I co-DMed a prison break in roll20 with FOV turned on. The other DM controlled the guard routes and had vision limited to the "fov cones" on each guard. We let the players know the general timing and gaps in advance (they'd been planning this for awhile) and they still barely made it out. It was a super fun set piece but it could have easily gone absolutely terribly.

Cold start: "You start in a tavern." Hot start: "You start in a tavern. It's on fire."

Matt's Voice says he's running DND, but his hair says he's leading the Rohirrim.

Some time I want to start a game with "Everybody ready to start? Cool! Roll for initiative."

Haha, who would start their PCs with amnesia, hahaha, in a prison, hahahahahaha, with no gear, hahahahahahahaahah **quietly slides campaign notes into bin**

“I read all of them” he says... well read this! Matt... you’re great thanks so much for ya know... stuff and things!

Literally the hottest start I've ever been in was in a free-fall situation. We were thrown out of an airship run by Bad Guys, the mage was tied and gagged and we were approaching the ground rapidly. Saved at the last minute by steering towards and pulling off the mage's gag so he could feather fall us to safety. After that we commandeered an airship to get our revenge on the Bad Guys over several months. We killed the Big Bad by dropping him out of his own airship.

"I don't take orders from dead men!" - Judge Easily the most epic one-liner from a PC I have ever heard.

If this discussion were being held in person: MC: "no gear and amnesia, I have no idea why this is so popu-" Like, 4 million people simultaneously: "Elder Scrolls. It's Elder Scrolls."

So the Hot Start video jumped out of the blue...as a hot start in and of itself? Hell yeah!

Oh you read ALL the comments? Well then... I hope you're well in these trying times, you wonderful person. Keep on keeping on!

"Let me know in the comments below. *I read all of them*" Matt, my dude, that cannot be healthy.

"You all grew up with the glorious fantasy and adventure of being war heroes - the drama and romance of a soldier come home. All of that has been washed away as you sit in the trench splattered in the gore, gib, and bone splinters of your Captain, who was just hit directly by a cannonball as he gave his rousing speech to inspire you to go over. Shell-shocked, you look at one another looking for any affirmation as to whether or not to continue over the edge. What do you do?"

My pirate themed D&D series starts with a shipwreck, gives an immediate goal of finding a new ship and throws them straight into the action

I was inspired by how you started the Chain of Acheron for how I started my current campaign. I conspired with one of the players after he built his actual character to instead play an NPC antagonist. He played this 5th level rogue masquerading amongst the party of 1st level PCs until the end of the first quest, when he flipped the switch and betrayed the party, taking them all out singlehandedly and stealing the powerful magic item at the end of the dungeon. Then his real character, a Cleric who had learned of this treacherous plot, arrived and awakened the group from their unconsciousness some hours later. The twist was SUPER effective, and really motivated the group afterwards for how much they hated this guy. Best start ever!

These are some fantastic ideas I intend to pilfer from liberally! One anecdote if i may, I ran the "Prison Break Start" pretty recently, my Qhoum Campaign opened with that setup, but not exactly the way you have it. I had the players make their characters, any which way they wanted to make them, and I told them to come up with a reason they might have been sold into slavery or otherwise imprisoned. The game began with them being shackled into a chain gang of twenty in a salt mine supervised by trustees. As soon as the trustees were out of earshot the players were informed by elder "We're breaking out, today, don't make us kill you (I didn't have to worry too much about the players opting to remain copper-mine slaves so I figured this was a safe bit of rail-roading)". The escape was already planed for them, there were a few key decision points the players had control over- do we rob the guards or don't we?, do we escape deeper into the mine or do we flee to the surface? etc. Overall it worked reasonably well, and I'd do it again better, knowing what I know now.

The campaign I'm running now starts the "standard" way: 1st lvl Players meet in a tavern at midsummer, having been hired to go into a dungeon and get a relic. However, when they remove the relic, everything goes black, and they wake up in a snowy field with no memory of how they got there. One is missing a finger, one has a letter informing him that he owes a favour to a crime boss, and one has the last surviving page of his otherwise blood-soaked journal, with a date on it a year and a half later than the day they met at the tavern. Now the only clues they have is a map with a marked city half-way across the continent.

"I feel confident something in this video has sparked an idea in your head, even if it has nothing to do with any of these examples." Oh, Matt, if you only knew. Next session will have the potential to be amazing.

"Don't do a prison break" *immediately inspires me to want to run a prison break*

Mine started in the antechamber of a gladiator pit. The grate lifted up and it was initiative. Later they escaped, but they all had their memories; they regained most of their gear, and they had an NPC helping them.

In my very first campaign we did a "Hot Start" that was designed as a tutorial for myself as GM and for the players. Having them start aboard a ship in cells they meet one of the early big bads whos judging them for there value. Few hints of player backgrounds.. "Shes the one the imps will pay a great deal for.. the rest can go to the Zygerrians". Having the ship come under attack offered the players a chance to escape while introducing a third party, the ship setting allowed me to make challenges that we're easy to plan for. The escape pod at the end required rolls.. on good rolls they went in the direction they wanted as they hurled towards the planet. On poor ones.. a random direction chosen by the dice. This worked great and allowed for some fantastic moments. Of course it was Star Wars but something similar could be done in D&D I have no doubt.

Adding a comment to help with the algorithm.

Look at us, spoilt for videos! I've been dwelling a lot on campaign openers recently, this was very idea inducing.

That is a majestic mane! One day, a great Noble may well turn up in my Campaign Setting. Lord Colville.

God I love that hair!

Always happy to see a new 'Running The Game' video. Thanks Matt!

The Amnesia Prison Break thing: It's Elder Scrolls. It's 100% Elder Scrolls.

"You wake up in prison. What do you do?" "I wrote Lawful Good on my sheet, so I guess I ask for a lawyer." Also the craziest hot start I've seen is that everyone starts in the tavern, then monsters burst in.

My most recent "hot start" was opening on the PC's small town being raided by gnolls, and them being captured. While being transported, in the same wagon with them, was a thief who unlocked their bindings and bought them some time to escape. Bit of a cutsene, but they had total freedom afterwards. Campaign just passed it's four month mark and going strong!

My favorite start is to start on the day of a festival. I do actually start it in a tavern, just so I have an excuse for all the characters are in the same room, but the first line of NPC dialogue is the barkeep telling them that he's closing down for the festival. They're welcome to come back to rent a room tonight, but everyone is going to be in the town square for the festival. There's fun stuff to do, people to meet, drinking, arm wrestling, axe throwing, etc. Then something terrible happens. Once a hag stole a baby, another time a necromancer riding a zombie blue dragon attacked. I scale the crisis to match the party's level.

One of my favorite starts of a campaign I've done was the "Commoner" prologue I did for one game that probably was the most fun and unique ways I've started a campaign. Each player were playing a homebrew Commoner class and they lived in ye olde typical village. Each Commoner had their own talents, the mechanics of the class sort of made the fact that you were a High Elf important because you could cast a cantrip. It shifted the priority of how the players approached their characters making class secondary and their Race and Backgrounds more prevalent. Suddenly positioning became much more important. The Dwarf could use heavy armor so he got a piece of chainmail and a shield and suddenly he was the tank. A Wild Boar was taken as seriously as a threat as a Dragon. And as they grew in power they grew more into the role of the heroes they would eventually become when they came face to face with a Bandit incursion. Probably my favorite way to start a campaign nowadays.

In my current campaign I started my players off on a train, sitting in the same compartment, and then had them notice bandits boarding the train, and I had this awesome combat on top of and through the train cars. It was really a blast

My favorite hot start is the one I used for my second ever campaign as a DM. The party starts as they are about to be hanged. They are adventurers, they already completed their first mission in a solo session zero I ran with each of them. They went to party afterwards, and met a person who offered them a drink. After that, they don't remember anything. The officer of the city guard is telling them that they confessed the omicide of a lieutenant of the guard and they have been sentence to death. They have to escape the hanging, make the city guard loose their tracks and work together as strangers to retrive their equipment and clear their names. Best start I've ever run. And the only time I've seen a wizard look for material components in a Pathfinder 1e game.

Posting a video 10 minutes after I wake up? Thanks for giving my *day* a “Hot Start”

I started a shadowrun game with the PC's, who _didn't_ know each other, stuck in classic people-tubes and being experimented on at the bottom of a secret underground lab, in an Aztechnology Z-Zone, in Tenochtitlan. It was epic. They started out quite a bit more powerful than normal characters, since they _needed_ that to survive that campaign introduction. Eventually they managed to track down the Aztech executive who's secret project that lab was and killed him. That was kind of the end of the campaign, four years later.

I just started my first ever campaign from a crazy one-shot that my players wanted me to turn into a campaign. Trying to make everything that I just wontonly threw into the one shot make some kind of sense has been a crazy but entertaining experience. Anyway, long story short now there is a cult of ancient lizard people reawakened from slumber that have opened a time-portal to the past from which dinosaurs are invading post-conquista fantasy Mexico... I'm very proud of it 😅 Would never have been able to pull it off without the great guidance from Matt!

My last one shot I started the players returning from slaying a dragon with random loot from the dragon. They get back to their keep, the guards are not there, and the portcullis open.

I absolutely LOVE the "Great Escape" idea! I was going say something along the lines of "I wish I could come up with great ideas like that," but I think I just need to run with my own ideas, stop hesitating. And if they do suck, I'll learn.

My first time DMing I ran a prison break intro. The party had all been captured by wannabe slavers. I went into it with no idea how they would escape, and I think maybe that was the best approach for a first time DM. I figured they would come up with something better than any escape plan I'd ever concoct on my own, and if it sounded plausible I could just try to find a way to make it work. They ended up using a charm spell to get the guard to be less vigilant and used some wire they found to pick the locks of their cells. They were pretty clever.

Started my favourite campaign in an arena with no explanation as to why they were there. just right to the action. Afterward learning they were competing for a spot in a guild and then came up with why each of them wanted to join.

I would love to try out something similar to the exploding-collar-suicide-mission-get-out-of-jail-free type of start because that seems very fun. Also the prison escape is really nice and the added 'X' NPC that tells the party of hidden weapons and booby traps is so creative and awesome! Thanks for the inspiration.

For a while, I was starting most of my games with the equivalent of "you're all traveling on the same road at the same time to the same place for your own reasons" and the first encounter was always the caravan of travelers either being attacked or coming across a group of innocent NPCs being attacked by minions of the big bad. (Or maybe just a danger created as a side effect of the big bad's efforts.) I always figured that it gave my players an easy encounter to get used to the new mechanics of a new character, it gave my players an opportunity to see how their characters might work together, and it gave them at least foreshadowing of the dangers to come in a way that they personally experienced and were affected by.

One of my friends ran a game where we started on a prison ship on our way to this prison island, and he'd prepared a murder mystery for us to solve on the ship. Buuut we instead tried to start a prison riot to cover an attempt to steal back our weapons, and what followed was one of the wildest, most chaotic sessions I've ever played that ended with the ship on fire and under attack by kua-toa, while the prisoners scrambled for one life boat and the guards scrambled for the other. I still feel kinda bad for trampling the dm's plan (it wasn't just me who started the riot, I'm not *that guy*, the whole party was in on the plan), but it also seemed to be the most logical outcome. We were prisoners of a theocratic police state that did not want to be on this prison ship, and cared more about getting off it than the fact that one of the guards we didn't like was killed. Major props to that dm though, he just took it in stride and rolled with the punches in a way that was still organized and narritively compelling and he was straight up improving it. One of the most memorable campaign openers in a long while.

The best DM I've ever played under had a brilliant start to help everyone introduce the flavour of their characters, we were on board a boat heading to Waterdeep trying to sneak an artifact into the city. A mist rolls in while we're still at sea and the boat is attacked by pirates - classic! BUT there was no roll for initiative, instead we go around the table and each person simply describes what their character does to aid the combat, and it just happened, each player got temporary narrative control and it made for a sweet way to describe and flavour your character, and it made it so combat didn't clog the introduction phase.

Matt I have two things to say: 1. At a college campus I interact with so many people playing planing and running D&D, but a problem that I see come up in many of the failed games is that of creating the world backwards. These new DMs have passions for large scale world building, myths and gods, but they do not enable their players to interact with the most developed and interesting parts of their worlds. In addition most of these games start at level 3. I think that a talk on the NEED for mechanics to speak to and through as much of the game as possible is needed. Heck, I would make a video if I had the means. 2. Going off the backwards world building, good ideas of the players should be given more weight. I once changed an entire encounter because one player thought an NPC might have been a doppelgänger. Stories bend to the authors’ ideas. There are many authors at one table; it is the DMs job to seek to engage with other ideas to give them weight through manifestation or dramatic subversion.

Matt: "Out of the Abyss is a good one to steal from" Me: Great, now I'm gonna go buy that module... :P

The first really sucessful game of D&D I ran (one where my players told me they had a blast) opened with the PC's having been shanghaied by pirates. Chained to oars and forced to row for their captors the PC start when a battle takes most of the guards away from the hold where they are kept, giving them their opportunity for freedom. Using invisablity the players tricked the remaining guard into gettting too close and jumped him. The PCS then convinced their fellow prisoners to revolt and led them above deck and won a three way battle between them and two seperate groups of pirates. I've run this hot start for three differnt groups of players entirely new to D&D and everytime the PC'S come up with creative ways to trick the guards using the features they were excited about in character creation. I ran that game after being inspired by one of Matt's first running the game videos around four years ago to get my friends together to play D&D. Just wanted to thank you for that push which has created a lot of joy in my life and in others.

One I have run and it's probably my favourite start to a campaign that I have participated in was the players being passengers of a trading ship convoy that gets attacked and eaten by a dragon turtle. This allows for the characters to have had an original destination with goals there in mind if they so choose, but it throws them right into the action, and makes even just getting to their original destination part of the campaign

I accidentally did this exact thing when I started Hoard of the Dragon Queen after my players finished Lost Mine of Phandelver.

I’m running my second ever prison break, and the first one I did went over well with my PCs. I think everything you’ve said about prison breaks is so true. PCs can handle not having gear, but give them clear path to escape and find their stuff. Then put challenges in between them and their goals. Don’t try and counter every thing they might come up with, write what you think the prison came up with as counter measures and leave it at that.

Love the vids Matt - I once started a campaign with all the PC's being part of the staff at a small keep, they had several choices of staff, and I gave them the map and list of others who lived and worked at the keep . First adventure was a massive world changing storm, they had to save the keep, save the staff and then find out what had occurred to 'save the land'. That campaign went on for years, and the PCs loved the hot start.

The best hot start I've ever been a part of was in a campaign based new beginnings. It started with all the players getting passage on the next caravan out of the capital city. Before getting to their destination however, the main npc who got them passage died defending the passengers and the survivors had to escape to a close by town as bandits raided the caravan

Jiminy Christmas! Matt's on the KZfaqs! Uh... That's all I got for the comment section. (Submitted to the KZfaq algorithm as a sacrifice for the glory of this channel)

The "hot start" as demonstrated brilliantly by The Chain very much inspired the start to my current longest-ever running campaign. In fact, now nearly two years later, I'm three days away from the finale of the action set up in the very first minutes of the campaign. Thanks for all the inspiration that you've given me and everyone else along the way - I would have never done it had you not shown me that it was possible!

One of my favorite sessions was when I Dm'd a WFRP (Warhammer Fantasy Role Play) game where they characters wake up in cells in a dungeon along with some Npcs, famished and dirty, and are brought to a feast in a gothic castle. They are then greeted by a pair of aristocratic vampires who gently explain than they're welcome to dine but the true dinner starts later, where as you already expect they are the main course. They have a few minutes to prepare and when the first horn is sound, the castle gates open and they may run though the dark Sylvanian forests as fast and far as they wish, but when the second horn is blown, the vampires begin their hunt. Was very fun to run and watch the players faces when they heard the hounds barking or female maniacal laughter and other ghoulish pressure setting sounds. Very fun.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="51">0:51</a>. DM: "You're falling." Players: "What?" DM: "You're falling. What do you do?"

I usually put my players on the precipice of danger. They're in a situation that's already happening, and their next actions will determine how the night will play out. The last time I did this, I put them in the brigg, and someone can get the key. And it actually worked! I didn't do any of that no character sheet or supplies either, so they were super engaged, right up to the point that they dueled the captain for control of the ship

The best hot start that I ever ran was actually my first campaign. I was introducing a lot of my family to tabletop RPGs. As it happens, it was a Prison Break. The party woke up in a bunch of cells, divided up, and each of them remembered having been ambushed as they were walking through the forest. None of them had their equipment but they all still have their bodies and abilities. One of them cast of Grease on the bars and that let some of them slipped through. In another cell, one of them was just strong and was able to break the wooden bar so they could Escape. As soon as they got out of their cells and got their equipment from a box in the corner of the room I had a pack of kobold come down the stairs to them. The party quickly realized they had been captured the used as sacrifices and food for these Cobalt. They had a blast fighting their way out of a Cobalt Temple, making sure to avoid the traps and dealing with Darkness. It was a great way for the party to feel Unified how to build camaraderie so that they could work as a team and it gave them ways to show their strengths and weaknesses

I've always started my campaigns in a tavern, as has my father before me. My last one, however, the local wizard got drunk, was very mad at the tavern owner, barged in and started the place on fire. We started the campaign by rolling initiative.

This video came at a perfect time for me! I had been planning a Hot Start campaign for my friends as part of a homebrew I've created. I'm running it as a multiple timeline type game and I'll try to elaborate.. I've had the party make a level 1 and a level 13 version of their characters. The intro will be an opening of their level 13 characters running through a burning city to confront demons and ending in a narrated battle with a Demon Lord. It'll be told as though its uncertain what happened in the finale with a "flash of light" type cutaway to an old sage telling their story to their future children. This is to show that their actions have lasting consequences, as many NPC's I introduce to the Sage may vanish if they die in the past. Once the narrative is set, they will begin as their level 1 selves, fighting off an encroaching Undead presence. They will be part of an emergency militia and given farming tools to defend a few buildings as they begin to tell their tale. Occasionally if I feel like they stagnate or I over/under tune an encounter, I can have the narrator chime in with, "As I recall..." and potentially give my newer players hints. Some of your narrative ideas will come in a lot of handy, and I thank you for every bit of knowledge you've given me!

Love so much that we’re seeing regular videos again. Thanks so much Matt! We love your enthusiasm and earnestness!

A fantastic one-shot hot start I ran multiple times (from a french d&d book, not sure if it exist in english) : the PCs are replicas/opposite-aligned clones of a party of thieves that broke into a temple and triggered an artefact creating the PCs. They are then tasked to piece together how they ended up here and ultimately confront their evil clones.

New to 5e (old 3.5 guy) so just ran LMoP for first time. Made an alternate opener where the characters are summoned to Gundren’s secret outpost in Neverwinter Wood. They encounter two spies fleeing the outpost who were, of course, also looking for gundren who had already left. Awesome start! Loved seeing the players figure out whose who and what to do. Worked great.

I think my favorite hot start that I ran, was also from fourth edition, each of the players would eventually be leaving from the town to go explore the dungeon. But before they met each other or the town, I ran each of them in a one on one mini adventure basically just a skirmish or two to get used to their abilities and get to feel awesome, a drow heretic warlock Who worships Corellon Running to the surface fleeing a Drider, and a squad of four other drow. An Eladrin sword mage, the first in 100 years to step from the Feywild, Comes upon hobgoblin slavers and fight them from the treetops before pouncing upon them teleporting and cutting them all down. And the dwarven barbarian prince having been gifted his family’s famous orc slaying axe and sent out into the world to prove himself a warrior cleaves through an army of orcs (mostly minions so he can show off area attacks easily) in a scene very inspired by the end of The Fellowship of the Ring movie. After I had ran each of these individual mini adventure/fights that also contained skill challenges, We found a time for the first game with everyone there And the three players paths each lead them to converge on the local settlement where they along with help from the town militia repelled the dark elf pursuers and welcomed their three new heroes PS This was also a great way to introduce players to fourth edition, and is amongst the reasons I will never understand all the hate and complaints I have heard about fourth. I agree with you on a lot of things Matt, and having really enjoyed fourth edition is one of them. neither I nor anyone I ever played it with seemed to have any bad experience with it 🤷🏻‍♂️

My best hot start was this: You are all prisoners for one reason or another, roll initiative, the airship that is transporting you is crashing

The best start I had for campaign was having Session 0.5. There were 6 players, 2 groups of 3 which were somehow related to each other. I was in a group of Goliaths that due to some circumstances left their tribe to explore the world. The other group were The Academics - noble, book smart characters. So Savages and Intellectuals. So each group had their own start of a short 2 hour adventure which ended with both parties meeting. There also was an NPC that joined the party of Intellectuals and once the NPC saw us - she started crying for help - tension! Best campaign start I ever had as a player. After that as a DM I try to create unique starting events on how the players meet while complementing their own created backstories. It gives more immersion and stronger relationship between the characters, so they have motivation to help each other and go on quests together.

One of my favorite starts was a classic tavern start, everyone was in the same room doing whatever they wanted, once they end describing their character/actions flaming torches break the windows and the door is blocked from the outside as the tavern is set ablaze with the players inside. This was even more interesting as a start since the setting was the Underdark, the players were monstrous races (not necessarily evil) and the tavern was set ablaze by a bunch of adventurers from the surface.

The "Group Patron" stuff in the new book is designed to make this sort of start a lot easier. I'm curious to read how they've sorted it out.

One of my favorite campaign openers started in a town known as "The Red Keep" It was originally a military outpost that eventually grew into a trading hub as the empire expanded. I told them all the immense amount of trade that goes on here, and that they are each here for their own reasons, giving them some examples of possible reasons, but allowing them to make their own. Then I told them they were all standing in the streets and square, and the entire city was on fire. What do you do?

My most recent hot start was for Tomb of Annihilation. The PCs were coming to Chult using an airship (the one already presented as having wrecked in the adventure), but the airship was being attacked by those flying dinosaur people. After having the airship crash into the jungle, the PCs had to rally the survivors of the wreckage and lead them back to civilization.

My best campaign start was an impromptu Hot Start campaign when two players were gone from the main campaign for a couple of weeks. I went into D&D Beyond and created five "sniper" PCs as part of recon in force group for a rich elf running a small island. The four players quickly negotiated which PCs they would take, and they tossed the extra out. Even the cleric was a crossbowman with stealth. My on-the-fly adventure was simple. The elf had about an hour's notice that pirates were going to land and do a smash and grab, and she directed the PCs to harras any pirates landing on the north shore to buy time and prevent a flanking maneuver. Well, "harras" turned out to be "wholesale slaughter" as the snipers picked off this CR +10 group one-by-one using every medieval gorilla tactic in the book. The players loved it. This is the only campaign I've run where the players avoid stand-up-fights at all costs. They will spend HOURS planning and sneaking here and there, capturing the occasional prisoner for interrogation and, in general, are sneaky little bastards. Indeed, their motto is, "Stand up fights are for bitches!" The elf has started to use them in an um, (cough) political capacity.

Matt your videoes are a bright point of my day. Thank you for that!

The hottest start: You start in the middle of the Endless Battlefield of Avernus. Jokes aside, I once had a campaign start with the group fleeing a town being burned by the BBEG's private army.

One of my favorite hot opens was mid-Orbital Drop for LANCER. Effectively narrating the high-octane rumbling and groaning and chaos of atmospheric entry, with going through a small montage of each of the characters - giving them a small showcase reel of what they do, how their characters get to look cool in little 'snapshots', and handing over control of the PCs just as they first laid eyes on each other; haggared, winded, and with the southern wall breaking down as combat began. They ran immediately to properly regroup, but the entire time the enemies were on their tail as they helped each other escape, giving them and the small unit of foot soldiers with them covering fire as the siege of the city began in full swing.

I'm currently involved in a game of 3.5 where my dm sat us all down, explained that we were hired as guards on a caravan headed for the country's capital city and immediately said "roll for initiative". The caravan we were on had been attacked by werewolves and it was essentially up to us to stop the attack. Honestly that was one of the best first sessions I've ever played.

Oh man, I haven't been keeping up with your channel for a while, love the hair. Good video too.

Oh man, I've been waiting for this one!

In one campaign, we started a few years after the end of the previous campaign that ended in basically a TPK. In the new campaign, we were all new characters that had died throughout history and were tasked by a council of archangels to destroy some evil entity whose armies started attacking in the middle of the first conversations. Definitely not as fast as the lizardfolk opening described, but starting as a character who was already dead and was being resurrected into a post-apocalyptic version of the previous campaign world was interesting.

I did a prison break in a FATE campaign I ran called Pirates of the Aether (custom setting - airship pirates a la Skies of Arcadia). The characters broke free on a prison transport, which justified the more lax security. Then, they released the other prisoners and assembled a crew out of them, and I allowed each player to name and describe one notable NPC who joined the crew. Then they fought through the guards, concluding in a duel with the commanding officer who went on to become a recurring antagonist, and then the players grabbed an impounded ship the prison transport was towing and escaped as the transport went down in flames to begin their career as pirates

The Birthright story gave me chills. Thank you for these marvelous ideas. I'm totally stealing all of them!

You've all gathered at a local inn, the inn is on fire, because of the bar fight, roll initiative.

my favorite start to a campaign that I've been a part of, the players failed to defend their town from an aarakocra raid, and then a ransom note shows up. so the players have to start by trekking to a meeting place to either buy back or rescue their captured families.

Ah. Hot start. I've done a few of these. My favorite was probably my first big Roll20 game. We started about two weeks before meeting on Discord. I allowed the players to introduce their characters and introduced the NPCs aboard their ships. The story was: they set sail from Luskan towards the Ten Towns of Icewind Dale (yes, I stole the intro of Icewind Dale II). They sail trough the Sea of Moving Ice, down the Shaengarne River except the characters weren't on one of the ships that made it to Targos. My players began by swimming through freezing cold waters (some even ditched some gear to make swimming easier) while their ship burned. Upon reaching the shore they then had to survive the goblins that were killing survivors. From there it spun into its own campaign, even reaching most of the Ten Towns, but always in the wake of, or before the arrival of, the protagonists party of IWD2.

Awesome, I was just trying to articulate this to my friend the other day. I couldn't marshall all of my thoughts on it, and it's nice to be able to hear a more coherent version, especially from a designer's point of view.

I love these videos. Even though I have never been a DM and I have only played a one-shot back in the 3.5 days. I never played again because I could never find a group... I hear about playing online, but I don't even know where to look.

Keep growing the hair for those of us who can't anymore! Loved the opening to the Chain, I thought you were a killer but a good one! Slay me at your leisure, Matt, please!

The hottest start I remember was when we started a new campaign of first level characters. We were all members or a traveling “circus”. It started with us finished packing up our “train” of wagons that was magically moved by our ringmaster/leader and moving on to the next town. In the middle of the first night while we were all sleeping, a werewolf began tearing through our train attacking everyone. As characters who were vaguely familiar with each other because of the size of this circus train, we were forced to fight it off and scare it away. Then, upon investing the damage, we found our leader dead and several other NPC subordinates of his missing, but seemingly injured because of the torn up rooms and blood everywhere, but several magical artifacts that we knew the ringmaster used for the circus and train missing. It was up to us to figure out what we were going to do next, and track the monster down.

Hey Matt, is there any way you could provide your videos as podcast as well? Would be really nice to listen to them on my way to work! Thanks for your work and of the whole team's!

Hot start deception: it seems like you are starting in a tavern, then as soon as the energy flags, giants attack the town. Great for getting a one shot moving. Never tried it for a longer campaign. Hot Start Failure: I started at the end of a duel with one of my players being the victorious winner of a pirate ship. I failed to get player buyin. They asked for a pirate game, I gave them an age of sail game, in which they were pirates. These are not the same. They weren’t interested in managing a crew or a ship, or planning piracy, they wanted a pirates of the Caribbean ride and the game collapsed. Most successful hot start? Actually Lost Mines of Phandelver, letting the players establish roughly who they are and how they know gundren out of character, and then starting with them bantering on the cart until then come across the remains of the goblin ambush. From the moment the realised that “Uncle Gundren” was the likely victim of the attack, they rushed to his rescue, ignoring every side quest. Matt, if you read this, I turned it into a podcast inspired by your Campaign Diaries. I wanted to say, thanks for all you do.

I recently started a campaign with a bunch of good friends and I don’t think I’ve ever been happier with how a session went. We started out on a smuggling ship going to some newly discovered islands in search of adventure. All the PCs booked themselves individually, so they have most of the voyage to get to know each other before a giant sea monster attacked their ship and they were all made unconscious by the creature’s sinister wail. That’s where we ended the session and everyone was hooked. They all played along so well with the running start too, so huge credit to all of them. The classic start in a tavern is great, but a hot drop right into the story gives you a lot of momentum and some good pressure for character moments.

My favourite start to a campaign was when I ran a game set in a magic school and started with all the players in detention. The whole first session was like The Breakfast Club with magic and it meant all the characters bonded before they set foot in a dungeon.

Here’s a joke for you, Matt (et al): did you hear about the zoo with only a dog in it? It was a shih tzu. Thanks for another great video

The only "prison break" hot start that I've had success with is an en media res á la MI-3... most of the PCs wake up in a dimly lit torture chamber; beaten, gagged, chained and hanging from the ceiling as "Dr. Jest" slaps one of the PCs into blurry consciousness, removes the gag, and demands the whereabouts of the Sword of Ursa. No matter how the PC responds, Dr. Jest flies into a rage and brutally executes a fellow PC (spoiler: the executed PC is a doppelganger). At that moment the significant other of the interrogated PC is led into the chamber by 2 leather masked mooks, with the clear intentions to break the PC by torturing her. Dr. Jest raises his surgical blade and.... cut... to 4 weeks earlier.

I love hot starts. I think the favorite one that I've done was for a 7th Sea campaign many years ago. We open, as we often do, with something blowing up. The characters are asleep when huge explosions wake them and cannonballs splinter through the walls of the galleon on which they've booked passage, missing them by inches. (Cue Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.) As the galleon on which they've booked passage from Avalon to the continent begins to sink, the heroes must band together and rally the other NPCs on the ship to fight, board, and capture the enemy pirate ship before they're all sent to the bottom. Upon succeeding, they must decide what to do with their new ship -- will they take up a life of piracy themselves?

Ran a pirate game off the cuff where the PC's woke up, together with the rest of the crew, chained in a row to the deck of a ship, the ship was listing and sinking. They could see that a fight had taken place and that they had probably fought and lost, but had no memory of the fight. Pirates had taken over the ship and theirs was bobbing beside it. Apparently before their memory was wiped they had agreed to join the pirates. If they refused now, they would go down with the ship. The players only needed to know their characters race and what they looked like. Skills and memories would return (read filled in) as they became part of the crew and the workings of the pirate life. The game rules were lite enough to allow this.

I called my Hot Start "the Harrowing". The characters were traveling to a newly acquired island as part of a crusade. The island and it's human inhabitants now reunited with their Imperial kin were beset by horrors from the darkest reaches of existence. Storms of ghosts would batter it's shoreline settlements, it's nobles had long ago turned to hedonistic vampires that fed upon their subjects, degenerate and deranged mages tinkered and toiled creating unspeakable abominations in their unrelenting curiosity, the very soil of the land was tainted so that the dead would never rest peacefully without great effort by their living relatives, worst yet one could not trust themselves as the curse of lycanthropy has run rampant; enslaving even the most pious folk to their beastial urges. And that is merely the surface of the fathomless evil which blights the isle. The PC's by their own doing ended up sailing to the island in separate vessels. I had established based on their background and class option which of three vessels the party members would arrive on. One was a military galley, another was luxury cruiser converted into a missionary transport for noble and ministerial delegates, and the last was a cargo ship loaded with commoners. Two PC's boarded the military galley and two boarded the cargo ship largely of their own devices as they were given options to attempt to board the others but were ignored. As the already arduous journey neared it's end as their destination even in the inclement weather was visible; disaster struck. Aboard the cargo vessel a increasingly mad passenger finally dropped it's disguise, the Deep Spawn revealing it's hideous form throws the passengers into a panic. Aboard the military vessel pelagic limbs grip the railings as harpoons spear hapless sailors before wrenching them into the murky depths. What occurred on the church vessel went unknown as none of the PC's were aboard however from the other vessels they could see magical lights illuminating enormous tendrils rising from the waters. PC's fight the intruders alongside sailors and soldiers only to reel in terror as the ships rocked from the wake of the Kraken rising it's head from the ocean. The already half mad captain of the cargo ship went full sail to ram the beast to no real avail. The cargo ship crashed against the kraken's hide as it tendrils broke the military galley in two. One of the PC's was lifted into the sky as he witnessed a flight of angels engaging the monstrosity and then a massive tendril bearing down on his head before darkness took him. The party would then awake on shore next to the ships wreckage and corpses of their crews and passengers. Corpses that soon began to stir to unlife.

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When I was getting into D&D, I had started my own campaign because my group's DM was going across the country for school, so naturally they wouldn't be available to DM. Now my she started my group in a Tavern, so naturally, I thought I needed to be different and had my party start off as "criminals" exiled from the Evil Empire to a wild continent. While I made some mistakes while DM'ing that campaign, starting the campaign like that is something I never regretted.

The Topaz Championship from L5R. The GM allowed our scorpion to rig the championship so our Kakita won the highest honor. Our Kakita and the scorpion faced off in the final duel and bc of the Roll and Keep system, when the Scorpion rightly beat the Kakita on the roll, but kept the dice to roll 1 under the TN, he ensured the Kakita took the championship and ensures the Kakita knew it. With the Kakita's appointment to emerald magistrate, he requested the Scorpion as his personal yojimbo. That was the best two sessions I've ever played in an RPG to date, and the start of the best campaign I ever took part in.

Matt i'm very angry!! you said you'd keep the best info at the beginning but the entire video was extremely important! SAD!