Most interesting campaign mechanics

[Wolfiepegasus]

Alright I'm sure this has been done but let's start a fresh one eh?

So I want to hear the title but also your thoughts on how to improve someone elses!

Anyway I'm currently running a campaign with me and a few friends and even I as dm dont know what's to come. Essentially I make a theme for the place we're at and roll to see what we get. Someone rolls a good check to find items I run a full random dice roll system to make something interesting. The entire campaign is based off random and dice rolling waaaay more then it should.

I mean to give an example one of the pcs currently has a +2 cold iron war hammer with both lightning burst and thundering. We essentially have thor with us.(also I forgot about enhancement so thats not included) and we also have a character whos practiacally untouchable at our point with nearly 30 ac.

This makes my job as dm harder but when you get a room with 3 kobolds and a boss of an ogre who dies to a ball shot. Can ya complain?

[Karl Aegis]

I personally favor a campaign divided into acts, scenes and intermissions. Helps to keep the game going so we can finish the campaign in a single night and do a follow-up campaign next time. I also tend to waive skill checks where failure doesn't lead to anything interesting.

[Wolfiepegasus]

Well I have been doing a lot of skill checks in the current place for it because there's a lot of bouncing thingies(yes thats what they're called) and failed checks on those result in the person endlessly bouncing back and forth till they finally succeed. But I do split it up but for the most part is we stop when we have to stop and I make a note of where we were and then recap from before and all that. Ya know simple stuff.

[Red Rubber Band]

A campaign idea that one of my players had was that places shift overnight. Camp out and could very well end up hundreds of kilometres away from your position when you wake up. Even extra-dimensional spaces like rope trick could move (They had a DC to beat. If they didn't, it would move up to the amount they missed the DC x 100 kilometres). There were ways around it. Certain ancient (of course) arterial roads could be camped on to stop the effect. And extremely rare (of course) lodestones would stop an area around it moving. That area depended on the size/strength of the lodestone.

One for a soon to be run campaign will be a fairly constant presence. It is a rain cloud that covers approximately 1/3 of the world. The cloud has become an object of worship amongst certain religions. There are priests that come before it (are they ushered forth by it, or do they bring it in their wake?) to herald it's coming. It has a calming affect on the multiple moons of the planet and drastically reduces the tidal upheaval caused by the moons. Despite the cloud being non-magical it also dampens and changes magic; while it is above a spellcaster they cannot cast their highest level spells, if they are part of the cloud's religion all spells are empowered or widened for free, additionally 9th level spells and epic magic cannot be cast.