How do you start a campaign?

My campaigns tend to be pretty specific. My favorite so far is
>you're on a ship transporting cargo across a narrow sea and are being boarded by pirates. Player A, B and C are on the cargo ship. Player D, you're enroute to boarding.

>>55373248
>You all get anonymous letters from someone with proof of embarrassing/dangerous secrets from your past, plus a time and a place for a blackmail meeting
>showing up to the meeting, you all encounter each other, plus a corpse with a knife in his back

I start a campaign by running 3 self-contained adventures to make sure everyone has stable schedules and to put down some groundwork.

>>55373422
Man, I love Clue.

I'm starting my homebrew campaign with the party watching the yearly tournament.

You meet inside John.

I'm hoping to start a Starfinder campaign shortly. I'd like some feedback/criticism on my opening.

>Each PC starts on Absalom Station, but independent of one another.
>They each, individually and apparently coincidentally, are witness to a different Android committing suicide in public.
>Each PC is given opportunity to finish their day after the incident in anyway they like.
>The next day, each PC is ordered by authority to make a witness statement, in person, at an investigative council.
>The PCs meet for the first time at said council.

Please respond.

do what good old Martin does.

You are responding to someone else, must make a choice from said response. The world does the same. Then continue that, raising stakes and adding in twists and turns and allowing people to pay for their mistakes until the game ends and everyone is sated or dead.

Every narrative action has an equal and opposite reaction. As DM I make the first action, as players you must respond, even if said response is to do nothing and fuck off to the woods. If a shady contact calls you to meet with him and you don't then thats a good a start as 'we meet all our friends in a tavern'.

Side note, if everyone but you shows up to the thing its obvious were the story is going, so make a new character or get with the program. I also have a lovely door you are free to pass through to the wonderful outdoors.

Yes I am a railroading asshole, if more people have fun getting involved with a cultist then fucking off into the woods then we are going to do that. We got limited time, we ain't doing both(unless we can seamlessly weave them together of course).

>>55373248
I'm curious in all three cases, what happens next, how do you "give them" the quest?