So I have been pretty active in the Reddit communities as of late, and I have seen a lot of questions across the major D&D subreddits around starting a campaign. This has got me thinking about what my favorite ways are, so I figured I would list it here for people to reference later. Just to be clear, these are just generic starting themes, I am not going to tell you how to run your campaign. My intent is to provide you with ideas on how to start your campaign off, or even get the creative juices flowing if you don’t yet have a campaign in mind. Now, with expectations properly set, here are my favorite campaign introductions I have run, watched, and experienced.

Prisoner Escape

In this campaign intro, the players’ characters begin as prisoners. They could have known each other before becoming prisoners, they could be complete strangers, or a little from column A and a little from column B. In the past I have created hooks for the players to choose ahead of time, without them knowing they start as prisoners. These hooks determine each players' positioning in the dungeon and the situation they are in when the first session starts. Here is an example of one of these hooks and the starting situation it ends up in:

Hook: You are married and are on your honeymoon

Starting Situation: (Starts in Cell A) Read: Your husband/wife was captured with you. As you wake up you hear screams. Looking to the cell to your right, you see him/her being dragged away by their heels by two Hobgoblins. They claw the floor, screaming out your name, you two lock eyes and in that moment his/her eyes show fear so devastating it infects even your heart. You know beyond a doubt you need to find her/him…(Character suffers the effect of fear when approached by a more than one goblin until a group has been overcome by the party)

I absolutely love the prison escape introduction as I think it provides great potential for story hooks, it is very good for setting a strong theme right off the bat and is very modular. As you can imagine, it is great at fitting into most campaign settings really well, especially an evil campaign.

Prisoner Escort

The prisoner escort is sort of the opposite of the Prisoner Escape from above. In this introduction, your players are hired to escort a very important prisoner to a high-security prison or to a key city to be executed (or something to that effect). The Prisoner can easily be the big bad evil guy or an important link to said big bad evil guy. Either way, this introduction is doomed, and the players are destined to fail. The players are knocked unconscious somehow and they come to discovering the prisoner is gone. It is from here that you as a DM will need to tie in your story. Maybe the players will now be considered part of the heist and will need to work to clear their name, or maybe they are fired and their names are mud until the players can prove their competency. Either way, you quickly establish a vendetta with the prisoner and your player characters.

A Call to Arms

The Call to Arms is a very simple campaign starter, but it can be hard from some to do right. In this intro your players are summoned to fight for some cause, a lot of times these get into full army battles. I would highly suggest if you start with this intro, that you need to not only establish a cause, but to give your players something more to do than just stand with hundreds of units and attack. Split the intro into three different paths that you players can choose from; reconnaissance, offense, and defense would be great examples. These can be fun little mini-games that your players can do that could have massive effects on the overall main battle. Let us say your forces are marching on an evil wizard's keep. Allow the players to choose from stealth, offense, and reconnaissance.

Stealth - The players would be tasked with sneaking in over the enemies walls and sabotaging the enemy defenses.

Offense - This could be part of the main offensive, storming that gates, if you will or it could be something like devising tactics for the offensive strike.

Reconnaissance - Send the players to search around the nearby countryside, maybe there is a secret escape tunnel that the players side can use as another front for their attack.

Remember in these situations variety and the ability to choose their own fate will be key to making this fun for your players.