I recently had the good fortune of playing D&D with one of my best buddies Kenzie and she did something that’s an old classic in storytelling: The Superhero Team Introduction. The individualized character introduction to a campaign provided each PC with their motivation, backstory, and an ally NPC.
Let’s imagine your campaign’s player characters to be each called to action in the middle of their mundane lives, brought together by a common goal. While in most cases you wouldn’t use the Bat Signal, you have a lot of potential options. I’m going to break it down for you to do this at your own table and maximize a homebrew game launch.
One-on-one scene setting.
Introduction of the boss or message.
Social encounter.
Repeat for each party member - THEN:
PCs first meeting.
The call to action.
If you’re a fan of Power Rangers or any superhero group movie you know that a good way to ground your PCs is to incorporate some of their backstory from the very beginning. Their mundane past before the hero’s journey. Give them plenty of opportunity to chat with an NPC from their backstory who enables this turn of events. Ground every character with some kind of community, family, or organization they’re loyal to.
Once they receive the word from their “boss” or a message with a summons, that is where the story begins. Try not to leave this off for too long, as going through your entire party will take some time.
Switch to the next party member and try to keep emphasizing the different backgrounds of the PCs. Once you’ve gone through them all - set the scene of them meeting one another just before the call to action.
“YOU ARE BROUGHT HERE TODAY TO VANQUISH THE DRAGON WHO HAS BEEN TERRORIZING THE LAND.”
With this method, I believe you can bypass most oversharing of the backstory up front from players - as you’ve given them a little treat to show it off in a short scene. Then they can focus on each other and stay on task for what the adventure is about.
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