I just did "You run into each other in a hallway inside the burning castle".

Have them start in a tavern.

Have the barkeep talk about some local rumours.

Maybe include a wandering minstrel, with some cliche'd local tales.

Suddenly - the PC's walk into the bar.

Silence.

The new party reviews them, coldly. Then attacks.

>>5656346
"Your party meets after starting a brawl at the local tavern, getting thrown out and tripped over the passed out dwarf in front of it."
That's how I met my party.

>>5656346
falling from the sky into a tavern

your party meets in the local prison after a local tavern is burned to the ground...

Your party is sitting around their office, when a customer walks in.

After months of being imprisoned by enemy forces, tonight's the night your party plans it's escape. There's a guard shift in ten minutes. Ready your clubs.

You're all ripped away from your respective homes, flying through space and time. Planets, stars, years, decades pass by in the blink of an eye, and off in the distance a small blueish light glows bigger brighter. You're about to hit it when wham! You're back on your own (x) feet, in a domed room carved from the living rock, with a tiny manlike creature holding a medallion in front of you shouting strange words you've never heard.

Your party owns a local tavern. You are running out of wheat, barley and beats to make ale and mead. A tribe of barbarians have raided the local farmlands taking much of the foodstuff. Are you bad enough bartenders/barmaids to kill a barbarian warband to get back the foodstuffs?

Set you campaign as a giant race across the planet, with sinister motives.

Make every single other person in the race actually working for the BBEG, even the ones that look friendly.

>>5656421

>>5656532
Actually Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run

One night you're taking a shower when SUDDENLY, OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE Dr. Doom busts through the wall and uses MAGIC and SCIENCE to wipe out dozens of police, soldiers, S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents, Jedi and Space Marines that were hiding in wait so they could ambush you.

As he drops the last of their charred, mangled bodies at your feet he crosses his arms and says to you, "This world is in need of conquering, Minion, and you shall help me do it."

And then SUDDENLY, OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE shirtless Nick Fury crashes through the opposite wall on his motorcycle with a gun in each hand and kills dozens of skrulls, ninjas, terrorists, Sith, robots, pirates and vikings that were lying in wait to kill you in case you turned down Doom's offer.

Then Nick Fury takes a long drag on his cigar, clenches it between his teeth and says to you, "The whole damn world's in danger; and I need your help."

What do you do?

>>5658424

Coke

Because obviously this is some good shit

Have them at a parade, in which the president/mayor/elder/senator is kidnapped by ninjas.

>>5656532

A Wacky Races campaign...

I love you /tg/

Have the party walking along and then a tavern falls on them.

Theyre sitting in their homes. Then suddenly, BAM! They're all teleported into some kind of cavern. Its full of sorcerer toads who were attempting to summon the toad god. Their incompetence not only summoned the adventurers together, but is also stressing the very fabric of the realm causing fractures in space to form. The spatial fractures also warp the flora and fauna very near them, so those zones have become filled with freakish aberrations. To avoid the very disintegration of the plane the party must venture out, kill the freaks created by the event and fix the fractures.

>>5658424
>>5658911

BEST. TRIP. EVER.

Idly, if you took a drug like acid that made you feel colors and crazy shit like that, and then took ecstasy to amplify the sensation of all your senses, what do you think would happen?

this assumes, of course, that you don't OD.

Bumping this. I like where this thread has gone so far.

>>5658424
i jizz in my pants just from the awesomeness of what he just did

>>5659419

According to the setup you're not wearing pants.

>>5659443
oh never mind then

>>5659443
>>5659450
Fuckin lol

have them meet in a costco

>>5659450

Yes, instead you're wet and naked while all this is going on.

How does that make you feel?

>>5659486

With my hands.

They are in jail in the same cell, and a king with his bodyguards are fleeing assassins after his life. By chance, their escape route is in your cell. The king says that he has seen your faces in his dream, and that you may all accompany him.

The king dies anyway no matter what your party does and with his dying breath gives you an amulet and tells you to seek out some fella.

I can knock this out all day, folks.

>>5659525
>I can knock this out all day
>lifted straight from the beginning of Oblivion.

Son of a bitch... Just add the dark elf asshole on the other side, would you?

the game starts with the local tavern exploding

>>5659575
I approve

the game didn't start like that, but one of my characters blew up a tavern,once.

The local tavern is warped into another dimension by the BBEG, who is a gelatinous cube lich, and used to be its death fortress. You and your drinking buddies must set out on an epic quest to infiltrate the BBEG's dimension, kill it, and put the tavern back where it belongs.

>>5659342

Sounds like you're trying to open a door to the Warp

"So you're all in the library, when suddenly there's an explosion. A communist illithid just mindblasted the wall. Roll initiative."

You all meet in an inn.
>Why do we always meet in an inn?
...
You all wake up in the bedroom of an inn.
>So, were we having sex, or-
There is a dead hooker in the room.
>What?
She is missing her head.
>*What?*
Everyone has some articles of clothing removed, strewn about the room Several of your party's blades have blood on them.
>Wait, what?
Someone is knocking on the door.
>Hold *on* a sec--
What do you do?

RUN LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER!!!

>>5656346
"You all already know each other somehow."

This allows us to skip the bullshit and get to the actual game.

"No guys, you ARE the inn".

I've done:
- You all met in a tavern...once, many years ago.
- You're all on board a ship traveling to a new world for your own personal reasons. Now the ship is sinking.
- You've all just woken up on a cold granite slab in what appears to be some kind of ancient castle.

"You meet on the road. Each of you needs an explanation for why you're on the road. Go."
blahblahblah
"Ok, some of you are travelling together, some of you, alone. Some of you are travelling in opposite directions, whatever. Anyway, it is at this moment, when you all pass one another with friendly waves, that a giant whatthefuckisthat jumps out from the brush. There is a small child in each of it's jaws. Yes, Brian, the children are dead."

Geez, so many of you DMs are impatient. When I run a new campaign, I think of generic yet not bullshit reasons why my party gather. However, definitely using the whole local tavern blew up next campaign.

You all meet behind the inn, and prepare to go inside and start a fight for no good reason.

Your quest is to reach the inn (the best in existence) and you meet people on the road as they all share this common goal.

You all meet in a brothel. Everyone has to roll for what they were doing in there. Results are humorous by default.

you Arrive in a burning Village

you've woken up you feel the trickle of blood from your gentiles

You are in the office of a Galactic senate member ( Works for Star Wars)

several taverns meet up in a local adventurer

The President was killed on tuesday by a sniper's bullet fired from over a mile away.
The rifle that fired the bullet had a set of fingerprints and traceable DNA on it. So did the spotter's scope, the cash that bought the gun, and the paper on the lease of the apartment the shot was fired from. They were all from different people.
Today is thursday. Each person is in one holding cell in the deepest bowels of the country's most secure prison.
Each person is innocent.
Except one.

>>5660645
>you've woken up you feel the trickle of blood from your gentiles
Your party consists of murderous Jews?

>>5660645

>you feel the trickle of blood from your gentiles
>gentiles

Um...your jews started bleeding why?

>>5660645

My Gentiles are bleeding? Fuck 'em. Bastards never pulled their weight anyway. I just want to know if my Jews are OK.

>>5660666

Protip: Jews are, by definition, not Gentiles.

You all wake up to realize you are being experimented on by aliens.

You all wake up.

YOUR IN PRISON.

Your hardened investigators/wod monsters meet at a group therapy session.

You're all trapped in the belly of some incredibly large sea monster. You have 8 hours of oxygen left.

go

You all come to in a ditch out in the middle of nowhere.

You all meet over the internet, trying to find people with experiences similar to yours.

>>5660689

Well, excuse me. I was out that day in Bible Studies.

You all wake up in an asylum. Apparently, you think you're a bunch of heroes out to save the world.

Your party steps out of the brothel, having just experienced a "Hydra in the Cave", something you don't hope to participate in for a while.

Welcome to Yaodune. Good and evil mean nothing, chaos reigns along side iron law, morality and ethic hold no more physical power then any other philosophy. None of the humanoid races live past 200, not even Elves, Paladins have been chained to the gods, gods that can no longer quantify right and wrong, and the demigod-like power held by adventurers is now available to any who try hard enough and thus adventurers have been made nigh-obsolete. And welcome to the Empire of Uraban. The Lich Emperor has ruled these lands since the War of the Monster's Rise a thousand year; kobolds, goblins, drow and other monsters walk the streets as normal tax paying citizens and even the undead who can control their hunger are treated with respect.

And now welcome to Grimholme, a coastal city-state of Uraban. The local government is rife with corruption, the various Elven Mafias compete for power, goblin gangs run amok, unlicensed wizards and unsanctioned necromancers walk openly and their are even demon cults washing the streets with innocent blood. You are member of the recently uncorrupted Citywatch, a mercenary living on the glory of adventurers past, a criminal acolyte of the vast underworld or even a normal citizen merely caught in the cross fire.

>>5659610
First adventure of this campaign. We met in a hostel. The food was poisoned. We killed everyone inside and tore the place down such that not one stone stood upon another.

This was all before the adventure proper began.

I love evil parties.

>>5660607
>Your quest is to reach the inn (the best in existence) and you meet people on the road as they all share this common goal.

Harrod and Krumar go to the White Castle

I had a DM once that told us to roll a character with zero class levels, as in just stats.

the party starts with a loincloth of holding each (the female player was upset at that, but the choice was a loincloth or a bra of holding). that's it. no weapons, no money, no nothing.

"you are all hanging by your ankles from a tree in a forest. to the east you see a column of smoke."

and we went from there...

For campaigns starting at higher levels:
You have all already met on previous adventures, and being experienced in the ways of aimless wandering have found yourselves in a very convenient stretch of the middle of nowhere.

>>5661817
the last set I played the DM actually started

"you all start trapped in a magically sealed Colosseum because Minty(lvl 10 sorcerer, with CHA augments out the ass) is a douche"

she then explains that he in fact convinced us to visit some ruins on a hill. once there he then convinced me to give the barbarian a battering ram and convinced him to run full tilt into, and through, a wall. once we walked through the hole some MAGIC BRAND MAGIC sealed the exit. and then the hermaphroditic gargoyles woke up...

You wake up surrounded by glass walls infused with living, writhing flowercocks

Munchkin D20 had one classic variant of you walking into Bob's Bar...

"Bob's Bar walks into you. He says hi."

In one of my campaigns I had the group all in a town for various reasons. Then a Pit Lord came, burned the town down, and made them into slaves by replacing their hearts with crystals only he could fuel at his whim and liesure, and then forced the mostly lawful good group to go prepare for his invasion of the plane.

YOU MUST GATHER YOUR PARTY BEFORE VENTURING FORTH

>>5662462
YOU MUST VENTURE YOUR PARTY BEFORE GATHERING FORTH

>>5662466
YOU MUST FORTH YOUR VENTURE BEFORE PARTYING GATHER

prisoner caravan is fun. Gives them that "We just escaped from law so let's stick together" camaraderie feel.

I recently had my players meet because they were all conscripted into local military service to help the king fight off a rebellion.

>>5662481

It amazes me suddenly that I've never seen a game where the party are fresh recruits in the army.

>>5661146
Sounds like my kinda game. I love weird races.

I sometimes give people different start times for the game. As people come in I have them find each other along the way. When a new person gets there, I find a decent place to insert them and move on.

the campaign follows your favorite tavern, after it gets up and starts running away.

>>5656396

I've done that.

No, seriously. A D20 modern game a friend of mine was GM'ing ended with a GIGANTIC EXPLOSION (which, given his GM'ing style, was the only way it could, or should, have ended,) which resulted in some of the party members being MIA (newly torn hole in space-time are wild like that.)

It just so happened that in my D&D campaign, I'd been hinting at the BBEG's current activities tearing holes in space-time that were allowing alien entities from the edges of the known universe into the local area (lovecraft style, natch,) so I just couldn't resist. In the middle of our next session, my friend's D20 character from the other campaign slammed through the roof of the tavern and onto the table the party was sitting at.

My favorite is still to have the party meet at a bear. They are standing in a circle around it, wide awake, but with no memory of who they are or where they're from or how they got where they are or why the bear in front of them is dead. Upon searching their pockets, they each find a scrap of paper that has a name, age, sex, and location on it. The paper turns out to be the name, age, sex, and hometown of someone else standing around the bear.

Oh, and by the time the "party" has found and read the scraps of paper, the dead bead in the center of them has polymorphed back into it's original form. A now dead wizard.

>>5660654

I played a game one time where the first session started with "Roll for initiative". Had no idea what kind of character anyone else had made or where we were fighting.

YOu are being HORRIBLY raped by an ogre. In a burst of cum you are expelled trought a CUM TUNNEL and choking on CUM you slice into the CUM PIT. Where you see three more cum-covered characters.(other NPCs!)

Oh ... floor is starting to open and looks like you may just slide on and fall ...

>>5662945

You are on a boat, get on with it.

>>5665068
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7yfISlGLNU
I'M ON A BOAT

"Have you all rolled your characters, got all of your gear, ready to go?"
...
"You're in the back of a paddy wagon, you have the clothes on your back and a smile... or probably a frown."

Long story short, the BBEG framed them for various crimes so that he could later exonerate them and then frame them for his big bad evil plan.

The party tried to join a superhero team but they were rejected because their powers were really, really lame, and so they started their own superhero team instead.

>>5656346
>then

>>5664779
I came

The party are long-since dead and were brought back by a necromancer to do his bidding.

The party are friends at some everyday workplace until they stumble upon a secret government project that Nazis are trying to steal.

Op, theres a reason most DMs use that, its because they haven't taken the time to ask their party or learn about their characters motivations and back stories, if you want to make a good starting point, you HAVE to do this.

Your PC's are all commoners. Simple fishing buddies out on a trip. Suddenly(!) a huge gem plummets from the sky and slams through the boat. The confused and frightful fishers swim ashore. They soon wonder what the hell it was, so they swim to where it was, find it (its big, not hard to do) and BAM!!! Its an artifact sent by the god of destiny! Its magical powers surge through the fisher's very bodies, transforming them from mere commoners into hot-blooded, quest taking, ADVENTURERS! (complete with starting gear). They then hear the voice of the destiny god, telling them that their fate lies in adventure. To the north is their starting point, whats there is left a mystery, but the group sets out for glory and excitement!

>>5666267

This is true to a point. And that point is when everyone in the freaking party decides to live on opposite continents, with opposite alignments, with no motivation to be anywhere near each other, or even anything interesting, really. So you're more or less forced into something stupid for an opening. I'm not the only one who this happens to, am I?

My last campaign started by me waking up in a communal Jail cell with 12 other people for inciting a brawl in the local tavern.

We were released the next morning on probation, and forced into community service for the next week.

First job: Here's some old armor and weapons, go clear the imperial sewers of monsters.
=(

>>5666267
This.

What helps is to use a system like GURPS/Hero where people have to spend points in disadvantages as well as skills/etc.

My best games always had the PCs DNPCs/Hunteds/Rivals intertwine.

When they finish rolling up a character...

"You are recruited by the kingdom, the captain of the guard directs you to a waiting room. inside are (characters already made, if any)."

After everyone's character is ready,
"A guard calls all of you into a briefing room. A generall walks in and says (insert quest description here)"

>>5666370
REST ASSURED YOU ARE NOT ALONE >.<

>>5666370

Guys, there's a simple answer: Just DON'T LET YOUR PLAYERS DO THIS.

You usually want them to make well-rounded characters with individual plot hooks and a reason to work together. Now they might need some help doing this. They may not have any ideas for plot hooks or any common ground between their character concepts, so help them out, get them talking to each other, and make suggestions.

But if one of them wants to play a loner from another country who hates the party and is only along for his share of the treasure, feel free to just tell them "no."

Some games make this process easier than others - for instance in Spirit of the Century each character 'guest stars' in a section of two other characters' backstories, so even if the characters aren't working together initially, once they do meet up they'll be able to say "I remember you, you helped me lift the curse of the jewelled serpent!" Feel free to implement something formal like that.

>>5656346
"Your party meets in the local pub"

Our last campaign started with "The minority character, yeah yours, is being lynched on the street. He has enough bling so that you might want to interfere."

They proceeded to oppress peasants.

>>5667194

Oh, and "The whore you hired last night is tagging along for some reason."

>>5659342
I can't decide which to greentext first,
>OD
>Acid
or
>OD
>By adding two completely different drugs together.

Maybe both.

One by one, the PCs are dug out of the ground - where they sleep in slimy cauls - by people with eyes full of exhaustion, pity and horror. Upon being recovered they wake up, able to remember their past lives - and their deaths. They are dragged to a beach where a gigantic fat albino sits on a rock throne. With his tremendous mental powers he forces them to kneel, then to perform various humiliating acts until he tires of this sport and puts them to work with the other sad-eyed people, digging up more living bodies from the ground, and combing the beach for the things that wash up there. If they find enough, they get to eat tonight. If not, they can starve for all the albino cares - there are more where they came from.

Amazing things wash up on the beach. Glowing tubes, unearthly machines, clothes made of strange and durable fabrics - but no weapons. The slaves are not permitted to talk amongst themselves, so they can only converse when the albino sleeps and leaves their minds alone. When they do, they find that each of them was born in a different time - one in renaissance Italy, another in ancient Indonesia, one in modern China, one in 1930s Chicago - and they struggle to understand one another's languages and idioms.

Where are they? How did they get here? Are they dead or alive? Are they being punished? Can they find a way to escape the clutches of the Albino? What lies beyond the beach? Where do the scraps and devices come from? Why do the stars look different?

"Your party is a loose association of mercenaries contracted by..."

>>5656346
Your stand in a county hall where some king or something has demanded x amount of people to perform some dangerous task.

All being of noble birth blah blah you all volunteered blah blah blah etc

I had an idea one time to start the party in a gladiator arena and force them to work together to fight for their freedom.

Only problem is... they'd probably just end up fighting each other.

>>5667338
Using sign language, improvise weapons out of scavenged junk to kill the albino fatass in his sleep

>>5667338
Sounds like an idea I had that would allow my players to bring back some of their favorite characters:

You wake up on a beach, the sun beating down overhead. Your mind swims, as it does when you wake from a deep sleep. Gradually, pieces fall back into place: who you are, where you're from, and how you died. There are others lying on the beach around you.

(Long story short, each character had something important they were supposed to do, something that would've benefited their world as a whole. They died before they got to do it, and now their gods are testing them. If they pass the test, they get to try again).

>>5667338

I'd watch this movie.

>>5667489

It's chapter from a book actually, I'm wondering if anyone will recognise it.

It would make a mindblowing RPG campaign for anyone who hasn't read the book though. Sort of like a version of Lost that actually makes sense.

"Roll for damage"

How this DH campaign started. A crashed Aquila lander with the acolytes in it. Nothing says welcome to DH like getting the fuck out before you die in a fire

The party is traveling through hostile territory in the same caravan.

Suddenly, ORCS!

The players should be the only survivors. Nothing is a greater motivator of cooperation than the face of incoming death.

Of course, my guys usually enjoy and look for cooperative gaming, so YMMV.

Started my most recent Eberron campaign with the players suspended over the edge of a skybridge, waiting to ambush a low-flying elemental vessel, stolen by a local gang of actors.

For a long moment your consciousness floats free in the universe, unbound to physical form. You feel as if your mind is one with the cosmos; all of the secrets of creation are laid suddenly bare and clear before you. Then, with the suddeness of a switch being thrown, the universe goes black and you fall into oblivion.

You awaken slowly with the grit of sand in your mouth. Around you is a scarred and barren desert bathed in the reddish light of an alien sun.

You are not alone.

>>5667510
what book?

>>5666865

I'm DMing my first campaign, under the premise that I don't know what the players want, and that being railroaded is BAD. So everyone's conveniently staying at the same tavern for the night on their travels, and random event ties them together a little bit. From there they get to decide what they want to do. My players love it.

>>5666359

so, onion knights, then.

or, start as commoners, and have the heroes of destiny die on your doorsteps. you have all their stuff and a world to save - go!

>>5667778

Last Legends of Earth by Alfred Angelo Attanasio.

You are a peasant-soldier in the army of your Lord. Your fourty days of required yearly service are at an end. As is per usual in the Dark Ages, you are left behind in the land you were besieging without so much as a thank you from your asshole Liege Lord. If you don't get home before harvest/planting season, your family, and perhaps your village, will starve.

What do you do?

Only if Winthrop is the barkeep

poop

>>5669188

Did this ever really happen?

>>5669502

Nah.

Enemy artillery fire has hit the primary generator block, and your spotter plane reports they have eight medium mechs with battle armour support closing on the facility.

Scramble immediately to defend our repair installation.

One of the most epic starts to a campaign started out with "you all meet in a tavern". My DM posted it on here before, but lets see if I can't remember the details.


Backstory: the BBEG and his minions have ruled over this world for about 20 years. It didn't used to be so bad before that, when it was just the BBEG. However, a group of 4 adventurer heroes heroically traveled the land, killing and destroying evil as they went. They were the biggest celebrities of their day for their deeds, known across the entire land by name. Everyone knew that they would eventually face the BBEG and kill him.

However, things didn't quite go as planned. It was known that one day they stormed the castle to face the BBEG. However, later that same day the fabric of space/time ripped apart and hordes upon hordes of demons invaded the world and took it over, all serving the BBEG as their master. It turns out that the heroes switch sides in their final confrontation. As a result, all adventurer types, city guard, rangers, mages, basically anyone who could ever pose any sort of a threat was systematically hunted down and killed. Most nobles were killed, pretty much all humans enslaved, a few cities were flattened, etc. A ton of bad shit. Any person who tried to rebel or even better themselves were punished severely and/or killed. Pretty much all hope was wiped from the world.

>>5670162
>>5670173


Enter the PCs. Everyone is a level 1 commoner. We literally were no better than anyone else. Regardless of backstory, every PC has had the same dream every night for the past few months. A ruined temple, hidden in the mountains behind a small village. Calling to them, beckoning them to travel the land to heed its call. One of the PCs arrives in the village a couple weeks early, works in the local tavern as a cook until she can decide what the hell to do. The other PCs get there within a few days of each other, and each doing basically the same thing; staying at the inn/tavern until they decide what the hell to do.

How about the local tavern meets your party? Some wacky building on legs?

>>5670196

It has glowing red or blue windows that seem to stare at the PCs, and shows up just in time to save them from a TPK.

It 'looks' down, opens it's doors, and (somehow) says "Come with me if you want to drink".

>>5670162
>>5670173
>>5670188

Once the last PC gets there, there's the usual "he looks interesting, I'll go sit and chat with him" basic opener between the characters to get the character descriptions read aloud to everyone else. During the conversation, a harpy busts into the tavern and scares everyone nearly shitless. However, none of the locals are at all surprised about this. Everyone has their heads bowed, not looking at the harpy and trying to avoid notice. After a bit of heckling and cursing and whatnot from the harpy, she picks out an NPC from the crowd, grabs him and flies away laughing. The PCs learn that the old man is going to be the harpies' meal for the next couple weeks, and they'll be back once they get hungry again.

Start Campaign.

>>5670226
TWIST: Baba Yaga now has an alcohol license.

It's a normal morning in your town, you're all waiting at the bus stop and out of nowhere an alien craft crashes into one of the buildings across the street.

After a fixed trial after the vietnam war you were sent to jail for a crime you didn't commit. You promptly escaped into the LA underground. Today, still hunted by the government you survive as soldiers of fortune. If someone has a problem and no one else can help they come to you.

>>5670196

>>5656346
It's the end of the working day, so your party heads to the local tavern to relax, and end up meeting each other.

The party is chilling out max at the local tavern, then a bunch of demons show up. They summon other demons, who follow suit. In time the place is crawling with them. Just as you're about to all die, a wizard shows up and lays down some heavy shit (your destined to save the blah blah etc etc) and teleports you and himself to safety. He informs you that crazy shit is going down and you are the only dudes bad enough to stop it. He magically endows the party in proper adventuring gear and leaves to go do some shit he needs to do, but not before telling the party of their ultimate goal, which is to kill Baphomet, who is planning to invade the material plane and use it to end the Blood war.