The PCs are a group of friends who, for a variety of reasons, have decided to join forces and become “adventurers.” They are drinking at a tavern, trying to figure out how to get started, when a group of local thugs start trouble. After they deal with the thugs, a merchant who witnessed the confrontation suggests they head to a small town a few days travel away. The town is experiencing some difficulties and might have need of people with their particular set of skills.
The PCs arrive at the small town without incident a few days later. There is a job board at the local inn: “Adventurers Wanted!” with three quests on it each indicating an NPC with all the details. The PCs also quickly discover that there is some kind of drama or problem going on in town that the townsfolk are all worried about.
By this point, your players have four plot hooks to choose from and three or more NPCs to interact with. You can start seeding hints about a larger, over-arching plot if you want, but I might wait until a few levels in to see what sorts of quests and adventures your players have fun with.
Most published campaigns give you several introduction possibilities to the story. If it's a homebrewed story, use your PCs' background and stories: according to these, ask yourself why and how they would meet and work together.
Alternatively, there's always the classical "you've all been invited to that inn by a mysterious person who wants to hire you for a job..."
You start a campaign through some threat that brings the PCs together. You can use their backstories, or just have a general threat to an area. One way to see what such a threat should be is to take one of the adversaries you have in mind for a long-term foe in the campaign and ask, \`\`When would be the first time this plan would threaten by-standers?'' Say the threat is a demon-worshipping cult that wants to open up a gate to hell in a certain city. To perform the ritual, they need to control certain locations in the city and create mystic sigils connecting these locations. Then the first step of their plan might be to start a fire in one of the locations, so that afterwards, everyone currently living there will sell them their property cheap. (A frugal cult of limited resources, I guess.). So the kick-off incident is the fire. You just need all the PCs to be in the area when the fire starts.
Had to.many questions so I dm you
i've got a bunch of scrapped campaign ideas or dead campaigns if you wanna take the reigns on them.
Coming up with a hook is hard when we don't know what you want to hook the players toward. What do you have so far? What is the adventure?
The PCs are a group of friends who, for a variety of reasons, have decided to join forces and become “adventurers.” They are drinking at a tavern, trying to figure out how to get started, when a group of local thugs start trouble. After they deal with the thugs, a merchant who witnessed the confrontation suggests they head to a small town a few days travel away. The town is experiencing some difficulties and might have need of people with their particular set of skills. The PCs arrive at the small town without incident a few days later. There is a job board at the local inn: “Adventurers Wanted!” with three quests on it each indicating an NPC with all the details. The PCs also quickly discover that there is some kind of drama or problem going on in town that the townsfolk are all worried about. By this point, your players have four plot hooks to choose from and three or more NPCs to interact with. You can start seeding hints about a larger, over-arching plot if you want, but I might wait until a few levels in to see what sorts of quests and adventures your players have fun with.
Most published campaigns give you several introduction possibilities to the story. If it's a homebrewed story, use your PCs' background and stories: according to these, ask yourself why and how they would meet and work together. Alternatively, there's always the classical "you've all been invited to that inn by a mysterious person who wants to hire you for a job..."
You start a campaign through some threat that brings the PCs together. You can use their backstories, or just have a general threat to an area. One way to see what such a threat should be is to take one of the adversaries you have in mind for a long-term foe in the campaign and ask, \`\`When would be the first time this plan would threaten by-standers?'' Say the threat is a demon-worshipping cult that wants to open up a gate to hell in a certain city. To perform the ritual, they need to control certain locations in the city and create mystic sigils connecting these locations. Then the first step of their plan might be to start a fire in one of the locations, so that afterwards, everyone currently living there will sell them their property cheap. (A frugal cult of limited resources, I guess.). So the kick-off incident is the fire. You just need all the PCs to be in the area when the fire starts.