So you're in a bar... that's on fire.

You recoil at the smell of rot and decay, moments before hearing a piercing scream come from the alleyway. A woman, still wailing, bolts out of the ally with an army of zombie squirrels nibbling at her heels. A mass of the horde breaks from the pack and heads in your direction. What do you do?

Listening? Good. Whenever you start a table top game your first goal should be to grab the player's attention. The best way to go about this is by starting with some kind of explosion. Take a moment to think over your favorite (or namely my favorite) sci-fi and fantasy stories.

• Lord of the Rings: Okay. We've got some intro, blah b-... WAR. You get maybe 15 seconds of introduction before you're presented with a full blown massive CGI orgy of a war. And it serves a purpose too. The intro said Sauron was a bad guy, but that doesn't really mean anything, but humans and elves were fighting against him-- together. You have to be one evil bastard before humans and elves start having weird dreams about talking to each other. Getting them to fight side by side? Damn man.

• Star Wars: Words... words... aaaaaand massive space ship shooting lasers.
  

• Sleepless: (Charlie Huston book. Go read it) First three pages were an introduction to the current happenings, then someone exploded and things went from there.

Catching onto the pattern? Short introduction, followed by a very big story hook. Now here's the difference between a table top game and a normal narrative. Your players have likely spent time making their characters. Most rule sets have flavor text to help players understand not only the world their characters will be in, but the tone of the game. That's your introduction! The scrolling text in Star Wars? Well there it is. Your players are introduced to the basic ideas of the game before you even start. So you really don't need to spend more time going over things. Get right into it. Now, exceptions can occur if you have a particularly customized world, but even then you'll want to give most of that information at character creation.

You might be concerned about some of the gaming logistics. How do you introduce characters to each other? Why should they even interact? Or more generally, why are we sitting here? Well that's fine, but in my experience if you just put characters together they're unlikely to do the work for you. You'll end up with a good deal of awkward “Hi”'s being passed across the table. The thing is it's not easy for people to switch from Anna the Check-Out Girl to Ilzara the Crimson Knight at the snap of your fingers. Especially at the beginning of a new game. When people make a character they usually think about the cool things their character can do, so help your players out by giving them something cool to do right off the bat. If the game starts with Ilzara smashing some zombie squirrels Anna might be more comfortable with the concept, and when a lull does occur not only will your players be more comfortable in their skin, but they'll have something more to talk about than, “Isn't that a pretty bar wench?”