7 Ways To Start A Campaign That Are NOT In A Tavern

0:20 The Adventurers. So picture this, You're all sitting in a tavern and a D and D campaign starts. I've been there, Yeah, we've all been there. Gym has already born. So today's episode, I want to break you guys out of the habit of having your characters meet in a tavern. Fun fact, you meet in a tavern was one of the working titles for this podcast. Long ar We're going with you, And the only reason we didn't go for it is I actually really liked the idea. Someone else use it before I did it, So that just shows how common this trope is, the trope of, like, you know, you don't know where to start your campaign, You're just gonna starting to tavern, and it makes sense.

1:00 You know, this is where the people of that town meet. If you're going to start your campaign with the characters not knowing each other, they might as well bump into each other at a place where everybody already goes. So it's not without merit. It's just it's too common not to say that's bad. Yeah, I know, Jim groaned, but it's only bad for Jim. As long as your campaign goes somewhere, it doesn't really matter. Where it starts, but it might as well start somewhere cool if you have the chance. So on today's episode, we came up with seven ways to start your campaign that are not in a tavern. Yeah yeah, yeah, I hate starting in tavern. I don't mind starting in taver like ending like taverns in the middle that kind of covers all our bases there. The air crackles with tension as our adventurers find themselves in the midst of a chaotic battle.

1:49 Iro's whizzing by and spells casting colorful lights against the night sky. They are already a team, pushed together by the urgent need to escape, pursuing enemies as fight for their lives, a mysterious figure of yours revealing that their fates are intertwined, setting the stage for a quest of epic proportions. The first method we have is called in medias rests, which is Latin for in the middle of stuff. The middle's in there somewhere, I don't really know Latin in it. Yeah, yeah, we're in this now, but it's when you start, like when in the middle of something huge happening. Combat is a great place to start this, but it doesn't have to combat could just be a kerfuffle of some sort. I think it's what in medius rest means. It's a in the middle of a kerfuffle. What's Latin for kerfuffle?

2:35 Follow that's plural. Oh, that's actually a pasta, I think a kerfuff. It's it's perfuffle, k yes, right, yeah, that's the yeah Latin. Yeah, that's pigline is into the midst of things, into the middle of a narrative without preamble. Yeah, so, Joe, actually a campaign that I think is still the campaign that we are in. I believe you kind of started us close to, if not approaching something like this somewhat. Yeah, we kind of did. We introduced you in groups. So I think one or two people were walking down the road having just met towards a certain city. Was a crossroads. We were coming from different yesh, yeah, exactly. You're all coming from different directions. And before we met each other, we met a bunch of bandits right kind of at that crossroom righth so, and it was using that skirmish to bring us together and step being like, hello, I'm an adventurer. Hello, I am also an adventurer. It's like, what crazy band is stuff going down? Right?

3:36 Yeah, yeah, I think so. Somebody a long time ago, I think when I first did as a DM for Anything, told me don't start in a tavern or do but you want to get to action right away. So the best thing you can do is the very first thing your characters should do together is a fight. Is fight something or someone. Well, you can do it in any sort of place where there's action going on. It can be in the middle of a fight, it can be a chase, and I mean you can even do it in a chase. It's one of those things where you know you're not entirely sure why you're being chased. You can sort of establish that as you go. But you can have it happen during like a dance, a formal ball or something like that. If you've got a campaign that's more like intrigue based or something, but kind of anything where rather than like you say, having a conversation between the characters, you take that conversation as red and you can either have them thrown together into this situation or you can just say, you know, you guys have been adventuring together for months already, and we're just going to start with a fight.

4:41 You know that you're in the middle of And one of the cool things about doing that that in medias res thing however you're doing it, is that rather than being the DM kind of monologuing at them, well the Prince is this guy, and you're here, and this is what's going on with the country, you can have it unfold as part of the action. The villains, you know, the bad guys saying stuff that you know, clues the characters in, you know, and by cluing the characters incluing and the players into what's going on as the action proceives. We call that bonus action expose. Yeah, yeah, a cast exposition at level three. Now, and you said, like starting with the chase, Like, the first thing I thought of was that movie Memento. One of the times when he wakes up and kind of funny because because that's the one I had in mind myself as well. One of my favorite parts of that movie. It's it's it's just it's a little almost a throwaway line. But he you know, if you're familiar with the movie, he his memories kind of work backwards. It's a it's a very strange movie, harder to describe. Just go watch it.

5:39 It's I think it still holds up. Am I still yeah, I think it's Nolan. It still holds up. It's a great Christian christ I haven't seen in a while. I'm just gonna assume it holds up because it was great. But there's a part where he where his memories kind of like click in again and he's like I was like, Okay, I'm chasing this guy, and then the guy shoots at him and goes, nope, he's chasing me. Yep, exactly. That's the first thing I thought of when you thought when you're going to do a medius rests chase scene. Yeah, I've definitely seen I don't know movies, TV shows start this way too. And the funny the thing I thought of was like you see your main character and they duck down and something smashes on the wall behind them. They're getting kicked out of their apartment, their house, a home, a bedroom by you know, a partner that would I could do it too. Yeah, it can be a jail break where you and a bunch of other people are you know, idea we're going to get their jail or whatever. But yes, yeah, yeah, that's a which which I think shades into one of the other one of the other ones on the list. But that's a way to do that, and you can kind of come one of the things about the Immedius resk, you can kind of combine it with many of the other things on this which is one of the things that's so cool. So that's a that's that's im Medius rest Just start kind of like in the middle of action, not necessarily combat action, and it's a great way to like force your players to get the real chummy REALI. A series of haunting dreams plague each character, providing glimpses into a shared destiny. As they awaken, they find themselves drawn to a small village where a seer reveals that their dreams are a

7:13 cosmic link between their fates. The dreams are prophetic, guiding them to uncover ancient secrets and find a rising darkness that threatens the very fabric of reality. Method number two is the dream sequence. Starting off the campaign with characters not even conscious is a bold move. But if they're having like vivid dreams and like now instead of just being like, oh, I want to be a great adventurer, it's like, no, I have to go here, and it brings the characters to a central location with a tied goal. Could be different goals, but tied somehow. And all they know is that they have to end up where the dreams tell them to go. It takes all the boxes. Yeah, we have a plot point. We have a shared plot point that gives every character a motivation. Is what I was actually looking for.

8:01 We have a character motivation and a shared purpose right off the bat that you didn't have to go to a tavern for. You also have a way to introduce them to each other before they've actually met, you know what I mean. They can show up in each other's dreams. And so when you appear at this place and like you show up there and you're you know, dragon born, palette and gear, and there's a half elf sorcerer standing there, like that half elf sorcer is not necessarily a stranger because you saw them in your dream either helping you out or you know, having information you needed or something like that. And so you're kind of lowering the barrier to the characters trusting each other have a reason to hang out together. I mean, not that you know ideally they should be doing that anyway, because we all understand that this is a you know, like a team sport that we're engaged in rooting rogue in the corner of the of the tavern to play along with this dragon Born. Now that we're not doing that today, why would I join fIF question? Well, because because of these nightmares you've had the last seven days that indicate the dragon boards the only thing that can help. So that also helps kind of bridge the gap between characters that, like on all accounts, probably would not be friends with each other. You know, they're the classic you know, l's versus Dwarves. It could be a reason why their friends were off the bat or dragon Born versus everybody, change lanes versus everybody. These are races in the game that are just generally not always welcome everywhere. So it explains the Motley Crew. Yes, yeah, so that's

9:35 the Yes. The dream sequence, a bustling city is a buzz with excitement as our characters gather at the departure point of a grand expedition into unexplored lands their mission to unveil the mysteries of a newly discovered continent rumored to hold ancient relics and untold treasures. As they venture into the unknown, they'll encounter challenges that test their metal and reveal a greater overarching question. Guests, this is the expedition departure. So we're starting off kind of with the quest already given, and they've already been briefed, and now they're just going I kind of this could be very cool for one shots, yeah, where you have a limited amount of time, and sometimes all that exposition in the beginning is just fluff. M Yeah, I got a bunch of teenagers that paid twenty bucks to play with me in the store. Let's skip all the skip all the lord dump that they're I'm just gonna hand them those that I already took if we need to. Here's what you know. Yeah, here's what you here's where you know, and and I have a separate list of things they don't know, and we can kind of just like get right into the actual quest.

10:41 And I feel like this is something that is probably not uncommon, just without really putting a label on it. Sure. Yeah, and I think that's where what's it called like a one sheet, one sheet, one page, one sheet, one sheeter you're talking about it? No, so so you can it seemed my very confused look yeah on the podcast, but it's it's there, it's there, it's you know, like a gazeteer. Oh oh oh okay, right, well that's Those are usually a little bit more in depth. But like a one sheet, one page, I have to look up the actual technical term for it. It just gives you all of the the main information that you need about your story or the story that you're taking part in, on one sheet. So yeah, I've never heard it being given a proper name. So the last thing about this expedition trope is that you don't have to have a lot of lore associated with it. You know, you can just say this island rose up out of the ocean mysteriously, you know, and it looks like it's dry, and there's an ancient castle on it, and we got to send somebody out there to go figure out what the heck is going on with it, and like that is literally all the characters know. So it's all the players need to know. This is a great starter if, like you said, for one shot, because you a couple of sentences, you know, why are you going to do this? You know, you can figure out why, but it's obviously because that things wasn't there before and now it is and we've got to figure out what's going on with it. That is sufficient motivation, you know, to get people off their asses and moving, and the players are going to learn

12:11 about it as the characters learn about it. You don't need a big info dump about what's going on, you know, with the competing merchant guilds and which one of them put up the money to send you on this expert right right now, that matters really, because the whole point of it is this, you know, we're all you know, we've been assembled. We're going to go do this cool thing into the unknown, and the point is that it's the unknown, and that's one of the things that lets you you know, get away without doing a big, big more dump and just get people right into the action. How I've handled this in and I'm even just thinking of what I just said before, like this is way more common but just maybe doesn't have a name associated to it. This is almost exclusively what I do with my store one shots. What I've done for those is I kind of just you know, went to name generator and found some helf girl name and made it so that this is always going to be their quest giver and because I get the same players showing up, even as different characters, but the same players keep showing up. And I say, okay, well you find And I don't have the notes on what her name was, but you know, lady Questgiver, you find. We open in her office and she says, okay, well today I received the distress call from my friend over at the museum and there's some disappearances and he wants to go check it out.

13:28 The characters receive letters bearing the wax seal of a distant relative or mentor that they never knew they had. Gathering at a mysterious estate, they learn of their shared ancestry and the responsibilities that come with it. A hidden legacy propels them into a journey of self discovery as they navigate through political intrigue, family secrets, and a world on the brink of chaos. Method number four is the inheritance or the legacy? It's the Star Wars approach. Is this a Star Wars approach? It might be, this is kind of a Star Wars approach. This is definitely the Baseball's approach. It without like less the Star Wars approach than almost like the I want to call it like the knives out approach or or something like that, like like where you all got Dickens is yes, exact expectations. Yeah, yeah, you have the letters and you have this like serious benefactor. I pretended to read that in high school.

14:20 Yeah, oh, you only pretended to. You should read that book. It's a great book. I'm not going to do that, all right. Watch the movie with fair Yeah, sure, that guy later the other guy Ethan Hawk god. But yeah, this is uh, this has a lot of like wiggle room too, because and even in this example, like it doesn't have to be all the same family. This could be you know, the the the mentor they don't that they never knew about, or you know, the the the watchful Protector or something like that, but we or the or it could be the mentor they did know about. I don't know whether you guys have any of you watched the the Godzilla show on Apple, the one that's told Monarch on our Legacy the whole driving behind that show.

15:03 Sorry spoiled, so so mild spoilers for anybody that hasn't seen Monarch yet. This is a thing that they get out of the way pretty quickly. Early in the show. But one of the driving things in that show is a woman whose dad has disappeared, and she goes looking for him and finds out he has a whole second family and she's got a half brother the same age, and you know, and that brings them together, and then together they're looking for the dad, and that's kind of what drives the whole narrative. And it's that kind of a thing where you know, maybe you know this, maybe you know this benefactor or whoever it is that's tying you together. Maybe you know about your relationship, maybe you don't, but that tie is what is going to keep the group together, even if they've never met each other before. You know, that's going to drive this story forward. Yeah.

15:50 I actually really like that too. And you're kind of right right along that monarch line. You're kind of uncovering new things like they may have been a mentor to you, maybe advisor to your father, mother or whoever to you, But does somebody else tell you everything right? Right? And to somebody else? Well, No, that was actually that was my that was my history teacher. What are you talking about? Yeah, you know, and right you're finding out new aspects of this person's personality. I love that. Yeah, I really like that. Hello Adventurers. Just stepping in here to remind you guys that we're actively looking for submissions for our Hello DMS episode that gets reported every month. Send us your burning D and D questions to Helloadventurers podcast at gmail dot com, or send us a voicemail by visiting helloadventurers podcast dot com slash voice. Don't forget to begin your message with Hello DMS.

16:44 You can't wait to get your questions and talk about them on the show. Send us your questions today. That's Helloadventurers podcast at gmail dot com. Poorly the voice going at helloadventurers podcast dot com slash voice. Now, let's get back to the show. Hailing from a renowned guild, each character is assigned a unique mission that intertwines with the others. Whether it's solving a citywide mystery, retrieving a powerful artifact, or eliminating a growing threat, the characters quickly realize that their individual tasks are thread woven into a larger tapestry of destiny. Me the number five is the guild assignments. So this is kind of what you were getting at before with some acquisitions and go Yeah, yes, as this is and this is similar to what I said about the benefactor from my one shots and actually another DM of friends with, actually DM Tony from D and D four H four, who also runs games at the same game stores me. He does this too, and his are even more connected than mine are. He does this as like you actually run the same character through all his one shots so they can like bring their items into the next one.

17:53 It's really well done, and he has it as like a central office. He kind of runs it like yeah, yeah, like the the Grizzled Cop on the day before retirement, it's like, all right, oh, here's what we got three things for you today. Any Less, the players pick which one shot they're going to run. These two are kind of easy and have decent gear, decent payoffs, and this one is the Red Guard and you're probably gonna lose half your players. Wanted poster. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I love that idea. Yeah, it's he's taking the wanted poster and just kind of you know, immersifying it more. Yeah, or what was the the Mandalorian. I think it was like, well, here's here it is. This one pays this. It's you know, at least the first episodes. Yeah, and then it became it's like, oh, what's this new planet? Oh, I can't leave until I do my question? Man, alright, p and piece Carl weathers Man. But yeah, this is this is another really cool one too, and not only for for one shot DMS, but even just as the campaign starter and having those tasks seem independent of each other and then finding ways to tie them all together down the road. That's your campaign arc, that's that's your that's that's that's late game stuff. Yeah, and it's kind of cool because this is like a campaign starter that is, you know, that you can use through the entire campaign. And I'm like, one of the things that I love about this that makes this ideal is if you've got any kind of what I would think of as like an open table situation where maybe you've got eight ten players that join you when they can, and at any given time, you've

19:26 got like, you know, five at the table, six at the table, something like that, You've got people that rotate in and out. You know, maybe somebody works every other weekend and they can only make every other session or something like that. This is the ideal setup for that because you can have stuff that you know the characters, the players that are there all the time. You can have a little overarching thing that ties them in together. But it doesn't exclude people that can only show up occasionally, or if you miss a session, it's not gonna you know, You're not like in the middle of the under dark somewhere where it makes no sense that you don't show up for a little while, especially if you can do these if you're good enough so that you can set it up so that you can do some version of done in one with every session. And this is great for being able to rotate people in and out that I love it for that reason.

20:12 Yeah, and then we know that one of the worst things, one of the hardest parts about playing a tabletop role playing game as you get into your thirties and beyond is getting any number of adults on we know just from this podcast, right, getting a schedule where it's like, hey, when are we all available for a couple of hours to do something that we like, you're just getting us three to not even play a game, right exactly, Yes, just so that is to your point, right, that's great, Like this person can't make it this week, like that, that's fine. Like they just they didn't want to take this this quest on. While we're on topic, thank you guys for recording today. Thank you, thank you for listening. But you can get whenever you want, so, you know, thanks. Anyway, this is actually very cool for you for the exact reason you just said. This is not only the campaign starter, but it's also your your your bullet points in the middle and your endpoint is gained all these to high together and then what happens when all those are are completed.

21:10 Also it also it also solves the problem of a particular kind of pain in the ass player. Sorry I shouldn't. I shouldn't say that, a particular kind of player that enjoys playing in a certain way, which is every three games they want to switch classes, right, They want to switch characters. They don't want to keep playing the same character through the whole campaign. And like, if you have a whole story that's built up around their backstory that includes them as part of the group and whatever, that can be vexing, right, But if it's just mission of the week every time, you know they can be you know, they can be their helf sourcer this week. They can play that till they get bored with it, and they can switch over to be in the you know whatever, the Goliath Barbarian, and it lets you know, if you've got a player or two like that, they can rotate through characters and it's not going to mess with the cohesion of the game because because of the way that you're running a mission based So you're saying this, this will help you run your campaign more episodic and a little less serial. Yeah, yeah, which is a candle keep mysteries and what's the other one? Tales from the Yawning Portal. Right, it's like supposed to be one shots and that's essentially that's what this is again, acquisitions incorporated.

22:18 Right, It's like, yeah, it'll feel more like a TV show than like an epic fantasy novel, which I'm totally fine. Which is the Holy Room way to run a game. I'm watching Never Winter five zero, sure, oh god, I Never Winter Yes to be Forgotten Realms five, I mean, oh no, I haven't heard about that shows who's on it? That's is the guilt assignments that this is one of my favorites. Amid the vibrant festivities of a grand city celebration, a sudden disturbance disrupts the joyous atmosphere. The characters, initially strangers, find themselves thrust into a situation that demands their intervention. As they work together to restore order, they uncover a sinister plot that extends beyond the festivities, launching them into an epic adventure. This is the festival or celebration. I love starting games or even just like this is good good for midgame stuff too, but like, but for today, we're talking about starting games at a town festival. This has a lot of built in lore and info dump disguised as just describing a particular festival and why the town is doing this. And this is a little less character lord dump and more world lord dump. And it's a fantastic way to just kind of like I like the analogy of hiding the pills and the cheese, where like you give your players want the cheese, but they gotta take their pills.

23:48 So this is like kind of just disguising your your lord dump fantasy hospital that is such a dog owner. I was gonna say that with children, it's like putting in the medicine in the apple sauce. Or my my music teacher always told me was it's putting cheese on the broccoli. Yeah, there you go where like it's like I'm gonna teach you this cool song you want to learn. But this song really kind of highlights the next lesson that we're gonna heart viol for a couple of months. And it's exactly why I do it, my students do. I just never called it something fun. You also have cheese on broccoli, cheese on literally anything? Yeah? Do you have cheese on different cheese? Hm? Greatly? Yeah to the festival, Jim, Have you had any fun festivals in your in your games? So I ran a campaign online a few years ago where we had we were running what we call a West Marches campaign, right, which is one of these kind of campaigns that takes place in an area that various d ms share running the games and players can move their characters back and forth between the different games and stuff like that. And it was in this It was in this village that was like on the edge of like a like like a big marsh, and their whole thing was eels. So they had the annual Eel Extravaganza. So it was this annual festival where like the Harvest of all the eels comes in, and so there were you know, there were games and like eel eating contests and cooking contests and stuff like that. One of the things I love about this as a starter is that it is absolutely of the ones we have

25:22 talked about the best way to bring new players in because you can you can introduce the rules in a kind of low stakes way. You know, if you have somebody's first strength check be you know, they have to bang the hammer into the thing that tries to ring the bell, right, you can have their first des check b running up, you know, a sack race with somebody else, and so you can kind of slowly introduce new players to how the game works, how the rules work, how initiative works, all that kind of stuff without your throwing them into a combat and they're worried that they're going to get sh just because they don't know the game, and it helps them find it helps love about this and it helps them find that that information. Right, So not only like oh, they get to do this stuff and learn kind of how it works, but they now they know where to find it on the character sheet, which Jason and I just played a one shot a week or two ago with a group of players that were all different, very mixed yeah, mixed table, all different experience levels. And that was the newer players. We're definitely like what where is this? Like Yeah, And they had a little bit of trouble because they, in their defense, I used non standard character sheets and and we were at a brewery, and we're at a brewery and we're drinking a lot. One of the other things I love about this approach, though, that's that is a little different from the others, is that very explicitly it sets you up to have the first thing that the players are doing be too. As part of all

26:52 of this, make friends right, find allies, helpful NPCs that aren't just quest givers. But this is where like you can you know, where you can meet a friendly fisherman who has a boat that can take you over to the island. Right, that can then be calm and ongoing NPC and stuff like that. This is a town wide festival. The whole town's gonna be there, And especially if you know you've got players that are a little more interested in story and narrative and kind of having fun, it's it's a great start to kind of show those players that you're going to engage with that stuff that they're interested in as well as just you know, having throwdowns with you know, with goblins and stuff. Yeah, and as GM, I think it probably gives you some insight into who those players are too, right, Like, it's fun for them, but it's also going to give you an insight to what your players find interest. So if they're sign ups for these things, and one signs up for you know, the sack races or the arm wrestling competition, and one signs up for the maybe there's a tournament, right, the fighting tournament yep, then with blunted weapons, of course, at least one of them will line up for the drinking on test, how constitution roles, and you know, maybe levels of exhaustion. So I ran a couple of one shots using exactly this. One was of my own making.

28:10 One was from a book, and the book one did have side games, and it had a couple of examples for mechanics on those side games. I think one was a like an ax storm competition. I think the other one was like like a strength based thing. I can't remember sop my head, but some players were like all about doing all of them. Some players only want to do things that their characters were probably going to be good at. Even before they knew what the mechanics were, they kind of guessed and at least two of the players just stood back and watched. And I try to make it quick so that those players can get can get back into it, or I let them have their little like shopping excursion while the other ones were doing that, and like in between rounds that would cut back to them and like say, hey, you're at this merchant. What do you say?

28:51 Uh? Yeah, For some inexplicable reason, there are players that enjoy shopping in these games. And you know, yeah, those are psychopaths and we don't make friends of sense to me, but we try to accommodate everybody. So now the other one that this this was the game that I created, and this was a game designed specifically to teach brand new players how to play. And that's what. Yeah, And so I I made the whole thing a day camp for it was it was it was adventurer camp. And they're being dropped off by their parents and putting into the put into the care of the the halfling scout master, and I made him super annoying, and I was like okay, campers and just said everything was like I mean, but he was he was awful. I loved him in front of Wisconsin.

29:34 Yeah, pretty much. So I I threw together these like the starting strength challenges, and I threw like a random puzzle in there. And then on their way back to the lodge to get their juice boxes and their lunch snacks, the camp counselor finds himself in a net trap and then a bunch of goblins attacked them as they did so that this this did a couple of things. One, it took the camp counselor out of the equation for combat because he could not himself out of the trap, and I rolled to see if he can get out of it, but it was behind the screen. He was kidding up. It fudged. It let them have actual stakes because these gobblins were after their their juice boxes. And it let the camp counselors stay in the combat so he can yell suggestions if I needed to. But like you said before, the having their first couple of roles be very like, you know, not not life threatening roles, and your your strength check can just be you know, whether or not you're knocking the other player off of the ortho logue and like a little fun games and now they understand how checks work, and we roll initiative for for the sack I think there was a literal sack race that we roll initiative for that. Now they understand how it turns work. And then they say, hey, cool, now you understand.

30:42 Also, now I'm gonna try to kill you. It's for real. Yes, that's the festival. Each character receives a cryptic invitation to a remote location where they encounter a gathering of individuals with extraordinary abilities. A mysterious benefactor reveals that are chosen to undertake a quest that transcends the boundaries of reality. The characters linked by fate embark on a journey through realms unknown, facing challenges that will test their strengths and unravel the mysteries of their existence. My last one on the list is the Mysterious Invitation. I would call this the House Unhaunted Hill approach. This is the start of a lot of movies, a lot of mystery books. Yeah, this is the This is basically clue.

31:27 That is all we know is that the way we were brought here for something, and this is this is cool for a mystery campaign, And Jim, I know you want to you want to lead us on the mysteries episode, so we'll do that on a different episode. Yes, Yeah, we're definitely gonna talk about mysteries and mysteries fun to pull off, and it's kind of difficult to pull off in this game, but I've seen some excellent ones. Very difficult. I actually want to hear an excellent mystery actual play. Nat Pod did a four or five episode arc that we is hysterical might be one of their funniest ones yet and and actually really good mysteries. Check that one out too. Bia. Have you guys ever tried the mysterious Invitation? No, it's a little good, Like there's not enough going on to be interesting to me. Like, if it's going to be the mysterious Invitation, I'm either going to do that as a one shot or it's got to kind of expand into something more compelling pretty quickly. Because it's there. You know, there's not a lot of there's not a lot of meat on that particular bone.

32:30 It's a it's a contrivance, right, It's it's a way to throw people into the same space, which can work if you're you know, if you're in a hurry or something like that. But it's it's probably my least favorite of these starters, I think in a vacuum, I absolutely agree it needs something to tie it together, which is why I'm said specifically for mysteries, this is a great reason to have them all there, and have them all there for different reasons that they may not discuss with each other. And bonus points if you get all your player's addresses and actually send them invitations. Absolutely I love that. But yeah, it's it. It creates a point for you to tie all the backstories together. I think that's really really important throughout all these. Yeah, right, I think planning and getting your players buy in from the beginning on backstory is really important because you're gonna, i think on most of these, at least six out of the seven, you're going to need that that work done beforehand. Yeah, and if you if you know that you're going to start the game with one of these, you know, have that in mind. You don't have to tell them, but you have that in mind when you're when you are around for your portion of helping with character creation, Like if they come they can have their character ideas.

33:43 Then when you're helping put together backstory, which should be a collaborative effort. Yeah, that's where session zero comes in. Yes, and this is the kind of thing we're like, Okay, well your character knows this, this, this and has done this in the past. The invitation that you got says this, right know, and you kind of like imply it's like this is yours. Whether you share this or not, it's up to you. But we talked about we talked about the knives out approach, Jim. This is the glass onion approaches. I haven't seen either one. Oh you should. I heard it. I heard It's great. They're mysteries. But yeah, so that is seven ways to start your campaign that is not in a tavern. Taverns are cool for getting people together. They're going to be there together anyway. And I'm not saying don't start your game in a tavern.

34:29 I'm saying, you know, maybe think outside, think outside. The tavern certainly gave me some ideas, and I'd just like to add too, You're gonna get to a tavern in your campaign at some point. It's always there. You're gonna be, you know, lousy on taverns, I mean, and and you can combine many of these with a tavern. You can set them in a tavern. You can start in medias res in the middle of a bar brawl, right, which I have played that was awesome exactly. You can you can have a mysterious dream that has everybody going to this you know, remote mountain tavern. You know, like like that that squats over the you know, the top of you know, the top of some caves or something like that. Isn't that The whole point of Tails of the Yawning Portal is that that's a bar that sits on top of it, like sits on top of Yeah, yeah, exactly. And there's all different kinds of adventures you can go in. We had a thing in a game I played where there was this region of the city that had been like taken over by this evil druid. So it was this just like nasty, mystical, overgrown forest that they just kind of walled off, and there was a bar called the Horned Gate, and you know, there was a gate that like you walked out of the back of the bar and essentially you kind of sort of crossed into the fay and there was a great big odds board, so that like whenever people were peering up to go on an adventure, the bets

36:00 would start and you could bet on yourself whether you came back and stuff like that. That's great and that was really fun, you know, and that that's a way you could do like a you know, kind of something more like a mission based game that proceeds from a portal where everybody, you know. The whole point is, you start the day in the portal, you go out, you do your thing, and when you come back, it's staggering back into the portal, all beaten and bloodied and you know, ready to spend whatever it is that you got on your adventure. Yeah, and so this whole thing is not to say that taverns are bad. It's just a trope. Tropes don't become tropes because they're bad. They're usually very good. It's just just think outside the box. There's a couple of different ways you can start your game. Otherwise we'll just recap those seven ways to not start in a tavern. It's one Inmediate's Rests two, dream Sequence three is the expedition Departure four, Inheritance or Legacy five gild assignments, six festival or celebration or seven the mist serious invitation. So go start your game somewhere fun and if it happens to be a tavern, I won't stop yet. I think it's gonna do it. For today. I'm Jason Botizo here with Joe McCall and Jim Crocker. This has been Hello adventurers. Our music is by an experier, artwork is by Kristen Broderick, and our listener is by you.

37:07 Thanks so much for that. Until next time, goodbye adventurers.