DM-Nastics #71: You Are NOT In A Tavern

I like dark chocolate. . .plots. Here’s mine!

You wake up with a throbbing headache and a dried scab over your forehead. The heavy tang of smoke and blood fills your nostrils obtrusively, but you are too weak to even cough. Lifting yourself gingerly from the muddy ground, you try to get up, but something heavy is crushing your legs. You look behind you, and find yourself under a pile lifeless corpses, gathered into a heap in the center of town. You pull yourself free in horror and disbelief, and scramble away from the macabre scene.

An unkindness of ravens circle overhead, their caws now clearly audible to your clearing senses. Many of the houses were alight with fire, their husks crumbling in the setting twilight.

What do you do?

I don't like amnesiac protagonists, so they would totally know what happened. Everyone will wake up somewhere in this devastated town and continue from there.

I tend to talk to my players as a group as well as individually and figure out how they want to start out. I implore them to attempt to create bonds within their own group which usually brings at least two or three players into a connection with each other whether it's familial or something else ie they share a common past where they had encountered each other previously.

With that said I couldn't think of a very specific setting that I think is unique enough to share, though I do have an idea for a common thread that can connect all the characters at the beginning and at least start them on a similar path as a group. I don't have any of this really fleshed out but I think something along the lines of each PC having a personalized dream sequence the first night of the campaign that ends with them standing in front of a well-known monument or place in the area. At this point you can either have some skill checks set up as the PCs most likely attempt to look around the area and attempt to figure out why they've had dreams that brought them here. Maybe you leave a thinly veiled clue in each PCs dream that when combined bring them to the conclusion of why they are there. Alternatively there could be a person/persons there to give them their explanatory rundown. Maybe they're all brought there and then attacked by something they've never seen or heard of before.

I think there's quite a few things you could do with this scenario and a lot of different ways you could take it. I personally love using dreams as a vessel to tell my PCs things I'd like them to know that maybe they've missed or I had difficulty finding a way to tell them in another form. Also due to the nature of dreams I can throw in subtle hints that foretell future events which gives them something to think about and hopefully think back to as the foretold events occur. To be fair as well I usually throw in quite a bit of symbology that I may or may not use in the future depending on how things play out.

edit: I wanted to clarify that the dream sequence in my original thought process doesn't teleport them to this location, though you could definitely choose that option. I thought moreso the PCs would make their way there as most times they'll take the proffered carrot on a stick especially in the first session. If you have a PC that simply wants to continue on their life and/or dismissing the dream I think at that point how you bring that PC into the fold is very situational and depends on the character. Most of my preparation for this would involve writing up the dream sequence for the individual players as well as figuring out what happens after they've all met up at that spot or at least after some of them have met at that spot. I know this isn't very fleshed out but hopefully someone else might get some ideas from this. 

I have a preference for starting in medias res, my first game with my current group started with them a band of mercenaries arriving at there new base of ops, and my most recent game they're starting of as members of a circus!

We tend to build up the history through play, though we sometimes intervene and write it, that happens later on.

I've done some new things in my PbP games, playing through the first encounters and stuff, which has been a bit different.

In the campaign I'm currently working on I have this Monster Hunters Guild at the center of the whole society which keeps the land safe. The players are all creating characters that are in the capital to join that guild. The firat session is going to be the aptitude test where they perform different tests and see each other in action a bit, get to talk to each other during waiting etc.

Then the guild will work out who passed, so the PCs have a night to spend in the city, maybe meeting each other in taverns or during conflicts with other participants. The next morning, the group will be all put in the same group for the second part of the emtrance exam, a field mission testing their ability to work with others and their applied abilities.

Its a bit long winded and maybe a bit railroady, but I feel its a more or less organic way of having random strangers end up with each other.

Here are 3 ideas:

1) The cart comes to a stop, and you are roughly pulled out and pushed to the ground on your knees. A burlap sack covers your head, and though you cannot see, you can hear the riotous cacophony of a large crowd somewhere in front of you. The hood is torn from your head to reveal blinding sunlight from the rising sun that leaves you dazzled for a moment as the governor of your province steps out before you. "You have been convicted of crimes deemed by our sovereign to be unforgivable. However, in his infinite mercy, the emperor has found it within himself to spare your lives. Considering the gravity of your crimes, you cannot be allowed even the slimmest chance of escape." As your eyes adjust, you can see a huge pit stretching before you, miles into the distance. Encircling the pit is a huge wall of stone thirty feet high, with guard towers every quarter mile. Below, and stretching into the distance, you can see a multitude of dirty, ragged prisoners. Their chants and hoots echo up to you as you balance on your knees at the edge of the pit. The governor smiles grimly. "I hereby sentence you to life imprisonment in Graywater Prison. May the lords of heaven be merciful in their final accounting of your soul." The governor nods, and guards behind you place a boot between your shoulder blades and push you into the yawning pit below.

So this campaign has three distinct parts: a) imprisonment and escape b) training and recon c) infiltration, redemption, and revenge. This all presumes that the PCs are framed for something they did not do, and sentenced to life in an "inescapable" prison. Setup would include: detailing the different factions in the prison; finding a couple of different ways for the PCs to get out, that are plausibly difficult or involved enough that few if any other prisoners have ever escaped; detailing the main NPCs in the prison; setting up random encounters for the prison; outlining the rest of the parts of the campaign.

2) Everyone found a flyer for joining the city watch that said something different: "Get paid to beat people up -- legally!", "Serve your city and uphold the law!", "Bring evil to justice!", "Trust and respect can be yours!", and so on. After a rigorous three month academy, the party begins their first day on the job with the city watch of a major metropolis. All classes can be accommodated as different specialists within the department. Very quickly, they all find themselves working on the same case from different angles and cooperate to resolve it. Their success leads to them being grouped together as a squad.

Ahead of time, the metropolis will need to be worked out, different factions outlined, different plot threads fleshed out, and NPCs built.

3) You board a boat bound for a distant and exotic land, as a member of an expedition group lead by an eccentric aristocrat. In the large cabin you share with other expedition members, you meet while stowing your gear and choosing bunks. The first encounter is an assassin who attempts to kill your patron. A little digging on the boat can reveal that someone does not want this expedition to succeed, and that your patron might be hiding something.

Ahead of time: build the boat, outline the expedition, build NPCs, build the organization/faction that wants your patron dead, work up clues about the real purpose of the expedition, and design several encounters on the boat.

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The nicest thing about how the characters meet is that it sets the tone and hints at the themes and plot of the campaign.

I completely missed this DM-Nastics when it first came around. So let me pitch in now.

I ran this One Shot for my guinea pig group I called the Tower of the --------- (Forgotten). The basic premise was that the players would create their characters and personalities, but their backstories were completely blank. They would awaken at the end of a very deep and dangerous dungeon, grasping the treasure they came for. However, they would have no recollection of who they were or their passed selves, but they retained all of their skills and abilities. I gave them a couple of random trinkets, and a useful but unexplained magical item based on how they built their character. They then had to work backwards through a somewhat cleared (though still dangerous) dungeon, where there would find further defining clues about themselves. Including a couple of fallen teammates, one of which I had barely clinging to life to answer a few questions before he passed on. The game actually went really well and everyone had fun. Based of their trinkets, magical items, and their interpretations of their characters as the game went on, I ended the One Shot by revealing their "true backstories". Which to my surprise, everyone was actually kinda excited to learn who they actually were. Great times where had.


This was the opening scene to that game.
The party lifts the large leather bound, backpack sized book off the pedestal together. Finally after.....hours.....days.... months? Aaah whatever, what matters is that you and your friends uuuuuuh allies? Yeah allies, that makes sense, have finally retrieved this.......book! Of course it is a book, you are holding one, it only makes sense. You finally retrieved it and.....and......and.........you can't remember anything else. Where are you? Why did you want to get this book?......who were you! You realize, with a start, you can't remember anything! That is when you notice that the people in the room with you have pieces of paper pinned to their clothing. So do you. (the papers have each players name and field of specialization on it, as well as the words "Get Straight Out" written on it.) There are at least a dozen empty potion bottles that litter the room all of which look freshly drained. There is a single set of double doors that lead out of this room and there is a barricade bar locking it shut.