Where do you start your adventures? Ye olde tavern?

If I was starting small, I've had this thought,

>You're in the middle of town, whether you're together or not I leave to you. What's important, though is that you all hear the town cryer shout:
>"Hear ye! Hear ye! New jobs available on the bounty board! New jobs, on the bounty board!"

The party gathers, and there'd be at least a small assortment of tasks to get the ball rolling.

Funeral. At some point gm asks why the character is at the funeral or how they know the dead person, something is revealed either through the deadman's will, a trusted servant or family member of his, or the funeral being interrupted.
Adventure begins.

Players are in a town/ship/town/prison/spirit-realm, they're stuck either because of monsters, law, or nature. They work together to escape, and fight against whatever caused them to be stuck there in the first place.

Each player receives a dream/illness/request from their loved ones, this brings them to the same place to find the place/person in their dream, or cure their illness, or get what their loved one asked.

You're in the middle of a fight or other immediately dangerous situation.

FATE taught me session zero.

All players are graduates of schools and apprentice programs, hand picked for problem solving. There are extra characters so that players can 'fix' their choice, swapping out for a new character. The players seem to favor having a chance to restart without dropping levels.

In a crypt, just woken up.

or above a pyre, being burned alive. True story. Was one of the funniest campaign too.

I love pictures with this kind of perspective.

Also it depends on player backstories. If I have two soldiers in the King's army, a guardsman, and a freelancer, then the soldiers are working with a specialist (the freelancer) to do something in the guards' town. Usually the party can find reasons to stick together after the initial meetup.

My next adventure is going to start in ye olde tavern...30 years after the fact. The whole thing will be the party telling the story of their adventure to a rapt tavern audience.

Said story is going to begin in media res with a giant attack on a town.

Dammit, forgot my image.

In a dark cave, stripped naked with all their possessions sitting in a neat pile besides them and no memory of how they got there.

unconcious in a cave in the feywild.

how'd that one kid on the left fall asleep -between- levels?

>Where do you start your adventures?
First room of the dungeon.

Sufficiently tired kids (and drunks) will fall asleep anywhere

'the aftermath of a party' isn't a terrible place to start a campaign - who knows what drunken vows and promises were made under the influence?
Could also be good for randomly generating gear, or doing a retrieval mission as a starter

In Shadowrun, our initial meetup was in a Christian bookstore. It wasn't even a front or anything, the GM figured no one would be there.

I like Skyrim's take on it.
>Surviving a nightly monster attack
>refugees fleeing from an invasion
>The Hangover(TM) premise
>being drafted by the army but your captain dies and you're left alone to decide what to do...
>being summoned by the local priest because other people had the exact same dream you told him during your last confession ritual thingy, he says it's a sign from the gods you
>every PC dreams about the others, so they try to find each other
>PCs all descend from the same person who fucked with the BBEG when they were alive, so when the BBEG comes back to life several centuries later he curses that guy's lineage/tries to find and kill them

excellent

I like GMs like you.

one of the shortest too, I guess, no ?

I like this. A lot.
Though you have to guarantee the PC's survival.

Unless you let them tell the story of how their parents met. If the PC's die, you just introduce a new cast member and possible ancestor.

hijinks ensue

Option A:
>Go one at a time with each player encountering a robed figure who gives them a quest, using blackmail/leverage to compel them to do so.

Option B:
>Game starts as the BBEG is on the ground, dying from a mortal wound inflected by the players. In his last breaths he tells them a secret that will take them down a dark path.

Option C:
>Players are summoned to the Queens Presence, on the way each player is met by an Old friend/master/leader who gives them a secret mission (on a peace of paper handed to the player IRL) on top of the Queens upcoming quest.

Did the lat one ia game, had a blast with the secret motives

Fuck my spelling is bad.

*Did the last one in a game,

Also I tend to do different starting actions each game, keeps things interesting.

Was there a record scratch?

They all go to the same school

How did fate do it?

>and that's how I died. End of the story.

They meet at a festival
Crew on the same boat
All got scammed by same guy, (example: paid rent for the same room, got their shit together to move in, and the slimy "Landlord" skipped town, and he didn't even actually own the room)
They meet at church service/some kind of temple service
They got drafted into the same army (good place to put in a DMPC drill sergeant and then get him killed off so they're on their own)
Captured by the same slavers, first adventure is killing him and escaping
They all got shipwrecked on the same island
They're going to the same place and meet in the same taxi/stagecoach/boat/train/whatever

The harsh midday sun blinds you as you are prodded out of a trap door from the dark underbelly of the arena. You grip the unfamiliar spear and shield tightly. Blinking through the white brightness you are surrounded by the roar of the drunken mob. You can make out other figures like you on the sand and you hear the clank of a metal portcullis being raised and the beating off hooves from horses being driven hard. Less you perish alone you must band together and somehow survive. You must play for the Empire.

Hey, it's D&D. Dying isn't necessarily the end of the story.

I'll remember this one for future reference. It's pretty cool.
I use this start too. Except without their posessions. They've macguyered their way out of a cult's sacrifice holding pen, and now they're finally getting to their own. It's four sessions in and I've got a good read on their tastes. It's about time to get them a base.

>finally arrive at a tavern late at night
>ask for a meal and a room
>bartender says he's full until next week and throws you out
>outside, a group of people sheepishly starte at you in the rain

Method basically stolen from FATE:
Session zero (aka, character creation). When characters are done, pick one player to describe and adventure, quest, or event in their past. They then pick a second player, who describes how they helped them. The second picks a third, who creates a complication that the first two had to deal with. The fourth player (if more than four, the third picks one. If less than four, the GM takes the place of the missing players) describes something that helped them, or a benefit they gained. The first two then describe how they dealt with the complete situation. This cycle then continues with another character, until everyone in the party has aided someone else and been aided by another in their back story. This linkage of combined friendship explains why they are adventuring together.

I did this up to the second step. It's a quick way to link players starting on their adventure. Going all the way through requires quite some investment from the players though.

But what if they want to do the wrong thing?

Yeah, its a good idea but a bit extra work. That's why I like things like various flavors of history/bond mechanics from PBtA games for something shorter but with potential to develop further as desired.

Buried alive.

>PBtA games
??

The middle of some good old fashioned roadside banditry. Where are they? Who/what are they travelling with? Or hell, who/what are they holding up the caravan for?

A funeral of a mutual friend/patron/enemy. Where another mutual friend/patron/enemy or some stranger approaches and invites them somewhere afterwards.

The middle of looting some tomb complex. Somebody set off a trap.

This is the most Reddit-tier comment I've ever seen on this board.

Session Zero is needless shit that tries to front-load an entire campaign into tell-don't-show predecided bullshit where you determine your characters backstories and relationships beforehand so you can use up as much story potential as you can from the get-go with the intention of producing a "grounded" campaign, but in reality you're just producing an overly-artificial load of bullshit that leaves the game dense, and sets up expectations that you may or may not be able to fulfill. Such as: I want character A and B to have X relationship, but as we roleplay we find they actually have Y relationship. Shit! Session Zero was a great idea wasn't it? Session 0 is basically railroading except the entire party participates in it. You might say "well that's not how you're supposed to do session 0" but if you mean session 0 constitutes something as simplistic as "here's the setting and start scenario, make characters that fit into that" then you don't need an entire session for that you moronic fuck. Do it over an email chain and get to actual play more quickly. That's what my group does. We don't have infinite gas for fucks sake. And the Reddit nu males should learn to conserve their time more effectively seeing as their wife only lets them out of the house once a week, once they are done cleaning her son's diaper and she has gotten time to go out clubbing with Tyrone and Jamal while he stays home "watching the little guy." I know guys actually like this, by the way. They're the ones always sending me links to dumb shit on /r/rpg. I run my campaigns the way I want to and no one has ever complained about it. Whereas their "session 0" bullshit results in the most cliche, boring fucking preplotted characters ever.

Short for "Powered by the Apocalypse," a genre of games that are derived from Apocalypse World's mechanics and principles.

The bonds/history mechanics are that each class/playbook has history options you pick that connect you to other characters. Things like
" has stolen something from me."
"I saved and asked for nothing in return."
"I figure is doomed to self destruction"
"Another character thinks you're the prettiest."

That's just some that I pulled from a few different games. They each do it differently, but the idea is to start off with some pre-established assumptions and history between people.

Probably not the best way to example it but whatever, I'm drunk right now.

Wow, you are incredibly upset about something you obviously don't understand.

Yeah I googled it, but I couldn't find a set of examples to kickstart an adventure.

Do you actually have to play each game to get those examples?

Triggered much?

Imagine being this upset over something so small.

>Yeah I googled it, but I couldn't find a set of examples to kickstart an adventure.
In hindsight they're not great for actually starting an advanture, I was just barging in to metnion it as a side-version of Fate's setup.

>Do you actually have to play each game to get those examples?
I'm not sure quite what this means, sorry.

>This is the most Reddit-tier comment I've ever seen on this board.
Thanks for the warning dude.

>Session 0 is basically railroading except the entire party participates in it.
the most retarded opinion of all times.

I was going to post this exact quote.

Do effectively the same thing, but for wherever you're starting.
Pick a starting city/planet, and ask each player what their character was/is doing there. Boom, plot hooks (unless they're unimaginative). Then ask each player for one to two rumors their character has heard. Decide how truthful those rumors are. Boom, even more plot hooks.
You can even ask them to create current events - and build adventures off of that.
My suggestion is to create three things that can drive adventure and drama - a good trio is an external issue (that still effects the local area), an internal issue, and something that causes trouble in both issues.
Example: an impending war, nobles fighting for influence, and bandit raids.
You can even swap out one to two issues for each smaller area within the bigger area.
The nobles are fighting for control of this village (big area issue effecting them), which is far from the probable front lines (a big issue that doesn't effect them), bandits are hiding in the forest (a big issue that is present), and there are rumors of a dark cult (local area issue).

gib comfy room

Fire is everywhere, licking up the rich drapes and curtains that surround the glass dining hall. The party cowers behind overturned tables or the bodies of slain guests, as machine gun fire rips through the air. Their employer Inquisitor lies in a pool of blood, his gun just out of reach. And behind the roar of the flames, the hum of the zeppelin's engines flickers.