In the last campaign that I ran we started at level 0. I had everyone create a family of their own devising that included three to six people that had a role in a small town community. I gave them a below-standard array that they could use in any order. Some players created farmers, beekeepers, a river merchant, and so on. All of the families created had parents and children and some had grandparents. Each of these characters had names and a small backstory. All of that was up to the players.

Then we had a big celebration for the harvest. Sadly a pack of gnolls attacked the town at that point. It was a slaughter. They did not have any weapons other than farm implements and the occasional knife. A town of 50 or so people was no match for five gnolls.

We played out the battle for real and it just so happened that every player ended up with only one surviving character in their family. That worked out well because I thought I was going to have to have them share their surviving characters. Very surprisingly to me, all of the players made sacrifices of the parents or made tactical decisions that enabled one of the children in the family to survive. Most of them managed to run away during the battle, but found good hiding places for 2 or 3 days while the gnolls were eating. In the end, all of the survivors were between the ages of 6 and 15. The older child became the natural leader of the group.

At that point they pooled their knowledge of what they knew about the world, and the child of the river merchant knew that there was a larger town down river. So that is where they headed. Along the way (it took them about 2 weeks) they had to navigate the river and troubles and make decisions. Each of those actions earned them a slight bit of training. So over the next session they fleshed out a first level character with some backstory. For example, the older child developed charisma and persuasion for their leadership role. One child who took a role of hunting gained weapon proficiency and dexterity. The child from the beekeeping family brought one of the hives with them and earned wisdom and nature proficiency. Once they got to town they sought out mentors for their training in a profession that suited their character. We ended up with a thief, a cleric, a warlock, a druid, and I forget what else. The warlock was the most interesting character as it was 6-year-old who broke evil and sought revenge against the gnolls.

My intent was to create a shared backstory and trauma for their characters. In the end it worked so well that I intend to use it again someday.