I'm going to start a new campaign in the near future with a mix of veteran players and new players. It's going to be a sanbox game, but I'm using the first adventure to break in the newbies and as a way to tie the players together. My problem is creating something memorable for all my players that isn't too cliche. A rowdy tribe of goblins or a cellar full of dire rats just wont cut it. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Courier duty. Have the local lord or merchant dispatch them somewhere with a message of great importance to him personally. His nemesis sends agents to stop them in various ways. Force, bribe, burglary. Maybe even con.
They can run into natural hazards and a wandering monster or two in addition to the hostile agents.
Or set them to stop a courier from delivering a message or parcel.
The PCs head to the mine for whatever reason. Perhaps they are hired to deliever a message to a miner who has been gone a while or need to escort a new group of miners overland. Mayber the theocrat sends them to retrieve a shipment of ore. The reason isn't overly important, but a compelling motive is nice (it won't matter for long).
Upon arriving at the designated location, the PCs find a ramshackle mining camp, but are assaulted by kobolds who pour from the entrace. Heading inside after the battle the PCs find that a tribe of kobolds are slaughtering the miners. Evidence throughout the dungeon seems to suggest that there is nothing to mine at the kobold warren and that theocrat made a pact with the tribe to murder the men sent their, eat their fill, preserve the rest, and send it back to him to sell as meat. Depending on their particular personalities from their they can reveal the disturbing truth to the town and do away with the corrupt leadership or perhaps even extort the situation for a cut of the action themselves.
I had it sent in a swamp region so there were "random encounters" with crocodiles and snakes, problems with getting lost, disease to deal with, and other dangers involded, such as banditry, to make the travel to and from the dungeon exiting as well.
Just some random ones I came up with. Have fun and good luck.
Ding-Dong Explosion Time!!!
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They start out at an outdoor festival that goes into the night time. (Gives them time to chatter and maybe talk to some interesting NPCs you make up. Suddenly at the strike of midnight (The Witching Hour), numerous homes and buildings explode, bursting into flames.
The parties goal is to stop any riots they come across and move the civilians to a safer part of the city (or outside of it completely), as charged to do so by the captain of the guards (or who they think is the captain of the guards).
The riots serve to offer battle, could throw in some low level assassins instead if you wish. Getting the civilians out is meant to give them a small heroic moment that could bring them together. It could then lead to finding who did the exploding (if you wish).
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The Break Out (A bit on the difficult side perhaps)
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All the players start out in separate but close dungeon cells and can't recall how you got there. The guards don't seem to human but they are humanoid. The dungeon itself is quite wet, with water trickling down the side of support beams, puddles on the floor and other odd nuances. Overhearing that they're going to be tortured for information, they (should) decide it's a good idea to get out of dodge. As they break out if they check to see who exactly their captors are, they notice that they look like Undines. As they open a trap door leading to what they may believe to be the ground floor, water floods in quickly. They must now make it to the surface of a lakes water.
If they do not, and they drown or are about to they are given some help from an unseen mage. Using the Air Bubble spell on them or teleporting them to the surface of the lake.
Depending on how tough you want to be, you can lower or raise the swimming DC to get to the surface as well as the skill of the Undine Guards. Maybe place an item of limited use Air Bubble where they could possibly find them to help.
They can now figure out why they were there, and who put them in an underwater prison to begin with. (If you wish).
I played this one back when it was first introduced. With your mix, it should be a positive experience since your veteran players will be appalled by the BBEG and your noobs won't know any better but will get nervous just cos the veteran players are.
This one is another in a similar dark theme.
I also liked this one; not as dark as the first two, but JMSO has a lot of elements mixed in.
look up the Melford Murder.
Rework it to make sense in your game, change names or skills or whatever. Its a pretty fun, simple adventure that is not too complicated but focuses on some interesting roleplaying. I adapted that game close to the beginning of my last campaign and the murderer (who I changed somewhat substantially) was a recurring villain for another 6 months in my campaign.
I would highly recommend the Free PDF of Hollow's Last Hope, available here on the Paizo downloads.
It is a nice, straightforward mission to get the party (of strangers) to trust each other and work for an established goal. Some nice treasure....just maybe beef up some of the CR's you will be facing. I did and it made some nice fights for my group.
Cheers.
Courier duty. Have the local lord or merchant dispatch them somewhere with a message of great importance to him personally. His nemesis sends agents to stop them in various ways. Force, bribe, burglary. Maybe even con.
They can run into natural hazards and a wandering monster or two in addition to the hostile agents.
Or set them to stop a courier from delivering a message or parcel.
Second courier duty.
Well my favorite way to have started a campaign was to have everyone wake up in a dark room with no memory of how they got there.
Sounds a bit cliche but there is alot you can do with it, adding in details about the adventure , in my case I used a disintigrated adventurer next to a completely wrecked object (which had previously been an artifact), It was amusing to see the team work there way out of a dungeon that was already gone though, low level scavenger type creatures moving it on various remains. At one point one of my adventurers pulled a stick from the wall, one which had previously been stuck there to disable a trap.... Oppsie.
Anyway, there is a lot that can be creatively done with the setup to make it not so same ol same ol
"You are all running from the horde of invading orcs."
"The tax collectors show up at your village. You have three days before they call the army to arrest everyone for non-payment. Find X to pay the tax."
Was looking for suggestions on this very topic when I came up with an idea that someone might like:
A church has recently received word that a local fighting tournament is being used as a front for some sort of illegal activity. They hire the PC's to enter the tournament and investigate from within. Clerics ostensibly heal the losers of each round so they don't die. However, it turns out that they are actually killing the weakened contestants and turning the corpses into undead minions.
Encounters alternate between fighting monsters or other teams of contestants during the tournament and trying to figure out what is going on within the tournament compound between fights. Eventually, they discover the leader of the operation and slay him. However, this may not make them very popular with the people who led gambling rings and other illegal activity around the tournaments.