Ok, so what are great ways to start the first session of a new campaign?
Specify genre if you like, or in general.
I guess one classic is "you all meet in the tavern and.."
Another classic is "you're all slaves in an arena, about to be forced to fight gladiatorial combats".
What other ones? which ones are really cool?
RPGPundit
Taking a page from Michael Stackpole, I started a campaign with one character in a sort of "charnal pit" as he was about to be cut into constituent parts by a maniacal researcher, led him through a short battle and then he discovered the cells where the other characters were awaiting a similar fate.
Then they had to fight their way through the research facility, equipping themselves as they went.
Did I mention they started out naked? :D
One of the most fun for me, was an attack by an ancient dragon on a small little backwater town I had my players start off in. This is sort of a "you had to be there" it was quite a while ago and the details are shaky so I can't really go word for word. Anyway, I got tired of the usual pussyfooting around until everyone got up the motivation to get their act together so I had them place themselves in the most likely spot they would be in based on the brief character history they gave me. An inn, a stable, a smith etc.
It didn't really matter where they were at the time, the entire town is blotted out in shadow from this massive form flying overhead. Roll a save, (they had no chance of making it of course) and they're cowering like frightened children. The entire town erupts into chaos, debris flying everywhere, dust, women and babies screaming, chaos. Eventually everyone is compelled (mysterious dragon magic I'm making up, what the hell do they know?) to go to the center of town. The players, and everyone else now can see the massive red dragon circling overhead. When the time is right he lit on the top of the largest structure that nearly buckles under his weight so that everyone can see him. I play up the size, how though they're terrified out of their wits they can't help but marvel at the magnificence of this titanic creature.
He gives this powerful speech about how old he is, every hero who has tried to slay him has met their end, he's big, he's bad, and he's bored. If there are no heroes worthy of taking him on by the gods he'll make some! So he breaths this special fire (more of that pulled out of my ass dragon magic, again, what the hell do they know?) that splinters off into a thousand sparks and depending on who it touched it either snuffed out or (in the case of my players and a couple NPCs) put a mark on their foreheads of a red dragon in flight.
Anyway, to make an already long story short, those who were marked had something special about them and if in a years time, they didn't comlplete the task that the dragon set them off to do they would die and he would kill everyone in town. If they survived they may become heroes worthy of taking on the mighty dragon of so and so someday.
It may have been somewhat of a railroad but by the time I was done they were so googley eyed they didn't care. :) I was amazed at the staying power this encounter had on them. They were very driven throughout the campaign to eventually amass enough power and resources to take this guy down. Which they eventually did.
I never cared for the "introduce your character" part of the game as I think they're kind of awkward. I'd rather just drop the characters in some action right away and do the intros later (if at all). Sort out the kind of campaign you're running and tailor the start towards it: if you're running a combat heavy campaign, drop the folks in front of a dungeon; if you're running a political intrigue game, drop the folks in the middle of a peace treaty negotiation; and so on.
This assumes, of course, that you spent a session with everyone in the room creating characters and everyone knows what the other guy can do and what direction you want the campaign to go. If you haven't, then perhaps the "you head to the Broken Mug Inn" scenario is the way to go.
For a long time I've wanted to start a campaign with "The gates of the city give way and ten thousand orcs start pouring into the streets. What do you do?"
My current campaign started with something like "Hey, are we ready to start? Great. Roll for initiative." Then some guys tried to kill them.
You are survivors of a shipwreck, aboard an emergency raft. You don't who the other people are, and supplies are running short. Suddenly, one of you spots land in the horizon...
Quote from: jrientsFor a long time I've wanted to start a campaign with "The gates of the city give way and ten thousand orcs start pouring into the streets. What do you do?"
Replace "orcs" with "Picts" and you have the opener to a D20 Conan game I ran last year...:D
The correct answer was, of course, run like hell! The climax of the opening scene went something like this: The PCs were a rag tag group of mercs and adventurers given horses and told by the commander of the doomed garrison to ride to the next city to warn them of the invasion, all while the border town was burning all around them. It worked out quite well, actually, and gave a real note of desperation and action to the game.
And of course they didn't make it to the next city without some adventure along the way...;)
TGA
I've used the "Usual Suspects" scenario where the players meet in a prison cell. Of course this was for a group of criminally minded characters, but with a bit of tweaking it could be used for other situations. Prisoner of War camp for example.
I guess I was in high school or perhaps junior high and I had just learned what in media res was and I had just picked up Spelljammer and my buddies and I were eager to give it a go.
They made up a party and we realized that there was no thief. I started the game with them chasing a flaming pyramid of a mummy who worshipped a dead sun's angry god.
"Why are we chasing this guy?"
"He killed your thief."
And the game started with them chasing down this bastard dead sun mummy, everyone getting a feel for how ship to ship combat worked and killing the thing.
Fun times.
QuoteI started the game with them chasing a flaming pyramid of a mummy who worshipped a dead sun's angry god.
I just wanted to note that you are awesome.
Quote from: jrientsI just wanted to note that you are awesome.
Thanks. :)
We started another game, a Burning Wheel 1-shot, set in an elven citadel with every PC waking up knowing that the king had succumbed to grief and headed West, never to be seen again.
The queen who had been cheating on him, the head of his knights with whom he had been cheating, his bastard half-elven son in from ranging in the woods, his estranged sea captain daughter back from her fostering with the sea kingdoms on the continent's westernmost shore, his ancient dowager queen crone of a mother and his loyal squire all vied for the throne.
It rocked.
I've always liked funerals for bringing together disparate parties, especially if you tell them to make up their connection to the deceased
Then you throw in a zombie attack or something. Everything goes better with zombies
Quote from: Hastur T. FannonI've always liked funerals for bringing together disparate parties, especially if you tell them to make up their connection to the deceased
Then you throw in a zombie attack or something. Everything goes better with zombies
The adventure already had kinstrife, elven court politics, and six immortal elves all going after the throne full throttle.
Zombies weren't needed.
It was a fun con scenario, ran it once for my home group and once more at Gen Con and it went pretty well both times.
Ok, pundy, here's one I like:
A SF setting, either hard sf or space opera, that opens centuries or so after "the big crash" in which the grand republic/empire/federation/whatever fell and a great dark age came across the galaxy.
The players, struggling to survive, find an ancient warship from the great times fully operational and realize it gives them the power to rebuild civillization.
In other words, for a grand campaign, I'd like to do one like "Andromeda" before Kevin Sorbo's monstrous ego turned the show into "The adventures of Kirkules."
Andromeda had such a wonderful premise and potential, too bad it turned into pure bullshit after a couple seasons as sorbo demanded that the show revolve around his character.
Quote from: jrientsFor a long time I've wanted to start a campaign with "The gates of the city give way and ten thousand orcs start pouring into the streets. What do you do?"
:eek:
I would SO play in that game.... I'm going to steal the hell out of that.
Quote from: Dominus NoxOk, pundy, here's one I like:
A SF setting, either hard sf or space opera, that opens centuries or so after "the big crash" in which the grand republic/empire/federation/whatever fell and a great dark age came across the galaxy.
The players, struggling to survive, find an ancient warship from the great times fully operational and realize it gives them the power to rebuild civillization.
Good one. I had one that had the players awakening from cold-sleep in a barely-function underground facility with no memory of who they were, where they were, or anything. I made the characters and revealed bits of their information and skills to them as they stumbled upon them. The only way to do the whole "amnesia" angle in my opinion is to keep the character sheets to yourself. :)
Quote from: WerekoalaGood one. I had one that had the players awakening from cold-sleep in a barely-function underground facility with no memory of who they were, where they were, or anything. I made the characters and revealed bits of their information and skills to them as they stumbled upon them. The only way to do the whole "amnesia" angle in my opinion is to keep the character sheets to yourself. :)
Hmmm, ever hear of "The morrow project"? It might be one you'd like, look it up.
One of the openings I took the most pride in was for what would become a long-running fantasy campaign where the PCs began as students at university, and were rummaging in some old unsorted scrolls as a favor for a master when God appeared before them and begged them, pleaded with them: please find a way to kill me.
That was the first 60 seconds of the campaign. My favorite of the many initial responses was the wide eyes and pained, worried expresison of a player named Bob, who had chosen this particular campaign to finally play his very first cleric.
The next three years was the resulting avalanche that Bob (and many of us) would come to consider the best campaign we'd ever done :)
So, in terms of method: I like to kick it off with a grabber!
(And what a very appropriate way to introduce my new SIG file)
Quote from: Dominus NoxHmmm, ever hear of "The morrow project"? It might be one you'd like, look it up.
Yeah, the idea was kind of a GURPS homage to Morrow projtect, Aftermath, all the oldies but goodies. I just added the amneisa-cant-see-character-sheet angle.
Quote from: S. John RossMy favorite of the many initial responses was the wide eyes and pained, worried expresison of a player named Bob, who had chosen this particular campaign to finally play his very first cleric.
That's... that's evil.
I love it! :devil:
Quote from: JongWKThat's... that's evil.
I love it! :devil:
[nods]
Three years later, Bob is the one who got to finish the job, to push the knife in, so to speak. What an evening ...
The longest/best campaign I've run (Earthdawn) started aboard an airship as airpirate grappeling chains dropped from above and latched onto the deck. The pcs were the only ones to survive the resulting crash, and they were in the middle of a vast wasteland. I've also done themore conventional desert island shipwreck. In my most recent game, I had one player, within the the first minute of the game he was kidnapped by Nazis who thought he was someone else. He woke tied to a chair. Afterwhich he was asked a lot of questions by some unfriendly people with a lot of sharp stuff. He was pretty motivated to kick some ass after that.
I'm a big fan of starting games "in media res." That said, one of my favorite openings was a D&D campaign I ran. I got tired of having the characters meeting "in a tavern" where a fight breaks out, so I just said, "okay, you all know each other. You're all walking down the street. As you're all passing the Bent Nail Tavern, Gruff the fighter (I roll a hit) gets hit on the side of his head by a flying tankard. Everyone make Dex rolls to avoid the two guys crashing through the door of the tavern."
-SJ
Quote from: Paka"Why are we chasing this guy?"
"He killed your thief."
I hereby take this campaign kicker in a manly fashion, because I less-than-three it with all my soul.
Or, uh, my loins. I dunno. Still manly though.
I had all the (Good, Neutral-aligned) PCs magically summoned to the lair of Pox the Lich (rider of Saurglyce, the White Dracolich). He had some evil that needed to be done, but he was knee-deep in research right now and couldn't get away from the lab. The PCs had a choice:
Accept his Mark, which would allow him to know where the PCs were, and to scry on them whenever he wished so he knew what they were up to (and also let the PCs ask 1 question of him each day), becoming his servants, or-
he'd kill them. Then, presumably animate them and send their zombies along with the party anyway.
The PCs all accepted the Mark, becoming the HAND OF POX. The theme behind the campaign was they had to find a way to get rid of the Mark (which Pox could cast thru remotely, as if they were all his Familiars, so he could Chill Touch or Finger of Death them whenever he felt like it if they tried to betray him) knowing that once they were free of the Mark, Pox (20th level) would come after them.
Sadly, that campaign only went a couple sessions.
*****
Another one I liked is BORN YESTERDAY, I've done it twice so far for my Gamma World campaigns. The PCs are revived, usually from Cryogenic Suspension, naked, with no memory of how they got there, to find the world is...very different.