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Man on Fire
2012-04-18, 05:55 PM
Since joining the site I realized I have quite a lot of campaing ideas, but all for D&D, in which I will probably never GM anything and I'm in too many games already to go into more, so I decided to make a thread where I can dump my campaing or adventure ideas I probably won't use in near future, for anybody to use as they wish. And for other people to do dump their ideas here too, because why not.

Campaing Ideas:

* Heroic Fantasy Campaing
System: D&D
Max 3-4 players
The goal is to emulate the feel of classic Heroic Fantasy, where brave hero tryumps over the cult of great evil by his muscles, wit and limited magic. In this campaing classes and prestige classes specializing primarily in casting (Druid, Wizard, Sorceror, Cleric, Paion) are forbidden, but guys like Rangers, Paladins, Bards, Duskblades and others who uses magic only as support to their battle abilities, are allowed, similiarly with prestige classes (no Archmages or Mystic Theurges, but yes for Dragon Disciples and Eldritch Knights). This is because in classic heroic fantasy heroes rarerly can do a lot of magic and if they can, it's only addition to heir other skills (Gray Mouser).
Type of game: Mostly fighths and traps. Rarerly will players meet magic oponents - wizard or cleric in this setting is a powerful Tusla Doom Jurnior who leads a cult to summon Cthulhu, final boss of the adventure, big bad sitting at the end of every dungeon raid, the bastard who demanded Fighter's girlfriend to be send as a sacrifice to him, that kind of guy. Aside from that enemies are rarerly magically powered. This forces players to think how to outsmart the enemy, how to use their wit to kill powerful mage.
For: Open minded players and creative DM who can balance ecounters to playing without magic support won't be unfair.

*Low-Magic Campaing
System: D&D
Max six players, recommended four, max 2 casters
This type of game has opposite restictions than previous - no bards, no paladins, no Rangers, no duskblades - nothing that gets magic as a bonus. Here magic is rare, limited to only few chosen people, who are feared and shunned by the rest. You can be clerics, wizards, psions or sorcerers, but there cannot be more than two casting characters in the game and you will rarerly meet other casters. This game puts emphasis on roleplay - your casters are experiencing great loniless and isolation, some could never have meet anybody as them, until joining the party (which is why upper caster limit at 2 casters - two is a companion, three is a crowd).
Type of game: Mostly roleplay, strong emphasis on how casters feels isolated and how non-casters must protect them.
For who: Again, open-minded players, interested more in roleplaying than getting XPs, and creative DM.

*His Majesty's Special Forces
* System: D&D or any other fantasy.
This is an idea that had come to my mind in Warfare In Fantasy Setting thread. Basically, players are an elite force assembled by the king for strategic missions during the war, prefferably builds that can do well both in magic and combat but not necessary. Powerful battle builds, high level, all things go. This is a campaing made to make emphasis on player's strenght and make them feel special - they are the elite and they need to feel it.

*Kidnapped Familly
System; Any will do.
This is simpler than previous ones and requires players who are both into this for roleplayig and the fighting. The basic idea is simple - each one of characters has somebody close, who was kidnappd by the villain and is hold hostage. Now players must do something for a villain (what it is can vary) if they want to see their loved ones again.
Variant: Additional possibility is to let other players play as the loved ones who got kidnapped and escaped and now are running away, trying to reunite with the heroes and escape villain's pursuit.
Variant 2: Even Evil Has Loved Ones - to make game more fun on roleplay, I suggest limiting character alignment to only evil ones. Now players are bunch of criminals, bandits, warlords, murderers, Blackguards, drows, who all share one theing - even they have somebody they care about, a weakness someone decided to explore, to force them to do a dirty work for him. May be combined with Variant 1 for amusing interactions once two groups will meet.

Adventure Idea:

Something for high-level party in any system, who didn't started that way but earned every single level - a adventure during which they need to face their past. Every person they wronged, every villai nthey slained, everyone they failed to save - and now they see visions of them all, haunting them. It gives a lot of possibilities, including battle again with some of bigger challenges GM threw at players, among other things. Can make for a good nostalgic story, or an epic campaing finale.

Feel free to share your own ideas.

Jay R
2012-04-20, 11:36 AM
Someday, I will run this 2E scenario.

What the Players know:
Your character is just barely adult – 14 years old. You all know each other, having grown up in the same tiny village. Everyone in this village grows their own food, and it’s rare to see anybody from outside the village, or anything not made in the village. There is a smith, a village priest, but very few other specialists.

The world is basically early medieval. You all speak a single language for which you (reasonably) have no name. If you pay knowledge points, or pay for another language, you’ll know more about what that means.

The village has a single road going out of town to the north and south, and you’ve never been on it. The only travel on it occurs when a few wagons go off to take food to market. Very rarely, a traveler may come through, and spend the night with the priest. You have all greedily listened to any stories these travelers tell. Your parents say this isn’t good for you – what’s here in the village is good enough for you, and all travelers are always liars, anyway. You may assume you've heard any period story you like; you may not assume that any of them are true. In particular, you have heard many mutually conflicting tales of all kinds of marvelous beasts. You cannot trust either those tales or your knowledge about the books regarding any monster. Do you really believe the guy who told you that vampires sparkle in the sun?

There is a haunted forest nearby. You have occasionally gone fifty feet into it on a dare, but no further, and never at night. Three times in your lifetime the village has been raided at night from the forest. You were children, and were kept safe in a cellar. Some villagers have died, but by the time you were let out, whatever the attackers were had fled or been buried.

There is an old witch at the edge of the village. Your parents disapprove of her, call her a fraud, and are afraid of her. Everybody knows that the crop blight three years ago was because she was mad at the village.

The old folks in the village sometimes talk about how much better it was when there was a king. There was real travel, and real trade. But nobody has any details.

Your character has a class, but only what training you can get in an isolated medieval village. A priest has learned a little from the village priest. A Wizard has learned three or four spells from the witch. I have veto over which spells you start with, and I have to believe that a village witch would know them. Charm Person, yes; Magic Missile, no.

You are uneducated peasants, and a large part of your adventures will involve finding out about the world.

What the players do not know:
At the start of the first adventure, the village will be overrun and destroyed by the goblins in the forest. The only survivors will be the PCs. They will be required to go out into the world to find a place in it. But what is it like?

They are in England, fifty years after the fall of Camelot and the breaking of the Round Table. There have been fifty years of corruption and decay. The place is filled with petty despots, brigands, wandering monsters - everything the knights of the Round Table kept in check. Also an assortment of abandoned keeps.

There are two living knights of the Round Table left that they might meet, and neither knows about the other. Sir Gawaine rules a small kingdom in Wales, under another name. He is an old man (with a beautiful, young-looking wife), ruling as well as possible over one of the few civilized places left. He will never speak of the old days.

And there is a wandering bard, named Tom of Warwick, who sings about the glory of Camelot. He is taken directly from the final scene of Camelot. (If you haven't seen that play, then go do so.) My image of Camelot combines the best, noblest (and worst) aspect of the play, the game Pendragon, and the books Morte D'Arthur, The Once and Future King, and Arthur Rex.