It’s getting nearer. We should be starting our new (last?) D&D 3.5 campaign next Friday night. Now one of the 5 players as already said he’d be missing, I so hope that no one else will be missing as I designed the 1st session based on the strength of the whole party. It’s not a big problem as I have at least one or two backup plans for this.
That being said, a campaign’s 1st session is one of the hardest to design as a DM. You want to present the players with a strong enough incentive for them to act as a team as soon as possible. I’m rather lucky because I have my player’s trust and they will not balk at some gentle Railroading to get things started.
Nevertheless the 1st session is critical. It needs to grab each player’s main interest in D&D and play on their preferences. I strongly believe it needs action for the players to react to instead of a passive situation where the players need to find the action themselves.
I also have done the Tavern scene to death in my 20 odd years of DMing. That’s why this week I’m going to do it In Media Res, i.e. the game will start with a combat, with the characters already in the action. Why are they here? What is the mission that brought them here? Who cares? You gotta survive this and worry about the rest later.
Also, it’s a great mechanistic approach to getting the feel for the character’s combat capabilities.
I’m really looking forward to have the characters meet the campaign’s bad guys!
Cheers!
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