“You Find Yourself Writing a Campaign Opening…”

“You find yourself in a tavern…” If you rolled your eyes while reading that because you’ve experienced it firsthand, you may be entitled to a prestige class-action lawsuit.

Starting your players off in a tavern is one of the most well-known ways of starting a D&D campaign, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Clichés are clichés because they work; generally speaking, they can be excellent ways to get the dice rolling with your players. A tavern is basically a playground for adventurers, and can facilitate those small bits of roleplaying that allow your players to adjust to their new characters.

The Yawning Portal Inn, Waterdeep

Other popular intros, like being summoned by the king/baron/other ruling figure or having the players all guarding the same caravan, are open-ended enough that players can explore their own individual reasons for being present while still having a reasonable connection to the greater group.

These intros are functional, no doubt about that. But when you’re making your own original campaign, you want something that will stick with your players. An original campaign is your baby, the culmination of your time and effort, your planning, your ideas. You don’t want your introduction to be generic; you want your introduction to radiate the same creativity that you put into making the game. Your first scene will establish the tone for the entire game moving forward, setting the stage for your table by showing everyone what to expect both as players and as characters.

Know Your Clichés

So how do you go about making your introduction unique? Well, first, you should familiarize yourself with the well-known clichés and what makes them work. Understanding what makes them work is the key part there: these intros are popular because they each provide a useful and/or powerful experience for the players. Like everything else, they’re tools for DMs to use — and tools are only powerful when they’re used in the appropriate situations. Having a party survive a ship crash into unknown lands is an excellent hook for a survival campaign, but it’s probably not the best choice for a political intrigue — unless you’re very creative and present the scenario in a different light. The ability to do such a thing highlights something very important: when creating your opening, putting a novel twist on a cliché can be just as effective as a completely original hook.

For example, let’s say that we’re creating a political intrigue campaign, and the player party is a group of young nobles. The plot for the campaign, in short, is that they’ve caught wind of a major conspiracy that a number of powerful leaders are a part of (for illustrative purposes, we’ll say that they’re trying to resurrect a powerful demon by slowly sacrificing residents of the more poverty-stricken areas that they’re in control of), and they’ll be attempting to expose their crimes — without being implicated in said exposure — in order to have them removed from power, while securing greater influence. A non-cliched intro might go something like this:

A near deafening silence resounds through the city’s lower quarter. You walk cautiously, hoods completely masking your faces, down the poorly-laid streets. Your cloaks conceal ragged clothes and simple weapons. They’re uncomfortable and unfamiliar, but it wouldn’t do you any good to wear your dress clothes and house emblems — especially not here, where the public perception of nobility is poor at best. As you walk you pass no one; it would be foolish for the average citizen to roam the streets at this hour.

With no interruption, you soon find yourselves in front of an old warehouse. The door is already open, as you expected it to be. You quickly scan the streets. Certain that you have not been followed, you step into the doorway.

Silver rays penetrate the cracks and holes that permeate the warehouse’s rusted iron walls. Sitting against the rotted wooden crates are two figures in dark blue hoods, completely indistinguishable from one another. As the echo of your footsteps grows louder, they calmly rise from their positions and stand before you. The figure on the left puts out a hand, indicating for you to halt. The other, in a clearly affected accent, whispers: “Were you followed?”

This intro establishes a number of things for the game and the party. First and foremost, this is not going to be a lighthearted adventure. There will be danger and secrecy, perhaps even some lawbreaking. The characters have some sort of informant or information network — some way of getting vital information. The party members are in positions of at least a little influence already, and will have to be cautious not to expose themselves while they participate in suspect or illicit dealings. In order to maintain that secrecy, they may have to be willing to make some small sacrifices or suffer some displeasures. Most importantly, though, while they are all willing to suffer together to accomplish their goals, what those goals are aren’t set. They have the ability to choose their own motivations for taking these actions, whether they be to take out particular nobles for revenge, saving innocents, to become heroes by stopping a demon, to secure power for themselves, or whatever else the players think of.

Shake Things Up a Bit!

However, as I mentioned before, putting a novel twist on a cliché can also be an effective opening. We’ll use the same campaign idea, but this time, we’ll use the “Festival Before Things Go Wrong” opening. Let’s say that we start like this:

Streetlights blaze against the fading sunset as the harvest festival hits full swing. The streets are engulfed with the roar of the crowds and bombastic tunes as the citizens dance, drink, and feast in honor of yet another bountiful harvest. Indeed, you are nearly taken by jealousy as your carriages pass by the delightful decorations and smiling faces of the city’s central square. While you are here to celebrate, your party is a smaller and more reserved (though more lavish) affair — the celebration being held by the city’s ruler.

You have all been chosen as the representatives of your respective households for this particular gathering in an effort to earn yourselves greater prestige amongst the rest of the nobility. You’ve been informed that many local nobles will be sending their own children as representatives as well, which will hopefully make the evening less stressful. You have also heard whispers, however, concerning the ruler themself. Of course, such whispers are not always truthful — such is the curse of those in power — but as you approach the ruler’s estate, you cannot help but recall the accusations that passed by your ears: “They’re a murderer, a kidnapper…” “Their power and wealth were stolen…” “They’re a demon, in human skin…”

With those thoughts ringing in your ears, you hear the telltale clanging of opening gates. The ruler’s magnificent estate lies stretched out before your eyes. Soon you will be able to see for yourself whether or not the rumors are true…

Naturally, you can substitute “ruler” for whatever title suits your fancy: lord, duchess, mayor, whatever title fits the story and setting. The point is that this introduction follows the core ideas that make the festival an effective opening: it’s a localized event that gets the party all in one convenient spot, while giving the party immediate control over their characters. Compared to out unique opening, this provides greater freedom of action: the characters have been given some doubts and a general goal, and are thus open to any additional elements that you might provide for them, but they aren’t being conscripted into any sort of action or behavior besides “go to the party and make your family look good.” That said, they’re still given context as to the tone and topic of the adventure. As above, there’s a sense that this probably won’t be a silly romp; they’re quite literally passing that by in favor of a more serious, dutiful affair. We’ve established that they are from noble families, though they aren’t the heads of the household, and have room to grow their power and influence. Likewise, there are others in a similar position that may serve as potential allies or enemies. While the party may not know whether or not they have an established contact or informant, they’re still receiving information through some means — perhaps you could leave that particular means up to them for some additional character-building.

This particular opening may rely on either your players doing a bit of metagaming to follow up on the accusatory whispers and end up together as a party, or on your ability to guide them to that outcome by providing information in conversations with NPCs, the ruler’s opening speech, or whatever other way you want to shape the celebratory proceedings. However, you’re also free to go back and modify your introduction to fit more in line with your vision of the game. If you want the party members to already be acquainted to one another, you could inform them of that relationship beforehand, and even allow them to cultivate it by placing them in the same carriage as they head to the estate. Likewise, if you want to enforce the idea that they should be investigating the ruler, you can make the information about them more concrete by saying that a family member/personal informant tipped the party off. You always want to go back and analyze your hooks and descriptions to make sure that they’re providing the information that you want them to provide, especially during moments as important as your opening.

With that said, I’ve given you a couple of my own examples of campaign openers, so I’d love to hear some of yours! Is there an opening that you’re considering for your own game? Or maybe an opening that you’ve used before that you’re particularly proud of? You can even talk about an opening that you’ve experienced which you found fun, exciting, or unique! Whether it’s a full description like mine or just a general explanation of what happened, please feel free to leave it in a comment! I’d love to hear your input and I’m always open to questions or critiques! After all, we’re here to learn together!

See you next session!

-Joseph