Getting off to a good start

[BiblioRook]

You all heard this one, right? "You are all in a tavern..."
A handful of unlikely adventurers meet for the first time, and within moments (often before even learning each others names) form a bond transcending race, class, and even sometimes (if unlikely) alignment. Maybe not always in a tavern, sometimes it's a caravan, or maybe a dungeon, or maybe you just cut to the chase and just say you've been traveling with each other for ears now and are just simply continuing to do so.

Thing is, beginnings are important, they also more often then not are cliche.

As I work my way up to running my first real game this has been pressing on my mind. How do I answer such a simple question that is just where to begin?

So I turn the question back at you all, though not in it's exact wording.
Tell me, what were some of the more interesting ways you (as a player or DM) started off a campaign?

[Dragon Elite]

Make a will save.

[Kaun]

HERE is how i started my latest game. /Shameless plug

[starwoof]

This one wasn't me, but I was a player in it. The whole party started the game in the waiting room to enter a gladiatorial arena where we were one of the tournament teams.

I've started my party on a train before, which was immediately beset by gnoll and ogre raiders.

In another game I played in our party was basically conscripted by the local government to go kill some ogres that were coming up a narrow pass. We started in a fight on a 10 foot wide path with a sheer cliff on one side. We were fighting like 10 ogres.

In short, I like to start with a fight.

[Toofey]

I have an adventure I've used to start two different groups where they are all passing through a harbor town that gets held hostage by a weather god trying to get a foothold in whatever world we're playing.

[beyond reality]

My latest group (an eberron campaign) started with everyone getting drunk at a bar and deciding they should write up a charter to become an "official" adventuring team. The warforged, Magnus, (of course the only one sober) gets to do the paperwork and so the team is named after him: The Order of Magnitude.

Then they're wandering away from the scribe's office with their paperwork and they stumble across a murder in progress...


Another interesting technique is to start with a dramatic event (in this case, most of the PCs are sitting around a table talking with one another when another PC is suddenly hurled through a window and lands, unconscious, on the table) then "rewind" to earlier and see how thigns come to that.

It's a risky technique and something that requires the players to be on board with it (some people might be really annoyed having anything predetermined). Definitely not something that should be used often. But when it works it's really fun.

[Gensh]

I've got this one campaign that I play once with every group I have. They all start in the same place: a peace conference where they're diplomats or servants or whatever they wanted to be. The catch? Every previous group starts at the same time. Where once the room was quiet and everyone showed respect for the speaker, now there's a druid who will throw a salt shaker at a nearby nobleman five minutes in. Where once the conference was halted by false information regarding a terrorist cell, there's now an actual terrorist cell because someone thought they'd be able to flush out the nonexistent one by acting crazy and setting things on fire. Where once the doors to the conference were stuck shut, they're now blown off their hinges by a helpful wizard.

[Kaun]

i have all so started with;

"Player x, you just manage to get your head under the orc's axe and it wedges itself in the door jam behind you... It is your action now what do you do?"

I like starting my games in the thick of things.

[EvilDM]

You're on a small island, the wreckage of a trading vessel all around you. You'll be able to salvage basic gear, weapons and armor from the wreck, as well as a few personal items. Now each of you give me a basic list of what you take and a short description of how you ended up here.

[The Glyphstone]

I plan to start my next campaign with "Player X, you're on fire. No, I don't know why you're on fire, you tell me, and hopefully your buddies will have a solution."

[valadil]

If you have time, start the game by running a private session for each player. Let them roam around as their own character. Introduce them to a few NPCs and bring them to the place where the PCs will meet. If you have too much free time, you can even introduce them a few at a time. Have A&B meet up and then C&D meet up. This is an awesome way to get little factions of players started, if you're not doing the everyone is a big happy party deal.

This method is great because it lets people rehearse their characters while nobody else is watching. It's a chance to figure out how your character acts and speaks. There's nothing worse than being asked to make a first impression of a character you haven't played before, which is what so many "you're in a tavern, a fight breaks out, now introduce yourselves" campaigns do.

If you don't have that much time, you can do something similar but give the players more control. Tell them the premise and starting point of your campaign. Ask them to come up with a character who would follow that premise and to explain how he got to the starting point.

[sdream]

This is a fascinating thread.

I like the "starting out in the middle of action, which you shall justify" stuff, really gives them the hook, and the freedom at once.

Meta points for the DM who actually started his campaign on literal rails, good way to get disparate characters together.

I'm a fan of having the characters explain why they know and trust each other when building the characters. My last couple games have features related players (can't choose your family, and all types show up).

Solo play sounds nice, but often the folks who need it most won't have time to spend on it.

[mint]

Figure out how everyone is connected during chargen. Some systems like Fate, with Spirit of the Century, facilitate this.
To get things started you can give your group something to get them started. Like, you're all in the same circus, what do you do at the circus?
And stuff.

[BiblioRook]

I'm a fan of having the characters explain why they know and trust each other when building the characters. My last couple games have features related players (can't choose your family, and all types show up).

Yeah, this thread was partially encouraged due the rather forced beginning of my last game (while playing with some very RP-lazy players)
Basically, the four of us, from various parts of the Realms, were simply teleported to one place and told we had to work together. The party being a bard, a warblade, and...oh a good Cleric and an openly evil Demon worshiping Cleric. No one seemed to seem all that concerned with the odd one out, unfortunately except for me (being the Good Cleric), but after about an hour trying to get everyone to suggest one good reason why traveling with an demon-worshiper was a good idea (other then 'we were told too') I was promptly put on ignore and they went on like nothing was amiss <.<;

[The Glyphstone]

That's a very lazy DM.

[BiblioRook]

You have no idea, but this isn't the thread for that story
(But look around, I'm pretty sure I mentioned it two or three times elsewhere )

[bokodasu]

Thing is, "interesting" is relative. I know people who would like nothing more than to spend their first three sessions just sitting around and chatting in-character, getting to know the other PCs. But I don't, so when I run I tend to tell them during chargen why they know each other.

I had one campaign where they were a disgraced noble family on the run from the family who had framed them, trying to prove their innocence and retake their land before it was utterly gobbled up by other opportunistic noble houses. (Also works for gang wars with a little refluffing.) That was fun, but a lot of work. When I'm feeling lazy/short on time, it's "you've all been working for [POWERX] for some time, and..." (insert caravan, merchant house, minor princeling, mad sorceress, local baker, etc. as desired).

Now, while I consider that "cutting out the boring bits", the people in Group A would probably call it "horribly railroady", so yeah, know your audience.

[valadil]

after about an hour trying to get everyone to suggest one good reason why traveling with an demon-worshiper was a good idea (other then 'we were told too') I was promptly put on ignore and they went on like nothing was amiss <.<;

I was in a game like that once. We were told we were all part of an established adventuring company and had already worked out our personal differences. Despite having this long history with each other, we didn't know anyone else's name until 4 hours into the first session. We didn't find out that the wizard was female until the second session. I was playing a cannibal. When I stripped and consumed our fallen enemy, one of the other players started to protest, and then shrugged it off since we'd already apparently worked out this issue. I didn't stick with that game long.

[Bluepaw]

I usually try to split the difference, by both establishing a relationship between characters (often A&B and C&D separately, like was suggested above) ahead of time, and then go with the 'in media res' approach -- but rarely with combat. Last couple games' beginning:

-One PC was a professor of alchemy and had prepared a minute of a (hilariously weird) lecture, which he started delivering, only to be interrupted with a student's eyes going all white and blazing, then the teleporting in of two bizarre artificers (one tattooed all over, with chainmail and earrings and using a lead pipe for a wand, one dressed in bright peacock blue parachute pants, with goggles and a giant clock around his neck, like the love-child of Flava Flav and Princess Jasmine), who chase him away.

-PCs wake up in a serene Dragonborn monastery in the mountains, with no memory of how they got there and no equipment, and nobody quite willing to answer their questions...

Set up an interesting environment and interesting characters, and players get sucked right in without all the "okay, so i introduce myself, say what mystic item I'm searching for, declare my oath against the necromancer, etc"...

[Gahrer]

The PC:s village celebrates it's yearly harvest festival in the main square. After a couple of minutes chatting with NPC:s and establishing the most important ones, the inquisition charges into the square from all sides intent on busting the villages "Red Magic" cult.
The problem? All PC:s had choosen to be a part of the cult during character creation (it allowed acess to Red magic = refluffed psionics). They managed to wiggle themselves free of charges despite the testimony of a cult traitor and then set out find and punish this traitor.

[mint]

-One PC was a professor of alchemy and had prepared a minute of a (hilariously weird) lecture, which he started delivering, only to be interrupted with a student's eyes going all white and blazing, then the teleporting in of two bizarre artificers (one tattooed all over, with chainmail and earrings and using a lead pipe for a wand, one dressed in bright peacock blue parachute pants, with goggles and a giant clock around his neck, like the love-child of Flava Flav and Princess Jasmine), who chase him away.

On his head place this crown for he is King of references!

[SowZ]

I once played a Semi-Futuristic game with a party of an 'escaped terrorist/freedom fighter,' (depending on your point of view,) a corrupt cop, another corrupt cop, (cops were friends,) an anarchistic rebel, a mercenary, and a hacker/con-man.

I tried to influence situations that would bring the party together. Within the first half of the first session, half the party had thrown the other half of the party in prison, one character had blown off another characters left thigh with a shotgun, one character had been tazed, (resisted the taze and evaded arrest,) There were two of the most chaotic sessions ever. But everyone said they had a good time! Eventually, they became a pretty effective-though still somewhat dysfunctional team.

My point? Everyone doesn't have to start off as allies. You can let the characters choose their concept and start off with everyone pursuing their own goals and spend the first session intertwining those goals and the second making sure they are all pointed in the same direction. With clearly good and clearly evil characters this can be rough, but it can usually be done if no one is too far extreme either way.

[Bluepaw]

On his head place this crown for he is King of references!

Thanks, Mint! I'll get right on supplying my avatar with this crown. Soon I will be...REALLY badass.

[Vknight]

I've got several suggestions.

Tied to stakes and being interrogated by a lich about an artifact they should have found last month. This works well with a time jump were the party is sent back a year or so and actually does find the artifact so those mysterious hero's that save them and make them become adventurers are themselves a few years later.

Also going to the jail house after a bar fight with the PC's and 2 others the only survivors.

Or if its Monsters and Other Childish Things. The party all have some lose affiliations and know each other then one new kid enters the town/orphanage/halfway-home and things go from there.

Sci Fi games waking up from Cryo Sleep, Carbonite Freezing, or on a Battleship that is sitting peacefully and nothing bad happens to it.