The Dragon’s Breath #10

09 April 2003

Campaign Kickers:

Let's Get This Party Started!

By James Bell

I’m currently in the middle of designing Plague of Dreams, an introductory adventure for Arcana Unearthed, and one of the "issues" that we’ve encountered is setting up a plausible method for bringing a party of 1st-level characters together. Now, personally, I’m not a stickler for "realism" in my fantasy games (there’s enough "realism" in my reality that I need a hardy dose of the fantastic in my fantasy), but I do like verisimilitude and internal logic.

Why would a group of people band together to combat evil wizards and plunder legendary tombs? Because they’re the PCs, of course! Beyond that, here are a few situations that can be used to kick off a campaign (or even a single adventure).

The first idea is just to have the PCs meet randomly in a tavern or alehouse. Coincidentally, the representative of the king will arrive at the perfect moment (usually just before a brawl starts), declaring an important quest. Actually, forget that idea . . . it’s so revolutionary that it just wouldn’t work. ;)

So, what brings people together? Commonality: common events, common relationships, common situations.

Common Events

This is the set-up that we used, to much acclaim, for NeMoren’s Vault. The PCs are brought together for the reading of a will. They have little or no knowledge of one another, nor how they relate to the departed. Through fortune (or misfortune), they each possess an artifact that links them to the recently departed and have been gathered from various locations to attend a common event — the above-mentioned reading of a will.

The event could involve a funeral, a wedding (something we used in The Silver Summoning), a birth, a festival, or some other gathering that the characters may attend from time to time. Each character’s background is irrelevant to the formation of the party; the only bit of history that matters is that the PCs were invited or decided to attend the event.

A neat idea: have the players create their characters independently, each fleshing out their backgrounds and personalities as much as needed. Have them develop their history up to a point just before the beginning of your adventure. Then, a day or two before you actually play, deliver invitations for the event to each of them requesting the presence of their newly created character. If you want to have some solo adventures before beginning with the entire party, you can roleplay the journey to the event. When you begin the adventure, you can start with, "You stand in the Great Hall as the bride enters. Around you stand a foul-tempered dwarf, an elf with a longbow . . . ." The subsequent attack on the newlyweds (or the final request of the departed, or the kidnapping of the baby, or whatever) spurs the attendants — the PCs — into action. The reason they begin the adventure is because they’re there! They are — by their presence — participants in the event.

Common Relationship

Are the PCs childhood friends or neighbors that have known each other for years? Bringing them together is easy if they possess a common history. Yet what if they have no such link to one another? They can still be connected with a common relationship.

As the saying goes, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Perhaps the assassin who murdered the ranger’s parents is also the villain who raided the dwarf cleric’s temple. Or the assassin that the fighter pursues is a hireling of the evil wizard that the paladin opposes. Was it the same dragon that destroyed both villages? Uniting to defeat a mutual foe may be slightly cliché, but it does provide a common ground to bring disparate characters together.

A neat idea: again, feel free to have the characters developed independently. Read over the backgrounds. Usually, a player will give you a tragedy or villain to work with. Create a common link between backgrounds using the people responsible, and get the characters out on their trail. Roleplay the hunt, bringing the players together as each path merges. Begin the adventure with, "The dark-cloaked man that you’ve been following — the one you suspect of your father’s murder — disappears into an alleyway ahead. Before proceeding, you notice that a gruff dwarf also follows the man . . . ."

Common Situation

The PCs are thrust together by chance or fate (or the GM, of course!). This is the idea behind an upcoming d20 Modern adventure that I have planned. Let the players create their characters and their history right up until the situation that sparks the adventure. Give them the beginning of the situation and let them explain how they got there. Then, set the fire to the fuse and watch the adventure unfold.

For example, let the players create any character they want. Let them know that they begin the session onboard Flight 995 from Hawaii to Australia, and have them create a back-story that leads up to that situation. Begin the adventure by describing other passengers on the plane, and then, "BOOM! A loud explosion wracks the airliner, and a blue wave of energy engulfs all passengers. A floating light can be seen outside the window, as the plane is pulled into the belly of a UFO . . . ."

Basically, start with a bang and leave it to the PCs to band together to resolve the situation. Are the PCs the sole survivors of a shipwreck off an uncharted island (inhabited by dinosaurs and lizardmen)? Do government-created zombies attack the PCs’ tour bus on a trip to the Grand Canyon? Have well-armed thieves taken over the high-tech building that’s hosting their office Christmas party?

These ideas are just scratching the surface, but maybe they’ll get you started down a line of thought that leads away from "You meet in a bar . . . ."

Next Week: In The Dragon’s Breath #11, Mike Johnstone muses upon how to use one’s travels to different places in the world as inspiration for giving cultures and societies in your game a distinct feel. Apparently, he did more in Rio de Janeiro than just soak up the sun and sip caipirinhas. Read what he experienced in "The World Around You."

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