Auspicious Beginnings
Hello all and welcome to Grave Plots, the place for quick and dirty adventure ideas and plot hooks. This week I would like to talk about campaign starters. For me at least, one of the hardest things about starting a new campaign is making sure that players are hooked from day one. So how do I get my campaign from interesting concept to interesting game? Start with an interesting adventure! Below are some fun little ideas about how to start off your next campaign.
The Fight
A friend once told me that some players will run from any plot hook but that they can’t run away from “Roll for initiative.” This ultra aggressive hook starts your game off with some action. The PCs are new acquaintances (or old friends) sitting around a table at a local inn or tavern ,when all of a sudden the windows shatter and doors fly off their hinges as assassins sent by the local king burst through the door to put an end to the PCs. After an intense bar room brawl the PCs either interrogate any prisoners they may have taken or else find a bounty notice on one of their would-be killers. Either the prisoner or the notice explain that the king wants them dead - but not why. From here, the plot can develop largely as you choose. Perhaps the king is planning something he knows the PCs will try to interfere with and he’s trying to get rid of them before they could become a problem. In this case, it’s up to you to decide what he’s planning, why he’s planning it, and how the PCs fit in. Maybe the king received information that the PCs were trying to overthrow him and decided to put down any rebellion before it had a chance to get off the ground. If you choose this path, be sure to decide where the king got that information: is someone setting the PCs up because he has some kind of grudge against them? Or does he just want the king looking somewhere else while he gets up to his own insidious plans? Either way, this set up lends itself well to a campaign full of mystery, conspiracy, and danger.
The Stranger
This idea is good for the start of a low-level campaign in which the characters have no established history with one another. The PCs are all young folk from the same country town where nothing ever happens and strangers are few and far between. The PCs are just living out their ordinary lives, until one day a mysterious man claiming to be a traveling merchant arrives in town unannounced. He says he’s looking to trade for vast quantities of the town’s goods and may need to stay a few days. While in town the man quietly tries to find out as much about the PCs as possible. Before he leaves, the man offers each of the PCs jobs with his merchant train, either as guards or as guides on his way to a major city far to the north. He doesn’t seem to want to take no for an answer and PCs who refuse find him to be suspiciously persistent. PCs who still refuse to travel with him find their reasons for staying at home start to suddenly disappear; for instance, lovers may also join the caravan, or livestock may suddenly die. Once on the road the merchant insists that they keep up an almost unreasonably quick pace on their way to the city. He grows more anxious the further you travel until one night the PCs are attacked by a group of strange creatures called morlocks led by a dark elven sorcerer. The merchant is gravely wounded in the battle and insists with his last breath that the PCs must make it to the city and see the wizard Elam Amor, who will explain everything. Should the PCs decide instead to return to their hometown they find it in ruins, destroyed only a few days after they left with the stranger by a horde of subterranean creatures. What happens next is all on you - what’s going on, who the sorcerer was, why the PCs are so important, and what happens next.
The Quest
This is for those who just want a quick and dirty way to jump into their epic campaign. With this simple hook the PCs are summoned before a person or group they trust (the village elders, a high council of mages, a king, or the heads of the local merchant guild). They are sent on some mission or other (whatever your campaign goal is), and are offered any necessary incentives. At this point you may be wondering why even bring this one up? The answer is that the situation can be more complicated than it looks. Some fun ways to carry this off include a set-up by the quest givers to accomplish some hidden goal involving the quest, or using the quest as an excuse to get the only decent heroes out of town for a little while, so that the quest giver can do something without the PCs knowledge. Perhaps instead of heeding some ancient prophecy whereby the PCs must accomplish something to save the world, evil quest givers give a quest that acts in opposite of whatever the real prophecy was and decides to dress it up like the original prophecy.
Well folks, that’s it for this week’s Grave Plots. Until next time, I would like to wish you all the best in all your gaming endeavors.