Unique Ways to Start Campaigns?

[Nerdynick]

I'm kicking off a campaign in just under three weeks and I'm looking for a unique way to start it off (you know, other than a tavern). My search-fu didn't turn anything up.

[Gavinfoxx]

Well.. you should tell us a little bit about the campaign, the power level of the characters, the setting, etc. etc.

You could always start it, "You all wake up with a splitting headache and hangover in the town jail. Apparently you didn't do anything bad enough to not get more than a night in there. What happened to the each of you?"

[Tvtyrant]

"Your escaped slaves running from a Mindflayer and its thralls."

[Dragon Star]

Start it in the middle of combat. Or in some prison filled with evil guards. Or maybe the whole party had their minds wiped, got flesh to stone on them, and someone is just turning them back. Or an adventurers guild, if you want something less out there, but not taverny. Or a palace, all the players are nobles and they have to escape their parents if they want to be adventures. Or dead, requiring they finish a quest as ghosts before they can be resurrected. Or completely penniless, as urchins in a city. Or just at a crossroads, where they all meet while traveling, and are going the same way. There are infinite interesting thing you can do.

[DoughGuy]

"You wake up with the worst headache ever. As you look around you see remnants of the tavern that once stood here"

It's not expecially different but have you ever started a campaign in an exploded tavern?

[Amnestic]

I think I remember reading of one person who started his campaign with all of his PCs falling from really high up in the air. Shoved his party together at terminal velocity

[Zeta Kai]

"Roll initiative."

[Xtomjames]

I prefer the split start: In what ever campaign setting you're using designate a major locations, places in those locations, and a time chart. Use a percentile for each character to roll for which major location, what place, and what time they'll be starting off at. This works great if a major event of some sort will affect many different places and they choose to send off willing adventurers to discover and stop what ever is causing the event. It also tends to lead to unique and varying introductions amongst characters.

[TheCountAlucard]

Is it weird to say I started a game with the PCs possessed by demons, and on a journey to the Demon City to meet with the fiendish masters of said city?

[Godskook]

DM: So, you're yourselves, and you're sucked through a portal into a strange land, that for simplicity sake, I'm just going to rush ahead and say OoC is very D&D-ish. Stat yourselves up, and I'll tell you what you see. Oh, and you get these 'gems' that do X, Y, and Z, which totally justifies letting you start with a class level, despite the fact that you're all probably commoners.

[2-HeadedGiraffe]

I once had a DM start a campaign by saying "You all meet on a train." The railroading only got worse from there.

Seriously, though, starting in a dungeon can be fun. It's a plot-light way to get the group playing together and the characters acting as a team. Another campaign I ran started with the starting town being attacked by merfolk with a mech. I find it's often effective to start with something that makes the players work together. A lot of campaigns where the players aren't together right away or very soon end up with very slow, annoying openings.

[INDYSTAR188]

You're all on board a ship off of the sword coast in the early evening. Your going to a new land with new opportunities to become wealthy and powerful.

You look to your right and are the first to notice a light growing off in the distance.... another ship heading right towards you! Following closely behind the ship is a huge storm, just as you try to shout out a warning you hear someone from the crows nest shout out "Turn the ship about, we need to break starboard!"

As the orders are followed everyone grabs a hold of whatever they can to keep from being tossed overboard. Before anyone can react the other ship slams into the side of yours *everyone is thrown down onto the deck* followed immediately by the storm, the sky darkens, lighting starts lashing down and torrential rain makes it almost impossible to see around you. As you gather yourselves you notice that the other ship was full of dead sailors who are now in the process of boarding your sinking ship!

[Nerdynick]

I'm still not used to how fast this forums answers questions....

Anyway, campaign is 5th level. Characters are as follows: Human Rogue 3/Urban Ranger 2 archer, Darfellan Barbarian 5, Dwarf Fighter 1/Wizard 4 (going for Runesmith), Human Cleric of Pelor 3/Church Inquisitor 2 (going for Warpriest and Shadowbane Inquisitor), Human Duskblade 5, Half-Aquatic Elf Bard 5 (I bumped the half elf a little by giving all the bonuses of the Water Adaptation feat and superior low-light vision as racial traits), and Wild Elf Druid 5

Setting is a custom one. The Rogue and Darfellan are on a ship together, the wizard, cleric, and duskblade are together on foot, the druid is on foot on her own, and the half-elf has yet to describe her backstory to me, but will probably be arriving on foot or live in the city they're starting in.

They're starting in a port city and the first mission will be them being hired (as a group) to put an end to the pirate attacks on the nation's trade lanes (which are unusually frequent and organized). They don't have access to a ship themselves, so they'll have to charter one, commandeer one, Diplomacy a naive captain, or stowaway on one (possibly a pirate ship). They'll soon discover that the pirates are being hired by an opposing nation as deniable assets, leading them into plots between nations.

[kardar233]

I've started a campaign by having my character get drugged into unconsciousness and tossed overboard by his crew who were paid by his father to have him removed, and find himself with the most horrible hangover in an Orc cell about a mile away from where he was washed ashore. Also, he's a mess because he was dragged there, and any noticeable items (such as armor, backpack, main weapons) have been taken.

The next hour consisted of him systematically butchering his way out of the camp, getting in a duel with the chieftain, drawing, and then staging an attack on a nearby city, drawing the orcs into a trap, stealing a boat from said city and sailing off home.

[BinaryMage]

Hmm. So they have to meet as a group somehow. You'll want them to have some sort of shared experience that bonds them together. The most common is a combat, though a roleplaying encounter might work also, if your group likes that sort of thing. If they're to be embroiled in some international conflict, you potentially could expose them to some sign of tensions between the opposing nations or alliances.

[Quietus]

"The first thing you become aware of as you come to is the feeling of the wind whistling by you. Not like a breeze or even wind, but the kind of fast-moving air that burns as it drives past you. A thin layer of moisture coast you and all of your belongings. There's a rhythmic motion beneath you, and the subtle scent of something burnt.

When you open your eyes, this all begins to make a little more sense. You appear to be riding in some kind of covered howdah. The part that doesn't make much sense - you seem to be riding through a cloud, on the back of a gargantuan red dragon. A very unhappy looking, enormous red dragon."

Might not fit given the additional information, but it was fun in my head.

[Slipperychicken]

The party wakes up with some NPCs in a small jail cell, deep in a cave, on an alien swamp planet. No one knows how or why. Shortly after introductions, they hear footsteps and voices that don't sound like any language they've ever heard of.

[Anarion]

Why not start them on a merchant ship, with a larger pirate ship approaching on the horizon and waiting to board them?

They can figure out themselves how they all managed to end up on the same merchant ship (or they met before that and chartered it together if they want) and you can get them into the action pretty quickly yet still do some setup before the fighting starts.

And, as a bonus, the PCs immediately get to start making plans for the arriving ship, thus derailing your entire campaign from session 1

[DemonRoach]

Is it weird to say I started a game with the PCs possessed by demons, and on a journey to the Demon City to meet with the fiendish masters of said city?

That's not weird, that sounds awesome to me

The only "Unique" start that comes to mind is being on a hilltop seeing a village being over run by a herd of cows on fire (Bad DM! No more Mars Attacks for you!)

[Rogue Shadows]

"Okay, everyone who rolled up a samurai, shugenja, or courtier, roll a d20."

*those players do*

*I point to the one who rolled highest*

"You're getting married! Mazel tov!"

[Soranar]

You're tied to posts, waiting to be eaten by a savage tribe of gnomes when kobolds come to your rescue.

[Rogue Shadows]

You're tied to posts, waiting to be eaten by a savage tribe of gnomes when kobolds come to your rescue.

And/or wanted to kill gnomes, and as long as the gnomes wanted you dead, the kobolds wanted you to live if for no other reason than to annoy the gnomes.

[BinaryMage]

You're tied to posts, waiting to be eaten by a savage tribe of gnomes when kobolds come to your rescue.

Luckily for you, one of them is Pun-Pun and he manages to kill all the 40th level gnome illusionists who were guarding you.

[Thiyr]

"You feel the prison cart shake as it hits bumps in the road. The occasional stone jerks you from your seat as far as the shackles will allow. You are on the road to your death, framed for a crime you never committed. It has been about an hour since you left <city of trial>, and it will be about four more until you arrive at the capitol, to be publicly displayed. Bump. Bump. Bump. You hear the guards complain about the roads, but before they can finish, your world, along with the cart, is turned upside down, rolling to the side. The cart is on fire, and [edit] an extremely muscular gnome tears open the back. He wastes no time with subtlety, tearing your manacles free of the cart's walls. He motions for you to follow him. You see the remains of what would have been a slaughter. The guards are matched man for man, swords at their throats and arms in the sky, their weapons on the ground as a few men begin to bind and blindfold them. Where the cart must have been before, a smoking crater and what look like the remains of some kind of explosive are. 'Welcome to the movement. You know something we need.'"

Edited for style. :P

[WarKitty]

My method? Just tell them in advance what the first plot hook is. Then tell them to figure out a reason why their character was in town and is interested in the hook. I find the players usually come up with more interesting stuff than I would, and it saves complaints of "my character wouldn't be interested in that."

[Divide by Zero]

"You wake up in the middle of the night to find undead attacking the city. Roll for initiative."

[NikitaDarkstar]

Okay so that is one big and varied group right there, and split up, how fun...

The guys on the boat could possibly become shipwrecked and be saved/found by some of the other characters (possibly the water themed half elf?) as they wash up on shore near the port city.

The guys on foot could most likely bump into the druid who's on foot... possibly unconscious after having been attacked? or one group bumps into the other just as they're being attacked/about to be attacked by bandits who happen to be a subgroup of the pirates (or similar.. hey if it's organized from higher levels it would make sense to have people attack the roads to the major port cities too...). They're forced to retreat (or if your group don't believe in retreat, forced to make their way to the city after just barely surviving the attack.), once there they meet they meet the other group talking to the guard captain/general authoritative figure who just happens to mention something along the lines of the pirate and bandit attacks are becoming more and more frequent, if only they had enough men to spare to actually do something about it./seasoned fighters willing to help put a stop to it.

Hopefully both groups jump at the chance and will work together, especially since both groups now have had some sort of encounter with them.

[MrSinister]

I'm running a 4e Ravenloft game right now. I was going to start it out with the group waking up in a Saw-like death trap and have a huge skill challenge to break free. But that is being saved for later. I ended up doing a shared dream sequence where I introduced the cult they will be fighting via a ghostly Vistani tarot card reading.

The characters all woke up bloodied and worn out, with evidence of having fought. They all could speak the Vistani language as well, and they are haunted by the Vistani tarot reader, who died in their shared dream.

[Ravens_cry]

You wake up in jail . . .and offered the choice between a hanging or privateering in the name of </insert nation here>. Yarr.

[Kantolin]

My last campaign started with the group on an enormous raft careening down an underground river fighting against slaad - that was the opening statement.

Chunks of that was never explained either (Or well, there was an explanation, but it was never quite as relevant as the other O_o moments that were going on, so the PCs never asked)