Yes, like with a good speech,a solid book is really important. Starting with action or starting with something unexpected keeps them coming back for more.

I don't do it every time, but often I like to try to end a session with a cliffhanger if possible.  Have to wait a week,but the anticipation can work in your favor.

Quote from: James Gillen;813392"You are on the highway, several miles outside of Barstow, when the drugs begin to take hold..."

I did that.

Quote from: RPGPundit;814424I did that.

I am not surprised.

jg

Quote from: James Gillen;814480I am not surprised.

jg

"bat country" is an encounter area in a surprising number of my RPG settings.

For me, the best intro has always been to have the PCs engaged in combat as soon as they're rolled up:

"You are on a ship that has come under attack"

"The town crier announces that the gates are closed as the town/city/castle is now under siege"

No need for introductions or exposition until after the initial action is resolved. Why they're being attacked can be figured out later.

In D&D, I've had the PCs standing outside a burning tavern, usually as a result of a bar fight gone out of control. At the very least they try and get their stories straight before the watch comes and arrests them.

In Star Wars, I like the Starfall opening. Your ship is broken, adrift, and rapidly falling out of orbit. Go!

I started a Stormbringer campaign with the PCs crucified in Pan Tang...then rescued by Yyrkoon, Elric's insane cousin, who sent them on a quest to stop Elric from destroying the world.

...they did not succeed...

Our latest actually did work out pretty well.

Setting: The cabin of Lawyer, former hero of the Border Wars turned Ranger. In attendance, his human smith friend, and the Elven Druid Xanth. Riders belonging to Lawyer's old unit come down the path, among them, Princess Audra Coogan, Lawyer's childhood friend and old flame (doomed relationship, him being a commoner, and she vowing never to marry). Audra meets privately with Lawyer to give him back his promise ring from their childhood days, and to invite him to her wedding (which, she explains, she is being forced into, for her family's sake). Audra stretched the invitation to include "the elf, and any of your other 'unusual' friends," basically asking Lawyer to bring along the other players (demi-humans all) to attend a wedding in a place where demi-humans are at the very best, faintly tolerated, as her form of protest over the marriage. Lawyer accepts the invitation.

A few weeks later, off they go, only to find the Druid's enclave has been burnt to the ground in a small-adventure (possible metaplot thread) intended to unit the disparate crew. It's not exactly whiz-bang, but establishing the relationship (with the player's permission), makes for an interesting mix of roleplaying possibilities. The sight of his old unit, and Audra, brings back a passel of melancholy for the Ranger, but, still caring for his flame, he gathers the crew and off they go.

Now to make sure everyone else gets the spotlight somewhere...

My recently-finished ICONS campaign started with the PCs, all brand new mystery men, meeting each other when they thwarted a group of gangsters that were dressing up as little green spacemen to rob banks.

Years of real time later, the very last adventure of the campaign (set 10 game years later) had the very last team adventure of the Mystery Men, Inc. group stop a team of high-tech super-criminals (led by the infamous supervillain known as the Sky Pirate) that were pretending to be aliens in order to rob banks.

Aberrant: Players wake up in an armoured truck on their way to be euthanized by the covert Foundation agenda. Cue all hell breaking loose.

Red Shetland: PCs are in a tavern. Paul Kidd,s Miffy the Spider Sorceress walks in. Cue all hell breaking loose, a few recruitment drives for a pleasure cult, some PCs deciding fighting a giant cursed two-headed frog monster was safer, and no one being turned into lawn ornaments... that could be proven...

Same game: Lone PC wakes up in a cell with a bunch of kids (because she is short and was mistaken for one) imminent to be sacrificed to Death by a death cult. PC proceeds to tell a horrific story to the kids which causes them all to freak out which draws over a cultist who then gets clobbered. Cue lead cultist finding out the hard way why sacrificing people, especially kids, to Death is a really really poor career choice. Said leader was cursed by death into a skeleton that had to follow the surly little adventuress everywhere. She hung a lantern in its rib cage... Another adventurer draped a sheet over it. So you had this phantasmal glowing sight.