Favorite Campaign Opening.

[Tolkin]

What's Your favorite campaign opening that you've played or dm'd?

[pdegan2814]

I didn't get to finish the campaign, but I dug the opening of Out Of The Abyss, having to break out of being imprisoned by the Drow.

[Laserlight]

I started a Primeval Thule campaign with five characters:
Noble Playboy By Day, Vigilante By Night
The Noble's Valet
The Valet's Sister, a Gladiator
Xena, who cooperated with the noble against slave traders
The Druid Who Didn't Understand Civilized Ways

The campaign started with them getting offered a reward for finding and rescuing the kidnapped-and-enslaved son of a barbarian chief. They got as far as "interview with the noblewoman who'd bought the barbarian", and they should have simply asked her "where is he now?", but... The party killed the noblewoman, her two gladiator boy toys, almost all the guards, and the elderly cook. The druid turned into a giant snake, in a town which hates and fears Set cults, and witnesses saw it (the one or two guards who escaped the bloodbath). The valet was making death saves and the noble performed mouth-to-mouth breathing, which "confirmed" a lot of (mistaken) assumptions about that relationship. They set the house on fire--accidentally, but the judge still considered it arson. They sent Xena, an illiterate barbarian, to search the noblewoman's desk for information about the chief's son. They left witnesses and physical evidence tying them to the crime scene. And they blamed it on the Valet's Sister (her player was visiting from out of state, so this was a one-shot for her), which resulted in PvP and lots of use of the houserule "make a CON save to stay conscious at 0hp", although Sister managed to escape.

The second session was them getting exiled from the city. And me throwing out my extensive notes on what was supposed to have been the home base for the political / crime-fighting / intrigue campaign they'd asked for. Sigh. It was frustrating to DM, but frequently hilarious.

[Mr.Spastic]

You all meet in a tavern. An old man runs in crying for help...

JK. On a serious note though, I played in a game where are characters new eachother before hand and we had established our character relationships in session zero. When we started they first session we were immidiately thrown into an invasion of the city that was already underway. It was really fun becayse we didn't have to worry about finding the quest hook or anything. We just found ourselves in the middle of this battle and had to fight to survive. We didn't even start at the beginning either. Our DM was like "The city is being invaded. You guys have grouped up after an hour since it started. What do you do?" It was really fun.

[Trask]

My favorite openings get right into the action and add some sense to why all these weirdos are hanging out together.

Bound and gagged, you are in a cart bound for the black ziggurat before you when you see arrows hissing out of the woods dropping ebon robed cultists, then a savage cry as loathsome goblins come boiling forth from the trees like a swarm of ants.

This is your chance, you leap from the cart in the confusion, hands still bound, and make a mad dash for the cover of the trees on the other side of the road.

Campaign begins like that. Its terse, evocative, and sets up villains for the future.

[OracularPoet]

My favorite openings get right into the action and add some sense to why all these weirdos are hanging out together.

Epic poetry (e.g., Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid) usually started in medias res. That is, in the middle of the action.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_medias_res

Edit: I never spell “Odyssey” right on the first try.

[Mr.Spastic]

Epic poetry (e.g., Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid) usually started in medias res. That is, in the middle of the action.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_medias_res

Edit: I never spell “Odyssey” right on the first try.

I wanted to mention that but wasn't sure how brushed up people would be on literary terms. Starting in the middle of some a scene is IMO the one of the greatest ways to start a story. Skyrim does it. Fallout 4 kinda does it. Those are just some examples off the top of my head. I think the main reason it works is because you don't have to wait to get involved with things. Those games, and campaigns that start like them, are like "Hello, your hear now. BOOM! S*** just hit the fan. What do you do?" and I love it.

Edit: Star Wars did it too.