How to Begin a Campaign | 5e Dungeons & Dragons | TTRPG | Web DM

hey there partygoers I'm Pruitt and this is Jim Davis and maybe you're tired of the tavern or pissed at the pub and been done with the beer garden and fed up with the fest certainly there's another way to start that campaign and we're gonna talk about it today on web DM this episode is sponsored by adventurers and adversaries if you need minis that are gonna stand out and who doesn't this is the kickstarter for you they've got figures that work for all types of ancestors including turtle people dragon people minotaurs demon folk cat people and even bird people with multiple sculpts planned for light medium and heavy armor types for each ancestry each kit comes with multiple arm head and even tail options for the ultimate in customization they're designed with storytelling in mind the clothing and equipment options reflect a depth of culture for each ancestry perfect for D&D Pathfinder you name it these folks are class axe their last Kickstarter fulfilling three months ahead of schedule and shipping is super cheap check it out link here and in the comments and description okay Jim it's the beginning of the campaign but where do you begin ah the campaign where do you begin how do you do it we're talking first level here first level we've assumed that we've got a session zero and some groups like to have like they're set up for their campaign dealt with in session zero you know how they know each other what their overall goal is gonna be we're assuming that this is not the case and you're looking for ways to kind of either get a game started where you you want to have just a little bit of free form to see what the players are interested in before you like focus in on that for the campaign that's how I run a lot of the games I run now where it's like I will start a campaign it's just I don't know what we're doing I've got a world partially filled and then you made characters for it and then I'll wait I've got enough going on we'll do something you know there'll be something that happens but it might take a few adventures before you know the players know their characters well enough that they can start you know giving goals to for themselves or they run into something in the world that that hooks the man and they push through that so it is okay to kind of start a game with a bit of meandering and it doesn't need necessarily to be this big you know pow we're done you know oh my god it's the campaign start like they the beginnings of campaigns already have some hype to them already you know you're like new new game new characters there's a freshness to it your new PC at the same time the first session can have a real impact on the game and if you've got a strong first session a session that like firmly locks in what you want your campaign to be about particularly if you do have an idea in line for like say a villain or or a situation that's gonna span the entire campaign that you're playing in you know you maybe do want to provide something that's a bit more structured a bit more provides impetus and motivation for the campaign a lot of different ways you can do it yeah well let's jump into them because I mean this was this was like a viewer-request like you know how to start like at first level yeah because I mean for me I normally start my games at least third especially in fifth edition I see that that's kind of a norm that way everybody has their subclass that's how Gary do you know zone game exactly but I do see the benefit yeah of starting at first level because especially maybe if you have new players yes yeah but maybe you have a mix that way it gives you some time to figure out the system yeah and maybe even figure out your character definitely maybe it's that maybe you're one of the classes that doesn't get their subclass to a third level and you don't know like I don't know if I want to go you know this or that you know a champion fighter a battle master yeah so where do you like where do you like to start the action and like where do you like to how do you like to get the band together so to speak and what do you like to how do you like to start that action off yeah yeah so when I'm thinking about how I want to kick off a campaign how I want to get things going I try to keep several things in mind one of them is that the point of a first session is to begin - it doesn't need to fully come together its begin - to draw the party together now D&D and and and most of the role-playing games come with the sort of meta game conceit that you are a party of adventurers who are going to experience this adventure together there's a lot of groups now who sort of have a you know sort of house rule a play style that assumes at some metal level the party will stick together and you will avoid things that you know that that drive a wedge between that that's not the only way to play there's a lot of groups and it's very satisfying way to play where you don't necessarily know each other there's not necessarily a commitment to always keeping the party together players can feel a bit more free to pursue their own goals and there's an understanding that that means less time for like your individual spotlights but when you get it it's going to be doing what it is that you want and then it's up to everyone to make sure that people are included that like alright even though we're going to doing the major thing today cleric and fighter are going to tag along because they have something like theirs they have adjacent interests you know or fighters doing it to curry favor and you know just do the wizard a solid so then later on down the line though you also return the favor and the clerics doing it because it is entrusted with yeah and and you know a lot of this has worked out at the player level so you're making decisions about what your characters are gonna be doing you know that with the eye towards let's keep them together even though like it's a little implausible that these three people who kind of just met each other recently would be going on these life-and-death situations voluntarily you sort of like suspend your disbelief yeah and and you know don't even know just don't think about it too hard because eventually it won't matter yeah no yeah no I totally get that do you think maybe that's why sometimes you see like the starting the first adventure in the action I think you hear that you give that galvanizing bond to the party like gone through life and death like in at the beginning yeah right yeah that kind of like starting off in media arrests you know the first words the campaign a role for initiative that's our thing and I it gets brought up a lot in advice for like how to kick off a campaign where it's like yeah start in the middle of the action do this and it sounds nice and I think yeah I think if you're skilled and and have a plan and a structure you can start out that way I have not done it successfully which maybe tells you more about how I plan and structure things anything else and for me when I've attempted it I found that the difficulties are sort of a lack of context or confer or some kind of confusion on the players parts and that this is even when they're just kind of like explaining what the setups gonna be you guys are gonna play you know this is sort of the setting here's who your characters are and and this is where we're gonna start and there's still some you know we don't know exactly who these are and especially if you're running a combat and you're running a combat for new players you know they're not familiar with the system or you've got players where they're playing characters that they might not be familiar with those classes throwing them in the deep end of combat has the potential to be to not go the way you would like it you might be facing a situation where it's like I'm having to like fudge to avoid a TPK or my first time out the gate or you know it's a fight that lacks passion it lacks consequence it's just it's perfunctory we're just doing it to because this is what they said we needed to do right right if what you're looking for is investment of what you're looking for is like to get the players hook to their characters to have them identify something in the campaign world it's gonna propel them forward then I think building up to but having a big action set piece in your first session is probably the way to go and you know not necessarily have it where it's like all right we're gonna start the campaign you're all in a caravan it's being attacked by orcs right now roll for an issue what do you do there's plenty of you know players who are gonna feel like can we back up how do I know everyone why am I here and this is where play style and priorities of play and why are you I'm a hermit who's never left my hood why am I not care yes like all of those kinds of things can introduce hiccups so it's not to say you know never start in the middle of the action it's just if you do be mindful of those things that can trip it up because there's trust me there is nothing worse than thinking I am going to start this game off with a bang in combat and it falls flat the other thing is if it's combat you need to be prepared for the worst you know like don't roll those dice don't put them in that situation if you're not prepared to follow it through yeah and and you know it's one of those things where it's like you don't want to be fudging a bunch in your first encounter that you have in the campaign you don't want it to fall flat on its face so it's risky but it's an alternative to what was previously kind of the standard which was you meet in the tavern and faff around for a while and maybe go shopping and do some other stuff and it's not particularly exciting or thrilling but it's also a great way to just ease things in get have the players get to know their characters have the characters get to know each other you know you're starting the game so there's some people who may be still lasting the questions about their characters or something and that kind of like starting off slowly allowing like role-playing and the like to to dominate for a while before the actions introduced can actually be a really satisfying way you know even though a lot of people are like I don't want to mean a tavern or I don't want to do just a bunch of talking and no okay don't start your campaign that way yeah but the action will eventually happen and one of the things about being first level is that your first level you don't have a lot that you can do you got some stuff you don't have a lot of hit points yeah some yeah so how do you how do you towed that line and make it challenging but not too deadly I honestly I don't worry too much about that I don't worry too much about the deadly part right like I I will let a group know you know I'm not going to deliberately set out to kill you unless you know that's what the the monster wants to do but I'm not necessarily gonna pull punches or you know do something that's going to play things in your favor I want to be I like the classic I'm a neutral arbiter of this world I am the referee and a referee is a neutral party they you know they arbitrate if I was worried about killing them if I wanted to have some kind of action scene or something something thrilling but I didn't want there to be the possibility of death then I might have a brawl of some kind didn't have to be a tavern brawl could be a street riot or something like that it could be you know getting mugged or something on one of these big fantasy cities it could be a tournament with like a practice bout or match or something you could have a chase or race or something like that where you're you know you're still rolling your physical stats the character still doing physical things it's action it's tense who's gonna win who's gonna lose that sort of thing but it's the stakes are lower in some senses it could be much higher you know there could be a lot at stake for that race or contest or something so those are things that you can do setting it setting your first few scenarios first few sessions in like a festival or a tournament or a joust can provide the outlet for discrete non-lethal action and then you can work your way up towards especially if you're playing with new players or getting used to the system that you're playing you like work your way up towards the big stuff yeah you know just remembering and keeping in mind that nervousness is normal it's probably not gonna go the way you want it to and it doesn't for me now some twenty odd years later after playing it they're still getting nervous occasionally I still get why do I feel weird about this thing or you know five minutes after the the session ends oh crap I forgot to mention this very important thing I'm like by the way the guy said this yeah yeah and that's why that personally for me that is and this is a tangent not necessarily related to opening your campaign but like that is why I started thinking of those things in terms of just what's the what's the information I want to deliver and like how many vectors can I think of for it because I am gonna miss one of them I need another way to get that information to the players so okay that's that's our way but first sessions right they've they they bear a lot of weight you know a bad first session can can mean the only session of a campaign you might have a first session of a campaign that's just kind of half-baked and you're in excitement and enthusiasm for playing got the better of you and now you find yourself after you know nearing the end of your session it's like crap I don't I have no idea what to do next I've used up all my all you know the material that I prepped it is important and you know you can really set the tone it really set the pace but I would also caution about like putting too much on it of getting like really you know building it up and making yourself super anxious because it's like it's gonna be okay you're gonna be fine most everybody there wants to have a good time yeah they want you to succeed as dungeon master right right well but I mean that's a and that's thing to keep in mind though I mean like the whole point of this is just like you know you're all you're starting a first level character so like I said the stakes are low yeah they can be high behind-the-scenes yeah but what they're dealing with it's like you know you'll have time to to implement other things yeah but when it comes to you know these these these early sessions low level yeah like how do you how do you try to get how do you try to get them to engage with the world okay yeah this is apart from the you know similar topics that we've talked about and like tips for new players or tips front of DMS I go check out those shows if you are a new player a new DM looking to start your first campaign like the big ones are looking and seeing not just what the players have written on their character sheets but asking them talking to them and like for real though diems you can straight-up ask your players what would you like to have happen in this campaign like you can seriously go how would you guys like to start this off like it there's nothing wrong with with directly asking and then incorporating that I it when it comes to magic items I know that there's some DMS were like give me a wish list and I'll work these in I resist that but I'm totally like yeah Santa yeah come on right for real though but you know I started an aquatic adventures campaign where we're you know I encourage the all the players to make you know like Triton's and merfolk and things like that and and then basically once they'd had some ideas for characters was like alright well when you guys think of an aquatic campaign you guys think of like underwater and undersea adventures what are some things you think of that if they didn't happen if the situation didn't come up that you would think you missed down it was a whole host of things fighting a Kraken romancing a mermaid you know like just a whole big list that the Lonely Island song I won't buy all the whole party pain they want all of it they just like go read the lyrics that's what's gonna that's what they want so I it was easy enough then I whenever I find myself lost in that campaign after the first session I can go back to those notes and I there's like 20 items on that list of like things that they want they wanted a treasure map they wanted a whole bunch of other stuff and out of that list I was able to construct a opening scenario of half a treasure map pirates looking for the other one second level I had them fight a Kraken when their characters survived a grazing hit from it and the rest of them bugged out because they won't get over here Kraken and we want to fight a Kraken your second lower second low roll initiative there's a cracker [ __ ] Caesar yeah it's really fun because it was you know it's very custom it's very what they want it's not a traditional D&D game because they wanted a game of like romance on the high seas and that's just a different kind of thing than like grungy dubbed and delving yeah it's romancing the boat oh sure yeah [Laughter] otherwise known as the lovely talking about like kind of moving up through like first second third level how do you feel about like ways to set up those subclasses that do happen mm-hm and a little bit later you know yeah you're not first love what a first level cleric sorcerer cleric try think of the others that have there's a few of them yes or and cleric good ones but you know like those fighters rogues wizards that you know there whitens to three levels yeah before they can finalize you know finalize where their character is going like how do you try to work that in and work with them and set it absolutely it makes more organic sense I guess sure yeah yeah yeah so one of the things you're doing whenever you're setting up your campaign and and and running that first session is like establishing important in pcs yeah we're camping and those can be like mentors and trainers and people that are nominally friendly to the PCs that you can then use to use like create links to the game world so if I had a fire in the party and they're like I don't know Oh gonna be a champion don't be a battle master I wouldn't necessarily do fully fleshed-out NPC's for each subclass but I would have an idea of what I would do for these specific subclasses that that player was looking for it's like I'm not gonna go all out and take all 12 classes everybody subclasses for them and think up things for each of them but I am gonna talk to the PCs and go you're playing a fighter do you have an idea of what you might like to do at third level is it you know if you thought about it do you want to be surprised you know some players have already given it some thoughts and know what they want to do and some players have already mastered little xx and then you have players like myself who are like yeah I will decide at third level well you know what I'm gonna take and probably I'll make that decision based on what's happened up until now yeah that's the way I like to play I didn't always do that you know you still like mapping things out too and then I just you know it got to be for me it was in case of like I never get to play these characters so it's sort of sad I've stopped doing that just because if I even when I get to play then it's like I mapped out 220 and we only take the character like little oh yeah yeah you're not just getting let down it's like and you realize I'm building myself up you're yes yeah I'm letting myself down so yeah not every campaign is gonna go to 20 which is something to think about and and you know you might want to think about it and talk about it in your session zero beforehand but first session is also another place to to reconsider what am I doing with the game do I have a set end point in mind for the campaign and let me tell you there are a lot of reasons to play a very limited campaign to end do to be explicit about it we're gonna play ten sessions then we're stopping it draws a sharpness to the campaign there's not like a bunch of what are we gonna do next how am I gonna set things up for the long term just like we've got these one or two things we want to do and we're gonna do that when we're gonna have a great time maybe you stretch it out a little you know but you say yeah we're gonna go six levels or however much ten sessions it takes a lot of pressure off of off of everybody right and you can just enjoy the thing and then if you want you know you can extend it or you can take the care kurz that you've already made and have bonds with and started and like reboot the campaign yeah you know what there whatever level they are and you just say okay well that that represents you know something you guys did a few years ago and you've come back you you've maybe you know been apart for a while and now you've come back and now this is the campaign proper we've tested it out we know the characters work together we know that you know the players work together instantly this is a really good way to sort of like get a new group off the ground if you don't know everybody you can just tell them hey we're gonna play a limited amount of time and and then we'll see where we want to go from there yeah because I think there's a lot of players particularly long time players or players were like super into the Hobby where the promise of the long campaign the promise of an in-depth multi-layered complex sort of sprawling thing is a very like desirable sort of wish and the reality is is that I think most people don't get that you know it takes a lot of work you have to have players and the dungeon master committed it to playing for that length of time you have to have structures but in place you have to but it's very helpful you have structures put in place that support you in your goal to have long term play if these are some of your first campaigns if you've never really done one of these before like totally don't even have that pressure just play a little game yeah do a level of a dungeon solve a mystery one of them you know and and then see what you like you might hate D you might hate the game you pick yeah you might not be able to stand it researcher or whatever yeah and also trying to think to long term too early you probably haven't come across the big bad evil guy that is scheduling conflicts this schedule yes now most campaign yep yeah but you know what's that's so yeah that first venture first level your that you just like up like take care of your little your little rosebud that's blue just take care of you don't worry about the freaking rosebush you don't want to win you're thinking about winning the freakin State Fair yeah enjoy the campaign as this and that that's my thing it's like your garden yeah tinder garden make a character for the campaign as enjoy the campaign as is and when it gets to higher level what you'll find is that I have this nice organic progression through the levels a good long time playing we've got established the relationships between characters in the world and characters in each other and it can be very satisfying trying to rush that trying to push it and trust me I read a lot of y'all's guys most of y'all's questions emma reads all of them and there's a lot of sort of people out there wondering like hey how do I do this how do I get players involved how do I get them invested how do I keep things going over the long term and a lot of that is like not skipping things letting giving things time to breathe and you know stretching things out a bit so that the campaign doesn't run a breakneck pace and you have time to sort of explore the side quests of some characters and then move over here some others and you start weaving them together and it's a very satisfying way to play but it's different than like the adventure path style where it's like you have a mission a quest yeah and you've come together to do that so would you say that that you that you're T bifs traits bonds ideals flaws yeah yeah more important at lower level starting at lower level than they are like later on in the campaign because I mean really for the character it's a it's a it's a weird kind of like background or you know for to the character yeah that whether or not they show it or not depending on the what it is yeah how much do you do you encompass that or you you just worry about the flaw yeah I like all of them and I think they're all worth reviewing and and if it's your first you want to really kick off a campaign than incorporating a bond is probably what I would use I think I think of all four of them bonds are probably the better use of of a motivator in that sense for you know four characters and if if you're not talking if you're not playing fifth edition then it you know it just be you know what are your characters find important who is the person in their life or a group in their life that that's particularly meaningful to them you don't I would caution away from threatening that thing like threatening it with non-existence right like if there are threatened without just straight-up killing cuz that leads to a lot of stereotypes you know I don't have any family yeah sprung out of the ground or you a door yeah like like a lot of things for one right like a lot of things problematic player behaviors when you go digging around and you go looking for things chances are there's a DM doing something that the player is doesn't like does it want and is compensating not always but a lot of the times and so like that's one of them like are they making characters that aren't connected to the world and have you know ties there yeah chances are they were either punished for it or read about it and and just don't but yeah I love first adventures I love first level D&D I love the start of a campaign that they're really great that you can fall flat on its face pick yourself up start over again yeah right but it you know examine why it fell felt flat on its face and and sort of like see is it something about the setting something about the setup something about the dynamics of the characters sometimes even though you talked about it beforehand the characters and the campaign don't really match and then the group has to make a decision which one is gonna get changed which one you know are we gonna stick with and I kind of err on the side of the characters you know I if this if these are the the characters that the players want to play then I want to run a game for those characters yeah and I would rather design a whole new setting I would rather create something from scratch that will work specific for that group than to tell that group listen here's my here's the thing I'm running you should have made characters that done that no it's not gonna work there's no sorcerers yeah and like I I think that there's nothing wrong with saying my you know the campaign that you want to run has these certain constraints to it there's you know these options are not available or it's a long-running one you've been invested a lot in it but to me when those two things come into conflict the the the heart of RPGs is the act of making decisions and engaging with this imaginary world and players are more likely to do that with characters that care about yeah and I don't I would prefer not to you know to mess with that I can always make another setting you know the one that works and so I I think that like those are some things that I try to keep in mind I don't want to pressure myself and you know it's relaxed the only things that need to happen in a first session are establishing if you've got a central threat if you've got a organization or a bad guy that's gonna be the threat for a while it's time first session never too early just let's start introducing the bottom rungs of that organization that the the minions of the big bad guy and just a mission gathers whatever yeah start the wheels rolling on that the advice is is that whatever your campaigns going to be about that's what the first session should be if your campaign is going to be about magma vagrant murder you know favorite murderers and thieves who wander around the countryside and break into you know tombs and stuff then then it's okay to count on kind of a meandering sort of start but you might start with them right at the entrance to a Barrow Mount you know if you're if the caravan guards scenario is is the one that you're going to start with then have them you know in on the caravan in a in a position to make a decision about something yeah it doesn't have to be combat it could be how are we gonna cross this river which of these two paths are we gonna take I was just I mean I was just thinking of I think a great one would be you're starting at a fork in the road except when you look at the map there's no Fork yeah mystery if the decision to make maybe there's a threat coming up behind you yeah but you know you could that could even be something that the big bad evil guy set in your way yeah as an immediate impediment yeah I know you don't know that yeah what are we supposed to do here with yeah yeah you know they're just interesting moments and you and they can come with sort of consequences that spur off into further adventure in this case like alright how did they wear this for come from is it the the you know are a villain trying to Ford us why we haven't done anything you know if it's like a natural phenomenon then what makes just natural roads you know it's just the earth getting older there's another wrinkle right I think it's worthwhile to kind of go through some other just sort of set up scenarios because a lot of times the setup for how the player or how the characters know each other also provides the hook yeah the initial hook that gets action going so yeah our Jim hooked me okay there is the classic tavern and it is it gets maligned for very many good reasons I liked the the newest campaign of control the first episode wasn't a tower I thought that was ballsy that's like and I think if you go back and watch that one you can kind of see how the tavern can be done well and yeah the folks are a critical role are at they have an approach to the game that's idiosyncratic to their group but your group can have you know their own sort of similar idiosyncratic styles maybe they don't want to just talk to a bunch of bar patrons so maybe it's some sort of festival that coincides and they're just at the the tavern because the tavern is you know a temporary beer garden for the big festival you know that you could do something like a wedding or a funeral and and have that be the social element you know everybody's an open bar right it's a dwarf funeral of course there's an open bar yeah whooping awake they're just all pissed right and so like you know it's a wedding and you know which okay which one of you has an objection to the wedding and you know that's where we'll start or you know it's a funeral okay tell me how you know the particular scenario and I think those are our fun ways to start the sort of like the socials the discreet social scene because it provides the same kind of atmosphere that tavern does there's a lot of people lots people to talk to which in game terms is a lot of ways to learn rumors which is how you find it the adventure some context about said adventure exactly yeah exactly but it could but it could be that that wedding is the venture itself that maybe something happens there maybe someone says something or does something maybe it's the PCs maybe it's someone else it could easily spin out into you know an adventure of some kind especially if the characters have ties to NPCs that are there that are important T now I'm just thinking like if you go to a funeral that everybody kind of knows and it becomes a funeral slash will reading where the deceased wants whoever to find who killed him oh yeah off of your idea and whoever does yes there gets their loot and gets them set up the entire campaign yeah and it's definitive it's not really a railroad yeah but nowhere you know where the train tracks come back to I will say this I'm gonna say this for railroads first off we have said before many times that the railroad which I'm you know i try to prefer a linear a linear play and the open-world sandbox represent you know two ends of a spectrum and that chances are you fall somewhere along the middle and not it's not a fixed place either I think if there's any place that you are going to limit the options of the players then it is in an opening scenario my personal opinion is that you should be honest and open about this you should say I have not prepared as much as I normally would I have some stuff here that I want to use to propel us in a direction it's not gonna last the entire campaign but it's gonna get us going except the limited amount of options that they would have in exchange for a more engaging session that's one way to do it that's another one like attacking or threatening a shared interest of the party and even if it's a meta shared interest right like not all the characters might have you know bonds with each other or whatnot but you know that the players all like this one NPC that you guys talked about sometime or they like this one spot then maybe threatening that one can be enough to get the party to come together and you know stick around have some fun adventures another one is to just start playing like do you have a dungeon start them right in front start them with inside of the dungeon why are they all together I don't know we'll figure that out as we plug like there's a I know that immersive experiences are important for players diems I know that having a certain feel to the game is very important but at the end of the day like did you show up at this table with a character sheet and dice then play like do like there seems to be a lot of sort of hurdles put in front of a group coming together and getting to the adventure and at the heart of it there's really nothing wrong with going like here's where the adventure I prepared starts let's start there and not do this lead in which some people might find boring which isn't necessarily connected to this thing that I've got prepared for us for this first adventure maybe we get distracted and can't do what we want or something like that and like you just cut all that out and handle it like in table talk when you're just hanging out or you know just chat with each other I think my character knows your character through this or maybe they've heard of you by this reputation or something like that or maybe it comes out in flashbacks as you play but I'd be honest and I played enough games where I just I didn't personally didn't care how the party knew each other and would just tell you know the player who were introducing a new character like I don't care you start playing it's not detrimental it doesn't like wood you know it doesn't take anything away and within a couple of sessions it's not gonna matter that that person that party member just kind of showed up out of the blue or that five randos my musics random people in a tavern just decided to go adventuring together once you guys start adventuring how you know each other how they relate to one another in the adventure is what's more important than what happened before that so that that's that's always what I want to try which is start playing like why do we even care about this it's gonna come together eventually let's trust it we will figure it out and get to get to that thing you know which we talked earlier about maybe not anyway don't we're gonna give you like contradictory evidence if you didn't know that already it's human nature they're contradictory being oh sure I got a lot of setups that I just was brainstorming maybe you've all got the same employer or patron oh yeah right you know that's that's a that's the classic one or your you know mutual everybody is a mutual friend with some of there's an NPC that everybody knows yeah and the NPC is linchpin may be the npc's a quest giver themselves maybe there you know some kind of resource or something like that for the party but that's a good way to kind of get people to come together yeah give me an idea for the one shot yeah yeah talk about their like cuz the roll for initiative in a bar like I was just like that would be kind of fun yeah and so I think what I'm gonna do since it's the dawn Jonathan collar onea yes and he needs some strong adventures he just sends some paid thugs in there to be like start a fight sort of hours late that's it we'll get yeah yeah that's how we're gonna start it's just a bar fight breaks out your carrot barstools start flying you get hit you get hit with a bottle like play into the confusion of it right right right that by the end of it you know there's some Minotaur in the bodyguard standing on either side of this little gnome going you may want the Lions brought you here today right but you are the ones who survived the fight yeah so I'm gonna hire you you're hired what contract yeah okay sign these contracts really good the thing with with opening scenarios in any in any deity or RPG scenario is just like present you can present whatever problem you want you can present whatever scenario you want the like when it comes time to make a decision do the players have the freedom to make a decision or are they expected to go along one way and I think like when you're starting off a campaign it's not unreasonable to expect that the players will sort of go one way but at the same time that that expectation should come with at least on the DM spark come within you know a responsibility to like incorporate their ideas make it fun for them yeah and they're you know you don't want to just have a thing where you're presenting what you want to do and not listening to the other players and I still see that a lot 20:19 you'd think after all these all this time these sort of like this is my story I'm going to play it and you're just gonna sit through it and roll some dice would have gone away but not necessarily maybe those people are having fun but I haven't found that to be the case for me personally and you know so I like a bit I like to loosen things up as quickly as possible oh yeah no I'm definitely getting there ever run near as many campaigns obviously and I used to just be like my precious camp yeah yeah yeah I'm gonna start this way and you're gonna do this and whatever and and yeah I'm I'm thankfully shaking that free and understanding how like you know the more Minds that are in from the beginning you know the more there is to mine the more there is demise so we've got the party sharing a carriage and it is under attack by highwayman or some kind of monster right that's another one yeah random yeah but you can do it where it's just kind of like I'm a I'm a low-key set a 30-minute timer after we once we started playing all right you guys are all in the carriage just whatever right guys roleplay for a while and then I'm just silently on myself or a slams into the 30 minutes later right era slams in alright make it make a you know thing alright everybody make a deck say something big hits the outside of it yeah you all live in the same village and you know and then that might be coupled with like threatening it or some you know NPC sending you somewhere ties in to the next one which is a coming-of-age ritual one of things I like about mutant mutant crawl classics is it assumes your first adventure is your coming-of-age ritual that the village has sent you your village you're part of has sent you out into the wasteland together whatever sacred technology you can go visit this ancient site and recover you know what you can from it and then afterwards you are a seeker you know someone who goes out and and engages with the larger world for your village yeah and you know if you're playing at a points of light setting you do something like that maybe you're all prisoners together rip off one of the many Elder Scrolls games and use one of those intro scenarios you're all kidnapped by the same mad mage or whatever tournaments joust festivals is one a good one especially if you want to provide some sort of framework introduce you social and combat or your two priorities there you're all siblings together and have been given a task by either your family the head of the house or like your you know branded or marked or something like that you know a reason to stick together might be like you're persecuted or criminals or you know falsely accused or you know you know if it's a noble thing you've caught up in a noble conflict or something oh I mean like thinking about that just like what if it what if the the setup is there was a big war and y'all were just foot soldiers yes I've lost yeah you weren't captured but you're behind enemy lines man yes yeah that's another know who might recognize you yeah there's conflict in the group some of you are you know taking off your tabards and and Harold Rick you know the signifiers and others are proudly keeping them on and just like having to make it back through anomie territory to a friendly side while you're beset by enemies is is really fun just any kind of military campaigns like that are are fun because you can medieval an ancient world that they're not like as you call it is strict with like going AWOL you know they're not as much formalized whatever but you can kind of shirk Authority anyway like yeah we're all members of this you know we're all members of this militia company but we sneak out and got out of here or our you know our our platoon was like decimated like not even decimated like just just devastate we're the only ones left and now we're you know we do what we want to do exactly right that's how yeah that sound all starts along with similan should be refugees you could be like newly arrived to a city TECA Mel is a setting sort of first settings for D&D and the main city there jacala your foreign barbarians who barely speak the language and are newly arrived and you've got to find a patron in the city you've got to curry their favor you need to find someplace to stay someplace to eat and like that's the game like they're you the act of doing those things given the social constraints of this setting which is highly socially stratified a very rigid society very much defined by customs and sort of etiquette and you are these uncouth foreigners who've come here but because you're uncouth foreigners you're very useful and and so it's the interplay between seeking a patron surviving in the city and doing favors for that patron climb the social ranks that propels adventure and I've always want to sort of use a use that as a scenario know what else we got here we've got they're far from home and having to get back sort of what you were talking about maybe they wake up on a deserted island abri all around them they don't really remember what happened or they wake up from suspended animation and are like where are we win our week we're right exactly you know you've been well we only talking about we cast that resurrection spell on you a long time ago and it just didn't work you know it just took too long and then the last one for me of all ones that I was sort of thinking of was you are late your characters are late for another hook like so it's sort of the similar of the way enemy within and Warhammer starts out you're given this thing of like hey this count is going off into these mountains to reclaim a dwarf City and it's like you know you'll get a share of the treasure and spoils and all these other stuff and the premises is that your characters are on their way to this expedition they get held up one of the you know the creatures that holds them up looks just like one of the PCs and you know the Spurs this adventure and the book never once it's just like yeah if they inquire about this expedition it went lost and like two weeks later where it comes back that they're all dead you know as a disaster yeah the party lucked out but I always wanted to have one where it's like now you're you're like late for this expedition it's left already do you go try to find them do you go somewhere else do you just commiserate about being late and and therefore adventure follows like I think it could be a fun one like the party is all trying to get somewhere to go do something individually and it's in the not able to do that that they become a party and find something else to do plenty of meat to chew on therefore for our loyal viewers yeah I imagine we'll come back and revisit this there's so many different ways to approach it you can approach it like it's a one-shot of no consequence and then build up on it you're gonna approach it like you're playing the foundations for something large and grand and and really giving it a lot of thoughts and yeah so I imagine this is something we're going to come back yeah if you liked the video please like subscribe and go and ring that Bell to get those notifications the web DM exists thanks to our patreon patrons the web daemons if you join the web demons you'll get our weekly podcast show audio discounts that'll save you way more than five dollars a month on books and dice and so much more check out our free podcast episodes right now including our free interview Luke Gygax about all things TV if you like our advice for your games then why don't you come check us out and watch us play yeah I've head on over to our second youtube channel web DM plays and subscribe thanks for watching [Music] okay Jim I have to ask this question because halfway through we were talking what was the name of that episode as you understood it what were we doing this yeah ways to start a campaign okay that's what I thought that's what I have yeah well no no we were literally having a different conversation and then I stopped asking certain questions because I like I was seriously under the understanding that this was how to start a campaign at first level oh no no sorry no this was just like ways to start a campaign like ways to kick it off like something other than in a tavern is what I what I took the request to be I mean we're gonna be mostly the same conversation but it is you know okay I'm sorry to you but look at number nine on what it says ah that's okay creative ways to start a campaign at first level that's the conversation that I was anything and about halfway through I realize like you're not talking about just first level so I kind of left it alone I mean I'm talking about explicitly not first level

Channel: Web DM

Views: 215,016

Keywords: dungeons & dragons, DnD, dungeons and dragons, d&d, web dm, webdm, campaign, dungeons and dragons for beginners, running the game, rpg, dungeons and dragons gameplay, making your first campaign, game master, how to play dungeons and dragons, master class, tutorial, d&d adventure, your first adventure

Id: bHb7MgkM1Ao

Length: 45min 56sec (2756 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 26 2020