I've read a few posts on here that elude to other ways people have started this campaign. Most seem to suggest they ran an added scene that took place during the Great Unpleasantness.
Could you elaborate on this? I am intrigued by the idea. Ideally, i'd like to run a scene that introduces characters who will come into play later, like Shalelu.
So, anyone want to fill me in on alternative ways you have started this campaign?
As I did a bit of this, I'm happy to share what I did.
I've gotten lots of great fragments to incorporate just from reading what other people did, even if I didn't want to use their core idea.
Anyway.
I knew I'd have to do a bit of planning - I'm running this in my homebrew, and I am adding lots of my own (and supplemental) material along the way. To that end, I gave the players a shortened version of the history of Sandpoint up to, but not including the Late Unpleasantness.
3 of them decided to be down on their luck brothers, locals.
The 4th was a late addition, and decided that he was an orphan.
Taking what they gave me, I wove their stories into the background of Sandpoint (the brothers' ancestor was part of the Scarnetti attack, Almon shifted some of the blame on to them, the orphan grew up at the Turandarok Academy) with that I had the basis for some short scenes.
I didn't want do do a big infodump on the players at the beginning of the campaign: "All was nice and calm in town until 5 years ago when...", so I made the players slap the Young template on their characters and did a bunch of small scenes with the characters, informing them of events in town as things went along. I introduced a number of the local NPCs to the players and set up their social connections. For those that were interested, I let them play around the edges of the search for Chopper. I introduced Tsuto, let one player be his drinking buddy, then had Tsuto sell him out.
I could elaborate more on the events, but they were pretty character driven.
I totally encourage introducing important NPC to the players before you need to use them in a scene in the AP.
In my campaign, I had the characters arriving in Sandpoint as guards on a small wagon train to get them some pre-adventure exp points. On the way to Sandpoint, they were attacked by bandits (linked to the Sczarni) and managed to fight them off. The survivors were tracked back to their base and I made sure that some were captured.
One captured bandit was a young lad from Sandpoint who was a small-time punk who had fallen in with the wrong crowd and become a bandit. He was then put on trial, with the characters as witnesses. That way, they met the sheriff, the mayor and other influential residents who were the judges, Ironbriar who was visiting for the festival and gave his advice during the trial on procedure, and the local Sczarni.
Just like Godfather 2, Jubrayl and cohorts (Messrs Mortwell, Hask, and Tabe amongst others), sat next to the bandit's weeping mother during the trial to influence the bandit not to implicate them. When he was hanged for banditry on the day after the festival, his older brother swore vengeance on the party - specifically the one who would become the obsession of Aldern.
So, within hours of arriving in Sandpoint, they had become the target of the older brother who kept trying to kill/maim or generally mess them up, and the local Sczarni i.e. Jubrayl. I played Jubrayl as sneering and sarcastic who used to regularly suggest that they were getting 'cocky' and 'lordly' and used to call the character 'your ladyship' as an insult. When the 'your lordship' note appeared, they automatically assumed it was Jubrayl and then later assumed it was the brother!
It also put them in good standing with the town elders, foreshadowed Ironbriar, and briefly introduced Mortwell, Hask, and Tabe.
Oh, and I made the Sandpoint hangman one of the Skinsaw victims just to confuse matters further!
Both of these are great!
Part of the back story for the three brother was that their family ran a lumber mill - one which ended up burning down in the middle of the Late Unpleasantness, killing their parents. So they ended up spending the last few years with their uncle and his family - Bilivar Wheen.
The drowning of their young cousin was one of the scenes - it was too bad that the character who was there was unable to rescue his cousin, and was only able to save young Simon Korvat from drowning...
My players came up with the thought that they were going to be "Bounty Hunters".
I thought that with the construction at the temple, that the graveyard in town may not have been always available, and the old Pauper's Graves would have been put into service. Before the Festival, the sheriff sent them to keep and eye on it, as a couple of graves had been robbed, introducing them to the new sheriff, and letting them start the game with the concept that they had come up with. They ended up capturing one grave robber, and the other ran off. The one who ran off is about to return as a corpse with a 7 pointed star courtesy of Aldren.
I have a thread for how my campaign has progressed here.