Vapourware Best ways to start a campaign?

[tuluse]

A shipwreck or some local disaster they share in common, which encourages them to work together.

Like Cube! Have the PCs mysteriously taken captive and put in a boat that they intentionally shipwreck on some "deserted" tropical island full of ruins and jungles. As new players randomly join the group, the party finds that many people in similar situations have been shipwrecked here.

This doesn't really handle "in the group every other session" though.

 

[Ninjerk]

A shipwreck or some local disaster they share in common, which encourages them to work together.

Like Cube! Have the PCs mysteriously taken captive and put in a boat that they intentionally shipwreck on some "deserted" tropical island full of ruins and jungles. As new players randomly join the group, the party finds that many people in similar situations have been shipwrecked here.

This doesn't really handle "in the group every other session" though.

They can get Morlocked in the night

EDIT: Or phase in and out of reality or something

 

[Xathrodox86]

Start a first session without anything planned. Set a generic tone/story for this game. Let your players run wild and then decided on a course of the campaign. Always worked for me.

 

[Keldryn]

"Roll for initiative" is always a fun way to start a campaign.

Given the irregular nature of the game you will be running, check out the West Marches Campaign:
http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/

 

[Dreaad]

Find out who your PC's are, split them up into three groups, set up one group in an awkward sexual situation (just like all the best AAA RPG's ) see where they take it (if they know each other or just met) . It's fun seeing how two players try to figure out how they ended up getting laid The second group is chasing the 3rd group (depending on your group size you might just have 1 guy chasing another). They burst into the first groups sexual tension situation, get to know each other, maybe have a little fight, they all get arrested and find out who's who in prison.

I've only done this twice, your millage may vary. Helps if you have a girl to pick on, if not there's always some fag role playing a woman, worst case scenario make the bard/rogue and cleric/druid gay. Also obviously not gonna work if you are going for some hardcore gridmark death and despair campaign. My groups always end up in a serious campaign but one filled with at best a group of lawful evil clowns.

 

[Zombra]

Well, if it's just a drop in/drop out/nothing matters kind of campaign, just shove a character sheet at them and start rolling dice.

If you want a real story, then establish motivation and intention for every character, even the people who are just here for one session. Even if it's simple stuff like "I want to be rich and I'm going to kill and rob everything I see", then at least you know what you're dealing with and can plan your encounters and other scenes accordingly.

As long as everyone at the table has something their character wants to be doing, and as long as you know what all those things are, the players are excited for their "camera time" and you can put the plot hooks in their paths to take them in the directions they want to go.

Spoiler

It helps if PC motivations complement each other but are not the same. One guy wants to get rich, one guy wants to get revenge on the anti-paladin who burned his village, one guy wants to learn the secret of his real father, then put all the hooks for all those motivations in the same place (the stronghold of the rich anti-paladin who is the PC's father) and give the characters the opportunity to meet each other and learn of their common ground.

 

[Xathrodox86]

"Roll for initiative" is always a fun way to start a campaign.

Given the irregular nature of the game you will be running, check out the West Marches Campaign:
http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/

Last time I did that to my players, half of them died.

I laughed so hard.

 

[Ninjerk]

If I were you ChessVice, I would be

on those "friends."

 

[Zombra]

I'm still pretty new so I have no idea what you mean.

Reg date 2004 here, I have no idea what he means either.

 

[Ninjerk]

lose families, watch friends be raped and murdered, meet racists who engage in ethnic cleansing, and nothing

Nevermind.

 

[Horus]

Here's an idea for free: kill one of the PCs. It can be done in a chase. After he gets arrested for something. When the party is sleeping. You can even tell him beforehand, so he can prepare. The best is to do it before the session ends, so the party can deal with the problem.

This is the worst DM advice I have ever seen. It's one thing for a player character to die due to bad rolls or bad ideas, but if you're just killing someone's character to fuck with him he's fully justified in leaving the table and finding a DM who isn't a powertripping asshole.

But what if we want to play a game of thrones campaign?:D

 

[Xathrodox86]

Here's an idea for free: kill one of the PCs. It can be done in a chase. After he gets arrested for something. When the party is sleeping. You can even tell him beforehand, so he can prepare. The best is to do it before the session ends, so the party can deal with the problem.

This is the worst DM advice I have ever seen. It's one thing for a player character to die due to bad rolls or bad ideas, but if you're just killing someone's character to fuck with him he's fully justified in leaving the table and finding a DM who isn't a powertripping asshole.

But what if we want to play a game of thrones campaign?:D

Yup, something like this is a major no-no. If he wants his PC to die in a climactic fashion then fine, otherwise it's a dick move. Even if you're running a GoT game.

 

[Neanderthal]

My own preferred method, drop the players in the shit together:

• Imprisoned together falsely, mistakenly or justly (I usually let the individual players decide and inform me.) Usual Suspects style maybe branching into the Dirty Dozen.
• Trapped together in a besieged locale, work together or die.
• Commanded to work together by a secular or ecclesiarchal power in a feudal system, perhaps even bound by geas, builds resentment and makes an immediate antagonist without really trying.
• Decimated mercenary company, on the run, bounties on their head, a border to reach and the bonds of a destroyed free company to flesh out.
• Binding, some kind of odd metaphysical symbiosis inflicted by witnessing or causing some weird occurence. Gives an immediate cause to quest, how do I identify and end this shit.
• Shared trauma, like binding but not necessarily enforced by anything metaphysical, perhaps they have all witnessed something traumatic and feel a sense of fraternity since. In an early Greyhawk adventure for instance I had my players start off as level 0 peasants, they were all present at the harvest when an artifact of Tharizdun was uncovered, and the Cthulu like unreality and strangeness marked all of them. I immediately started alienating them from their townsfolk, building a sense of paranoia and shifty looks that drove them away and set them on the path. Good campaign.
• Survivors, everybody is dead, we're all still alive. What the fuck is going on?
• Slaves from distant lands, gives an immediate quest (to escape) and introduces the players to a foreign land as they explore the new world. Feels natural.
• Death of a friend, the players stand around a grave on a wet grey afternoon, four (or whatever) strangers brought together by a common friends passing. They stay for the reading of the will, when you can manipulate them however you wish, gold, titles, magic items etc on offer for whatever the old friend wants doing.

 

[DraQ]

"You wake up with a throbbing headache and a suspicion that previous night involved some heavy drinking on your part. You would need to know what day it is to risk a guess if it was just the previous night. You feel like you're about to die but are afraid it might not be the case, at least for now..."



Bonus points for being able to dismiss all cases of "my character wouldn't do that!" with derisive laughter.

You can also have people be "in the same boat" either literally or figuratively. A shipwreck or some local disaster they share in common, which encourages them to work together.

That's a good setup because it doesn't require contrived explanations for often very diverse and possibly conflicting characters suddenly deciding to work together.

 

[Lhynn]

Waking up naked on a dungeon is the single best idea on this thread. Im gonna try it in my next campaign.

 

[Night Goat]

Starting with the PCs in prison means starting them without equipment, and that means they all die in the first encounter unless they get it through some contrivance.

 

[Zombra]

Starting with the PCs in prison means starting them without equipment, and that means they all die in the first encounter unless they get it through some contrivance.

True. And as we all know, contrivances are never allowed in RPGs.

 

[DraQ]

Starting with the PCs in prison means starting them without equipment, and that means they all die in the first encounter unless they learn to think with their heads instead of their ballsacks

Fixed and I like it.

 

[Ninjerk]

Waking up naked on a dungeon is the single best idea on this thread. Im gonna try it in my next campaign.

Roll for sore butts.

 

[Xathrodox86]

My players got bonded after being put on a trial, and before that as captives of a tzeentchian cult.

 

[Servo]

Here's an idea for free: kill one of the PCs. It can be done in a chase. After he gets arrested for something. When the party is sleeping. You can even tell him beforehand, so he can prepare. The best is to do it before the session ends, so the party can deal with the problem.

This is the worst DM advice I have ever seen. It's one thing for a player character to die due to bad rolls or bad ideas, but if you're just killing someone's character to fuck with him he's fully justified in leaving the table and finding a DM who isn't a powertripping asshole.

I thought it was a neat idea but I was thinking an NPC instead of a PC that someone had spent hours preparing beforehand. That would be a dick move to be sure.

For instance, you've been crossing the frozen wastes for three weeks. Your party is camping in the woods. When you awake, you notice Jared, the younger brother of (character), is missing. There's a trail of blood or something. Figure it out.

I also agree with the advice that you shouldn't over plan. That's a good way to never get started.

 

[Night Goat]

If you kill off PCs' family members, you'll just encourage the players to not give their characters families. It's still a dick move, you should be encouraging players to come up with family members (potential story hooks) instead of punishing them for doing so.

 

[Servo]

I didn't say he was dead.

I played a WoD campaign once where we all got together before the first session to figure out our backstories and how our characters were connected. The GM came with a list of ideas for campaign settings - we picked one that our characters could fit into and built off of that. In other words, let the players decide.

Edit: I replied before I read that you're running an open table. For that, I think Grunker's suggestion of in media res is ideal.

 

[Zombra]

If you kill off PCs' family members, you'll just encourage the players to not give their characters families. It's still a dick move, you should be encouraging players to come up with family members (potential story hooks) instead of punishing them for doing so.

A good player would rather have an emotional attachment to the game, even a negative one, than play a character with no stake in anything. Of course, a good GM will also "read" his players and know the difference between what will involve them more deeply and what will alienate and disconnect them.