What are some good ways to start a campaign?

Unity

Nobody does bleak executions like the French

By not starting it.

It's going to be a disappointment and no one is going to enjoy it, just bear with it thinking they'd depress everyone else if they stopped.

>narrate some chaotic stuff going on
>*record scratch*
>"you might be asking your selves how you got into this mess"
>flashback to tavern

Just finished sacking Jerusalem. Now what are y'all gonna be doin' next?

Prisoners in a besieged dungeon

Just finished character creation. Season one is going to be in the hills of a space ship bound for the new world.

Hills?

Election season has kicked off. Or if citizens don't get to elect things, some kind of citywide contest that involves voting. Both sides are trying to sabotage the other, and your party can choose who to help

You all start in a tavern...30 years after the adventure. The entire adventure is the older characters telling the tale of their adventure to a rapt tavern audience.

That's just asking Fate to give you a TPK.

I've had good success with this format:
Father begins to tell a story to his son
"And on that day, my world changed when some wanderers walked into town...."
Bam DMPC introduced, and it flows into the story.
Have an issue where the DMPC isn't around? Ask the players to recount the events after they happened(a session or two). Make sure they know they don't have to be 100% truthful, they can embellish as much as they like.

No...that's not what happened.

Yeah, but in D&D that's not necessarily a game ender.

dunno about the mcguffin but I like the idea of the party meeting at a funeral. gives a nice way to tie them together and have them meet.

Players all meet at their own public execution for horrible crimes they may or may not have committed.

Players are all at the same wedding as the bride and/or groom are grossly murdered and the guests look to be next.

Someone has hired a very large group of adventurers/mercenaries/freelancers for a dangerous job, including the players. All of the other NPCs are picked off by a setting-specific threat and only the players are left alive.

The players have all dig themselves out of their own shallow graves, finding themselves all to be awakened undead on the site of a hundred-year-old battle that they partook in, and at the mercy of a local necromancer.

The players awaken in a pile of sleeping naked people, with massive headaches, no memory, and the holy symbol of a god of hedonism inserted into their anuses.

There's a few.

Out of universe? Have a session zero where you discuss characters and motivations and expectations. Some problems that could crop up later will be sorted out that way.
The GM could even tell you where and when you all meet, and you could each decide how you got there.

In-universe, starting campaigns is kind of tricky. Some classics I've seen often are
>You all travel to the same location for different reason and something strange happens with your transport. You must solve it together.
>You are all recruited to the same organisation and go through bootcamp/initial training together.
>You are all hand-picked for some special task by some powerful group or entity.
>You are captured and placed in the same cell and must now escape together.
>You all witness the same rare event and the experience binds you together.
>You are perhaps the only survivors of some calamity. Only cooperation will let you survive.
>You all rest at the same location when something wakes you up.

These are a bit generic and combines easily with each other, but you see variations on this in almost story out there.

Have bandits attack and capture them.

Stupid over leveled bandits.

Then the PC's have to survive in prison and become strong enough to fight the bandits.

I did it with a bunch of vampires

It's a really big ship.

For you

The group meets by accident as they all try to invade the same place at the same time to steal the same mcguffin. They all use different methods that showcase their abilities:
>Barbarian smashes through the front security
>Bard talks/fucks the maid into sneaking him in
>Rogue poisons the butler and pretends to be him
>Wizard creates a hole in the saferoom's wall and waltzes in

Definitely gonna steal this. Probably no Mcguffin, but inheritance in another land. Then they arrive and the region is dying to some great plague.

You all wake up with amnesia

With shit already in the process of hitting the fan.

You all wake up as an inn

individual inns, and now must compete to attract and keep other customers/adventurers

>The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault

A shoot out that ends with the players in a Mexican standoff with each other.

>"You are attending the funeral of the previous Party Rogue. How did it happen, and who has to tell the widow?"

>Players all meet at their own public execution for horrible crimes they may or may not have committed.

To the dwarf "So what are you in for?"
"Poetry."

You're all attending the local Drownball championship.

*You all meat at an orgy.

Our GM had us walking into the mansion of a rich merchant who wanted to hire us to look into why his mines and caravans were disappearing. As we enter his study and he begins to talk about the job, the whole place explodes.

Good campaign that one. Stupid dwarf eco-terrorists.

Police Lineup