The good ol’ fashioned “You all meet in a tavern, answering a poster offering gold for help…”? The action-scene, “You’re all engaged in mutual mundane task, when suddenly a band of thugs/goblins/whatever bust in looking for the plot coupon and chaos breaks out”? The “Elder Scrolls classic” - all being prisoners thrown in together? Tie it in to a character’s backstory and let them lead the other party members in?
What have you found interesting or successful, and why?
I haven’t done it yet, but ideas I’ve thought about are:
- on a flying ship (party, traveling, etc) and it’s attacked and crashes
- they are part of a town and witnessing an execution, coronation, etc, and someone attacks or stops the event scattering those watching and forcing people to fight for their lives
- dead and in a hell when they are given the opportunity to return to life and avenge their deaths
- plucked from their lives and brought to limbo where they are informed that their destiny must be fulfilled as they are now awakened souls who were sent to the realm to fulfill their duty as agents of good to stop a rising darkness and then they are sent back to reality with a drive to meet up at a certain place to gather their group and begin their duty
session 0.
make sure we’re all on the same page about how we want to play the game, alignments, character cohesion, RP vs. combat…
that kind of stuff.
Killing a player character immediately usually grabs everyone’s attention and gives some compelling motivators.
(Usually the dead person gets cool powers and is revived, so its not super mean lol)
My favorite one-shot I ever played in began with
“You wake up. It is a dark and stormy night. You realize you are dead.”
The group had all been raised from the dead by a mediocre necromancer, and the plot went from following his commands, to breaking free from his command and earning our freedom.
Somewhere on the Sword Coast there is still a little pub between towns that’s staffed by two skeletons, a ghost, and a ghoul.
Really depends on the general theme of the campaign imo :3
Taverns are a good set up for a mercenary style campaign, getting ambushed and having to work together sets up a nice destiny plot, meeting at a town by happenstance sets up a nice mishmashed family all traveling for their own goals, but finding it helpful to stick together etc.
