R]

The first campaign I ever played in began at the door to a dungeon. It was 1974, we had the original three books, and didn't waste time getting to where the loot was.

The first game I ever DMed had each PC come crawling out of a desert into a small town, more dead than alive. Some PCs looked for a tavern, but that was their choice, not mine. I was running a literal sandbox.

[Stumblebee]

IIRC, all our PCs ended up on the same boat. The boat sank for some reason (we didn't do it) and we washed up on some bleak, misty island called Ravenloft.

[slaydemons]

my first... I haven't even finished one yet, but I can tell you where I started one it was in an arena. also tried sunless citidel one of my friends didn't care for it and now we are doing an arena

[Shadowknight12]

"You were powerful, respected, feared and admired. You have been kidnapped by unknown forces and left in a tower full of death traps and overwhelming foes. You have one day to escape, or you will remain imprisoned forever. Solve the mystery that binds you here, enact vengeance on your new enemies. Escape. Fight. Survive."

It was an optimisation-heavy party, though they originally started alone and separated. I can't remember whatever happened with that game.

[Choco]

First real campaign (I am of course not counting 1-shots and 2-3 session adventures as campaigns) started:


On a road, in the woods.

[Winds]

My first was this: You are traveling to somewhere as yet unclear, but a storm threatens. You take cover, and find the rest of the party has as well. (Some slight railraoding as one member refused to move inside. :smallconfused:) Cave/crypt exploration follows.

[Toofey]

My first campaign I started as a prisoner in a prison the other characters had just found themselves in (I started a few sessions after the rest of the group)

I think they did start in a bar though.

[Serpentine]

The first game I DMed, which came directly off that one, started on a lonely road one dark and stormy night, with a shadowy figure through the rain.Ohey, turns out I still have the actual original script for that:

The heavy grey clouds that had been gathering all yesterday suddenly burst into a shower of sleet around mid-morning. After a while, a tired-looking figure gallops up to you/the inn on a sweaty chestnut roan. At first it appears to be a chubby child, but as the horse is reined up in front of you, you can see there is a slight bosomy curve in the armour they’re wearing, and they appear to have a healthy pair of sideburns. Unless you decide your character doesn’t, you know that this is, in fact, a healthy if very tired female dwarf. Her face appears pale from a long, hard ride, but she is protected from the worst of the rain by a well-made but muddy and travel-worn cloak. She gives you a cheerful but weary grin and inquires as to whether this might be the “League of Steely Mettle” in a moderately thick dwarven brogue.

As an aside, that's also the introduction of my long-running DMPC.

[Yora]

My first campaign were three old AD&D modules, as 3rd Edition was brand new those days.
No idea how it started, though.

[Grim_Wicked]

Mine started in a burning town hall. We didn't quite understand the rules of 3.5e and we didn't even have the books with us, so the party's monk started with 3 hp and they all had 80 points in several skills.
The town hall burned down and the PC's and everyone else (it was pretty crowded) escaped through a hole in the ground, which had been made by something huge and heavy falling off the ceiling, if memory serves.
They encountered a big monster, killed it (and several villagers in the process), erupted in the middle of nowhere, on a hilly plain. They killed some goblins, entered a marsh, died awfully and we quit.
Good times.

Edit: turned out it was in my sig too. That's funny.

[MarkusWolfe]

My first campaign started in a tavern...but not just any old run of the mill tavern. No, this was Caritas, an interdimensional tavern run by an expy of Lorne from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. No violence or thievery could take place in Caritas, and it could be accessed from any tavern door in the world provided you were one of the few people who knew how to draw the correct symbol on the door. No chance of getting mugged or killed in your sleep and free long distance teleportation? Of course adventurers flocked to it. And soon after the adventurers came the people who needed work done, which in turn brought more adventurers....by the time my character got there (though I don't know how long the place had been in business) the patronage was entirely adventurers and quest givers. Every Sunday, the quest givers would go up on stage and share the details of their quests, then all the individual adventurers would sign up for whatever quest they wanted to go on (it was the university nerd club, so people couldn't be expected to show up or group up consistently). Often, the groups were mismatched, sometimes in balance but quite frequently in appearance. We had gathered from all over the world, from many different cultures and ways of living. Caritas wasn't just a place to find work; it was an opportunity to meet some people that are very different from you but are still people you can relate to by your adventuring lifestyle that you'd never meet otherwise. I could produce a list of the varied and colorful personalities of Caritas, but I don't think this is the time or place for it.

However, it is appropriate for me to mention my thoughts on this whole 'you all meet in a tavern' thing.
In the Mutants and Masterminds Corebook, it gives the outline for 2 adventures. In the first, all the PCs are at the bank in their secret identities doing normal bank stuff when 2 supervillains and their 8 minions come through the door and try to rob the place. In the second, the PCs are being tested to see if they're good enough to be in the setting's Justice League expy. The book says that if all the PCs younger than 18, then the adventure should be refluffed to be at the setting's Xavier's Insitute for the Gifted expy. I imagine that most M&M campaigns start with some variant of what I just mentioned.

The way I see it, nearly all campaigns where the PCs are absolute strangers to each other (or at least, mostly strangers) before it starts begins with some variant of 'you are all coincidentally in the same place at the same time when something happens that causes you to all work together' or 'you have been deliberately gathered by someone with the intent of having you work together'. Sometimes you get the odd 'you have been deliberately gathered by someone when something happens that causes you to work together'. They're all just variants on 'fate has gathered you here and caused you to work together'. It's the way it's been done since D&D players did stuff before going into the dungeon because it's the most streamlined way to get it done without disregarding the roleplay aspect. All systems, settings and genres have their own traditional ways of doing it.

So why taverns? Well, when you're an adventurer, a tavern is also a meeting house and an employment center. A great deal of adventurers frequent taverns because of their nomadic nature, and the questgivers can usually be found where adventurers can be most commonly found, so all adventurers must go to the tavern if they want to find a job in good time. Additionally, a tavern is a good substitute for a house when you're gathering people. It's private enough for business, but it keeps strangers out of your home. It's a comfortable enough place to for casual or personal purposes (such as if the PCs had a mutual acquaintance) but you don't have to make the effort of cleaning up for company and cleaning up afterwards. And many things can happen in a tavern that cause groups of strangers to work together. They can all sign up to work for the same guy, they can all help the distressed maiden who just burst into the room, they can get into a bar fight together, they can have a discussion, find they have some mutual interests and agreeing to go out and do something later....the list goes on. Point is, taverns are natural environments for getting people who don't know each other to do stuff together.