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View Full Version : QUICKLY MEN! Ideas for a campaign im supposed to run sometime tonight!



toddex
2009-01-07, 04:34 PM
It sort of was thrown in the air and I volunteered to DM for this little session tonight. IM OUT OF IDEAS! MY MIND IS BLOCKED! Any and all ideas to get me started would be appreciated.

Human Paragon 3
2009-01-07, 04:36 PM
Need more info to be of any substantial help. What is already decided upon? What is your group like? Are there characters?

Also, you picked a bad time for an emergency since the forum is stalling out and acting funky.

Rei_Jin
2009-01-07, 04:38 PM
We'd love to help you out, but we need more information.

1. What system are you using, and what edition?
2. How many players will you have, and what level?
3. What kind of experience do you have with DMing?
4. What kind of games are you good at running?
5. What kind of games are you bad at running?
6. What kind of games do your players enjoy?
7. What resources do you have in terms of books?
8. How long do you want this to go?

AslanCross
2009-01-07, 04:38 PM
Pirates and ninjas immediately come up for some reason. :P

Is this a one-shot or a long-term thing? If it's long-term, you could have the pirates raiding coastal villages for slaves to give to their Illithid bosses.

Oh, and the pirates have a kraken too.

DrizztFan24
2009-01-07, 04:38 PM
I vote that you go for a sweet political intrigue. Murder of the mayors brother. Why not the mayor? They were staying in the same inn for some reason or another and it would have been just as simple. Obviously something strange is going on with the mayors brother. I suspect some shady dealings and some angry clientel.

Easy enough.

toddex
2009-01-07, 04:40 PM
I vote that you go for a sweet political intrigue. Murder of the mayors brother. Why not the mayor? They were staying in the same inn for some reason or another and it would have been just as simple. Obviously something strange is going on with the mayors brother. I suspect some shady dealings and some angry clientel.

Easy enough.

YOU ARE A BAD ASS!

These people and their number hugging I tells ya! THEY DONT KNOW WHAT THE D&D IS ALL ABOUT! Ideas apparently need systems to be attached to...

toddex
2009-01-07, 04:42 PM
Pirates and ninjas immediately come up for some reason. :P

Is this a one-shot or a long-term thing? If it's long-term, you could have the pirates raiding coastal villages for slaves to give to their Illithid bosses.

Oh, and the pirates have a kraken too.

Pirates are always fun ha! I expect it to be no more then 1 - 2 sessions. So I can be as freaking nuts as possible.

Ravens_cry
2009-01-07, 04:56 PM
One of the games of programming geek is making game engines do things they aren't designed for. For example, I have seen people make FPS and platformers using AGS, an old-timey Sierra-style adventure game engine. That doesn't mean it is good at it. While pen and paper role playing systems tend to be more flexible, they still have somethings they are better at then others.
Sermon over, now for ideas.

They mayor claims his daughter has been kidnapped by orcs, when they find her, his daughter begs to differ, she rather likes the hairy well-muscled type, who smell 'earthy'. After settling things with the mayor, his daughter and her fiancee, they are invited to the wedding. But when they get to the orcs shrine, they find it desecrated and burned. Now the orcs are angry, very angry, and you have to find out who did this before the orcs come into town to do some burning of their own.

Epinephrine
2009-01-07, 04:59 PM
Chandrathar's Bane. (Dungeon 18, first dungeon magazine I bought)

Little cottage, with an orb in it that shrinks anyone (sentient) that stays in the area too long. The adventurers stay the night, end up shrunk to the size of a small mouse, and discover that there are bands of shrunken humanoids living in the walls, and dangerous enemies all around (14' long rats! A crow in the garden that can snatch them and fly away). If they can find the orb and destroy it, the spell will wear off - but they have to find it, and to get through the tiny goblin territory they may need to befriend the humans who live up on the shelf in the kitchen.

Makes normal situations extrodinarily difficult, and allows you to throw weird situations at the PCs - good for a one shot adventure.

Darrin
2009-01-07, 05:02 PM
It sort of was thrown in the air and I volunteered to DM for this little session tonight. IM OUT OF IDEAS! MY MIND IS BLOCKED! Any and all ideas to get me started would be appreciated.

Just use the Running Man.

PCs are convincted of a crime they didn't commit, thrown in prison, then some wizard comes along and says, "You were framed, but if you allow me to sponsor you, you can compete in the Arena, and eventually win your freedom. Who knows, maybe you can also figure out who set you up and why."

Use some superpowerful city (Sigil?) so high-level wizards teleporting creatures or creating elaborate trap-heavy environments isn't unusual.

Each session, they go up against another team of criminals/animals/creatures/etc. The winning team gets to go up against that weeks Boss Fight, some uber-NPC. Now add competing sponsors competing over the best contestants, mafia bosses fixing fights, offers to throw a particular battle or sabotage a certain NPC, powerful/dangerous magic items being surreptitiously passed to the PCs on the sly, and so forth. The whole city is in on the betting, with the major Wizard Houses fighting over control of the best teams. At the higher levels of competition, the fates of nations/city-states/demiplanes hang on the results in the Arena.

I haven't quite figured out what it all builds up to... maybe the Gods are secretly backing the Wizard Houses, and the very best heroes will be chosen to channel their Divine Avatars for one last final battle to determine the Fate of All Creation.

Philistine
2009-01-07, 05:34 PM
I had an idea for a campaign/setting recently; and since goodness knows I'm not likely to ever use it, anyone else who wants it is free to run with it.

Counter-Revolution
One of the Great Power nations of the setting has been plunged into chaos following their notable lack of success in prosecuting a recent war; the old rulers are dead at the hands of a radical revolutionary movement, and the country is now torn by a civil war between those same revolutionaries and a somewhat more moderate faction. The PCs are part of an expeditionary force (or mercenary company) from one of the other Great Power nations, tasked with doing whatever is needed to aid the moderates in the struggle (because it's expected that they'll be easier to work with than the radicals). Why yes, I was watching Reilly, Ace of Spies at the time. What of it?

This should work in just about any system, with any number of players, and for just about any sort of adventuring: intrigue/espionage (either as spies, or spyhunters), open combat (on any scale)... even dungeon crawling (whether in search of a MacGuffin, or just loot to pay off the troops). Heck - make the disintegrating Great Power an island nation, and suddenly it becomes a pirate campaign.

Waspinator
2009-01-07, 05:47 PM
You could always grab something from here:
http://wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20030530b
Something's Cooking is pretty hilarious.

Thorin
2009-01-07, 05:52 PM
A Vaarsuvius-type wizard is gathering variouscomponents for a rare spell.
The motive, the spell. and all kind of hard-planning things can be passed by arguing that all the relevant checks have a high DC to reveal any plot-relevant info.

Of course, you must offer a reward they canīt deny.
IF the campaign start to growth, you should start to create a real background for each thing, and a motive for the wizard; but of course, you weasel your way to start the campaign for today.

Just need to think the first item: The amulet of an orc shaman is always a good start (could be an only-battle thing or a sneak-all-the-way-to-get-the-talisman-without-being-notice)

Prometheus
2009-01-07, 06:59 PM
Chandrathar's Bane. (Dungeon 18, first dungeon magazine I bought)

Little cottage, with an orb in it that shrinks anyone (sentient) that stays in the area too long. The adventurers stay the night, end up shrunk to the size of a small mouse, and discover that there are bands of shrunken humanoids living in the walls, and dangerous enemies all around (14' long rats! A crow in the garden that can snatch them and fly away). If they can find the orb and destroy it, the spell will wear off - but they have to find it, and to get through the tiny goblin territory they may need to befriend the humans who live up on the shelf in the kitchen.

Makes normal situations extraordinarily difficult, and allows you to throw weird situations at the PCs - good for a one shot adventure.
I like this one. Reminds me of the time I had the adventurers climb a massive tree. In their journey, they were threatened to be thrown off by the tree swaying in the winds, they climbed a part of bark that split away from the tree away from them, and they were bombarded with pine needles raining down like spears and a glob of sap that almost suffocated the full-plate dwarf. Familiar setting, unfamiliar challenges, last as long as you want it to.

Alternatively, there was this thread a while a back (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93207) about keeping an epic mage's estate while she leaves -including powerful caged monsters, meddling apprentices, and mysterious rooms.

If you want still another, click the "yeth hounds (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=76866)" link.

Grail
2009-01-07, 07:25 PM
Assuming Fantasy/
The characters arrive at a small town that seems to be beset with fear. They discover it is ruled with an iron fist by a Half-Ogre. The group as most PCs do, will decide to take on the Ogre and kill it. Only after they do that, the group become pariahs in the town, having rotten vegetables or even rocks thrown at them and the fear in the town escalates.

It seems that the Half-Ogre and his minions were keeping the town safe from a band of Orc Bandits nearby. With the death of the Half-Ogre, the orcs are bound to hear about it and attack. The townsfolk are now terrified of what the orcs will do to them.

The PCs need to make ammends, and save the town from this fate.

Assuming SCI-FI/
The characters awake to find themselves in cryo sleep. They have little memory of how they got there or who anyone else is. They find that there are plenty of other cryo-chambers around, but only theres have opened, the others now all have corpses in (some have been dead for a long time).

The characters are onboard a deep space seed-ship. They have 24 hours to try and regain their memories and stop the ship colliding with a planet. A virus has corrupted the mainframe over the years and the robotic service droids are corrupt as well and consider the characters to be enemies. Lots of fun on a time limit.

If the characters resolve the issues and can restore the mainframe from to pre-virus state they will then have a ship available to them, unfortunately lots of dead friends.