What are some of the best way to get your campaign started?

The party meets at the funeral of a mutual acquaintance. Mid-service, the doors are barred from the outside, and burning torches are thrown inside the temple.
The party must escape and confront those responsible.
Will the ensuing adventure be a mystery? Something more combat heavy? Options are open.

You wait in line at the employment office (known as "Pathfinder Society") for what seems like hours before a very tired and bored clerk gives you papers to sign saying you will collect ten bear butts and receive payment upon completion.

>Only a third of the bears you slay have butts
>Apparently this is due to some magic fuckery emanating from a nearby tower

Suddenly it's not so shit

Dumb homebrew world building mechanic shit

There are interdimentional nodes that can be used to triverse multiple cities, dimensions, and worlds. They don’t work for everyone. (about 30% of the population can without knowledge of why however nothing is inherently special about these people)

Those that can use the nodes are changed once they come in contact with a node, people can no longer recognize them; even friends and family see them as imitations. The only people that can see them and know them is others who have traveled the nodes, because of this the nodes are generally seen as evil and forbidden, and the those using them generally out of work and loners.

The campaign is a group of people like this who meet at a bar seeing a mission posting by the king, the group finds comfort and hope in forming a group of the equally downtrotten.

Kinda dumb but I’d like to hear opinions

Ooo, I like that one!

This. I've hardly ever managed to herd players enough to do it, but it can work really well.

Also having a preestablished party that already know each other.

DnD: you and the rest of the group find themselves in a little walled off hamlet to rest and get supplies.

However once you are rested and to contine on your journey you are all stopped at the city guard saying that the town is currently under seige and that no one is to leave.

CoC: just watched the void, thought it would be cool to start off pitting the player characters against one another. Then to find common ground in a crisis that hits everyone in the marbles.

>You find yourself standing on a top of giant falling meteor
>roll for balance

YOU ALL
MEET
INSIDE
A TAVERN

>each party member is separately mugged and robbed
>all wake up inside the tavern
ftfy

>BRAZZERS

The tavern owner (perhaps with the aid of a religious order) is worried about the growing crime in the city and wants to put an end to it. He sees a number of foreigners who appear combat-ready and enlists the Party to help him end the criminal ring and corruption in the city - in exchange for equipment and intel.
What's the problem?

>Your reasons are your own, but you have all signed on for [job] at, or going to, [place] together.

...

I feel like the biggest issue that could arise from this is the fact that social routes will be heavily gimped in most situations due to the displeasure for the adventurers being the default for most NPCs due to the setting. So as long as the group doesn't prefer the diplomatic/heroism themes, it should be fine.

Unless of course you plan on there being a sort of threshold they break out of in the game if they go the hero route, becoming able to fix the nodes and themselves to reunite all who have been cursed into obscurity. Whether or not some malevolent being is dividing the populace for his own evil deeds using the nodes is totally not a possibility. Downtrodden types with no job opportunities and easy means of global travel sound like the perfect group to cultivate into soldiers for a villain to me.

>The players wake up chained to the walls of a rape dungeon
>They have already been raped
>Roll to see who is pregnant

why not a butcher, a baker, or an amorer or weapon smith

maybe they all meet in line at the DMV

meet at the library

meet at the casino

meet at the execution

meet at a concert

You all happen to be passing through a space station and staying the night when you are all awakened by an alarm. You quickly come out of your various rooms and step into the foyer of the living area. This section seems to have been locked down and a fire has broken out in an adjacent section. The entrance to that section is sealed off by a fire door, but people are gathered around an elevator on the opposite side of the area, which is likely the only way out. The elevator doesn't seem to be working though...

The civilians gathered are all just standing around, unsure of what to do.

What do you want to do?

Thanks for the feedback and yeah the npc interaction and diplomacy is going to be somewhat difficult but I’m aiming to make it as involved as combat, also the setting is very untrusting and scornful naturally being extremely xenophobic with most of the players choosing “human passing races” while juggling not outing themselves as not human.

As for the nodes they aren’t as sinister but I guess more devistating, I presented in the last post the way I’d tell the players but the big reveal is that they exist as reality decaying, the 30% is more a current number that will grow over time, the actual interactions with the nodes kills the individual on the spot and leaves what I’m calling an “imprint” who is more or less a slightly lesser clone of the original who spreads decay unbeknownst to them.

The group could end the decay through a certain method later on, however it would result in killing themselves. I’m not a fan of big bads to be honest at least anything more godlike so it won’t be stopping someone more trying to reverse a natural phenomenon.

Rolled 2, 4 = 6 (2d6)

Rollan.

Roll 2d6. On an 8+ you are pregnant.

what happens if we're male?

I've found making them all related works.

>You're brothers from the poor side of the family who've been hired to escort your rich noble cousin around as she wants to adventure before she gets married off

or

>You're a mercenary group that has been working together for the past 10 years you're on your way to meet your current patron
>X is the captain and X is the quartermaster

Ah, so a much darker setting then. As long as the players are aware of it/willing to play it it should work pretty good. I personally like having some sort of antagonist that is a person/being of some sort, gives me and them something to focus on.

They don't have to be the guy behind the problem in the first place, just taking advantage of it or making it worse.

An influential figure who was one of the first few to touch the node is shunned from society, becomes spiteful and starts recruiting people to start trouble.

A wizard wants to see what is on the other side and is trying to open one even faster than anticipated.

A group of the damned realize what is happening to some degree and are trying to either convert more or scare everyone away from the nodes.

Someone or some group from the living are now aware of the doom, do not know how to fix it, and are quashing all talk and discovery of its true design, including meddling PCs and the other shadows in order to keep the status quo.

A paladin order has become aware of the gravity of the situation and is trying to help find a solution, and thinks the damned are a key to figuring it out, or they are yet another group that will crusade in a blind rage to crush those that they think are bringing the apocalypse.

They don't have to be the big bad, just side groups that are operating based on their circumstances, trying their hardest to stay alive, maintain control of their lives while everything falls apart around them. Whether or not they will help the party is up in the air, but I feel a pure focus on the nodes alone could get bland. Unless they're doing something other than just being a tide of death and doom, something else needs to be able to help the party/encourage them to move, because 90% of the resources available to normal people are not to the party.

transformed into a female before the rape

Suddenly it's an MMO.

You all are drinking together, old, remembering the old times, when you first started adventuring together.

What happens if one of the PCs dies during the course of the game? Does he just disappear without really being there reminiscing with the others? Would the other PCs justify it by senility? "Oh, that's right. He died back there in the kobold hole, nearly 60 years ago. Must have slipped my mind".
That's a neat idea in theory, but in practice it can easily turn into a scenario where the PCs are insane old men who share the same mass delusion, talking for hours on end before realizing that there's nobody sitting in the chair in front of them, and that everyone else in the tavern is looking at them in a funny way.

The annual Grand Festival is happening and the PC's are scattered around the festival. When the King begins the opening speech, he gets executed and the town is attacked. Chaos ensues and the PC's slowly group up to fight off the attack

>in practice it can easily turn into a scenario where the PCs are insane old men who share the same mass delusion, talking for hours on end before realizing that there's nobody sitting in the chair in front of them, and that everyone else in the tavern is looking at them in a funny way.

...so?

The player characters all know each other and have come together to work towards a common goal.

Meeting in a prison is a fun way to give everyone character establishment and also needing to work together to escape (even if ultimately the solution is asking the guards what the hell is going on).

Dat pic "everything's just works out, the old hag/woman is buried"

You don't indicate who is sitting at the bar and foretell the death of several party members

Session zero where all this is decided.

That's a 5/5 lady.

>bored lich is polymorphing bears to kill time

One way my DM did it that I really liked was that we were all part of a mercenary company and the mercenary company just got fucking obliterated and now you have to fight your way through straggler enemy soldiers with these people you don't really know well but you trust through brothers in arms comradery.

Always start campaigns with a filter.
I like the fighting pit scenario where the campaign starts with all characters being thrown in and set against a challenging fight straight away. If they lose then its certain that they either failed to make their characters properly or they play foolishly, either of which has no place in the game.

It should also be used to demonstrate to the party if they have a flawed composition.

>no cleric
>oh look at all these undead pouring from the gates, guess we should have had someone who can turn huh?

The PCs are part of an elite mercenary army. On their way to *insert name* Town the general sacrifices the entire corps in a deal for great power. Blah blah blah PCs are the last survivors and start on their path for revenge.

So ended up figuring out a good plot for it, basically players following the trail of a wizard who for all they knew was finding a way to fix it, basically following his notes and guides left behind to his next cache.

Ends up with leading into a few different groups who misunderstand the wizards intentions, and given his eccentric nature gets himself in and out of trouble, with the group just behind him any investigation ends up getting the attention of those trying to capture the wizard.

I did a recursive city. The players are all modern incarnations of ancient beings. They were friends, allies many lifetimes ago. Somehow they were drawn to the Core under the city.

Then I start them already in a dungeon. In Media Res is pretty great if your players are into it.

>You're all at a public hanging, someone is passing around rotten tomatoes

In a tavern.

Looking for a party.

Characters all awaken naked with splitting headaches and no memory of the past five years as they realize they are plummeting towards the ocean at considerable speed.