"You meet in a tavern..."

Can we all agree that "You meet in a tavern, having heard about a dangerous riches-holding ruins" is a better way to start a campaign than "You're guarding a caravan"?

I don't know about you guys, but I actually want Dungeons and Dragons in my D&D. It's not Bandits & Caravans

My most fun (if brief) campaign started with us guarding a caravan. Here's how the first session went
>Sitting in the wagons and chatting
>The caravan is supposed to go through a portal to Erathia
>Portal takes five minutes to recharge after each wagon
>Finally, it's our turn
>Teleport and see that all of the guys before us were slaughtered
>By nighonian raiders
>Who are now attacking us
>Fight them off, but one of the harpies sabotages the portal and steals it's part before flying off
>We're now stuck in a foreign territory with no supplies
The game ended with us taking over a dungeon, and trying to come up with the plans to defend it from the humans and orcs at the same time

Run your campaigns how you want, and stop looking for affirmations from a Taiwanese sitar-strumming board.

Why the fuck would I trust my life to a bunch of strangers I just met in a tavern for what could be a highly dangerous job with lots of money involved?

Seriously, that's like asking a bunch of people hanging around McDonalds to help you help you go steal a drug cartel's money and not backstab you along the way.

Fuck, at least say we're members of the same guild or something. Damn.

>Adventurer's guilds

OP didn't mention that.

Bandits and Caravans is a fun game go fuck yourself.

The guy who was responding to OP did, however. Try and keep up.

What about a mobile tavern that is part of a caravan?

Why assume everyone is strangers?

>What about a mobile tavern that is part of a caravan?
I've had on the backburner this idea for a setting with something like Dragonmech's citymechs which make a circuit around this regional map. Since the world is post-apocalyptic, the players can hop off when they want to search ruins.

I started my last campaign with the characters having just finished their first mission together coming back to the mayor to get their reward.

I think we can all agree the worst campaign opener is "you all meet in dungeon cells with none of your gear."

Skip the intro. Start things in medias res.

>You kick in the door to the dungeon

Fuck off, tripfag.

Interesting idea. I've never been too keen on in medias res. But I suppose it might help for a certain playstyle.
Have you tried this out yourself?

He does not know about guild (art and merchants )

Why not combine them? You meet in a caravan heading near dangerous richesholding ruin.

>Might and Magic setting
My gentleman of nubian ancestry

>starts off as a "guarding a caravan" campaign
>except the party is all assassins
>and the nobleman in the caravan they're guarding hired these mercs thinking they were just hired blades loyal to his coin
>party cuts the head off the nobleman, guts his son
>put the guards down and burn the rest of the carvan
>bandits stumble across it and finish off any survivors
>party continues onward on foot

>Can we all agree
"No."

What if you're merely the strong-arm department of another guild?

True, but a plain "Here's a tavern, there's a quest on the board" is possible, too - OP just didn't clarify. The scenario might get interesting, yet I couldn't play a character seriously if he'd immediately wandered of with some strangers to pursue it, especially if he wants to make coin.

You sould start your campaing in a thrilling way like a battle or danger right alway. Building up slow works well in books and movies but drags out in games like this.

I have my own spin that I have yet to use in a campaign
>You all wake up surrounded by dead cultists. Upon inspection every death looks like a suicide.

The hard part with that is in order to start in medias res all the players need to know the events that lead them up to that point in order to roleplay their characters. Which means either the DM determines what their characters did, which takes away player agency. Or the players have input and influence over the events, at which point why not actually roleplay through them?

I wanted to avoid the "you accidentaly meet in a tavern" thing so I talked to the players how their PCs would end up in an adventurer guild. At the beginning of the session I told them they were scrambled as a quick response team to clear out a random NPC's home of goblins and now they were done with the job and were given some free time and some money to spend in a nearby tavern. I thought I could use the moment to let them try to RP and to properly introduce themselves. That's how my current campaign started.

fuck off L

Not the media-res user;

In my groups, we just talk about it before the game, and just shoot the shit about what they did before, we talk about how they met (I make PCs pair up before meeting together), we talk about the tavern brawl they had, we talk about the journey here, the shittalking, giving each other nicknames, and so on.

Then we go "And so, you're in front of the dungeon, 3 cultists you've killed are still warm and twitching, and you're kicking down the front door, roll initiative."

You can also have them "You're all quick-friends that are going to explore this dungeon and retrieve the Chalice. The Fighter kicks the door down, and 2d6 goblins steel themselves against the oncoming slaughter, roll initiative", and then after the fight have them talk it out how they all got there together.

>you start midway through the BBEG's monologue

"You start as pen-pals, you meet in a tavern for your first live meet-up" is better

For my next game, I'm starting the setting with new characters and some will be in a mercenary band, while others will be in a tavern. The mercenary band PCs will be tasked with going to locations in town to see if there are available men for hire. The tavern PCs will have opportunity to look for work with tavern as starting point. Hoping to get an organic flowing start where the players feel they meet up not, so much by force, and go on together. Any suggestions are very welcomed.

They'll instantly join each other if you're playing with any sort of normal human players. They'll naturally cooperate.

Every time, the party just accepts the new PC instantly, nevermind if they found him captured in a barrel in the dungeon, they just instantly trust him, hand him some gear and off to adventure.

My very first campaign as a wee brat started with people sheltering from the rain under an overhang that turned out to be the entrance to an old barrow tomb.

Rate my campaign starts:
>You're all in a bootleg prohibition speakeasy which is currently being raided, you all need to get out the back as soon as possible.
>You're at a public hanging, someone is passing out old tomatoes and you're expected to begin throwing.
>You've all be drafted into the local militia as horrible beastmen descend upon the town, you need to survive three days before the Baron's men-at-arms arrive.
>You all gather for a mutual friend's funeral only to realize after his grieving widow knocks the casket over that his coffin is empty.

One other thing, for the first two I did the following in the past:
>four players are patrons, one is a cop
>four players are expected to begin throwing, one is being hung

Don't be silly user, what are we gonna do if we don't post bait threads or seek affirmation? Produce quality OC and discuss traditional games in a sensible manner?

>"You find yourselves wandering the floor of a furry convention. Now, we're going to go around the table, and each of you is going to explain how the characters know each other and how they ended up in this situation- best explanation becomes canon. George, let's start with you."

Correct

My favorite campaign start was on a boat were were all just incidentally buying passage on and we came together as a party dealing with a sea monster attack.

You all meet in your legally required anger management class

In mt first capiagn back when I was a kid, my bard tried to justify the party's constant ultraviolence by claiming we were the 'Pan-continental Economic Advisal Committee' and we just happened to be in the general vicinity of all those dead people. By the end of the campaign, the Committee was a real thing and was basically a slightly incompetent version of the illuminati.

You all meet in an adventurers anonymous meeting that you're attending on account of your life crippling addiction to adventures

I'm an amateur assassin hired to purify the gene pool by replacing the yiff juice with ricin.

I've been starting my players right outside of or on the journey to the dungeon for years. Describe what's in the dungeon and what's said to guard it, then go around the table and ask what the adventurers hope to accomplish by seeking the treasure of the dungeon. Then ask them why they decided to work with these other guys to get it.

Cuts a lot of the fat and, in my experience, gets people invested right away by making them consider who their character is and what motivates them. Usually leads to a lot more substantial roleplaying when the characters have a goal and motives than when they're faffing about in a bar waiting for a quest giver to give quest

>asking a bunch of people hanging around McDonalds to help you help you go steal a drug cartel's money
Now that right there's a good shadowrun start.

You mean there's other ways to start a game of Shadowrun?

They meet at burger king.

A cyberzombie crashes through the ceiling of your apartment. Everyones individual housing unit. Objective: Survive.

>all the players need to know the events that lead them up to that point in order to roleplay their characters
But where's the demarcation point? If you argue that you need to roleplay the characters meeting in a tavern and deciding to go on an adventure, why not roleplay the events that led each of them to visit the village the tavern is in, or how they decided to leave home for a life of adventuring in the first place? Where does the backstory turn into story?

Now, I'm not actually arguing for some sort of slippery slope where it's either full-on Traveller-style character creation or starting completely in medias res. What I'm arguing is that backstory turns into story when something interesting happens, or at least something interesting that *everyone* would like to roleplay. In the end, we're here for adventure: if something interesting beyond "you decide to go adventuring" happens in the tavern, it might be a good idea to go through it. Otherwise, skip straight to the good stuff and kick that door in.

You're waiting in line for the iphone 17, the line is far longer than you expected.

>Your character is born in the line, roll stats.

>the heroes are restrained and helpless as the BBEG cackles maniacally about how the end of the world is nigh
>*record scratch* *freeze frame*
>"Now, you're probably wondering how we ended up in this situation. It all started in this tavern..."

My favourite way I started a campaign was everyone was traveling on a boat and got shipwrecked. They and a few NPCs had to explore and survive on the island while waiting for rescue, only to discover that there was a cult of demon worshipping goblinoids that lived there.

I'd like to run a game that starts with the characters as slaves abord a ship. No weapons, no gear, no idea where they are.

I legitimately love this about gaining PCs. Recently we had a new player join and he introduced his goblin rogue by stealthing up to my young halfling while she was away from the party and basically saying in a Brooklynn smoker's accent, "Hey girlie. How's it goin? I saw yer' group from afar and you seem to be of the upstanding sorts. Want some help?"
And then I got to roleplay niavely just welcoming him in and introducing him to the party.

>The hard part with that is in order to start in medias res all the players need to know the events that lead them up to that point in order to roleplay their characters

Given the often picaresque nature of D&D games and how very often the personality written on a sheet isn't even worth the paper it was printed on as a predictor for how the player plays the PC. Realistically, the first few levels of a campaign are your backstory.

Beat me too it

If what you say is true, maybe I should spice it up a bit. Lold at the barrel PC.

Don't. Not having gear or freedom to move about sucks balls.

Make sure the players are on board and they understand the tone of the overarching game.
The problem you will have is people like , who treat any kind of denial of agency as a personal attack.

Because it's a time where people were baseline way more honest.

Taverns are supreme

>Why the fuck would I trust my life to a bunch of strangers I just met in a tavern for what could be a highly dangerous job with lots of money involved?
To be fair, you were VERY drunk when you signed the contract.

He could start it in medias res. Honestly, busting out of prison could be a nice Level 0 funnel (roll up 4 or so 0th level schmucks per player; the survivors go on to become level 1 PCs).

You're in the cybercafe, using the anonymous and hard to trace facilities to check for employment opportunities, when you hear a voice behind you:
"Now that you're all here, we can begin the contract briefing".
Turns out the Johnson has decided to assemble a team from this cafe's regulars, since they figure you've got that much in common...

I disagree.