Best place you started a campain

[kasubot]

We all know that the default starting place for any campaign is a tavern, bar, or inn. But where have you started them besides that?

My favorite was the back of a paddy wagon, our entire party started off the campaign under arrest.

[BardicDuelist]

Making the entire party witnesses to a horrible murder, and having them arrested was a great way to start.

The murder was in a park in a large city. I had gotten the character back stories beforehand, and so was able to place each character there for a specific reason.

[Dean Fellithor]

while everyone else was in the tavern I was in a top-secrete Headquaters being interrogated, I was then promptly thrown into a Garbage pile in a back alley behind the Tavern.

[Krellen]

The best start to a campaign I ever had was a murder scene; two of the characters were investigating the murder, of which the third was suspected, and to which the fourth had been beaten.

[Hadrian_Emrys]

Attempting to kill each other in an arena. Talk about a lasting first impression.

[suckered_D.M.]

if you do want to start in a tavern you have to make it a good one. THE VULGAR UNICORN from sanctuary is an awsome place to start. some of my players are a little older so they new some of the pit falls though.

[SurlySeraph]

In the sewers of a major city. The rogue had been severely beaten and had his seemingly dead body dumped there. The cleric was chasing undead he'd detected there. The wizard's hideout was hidden there. The barbarian woke up lying there with a very bad hangover, next to a gnome of the opposite gender.

[ClericofPhwarrr]

I hesitatate to ask, but... what race was the barbarian?

[RedScholarGypsy]

The entire party, before forming, held various positions in the castle. My sorc's was in the princess's bedroom, right before our Fighter stormed in with several other guards. Good times, good times....

I think his bastard son ended up ruling that kingdom....

[Morty]

My campaign started when two other players' characters got in trouble because they owed money for a crime boss, and by mutual aquitance they've met my character, who helped them by giving them some information. It all ended by us three escaping from city in a caravan, running away from both city guard and crime boss' thugs, and thus our group was formed.

[Xuincherguixe]

For when I was the GM, I ran a few missions out of a Sushi bar that was a front for Yakuza. It was an exceptionally silly place.

Order the Tuna and you get Heroin. Amazing that the place wasn't busted by the cops. :P

[TheDon]

Best place where I started was in an evil lair, as the kobold minion. We created a normal lvl 2 party and as soon as we were done the DM took our sheets, then gave us those kobolds. Our lord and master charged us with retreaving a precious magical amulet, so we did, having the hardest time of our life, but we felt proud when we did... only to be TPK by our own party on the way back.

The DM then followed that by giving us our sheets back and resuming the fight we just had exept on the party's point of view and telling us we had just found an amulet. Great fun overall.

[The Mormegil]

I havn't got a "best" place, but I damn have a worst:
little city scorched by sun in a destert. All PCs were there for a reason or another and they started there, for a reason or another, a big struggle in which one was killed while the rogue was taking away everything that wasn't over 100lbs... And they were supposed to help the village... Well, after that the game went very well, but it was quite an opening for sure!

[TheAlmightyOne]

Started one in jail wher we'd been falsely imprisoned
Started one on a ship
And my favourite was where nobody could be bothered with a backstory so i got to pick how we all met up. we started by graduating from heros school. good times

[Saithis Bladewing]

My favourite was in the middle of a desert. A fierce storm was brewing and the characters were all members of different caravans. Forced to search for shelter, there was only one convenient landmark in reach: a large outcropping of rock and stone just within reach of escaping the storm, marked on the maps as having a number of large caves. Everyone rushes their to escape the storm and get drawn into chaos from there.

[waffletaco]

I've never played D&D before, but I've always wanted to start out jumping out of an airship/balloon/plane. I haven't thought it out any farther than that. I'd make such a bad DM.

[Swooper]

Hmm, I remember one where I (a human paladin) was heading out from my home city found a passed out dwarf lying by a tree with an urgrosh next to him. I woke him up and he had no idea who he was or where he was, he knew only his own name. I took pity on him and offered to travel with him. We later met the hobbit sorcerer down the road.

That was an awesome campaign, revolving partly around the dwarf finding out more and more about his past.

[ranger89]

I haven't done this yet but I've always wanted to start a campaign in the middle of a massive battle between two armies. The characters have all been conscripted into the king's army. My first words would be "You hear the captain sound the horn and your unit begins to charge across the battlefield. Roll for initiative."

My favorite campaign beginning that I have done was having each member of the party individually attacked by very powerful orcs, chained up in the back of the same wagon, and sold to an evil little halfing who made them fight in an arena.

[Dark Knight Renee]

I started a campaign in an abandoned "haunted" mansion a little ways from a small town. There actually weren't any monsters or undead in residence until the PCs moved in, one of them being a vampire. They were lucky they were in the middle of nowhere, because this was FR, where something like that will have adventurers knocking down your door in no time.

For me, the most common location to start a campaign or a new plot arc is In The Woods Somewhere. Taverns are usually reserved for starting or pursueing sideplots.

[Diggorian]

Farscape theme: The party was made of abductees aboard an advanced living alien ship under attack that woke up in the same specimen storage hub. Half of them had no idea that other lifeforms existed until hey met each other.

[Matthew]

I haven't done this yet but I've always wanted to start a campaign in the middle of a massive battle between two armies. The characters have all been conscripted into the king's army. My first words would be "You hear the captain sound the horn and your unit begins to charge across the battlefield. Roll for initiative."

The last long term campaign I ran began in the aftermath of a decisive battle, which was quite fun. I thought starting it during the actual battle might prove too deadly a beginning.

[Swordguy]

"The five of you slowly regain conciousness...you each think who ARE these people lying on the dirt road next to me? Suddenly you hear hoofbeats coming from around the bend in the road. A group of men and women in fancy livery on large bay horses round the corner and reign in. The one in the lead points at you. 'It's THEM! Get them!"

Roll initiative."

[Inyssius Tor]

Aboard a lightning-rail (magic Eberron train), which was being robbed by draconic thugs.

EDIT: I should say, we thought they were draconic. The campaign died after the first session.

[Dihan]

My DM started a roleplay where we were in the wake of the destruction caused by a Tarrasque...

[Korias]

Weaponry Conventions. The best places to start campaigns.

[kasubot]

Well, there was one good one, it wasnt exactly the start, but i had come into the campaign late because another player had to drop out. It was a Star Wars campaign and my character came in as a deus ex machina to save the party and their smuggler freighter from a sith star destroyer.

Im going to have to use the idea to start right after a battle in my upcoming campaign.

[ChrisMcDee]

On the front line of a battle is a great place. Start off with a situation where the risk of death seems very real and there's plenty of action available from the off. The way the battle ends can have a huge lasting effect on the players' lives.

I'm a big fan of starting a fresh campaign off with an action scene. A sinking ship, in a town being attacked by a giant or in the gallows with nooses around their necks are good starters.

Being imprisoned is a good start too, as there's opportunity for action but it's a relatively controlled environment, meaning you can establish any important things without too much risk of the players wandering off.

[Maltrich]

Ugh... I don't think I've ever started a campaign really well, but I think the best place I have started one was on the hill outside of the mansion of a wealthy merchant, who was known to be playing host to a powerful diviner. The players were thieves, and would presumably be attempting to make away with all the diviner's powerful magic items.

It would've been really cool, except they never went in, because they decided to go screw around in town instead, and then the game died because we all started playing Shadowrun again.

The worst place I've ever started one is the one I've just started, which started in a tavern in the PC's home town. We decided to play on very short notice, so there was no real time for me to prepare, and at some point I decided (and said out loud) that the PC's were still living with their parents in their hick home town. None of them had backstories, so I was grasping at straws for how to get them to the cave with all the olive slime creatures in it... but obviously, I introduced a lot of unnecessarily boring complications.

If I had it to do over again, I would have had them be adventurers passing through, so that their histories could be fleshed in later.

That said, they must be having fun because they want to play like every other night, apparently with no concern for the fact that since I'm moving away, I really need to get the game transferred to an online forum, at which point I'm planning on introducing a few new players, and I'd rather not have the current ones reach level three before then (which they will, unless I start cutting their experience rewards, and I'm not sure how they'd take that).

[SilverClawShift]

The campaign itself wasn't one of our greatest, but I think our best starting place was the ethereal plane.

We all woke up dead, for various reasons, and had to figure out how we died, why we were ghosts, what connection we had to each other. Then it spilled out into trying to scare/kill some baddies on the material plane, trying to find a way back to life, possessing people, ect. Our 'party' had a sorcerer who found a way to shift themselves physically onto the material plane, but then they were a melting pile of ectoplasm that had to shift themselves back to stay in one peice. Getting hounded by clerics trying to exorcise us...

wait, come to think of it, that campaign was pretty fun.

[Zeta Kai]

My favorite place I've ever started off my players was aboard a pirate ship. They were pirates, so they didn't mind, & it kept them disciplined long enough to get the plot started (no small feat).

My least favorite place to start: In front a dungeon. It just doesn't go well.