Every Good D&D Campaign starts... at a party?

You’ve decided to DM, maybe it’s your first time, maybe it’s the first time in a while, or maybe it’s your 7th campaign but the questions stumps you again. You’ve got your world, the villains, the plot, the intrigue…. but where do you start?

We all know the trope. It’s a staple of old school table top games. Where does your campaign start? A tavern of course! It’s fun a tavern is where you could meet all sorts of people, it can end in a brawl, you can highlight the ordinary folk and the more extravagant characters.

The issue with taverns though, is twofold. On the one hand, it gets boring fast. You enter the tavern, how do the PCs know each other? unclear. What are they doing here? uh… not sure, let’s just get some ale and see if something happens. Add to this the fact that your players don’t even know their own characters that well. Is Bloink the goblin going to have that french accent all game long? nobody knows yet. The other issue is that it’s a lot less obvious how a tavern could be made interesting. Yes, you could bring a servant of the villain to the tavern, yes you could highlight the central tension, yes you could start a fight, a lot of this can be easily forgotten in the moment and then you have to twist the story to explain why all these people were at this tavern.

In the D&D community starting in a tavern has therefore been seen as boring, mostly due to bad experiences with first time DMs who didn’t know how to make a tavern exciting. This is where I think a lot of this can be solved. You don’t need to break the wheel and start a campaign where no campaign has started before, just keep it simple, but exciting.

This is why I think every campaign should start at a party. It can be any party, a wedding, a birthday, even a funeral. (though keep it light-hearted, it’s the first session)

Intrigue and politics

why start at a party? because it solves all of the issues of a tavern and provides a myriad of ways for your players to interact with the story. Even in unexpected ways.

We start at a wedding? who disapproves of the match? Who is secretly still in love with the bride-to-be?

A funeral? How did he die? was it really natural causes? Who stood to gain by his fall?

A birthday? Perhaps the big cake is poisoned, or maybe somebody chokes on it? who gets blamed?

Who shows up uninvited? who was invited but didn’t show up?

You can keep going on and on. The intrigue is there, and can even be improvised on the spot. Have you ever gone to a party that didn’t have back talking, gossiping and drama?

Tone

The party also sets the tone. Is it a goofy party? Is it a special occasion but the town folk don’t feel like celebrating after all that’s happened. A party can very easily set the tone of the story, while still allowing the players to be silly, it’s a party after all.

Folk from around the land

A party also makes it very easy to have visitors from around the land. There will be local visitors, far-away visitors, random travellers who wanted to find out about the commotion, foreign dignitaries, etc. All can be interacted with, your players can pick and choose who to talk to, and you can quickly figure out what your players are more interested in, and lend into that, maybe slightly pivoting your campaign plot.

The Buzzkill

Not every party gets ruined, but this is a D&D campaign, so yes, something will go wrong. Maybe the distraction is the perfect distraction for the villain’s plans? Maybe this is the only time the king shows himself publicly? There’s countless opportunities for a party to go wrong, and when it does, your campaign has kicked off.

So in summary, I think everybody should start their D&D campaigns at a party, whatever party it is because:

• it allows you to skip the awkward party of starting in a tavern waiting for the plot to happen
• The nature of the party naturally brings intrigue and drama
• The party is a microcosm of the campaign world
• It’s easy to have folk who would under no other circumstance be where they are be ready to be interacted with
• And as all dramatic parties do, something will happen, and it will go horribly wrong