“hey, I want to run a game about {theme, conflict} in {setting} using {rules system}. You want in?”

When you have enough interested players, do a “session 0”. Talk about what kind of game you’re aiming for (serious? Comedy? Deadly? Power fantasy?). Set lines and veils. You’re going to have a bad time if you’re aiming for tactical combat in a grim world, but two of your players want Loony Toons.

I highly recommend players make character concepts together. You should probably play “you all meet in a tavern” once or twice because that’s kind of a whole Thing, but that brings in a bunch of problems.

Read how Fate does it: https://fate-srd.com/fate-core/phase-trio . Maybe just read the whole section on starting a game there. A common property of good DMs is reading other sources and stealing from them.

Absolutely do not get super committed to any particular story beat. Do not expect the players to get captured, or for them to agree to a sea voyage. If you want the game to be about something like that, start there. Tell the players. You can absolutely pitch a game based on “you were all overcome by an orc raising party. You’ll start as prisoners planning an escape”. Do not play out them losing the fight.

Your players are probably not going to pay a lot of attention to your setting. This is doubly true if you unilaterally made it up. If you give players input into the setting details (see again how fate does it), they’ll be more invested and remember more. (Though some players hate having narrative agency, so watch out for that)

Interpretative dance.

Seriously though, think cinematically. Find a framing device for the adventure (a legend) and a mcguffin (the item that drives the story forward.) The first few times you try it, you may cringe but it’s a skill that gets better over time. Have fun with it.

I liked how the DM started things off on one campaign I played in

We agreed that we’d be an already established party so we could pretty much jump right into things and not have to do a whole “I’m putting together a team” thing the first session.

We had our characters mostly ready beforehand and gave the DM a brief overview of them. It was loosely set in the forgotten realms, so we were already pretty familiar with the setting, but if it was a home brewed setting all we probably would have really needed was a brief primer of the major factions and locations. Most of us weren’t tied to any major factions, or our ties were pretty loose.

For our session zero, he basically had us figure out how we knew the characters to the left and right of us while he pulled each of us off one by one to run through a quick little backstory roleplay to give us a couple personal plot hooks we could latch onto

For example, I was playing a fighter with a soldier background, I remember the guy next to me was playing a barbarian, so we decided that sometime in the past his tribe had tried to invade my city, hijinks ensued, and we had ended up stranded somewhere together and bonded, missed out on most of that war, and became friends.

And when the DM pulled me back, we ran a quick scenario from another conflict I’d been involved in against cultists of some kind where I’d been captured during the final battle, the enemy had attempted to turn me into some sort of living statue servant, but the spell was interrupted, leaving me with a stone fist. I was rescued, managed to be present when the big bad was defeated, and was counted as sort of a minor hero of that war.

Unfortunately that stone fist kind of ruined my plans of retiring quietly to be a farmer or something (hard to do farm tasks one-handed) so I turned to being an adventurer to make ends meet. Recruited my old barbarian buddy who brought another of his friends on-board etc.

And once we all had our backgrounds and how we know each other sorted out, we hopped into things.

I ended up being kind of a central part of what brought us into town at the start of the campaign- my old commanding officer was getting a promotion and had sent me an invite to the ceremony. Of course it didn’t go off without a hitch and the ceremony was interrupted by an assassination attempt, and evidence pointed to it being tied to the cult we thought was defeated in that previous conflict, but there were some other things dropped that tied into some of the other players’ backstories as well, and off we went.

I think that did a very good job of making us feel like we were part of the world and not just some murder hobos dropped into it to run rampant. We all had history with each other and in the setting, and it wasn’t just words on paper that no one else was really going to read, it gave us a chance to actually act out a bit of that backstory and sort of collaboratively figured out our place in the world before the campaign started.

“foolhardy”, not “fool hearted” smh

Anyway - different DMs have different styles. If your group is into extensive backstories, your startup session can incorporate that. Do the characters know each other because they’re all citizens of the starting town? or did they each respond to a town bulletin-board recruitment flyer and the recruiting event is their first meeting?

The classic Basic D&D module “Keep on the Borderlands” has characters arriving at the titular Keep because they’re the best and brightest of their home villages, sent to do a tour of duty in service to the Kingdom.

The classic AD&D module series “Scourge of the Slavelords” opens with characters breaking free of captivity in a slaver camp. Maybe they knew each other before being kidnapped, maybe not, it’s not really important to how the campaign plays out either way.

The best way i ever experienced was a DM running a number of one-to-one gaming sessions in parallel with each of the players in the group. I played my character for four or five wonderful afternoons before he met the first other member of the group, who also had a similar amount of sessions. While we all knew the other players, we agreed not to talk about our experience before our characters met.

We all had time to immerse in that world, build up the character and get a few levels, despite those sessions not really running a module - just good old improvised role playing and random encounters.

The last solo session involved a lot of telephone calls of the DM to the other characters player.

I once created a homebrew one shot for friends where I introduced their characters at separate parts of a fair. The ranger character was trying to win an archery contest. After that I had the healer help a child that fell to heal their scraped knee etc… This helped them role play a little bit and use their primary skills to get familiar with calculating rolls

Involve them in the world building! Play games like A Quiet Year to develop a map and history, Artifact to make legendary items and add history to the world, Deck of Worlds to make locations for the larger map, dieties, etc.

Lots of fun this way!

It’s helpful to collaborate the setting and world-building with the players. Not only does this allow them to create characters who are native to the setting, it also gives them agency and stakes in the story.

This will this save you time and effort, and make you a better DM.

In a tavern. Alcohol helps with breaking the ice.

What’s your entry point ? What is your world ? Give us a little more to think about it

I sit down with the players at Session 0 before anyone has rolled a character and set out the plotline and setting of the campaign, as well as major factions. Then, everyone rolls for who creates their character first. The first person does, based on the info given, and then the next person follows. The only rule I maintain is that all of the characters must be friendly and trusting of each other from the get go. I’ve had too many campaigns get derailed because someone wanted to be the guttersnipe and not trust anyone else in the party and then it just turns into a slog through trying to convince that one player that it’s OK to go along with the plan. Once the characters are rolled, I ask if there is a consensus as to who will be the default leader of the group. If there isn’t one, then I have them roll a CHA check, winner is the leader. It doesn’t have to stay that way, but it helps to keep the early game organized until players find their footing.

After all of that is taken care of, I’ll play through a quick one-shot intro to the campaign to make sure everyone is happy with their characters, then set up the hook for Session 1.

So, like do you mean… before the session starts (for example to get a feel if they’re into it or not)? or do you mean like, with the session underway?

Before the session starts, I generally just descibe the setting and vibe the campaign has. If it’s another person’s campaign (precanned from the source books or someone else’s,) I’ll tell them where it comes from.

if we have a new player, I’ll go into more detail there; specifically as part of the session zero with them; so that I’m getting a feel for what they like and if I need to change it up or add to it so they get something out of it.

Once the session begins, I’ll open up in a social setting- a bar, tavern or inn, maybe something like a temple hostel; where we can place the characters and let them meet each other. (especially if it’s the first time the characters are meeting.) this gives the players an opportunity to establish basic personality etc; while also letting me start getting into the worldbuilding.

I generally don’t do too much in the way of details on where things are located. I do have detailed encounters that i drop as they move about instead, “you come on a broken down wagon” type thing. (or a corpse. or just a little girl asking for help.)

this way you build out the map as you go; and you just focus on giving them an immersive world to explore and be little shits in. you want to nudge them, not shove them, and let them set the tone and passing. Sometimes, they just want to get drunk in a tavern, after all.

Build the world around the narrative unfolding, rather than trying to get them into some super detailed GRR Martin-esque world that they’re then just gonna go sit in a pub picking fights with the gnomes while the bard tries to bang everything in sight. You don’t have to make everything up on the fly, but don’t worry about a city they may never reach. have taverns and inns and farmyards and bridges ready to go, They don’t have to be totally unique, even. Have a list of names- people, streets, whatever- to drop as you need to. Precanned enough so that you can keep it fluid without sacrificing flexibility. (boss rooms, though, do require attention to detail, lol. or just things I want them to think is the boss room…)

Have a few partial ideas, and draw a quick map, draw some locations on it. Create a few npc (say 3) characters that you understand their purpose. Starting location has job postings or all NPCs know where to point you to find the postings. IF you can get the group to travel together to the first location then npc1 know step one of a quest you want to guide them towards with the promise of something interesting that the group may want.

Maybe it’s easier to picture it as a game of hidden ball/cups at first. If the locations on the map are vague enough or you NPCs vague enough no matter where the users go you can have said NPC that lived at the large house at the end of the hill, or caught walking from visiting so-and-so at the edge of town, the grocer, the salon. Pointing to whomever you wanted on your story.

Shit I had one quick set up I did where the starting point had 6 pictures of the inn keeper strung around the entrance room. Just for a chuckle I had each character meet the inn keeper to escape the storm where their characters would start off. All 6 inn keepers were actually sixtuplets and never mentioned their brothers also working there, but supplied different answers or bias. By the time they figured out the pictures on the wall matched there being sixtuplets all the members were working together to figure it out/figure out what they needed to do to successfully avoid arrest for 2 of the members killing 4 of the inn keepers because they thought they were continuously being lied to.

Basically just have fun. It’ll all work out.

Oh and create a few known to you creatures that plague the roads outside of towns, their numbers unknown, how wide spread they are, whatever.

“It was a dark and stormy night when all through the abbey not a creature was stirring, not even a wight. The axes were hung in the armory with care, in hopes that some hapless enemy soon would be there.”

Or something along those lines.

Actually, on the 14th of this month, I am starting a homebrew adventure for my Friday group.

How am I starting the adventure?

With a TPK of course.