Check the tavern for any companions and if you can afford them hire them on. Take any you want to but look for the one that asks you to collect taxes from a town or village. Afterwards Go to the castle and talk to all the lords and ask for quests. If your not sure then just enter and do the best you can without betting. Once at a tournament, if your comfortable with tournaments and you know you can win bet everything you have on yourself. If the tournaments haven't spawned yet knock out a quest with the merchant and then check back.

Immediately leave and head for the nearest tournament and dodge any bandits on the way. At the town you spawn at 'Enter the arena' and see where the nearby tournaments are. Pick a Caravan to Swadia and meet the merchant, get the starting quest so he pays you and then bail. Put 1 or two points in Prisoner Management and a whatever you have left in looting, and Training. For skills max out Iron Flesh and Power Strike. For starting Attributes pump up your strength to 12 or 15 and then put everything else in int for extra starting skills. You can do iron man runs later, but if your having trouble starting you need to get the system down first. Set the game to let you quit without saving. If you want an optimized character follow the backstory steps, if you want to roleplay go crazy, it's really not a big deal. These steps are assuming your playing on 1/4 or 1/2 damage to yourself/allies.

This is by far the best way I've find to get a good start. This may not be a perfect guide and I don't claim to be a master, but I've started near a hundred campaigns and conquered the entire game-world over twice. So you've had this game and you don't feel like your playing it to it's full potential? Or you feel like the learning curve is crazy and your just not sure where to start in this huge world? Well here's an outline for your first two hours that will get you setup with some great weapons and all the tools you need to start your kingdom in Caldria.

Mount and blade start