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

That's not creation of characters, that's just dumb grind of decharacterised statblocks.

If you want something that actually gets you characters and campaign look at this little paper◊.

Bah, don't be so cynical about methods that differ from logical standards

That method gets you one line of backstory - "survivor of a horrid war out there". Hell the characters didn't even survive through all of it, the survivors are only the ones that were lucky to be played in the last stretch of the game.

It's a cool game to show how it is to be a guardsman in wh40k, but a chargen method it isn't.

I found the "You All Meet..." session of the campaign I played last year really memorable. The backstory was that a speciesist regime had taken power in a neighbouring country; our characters were all in a market square in a border town when some unofficial-looking armed "guards" started roughing up a halfling woman and dragging her off in chains. The whole crowd is standing and staring at this point, and while we-the-players knew that obviously this was the "step up and show your heroic colours" moment, there was a genuine tension in the room as to who was going to be the first person to speak out. My cleric started demanding some answers, the thugs got aggressive, the other P Cs started to put hands to weapons and/or back the cleric up as and when it seemed appropriate... It was a great way of establishing both theme and characters in the very first scene of the game.

We just started a new campaign (my first actually). We all met in a tavern, pretty standard, the bartender rounded up a few likely looking patrons (the P Cs), explained about a job he had that needed doing... and then a boulder smashed through the side of the tavern, the bartender is killed instantly, and we were attacked by goblins.

Pretty typical, really. I remember a number of Living Greyhawk adventures that began with the party in a tavern and then an orc band attacks, or a group of skeletons and zombies smashes in the window, or were-rats and their minions come boiling up out of the cellar.

It's used because it works pretty well. "So here's your group. Everyone introduced? And now we fight!"

It was more the fact that we were getting ourselves into the headspace of dealing with this guy, our first quest-giver, but then he's immediately wiped out, just to throw us for a loop.

So did he end up having an actual plot hook for the party that was interrupted by his sudden death, or did his proposed job end up entirely irrelevant to what the party ended up doing (the real adventure)?

edited 8th Mar '17 10:34:35 AM by Bense

It is now linking back up, so it wasn't purely for drama.

"You were all on the losing end of a civil war in your kingdom. In lieu of being executed, you're being pushed through a dimensional portal. You don't know what's on the other side, so it might be wise to stick together for a while."

I started the horror-themed pathfinder campaign I'm D Ming right now by splitting the 4-person party into two pairs that would wind up meeting at a crossroads. The first pair being a tribal human fighter trying to unite four barbarian tribes and "winning" a halfling sorcerer slave from a fight to prove himself worthy to speak with one of the chiefs, and they were sent off to uncover a Sword of Plot Advancement in a ruined city nearby. The second pair was a tengu cleric who's an aspiring necromancer and a Mad Scientist dhampir alchemist, both searching for what's essentially the Necronomicon in the same ruined city, but they are attacked by one of the tribes on the road, and the fighter and sorcerer run in to intervene. After the battle, the group go into the city to find themselves cornered and trapped there, surrounded by zombies and cultists, all of them seeking an artifact and trying to make it out alive.

I really want to start a campaign, either as a player or DM, by having the party be the only survivors of a shipwreck on a seemingly empty island. They were all on the ship for different reasons, it was seemingly just a passenger vessel - but perhaps it was carrying more than just a few mercenaries and miscreants...

edited 31st May '17 10:08:20 AM by HisInfernalMajesty

-*reads back in thread*

Huh. So the fit of insanity came to pass, and I did, indeed, end up running a Shadowrun game (sadly short-lived- the players loved the setting, enjoyed the story, but the mechanics drove them nuts >.O).

We actually started off in a gun shop that one of the players owned, with them all being runners that had worked together at least long enough to have a certain amount of mutual trust. Got hired by a semi-anonymous Johnson, ended up moving fairly quickly from the gun shop to a street near an Aztechnology facility that was hosting a minor Halloweener gang war, which the players promptly turned into a massive riot and dragged it through the Azzie's front gate (by powersliding the team's tricked-out semi through the densest collection of Halloweeners available and then sideswiping the gates open... 'runners kept going, Aztechnolgy security comes piling out to find out WTF is going on and gets a faceful of enraged Halloweeners ) while the team's infiltration specialist and sniper broke in through the back door.

That was a fun session.

Would it be cliche or too dramatic out the gate for the players if I start the campaign with them on a simple hunting trip, and having them come back to find their village destroyed?

I'm trying to kick off a low fantasy sort of open world game, and I'm not sure if that's a good way to start.

I recently started running own campaign that wasn't based on any official module or setting. What I did was have everyone use background generator(players I got for that one were really enthusiastic about rolling for everything <_< ) and part of Pathfinder's background generator is having each pc have relations to two other pcs. So by that way party already starts as party instead of having to meet somewhere and at least several pcs got inspiration out of it what they based their characters' goals from. Sooo yeah, that was pretty cool.

(besides that, the campaign started on "You were asking for ship to go to the island you guys were planning to go to and only one captain was willing. You are currently on the ship")

@His Infernal Majesty: The Serpent's Skull's first book is good shipwrecking adventure that fits that criteria pretty well. Rest of AP isn't that good, but first good is excellent and works as standalone well.

edited 25th Jun '17 10:35:38 PM by SpookyMask

Yes it is way too cliche. Especially if any of them want to actually get invested and make up backstories and relations - that starter would just rip out and burn all those connections.

Yes, establishing interparty relations is certainly a good idea.

x3 I'd say having them leave on the hunting trip, actually playing out said trip with some descriptions of the surrounding area, skill checks, and a couple attack rolls, and having them come back to the village while it's under attack but in time to still save some people would be a step better.

I started my current campaign basically the way you described but without any prior relations among the party (on account of I really didn't know what I was doing) though in my case all the villagers were possessed and there was only one confirmed civilian casaulty. :/