Campaign Genres

[Rolled A Three]

Hey Playgrounders,
I'm hoping to organize a little list of campaign tropes to use in reference for future games I'm working on. Much like how media has specific genres, I'm looking for campaign equivalents. Now, that isn't to say I'm looking for different settings like space and western roleplays. What I'm asking for are examples of conventions you typically find in your usual game of D&D.

An example would be Inn Campaigns, a typical starting setting in which the main characters all meet at an inn and usually an adventure spawns off from that.

Or maybe an Undead Campaign, usually defined by an assortment of undead, necromancers and small little settlements eager to fend off the zombie invasion.

Please feel free to contribute as many genres as you can think of, ranging not just to settings but character tropes and quests that have occurred from it. I hope I've been specific enough to outline what I'm asking for, and I hope this gets a lot of posts that show the creativity of these forums.

[Rhynn]

The Epic Campaign: saving the world from X. Dragonlance, etc.

Related, the War Campaign: fighting a war against enemy X.

The Company Campaign: an adventuring company (often with changing membership, quite possibly due to changing players, but with a constant setting and environment), usually delving into dungeons (or a really big dungeon), or exploring the wilderness. Related to or a version of the Wilderness Campaign and the Dungeon Campaign.

[W3bDragon]

Faction Wars Campaign: Usually this revolves around a group of factions with varying amounts of power or influence. These can range from nobility cliques in a king's court or street gangs in a rough city. The PCs join one of the factions or become a new faction. They continually try to one up each other, with each faction trying to be on top.

[ArcturusV]

Survivor Campaign. Campaigns which focus on the aftermath of some event and players are basically told "You're screwed, at the bottom of the food chain, and almost out for the count... now make a run of it."

Sometimes crosses with Undead Campaign, Prisoner Campaign, War Campaign, and Post-Apocalypse Campaign, but not necessarily.

[Lorsa]

The Random Campaign: The game master randomly creates adventures, dungeons, monsters and loot using both tables in the DMG and his own home-made tables.

The Chosen Campaign: The characters are specially chosen by some mundane force or mystical deity to perform a Very Important Task. Why a group of level 1 characters with no experience would be chosen need not be explained. Can often dual with the Epic Campaign.

The Pirate Campaign: Yarr! (in reality a subset of the Seafaring Campaign)

[CoffeeIncluded]

The Whodunnit Campaign: There's a mystery, and you guys are tasked to solve it and catch the culprit. Especially effective if there's a serial killer and a semi-hard time constraint.