I received a PS5 and Baldur’s Gate 3 as a gift from my family this past weekend. On Sunday morning, I built a character and was able to play for a couple of hours on Sunday evening. I’d like to share a few early thoughts and how they apply to running a campaign.

Let’s set aside the character builder for now. Yeah, yeah. It’s wonderful and absolutely pregnant with possibilities.

But what I want to address is the nature of the opening scenes.

One of the most remarkable characteristics of the Baldur’s Gate 3 prologue scenes is that, even though we start as a 1st-level nobody, we’re immediately thrust into epic-scale events. Our first moments as an adventurer occur in a setting and with events appropriate for 20th-level characters. Interplanar travel, massive living skyships, and githyanki warriors on red dragons are the domain of Tier 4: Masters of the World adventuring.

Gone is the trope of starting characters waking up destitute in a village with dirt floors and ignorant locals pulling straw in a cart. No more pest-control starter “missions” or trivial local fetch quests to contend with.

Instead, we get an immediate, close-up view of the epic scope of global events that the player character and their ragtag party members become directly involved in.

For storytellers, this approach offers valuable lessons. For starters, player characters—and indeed all characters—can be present for important and dangerous events in exotic settings without necessarily being in a position to engage in mortal combat with the most powerful entities involved. Many of us are so conditioned to framing our adventures by level and tier that this comes as an eye-opener. It opens up new vistas of possibility. And clearly, there’s plenty of room for plausibility. While world-changing events may be rare and statistically unlikely, remember: we are telling adventure stories here. High-level characters and monsters may be the major players, but many others are also present. Why not our hapless, 1st-level characters? And just like that, their destinies unfurl before them, giving them a sense of purpose and a place in the grand arc of historical events.

It’s not the only style or flavor that works, of course. But wow, BG3 delivers an epic and compelling campaign opening!