A lot of us complain about the cliched 'you all meet up in a tavern looking for work' campaign start, and with good reason. For experienced gamers, it's old and stale. However, I sometimes find it hard to come up with good alternatives to the tavern scene. I've come to realize that maybe this is because of the way we play d&d; that is, we often play it still holding on to our modern sensibilities. Need a job? Go pick up the want ads/town bulletin at the local mom & pop's/tavern!
In a medieval world, everyone already has a job from the day that they're born. They train thru childhood and when deemed ready to start working by their superiors, they are assigned a specific place to work. No want ads, no resumes, no references. So I've been thinking, has anyone tried starting a campaign in this vein? Say, starting out an 'adventuring party' in their backwater human hamlet; so that they all have to be human (or perhaps a 1/2 breed) and a 'standard' class (fighter, cleric, druid, ranger, wizard) and don't need to meet up in the tavern because they already know each other and already have a job/mission given them by the town elders. In order to accomplish this mission, they soon must leave for distant and exotic lands; as they visit other nations and cultures, more options become available to them.
This situation might be similar to certain electronic rpgs (FF is the one that I've played): the group encounters a specific character in their journeys, and the DM announces (possibly after the PCs get to know the NPC) that a player can 'trade out' a current PC in exchange for the new one.
Or the situation might be simpler: upon arriving at a new community that has new/exotic races after a long and harrowing trek, the DM announces that any players are welcome to create new PCs using this culture's race and class options.
Anyone ever done this? Have any comments anyway?
I think it's become a cliche because it's the easiest way to do things. However, it can be a bit restrictive to start the way you describe. The basic idea is good, though--as with the recommended start for the AoW campaign, where DMs are encouraged to have their players root characters in the local setting. To do this effectively, I think you need to prepare in several ways.
1) An extensive handout detailing the village or town where the campaign starts, so that players can use their creativity to invent a character that fits in somehow. (This means the DM needs to do a detailed background on the settlement, like the classic Village of Homlet or the Diamond Lake backdrop in last year's Dungeon. You don't have to put all the details in the handout, but the major figures and institutions in the village should be mentioned and characterized.)
2) Hold one on one sessions with each player as he/she generates a PC--as the player decides what kind of character is desired, the DM can suggest several options for plugging the character in to the local scene. (The last page of the Diamond Lake background piece shows a good way to do this formally--for your own campaign, though, you just have to have a good idea of who might live in the village and create ties to NPCs you've already invented, or be ready to add some new NPCs--the PC's family and close associates.
3) As an alternative or supplement to #2, you can tell the players their characters already know each other, and have a group brainstorm session so they can figure out what the relationships are. X is Y's best friend, Z is Y's cousin, X and W are both apprenticed to B, etc. This puts the onus on the players to come up with a raison d'etre for their party. This method also has the advantage of giving the players an opportunity to decide what kind of party they want collectively and who gets to play what role. The DM should be actively involved in this session, willing to alter the fabric of his setting creation a bit to accommodate players' desires, and perhaps dropping some hints as to the nature of the first adventure, to help guide the process a bit.
3) Otherwise, as a DM you can invent the relationships and tell the players what they are (since people rarely have control over who their close associates are in a village setting--they're born into them or their parents or masters decide for them). This is easier, and may be more suitable if the group doesn't want to spend a whole playing session on party building before the first adventure.
Having the PCs already know each other reduces the mercenary feeling you get in many adventuring parties during the early sessions--not that treasure will disappear as an incentive in the campaign, but if players are roleplaying fellow villagers well, there should be a sense of loyalty to the party that you don't always find among comrades who are basically chance acquaintances in the local tavern.
Even if one wants to have the adventuring party founded on a chance meeting, there are other ways to do it. Some options:
1) Have the PCs meet at a temple. Each has come separately seeking some sort of service (prayers for good fortune, healing potion for sick parent, marriage license, blessing for the crops, etc.), and the priest needs something done in return that the PCs must cooperate to accomplish.
2) Near a crossroads in the wilderness. The PCs all arrive separately near sundown, and this is the only good campsite available. They start by figuring out if they can trust each other, and the DM can spring an event on them in the middle of the night that leads into a more extensive cooperation.
3) In jail. The PCs have to cooperate to escape, and the circumstances of the escape (or the imprisonment) lead them to keep working together. Maybe they've all been connected to a crime they didn't commit, and they need to turn up evidence to clear their names. Maybe one of the PCs knows the whereabouts of a treasure trove, and promises to share equally if the other PCs help him escape.
4) Shipmates. The PCs all end up together on the same ship/conveyance of DM's choice. Originally, they are planning on going their separate ways, but fate intervenes--something happens that forces them to cooperate to ensure their common survival or gives them a common purpose (shipwreck, mutiny, piracy, ship runs out of or loses something important and captain sends the PCs to secure it, etc.)
5) Their bosses are important figures in the power structure of the city or village or kingdom, and these bosses decide to cooperate on a project or mission of some sort, assigning the PCs to work together and represent their boss/guild/organization's interests in the affair.
6) The PCs are minor members of a traveling circus or troup of jongleurs. Their troup is set upon by a mob or bandits and wiped out, except for the PCs, who have to figure out how to make enough money to get back home. Recent events lead the PCs to believe that adventuring probably isn't much more dangerous than acting, and the rewards are potentially much greater. (Different classes with no obvious performer roles can have different roles--the fighter starts out as the bouncer or gatekeeper, the cleric as the troup's healer, druid is the animal keeper or horse-handler, etc.)
Obviously many more possible opening campaign hooks exist, and I welcome others to share their brainstorms.
Classmates! The Wizards' Academy, doncha know!
|
I was watching a show about life in feudal Japan. At the border of each daimyo's feifdom there were governmental border patrol checkpoints. Nobles got right through, samurai had to show some papers, commoners got the bureaucratic runaround.
They had to hang around there while "their papers were checked out."
The adventurers could meet under similar circumstances, cloistered at the border while the attendants there sent for a divinatory spellcaster to "figure out what they're up to." This could take hours, days, as long as the gamemaster needs it to be, or as long as he is enjoying it. A similar setup at the gate to a walled city--the characters have to wait around in a "guest room" with multiple other travelers for a few hours; seems the cleric on duty had to go help out with an accident involving an overturned wagon and a goat stampede. Oh, he used up all his spells with that; maybe he'll be here tomorrow. You can all spend the night in the guest room, or find appropriate lodging in the woods outside the walls. What was that howling?
|
An interesting alternative that I used with a recently-begun campaign, was to have the players prep their characters, and to come up with reasons for them to journey/live/travel to a specific city in my setting. They all go to rest that night ... and wake up, feeling battered and laying about a cavern with signs of carnage. As they stand up, they get "deja vu" impressions of each other, and realize that they are wearing different clothes (and carrying different gear) than they remember having the night before.
As the campaign has progressed, they have pieced together from evidence that they are far away from home, and apparently had suffered severe level and memory loss at the climax of an epic battle. Not only are they attempting to battle "leftover" minions, figure out where they are, and what they're doing there, but they are also having to "reacquaint" themselves with each other and try to second-guess why they were associating together in the first place.
Fairly convoluted, for sure, but the surprise factor lent to the unique feel I was going for. It also makes it easier to explain why such diverse characters are together - truly there may be no way to find out the original reason they banded together "back in the day", but musings and theories gives them something to talk about around the campfire.
Wizards' Academy? Did someone mention Hogwarts?! Thanks for the input all!
I've done the start-as-a-prisoner thing, as a player. Boccob bless guards for being stupid and charm person for not having a material component!
Heathanson, I love that tidbit about Japanese history. Sounds like a great way for an adventuring group to meet up; just be sure they're headed in the same direction!
|
|
A lot of us complain about the cliched 'you all meet up in a tavern looking for work' campaign start, and with good reason.
I've come to enjoy starting campaigns in media res. There's something to be said for beginning with "Roll initiative" and filling in the background with a flashback scene afterwards.
Heck, you can even flash back to a tavern scene if you feel the need.
Another aspect of the cliched tavern is that it tends to be more or less set up for the players to take the DMs first adventure hook. That means all the players start off with the same initial objective.
One of the dangers of allowing a lot of out of party development is that the players can easily start to wander off in different directions derailing the campaign from day one.
That is not to say that DMs should only use the cliched tavern - just that they should be very aware that their PCs have to meet and have to all want to work together - from this moment until they are 20th level or they die. So the set up has to make them into a team one way or another and if they have all sorts of conflicting or extraneos goals especially right at the begining there are going to be problems. Nip this sort of idea in the bud before it even has a chance to fully formed. Or just tell your players that they have to design backgrounds that will make them want to work together. Period.
There seem to be three types of integration that I've seen (character integration being one of my weakest skills as a DM, by the way). These are nominal, shallow, and deep integration.
Nominal integration is where the characters are told to hook up and travel together, but have no inclination to do so for any other reason--the King grabs the characters and tells them they are heretoforth ordered to return to him the holy artifact that has fallen into the hands of the evil lich. The wheels usually fall off of this one pretty early unless the PC group is pretty chipper about being railroaded around. Usually one or two of the most rebellious types will have ditched before the group even leaves town.
Shallow integration is where there's some emergency and the PCs band together to soldier through it until they each get what they're after. This might get the PCs all the way through an adventure, but often it only gets them through their current difficulty at which point the DM desparately needs to come up with yet more hardship to keep the group hanging tight and not wandering off.
Deep integration usually happens when the PCs actually care about each other for some reason, and this friendship bond inclines them to put aside their individual agendas for long enough to help each other out.
This is relatively rough to get to happen, particularly in a group where some or all of the characters are of the haughty/whiney/detestable variety. Even in the best scenario it's hard to get characters who've never met before to seriously bond. It's like if you've ever gone to a restaurant or had to wait in a doctor's office. How many good friends did you come out of there with? None. And why? Because there was no reason whatsoever to interact with anyone else, and in fact it would be somewhat impolite to do so. But in roleplaying games often players feel this fake and cheesy pressure to have to seek out the other PCs and make conversation--they don't do this with NPCs mind you, just other PCs. This really ends up marking the failure of a DM in my opinion, when the players are forced to forsake roleplaying to bail you out.
A way I like to use is to tell the players that they've simply been friends and allies the entire time. The details of how and why they are allies and why they are going on their first adventure together can add an interesting aspect to the campaign.
For example, they might have been soldiers in the same platoon during the war. Discharged now that the war is over and unable to find mercenary work because the supply of ex-soldiers is outstripping the demand, they decide to investigate the famously deadly crypt in the hopes of finding valuable ancient treasures.
Or, perhaps the group of you are a loose criminal syndicate. The local mob boss is calling in your debts with interest, and you need money fast. The only people you trust with your life are each other, and one of you has heard a rumour that there's something going on in the nearby moathouse that might be what you're looking for.
With new players, I'd be inclined to start them out at the entrance to the dungeon right away, glossing over the how-you-met quite quickly, perhaps forcing a backstory on them to get them into the game as quickly as possible.
Having the "dungeon" come to the PC's is a good option - start an encounter right in front of their noses, giving them the chance to leap straight in. For example, a robbery in town, which all the PC's witness - they might not know each other, but their interventions imply they have similar motivations, or at least can work together ongoing. Keep the hooks going from there, givingthem a chance to keep together, e.g. some by-stander / the person being robbed, asks the PC's to help do something else, and so on...
This only requires the players to play along with the leads, which they should do as otherwise there's nothing for them to do and they should leave or roll another character...
See Mad God's Key, for an example of this approach.
Yup, the "Hogwarts" approach can work! Membership in a common group (race or class, frex) is another way. Got a "Guild of Adventurers" in your world? Local members prolly know each other, at least by reputation. Wizards' Guild, Druid Circle, Elven ex-pat community, and so on all work as well.
My players have decided via majority-vote to start a new campaign. (I think they like making new characters...) They want to run a wilderness-oriented campaign and since there are only three of them (and two of them are ages 12 and 6), I declared it to be a gestalt-character campaign. I decided one "side" of their gestalt "tree" had to be Ranger, Druid, or Scout. The lead player then convinced me to allow Shaman (and ended up taking Scout as the other "side" anyway!). So I have a Drd/Rgr, Drd/Rog, and a Sha/Sct. Obviously, their character class choices have made a great starting-point for how they know each other!
Also, another (more subtle?) way is to look at skills and feats characters share. This could easily be another way they know each other, thru having shared teachers or shared skill-practice.
Just some thoughts.
|
Ooh, ooh! I have an idea (snatched whole-heartedly from the movie "Savior").
Foreign Legion idea…each PC has done something or is believed to have done something (built into the character design by the player) that requires that they make a new start, with new identities. They are invited to join (via messenger) the “foreign legion” of the empire (or whatever). It’s their only out. Put in 6 years, get out with official new start, all crimes forgiven. That sort of thing.
Level 1- training camp, bond-forging as a special ops unit, so-to-speak.
Level 2-7? Carrying out orders. Towards end, forced to work with NPC (evil dude) as a comrade. Put into situation that requires an evil act (although they may not realize it is evil; eg – the killing of the boy on the bridge in “Savior”). Crisis of conscience ensues. Opportunity arrives to leave the Legion (with which they have become disillusioned) and redeem themselves by helping an innocent in duress. PCs stop the evil NPC in order to help the innocent and strike out on their own.
Note – also include friendly NPC that left earlier due to conscience, plant seeds of doubt about the Legion and the empire. Legion gets ticked off about their dereliction of duty, causes issues throughout campaign. Hehe. Where do they go now? Can they make yet another fresh start?
Level 8-20: the big story arc…hmm…
Hmm the old Spiderman "Secret Wars" crossover had Spiderman choose a team of superheroes to defeat the villains on an alien planet. The chosen Superheroes were teleported away with little choice on their part.
Another opening similar to that is a town attacked by monsters or a war in which some of the characters are conscripted, some might be mercenaries, and others might use the war to appeal to their god or some for personal reason.
There's always the possibility for a chance encounter to bring them all together besides the need for booze.
I prefer having some frame for group, other than "chance meeting in tavern". One way is this "X knows Y whose cousin is Z" approach. Another approach is being hired as odd-jobs people by a temple, city elders, rich merchant house...with emphasis on "odd jobs". The initial equipment is provided by hirers as is lodging. This is a fun way to bring together wildly different characters who don't know each other beforehand and can bring in some fascinating conflicts (if such things are your cup of tea, naturally).
And no, being hired by temple doesn't necessarily mean Hieroneous "remove all evil from face of earth" missions. Temples of Boccop or Olidammara can have very different needs for an adventurer group...or how about temple of Vecna sending adventurers to uncover and report secrets to the temple (especially fun if the players don't know who they really are working for...).
Some other groups I've had:
Group of mage apprentices whose guild was destroyed by...something, but who managed to escape to a little town of Diamond Lake...
Traveling circus (or freak show, to be exact...all the players were encouraged to create strange and offbeat characters, preferably of noncommon races), whose director died, and a paladin who got a divine message to take these sad rejects and form a tool for Heironeuous of them (working for Heironeous can be fun too, when provided with a twist).
Polyamorous gnome family.
members of Guild of Explorers, whose mission was just to go to different places, find out what there was and report back (Star Trek, anyone?).
I was watching a show about life in feudal Japan. At the border of each daimyo's feifdom there were governmental border patrol checkpoints. Nobles got right through, samurai had to show some papers, commoners got the bureaucratic runaround.
They had to hang around there while "their papers were checked out."
The adventurers could meet under similar circumstances, cloistered at the border while the attendants there sent for a divinatory spellcaster to "figure out what they're up to." This could take hours, days, as long as the gamemaster needs it to be, or as long as he is enjoying it. A similar setup at the gate to a walled city--the characters have to wait around in a "guest room" with multiple other travelers for a few hours; seems the cleric on duty had to go help out with an accident involving an overturned wagon and a goat stampede. Oh, he used up all his spells with that; maybe he'll be here tomorrow. You can all spend the night in the guest room, or find appropriate lodging in the woods outside the walls. What was that howling?
Yup was thinking something similar along the lines of a monster(s)/plague threating a town's transportation that all the PCs have the misfortune finding themselves trapped in until they can remove the threat. And if the show was on the History Channel i watched it too.
Taking a page from Geoffrey Chaucer, I had a party gather to go on a pilgrimage.
The cleric was directed by his superior in the church to guide a group of commoners to a cathedral a few days away. The ranger's parents were among the pilgrims, while the fighter was protecting the pilgrims to pay off a Cure spell that he had been the recipient of before the campaign's open. The mage was on his way to the same city for another purpose, but there's safety in numbers.
The first adventure was getting the commoners to their destination safely. From there, they stayed together to assist the mage in an errand assigned him by his guild.
As DM and player, I've never had problems with characters wandering off due to lack of motivation. The folks I've played with liked to roleplay, but never had a problem with fudging the characters' motives a bit; "I have to stick around to take care of the gnome, cause he'll get himself in it deep otherwise!" "I'm sticking around because...cough (the party elf is HOTT!)" or even "I want more loot and these oafs make great meatshields!"
I guess that, like me, they knew that not helping the DM a bit in this department would just take more time away from the actual adventuring. Better even to invent a movitation for one's character to stick with the group than to force the DM to invent yet another reason to do so. Not exactly hard-core rping, but it worked!
I guess that, like me, they knew that not helping the DM a bit in this department would just take more time away from the actual adventuring. Better even to invent a movitation for one's character to stick with the group than to force the DM to invent yet another reason to do so. Not exactly hard-core rping, but it worked!
Ah, yes, my players (and me too) have learned that creating a character with good motivations and story hooks (even if those hooks would stay unexplored) gets brownie points. And brownie points outrank exp points.
|
|
Ugh... I just read Magdalena's post and now I'm sitting here grinning thinking about how amusing it would be to run a one or two session game where I priest of heronious tells the players in all seriousness to rid the world of evil. Somehow it just makes it better if he then hands them like 50 gold. The scary part is that I have a couple of players who would jump on that.
On the note concerning parties that don't really seem to hold together, remember the lessons that can (oddly enough) be learned from Order of the Stick!
Remember when they were in Azure City and the team was escaping the jail cells? Roy pointed out that they needed to go get Belkar, though no one else wanted to. Roy pointed out that he did owe him for his help against the dragon, and more importantly, he owed it to the rest of the world not to let Belkar loose without some sort of supervision.
Which is reminiscent of the Kingpriest of Istar in Dragonlance, who too Fistandantilus, the most powerful evil mage in world history to that point, into his Holy Court, as it was better to keep an eye on him there, than to let him do whatever he wanted in some distant tower (at least, that was the thought).
The point being that, if there's a character that's just causing trouble and doesn't necessarily seem to fit, a good or lawful member of the party may feel the need to keep him around so that he can't cause trouble elsewhere, which could lead to some interesting situations.
On the note concerning parties that don't really seem to hold together, remember the lessons that can (oddly enough) be learned from Order of the Stick!
I've got to read one of those sometime!
On the note concerning parties that don't really seem to hold together, remember the lessons that can (oddly enough) be learned from Order of the Stick!I've got to read one of those sometime!
Go forth and read them, young man! Never shall you find a funnier compilation of gaming humor! (Well, it's possible, but not likely!)
With new players, I'd be inclined to start them out at the entrance to the dungeon right away, glossing over the how-you-met quite quickly, perhaps forcing a backstory on them to get them into the game as quickly as possible.
I kind of like this opening. Not only does it get to the action quickly but you can encourage the players to come up with a back story to explain how they got here in the first place. They don't need this back story at start at all but can create it for themselves over the first couple of sessions.
A party or festival would be an interesting place to start a campaign. Festivals were very common in medieval times, especially those dealing with holy days or harvest festivals. Feasts were popular as well, especially in the winter as it helped break up the monotony and general dreariness of the season. If you did the feast angle, it's easy enough to place the PCs in various locations, either as servants, bodyguards, apprentices or one of the honored guests.
If you haven't read the Brother Cadfael series (heck, check out the PBS series), I would heartily recommend them. There's always an interesting mystery that could easily be adapted to an adventure or campaign start (One Corpse Too Many, Monk's Hood, The Rose Rent, etc). If you watch the PBS series, you'll get the bonus of Sir Derek Jacobi's excellent acting.
A festival or similar sounds like a great idea. You just need, in my opinion, to launch into some form of action pretty much straight away.
I've played a game where we trudged into town during some festival, and for some time nothing happened. We didn't really have any great reason to be there, so we just mucked around until eventually something happened. It was a boring way to start, in my opinion.
So, for example, start by saying everyone's gathered at a festival, and *bam*, someone's stabbed, or kidnapped, or dissapears, or punches one of the PC's - something to get them doing something.
Also, I've played in more campaigns than I care to where our group is always on some mission for someone else - it's an easy out for the DM, but gets pretty dull as a player. For example the Eberron modules. Makes you feel like you're just a puppet with someone else yanking the strings, which leads to less role-play as players are purely motivated by someone else's desires, not what they might dream up of their own accord.
I like the idea of a meeting at crossroads or on the middle of nowhere. IMC (Shackled City) the PCs met in the carriage which took them from Tashluta (Sasserine) to Cauldron. Some talk and an Alleybasher attack later, the group was formed. They were all newcomers to Cauldron and were told the city was dangerous by night. They asked for an inn, did some sightseeing, got lost on the way back and fell on Last Laugh bullying Rufus Laro.
Bran.
If you haven't read the Brother Cadfael series (heck, check out the PBS series), I would heartily recommend them. There's always an interesting mystery that could easily be adapted to an adventure or campaign start (One Corpse Too Many, Monk's Hood, The Rose Rent, etc). If you watch the PBS series, you'll get the bonus of Sir Derek Jacobi's excellent acting.
You forgot "St Peter's Fair" ! A fair is also a good place to start a campaign. Any kind of PC has a reason to attend it. (shopping, special errands, merchant's protection and so on)
Bran
Well, my personal problem with "chance encounter in crossroads" or similar thing where there is no clear motivation from the start for characters to join together is that sometimes, too often, characters don't join together.
They notice that they hate each other (I have some players who are good roleplayers and who don't shy from playing their characters' personality flaws from the start...) or that they for some reason don't pay attention to others (again, "I know that but my character doesn't") or that they don't trust each other (in one campaign my character coldbloodedly shot a new character in his introduction since "that's what he would have done". All the players agreed on this even if one of their characters then shot mine...).
Depends on player group and the game how those things work but at least I have to carefully rig the situation before doing a "chance meeting". And even then it sometimes backfires. Some Mage players once mentioned how there meetings like that are rather easy since it makes sense for characters too to do some metagaming thinking, in some Cyberpunk or Illuminati campaigns it at some point became impossible to introduce any new characters since the current players trusted nobody.
They notice that they hate each other (I have some players who are good roleplayers and who don't shy from playing their characters' personality flaws from the start...)
I've actually roleplayed a character who hated dwarves to another character. Nothing mean but my char was a little short with him and sarcastic. The poor guy startled everyone when he assumed it was personal and got up and left suddenly. I can understand the need to roleplay but i back off now if it will get other PCs killed or risk hurting what the DM is trying to accomplish. But this is a whole nother issue best explored on a diffrent thread.
You forgot "St Peter's Fair" ! A fair is also a good place to start a campaign. Any kind of PC has a reason to attend it. (shopping, special errands, merchant's protection and so on)
Bran
I know - I couldn't remember the name of that particular book/episode, so I left it out. Excellent either way - I'm glad you remember it.
Something my mentor GM/other half told me when starting this Forgotten Realms campaign is the players have to have a reason to be together. Having a background for the characters handy is good, from both a player's and a DM's standpoint, as the DM can set the stage for the characters to act.
There's an old 1st edition module (well, I guess they're all old, now...) called Under Illefarn. It's for a beginning group of players and GM, and it's set in the town of Daggerford, south of Waterdeep in Faerun. The idea is that everybody in town is in the militia, and the party of characters have all graduated from their basic training, whether it be with spell, sword, church or stealth. They're the ones hanging around when the captain of the guard gets notice that somebody needs to go take care of something, so the party gets sent off to deal with it.
So, they all grew up together, they're all teenagers, most likely, and it makes perfect sense for them to have picked their classes with the idea of building a party of PC's.
There have been a lot of great suggestions from a variety of sources on this thread. The party in my ice age campaign met while preventing the escape of a warlock. It didn't go quite as smoothly as I would have liked (because of a bit of annoying player metagaming), but was an interesting way to get them together (start off with a fight).
After the initial meeting introducing new characters can also be difficult. My group commonly jokes about new characters having to pass entrance examinations before joining. Then there's the probationary period.
My last two players were slotted in easily. One met the cohort of my group's paladin as they were working in a temple together tending to the injured after the mill exploded (long story) while the other is the friend of an NPC he owes a favor to, and will be summoned to the group via a bracelet of friends.
We've tried many methods as a group-- and all but "make the GM figure it out" work well for us. (Largely because it never gels or someone decides to work against the party.)
In the first campaign, we were all "youths" from Rudisheim. There was some racial tension that we weren't a part of (backdrop at the start, but it became a major subplot over time). We were all childhood friends-- and one of our friends was captured so we set out to rescue them, as a favor to her Dad...
In our current campaign, I suggested a "mercenary company" theme, so we could justify a more martial, low caster campaign. While the low caster kind of fell by the wayside, it matched some of the ideas above-- at low levels we went on directed missions. After outrageous success, we became an independant special forces like team...
In last weekend's one-shot (Sons of Grumsh), we came up with this: the Shukenja was requested from the local temple to deal with the problem. A Monk was assigned as a bodyguard, the Rogue was geased to aid us as penance for his crimes, and a local ranger who kept an expert eye on orcs was hired as our guide.
This is one responsibility you can safely duck as GM-- make your players do the work.
-- Scott
|
However, I sometimes find it hard to come up with good alternatives to the tavern scene...
I was really tired of trying to come up with new reasonable ways to meet. One time when we were starting up a new campaign, I told everyone -- "Choose your nationality, your race and class. Don't worry about how you would work together or how you met -- I will take care of it." After everyone created their characters, I had them describe their character's appearances to the group. I then said "OK, you wake up in a strange location and you see the described people waking up around you." This got them right into the action (I had an evil group waking up in a nearby location) and led to a lot of good roleplaying right from the start since no one knew where they were or how they got there or why they were there. This ended up being one of the best starts for a campaign and people still remember and talk about that campaign today.
I was a little surprised at how well it went -- especially since I had 30 minutes to prepare and at the time I kind of felt like it was the lazy way out.
One of my better low-level startups had the characters as apprentices of each of the respective local authorities in each class; their town was attacked and overrun by a humanoid attack and the apprentices were tasked to lead children to the next village for safety.
The characters knew each other loosely, started out together in an emergency and had a common cause - to avenge their masters.
M
In my first campaign, the village leader, a cleric, had a terrible vision that orcs would rise over the village from the woods to the east East, leaving nobody alive. The cleric's judgement is respected by his community, but nobody in the nation's government particularly cares to send out an army to help based on nothing more than a dwarf who had a bad dream. The village is going to have to deal with this on its own.
The cleric asks for the strongest, nimblest, and most intelligent persons in the village, and teams them up with his shrine's own acolyte. These four are the player characters - a local boy who just finished his military service, a thief who's being let off his crimes for assisting, a wizard's apprentice, and a cleric of the local shrine. They are sent out in a desperate attempt to find any kind of help - allies, magics, whatever can stop the prophecied attack on their village.
even though I (unfortunatly) didn't have time to read all the posts, I wanted to tell you guys a get-together story I ,personally, quite liked. The world had just been released from the holds of the demon war and the group had been part of a legion.
|
|
The coolest party tie-in that I have used went something similar to this...
The players wake, each of them naked, with piles of loose rubble scattered around them. Nearby is the dead body of a once majestic man in scorched royal robes.
As it turns out the characters are the animated statues that once were just decorations in the now dead high king's courtyard. Sculpted centuries in the past by an unknown artist it is unknown is the statues actually depicted real persons or were just products of the sculptor's imagination. The characters have memories that seem real to them but are actually the product of the many stories and legends that have sprung up and been retold through the generations by the residents of the castle, kind of a concentual reality thing.
The high king, last in a long line of benevolent sorcerer kings, sacraficed himself in the ritual to animate the statues so that they can persue and rescue his daughter from his evil brother who hopes to marry her to secure his own position on the throne. The remnants of the evil bother's humanoid army still pillage the castle giving the character's their first challenges.
The high king's spell will last for one year, until its conclusion the PCs have two tasks, find his daughter and find a way to lengthen the duration of the spell. For the most part they are typical specimens of their specific races, not golems.
Tam
|
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
|
3) In jail. The PCs have to cooperate to escape, and the circumstances of the escape (or the imprisonment) lead them to keep working together. Maybe they've all been connected to a crime they didn't commit, and they need to turn up evidence to clear their names. Maybe one of the PCs knows the whereabouts of a treasure trove, and promises to share equally if the other PCs help him escape.
One of my greatest campaigns ever started this way! I gathered up 8 players and told them they could play any character concept they wanted, but they had to draw their character's alignment from a hat. Inside the hat were all of the alignments except True Neutral! Every character had a different alignment and many radically different concepts. We had a chaotic evil half-black-dragon barbarian, a chaotic neutral elven arcane trickster, a lawful good human fighter, a lawful evil human cleric of Bane (Forgotten Realms deity), and many more! The characters started at level 16 (or ECL 16 in the case of the 3 LA races we had) and the entire concept of the campaign was this:
The characters had all done something in the recent past (I ran individual one-on-one sessions with each of them to explore what this 'something' was) to put them at odds with some powerful entity who had them imprisoned... IN THE PRISON PLANE OF CARCERI (see Manual of the Planes)!!! The characters were allowed to follow any deity from any D&D sourcebook I had. They had a wide variety of class and race options available to them (we had a lawful neutral githzerai monk, for example) and their characters could be from any plane of existance that they wanted (the LG human fighter was from Dragonlance). These characters ended up being imprisoned in the same wing of the gigantic prison together and some of them had been there longer than others (the half-dragon had been there almost 50 years while the arcane trickster had only been there a week). They concocted a plan to escape and it was going to take all of their mutual cooperation in order to pull it off. The game was AMAZING! Seeing the chaotic evil barbarian rushing forward to save the neutral good elven druid from a pack of slaadi was something I will always remember. Jailbreak concepts don't always have to be 'conventional' especially when you want to do something truly awe-inspiring. As you can imagine, the campaign ended once they made their way to one of the portals back to their homes, but escaping from a prison of such epic proportions with such morally diverse characters was quite the adventure!
Dead hooker. THe rest writes itself.
I never really minded the ol' tavern. It's always fun to start in a bar, as long as you can avoid the 'walks into a bar' jokes...
|
I really wish I could have gone farther with the one-shot I put together to show my commanding officer what D&D was like. I told them they wake up alone (separated) in a strange dungeon, with a mannequin with a magic mouth that said 'I want to play a game...' ^_^
Two hours later, they manage to stagger out of the dungeon with revenge against whoever was behind it on their minds. Might have to use that again in the future.
|
|
A festival or similar sounds like a great idea. You just need, in my opinion, to launch into some form of action pretty much straight away.
The OD&D companion set has some rules for Jousting, Archery Lists, etc.
I ran a game that started with a series of competition, the Prize of each being a suitable +1 weapon/armor. I had some 5th level NPCs...Warriors, mostly, but a few adepts for the "wizardly" competitions, as "those most likey" to win. Then we just played it out. I did it primarily because the entire group had NEVER played D&D and I wanted them to learn what dice does what, when to roll, why to roll, etc.
I had some roleplaying stuff where they could try to convince someone to give them a kiss, or free ale, etc. as well as a "cheater" or two thrown in...they really enjoyed it.
I didn't force anyone to compete against each other, but a few moved up in further rounds of their respective competitions to the point where they did face off, and there was some great moments there:
The paladin (a female) felt moved by the Fighters sob-story of losing his wife to the orc raiders and has been barelyscraping by as merchant guard, barely able to feed his kids. She decided to kneel at the beginning of the duel and bowed her head, signaling him to make a mocking blow to which she yielded. He moved forward, she lost, but they "became friends".
The wizard caught someone cheating and was heralded as a "hero" of sorts, so naturally, the kind Paladin gave her praise to the wizard, etc.
In the end, the fighter did win the +1 Longsword (The duels were to first blood, good use of defensive fighting, trip attacks, and a lucky crit on an AoO won the day...the crit nearly killed the guy! We still talk about that lucky crit.).
The Baron rewarded the Fighter with all pomp and ceremony, Honored the wizard for his service to the competition, praised the Paladin for her chivalry. Joined in praise and admiration, they made a natural "party". There was a Cleric who showed up late to the game, who basically officiated the ceremony, being a cleric of Kord, it seemed to fit more than the Barons clerics of Pelor. The rogue spent most of her time trying steal stuff, and was fairly successful. The rogue "teamed" up with the wizard after his discovery of the cheater, and sort of "latched on" to him...she was playing a gnome rogue and it basically became a running joke that the wizards familar was the gnome../
Anyway, a long ramble, I know, but such competitions are great ice breakers. The players WANT to know each other, even these neophytes gravitated to each other naturally. It was a great group, 3 women, 2 men, and probably one of the most fun ROLEplaying groups I've ever run.
I have to admit, you ladies sure make the game table a lot more interesting. AT the very least it smells better.
I once started a group of PCs with some NPCs in a dungeon that was constructed as a sort of game show that crowds would watch via divination magic. There was one prize to be split amongst the winners (those that made it out first/alive) consisting of gold and a few magic items. It was easier to escape with help, but if too many escaped together, the treasue had to be split more ways. This caused the PCs to work together, while working against the NPCs. Once the party made it out, it wasn't hard for one of the spectators to approach them, in need of a little assistance.