"You all meet in a tavern..." How to start a campaign

I started my first campaign this week, with a Cold Open in a training room. It was met with groans all around. So, I think I might just go with good old taverns in the future.

Planning on having the characters all summoned into a council-meeting, and essentially drafted into doing the initial thing, a scouting expedition. Then we'll see how it goes.

For my Infernal Exalted campaign, it was pretty standard for Exalted: You all meet in Malfeas at Calibration. Ligier is assembling a full circle of Infernals. Your job? Take over the East. Yes. The entire East. Have fun.

edited 6th Feb '13 5:21:20 PM by DrTentacles

Got to admit, my favorite I keep hearing is "You all wake up in Prison. Jailbreak time!"

Is it possible to do "meet in inn/tavern/bar" thing right if its such a huge cliche?

You can do it, just be prepared to hear a couple of groans all around the table.

Seriously, though, just because something is a cliche doesn't mean it can't be done well. Though it certain cases, the cliche status might make that sort of feat harder. But not impossible.

Oh, absolutely. You can do anything right if you hang enough lampshades on it.

"You all meet in an inn, because you guys couldn't be arsed to come up with a better way."

Seriously, though, isn't the whole "how did I end up in this party" the player's responsibility? I mean, it's basically character background, right?

There are several schools of thought on this one:

• The game sets up how the party met. This works well for games like Spirit of the Century where setting, tone, and to a certain extent backstory and moral code, are set by default.
• The GM (or players, in theory, but I've never seen it happen myself) chooses a party concept, which the players build into. This works best when the GM has a particular vision for the type of campaign they want to run (though not necessarily the nitty gritty details, of course). For example, if the game is about undersea drillers, certain character concepts just won't work and it's hard to add random character concepts and still have them be useful.
• The players make characters that would be able to slot into the "standard" party type without much trouble. This works well for games like D&D, where player characters are adventurers unless noted—the reason to be with this particular adventuring party doesn't have to be a strong one.
• The players make their characters, and the GM comes up with a party concept that can suit them all. Expect Contrived Coincidence as the GM contorts to get such disparate characters working together, or for the player characters to have instinctual knowledge of which other people at the inciting event are other PCs.
• The players come up with basic concepts and flesh them out as the entire table comes up with ways that they're connected. This only works if you can convince the entire table that character creation can itself be a play session.

The main lesson is to know your group. Some people feel that mechanical connections between characters feel forced and will avoid the rules-suggested linking mechanics that other groups will need to come up with a functional party at all. Some players get upset at the thought of their characters having met any other PCs "off-camera", and will resist any attempts to have a shared backstory, while others thrive on these past connections. Some players like coming up with an in-depth backstory, and some don't. Some group members—players or GMs—hate being told what to do, while others prefer guidance. Some think that any restrictions on character creation stifle creativity, while others prefer building into a mold.

I've seen games work all ways, but I've also seen many ways fail because they didn't suit the group. The worst case is when two or more players are well-suited to one method, while two or more other players are suited to a mutually exclusive one—or the majority of the players prefer a method that the GM hates. For example, after having it both ways, I've resolved to only play in parties that have set concepts (either player-set, GM-set, or collectively-set) if I can help it. The standard "adventuring party" conceit leads to too much conflict between in-character goals and out-of-character goals: the "My character really wants to bail and escape from these idiots, but I as a player know that the game falls apart unless I stay" issue.

One thing that I find interesting is when players fight off any attempt to restrict their character's backstory, but will gladly accept restrictions on personality. You know, the sort that will reject any party concept off-hand, or even chafe at the thought of setting a home country for everyone, but see no problem with the entire game hinging on their character's willingness to implicitly trust three other greedy sociopaths that they just met.

My friend and I come up with the idea of having the party awake next to a dead dragon at the end of a dungeon with a hangover, and they have to adventure back to the tavern to piece together what happened.

It's named "Dude, where's the tavern?"

^Shouldn't it be more weirder scenario?

I mean, dead dragon while hungover sounds like they somehow killed dragon while drunk :P You should have much weirder bizarre scenario to discover what the heck you did while drunk.

Someday I really need to run a game that opens with "A volley of blowdarts soars over your heads as you crash through the undergrowth in front of the Temple of the Black Serpent, a king's ransom in stolen gemstones in your packs. What do you do?"

A lot of dungeons end with fighting the Big Bad though. The idea is to make it an adventure in reverse.

The Hangover scenario sounds like it would be a lot of fun, if only every game I played didn't have at least one guy playing The Teetotaler.

I'm running a Paranoia game soon. Any ideas besides starting on the way to the briefing room?

Have them wake up near the cloning vats with no memory of how they got there. Turns out they were on a mission and all got killed, but the memory recording system got junked and they don't remember any of it.
The first part of the game would consist of finding out what the hell they were doing before Friend Computer vaporises them for not doing it.

I remember once running a game for a couple of friends (sadly too few to really get good backstabbing in) where I had them summoned to a different briefing room when they were just about to reach the first one. After running back and forth a few times a scowling Vulture Warrior ushered them to one of those rooms.

That guy's drink got spiked.

Likewise- I'm starting an urban fantasy campaign. Urban fantasy of the Young Adult Fiction variety; think Percy Jackson. That is, the protagonists (and players- there's the twist) don't know they/their characters have supernatural powers. So, I need a way to get them together, which I have done, and a clever way to show them the cool stuff. What do?

Let them get cornered by a shady organisation that wants them dead for some reason, and have them discover their powers by zapping the enemy with whatever kind of power they may have in their panic. Using said power comes at a penalty until they've had time to learn how to control it.

Here's a good one:

You were all part of a larger group (a batallion, a club, police force, a tour etc.) However, on a trip/mission, your entire group was wiped out. Now it's up to you who lived, even if you didn't know each other before, to carry on that group's heritage. (Even if you don't yet know what that is.)

New players may be added any time: they simply thought they were dead, but it's not like they could account for every missing person in all the commotion.

One interesting forum game I was in.

"You all meet at a wedding. A and B are arranged to be married, having never seen each other, the rest of you figure out why you're there." (A and B being PC lesser-nobles who'd both signed up for said roles.)

Yes, the wedding was called off by, um, external forces.

edited 12th Jul '13 6:47:10 PM by Ramidel

Usually I like to go the In Medias Res route, even starting them mid-battle ("You all meet several hours ago. Right now you're half-dead."). But if I were mixing things up, I'd start by informing every player, in private, that they've been hired to accomplish a task. Either they all have the same task, or they're all mutually exclusive. The game would start at a major social event where everyone's targets are.

One specific variant I would use is random assassinations. Name a few NPCs, put their names into a hat with all the PC names, and have each player draw a name out of the hat. Replace any names that have been drawn. Each PC has been hired to assassinate the character whose name they drew. (If they drew their own name, have them draw again, obviously. If you're doing it via the Internet, just pick them at random yourself and tell the player what you picked.)

This opening allows for liberal application of Schrödinger's Gun. The players might fight each other, or they might team up; you can decide based on their actions and your own preferences whether they had different employers or the same one to start with, and whether they were supposed to try to accomplish their goal first, pick each other off, prove themselves, or work together. It helps to get your herd of cats under your control and keep them entertained.

edited 12th Jul '13 11:01:03 PM by Ezekiel

Oh, and one other idea.

"You all meet in the afterlife. Because you're dead."

Adventures in Limbo? Resurrected for a job? Your call!

I haven't yet run it (never found enough players interested in the system), but I have an Unknown Armies campaign that starts with the P Cs being college students on the same floor of a dorm. Each of them is entrusted with a package by their RA ("Oh, it's a present for my girlfriend's birthday. Don't want her to find it in my room..."). Then the RA is murdered, and someone or something is after them and what they have.

To start it, I plan to run a solo session for each player, setting them up with the package (And seeing how many of them open it right away), and getting a feel for what motivates each character. Start of first joint session: "It's 3 am on a Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. You're awoken from sleep by the sound of a scream. What do you do?"

edited 14th Jul '13 5:53:05 AM by Terrie