We all know the trope of a campaign that starts in a tavern. It’s an easy location to put strangers who might be called to action to work together and solve a brewing crisis. This has become a trope because it works and it is easy to handwave all your characters into a tavern, though they might have different backgrounds, interests, and ideals. Today I’ve made a list of other campaign introduction ideas for you to use instead of the tavern trope that still checks all the boxes.
- Festivals: Much like the tavern, festivals have drinking, brawls, and lots of people. Festivals can also inform your players of the time of year, the values of the society they are operating in, or the religious beliefs of the townsfolk. You can add more lore to a festival than you can a tavern!
- Game Show contestants: A game show can automatically give your players a rival team and you can easily establish what they do and do not know. You can also establish your villains early by leaving clues that the “survival totem” is a target item of a particular group, such as the Zhentarim!
- On the Road: This is the classic opener to “Lost Mines of Phandelver ” but you don’t even have to go as far as WoTC to have your characters already together and working on a quest. Character A and B are in a travelling caravan going to X and character C is passing them going the other way. They camp together that night, when the caravans are attacked by werewolves!
- Faction Clubhouse: You should already know your character alignments and traits so make the characters members in the same faction. The faction leaders can give them side quests, a reason to work together, and guidance through the first few levels. “Ah excellent, you’re all here. Now the reason I’ve asked you three here is I have a job that will require all of your particular talents…”
- Battle Royale: Give your party something to work together against by pitting them against some tough enemies in a coliseum. Maybe they are all slaves looking to make an escape or maybe they are in it for the money!
- In Prison: Everyone makes fun of Skyrim for its trope opening but it’s an opening you can use! You can even start with the arrest—except it’s not the city guard after all, it’s a local noble who needs their help with a secret task and needs a cover for the characters to go missing.
- Survivors of a Shipwreck: I hope someone invested in survival because these characters are going to have to scavenge everything they couldn’t rescue when the ship hit a bad storm and went down. Who even knows if they are being looked for?
- School: Nothing like good old-fashioned Wizard school or Bard college to bring people together! This gives you some authorities, side quest hooks, and an easy way to handle magic user level ups. It also offers comedy as the rogue in the party is not progressing and has taken to stabbing people while exclaiming “fire bolt!”, or the fighter starts casting ‘punch’ spells.
- Treasure: An antimagic field around an archaeological site has just fallen and no one knows why. The characters are sent (or drawn) individually to investigate (loot) it and find they must work together against other parties to get the treasure.
- Town Flyers: The characters are all handed a flyer inviting them to “the summoning” by a curious looking urchin. When they arrive they realize the cultists are about to summon a demon and they must work together to stop them! But who was that boy and why were they invited?
Let me know in the comments what openers you have used!