How have you kickstarted a campaign? I would like to have a conversation with real accounts, not hypotheticals, and focused on so-called "sandbox" or "hexcrawl" campaigns. I think it's common to say that these campaigns "take on a life of their own" once the PCs start interacting with the gameworld, generating consequences from their actions and forming relationships. But how did your campaign start--what set things in motion?

I'm especially hoping to hear from Black Vulmea because of this excellent series of articles:

http://black-vulmea.blogspot.com/2012/02/swashbucklers-sandbox-part-i.html
http://black-vulmea.blogspot.com/2012/02/swashbucklers-sandbox-part-2.html
http://black-vulmea.blogspot.com/2012/02/swashbucklers-sandbox-part-3.html
http://black-vulmea.blogspot.com/2012/02/swashbucklers-sandbox-part-4.html

Just as described in the original D&D booklets, except that I had only a couple of dungeon levels prepared (not the larger number recommended). Characters appeared at the town gate, and we went from there.

The way it worked with the Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea campaign we are playing right now is that we created a few characters first, namely, in particular, an Hyperborean warlock going by the name of Mercurio Drakonos who was a sailor onboard a Viking ship sailing towards the Savage Boreal Coast. It all came from rolling for a particular skill, brainstorming a bit of background, not much really, but it was sufficient to set up the starting point of the game:

The game started at sea, en route for the Coast. PCs that joined the first game would be assumed to be travelers on board. There was a storm, and while passing through the islands of the Skarag Coast northward, the captain lost control of the ship. The PCs jumped in and took the decision of where they wanted to go from there: sailing through the storm and islands, either crashing the ship on the Coast (with its own set of explorations and potential adventures) or by sheer luck avoiding disaster and making it farther to the actual valley where my primary mega-dungeon could be found (unbeknownst to them), OR sailing for Kusu's Cove, a large cavern with a village of smugglers and bandits where they knew they could find shelter for the time being (therefore: choice).

They chose the Cove (where, as in the case of the two other possibilities besides death that could unfold from their original choice at sea, other PCs could be met, of course), which was itself set up as a mini-hex sandbox. From there, they arrived in the Cove, found that the village of bandits had been taken by a young lord without respect for the old ways, that there was some sort of curse spreading amongst the villagers, and several ancient forts spread around the Coast, and role playing, action-reaction etc did the rest.

The full account of the first few games (we've played our 15th session yesterday): http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=24537

The RuneQuest Griffin Mountain campaign book was excellent. I started the players with a "coming of age ritual" scenario to get them comfortable with their Balazaring (stone-age tribesmen) characters. Along the way, I dropped in bits of information about what's where, who's who, and such.

The selection and organization of resources in GM is probably a good model if you want to put in a lot of prep work to make running a campaign easier.

Quote from: Phillip;626954Just as described in the original D&D booklets, except that I had only a couple of dungeon levels prepared (not the larger number recommended). Characters appeared at the town gate, and we went from there.

I.e., the characters just started exploring the dungeon because that was what you do, yes? This is exactly what I did, except there wasn't a town until later. Actually I inherited the dungeon from another player, and then when it was (basically) empty, instead of me expanding it or creating another, the players adventured in town and eventually overland. Not sure whose idea that was.

Currently running a new campaign with my gaming group of the last few years.

Usually we play older D&D types (2e, C&C, OD&D) but this campaign is a post apocalyptic/sci-fi gonzo homebrewed mash up of S&W Whitebox and Other Dust. We are one session in.

This was the blurb I gave to kickstart PC creation/the campaign jump off point.
You hated The Village but knew little else. There you were raised a slave & trained to be sent out into the Bleak Beyond to fetch treasures for the Tyrant. Occasionally people would whisper of legendary Xanadu or find some relic from Olden Times to puzzle over. Now The Village- your one refuge in an already ruined world- is gone.
"You crouch behind a broken wall, clutching the few possessions salvaged from the burning ruin of your home. Hideous winged beasts swoop in the distance, hunting & killing your fellow colonists- but it was men who destroyed your village. The attack was brutal & unexpected, the survivors have scattered. What do you do?"

RANDOM THINGS LEARNED IN THE VILLAGE
It was wondered what the Tyrant did with the Tek collected on his behalf, or what he was looking for.
Sometimes wild sandstorms blow in from the west.                                                    
The Village had no well, but the Tyrant had a source of water, it was one of the keys to his control over the people.  

So it's began as a hex crawl, searching for food & water, fighting off raiders and chasing the rumour of a surviving city to the South learned by a pc during the session. But if they ever discover a thriving city it could turn into an entirely different kind of campaign.

Or they could join with slavers, raiders, try to start their own settlement, join a small community somewhere, just explore the hexes, find out the secrets of the apocalypse or things I can't even think of.

The idea of the start was that the PC's know very little about the world, it's georgraphy or history or what the hell is out there so I imagine exploration and discovery will be big themes.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;626948...how did your campaign start--what set things in motion?

Our new Ars Magica campaign is a quasi-historical sandbox.

We started with a wizard's council. I gave each of the three players of wizards three news items which they could introduce at the council (or veto if they didn't want to introduce them). They were also free to introduce their own topics from their character/covenant backgrounds. Some of my 'news items' also drew upon their character backgrounds.

During the council, they elected to deal with two of those news items right away. The rest are being treated with a wait-and-see-what-develops attitude. We'll run those two 'missions' that they elected to do, and then we'll have another council to decide what comes new. The more familiar they get with the game world, the more likely they are to introduce their own missions and ignore the news items, I suspect. Regardless, I've got some 30 or 40 plot hooks to toss into the pot when needed. I'm sure we'll never use all of them.

If you want to see hour our initial wizard's council turned out, see the link in my sig.

Quote from: Benoist;626956The way it worked with the Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea campaign we are playing right now is that we created a few characters first, namely, in particular, an Hyperborean warlock going by the name of Mercurio Drakonos who was a sailor onboard a Viking ship sailing towards the Savage Boreal Coast. It all came from rolling for a particular skill, brainstorming a bit of background, not much really, but it was sufficient to set up the starting point of the game:

So the group collaborated on setting the initial situation? Or did you pick the tidbit and create the situation by yourself?

The Traveller game I'm running now was billed as a "one off," but could become a campaign if the players like.

I'm using the scenario Research Station Gamma, which is presented as a sort of "dungeon crawl" rescue mission. The characters start in a bar, drinking and thinking about their need for money so they can get off the planet (up to the players as to why, but it's rather a backwater).

However, the players spent the first session mainly pursuing their own agenda -- playing rather more lawless characters than they usually do in D&D -- and we ended with them just docking their submarine at the station.

I've got the Spinward Marches sector book, in which most of the early Traveller scenarios are set. I'm sowing leads to Twilight's Peak. The sector data is pretty rudimentary, a starting point for one's own brainstorming as to how to flesh out the worlds.

In an open-ended campaign, they'll probably want to find some way to acquire a starship. A pretty common Traveller set-up has the players operating a trader, taking side jobs to help make ends meet.

If it goes that way, I'll be mindful of some lessons from a "D&D in space" game another GM ran. In that, we did not feel we had enough information available on which to base strategic decisions. There was also a problem with getting too much wealth and goodies off the bat, which made it harder to come up with objectives.

A good lesson (learned long ago, but worth being reminded of) was the importance of engaging NPCs. Friends, foes, flunkies, etc., can create interesting situations.

Quote from: Phillip;626957The selection and organization of resources in GM is probably a good model if you want to put in a lot of prep work to make running a campaign easier.

That's exactly what I started with for the micro-sandbox I'm working on at the moment.

In this particular case, who decided the PCs would be Balazarings? And once that was set, you chose the initial getting-to-know-you adventure, right?

Quote from: Phillip;626966The Traveller game I'm running now was billed as a "one off," but could become a campaign if the players like.

I started with the scenario Research Station Gamma, which is presented as a sort of "dungeon crawl" rescue mission.

However, the players spent the first session mainly pursuing their own agenda -- playing rather more lawless characters than they usually do in D&D -- and we ended with them just docking their submarine at the station.

[...]

In an open-ended campaign, they'll probably want to find some way to acquire a starship. A pretty common Traveller set-up has the players operating a trader, taking side jobs to help make ends meet.

This seems to be a common theme in classic Traveller: the PCs are partners/friends, they don't have much, and they want to get their own ship. In this case they've been set down in an environment and they're actively doing stuff to achieve that goal. Sound right?

BTW, thumbs up to all responses so far. My questions are aimed at clarifying who made various decisions in the real world; the idea is to see what strategies GMs have available to get things started, so it's important to identify what the GM did specifically.

I decided the initial PCs would be Balazarings (except for one who wanted to play a Baboon). I chose the initial state of the world, which involved among other things it being time for the coming-of-age ceremony.

What works well for introducing a new player-character may depend on the scope of your game.

Anything I run for the group I'm regularly playing with these days will be a single-party setup, so wherever and whenever "the party" is, somehow the new character needs to be introduced there -- and also ought to have some motivation to join up, rather than going off on some separate adventure.

With a bigger campaign, with more frequent time slots for running games, I often liked to start with a single-player session to establish a new character and get it synced on the map and timeline with people who would be looking for (or at least be open to) adding another member to an expedition.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;626971BTW, thumbs up to all responses so far. My questions are aimed at clarifying who made various decisions in the real world; the idea is to see what strategies GMs have available to get things started, so it's important to identify what the GM did specifically.

Ok, I can give a more specific answer to that.

A) a bestiary & run-down of the various enclaves/potential adventure locales eg the ruined village at the start; Bone-Man (Carcosa style) country etc.

What changes as you come into each territory, what minor encounters specific to that enclave/locale are you likely to have when within a hex of the main base etc.

B) a hex map (6 mile hexes). To begin with I only filled out the hexes within a few days of the PC's but had ideas about vaguely where other regions/features would be placed.

C) Random encounter tables. IMO in an exloration hex crawl RE's are a great way to show the PC's (rather than tell them) what your world is like, what is out there and what is happening.

I spent more time on this than almost anything else- encounters, each one is with intelligent beings MUST be doing something to do with the gameworld, have motivations, links, possibilities, info to gather, alliances to form etc etc.

D) Half-prepped several likely modules/adventure locations I could drop in- so that if the PC's homed in on one I could run it in a pinch in any session, or easily with a sessions notice.


E) A set of tables for filling hexes on the fly- in case the PC's manage to somehow blast right of the map, I have some tools for winging a session and still keep the flavour of the setting coherent and not pull it completely out of my ass. This is just a personal preference, some guys are great at Dming on the fly, I need to give myself something to bounce off.