Why is it that every time a new campaign begins it starts off at an inn? Would you want a bunch of drunks watching your back while you sneak into the dragon’s lair to rescue the princess? This thought occurred to me when the Dragonlance campaign I am playing in started up.
Granted, the generated PCs in Dragonlance have a reason to be meeting at the Inn of the Last Home. The PCs are friends with a shared history and are coming together for the first in five years after their unsuccessful searches for the true gods. In the modules, a DM is told that if players are running their own characters a reasons for their meeting at the inn must be given. This then forces a DM to come up with logical reasons as to why the PCs are together. For most of the campaigns I have played in, the first adventure has the PCs meeting at an inn, star port, or even an Upper Manhattan Italian restaurant. They are thrown together for no apparent reason, and no explanation for them working together is ever explained. It seems as if they stick together solely due to the inertia from moving from adventure to adventure. I then thought about the campaigns I ran, and I realized I never fell back on the “You meet at an inn” cliché. So, as is always the case with my wandering mind, I started thinking about different ways a GM can begin a new campaign. All of the following ideas are ones that I have used in my own games, and have had great success with.
Survivors of a Village Raid
When I started my first D&D campaign, way back in the golden days of 1985, I made hobgoblins the major threat. I wanted the players to work together, with a single event that would bind them. I came up with the idea that the PCs were youngsters, ranging in age from 18 to 20, from a small mountain village. All the PCs started at 1st level and I required them to work together in fleshing out how they knew each other. To facilitate this, I had each player look to the player on their right and state how they knew that character. What this did was force the players to think of a back story and allowed them to shape the group’s relationships. I then had the PCs deal with a hobgoblin raid that saw their entire village destroyed. As the oldest youngsters in the village, it was the PCs duty to get the rest of the village children to safety.
Over the next two adventures the PCs dealt with not only a hostile environment and difficult children, but with the fallout of their village being destroyed. Families were slain, friends missing, and a way of life obliterated. In the end the group had a reason for being together. Once the younger children were safe, the players decided that they would have their revenge against the tribe that destroyed their home. Little did they know that over the next six years of the campaign the players would learn why their village was destroyed and why the hobgoblins were on the warpath.
This method worked, because the PCs had a reason to be together. They shared a common experience, and had a common bond. It did not matter that two of the PCs did not care for each other, they both knew that they were one of the few remaining survivors from their village. The group had motivation, the PCs had a history, and the players became closer during the game.
Jail Time
Another successful method I have used in starting a campaign, was when I had the PCs start off in jail. The characters were jailed for crimes they did not commit, and their motivation was to break out, get to safety, and clear their names. I used this twice in campaigns, once in a Star Wars campaign I ran, and once in a D&D campaign. This method threw the players in a situation were they needed to work together to not only survive life in prison, but to escape it as well. Having the PCs in jail also gave them a reason to be together. In the case of the Star Wars campaign one of the players wanted to play an Imperial Naval Officer who had become disenchanted with the Empire. I knew I wanted the campaign to center around the PCs being members of the Rebellion and I needed a logical reason for an Imperial Officer to be with the group. Prison worked perfectly.
The PCs managed to escape the prison, and also managed to get a ship. Once out the PCs had a common bond and they decided to stick together. In addition they all learned that they were framed by the same individual, and they all wanted revenge. There may have been rivalries, but they were still brothers and sisters in arms, bonded not only by a shard experience, but by a mutual enemy. They lived and survived the conditions of an Imperial prison planet, worked towards clearing their names, and had a mutual respect for each other. It was a group decisions that led them to joining the Rebellion, and it was as a group that they fought the Hutts and the Empire. In the end it was also as a group that they buried one of their own.
There are other ways to start a new campaign, but for me the above two methods worked the best. What they did was provide a basis for the players to work off of, and gave them a common origin that explained why they were together. It also put some of the work onto the players, forcing them to think about their character’s background and come up with a history. It is one thing for the cleric and thief in the party not liking each other. It is another thing for Roland to be angry with Justin over a girl. This early history also provides enough plot hooks to use for more adventures, and provides a group history to build a campaign on.
Why is it that every time a new campaign begins it starts off at an inn? Would you want a bunch of drunks watching your back while you sneak into the dragon’s lair to rescue the princess? This thought occurred to me when the Dragonlance campaign I am playing in started up.
Granted, the generated PCs in Dragonlance have a reason to be meeting at the Inn of the Last Home. The PCs are friends with a shared history and are coming together for the first in five years after their unsuccessful searches for the true gods. In the modules, a DM is told that if players are running their own characters a reasons for their meeting at the inn must be given. This then forces a DM to come up with logical reasons as to why the PCs are together. For most of the campaigns I have played in, the first adventure has the PCs meeting at an inn, star port, or even an Upper Manhattan Italian restaurant. They are thrown together for no apparent reason, and no explanation for them working together is ever explained. It seems as if they stick together solely due to the inertia from moving from adventure to adventure. I then thought about the campaigns I ran, and I realized I never fell back on the “You meet at an inn” cliché. So, as is always the case with my wandering mind, I started thinking about different ways a GM can begin a new campaign. All of the following ideas are ones that I have used in my own games, and have had great success with.
Survivors of a village raid
When I started my first D&D campaign, way back in the golden days of 1985, I made hobgoblins the major threat. I wanted the players to work together, with a single event that would bind them. I came up with the idea that the PCs were youngsters, ranging in age from 18 to 20, from a small mountain village. All the PCs started at 1st level and I required them to work together in fleshing out how they knew each other. To facilitate this, I had each player look to the player on their right and state how they knew that character. What this did was force the players to think of a back story and allowed them to shape the group’s relationships. I then had the PCs deal with a hobgoblin raid that saw their entire village destroyed. As the oldest youngsters in the village, it was the PCs duty to get the rest of the village children to safety.
Over the next two adventures the PCs dealt with not only a hostile environment and difficult children, but with the fallout of their village being destroyed. Families were slain, friends missing, and a way of life obliterated. In the end the group had a reason for being together. Once the younger children were safe, the players decided that they would have their revenge against the tribe that destroyed their home. Little did they know that over the next six years of the campaign the players would learn why their village was destroyed and why the hobgoblins were on the warpath.
This method worked, because the PCs had a reason to be together. They shared a common experience, and had a common bond. It did not matter that two of the PCs did not care for each other, they both knew that they were one of the few remaining survivors from their village. The group had motivation, the PCs had a history, and the players became closer during the game.
Jail Time
Another successful method I have used in starting a campaign, was when I had the PCs start off in jail. The characters were jailed for crimes they did not commit, and their motivation was to break out, get to safety, and clear their names. I used this twice in campaigns, once in a Star Wars campaign I ran, and once in a D&D campaign. This method threw the players in a situation were they needed to work together to not only survive life in prison, but to escape it as well. Having the PCs in jail also gave them a reason to be together. In the case of the Star Wars campaign one of the players wanted to play an Imperial Naval Officer who had become disenchanted with the Empire. I knew I wanted the campaign to center around the PCs being members of the Rebellion and I needed a logical reason for an Imperial Officer to be with the group. Prison worked perfectly.
The PCs managed to escape the prison, and also managed to get a ship. Once out the PCs had a common bond and they decided to stick together. In addition they all learned that they were framed by the same individual, and they all wanted revenge. There may have been rivalries, but they were still brothers and sisters in arms, bonded not only by a shard experience, but by a mutual enemy. They lived and survived the conditions of an Imperial prison planet, worked towards clearing their names, and had a mutual respect for each other. It was a group decisions that led them to joining the Rebellion, and it was as a group that they fought the Hutts and the Empire. In the end it was also as a group that they buried one of their own.
There are other ways to start a new campaign, but for me the above two methods worked the best. What they did was provide a basis for the players to work off of, and gave them a common origin that explained why they were together. It also put some of the work onto the players, forcing them to think about their character’s background and come up with a history. It is one thing for the cleric and thief in the party not liking each other. It is another thing for Roland to be angry with Justin over a girl. This early history also provides enough plot hooks to use for more adventures, and provides a group history to build a campaign on.
