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GM.Casper
2011-12-22, 05:30 PM
Here are some short campaign ideas that GM’s could adopt for their games. Please share your own ideas as well.

Scenario 1:
A land is ruled by a merciless Tyrant. PCs end join a rebel group that seeks to overthrow the Tyrant. They are aided by a mysterious Benefactor. He supplies them with valuable information about the Tyrants plans and sometimes other types of aid. But it is ultimately revealed that the “Benefactor” is a right hand man of the Tyrant. The rebel group was created specially to gather together all the most dangerous dissenters and use them as scapegoats.
Twist: At least that’s how he sold the idea to the Tyrant. In truth he really seeks to overthrow his master- either to liberate the land or to become the new ruler.

Scenario 2:
By accident, the PCs end up possessing a mighty Artifact that’s sought after by two powerful Mages- a Necromancer and a demon Summoner. Both send agents (apprentices, servants, magical creatures) after the PCs. Luckily for them, the both factions fight each other more than the PCs.
Twist: While the Necromancer rules openly from his Black Citadel, the Summoner’s identity is not known. Secretly, he is an important person in the local kingdom. Does he seek the Artifact to counter the Necromancer’s looming invasion; or for his own dark ends?

Scenario 3:
A kingdom lies next to a large dark forest. A scouting expedition is sent to explore the region. Within the overgrown ruins of a long lost elven city, the PCs find a gathering of monstrous force that plans to invade the kingdom. Can they evade their pursuers and warn the king in time and repel the invasion?

The Dark Fiddler
2011-12-22, 09:57 PM
And You're Live! The PCs wake up on an abandoned island with no idea how they got there, little equipment, no way to leave, and (preferably) no pre-knowledge of each other. Little do they know, they've been put on the island as a sort of reality show for the gods. Expect plenty of secret divine intervention and confusion.

I'm Who Now? The PCs, unbeknownst to them, are the mortal reincarnations of long-dead gods, overthrown by a usurper. The PCs only discover this after years of working for the church of said usurper, collecting relics from their past lives to be destroyed in the interest of suppressing heresy.

Perhaps more later. Now? Bed time.

Edge of Dreams
2011-12-23, 12:05 AM
This is one I've started running a couple times but never could keep going long enough:

A group of fairly normal low-level adventurers all have the same dream. Each stands in a room full of treasure and is asked two questions by a disembodied voice.

"Who are you?"

"What do you seek?"

After answering those questions, they are told "Take whatever you will, but choose wisely." The player then describes the first object their character would pick up, giving visual description only (e.g. "a blood-red dagger with a hilt shaped like a snake's head" or "a jewel-encrusted mirror, etched with the symbol of my diety"). Whatever they describe, the character wakes up holding it.

These items will turn out to be artifacts with their own backstory, powers, and purpose (designed by the GM). The quest to discover what these things are, what they can do, and why the characters were chosen to carry them will underscore any and all other adventures that may come up in the campaign.

I love this campaign concept because it allows the players and GM to work together to create something really cool and unique, and it tends to give more personality and motivation to otherwise average adventurers.

Ulysses WkAmil
2011-12-23, 12:30 AM
My first campaign ever ever, the world and quests being 100% (so far) homebrewed, involves the players waking up in a cultist torture dungeon, complete with kinky armour and ball gags. The players escape, and go through a "Cult of Orcus" type questline, getting sidetracked with large sidequests. I like the feel of this, mainly cause its a "you can't go wrong" type deal, being a partial cliche. The continents, countries and such are all homebrewed thanks to some downtime way back in the 7th grade. And also, I was unaware that there was already a published Orcus-cult campaign when I began the homebrew.

KingofMadCows
2011-12-23, 03:49 PM
A (non-evil) nation is ruled by necromancers. Liches on the ruling council routinely bound their a portion of their souls to living people. When those people die, the liches acquire the experiences of what it's like live among the people they rule, all the emotions of the living, and memories their daily struggles. This helps them remember the needs of the living and how to properly govern them. The PC's are hired to capture a peasant who possesses the soul of a lich governor and bring him to the vampire controlled city of Shadowfall, which is in perpetual darkness because an artifact known as the Black Mist Brazier cover the skies with plumes of smog that form into dark clouds. When the PC's arrive, they learn the nature of their mission and become entangled in the politics of the undead nation.

Mikeavelli
2011-12-23, 04:50 PM
He's a no-nonsense cop with a stick up his ass, she's a cat burglar with a heart of gold. They mean well, but end up waging a war that nearly burns the city to the ground: Just the title could be taken anywhere actually... But in this case, a Throne Archon in a human disguise has taken control of the city guard, while a Ghale Eladrin in human form has taken control of the city underground. They're both hunting after a fiend from the lower planes, but each believe the other is the fiend they're hunting after due to different methods on the law/chaos axis. They start a civil war through mortal minions.

There also is a fiend present somewhere in the background, and it engineered this scenario to try and get the two celestial beings to fall.

Bastian Weaver
2011-12-23, 05:22 PM
One of the PC's ancestor was a nasty, evil man, obscessed with an idea of cursing entire world with a single spell. Luckily, he never managed to fulfill his dream. He's long dead now.
And one day, the PCs notice that the world begins to change.
Do you remember that spell that you great-grandfather dreamt of? It looks like someone finally made it work.
The good news is, for every spell there is a counter-spell.
The bad news? The wicked ancestor is probably the only one who knows the counter-spell, and he's definitely not going to use it. And since he's dead, it would be pretty hard to contact him. Maybe the PCs should try to find a medium to try and persuade the evil old man to remove the curse.
Maybe the only way to undo the spell is for someone to die and find the ancestor's spirit somewhere in the afterlife.
Or maybe it's too late already.

The Dark Fiddler
2011-12-23, 10:50 PM
Exploration, Ho! Quite suddenly, a large island appears in the middle of one of the world's most popular sea trade routes. The island seems to be devoid of intelligent life, but even the most powerful mages are unable to peer into the land. The players have been hired by a (or multiple, possibly competing) kingdoms to explore the island and find any valuable resources availible

Jallorn
2011-12-24, 12:36 AM
"Who are you?"

"What do you seek?"

I can't help but feel that that should be "What do you want?" :smallbiggrin:

Otherwise, I like this and may use it sometime.

Shoot Da Moon
2011-12-24, 03:33 AM
Journey Into the Metal Palace:
One day, the nearby coastal town awakens to find that a strange and giantic metal structure (that seems like a cross between a clocktower, an oil rig, a castle, a prison and a whole bunch of metal walkways) has suddenly appeared some few hundred metres out to sea.
Local adventurers have set off to explore it, entering through the large metal paths that connect it to the beachside.
What's inside its strange walls? Where did it come from?

Out on Bail:
The wealthy town of Pagan's Landing is a great place to go for magical research and useful arcane devices. Its people are intelligent, humble, polite and magically gifted.
It is here that the PCs were arrested, and put into suspended animation jail, awaiting processing for the crimes they were charged with. It was only supposed to be for a few hours.
The PCs, however, find that they instead are awakened days later after their arrest, and the cause of their freedom is the spell being broken rather than dismissed by jailers. Something has gone wrong in Pagan's Landing. The police station is abandoned, full of slaughtered townsfolk. While the PCs will find getting back their gear and escaping captivity practically already done for them, the town outside the walls of the station is far worse than they would guessed.
Pagan's Landing is now a ruin, its street empty of life - except for whatever hideous and strange monsters that now prowl the entire town. Some sort of unnatural disaster has struck.
Now the PCs must get to the bottom of the situation, or the de-facto punishment for their crimes will be the death sentence.

Lord Tyger
2011-12-26, 03:17 PM
Something Wicked

Out of the forests and the caves and even distant castles come a variety of figures. Normally they lurk on the edges of society, plying their trades, but now the stars are right, and the Witches have come to town.

It's the Great Coven, and the little town of Idlewylds remembers the ancient rules. Don't go out in the woods at night. Don't look too deeply in the visitor's eyes, and above all remember, the line between a good witch and a bad witch is wide as the ocean and thin as a spiderweb.

Of course, the church that's come to town since the last Great Coven isn't so willing to appreciate the sudden surge in the food and livestock markets and look the other way. Plus, some of the younger witches aren't willing to play by their own rules- or wait out their apprenticeship to gain the knowledge of their elders.

All of this will come to a head at the height of the Coven, when Baba Yaga arrives in her chicken-legged house.