A good campaign opener? (beginner GM)

>>46227086
Anyway, that's how I was planning to get all the characters plausibly into one place, but then I have to get from there to turning them into a player party, which requires an *event*. Current thought is that someone important gets poisoned, and the PC's are either among the suspects - but why would they all be suspects if they have never met before - or they're tapped to investigate the poisoning (but why would that happen if they're not renowned at the start of the campaign?)

A thought that struck me just now is to put limits on the characters during character creation - make up a particular feudal lord that they all have to come up with a relationship to, whether it's as enemies or as vassals or whatever. This is the guy that gets poisoned, and the PCs come together as they're all interested parties trying to figure out whodunnit and how to save the guy.

Does anon have any other fun ideas for how to pull the group in, or for plot twists to the starting adventure?

>>46227097

A few of the other things I'm considering for the grand tourney:

"Battle of the bridge" with staves standing on a raised log

"Pillow fight", sitting on the same log, except now it's greased

"Axe throwing" (with the dwarves going "who'd throw away a perfectly good axe?)

"Spear throwing" (same thing, except different complainers)

"Fisticuffs" (self explanatory)

"Turnip-chopping" from horseback

An air show, by elves on drake mounts

An exhibition mage duel (a real one would be unsafe for spectators!)

More ideas still wanted...

>>46227097
>>46227086


I would do the following:

Step A) Find out what each player will be playing. I don't know how this system mechanically works, but if each player is going to the tourney for some reason, they're probably good at one or more of the events.

Step B) Have them do well enough in their individual events to be in like the top 5, but not quite win. If the tourny awards prizes for places other than 1st in events, bump them down a few more ranks, none of them should win anything in their individual rounds.

Do this in seperate sessions if at all possible, since each one will be them off on their own in their own little event.

Step C) Whomever's organizing this rounds them up into a "Grand melee" which is a team battle, small groups, composed of the top tier of people in other events who didn't win a prize. They get lumped together as one team, and make them battle out with several other teams in a free for all.

Add elaborations as necessary, people cheating, side bets, pressure from above to make sure a given team wins, etc.

>>46227097
Something I like to do is to start during a funeral, someone that everyone knows died and they can meet each other by the eulogy's given ect. My two cents anywho.

>>46227507

Thanks for catching this before it fell off the board!

I had mostly planned to do step A and B already, while I haven't actually GMed before I've watched it done several times. Our game time per session is really limited, this is part of an organized activity for people with ASD (yes, actual sperglord here, though I try to keep a lid on it) and we only have two hours per week, so I kind of want to get the most out of each session, so most of the time all the players will be in the same room. The initial adventure isn't planned to last very long, just possibly set up for a longer campaign if everyone ends up liking the game and my GM-ing style.

Step C? Not sure all the players will be actual battle-focused characters, as there's rules for freaking everything and you can play a complete non-combat character with the rules as written. No level system, EON is skill based and you only improve in the things you actually do.

The EON game system is kind of complex, so I was planning on pretty much abstracting the tourney fights other than maybe a couple to show how it works, until the adventure proper starts when *events* start popping up.

At the moment I don't know how big a group we'll even have - I think five players including the GM right now, but that might change before I get my turn to GM (there's someone else ahead of me). I'm kind of unique in that I brought my own books - I've had a collection of RPG books sitting on shelves for fifteen years or so, but I've been too much of a recluse to go find an actual RPG club to play with.

>>46227565

A funeral sounds like a less complicated version of what I'm doing already, but it doesn't really offer an immediate adventure - unless the deceased party was murdered and you're off to look for the culprit. Of course, if I start with something like that, I can basically tell the players up front that we're starting at a funeral and then they can work in the reason for why they'd be attending into their character build.

>>46227086
You already fucked up by not having everyone make characters together on the first session and bouncing ideas off each other.

Forcing a bunch of completely different people together and then making them stay together almost always ends up stupid and reliant on everyone just agreeing to stick together because they're characters in a rpg and that's what you're supposed to do.

Also, länge leve Knugen, lycka till!

>>46228006

Of course we're going to be making characters in the first session, given how much stuff there is to do there we're probably going to be spending more than one session even on that. What I'm trying to do is come up with a plan that'll work even if the players *don't* come up with backgrounds that I can work into a pre-existing relationship.

Keep in mind that most of my actual *players* are just as socially awkward and in most cases way more spergy than me. I'll have an NT staff member on hand to help me sort things out, but I don't know my players enough to be sure I can get a working party out of their character ideas. They're kind of...strange. :)