I'm gonna be GMing for the first time (i've tried a

>>49548862
Dragon attack.

>>49548862
Start everybody off individually, give them each a reason to go to location X. They all happen to bump into each other at location X for different reasons and the adventure starts from there.

Have them either guarding or traveling with a caravan when, OH NO, someone or something attacks it! The group that attacked may make off with something/someone important and the caravan master ain't moving until they get them back and even offers a nice reward.

>>49548862

My favorite way to start a campaign is to pick one external event, and just ask everyone what their connection to it is. My two standard versions of this are, the funeral and the mercenaries.

In the first, everyone is attending the funeral of an old adventurer. The party are all included in his will, which includes the deed for a cabin deep in the woods, which (when they explore) has an ancient, cursed ruin beneath it.

In the second, we open in the middle of a melee, where a group of survivors from different squads of a mercenary army regroup and try to find their way out alive. I tend to randomly generate a map with some threats, and when they escape, they can limp off to town, and discover the army was routed and they're now on their own. If the group doesn't have natural cohesion, or refuses to give themselves a direction, I may tell them an important officer has been captured, and he may be able to help them with resources if rescued.

Im fairly new myself, but these are a few things I've been learning as I DM.

One thing you could do is have each character start in a part of town that makes the most sense for their type, (a fighter would be at the blacksmith or garrison, a wizard would be at the temple or library, and the bard would be at the tavern), then jump between them - luring them to each other and the adventure's plot hook all at once until they're in the same place with different pieces of information needed for the quest. This allows players to start role playing immediately, and sets an easy way for you to bind them together as a party for the first adventure.

The best way to lure them together is to have an NPC require something of a player that leads them to another player - while in a different part of town an event occurs that attracts a different player's attention. Try to mix up what's happening to each player individually, and then tie the strings together so they converge.

Some general tips: I feel that sometimes a GM can get caught up in a feeling that the session will be ruined because they'll have found a way to circumvent your challenges. My advice is to not worry too much about that, and instead give yourself a moment to think about what should logically occur because of what the players have done - then just let it play out! It may be scary at first, but the players will be able to tell that their actions have consequences and can actually impact the world. This is very important! Fudging dice or making things up off the cuff for the benefit of keeping the story on track should only be using sparingly.

Focus on creating interesting set pieces, adventures, and situations - not necessarily stories. Playing the game is the act of creating the story, so just have a general idea as to where you want the story to go - but otherwise leave things unscripted.

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>>49549214

All of these are actually really cool, thanks for sharing!

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84KB, 804x342px

>>49548862
>Also any other general tips you could give me would be nice hrmhmnhgh

Throw whatever shitty system you are currently planning to use in the trash. What you want is Dungeon World

It's pretty much objectively one of the best currently out there. It has fast easy to use mechsnics and is perfect for beginners, it's a lot cheaper than most of these other rules bloated systems that cost fifty dollars. There is no reason for extra rules when it is he role playing that matters. Dungeon World is fast and innovative and still feels exactly like the spirit of ADND before DnD 3.5 destroyed the hobby and ruined a generation of role players.

You want fast, intuitive combat? Dungeon World does that.

You want real, deep roleplaying mechanics? Dungeon World does that.

You want great mechanics that reward diversity of play? Dungeon World does that as well.

My last session of Dungeon World my human fighter wrapped a vampire in a bear hug and wrestled him out a window. This is real roleplaying we are talking about here, not babby 3.5 shit. Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of Dungeon World today, it is an evolution and perfection of the half-formed ideas in Apocalypse World (the game it is derived from)

>>49549525
>objectively one of the best
kek

>implying the depth of the roleplay and the rewards for diversity of play depend on the game
You can wrestle vampires out of windows just fine in any rpg (yes, even in 3.5!) as long as your gm is down to it

>>49549525
>>49552134

Though I think saying DW is objectively one of the best is quite a bit of hyperbole, it is a good starter system for newbies since its so easy to learn and its mechanics actively teaches you to roleplay and not just rollplay.

>>49549525
Either you jump out of windows with vampires every session, or you never even play this "objectively best" game.

>>49549525
>it's a lot cheaper than most of these other rules bloated systems that cost fifty dollars

... or you could just download an OSR rules clone like Labyrinth Lord or Swords & Wizardry for FREE, and have full compatibility with existing D&D source books and modules.

Hey OP. Alot can be solved for hooks and starters by:
NOT PLAYING GENERIC FANTASY
Generic fanatsy is good if your looking for generic, the 'you start in a taven' or 'the duke has hired you to clean out goblin' starts are generic because your playing in generic fantasy;
the setting should be a function of the story, take curse of strahd in 5e for instance; do you fight the acursed vampire in some generic fantasy valley with a castle and town
No, you fight him in Bovaria, a land ever cused to be cloudy, where the people are dower and the forests haunted by witches and wolves.
You figure out what the story is going to be and craft the setting to match, the enconters that the party faces should feel natural in the enviroment and that goes double for enviroments.
The 'you meet in a tavern' opener can have so much more weight to it if it is part of the story. For instance for curse of strahd (its on my mind sorry):
>"Each of you have been traveling for the last couple day, windthrax you are going to your former master in the highlands while sir hopkins you have been following a band of brigands across the coast road, one night when a heavy fog all but blinded you found an old tavern, the sign out the frount faded with age reads the 'the last drop', lamp light from inside is barley visable through the scrached boards covering the windows but the sign on the door read 'open'; hopkins you are just settling in when a dark skined elf enters, windthrax you see a rugged human staring at you as you enter"

Etc.

bamppu

>>49548862
In my opinion games work best if you give the players something they can work with, and usually they will give you something to work with in return. Collaborative storytelling, I guess.

The best way this worked for me was to give them a limited locale -a cursed valley they couldn't get out of- with a clear villain, but four infighting villages that they would have to unite, each led by their own leader with their own goals.

That's the best advice in The Lazy DM's Guide: The "C" in "NPC" stands for "character", which means that they have their own motivations and reasons. In my case, the village leaders all had smallminded, ineffectual goals, and the players quickly picked up on that, took charge, defeated the nastiest leader in combat and made the other two fall in line behind their chosen leader. For me, as a DM, all the effort it took was working out these four characters and your regular stuff. No intricate if-then stuff.

If you play your NPC's as characters, you can deal with player vagaries, and it sets you up for creating a living, engaging world. What if some trader tries to hire the party to retrieve some artifact? He will try to underbid, of course. But if they refuse, he will try to make to make it more enticing, but he'll never offer more than the deal is worth to him. And if a king asks the players to rescue his daughter, why does he come to a party of untrustworthy foreigners? Why can't his own army do it? Doesn't he trust them? Is there a spy in his court? This sets him up for coming to them in the tavern, dressed as a common traveller, rather than meeting them in the throne room.