There's a reason 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons is considered one of the greatest role-🐈playing games of all time. There is an unbridled joy in experiencing꧟ a shared story among friends, whether it takes the form of a classic high fantasy adventure, a modern murder mystery noir, or any genre in between.
Regardless of the genre, though, every game of D&D has to start somewhere. Sometimes, it can be a challenge to find a good reason for your players to come together in the first place. Thankfully, there are an endless number of story hooks your Dungeon Master can come up with to start your adventure. A lot of thes🃏e pop up time and again in a variety of adventures, the perfect catalysts for a quest.
Updated April 24, 2023, by Lucas Olah: The more story hooks, the merrier. Though there already are many classic and useful ideas here - not to mention personally tested and approved - You still have a plethora of ways of starting the campaign. After all, everything is virtually possible in D&D and other TTRPGs, and the ideas here will hopefully help you with whatever creativity blocks you may be having. Use them as much as you feel like it, adapt them to your necessity, and make sure your players will have a good time.
15 🌠 ꧙ A Noble Looking For New Muscle
Money is a good way to motivate people, and it can be used in many ways to start an adventure - we'll even get deeper into that as we dive into this list. A simple beginning is to make a wealthy character in need of help. It can be a task their employees are not strong enough to handle or even something illegal that needs to be done in secret.
That also creates a powerful connection for the future, where a noble is a friend of the party. Or even a potential villain in case you want to double-cross them, just so you don't need to pay for their services. Or something more personal.
14 Anꦍ Important Person Is Missing
Someone important, either to the players' characters or the world itself, has disappeared. Their absence is felt by many and creates a lot of problems. Which means they need to be found as soon as possible. Luckily, you have the right people for the job. Or the next best thing.
This can be a contract they hear about or, as previously hinted, someone relevant to a character's backstory, turning their disappearance into a bigger deal for the players because extra drama is always welcome.
13 ♉ City Underও Attack
Nothing better than starting with intense action, and there are quite a few ways to do so. Complicating the life of a city is one of them, and that can be done in differ🎃ent ways. It can go from a simple group of Goblins who are a constant nuisance but n🍌ot enough to involve high authorities to a full-on siege that completely traps everyone inside it, and the players just happened to be there.
You can decide how much you're going to throw at the city depending on the initial level of your players; the higher the level, the more chaotic things can be. Or you can just create an intense siege for the level-one players to handle. Just be careful with potential TPKs.
12 They All Know A✃ Particular NPC Who Needs Help 🥂
This will require some minor intervention on your players' backstories, but it's a fun way to kickstart the story. Create a friendly NPC, give the players basic information about the character, and ask them to incorporate the character in their backstory.
With that done, have letters or magical messages from this NPC saying they need help. Not only you'll have a personal connection and a character who can grow and be meaningful to the party as the plot goes on, but the NPC bringing everyone together is a very organic way for them to meet one another.
11 A B💮ig Festival ⭕
Not everything needs to be overly dramatic. Some people just like to travel around, see the world and experience its cultures. Thus, if you want a lot of people in the same place, culminating in the players mee🌜ting one another, why not throw a big party?
An important celebration is a good reason for them to be in the same place, and then, you can start adding the drama by combining it with other hooks. Or just blow everything up, and it'll be overly dramatic again.
10 You're Approached By A Mysterious Stranger
The trope of the mysterious stranger is a classic for a reason. In this case, you essentially have a deus ex machina coming into the story, except instead of giving the characters an easy out, they're present to give your heroes a quest. They can offer something, be in danger. Whatever get your players' attention.
It makes for a simple and direct way to bring the heroes in for a new adventure by bringing the journey to the players instead of having them seek something out on their own. This NPC can be either an ally or an enemy, and they can also return t🗹o play a larger role in the future.
9 Prophecy
There's no force in D&D stronger than the power of fate: If destiny calls, it would be unwise for a fledgling adventurer to deny their calling. A prophecy can be a great start to a campaign, as they bring in players without needing much backstory to validate why these particular heroes belong on this adventure.
They also offer clues as to what may come in the future and can lay out how the𝄹 rest of the campaign unfolds from the very beginning. A prophecy serves as a be-all-end-all type of plot hook that is difficult for players to deny, and it provides a rich overall arc to a story.
8 🦹 🏅 You Find A Map
Speaking of laying out how the adventure will unfold, a map to untold treasures or an undiscovered city also works as a great opening to a campaign. Maybe the adventurers need to fill in the map with what they learn as they travel, like in Tomb of Annihilation, or maybe it's as simple as 'X marks the spot' for the party to find.
This is also a great way to lay out the geography of your world and offer a sense of scale to the adventure, with the potential to pique your players’ interest in where they may venture next. A simple device, but a hiꦿghly effective one.
7 The▨ Revenge Plot
The quest for revenge is a common plot hook that largely 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:depends on a character's backstory. In this case, an event prior to th﷽e start of the campaign brought your character or characters on a quest for vengeance against the offending NPC.
Bringing in something or someone from the party’s past is a great way to get the plot moving forward while also personally connecting the story with the players, such as The Briarwood Arc in Campaign One of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Critical Role🌱. This gives the players great incentive to accept the quest and move forward in the adventure.
6 💜 Trouble At 🍰Home
Similar to the Revenge Plot, this story hook largely has to do with the characters' backstories. In this case, rather than vengeance, the characters may be on the search to find out details about something that happened in their hometowns.
Perhaps there was a mysterious corruption or plague. Maybe there was a mysterious, tragic event or a political up🐭rising. Either way, this is another plot hook that will bring players in to resolve their backstory, which makes the adventure a personal quest as well.
