How do you guys normally start your campaigns? Classic tavern, or something unique each time?
I’ve been thinking of starting my next one with a surprise DMPC.
He’ll be mid-high level and over the top, inducting the players into his party because despite his power, the contract he has specifies it must be accepted by a party. He’ll want them to do nothing but stay out of his way. I’m thinking the contract will either be a bounty or goblin clearing task. The target either way will be in a small fort with only a rope bridge for access. He’ll tell them to stay with the horses, go off on his own and promptly have the bridge cut out from under him, dieing to the fall.
If the party want the payout, they’ll have to both get the contract from his corpse and then complete it on their own.
My setting has a town, kind of like the one at the entrance to the Grand Line in One Piece, where most people going on an adventure have to stop. The Townspeople there know adventurers do better in parties, so they guide any visitors to the local tavern to help them form groups, and so that they can get gossip about them, as nothing much else happens in this small mining town. The tavern is run by a former adventurer that tells them about the first choice they’re going to have to make in their journey, which path to take through the mountains.
So it’s not me that was pushing them together to make a party out of nowhere, it was nosy locals in setting. This also let me introduce a recurring rival character who refused to join their party because he’s a rich asshole.