So far my best campaign start was I told the group: Look, until I say so, everything you try works. No rolls. Your bad asses. Something will go wrong at some point, but it’s imposable for you to die until this opening is over.

They proceed to pull off an amazing heist where they had to break in and tamper with some evidence. Just add they do their NPC teammates betray them, set off a chain reaction that kills a bunch of civilians, and leave them to take the blame. The law is on their trail, they are running out of friends, and finally they dive out of a high rise building and land in a trash heap. Then the campaign starts.

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.

I like having a goal already set. The party has been hired to do X, so they have an established relationship and at least one shared objective.

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.

I try to have each character know at least 2 other characters in the game, this creates some overlap.

I ran a game (and after almost 11 months) finished a campaign with a bunch of teens who had never played any RPG of any kind prior to this, and while making characters they created a traveling circus or carnival kind of thing and every character had some ties to it. So even when they did not know one another they would see the troupe’s emblem and become instant friends.

The other method I enjoy is trial by fire, starting the game with an intense situation and they have to work together to survive. I used this to start the other d&d game I am running. It also inadvertently happened when I was introducing two new characters to my Werewolf The Apocalypse game.

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)

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

I enjoy the classics. Tavern meet, or prison escape.

But one I really like is as part of character creation everyone tells GM (secretly) about something their character would be blackmailed for. Makes for a fun campaign as these secrets are revealed.

I did one where everyone started in the same town during the resurgence of dragons -who were more like a dangerous pests than an unstoppable force.

Half the PCs were from a previous campaign, so I had everyone tell me according to their back story what that person would be doing independently in a medium sized town.

(1 was working at an orphanage, 2 were staying in the local tavern, 1 was out all night partying)

The town was attacked at night forcing all of them to respond. Some of them ended up fighting together. The rest were folded in when the city guard thanked everyone who helped.

Unfortunately this was an impromptu one shot, so we didn’t get very far.

…

As DM I don’t enjoy trying to corral PCs into a storyline. I prefer to give people an open world that responds to their actions accordingly.

The BBEG is always on the horizon, never in the middle of the road. Random Encounters are not forced or used to move the plot forward. I try to directly attach as much of my world building as possible to actions taken by PCs.

I’m all about rule of cool. I want my PCs to believe they’re going to die without killing them off. I fudge every number except d20s because I want people to focus on the narrative and the role playing over the numbers.

Wouldn’t say that I have a favourite, but one DM I had started the campaign mid-adventure in an old but recently rediscovered ruin. Our characters, who were adventurers, explorers or treasure hunters, just randomly bumped into each other, and after some negotiation decided that there were safety in numbers and joined forces.

Generally will have everyone going to a location for their own characters reasons when plot occurs and forces them to work together.

I’ve only done it once. But I like putting them in a jail cell together. Let them each come up with a reason that fits their character.

Tried a bunch of things, played a bunch of things.

Best scenario was a number of 1:1 sessions (one player, one DM). They led to situations where characters met in quite realistic situations. Takes a bit of flexibility, though. At one point, my character arrived somewhere, and my DM told me to wait, he had to make a call. After that, I had what I thought was an NPC interaction, when a friend arrived, and took this “NPC” over. It was his character.