Old School RPGs : Need advice for great campaign beginnings

[Aghris]

@snfaulkner

You all awake in a hotel conference room full of conventioneers with almost total amnesia…you remember your name and skills, and nothing else…GO!

I used a similar method as a cold open and character generator concept. All characters are blank slates with amnesia, locked in cages in some dungeon. The way they approach the escape defines their character. Anyone wants to bend the bars using Strength? They get an 18 in STR. They improvise tools to pick the lock? They get +8 to Open Lock. They intimidate the guard? CHA 16, and Intimidate +4, etc.

I’m also a big fan of having the players create their own origin story. We play a quick game of Fiasco and have that be our session 0.

[nightshadea]

@Prof.Pepperwinkle

The best opening I’ve ever used involved all of the characters finding themselves trapped in a prison together. They each got to decide what crime they had been charged with, and whether or not they were guilty or not.

Then came the mandatory earthquake, destroying the exit to the above, freeing them from their cells, and opening the one-and-only passage into the Dungeon. From there on, it went swimmingly.

this was my dms favorite setting and it was usually the dwarfs or kenders fault that the brawl got started and the party was forced together dirty half dozen style …