My Favorite Way To Start TTRPG Campaigns
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- Опубліковано 1 чер 2023
- In today's video I want to talk about my favourite way to start a TTRPG campaign, by using prologue sessions to help the players get used to their characters and the world.
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Oooh in my recent short running campaign I ran a "one shot" that ended up being 3 sessions that was meant to be a prologue. Really useful because the players had an introduction before they were thrown together in a prison cell. I was running out of the abyss and the intro was to do with how they got captured, it was cool to actually get them to hate the drow, that could've been lost if I just told them that they got captuerd by the drow "off screen".
I also love prolog sessions, but use them a little differently. We run these after 3-4 regular sessions with the group. I have found that my group shifts their character concepts a little as they start to play together as a group, and I generally think this is a good thing. After 2-3 sessions this is mostly resolved and a prolog session at this point provides a lot of depth and makes the characters more meaningful as we start getting into the main part of the campaign.
I really like this idea and want to try it in the future. I normally start out by just saying everyone knows each other.
Not exactly a prologue, but I did start my Frostmaiden campaign in a way I was proud of. The characters all found themselves locked in cells with random strangers (other party members), and all had splitting headaches and couldn’t recall how they got there. They all started working together to escape, eventually alerting the guards who then let them out of the drunk tank and told them to go close their tab at the tavern. The trip over gave them time to RP, and the shared experience brought them together naturally for the first quest hook at the tavern.
i was going to write an adventure path, and it starts with a prologue, and funny thing is, my plan was what you described, introduce one important NPC (the adventures main villain), and the end as soon as every important element had been introduced, and concluded (as much conclusion as the prologue would give you), the actual campain would happen several years after that prologue
Maybe it is because I had been shaped quite a bit by the World of Darkness games, but about two decades ago I used to run preludes before the proper chronicle. Usually to set the mood and to introduce themes, and I did that for about three scenes to reiterate in different ways to the character. But that was before I started to outright tell players what theme I am going for, and replaced preludes just with a session zero.
My last homebrew campaign was still in 5e before we switched to PF2e and I ran two prologue sessions. I ran two because there were four players and each paired up to run a duo session. One pair had military backgrounds and so they began in the king's army and their session consisted of a final mission before they were convinced to become deserters with a mysterious egg found during their mission. Their prologue session ended with them escaping soldiers that were hunting them by booking passage on a ship to the other side of the kingdom.
The other pair began in a college as one was a bard and the other was a rogue that wanted to become an artificer. They solved a mystery within the college and were then invited by the dean to join a secret society. They accepted and their first mission happened to be on the other side of the kingdom so they booked passage on a ship.
The first session with all four of them together was on the ship where they were attacked by sahuagin and learned the ship had a strange artifact on board that was to be delivered to the governing noble in the town they ended up at. From there, the followed or ignored plot hooks as they wished and traveled throughout the kingdom learning and growing as a team.
Until I discovered PF2e and we ended the campaign early so that we could switch. I'm not sure if that was a good idea considering my players were really invested in their characters, but the 5e system was just complete trash. We'll eventually start a new homebrew campaign in the same setting but beginning in a different region and a couple decades later. They'll still get to see the results of their previous characters actions and even get to find hints to their old characters backstories that we never got to conclude.
I do plan on doing prologue sessions to start the next campaign, though I now have seven players instead of only four and they have grown a lot as players so the characters should have even greater depth and backstory.
I've always thought solo prologues were a good idea, and I think the occasional solo session during a campaign can be useful too. Of course, in AD&D where I began, there weren't prologues or a Session Zero, but in the DMG, Gygax said to have the party start together, *having* *already* *met* in a tavern or the like, then gear up and head off on the adventure. I've often wondered how "you meet in a tavern" became a thing, but he did bring it up after all.
I did run a prologue session once, but I did not intend for it to be one.
The initial premise for the adventure was very simple: A mysterious letter arrives from an old acquaintance of the PCs, who has disappeared long ago, calling for help. I told my players about this person, why he left and when contact with him was lost (not about the help request), and let them decide how, where and when their characters got to meet this guy: were they relatives? a childhool friend? his teacher? I couldn't care less.
My plan was to start with a session 0 and then start the campaign with very quick flashbacks to the day said man left, then to the letters he wrote back from the places he visited (teasing them for the players who may want later visit them), the day his letters stopped coming and then fast-forwarding to the present, revealing the call for help.
It was suposed to just be an opportunity for the players to introduce their characters and what their pre-adventure life used to looked like, and for me to flesh out the world and do some forshadowing through the acquaintance's letters. It was supposed to be short, since I didn't want to force my players to roleplay through the mundane, adventure-less life their characters used to have at least 5 years before the adventure, I wanted to tell them what they needed to know, reveal the latest letter and send them out to go where they desire!
But we started the session later than planned, and it turns out the players didn't mind playing as a mundane residents of on a god-forsaken remote island town, so in the end the letter reveal was less of a start shot for the first session and more of a cliffhanger at the end of what became a prologue session.
In the end it was for the better, because even simply letting the players interact in-game 5 years before the adventure started meant that by the time the adventure actually started they weren't strangers with a common acquaintance like I thought they would be at first, but actual friends who felt like they really knew eachother for years and wanted to go on this adventure together, which was very nice. You could tell that the chemistry between the 5 PCs who were in the prologue was much, much better than between them and the 6th player who joined one session later, simply because they subconciously knew they knew eachother for many years, while the 6th player was basically a man-with-a-common-acquaintance I thought they all would be at first.
Cool idea. I know the gauntlet from DCC, but I've never thought about doing something similar in D&D. How do you think a prologue would fit together with the modern concept of a session 0?
I would do my prologue sessions after a session 0, which is more about setting expectations and figuring out more of the out of the game logistics of playing.
But taverns are iconic
Sounds like medias res
I dont think I ever started in a tavern.
1. They started as strangers in a vat, captured and inplanted by mindflayers and 20 years into the future.
2. Started in an airship crash in the middle of no-where, had to survive togheter in a frozen wilderness
3. Had a small induvidual sessions in a minor village. Dragons had been gone for hundreds of years, so ofcourse the first session was one of the last dragons erupting out of the mountainside destroying the village.
4. As employees for the magic itemshop and finding rare ingredients that would make a magical tattoo that increases their regeneration.