The party meets in a tavern

I played in a campaign like that once. DM had done a perfect job in terms of worldbuilding in a sandbox campaign, but the overarching plot felt lackluster. The sidequests and one-off adventures were definitely better overall.

We played regularly for over a year before we all just got bored of it, and decided to do something else.

>The party meets on a ship, even though it doesn't make any sense for half of the characters to be there.
>They all get knocked out during a shipwreck and lose all items on them and are the only ones alive, even if this still makes no sense.
>Then they inevitably group together and scrounge around for an hour IRL to get basic equipment and fighting life or death against CR 1/8 enemies.
>Someone dies and gets super salty IRL.
>Game ends before it can get to session 2.

The party meet in a tavern, then a riot happens and the guard arrest everyone. The party is kept in the same cell and released in the morning.

important rule for prison starts, nobody is innocent. I fucking hate the
>you've been sentenced for a crime you didn't commit

otherwise better then taverns.

>tfw only the Drow half of the party starts out in a prison & the rest get to start in a tavern.
By Lolth, I'd have the sense not to act out in the middle of a human city! Oh, I see. "Drow curfew." How outrageous. That's what you get when the men make the laws. When will surface dwellers learn? You'd think they could at least tell us about it ahead of time. Hmph. Lolth, by your power, let me meld into this stone wall to escape!

>fucking hate the
>>you've been sentenced for a crime you didn't commit
To be fair, it does instantly set up corrupt regime du jour as corrupt without needing further explanation. It can be seen as following the "show, don't tell" convention.

After carefully giving them a suspicious amount of gold and goods during character creation, the party gets robbed by the corrupt and heavily armoured guards at the entrance of the city/town.

It also sets you up as pic related

>the party wakes up in a dungeon
>with sore asses and crotches

Beat me to it by 20 minutes.

Kek. Could actually work given the right plot and characters. On a semi-related note I once had an assassin/bard multiclass specialized in dancing. Used to travel to courts as a dancer, entertain their high ranking targets and use their influence to get alone with them and kill them before running away, changing their appearance, and taking on a new name.

we can probably imagine scenarios where you aren't missing all your gear. i'm definitely a big fan of making players figure out why they're working together instead of telling them why.

"your party finishes tying up the last prison guard and surveys the cell block. who are you here to break out, and why?"

>You all meet at a bear. In the woods.

The party "volunteered" to become eunuchs for the royal palace. Why did you character did it?

>The First party member you meet was the BBEG the whole time

>get the starting equipment back
>starting equipment
user...

Because eunuchs can still get boners and orgasms.

>party meets in queue for welfare
>party meets in queue for execution, amnesty imminent
>party meets in queue for small transactions at the bank, robbery imminent

:In a quaint village largely untouched by time and tide, where hardships come in the form of poverty and harsh winters, four travellers who have taken to the road for incongruous reasons have each stopped to wait out the mud and rain.

(From player backstories)
:A religious pilgrim performing her daily rites in the local chapel, though it appears designated to no particular god.
:A trapper who has been hunting local foxes in exchange for coin. Tracking the foxes in weather like this will likel yield no results.
:A low-ranking scholar of arcane arts, having been dispatched to investigate rumours of stones that explode when examined by the literate. Perhaps this is a true missive, or perhaps he chases thin air as to not be an annoyance to his superiors.
:A veteran of a conflict between two halves of a country once again made whole, though having fought for the losing side.

:Suddenly, the alarm bell in the town square rings out desperately and unevenly. Bandits are fast approaching. Many of the able bodied men were conscripted to fight for the banner of the lord of the land during the civil war and have not made it home.
:The only volunteers to fight are a small handful of boys, no older than twelve years, with hoes and hayforks unbalanced in their tired arms.
:Each recognizing themselves as the most capable of preventing senseless bloodshed, the four travellers gather together and dismiss the boys, and prepare to fight.
:As the bandits draw nearer, the veteran recognizes two men from his old company, though their faces have been scarred and burned, indicating they were prisoners of the enemy for some time.

What do?

(I have no illusions of this being a great intro, and I know it's railroady, but the hope is to establish a reason for the PCs to work together at least for a few tense moments, and give each character loose enough motivation that travelling together might not thoroughly disrupt any of their individual goals)

>the party meets up in a tavern in Australia

You all wake up inside a Chicken's stomach. Better get out quickly before the digestion.

It's a large one.

>The party is on a stagecoach traveling to to the hinterlands when adventure happens.
>The party meet up to revenge-murder a local druglord.
>The party are various occupants of a Dining Car when the train gets attacked by orc and goblin train robbers.

The last three I've used.

Properly performed prostate stimulation is one hell of a ride.

>>You finally arrived but your records don't show from where.

I prefer neither.
Last one I used is
>The party is summoned to the office of an high ranking lord who demand them to work with each other to achieve his goal for large bags of gold and influence.

Tavern; comfy rumor mill. A bulletin board where players can see what's going on in the world, and what adventures might be out there

I prefer highly lethal character funnels with each player controlling multiple 0 level characters for a 1st adventure. The survivors gain thier level 1 and become the PCs.

In media res at the door of the dungeon.

Japan pls.

You roll to see in which part of the besieged castle your character defends. You are heavily outnumbered. Higher roll, the more far away from the first line of defence.

If the characteres allow it, I like to start with:

"Your characters have been a group of friends for a while, some older, some newer. One of you talks the rest of you into beginning a quest"

It's pretty much the tavern setting, but it doesn't necessitate a tavern and it also skips that part where no one's characters knows each other(not that the players ever play that part anyways)

I think a good idea is an intro session mostly rp and maybe some combat but give a way for each character to introduce them selfs in an interesting way.
>Warrior is in a bar, being a bar patron
> commotion outside
>thief runs by being chased by guard
>theif is about to run into someone
>it's the Mage
>Mage dose magic shit
>thief is injured
>have cleric come from nearby church to heal
>then a massive boom as a wall of the city is knocked down by a trebuchet
>guard runs to help
>party defends themselves from looters and invaders

"Morituri te Salutant".

>the party meets at a swingers party

>not that the players ever play that part anyways
Wut. You might wanna get new players, then. My most recent group I've been running for was the second in and they've already done a lot with the fun of four people who's only real link is wanting revenge on the druglord that's impacted each of their lives.

There's the paladin finding out and having to come to terms with the fact that the cranky old shopkeeper served as the sergeant in the army that had invaded his homeland and used it as a testing ground for all manner of horrific creations of carnage. There's the native who has been pushed in with these colonials, slowly finding some common ground with the city's poor. There's the thieving urchin, slowly opening up to the closet thing she's ever had to a family other than press-ganged pickpockets.

But why is the a buffet at an orgy?

not him but my d&d group only really role plays to cause in character trouble or crack a joke based on characters. I'm not sure if this is a bad thing, we're all newbies but I tend to cringe whenever someone starts 'role playing'. I don't see what poor theatrics brings to the dungeon, rather than role playing in the sense of immersing yourself in your PC's perspective and behaving accordingly.

Because nothing beats eating a good meal, having a good shit and getting a good fuck.
Especially at the same time.

>the party meets in a shared dream

Usually I leave fucking and shitting separately

>The party meet up to revenge-murder a local druglord.

This would be a pretty fun intro to a group, if the GM ran a one-shot intro game with each player separately establishing why they want the guy dead, ending each session just as they're about to finally get the drop on the druglord.

Then at the start of the first group session, everyone barges in at the same time and has to decide who gets to kill the druglord.

>poor theatrics
>just chatting in-character during a bit of downtime or when planning what to do next
I considered actually going further, but your talk of 'the dungeon' made me wonder if you're just doing crawls. In which case, sure, I don't really see an issue with it.

I tried a slightly different take
>party wakes up in prison
>massive hangover
>were all at a huge party night before
>let out in exchange for helping the town guard
>first job clean tavern
>find super bloody scene
>they're the only ones who couldn't have done it
>begin investigation.

yea I am. I encourage my players to keep their backstories to a couple sentences + a couple character traits, flaws, previous profession etc.

I've never been exposed to not old school type of play, I'm not sure how it works outside of Veeky Forums greentext stories

Fairly close. Didn't do a full session for each, but ran them through the events and looked to see how they would react to various situations and developments. The paladin searching for information about who killed and mugged an old priest he had come to visit, the shopkeeper's Taken-esque quest to find out what had happened to little Percival Shieder, etc. Party came together at the invitation of a fortune-teller who had similiar been wronged who had finally gleaned information from her gifts and drawn the various people pursing Gideon together to strike as one.

Well, that was her claim. Had actually been murdered a week back and was partially dismembered/dissolved by the time the party found her, drawing the party together as a ghost. Gideon had been there when she was last alive, but the party found that he'd already skipped out on the place as part of his upcoming revolution and was planning on letting one of his oldest partners and dedicated "puts the bodies in the acid" guy take the fall.

Huh, I guess I had never really thought about how different the mindsets between the two styles of play are, since I think I've only ever done an OSR-style crawl like... once before.

I suppose it does lead to a lot more conversation and chances for roleplaying when the combat is only a seasoning to the overall dish, rather the brother.

Has anyone had their party meet at a funeral before?

Once, but the campaign never really took off. That was part of their character creation was "how did you know the stiff?" They and others had traveled in from some fairly great distances, some related to him and others simply friends and colleges. Funeral quickly turned into a murder mystery in the isolated manor, and the party came together through their own investigations of the various people present.

Neither
>party meets as their souls are forcefully wrenched from the afterlife and the crawl out of their own shallow graves
Undead campaigns are fun

"Each of you slowly gains consciousness as the sound of creaking wheels echo throughout. As you're awakened you hear soft moans and prayers, a sense of anxiety and fear permeates the area, the lack of light making it impossible to discern anything. Your bodies ache with the telltale signs of exhaustion, fatigue, and pain. Soon the noise from outside becomes louder, at first, it was an indistinct throng of screams and yells. But as time passes the noise becomes louder and louder. Eventually, you're able to make out the calls for death, justice, and revenge. The cart stops. Door rattles. Light pours through, blinding you all, soon it passes and you look out to see...

Executions are the only way to go my yout. Yuh zimmie?

actually OSR style has combat in the background too, most cases it's better to run or avoid combat because of it's lethality and the relative low power level of PC's. I think it might just be due to nature of the dungeon not having much NPC interaction beyond low int monsters, and few situations where the PC's can define their character in any way beyond the context of adventuring (e.g. coward/courageous, cautious/foolhardy etc.). But on the flip side, PC's develop their story and character through their interactions in the world, which is why a back story isn't necessary nor any forced role playing beyond following an internal image of the character.

How cliche is it that my players meetup on a recently disabled ship in the middle of the ocean?

Yeah, the lack of frequent NPC interactions and the like definitely changes things. Even with trekking through the hinterlands, there are small flickering hearths that the party ends up taking shelter and whether it a sprawling port of 80,000 or a quaint little fishing village of 600, there's people for the party to meet and interact with, love and hate, work for and against, etc.

Yeah sounds super lame imo

>The party are random people who are hostages from space pirate encounters that went sour for them, intent to either be ransomed off or sold as slaves
>At least one party member wasn't tied as tightly, setting the scene for the escape

Tavern.

Though, in my latest game, the party met while imprisoned on a slaver ship. We broke out of our cells, started a riot, and took over the ship.
Pretty good time.

How do they get there?

>The party meets in a graveyard. They wake up as a random graverobber literally digs them out of an early grave, with no memory why they are there. Bonus points if the party is undead.

>The party meets at a campfire while independently traveling from one city to another. They are forced to fight for their lives when a dark maelstrom erupts in the distance and the malevolent darkness suddenly engulfs the world around them.

>The party meets when a cult knocks them out and tries to sacrifice them, only for the ritual to go horribly wrong and release a sealed evil, killing the entire cult and the rest of the people around besides those who were supposed to be sacrifices, who all are conveniently your party members.

You can easily do the whole "complete strangers are forced to cooperate" schtick without the fucking "tavern or prison" bullshit.

I had a fun spin on the "meet in prison" type.

They were all being transferred to a new styled prison (Read: Prison labor) via boat when the envoy is taken down by a Kraken.

Party manages to survive and washes up on shore, seemingly the only survivors, apparently scot free-
But while scrounging for resources that also wash up, they find a sealed scroll container that has passcodes for various important locations, including but not limited to a massive bank.

Never finished it but was meant to be a sort of all-evil/neutral Oceans 11 held together by the mutual interest of "The Heist" kind of situation.

Don't worry about it Charlie

I tend to just put the PCs in media res in some sort of situation in the game, and ask them how they got here.

>I only play DnD instead of craps because it doesn't lose me any money

I may end up stealing this... I like the whole Rura Penthe vibe...

They can't get boners if they took the pillar and the stones. Orgasms I'll buy though...

My favorite is all the characters meeting in some crossroads city. The perfect place for people heading anywhere else. The exact setting changes, but its generally some sort of common area and the group just happens to be in the right place at the right time.

I try to avoid the captive party scenario. It's a bitch sometimes making all work together and it just seems kind of asinine to make the party search for all their starting gear. Coming from a certified Sadistic DM From Hell, its even a little dickish for me, but I also think its pointless to do that and just leave all their stuff in an easy spot... On the other hand if I do that and they still can't find it... Welcome to hell, bitches
>evilgrin.gif

>They can't get boners if they took the pillar and the stones.
Usually castration is just removing the testicles without a penectomy. Hence why we have different words for the two. I don't think we have any reason to believe penectomies were routine for harem guards.

>The party meet during an Orgy
>The party meet in a warzone
>The party meet in a hostage situation
>The party meet in the necromancer's Laboratory
>The party meet in a party
>The party meet in a sacrifice to a dark god
>The party meet in a religious ceremony
>The party meet at a wedding
>The party meet in a castle, invited by a mysterious benefactor
>The party meet in the death star
>The party meet at a funeral
>The party meet when robbing a tomb
>The party meet in a riot
>The party meet in a crusade
>The party meet during a rebellion
>The party are citizens escaping the Rocks fall everybody dies situation of an empire going to shit because a fucking Elf went too far as per usual.

I was thinking moreso in the general sense where enuch is more synonymous with physical emasculation. Any mutilation or removal of the male genitalia(sp) would produce a eunuch.

A snake without a basket is the same as a basket without a snake. Both are the same as having no snake and no basket.

The party meets in Hell.

Like the Prison thing but better.

Best way to start a campaign is in the middle of an active adventure, preferably mid-fight if possible.

Role-play was never about ego insertion and indulgent theatrics, except when you were acting out a fetish in the bedroom, up until the scene was overtaken by autists and furries and their mental equivalents. It's about occupying the perspective of your character and playing accordingly.

Meeting up in a prison in a tavern.

Go away damegami, you are fucking useless!

>the party has just arrived at the location of the first quest, the explanation of which you gave in the backstory, and the motivation of the characters was sorted during creation
The only way to do it.

>starting equipment
doing prison start wrong.

>gif
Who's useless now?

>you and the party wake up cold and gasping for air
>The first thing you hear is the hiss of air escaping and feel the cold metal grating on the floor
>As you strain to pull the tube from your throat you look and see others in a similar situation to yourself.

Sounds like a Maid RPG scenario.

>starting not in medias res nor with something to estabilish the setting

What are we, faggots?

prison CAN be better, but you need players who will work for it. players say they want a wide open sandbox? put 'em in a tavern. players want a story driven campaign, and have some sort of character motivation eg Vengance? go full count of monte cristo

Technically in MAID you're supposed to start and finish as the harem itself. I guess the master isn't always the BBEG but fuck, why the hell not?

>the PCs were all independently tracking down the same evil cult
>one is in disguise as a cultist
>one is strapped to an altar, about to be sacrificed
>one bursts down the door in the middle of the ritual
>one gets teleported in by mistake from the other side of the world when the ritual gets messed up
>shenanigans ensue

>malazan was something like %70 rp'dbeforehand
> it is entirely possible that erickson and esslemont sat through the shitfest that was heboric and felesin as part of their tabletop game

>party meets in queue for execution
go full discworld. "kill them", and then kick off the main quest

shoggy's gm?

>Four brave heroines set out to slay the BBEG end up in his harem. Determined to save their homeland, they don't give up and decide to fuck him into submission instead.
The female equivalent of giving her the Holy Paladin Dick.

>>The party meets in a tavern

>The bartender offers to pay for the party's room and board if they kick out that obnoxious bard

>The party are just settling in when someone else comes in and starts preaching the Gospel of the Worms

>The rogue notices it first: everyone in the tavern except the party has cotton stuffed in their ears.

>brawl. You meet in a tavern brawl. Roll initiative.

I've tried this a few times with newbies or new school kiddies, it's a good way to teach them lethality and caution, and it's a fun time, too, with 16-24 peasants all swarming a dungeon. Been using DCC's modules but I need to design my own funnel, I don't like the way they approach things, too railroaded even if it's supposed to be a funnel. Doesn't teach exploration and alternative combat resolution

>Forcing your players to do anything they clearly didn't care for
that'll win them over!

If they dont want any kind of backstory they can get the fuck out of my house. I hate DMing so on the rare occasions I do I expect a significant level of commitment and confidence from my players. If I'm DMing my word is law because other wise I would rather not have anything to do with it.

Prison tavern.

On a more serious note, I'd prefer to start things off in a tavern. It allows for more flexibility.

>The party meets in prison

>The guard captain guides them into a cell filled with blood and bits of people and begins to give the necessary background on the criminal who just escaped.

>"We have gathered you here because you are all experts in your respective fields. Your job is simple: figure out how the perp got away and where he is so he can't hurt anyone else. Good luck."

>Who are You by the Who starts playing.

>not being a legendary band of adventurers who were captured by a corrupt Guard Captain and have all of your high level equipment stolen from you
>not being sent to a prison where you're scheduled to be executed
>not starting a prison riot and outfitting your group with Guard gear to escape so you can retrieve your armor and weaponry, all of which are ridiculously overpowered
>not accidentally getting recruited by the force of Guardsman who arrive at the prison to put down the revolt, mistaking your group as part of the prison's regular staff
>not viciously and brutally hunting down the prisoners you worked with to start the revolt in order to hide your secret that you're all escaped convicts, leading to leveling the entire prison and executing everyone by branding them as cultists trying to summon a demon
>not spending the entire campaign doing Guard things while attempting to find the equipment that was taken from each of you because they were all legendary weapons forged by grand masters from across the world, using the guard network to be relocated to armories across the kingdom
>not having a final duel with the Guard Captain at his new home, a keep he was able to buy after selling some of the armor from your group (which you recaptured from some merchants)
>Guard Captain is equipped with pieces of armor from every member of the party