Have you ever noticed how many Dungeons and Dragons campaigns have the party starting in the tavern? This is so common that there are games like the Red Tavern Inn that riff on the trope. But what if you want to do something different and fun for your party?
Well the good news is you can! You also do not have to look far for ideas. What are some of your favorite games outside of Dungeons and Dragons? Take Skyrim for example, you start in a cart heading to a camp with a bunch of other people. You can take a spin on that and make it your own version. You could have had them all wake up in a bandit camp together and are forced to work together to escape. The group could have gotten their own individual summons to a court house on a mission for the city. You could have had the group invited to a party separately. Or even a festival that they all partake in and events unfold that cause them to come together. You can also take away the awkwardness of the first meeting by having it play out as if they already found the reason to be together.
The Party Cart
You do not have to take the entire beginning plot to Skyrim and have it be a prison cart. You could very well be hired hands for a bunch of merchants that hired all of you individually and now you are all together and face the treacherous road together. You are all hired to guard a VIP being escorted to the castle in the main city and there are concerns of when he walks through a rougher part of town. What ways can you think to alter this?
You can use this in many different ways too, for instance if you have any automation like trains or tunnels of magic to be carrying the group to some purpose or major plot point. One of my favorite is having a Demi-god try to trick the players that they had died and he had saved them and needs to do something for him in order to gain touch back on the world. Or just a tunnel to the engineering section that was overrun and the gnomes are trapped and need help.
Bandit Camp Wake Up Call
Then again you can lean even harder into the Skyrim vein and have you and the other players wake up together bound in a bandit camp and need to find a way to escape without suffering casualties. You will want to make sure there are no players that would want to leave another person to die. You would want to create the tension of being stuck here but the drive to get everyone out. If you only care about yourself and not the others than this will not be a great way to start the campaign.
You can use more than bandits. It can be slavers, an army that has taken you as prisoners, a cult, a city jail from a drunken fiasco or falsely accused as a murderer and your party has to help prove your innocence. Or perhaps the whole party is on the hook for something that transpired. Maybe they killed a beast but it came back as a baron and the guards arrested your party.
Court House Summons
Perhaps you are a bunch of traveling adventures and have landed into town recently. But the town has a problem with goblins/kobolds or another monster that is causing havoc for the city. This can be as simple as they are stealing the food or killing all the horses. Or they raid the city every eight days and take prisoners from the city. Or perhaps there is something dark in the sewers that is causing a problem if you are in a large city.
By far one of the easier ways to get some quick and easy combat And lets you create some good lore about your city. The scary rat people that live in the sewers or large spiders. The goblin raiders that steal livestock and supplies making winters really rough. Take down a bandit who has been taking advantage of people as they leave town. So many great ways to get the players out solving problems.
Invitation to the Mayor’s Manor
You can also return to another classic style of having a Murder mystery. You have all been completing odd jobs independently and have been invited to the manor as a thank you. That evening there is a murder and you all work together to find out who the murderer is. Maybe its someone in the party? What kind of twists can you think of to make this different than your normal run of the mill clue type encounter?
Who doesn’t like a little murder mystery? The only feedback on this one is there is little chance you will surprise your group that it is a murder mystery as things will just have the feeling. But you can still play with the various traditional mechanics and add your own twist. The body disappears, it becomes a zombie, it was all a joke, have fun but remember what your players expect and enjoy and don’t take away their fun.
The Festival Experience
Your potential party is already in a town that is about to have an extraordinary festival. Create a holiday or event for them to celebrate and have them become excited and some cash for some missions they have completed earlier say a session 0 prep for individual or mini groups that came together. Then give it a random time in the the festival where things go wrong and absolute chaos breaks out. This can be a town rioting to take over or monsters trying to take over the city. The sky is the limit on this one.
One of the fun things with this one is it allows you to start creating some fun DM skill challenges that are not life or death. You can experiment with various types of games and puzzles and see what resonates with your group without it being in a dungeon with a time limit of doom.
We Are Already A Party
The other great and simple way to avoid acting awkward as if you do not know the others around you is to have it be where you already went on some missions together and have already started their bonds as a new party. This is also a nice way to get away from some awkwardness if the party just isn’t ready to play out those kind of scenes and just need more time to grow.
The details don’t even have to be too concrete, allow your players the ability to mold that into what they need to help them drive the story and feel connected to game. It also helps if one of the players end up not being able to stay or only stayed for that session. It can then say that person either tragically died and brought the party together or used for any other story driven mechanic.
So Much More!
Of course you can even go beyond this with not even having your players start in the prime material plane. What if they were all forced to be in the Feywild and have to solve a tricksters riddles to be able to escape back. The best part about Dungeons and Dragons is that it is your world. You make it your own and share your ideas and passions.
What are some of the ways you introduced your party to each other? How did you get them to be together? If you liked this post and think others would please share it with others!