As a GM, whats your preferred method of introducing the party during the first session?

As a GM, whats your preferred method of introducing the party during the first session?

Do you like to have all the characters meet there on the spot, or have a previous history?
Do you like to have it start off somewhere mundane like and inn or guild, heeding a call to action? Or instead start in the middle of a perilous circumstance, such as having them imprisoned in the BBEG's dungeon, bonding as a party as they coordinate their escape?

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Depends on the set... the story.

I often have them start as work-mates for the same organization. They know each other but they often get to decide what kind of relationship they have and if they've already worked together in the past or not.

Or just make their objectives complementary.

I tell the players what the premise of the campaign is, then I ask them to explain why their character is involved in that premise, any further information is up to them

Depends on the game. For one-shots, they usually have the same goal and meet for that reason.
>You're all aboard the same plane when something goes awry.
>You're all heirs of the same estranged, weird uncle.

For campaigns, usually I try to work it from their character concepts and build some reason for them to meet. I usually encourage playing family members if two characters are from the same race.
Otherwise if I can't find anything else, it's usually "same (bad) place at same (bad) time, forced to cooperate". I've never found a way to make "you all meet at an inn" work.

This.

I also prefer to launch directly into action whenever possible.

>BBEG
Ugh.

>The campaign is going to start with an event (event description here). Make character that have some important reasons to be involved in said event. I can help you if you need advice on it, you are also encouraged to come up with preestabilished ties between the characters - but this isn't mandatory.
Literally the simplest way.

More ambitious way is asking each layer for their background before the first session and then prepare a short introductory scene for each one, which ties them together.

Why is there so much distaste for this term? Most campaigns have a primary antagonist. Even if you have a trio of mutually opposing forces each of which are nuanced opponents to the PC's goals, you have to respect they are all big (in relation to the setting) bad (for the PCs plans) evil (as in intractably opposed compared to bandits or dickass nobles) guys.

Please die. Please

I prefer for then to already have history. I also go with the rule "start as late as possible." There is nothing worse than an hour of fucking around before we actually get to the story. Don't start at the tavern, start at the ruins with the characters already having gotten the map from the mysterious dude last night.

made me kek

It's the growing distaste towards the people who role-play at being role-players.

This is the worst attempt at defending the phrase I've seen yet. Just call them a primary antagonist, or if that's a mouthful, the villain.

No need for your sporkpenguin terms.

What in fuck? BBEG was coined by Buffy the Vampire Slayer about fifteen years ago, which is about when I started gaming, and hung around in our community. Either I'm pretending to be a gamer, or you need to explain yourself better.
>sporkpenguin terms
There's nothing lolrandom about it.

I prefer the characters to know each other previously and willing to work for a common goal. Belonging to the same organization helps, too.

You might want to try a new angle if you think "Big Bad Evil Guy" isn't intentionally convoluted and needlessly long. It's like calling the PCs "Super Good Friendly Dudes", and when someone asks you why you're being dumb, you go "No, see, they're Super (stronger than average people) good (for themselves) friendly (as far as needed to remain in the same group) dudes."

Does that put how silly you sound trying to rationalize your lolrandom in perspective? Now shut up already.

I prefer to establish some running reason why they're already working together. Blind introductions are a little dicey since you'll often have a character that doesn't naturally mesh and needs some extra motivation.

Membership in an organization works out pretty well. I've swapped a couple characters in just by having a superior go "hey Bob is working with you now". Everyone just has to deal with the new arrangement.

A...slight...variation on "you all meet in a tavern", in that there is a tavern and they do all meet there, but the introduction is perhaps a bit more bombastic than is typical for a D&D campaign.

youtube.com/watch?v=aTZYSzxZcvA

Usually after about 2 minutes of my attempts at singing, they're pretty eager to leave the tavern and go on an adventure already.

LITTLE DO THE FOOLS REALIZE THAT THE GIANTS ARE GOING TO SING, TOO!

How is big bad evil guy "convoluted"? It's pretty much as straightforward as you can get.

You all want to find gold in a dungeon. You got each other to help. Okay, now you're by the dungeon. What do you do?

>You might want to try a new angle if you think "Big Bad Evil Guy" isn't intentionally convoluted and needlessly long.

So is the word "superfluous" according to most people I meet (nevermind that it's actually less syllables and letters than its more common synonym), but I still use it in everyday conversation because I personally like the sound of it.

On Veeky Forums, I use BBEG because it's a well-recognized and understood term that's only 4 characters long, which is convenient given the 2000 character post limit. I don't think I say BBEG in real life.

>You all want to find gold in a dungeon

Bitch you best not be telling my character what she does and doesn't want.

>On Veeky Forums, I use BBEG because it's a well-recognized and understood term that's only 4 characters long

People have been complaining about "Big Bad Evil Guy" for years. The early complaints seemed to be mostly about the concept itself, with many people disagreeing that a plot needed a character as a central antagonist.

Now, it seems that some of the complaints are about the language. "Big Bad Evil Guy" was coined to sound corny, and is more of an in-joke than a designation like "Central Antagonist." It's also grown to be somewhat vague, with some people using it as the central antagonist, others using it as the final antagonist, and still others using it as simply any antagonist, which can get confusing when trying to communicate about one of these specific ideas.

As far as the shitstorm, I think that comes in part because it takes very little effort to say "BBEG sounds dumb", which is enough to trigger some people who use that phrase. These people then go to say things like "you need to respect this acronym, it's Veeky Forums's acronym, every true fa/tg/uy uses BBEG exclusively," and that gets even people who had no real interest in the matter upset, because it starts to sound like there's people who are actually actively trying to push BBEG.

BBEG is a meme, and like most memes it doesn't have much of a shelf life. The old joke has faded, and now it seems like people are just finding it weird for people to be so fervent in holding onto it.

>You might want to try a new angle if you think "Big Bad Evil Guy" isn't intentionally convoluted and needlessly long.
Big Bad Evil Guy is amusingly direct and takes the wind out of self-important grand villain types.
BBEG is a shorthand.
I'm not advocating the replacement of all other synonyms,but it seems a weird hill to die on OPPOSING a harmless term. In other words, user, "no, _you're_ autistic."

It's way older than Veeky Forums though. I started playing in the 80s and it was already in use by then.

>amusingly
Since when?
>direct
I don't think you understand what that means.
>takes the wind out of self-important grand villain types.
I think you meant to say it takes the wind out of all types.

>I'm not advocating the replacement of all other synonyms,but it seems a weird hill to die on OPPOSING a harmless term.
You're trying to call it harmless when the real word to describe it is dumb. No one's saying that its killing kittens or anything, but there's plenty of people, like yourself, who are pulling their hair out to try and pretend it's not dumb, when that's it's primary defining trait.

>Since when?

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I think.

>I don't think you understand what that means.

It clearly conveys the intended purpose of the character.

>I think you meant to say it takes the wind out of all types.

Hence why it's amusing.

The last campaign I ran had everyone wake up as prisoners of a slave ship.

The one I'm about to run will have rolling, dynamic introductions. Each one will appear just in time to use their strengths to pull the group's ass out of the fire.

>Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I think.
Did you honestly find it amusing then? If ever?

>It clearly conveys the intended purpose of the character.
Not at all, especially when the villain need not be big, bad, evil, or a guy. Any one of those words may be misleading, which kind of puts a pin in your "clearly" balloon.
You want clear? Primary/Central Antagonist. Main Villain. Final Boss.

>Hence why it's amusing.
It's about as funny as using SGFD instead of PC. It's a dull, lifeless in-joke masquerading as jargon.

>Did you honestly find it amusing then? If ever?

Yes.

>Not at all, especially when the villain need not be big, bad, evil, or a guy. Any one of those words may be misleading, which kind of puts a pin in your "clearly" balloon.

Then I wouldn't be calling him the Big Bad Evil Guy, though in this case I think both you and I know that "big" is used colloquially in this sense to mean grand or of major concern or importance, i.e., "the big guy".

>Any one of those words may be misleading

But not all four taken together. I mean, any one of the words in this sentence doesn't tell you the meaning of the sentence, either. That's why we have language structure and syntax and grammar and so on, dear.

>It's about as funny as using SGFD instead of PC.

I've never heard of SGFD before and suspect you just made it up. Conversely, BBEG is a well-known term.

>It's a dull, lifeless in-joke masquerading as jargon.

But it's not even an in-joke. An in-joke is something that's only known to a small group of people, but I defy you to find someone on Veeky Forums who doesn't recognize the term "BBEG", and likewise even a normie when confronted with the phrase "Big Bad Evil Guy" would understand what you're trying to convey.

Last campaign, players were in town for a festival. One of them pissed off the Prince and, assuming they were all together, had them locked up. The King knows his son is a hothead and agreed to release them if they undertook a task for him.

Do not engage

My favourite is "shits gone down; band together or die alone"

>But not all four taken together
Actually, even moreso. People understand "bad guy." But, a lot of people get confused to what level of bad guy "Big Bad Evil Guy" is meant to refer to.

>I defy you to find someone on Veeky Forums who doesn't recognize the term "BBEG", and likewise even a normie when confronted with the phrase "Big Bad Evil Guy" would understand what you're trying to convey.

This is hardly a challenge, because we get those constantly. Typically, they can use context to get a rough picture of what you're trying to say, but as said before there's a lot of confusion as to what you're exactly trying to say in comparison to a more straightforward phrase as Final Boss or more technical one like Primary Antagonist. I mean, even you've made the mistake of trying to say that the "evil" part of "BBEG" has anything to do with them being intractably evil or even evil at all.

Now, I get it that you probably don't pay attention to that sort of thing, but it's actually pretty common for people to just use it interchangeably with any villain, to the point where people discuss their campaigns with multiple "BBEG" or how "BBEG" interact with other "BBEG", which tends to contradict one intended purpose of using the phrase to refer to the primary antagonist. In fact, there's plenty of people who don't even know what BBEG stands for (I've heard big bad end game on numerous occasions. One terrible thing about such a cloudy phrase is that most people simply have to roll with it and you don't even really get a sense of whether or not they're on the same or a completely different page then you.

"Big bad evil guy" gets you in the same ballpark as saying "bad guy." Everyone knows who the bad guy is. But, "Big Bad Evil Guy" is three steps in the wrong direction. It's just an awkward phrase that some people try to keep alive, even though any humor in it has dried up long ago.

it's a convenient shorthand not a joke

BBEG is shorthand for an awkward joke because no one wants to type out the full phrase because it is long and unwieldy.

If you want convenience, boss is also four letters long, and makes you sound less like a eight-year old.