CaseyBear's page

Depends on the group makeup and dynamic.

What kind of game are you shooting for?
Does your group like gritty, investigative, murder-hobo, what?

Without specifics...then I'd probably go with in media res.

"You are all in the cantina...suddenly the glasses and bottles around you start shattering as a squad of stormtroopers rush in firing at everything in sight. The bartender manages to say 'No blasters! No bla-AUGH' before a volley stitches across his chest cutting him off mid-protest."

...That sort of thing.

for what I have planned it's not gonna be too hardcore since my campaign is gonna have 2 people who are somewhat new to this type of thing. But if I had to gauge what the group likes overall I would say it's gonna lean more towards gritty, but not all the time, like maybe at the most extreme the party is exploring a raided village and they find the charred bodies of a couple, (maybe a family) huddled together in their final moments in a burnt down house.

A good first encounter should be aiming to set the tone of the campaign, and get them into it without killing them or stressing them out. I'd suggest an encounter of CR equal to the average party level, with maybe 4 or 8 plot relevant enemies. What's plot relevant depends on you. (This is also assuming you have a party that's at least somewhat diverse. If you have a weird group, like five wizards, you might need to adjust the encounters with that fact in mind).

(Word of warning: Avoid orcs. Orcs look like a start-of-campaign enemy, but they're a bit unbalanced. Orc encounters go wrong a lot easier than most monsters I've seen, and that doesn't make for a good start to a campaign.)

Good thing you said that I was playing around with throwing in an Ork or 2, luckily our party is pretty diverse. So far we have a Rouge, Ranger, Fighter, Paladin, and a Bard. More people may be joining but it's doubtful.

So it's my first time gm'ing a campaign and I have no idea what a good first encounter for 5 people would be, none of my friends who have gm'ed can really help me either since they're in the campaign, and this campaign will have the most people participating at one time than any others we've been apart of. I'm not really looking for a full layout of an encounter, just an idea of what I should be bringing to the table for the group I'm working with