Starting a Campaign

[DefKab]

Hi guys, hows it going...

So, I'm sitting in a proverbial stew. I have no game, haven't had one for a while, and I'm just bustling with creativity while I plan all these games I may never get to play. Since the only thing I get to do is thought excersizes, I thought I'd include the Playground in my torture.

So here my thought excersize for today. I want to see as many creative, original ways to get a new group of players and characters into a campaign world. Lets say you have a plot, can be whatever (more points for making up a whole new plot on the fly), and you have characters in line with that plot. What would you plan for the first session(s) to get this train on a good set of tracks?

Now I'm not saying to railroad them, but I want to see new ideas at motivating players. Getting them involved.

Alternatively, you could regale us about that one time, where the first session went perfectly, and the players were hooked for the entirety.

Lets get our learnin's on, and attempt to become better storywriters!

[stupiddDice]

How about the party members witness a crime, get framed for the crime and go on the lamb and try to clear their name, which eventually leads to the main plot.

[TheStranger]

How about the party members witness a crime, get framed for the crime and go on the lamb and try to clear their name, which eventually leads to the main plot.

I now need to run a game based on The Usual Suspects. With an NPC sidekick who (redacted for spoilers - if you've seen it you know).

I've also had some luck with the players surviving a shipwreck, attempting a prison break, or otherwise being in a scenario where they're going to work together by default.

[QuintonBeck]

One I plan to run next year is "In the land of [tbd] there have been many great and powerful heroes, and villains over the millenia. When the last great heroes fell there were whispers among the elders and holymen of the coming dawn that would bring with it the new heroes of the age. And they were vindicated when rising from across the lands these heroes did arrive at last and just in the nick of time to form a force capable of stopping the mad wizard [tbd] from completing his most terrible goal and destroying the world, today they march on the wizards castle, and today they face a threat to the world."
"You are not these heroes however. You are their hirelings. Bound in service you have valiantly waited outside and heroically tended to the horses during their travels and now you wait outside the dark wizard's tower, tapping your fingers and checking equipment waiting for the heroes to return triumphant."

Then I plan to have the wizard either kill the "heroes of lore" or they both kill each other and the lackeys will become the focus of the story however I don't know quite how I want to do that yet. Maybe steal the plot of Mystery Men and the bbeg was released by the heroes so they'd have someone to fight and it didn't work out? I don't know yet, but we'll see.

[EdokTheTwitch]

Well, The easiest way to motivate them is either stealing from them or having something they care for being destroyed. I used the second one when i wrecked their city (and making them partly responsible for it), and it worked out pretty well.

The next one is to say that they are all beginning at a certain place, like a barons mansion, where they came following a poster asking for help, and they are immediately assigned a mission.

And another one just crossed my mind: Have the characters be randomly kidnapped and sent to an arena, and base the entire campaign on them finding a way to escape. You could even make them kill each other, for the lols of it