BBEG as your first encounter

[Ravenbow]

This week (or next week) will see the start of our new Beginner Box campaign. The players specifically requested they not start in a cliche' fashion, so the campaign intro is them surviving the campaign 'Final Boss'.

Kind of. It is more along the lines of the villains 'pet'.

The game starts with the PCs asleep in the crew bunks on a merchant ship bound for Magnimar. They awake to wood splintering around them and water rushing in, while the first mate is yelling at the "lubbers" to get on deck and earn their pay. The first few rounds is them making it through now difficult terrain to get on deck.

Once on deck, they are greeted by Sahuagin boarding the ship during a storm. "Something" is attacking the ship from below.

Goal= Scare the crap out of them!

details:

While the minis are Sahuagin, and the descriptions are of such, the stats I am using are for seven skeletons. The crew will be assisting in narrative fighting additional boarders, but the fight is just skels without DR.

Once they repel the initial wave of baddies, the boss makes his presence known.

Goal= Survive 7 rounds!

Boss Attack:

Using the 3 section caravel, the ship travels 4 squares per round across my chessex game mat. On the third round the ship slows to three squares per round. When the tip of the ship reaches the edge of the mat, they escape.
Narrative- The sister ship which has made the journey with you is racing to your aid. You have to do your best to survive until they can come along side you and you escape to their ship.

The seventh round see's them rescued by the sister vessel traveling with them. How I am pulling this off is with the Ships Map pack found HERE glued to some foamcore so it moves as one piece. The sister ship is the large 4 section ship.

There is a possibility they only need to last 6 rounds. I have a random event chart I made where one option is a sudden wave which shifts them a few squares sideways and two ahead. If this happens the two ships meet in six rounds.

The 'boss' stays underwater, but its tentacles erupt through the waves to attack the crew and ship. I am using these as miniatures for the Kraken for this attack. They can engage the tentacles or avoid them. Mainly they need to stay on deck until they are rescued.

I am using Reefclaw's as the tentacles.

Verdict- The surviving ship limps away for an unplanned stop in Sandpoint, right before a ceremony to open the new Cathedral*Grin*

CR1 hazardous terrain encounter.
CR3 fight
CR2/CR4 hazardous terrain with an option to engage a foe.
The four tentacles are decoration. I would maybe have one engage them using the stats for the Beginner Box Reefclaw.

The characters are built pretty well using higher than normal scores. I will adjust threat levels as needed if they become overwhelmed or just have a moment of bad luck.

So, what interesting ways have you started your campaigns?

[Manimal]

Everyone wakes up with amnesia.

[Lakesidefantasy]

The party wake up naked in a muddy field. Initially they don't recognize each other because their souls have been transferred into different bodies (with identical stats for convenience). Over the ensuing adventure to get there bodies back they slowly discover that the bodies they occupy are those of a notorious criminal gang--a gang that owes money to scary people. Which, leads to an initial scene where they walk into a tavern and the music stops, everyone is staring at them, and as they approach the bar an angry voice rumbles, "you've got a lot of nerve comin' in here."

Good times, good times.

[Tandriniel]

All of the above.

Had a campaign with the characters starting in stone age, became buried alive, then realized that they where immortal. After 50.000 years they where liberated, only to wander the better part of a decade as insane for the emtombment, but then crawling back to life, and being integrated with a river tribe. Only to become caught as slaves, and become slave soldiers in an egyptian style era. Only to slowly realize, that the Living God, is indeed another immortal whom they fought in the first adventure. Unfortunately he has not been entombed, so he has been gaining a lot of xp, and was epic lvl :-).

Thanks to stargate, Rice for Vampires, Age of Empires, etc :-)

[darth_borehd]

I started a campaign once with the 1st level party encountering a vampire. I made sure they had an escape route past running water and easy way to cut the rope bridge behind them. But it sure did scare them.

[Chobemaster]

I once started a group in the midst of an caravan ambush by bugbears. It was essentially already "round 2" of the combat, the bugbears were already in melee w/ the party and the other caravan guards.

Don't do something like that if it's not immediately obvious which "side" everyone should be on, though. Unless you want the PC's attacking each other thinking they are bandits.

[Thalin]

Sounds like someone played too much God of War? :).

[Kakitamike]

The party were teenagers at an orphanage out in the middle of nowhere, and came across a post wagon that had been attacked by (unintelligent)monsters. The campaign revolved around the mail they found. Each mail item was an adventure hook. I actually wrote out letters with to and from addresses, picked scripts, had props, etc. I handed them a backpack full of actual letters and wrapped items.

Party are students arriving at a boarding school on an island off the coast. Mysteriously get trapped inside a storage room during a storm. Get out of the room the next day...zombieapocalypse, ala highschool of the dead.

Started as a generic sword and sorcery mid-european setting, party thought they were escorting a scientist to a village, then, BAM world ending volcano erupts, blanketing the world in ash, becomes post apocalyptic survival horror. Something great about introducing the party to a bunch of NPC's you know you're going to kill before the session is over.

Know i've done more, but those 3 always come to mind first.

[Kalshane]

Chobemaster wrote:

I once started a group in the midst of an caravan ambush by bugbears. It was essentially already "round 2" of the combat, the bugbears were already in melee w/ the party and the other caravan guards.

I did something very similar. My players came in to play the first session to find my battlemap covered with a cloth. Once everyone got settled, I opened up the campaign by saying "Roll Initiative" and pulled the cloth off the map, revealing the caravan they were escorting attacked by bandits.

I also started a Mage: The Ascension game with the characters' previous lives (with stats exactly the same as their current incarnations) in battle against (and eventually losing to) a vampire sorcerer who became a recurring villain for them in the modern era.

[Thanis Kartaleon]

I'm considering running a "Harrow reading" style campaign.

Spoiler:

The game begins before characters are generated. The unknown PCs enter Madame Mvashti's (or any other fortune teller NPC's) home.

"So, you've finally arrived. I have been expecting you for some time, and I know of what you seek. But first, you will sit, and you will hand me coins, and I will read your Harrow."

At this point we do Harrow readings to generate characters as per Wayfinder #5 (page 32), and then a standard Harrow reading. The campaign would be done in nine parts - three representing what happened to the characters before they came to the soothsayer, three representing things happening to them while they deal with her, and three representing what happens afterwards. Each card would set the theme for the adventure/encounter.

Experience points would not be awarded - instead, the characters would simply advance one or more levels in between events - and perhaps age categories! There would need to be some sort of system to cover event failures, though.

That's all I've come up with so far, but I'm intending to flesh this out further.