Starting with a Bang

You are in the Morning Glory Inn, a large gathering spot on the edge of Andel for adventurers. We see a particularly odd party, [insert each player describing their character]. A mysterious figure walks in the room, and spots the party. He approaches throws a bag of coins on the table and says "I have need of escort over the mountains. The journey is perilous but there is another bag of coin waiting for you on the other side."

Sizing up the occupants of the table he says "What say you?"

For many people who have played a fantasy RPG before, you may have had a similar experience when starting a campaign. While this is a perfectly fine start it can get old, rehashing the same beginning experience.

Well I would like to challenge everyone to try and start their next campaign with a bang! This may be some of your players first time make it memorable! You may be playing with seasoned gamers, but why not give them a reason to remember why they love playing. Here are a couple examples of what I like to do to kick things off with more than just a pint.

Roll Initiative

These words typically are good at getting your players attention. Why not start your campaign off in the middle of some action! This will get your tactical and combat focused players paying attention from the beginning, and gives your players a quick chance to test drive their new characters.

The flickering light of your make shift fire illuminates part of the derelict temple. This former house of worship is your parties chosen place of rest for the night. Though in disrepair it provides a feeling of safety ... until you hear the cracking. Bones pulling themselves together. Grabbing up their old discarded weapons and armor, brought back from death by the curse that plagues this land. Their hollow eyes turn to look at you gathered around your fire as they approach with cruel intent...

Roll For Initiative!

I did a intro similar to this for a gothic horror themed campaign. Not only do I get to start the campaign with a fight, but get to give some cinematic setting information. This will help give the players a feel of what to expect on this first adventure. After this fight we flashed back to the city they came from, and they found out what their mission was. This derelict temple became a rest stop on their travel, and where we caught back up to "real time".

You can leave it like that as a place on the road to anywhere so it can fit in no matter what first adventure your players choose to go on. Or if you want you could maybe play out the first room of the first dungeon if you have the first adventure in mind already. Maybe the players could get a glimpse of a challenge they will have to deal with there, and when you flash back they could buy items in town like ropes or pitons to help deal with it.

You definitely don't have to use this as a flashback though, you could just continue on the adventure from their letting the players figure out what quest they are on as they go. Maybe the players could even tell you!

Cinematic Open

These are great they give you a chance to introduce your players to elements in world that they may not get to directly interact with until later in the campaign. However make sure that whatever it is affects the players in some way or why bother talking about it. Maybe you could show the event that sets up the central tension of your world.

As Arioc struck the Dusk Emperor with Sunfall, his celestial maul, a thunder crack rang out shattering the fabric of the world. Decimating the bastions of evil the Emperor had built over the past century. An for the first time in just as long a ray of sunshine shone through the clouds. Though the world was still broken, hope that existed once again.

10 years later...

Short and sweet you could explain the battle a bit more, but it gives a little background on the world an what the players can expect. There is a world that was under the thumb of tyranny but now its being rebuilt. How will the players shape that new world! Maybe you could then start in a tavern but the tavern is in one of the Dusk Emperor's old forts. This takes a trope that many players know but uses it to illustrate how the central tension of the world will effect what the players encounter.

Then again maybe something more direct is in order. You can find lots of these on the internet one of my personal favorites....

Its dark, you feel a great weight pressing upon you. You begin to push the debris off of you, it's heavy and awkward but movable. You start to crawl out of this pile when you finally see some light and a pair of still eyes staring at you. Staring from all around you, panicked you push through the rest of the bodies as quickly as you can. Finally you get yourself free to see a few others standing their traumatized from a similar experience. Were you mistakenly tossed in this mass grave, or were you supposed to be there. If so why are you back now, what do you do?

Another cinematic opening that immediately raises a ton of questions for the players. Why them? Why are they there? Where is there? You can see the difference as well. Both events effect the characters. The first in an indirect way in how it affects the whole world, the other in a much more personal way for the players.


I hope reading these will jump start your creativity and get your gears moving on how to start your next campaign with a bang. Also pull from your favorite movies, comics, books,and video games. If there is a beginning that really grabbed you see if it could translate to the kind of story you want to experience with your players.

Roads Versus Railroads

If you have ever played a pre-written adventure sometimes it can feel like you are just walking down a hallway. This can be okay as a lot of times your characters are walking down a dungeon hallway. The decisions you are making in this situation are what doors do you want to open and how to fight the monsters.

However when a tabletop RPG gets boiled down to only this it can feel like you are on a train track just going. You may choose to blow the horn or disconnect the caboose, but there is only one direction you can go. It can feel like you are stuck on a track, and this is where the term rail-roading comes from.

I first started playing a little bit with the 3.5 edition of DnD but never got into a long term campaign until 4th edition. A lot of what I played had that feeling of being on a train track, but I was new to DnD so I was still trying to understand the rules and just enjoying the scenery. However once I started playing with more experienced DMs and seeing games online. I saw the open world type choices that were available to them, and quickly what I had been playing felt like a video game with extra work. This is what inspired me to DM knowing the limitless possibilities of a table top RPG how it can change to the players and the frustration when it remains rigid. You want your players to become DMs, the more the better, but preferably not out of frustration!

To keep players interested for the long haul they need choices or at least the illusion of choice so that the world feels real, this is called verisimilitude. Well how do you do that, DMs are people too and have day jobs and we cant create every aspect of the world so the players can just go wherever. Your absolutely right, but there are a few things you can do here.

Improv it all - have your notes about the world and make it up as you go. Create things as you play and flesh out the things the players seem most interested in between sessions. While this can be awesome, it is understandable if its not something that everyone can do, and sometimes people who are good at it can even get stumped. Some RPGs even encourage collaborative world building and is meant to be made up as you go so maybe a different game could help here. However if the thought of this makes you anxious or doesn't sound like your cup of tea then maybe...

Get a premade campaign - this goes the complete opposite direction of improv. In a premade campaign the world has been laid out for you. All the locations your players can go to, whats there and who is there. All you need to do is react to the actions of your party, and the campaign book serves as a guide to how to do that. The most recent Wizards of the Coast campaigns Curse of Strahd and Storm Kings Thunder do an excellent job of this. Then again maybe you want to do something original this is were building roads come in.

Putting your players behind the wheel - when you drive your car it's rare for most people to drive off the road. Typically we stick to the roads, we go to the grocery store, our jobs, the movies. Yet we choose which roads we want to take: the highway to get there as soon as possible, the back roads to avoid traffic, or maybe the scenic route to take in what is around you. You can take this in mind when you are building sandboxes for your world for the players to drive around in.

NPCs can be good passengers to have in the car as well. They can suggest interesting places to go, or warn of dangers that lay in certain directions. Just make sure you don't have these NPCs take the wheel or constantly steer the party out of danger. Because you are no longer giving the illusion of infinite choices.

Also I want to stress just because your the DM doesn't mean you have to know everything! It is perfectly okay to say hey lets take a 5-10 min snack break while I think about what is going to happen here. You are just as  much a player as the PCs, and remember it's a game for you to enjoy. Don't put unneeded pressure on yourself.

No matter which approach your take just remember to stick to it and do it a lot. Repetition will only make you better at weaving a world for your players to create wonderful stories in.

So will watching people better than you who have been doing it longer! Matt Colville has an excellent video on the subject you should give it a watch.

Failing Forward

Failing forward is a concept I have learned from watching more experienced DMs and from games like Apocalypse World and Dungeon World. Tell me if you have heard the following scenario before running Dungeons and Dragons...

The party encounters a door it is locked..

The Rogue/Thief steps forward and says "I pick the lock"

Lock Pick roll.... its a 4

The Rogue/Thief rolls again... its a 6

This cycle continues until the Rogue or another party member rolls high enough to meet the DC you had set. This same roll until you succeed situation, happens often for newer DMs that run a game that doesn't show you how to handle failure other than saying no or try again.

So before we even get into how this situation could look with failing forward in play. If there is something you want the players to see or to experience, then don't put it behind a skill roll. Because the above situation makes skill rolls feel like filler/time wasters. So the simple solution is to not have it there, however if you actually are wanting to present a challenge try failing forward.

Like the lock door situation there is a number of ways to handle the failed roll narrative and continue the forward momentum of the game. You might say this particular lock is too complex for you at your current skill level, this way the Rogue can longer keep rolling. Instead they need to think of a different way past the door. Breaking the door down, going through a window, searching for a key, etc. The players will then have to deal with consequences of having to take that route but it adds drama to the game.

But maybe you don't have multiple outs for this door there is one way in and its this door. A thing I like to do is the no matter the roll you succeed however if its a low roll just takes you longer. Then you let the players know that they are going to be getting random encounter rolls based on how long the lock picking is taking. Going this route creates tension of something coming around the corner to get the party. Sometimes nothing will happen, sometimes the patrol comes around the corner and sounds the alarm. It helps to encourage verisimilitude in your game, and also prevents the Rogue from being bad at lock picking :D

While this is a simple common example, always be mindful of how "failed" rolls can further the story in interesting complicating ways for your players. Some of your parties best moments might come out of it.