What good ideas have you used or seen to get the party together at the beginning of a campaign? There's the tried and true having them meet each other as wagon guards, or in a tavern that's attacked. What have you used or seen to get the party together and get things moving in a fun, fast, and effective way?
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2\$\begingroup\$ Idea generation/discussion type questions are off-topic for RPG.SE, they don't fit our Q and A style format very well, but we do have a list of forums we recommend where you can get this sort of feedback. meta.rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/5449/… \$\endgroup\$– Joshua Aslan SmithCommented Jan 20, 2016 at 17:05
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\$\begingroup\$ A good way to improve your question is to ask for methods of producing ideas for ways to put the party together. \$\endgroup\$– SmurftonCommented Jan 20, 2016 at 17:18
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\$\begingroup\$ Try googling "d&d players characters meet", also see this question: rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/16788/… \$\endgroup\$– RobertFCommented Jan 20, 2016 at 17:18
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\$\begingroup\$ @JoshuaAslanSmith could this not, perhaps, be coerced into a good-subjective question? Like "What has worked for you, and why?" or "How did you come up with a good way to do this?" Like in this blog post: blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective \$\endgroup\$– TophandourCommented Jan 20, 2016 at 17:23
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\$\begingroup\$ Also see How to: Create a good backstory for how the party got together? \$\endgroup\$– RobertFCommented Jan 20, 2016 at 17:23
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1 Answer
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At the time of this writing, my campaign has been running for over a year so I've seen some success with the method that I used to start things up. I had all of my party members come up with a reason that they wanted to go exploring to a certain new land in my campaign setting. Then, during the first session, the action started during a boat voyage (they were all on the same boat) and a crisis occurred requiring adventurers to leap into action to save the day. The party succeeded, so the authorities in charge of the voyage gave them some recognition in a ceremony and then went to that group when they needed help with additional tasks that required daring adventurers. My players were quite happy with this setup and mentioned to me that they preferred it over our standard "So you all notice that there are other adventurers in a tavern. Now go adventure." type opening. Since this was when 5e first came out, my party was quite pleased to jump straight into the action and start using the new rules.
To generalize this a little bit, you could get all of your players to come up with a reason to be at the place that the campaign will start, then during the first session introduce some crisis that they are the most qualified to solve, then have the people that witnessed their heroics treat them as a group and offer to pay them or provide services to them if they do some additional quests.
The crisis doesn't have to necessarily be combat. You could, for example, have everyone watching or participating in a circus and have a large fire break out. The party could attempt to save as many people as possible and assist with putting out some of the flames using skill challenges to determine success and failure while keeping things challenging, urgent, and exciting without ever having to make an attack roll.
answered Jan 20, 2016 at 17:08
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\$\begingroup\$ I really like this. What I think is good about this answer is the idea of asking the players to come up with why they are going to wherever. Thanks! \$\endgroup\$– JackCommented Jan 20, 2016 at 19:06