What's are some good "in media res" versions of

>>55370822

>party of adventurers fighting desperately in the middle of a horde of skeletons while a necromancer blasts a bolt of green lightning at them
>freeze frame
>Yep, that's you. You're probably wondering how you got into this mess

>>55370822
Dunno about real examples. But would be interesting to start game with characters already in situation and letting players have flashback situations where they have freedom of explaining how and why characters started working together.

File: 1504049831919.jpg (22KB, 480x480px) Image search: [Google]

22KB, 480x480px

>>55370864

>mfw forgot the record scratch

File: Lincoln Heights Drunk tank Christmas Morning 1952.jpg (94KB, 800x691px)

94KB, 800x691px

>>55370822
You all wake up in the drunk tank

>>55370822
Skulls and Shackles begins with you and the party waking up after being drugged after a night at the tavern, and finding out that you've all been pressganged. That's pretty in meditas res.

You all meet in a swarm of bees. Roll initiative.

>>55370822
Examples from a few of my campaigns.
>You're all passengers on a train heading over the Sierra Nevadas into California.
>You're all standing in a transport ship sailing over the Volga. Your commissar has just pressed a box of ammo into your hands, and handed a rifle to the man next to you. What's that whining noise up above?
>You awake imprisoned together on a slaver ship.
>You're all at a hiring square at the market, looking for work.
>You wake up to the sound of klaxons and the red emergency power lights. Outside the window, the starfleet is burning - and the ship you're on is veering its way down towards a nearby planet.

You'reall in the waiting room of the Devil's Office.

>>55370822
You posted three different examples of what "in media res" can mean, so ill take the time to hit all three using examples from media:

1. Something like what anon here >>55370864 said. Begin the first session already in the thick of some big plot point, either near the middle or end of the overall story you have planned out. An example of how this could be done is Fire Emblem Awakening. Don't want to get into a discussion of the merits or demerits of the game, but it starts with a vision of a bad future and then warps back to the beginning of the story, the protagonists armed with some knowledge that the future might entail a fight that would lead to ruin and thus challenged to fight fate. If done well, there could also be a really big twist tied in there. The fight could also be under completely different circumstances than how it seems, allies fighting in the background that werent the focus of the initial vision, a cunning trap ready to be sprung right as the vision ends.
Cont.

>>55371332
2/3:

2. This basically assumes you either dont particularly care about how or why the players met up, want to keep it a secret, or you dont think it needs to be fully fleshed out outside of the PCs backstory. If you take the mystery route, you might hint or allude to it, and it could be an eventual exposition dump, but there will never be a straight flashback to the beginning. Ive seen it done in a Rogue Trader game, where the crew of the ship was pretty much already assembled and we had already discussed how we all met in our backgrounds. Eventually details on each character that had been kept hidden came out to flesh them out more, but we never really covered the true beginning of the group in a session. Probably the most famous example is Hamlet, where the characters have been assembled by a predetermined event that is explained (Hamlets father's death) that is not explained before characters start mentioning it as a previous event. To apply it to an RPG, maybe the party all have some combined element or history together, and have been journeying together for sometime before the story starts.

>>55370822
>>55371332
>>55371348
3/3:

3. This last one would probably be the hardest to pull off in an RPG given that PCs could develop entirwly differently than you planned on, so the constant flashbacks would eventually become kind of nonsensical. An example of this is Final Fantasy XIII, where the game begins in what looks like a warzone with intermittent cutscenes that reveal how the main characters are tied to one another and what the true central conflict is about. Another would be Persona 5, where the game begins with the Protagonist escaping a heist and being captured by police, to be interrogated. It has minimal player interaction during the intro and only one fight before the player gets to really take control over their character, so you dont have to feel taken out of things by the devs guessing what personas you'd have to fight with. Over the course of the game, as you unlock more allies and defeat more bosses, the interview with the detective progresses, with her line of questioning giving the player forshadowing into where the plot is going.

For kicking off a sci-fi/cyberpunk campaign, I thought it would be cool if
The last campaign the gaming group was in was a fantasy MMO, and now the people who were playing characters (distinct from the real players in real life) in that virtual reality have all been contacted by a mysterious entity that wants them to run a mission in meatspace, and will pay them in whatever real or virtual currency they desire.

They all meet in a virtual tavern wearing the avatars they were wearing in the previous game. Character creation happens in character as they tell each other about their "real" offline identities. Once everyone has a functioning character sheet, they can start having encounters in meat-space where physical stats are necessary. If you want to get really meta, then have them hang onto their fantasy characters and have events in the MMO effect events in on campaign effect events in another.

>>55370822
>>55371332
>>55371348
>>55371368

tl;dr:
Which of the three examples you gave do you want? The third one is probably too hard to pull off in an RPG format, but the others could work. The first still requires a true beginning, but grabs you attention with action and adventure before laying out all the details. The second says "leave backstory on the character sheet, lets get to the action". It can be the easiest for a beginning group, but it also has the potential for complex storytelling/roleplay for expereinced players depending on how the GM sets the story up and what the players do with it.

>>55370822
the action starts with the characters LEAVING the tavern, and going on the quest they had decided beforehand, except the players don't know it because the action starts with the characters LEAVING the tavern, and going on the quest they had decided beforehand.

>>55370864
>party of adventurers fighting desperately in the middle of a horde of skeletons while a necromancer blasts a bolt of green lightning at them
>freeze frame
>Yep, that's you. You're probably wondering how you got into this mess

...

>The players then proceed to split off into all the individual dark corners of the tavern and shadowy-loner themselves away from the party.

I could see this happening.