Five First Sessions

First sessions are hard, mostly because there's nothing behind them yet. The people around the table are strangers with an evening to spend, and by the time they pack up they need a reason to stay together and an ending that points somewhere.

This book gives you five ways to start a campaign, and each one runs straight off its page. Every opening has a premise, a cold open, three scenes built as frames, and the people in it, each with a want and a tell you can read. Under the floorboards is the turn, along with a note on what session two inherits, and each one closes with a line called If They Do the Weird Thing.

The five fit different kinds of campaign. One is an inn that stays put and another is a sealed wagon on the move. There's a festival with a secret, a war that paid its soldiers in worthless scrip, and a tithe barn that goes under. Each names the campaign it starts, so you can pick by the game you'd like to be running six months from now.

Distances, dates and stat blocks all come from whatever game your table already plays, so there's no system to buy into.

WHAT'S INSIDE

• 5 complete campaign openings, one page each, dense enough to run from at the table.
• 15 NPCs with wants and readable tells, and 15 scenes built as frames for whatever the players do inside them.
• Each opening's turn, with the truth included, sized to grow into a campaign.
• Screen edition plus a plain-white printer-friendly edition, US Letter.
• All five openings as plain text for GM notes and VTT prep.
• Bookmarked PDF with no lock on it. System-agnostic. No rules text.

The people in these openings all want something, and The Sleeper's Tables Vol. I is a whole book of those wants. The Party Ledger keeps the record from session one on, and Five Final Sessions closes what this book opens. Either one works on its own.

We'll Pick Up Next Week, the free letter: sleepersartifice.substack.com