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8BitNinja
2017-09-05, 06:30 PM
This is a place for you to share any campaign idea you have had in the past or present. You don't necessarily have to have finished it, just came up to it. Any system is accepted, including your own.

Here's a few I've had for D&D.

The Venomblood Arena: Made to be a "side quest" inserted into a campaign. You and your party wake up with all of your gear in a cage, where it opens to a maze. The entire thing is a gladiatorial arena with duels and monster filled labyrinth crawling.

The Iron City: The entire campaign takes place inside of one large city. Besides that, I didn't come up with anything.

Three Hammers: I was thinking of a concept using the song Three Hammers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVIGju-rSho) by DragonForce for the story of the campaign, it never went anywhere.

Vitruviansquid
2017-09-05, 06:44 PM
I've always wanted to run a campaign that's like Futurama, but for fantasy instead of sci-fi.

By "Like Futurama," I mean a fantasy world that is just as stupid and tacky as the real world.

rs2excelsior
2017-09-05, 06:59 PM
I'm pretty proud of this one:

I had the players make their characters without a definitive backstory. I told them to focus more on their characters' personalities than specific things they had done or where they came from. I also deliberately left the details of the outside world vague. When we started, their characters had no real specific memories: they felt like they knew the rest of the party, but couldn't think of a specific thing they'd done together in the past, things like that. Pretty soon they start getting visions of their characters' deaths. They learn that their characters are actually dead in a kind of limbo, that the god of death doesn't know exactly why that's happened, and the visions are actually flashbacks. As they continue, they figure out that reality is basically coming unglued, and that forces from the various outer planes are trying to exploit that fact to their own benefit. After a race with a couple of groups of extraplanar beings, they get into basically the foundations of the universe itself, and can choose to fix it but leave things as they were, try and manipulate the world as they see fit, or just let it all collapse.

Unfortunately, we got it started (and got to the first reveal) but couldn't finish. I was mainly worried about the players not really being invested in the world, so I was going to try and flesh it out some via flashbacks--basically have each person doing short 1-on-1 RP sessions with their characters while they were alive to get some details back in. I don't know how well it would've worked in the end but I like the idea at least.

TurboGhast
2017-09-05, 07:30 PM
The campaign's introduction states that the PCs fought the BBEG and lost, getting scattered across the now post-apocalyptic world in the process. The party would start split up, and each member would have to adventure across the world in order to find the others. Once the party's back together, strengthened from their solo adventures, they'd take on the BBEG.

RazorChain
2017-09-05, 09:26 PM
I usually just set the stage. Tell the players generally what I'm running in broad terms and the power level and such. Then we sit down at session zero and find out what the campaign is about and we make characters and backstories together.

Then I build a campaign around their characters, their backstories and their goals. Usually it has a cascading effect, the more they affect the world, the more ideas I get and then we end somewhere that no one could have predicted at the start of the campaign.


It's what I call a character driven camaign.

JNAProductions
2017-09-05, 10:05 PM
Princess Panic-The Kingdom Is Yours!
The players are all bastard princesses, so when a bloodline curse strikes the royal family, they're the only ones left alive from it. They're left to take over the unruly nobles and handle running a kingdom, as well as trying to track down the killer(s).

The Princess(es) Were Kidnapped!
Your standard princess got kidnapped scenario, except more than one princess, and the players are princesses.

From No One To Noble
You return, triumphant-probably rescued the princess from a dragon or something. Now, you, an adventurer, born common, with no governing experience, are suddenly thrust into a position of power.

Green Elf
2017-09-05, 10:17 PM
The campaign's introduction states that the PCs fought the BBEG and lost, getting scattered across the now post-apocalyptic world in the process. The party would start split up, and each member would have to adventure across the world in order to find the others. Once the party's back together, strengthened from their solo adventures, they'd take on the BBEG.

I would find that very hard considering you have to take care of a whole party yet only one can play at a time. If I ever split the party it would be into two groups.


Princess Panic-The Kingdom Is Yours!
The players are all bastard princesses, so when a bloodline curse strikes the royal family, they're the only ones left alive from it. They're left to take over the unruly nobles and handle running a kingdom, as well as trying to track down the killer(s).

The Princess(es) Were Kidnapped!
Your standard princess got kidnapped scenario, except more than one princess, and the players are princesses.

From No One To Noble
You return, triumphant-probably rescued the princess from a dragon or something. Now, you, an adventurer, born common, with no governing experience, are suddenly thrust into a position of power.

Lots of princesses.

JNAProductions
2017-09-05, 10:18 PM
Princess Power! :P

I'm not entirely sure why, honestly.

Lord Raziere
2017-09-06, 12:19 AM
oh, so much to list.

Dungeons and Dragons:
Castle Sagranarc:
There is one castle, that no one remembers building. No histories record why it was built, who occupied it, why monsters avoid it, or why no scrying or indeed, any magical method of gaining information works upon it. Generations of adventurers weak and strong have gone inside, only to never be seen again. It is called Castle Sagranarc and it is a complete mystery.

Within lurks darkness greater than any monster, dangers worse than any trap and something wrong worse than any dark magic- will five more adventurers dare to enter it?

Shadowrun:
A Will Beyond Insanity:
Cyberpunk is not known for its change. But what if one day there was something that could change all of civilization, forever? What if it could spark a revolution so great that the megacorps would get destroyed in the tidal wave? What if five Shadowrunners got a hold of it without a clue of what it is?

Exalted:
War of the Roseblack:
Fokuf has been killed. Mnemon has declared herself Empress. The Roseblack decided to rebel. Chaos has broken out. Two years later, Creation has descended into war and you have gotten mail from a Dragon-Blooded who claims that he can set everything right, if you help him. Will you answer?

Dark Sun:
Escape From Athas!:
Athas is doomed. There is no hope for it. You know this. So you have decided that your not going to take this place anymore. Your going to escape. Your going to find some way that finally allows you to escape from Athas, from the sand, the heat, the constant fight for survival, and reach a near-mythical city called “Sigil” so that you may live a better life before everything finally breaks down and what little remains of civilization descends into chaos. Easier said than done.

Planescape:
Welcome To Sigil:
Greetings! You have arrived in Sigil, the world between planes. You have decided to start a new life here, among the various people from all the worlds and planes ever. Problem is that now all these philosophical yahoos won’t stop bothering you, the crooks won’t stop trying to scam or steal from you, the gods and demons still keep on fighting, and The Lady of Pain doesn’t care. Do you have what it takes to live your life in the City of Doors? Inspired By Dragon Age 2.

Warhammer 40k:
The Warp Unleashed:
Your a Psyker. You don’t like Chaos and all its cruelty and evil, but neither do you like the Imperium that oppresses and shackles you- as well as many other injustices that it commits. For whatever reason, you’ve decided to rebel against both, and unlock the full potential of your psychic ability. Do you have what it takes to shine a light of hope in the grim darkness of the 41st Millennium?

The Last Lamenters:
You are the last five Lamenter Space Marines in existence. Your Chapter has been screwed over time and again by both within and without, you cannot replenish your numbers, none of the other Space Marines trusts you, and fortune only seems to turn against you every step of the way. All you have sought to do is to protect the innocent in a world of eternal war. What deeds will you do before your Chapter dies forever? What memory will you leave behind in the minds of everyone else?

Lets Kill Horus:
The Ordo Chronos has perfected a time machine powered by the Warp to go back in time to the last battle of the Horus Heresy. They are sending you, the best Space Marine Kill-Team in the Deathwatch to go in and kill Horus at any cost before he injures the Emperor, to save the entire Imperium. Only one problem: you showed up a little early and they never specified how you were supposed to get back…

Dragon Age:
Tevinter Still Stands:
The Tevinter Imperium has stood for over 8000 years. In the past 800, it has caused the Blights in general, caused the modern state of the Chantry and the Circle of Magi, dominated almost all of known Thedas, was the only nation not to sign a treaty with the Qunari and thus has been at war with them for centuries. They were also the first to defeat and enslave the elves, invented blood magic and still practice slavery. It is practically the most influential nation in all of Theda’s history.

It is still around, still has a blood-magic using mage upper class that pays only lip service to the Chantry, and are still pretty much the same imperialistic aristocratic jerks they always were, despite all the trouble that it has caused for everyone in the world. Everyone else wonders why it isn’t dead yet. Well, the Imperium’s resources are starting to strain under the eternal Qunari war. The possibility of it falling starts to grow in everyone’s mind.

You have somehow got caught in the middle of this war. It is probably a good idea to end it. But both sides won’t negotiate. So your left with a choice: Will you defend the Tevinter Imperium and thus uphold all its dark practices? Or will you destroy it for all its crimes, and risk leaving the rest of Thedas vulnerable against the Qunari?

Pokemon:
A Broken Region:
Welcome to a region where all the pokemon gym leaders are corrupt, the cities are polluted, the elite four and champion aren't doing their jobs and basically everything is screwed up. Your a bunch of trainers who want to be big names- but the twist is that the people in power deserve to be replaced, and the region seriously needs to you to fix itself. Can you find eight replacements for the Gym Leaders, lower the crime rate, clean up the pollution, replace the Elite Four and the Champion, make a prosperous region? Also did I mention this region's legendary is evil, fire/poison type and radioactive?

Custom:
Lonely At The Top:
There is a man, named Kunamo. He was once a young lad who sought to be a master martial artist, and gone on a decades long quest to do so, gathering friends, allies, enemies while training every day to get better to be the master of martial arts.

He succeeded. He is now the master of martial arts, no martial artist is greater than him and he feels tired at all the people wishing to challenge him, tired of the politics he has to deal with, tired of the fact that most of his friends died for him to get here, tired of the result of his dream coming true. You are one of his apprentices. This is not a story of a shonen hero becoming a master of his trade. This is about what happens after.

Lacco
2017-09-06, 03:00 AM
Sooo... my ideas:




It’s 14th March 2071, 18:34, you are currently in Seattle.

For the next 24 imaginary hours I will be your host and lead you through the life in the shadows.

And in 24 hours your rent - or debts - need to be paid.

Will you get a job? Will you rob someone? Will you try to disappear and find an abandoned factory to live in? Will you try to work as a fixer to get the money? Or will you try to kill your landlord?

Will you form a team and go for a run? Or will you run solo?

It’s up to you. You are the driver...

...and it’s going to be hell of a ride.

You are a protagonist of your own Shadowrun story for 24 in-game hours. Solo-play, which after 24 in-game hours switches to another player and another character.

The players that were already in game can play supporting characters - contacts or crew - if your paths cross.

You will have to make sure you eat, rest, you will have to make contacts, and maybe do some very fast running. You will breathe the

This will be a game about living in shadows. About surviving in shadows. About your character - and his life. About paying the price for freedom - and paying debts. You have 24 hours - can't really buy more sand for the hourglass.





The city of Paris is bustling with activities at any hour. Parties are being organized, duels are being fought, ladies are being seduced and anyone can attempt to climb the steep ladder of social acceptance there.

And there you are - entering Paris, each on your own, to make your fortune or die trying.

Will you join the King's army and become one of his generals?
Will you try to seduce as many ladies as possible?
Will you fight duels for each offense you perceive - imaginary or true?
Will you join your forces or fight each other?
Will you try to work through intrigue? Valor? Luck?

Paris is waiting for you. Are you ready to walk down its streets, bathe in its light and fight in its darkness?

System: En Garde/Flashing Blades meet Riddle of Steel (for dueling)




As a group of dedicated professionals you were hired by a known operator to break into a penthouse apartment in a 5* hotel occupied by a sleazy senator, to get out a certain briefcase from a wall safe and deliver it - safely - to his hands. The security detail was expected to be tight due to the senator being present and the hotel currently holding a conference, professional poker tournament AND it being a New Year celebration.

Fast forward two weeks and here you are - sitting in a back room of a run-down pub in Tijuana, your assumed contact dead, the briefcase lost, most of you having at least bruises and twitching anytime you hear sirens in the distance.

It was a set-up. And you want to know who and why - and get paid for your troubles. Somebody's gotta pay...

What can be expected: high-octane shootouts, crazy chases, even crazier plans followed by explosions and narrative focused on your characters. You'll start as a small group, with the break-in operation and then, after the sheet hits the fan, you'll try to get your money and the traitor's head on a stick...

System: FATE




You are an ordinary person, living its ordinary life. Then, something strange happens. A door opens, something strange calls you, draws you inside the night city, the city that never sleeps, but patiently waits...

...New York. It is a city you have known for some time. A city where you work, a city where you live, a city that you know. It's easy for you to get still a bit lost there, but you always find a way home...

...but after the night falls, the city turns into a twisted caricature of itself. Noir York. City on the other side of the mirror, city where nightmares live. And once you step in, it's hard to get back home.

...so, will you enter?

Thriller/horror/noir-style detective/investigation story with heavy Lovecraftian overtones. It will start with a slow introduction, or with a jump - I don't know. It's based on players input. Good for solo or with 3 players maximum.

I'd reserve the right to do the "paranoia" rules = players know only the rules they immediately need.

Also:
- DeProfundis letter campaign around the world
- Dragon Hunters! (high-level characters go dragon hunting! - one shot)
- Sixgun Bastards (Wild West one-shot)
- Striders (tolkienesque high fantasy/low magic travelogue/exploration/pointcrawl)

...and many more...

Misereor
2017-09-06, 04:11 AM
0th level campaign. (AD&D 2nd ed.)
All players started off as kids from the local village (level 0 commoners) who had to earn 500 XP before they could select a class.
Lots of roleplaying in that one.

The King's Sceptre. (AD&D 2nd ed.)
Silly campaign where every single quest revolved around the Kings Sceptre getting stolen. (It happened at least a couple of times per month.)

The Untouchables. (Call of Cthulhu, 3rd or 4th ed.)
Sandbox campaign in the 1920s Chicago underworld. Players spent their time building an underground casino empire.
By the time I sprang the first monster on them, they had completely forgotten they were playing CoC. Good times.

Zhentil Keep: Resurrection (D&D 3.5)
Characters were from Zhentil Keep (Forgotten Realms badguy city) and drafted into the penal legion (mix of cannon fodder and special forces).
Semi-social experiment to see how players would react when their non-evil characters had to survive in an evil setting. They did ok.

Shadowrun Astral Quests.
Played out as games of "Everyone is John" (from 1d4 Chan), so the other players didn't have to sit around and wait for the Mages.

Bohandas
2017-09-06, 07:22 AM
2 campaign concepts for Toon: The Cartoon Roleplaying Game by SJ Games
(crossposted from http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?482528-DM-s-Aid-Share-Your-Campaign-Plothook-and-Encounter-Ideas)

2001: A Space Hostelry

The main characters all work in what is essentially an overly prosaic reading of the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, to wit they are employees in a hotel and spa in deep space run by an enigmatic godlike AI that travels the galaxy creating sapient species in order to generate potential customers. The each session revolves around dealing with the various beings that come in


Monolith stats:

Monolith

The Monolith is a godlike artificial intelligence that travels the galaxy being myaterious and raising animals into sentient species in order to xxdrum upxx create demand for its deep space hotel

Speed: 1 (0?)
HP: 18

SMARTS 6
Read 10
Resist Fast Talk 9
ID Dangerous 9
Spot 7

MUSCLE 1
break down door 5

CHUTZPAH 5
Pass/Detect shoddy 7

ZIP 1


Shticks

Teleport 9 (Usable On Others) (The monolith can't really move much, but can travel anywhere in the universe in 20 minutes (even if it's in the same building; twenty minutes) by traveling through the kaleidoscope dimension)
Cosmic Shift 8
Command (Soaptoon web supplement) 7 (the Monolith doesn't speak, it just sort of looms mysteriously, but looming in different ways can convey a lot and it's hotel employees can pick up its vibe, IF it makes it's roll)
Psychosis (Psychotoon web supplement) (Special)
Invulnerability (Physical) (TTG) 7
Invulnerability (Mental) (TTG) 5
Mindwarp (TTG) 8
Mental Attack (TTG) 4
Psychotic Fighting/Mind Fu (Psycho Toon web supplement) 4
Psychotic Exploration (Psycho Toon web supplement) 6

Factbusters
The PCs are employees of a Mythbusters-esque television show wherein the "myths" being tested tend to be either stupid bar bets ("you can't drink more than me without passing out"), health advice ("if you keep eating so much fast food you're going to have a heart attack" and then eventually the character dies of liver failure and diabetes. "myth busted!"), and places where people have used the word "can" to mean "may" ("you can't bring those TV cameras into Area 51!" and then they tunnel under the fence or somethig "So as you viewers can see, we can get TV cameras into Area 51 after all"...)

8BitNinja
2017-09-06, 08:56 AM
The Princess(es) Were Kidnapped!
Your standard princess got kidnapped scenario, except more than one princess, and the players are princesses.

While I think all of these princess ideas are pretty funny, I don't see how this one can be played. You get taken hostage, you sit around for a few days, and then the hero breaks you out.

But if they were from the same kingdom, all born on the same date from the queen (as in no royal adoption), and the hero's reward was the princess's hand in marriage, things could get interesting.

Maybe you could go to the extreme and have a battle royale. Last princess standing gets married to her rescuer and becomes next in line to be queen.

I think I might have over thought this.

Inspector Valin
2017-09-06, 09:36 AM
While I think all of these princess ideas are pretty funny, I don't see how this one can be played. You get taken hostage, you sit around for a few days, and then the hero breaks you out

Sure you can. What stops those princesses busting out themselves, and having to adventure back to their kingdom, avoiding the dragon? There's plenty of potential there if you're willing to write out the hero character

(Though personally, I prefer the bold epic of a band of heroes having to save a poor dragon from an evil princess ^^)

Bohandas
2017-09-06, 10:37 AM
While I think all of these princess ideas are pretty funny, I don't see how this one can be played. You get taken hostage, you sit around for a few days, and then the hero breaks you out.

They're different princesses who are lesbians and hoping to win the hand of the kidnapped princesses in marriage

Karl Aegis
2017-09-06, 10:44 AM
Ninjas playing basketball in space.

Potatomade
2017-09-06, 10:48 AM
0th level campaign. (AD&D 2nd ed.)
All players started off as kids from the local village (level 0 commoners) who had to earn 500 XP before they could select a class.
Lots of roleplaying in that one.

My group's planning on doing this, using the 0-level rules from Greyhawk Adventures. Our characters are going to be war orphans from the campaign we're currently doing.

Speaking of which: a massive interplanar war, spanning the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Spelljammer, Planescape, Ravenloft, and Dark Sun settings, using a ton of BattleSystem (2e). The players control 3 parties: the Main Party (traditional D&D stuff, serving as special forces), the Support Party (logistics, diplomacy, etc., using a lot of stuff from Birthright), and the War Party (BattleSystem). Bad guys are led by an Evil party of former PCs, so we're basically killing our own characters. It's a hell of a mess, but a fun one.

Joe the Rat
2017-09-06, 12:50 PM
While I think all of these princess ideas are pretty funny, I don't see how this one can be played. You get taken hostage, you sit around for a few days, and then the hero breaks you out.To quote a certain shirt, "I can save myself."

Mind you, I'd also be inclined to make the "knight in shining armor" the Big Bad of the campaign (scion of the evil empire that's trying to take over, likely to doom the kingdom of whomever he rescues into a subjugated vassal-state at best, and he's kind of a dink).

Something I've been thinking about quite a bit is an "over the edge of the world" campaign - falling into a strange, exotic environment, and trying to get home. Riding a colossal waterfall to the underside of a flat world, dropping into a mile-deep valley, where you navigate the Lost World of Dread, discovering the Back of the Tapestry, and negotiating its Wonderland logic, all to get back to civilization. Everything is a bit different, the occasional recognizable thing turning up as an artifact (and the strange tchotkes you've collected are actually from here), and languages are a new problem. Underdark with less caves.

Talwar
2017-09-06, 01:49 PM
I'm very slowing working on a campaign that is basically a fantasy Klondike Gold Rush, starting with the very long and arduous trip to get there in the first place. There'd be a fair bit less of the lethal combat stuff and more survival/non-lethal combat/social stuff but some of the notional end points of the campaign do point to it getting nasty later on.

Tinkerer
2017-09-06, 02:07 PM
One that I've been kinda tossing around in my head is a highly lethal post-apocalyptic mercenary campaign. Now when I say "highly lethal" I'm not just talking about combat here, I'm talking every type of skill. Don't have enough survival skills to get food? Dead (plus side the first person who dies helps support the rest :smallwink:). Don't have a bomb disposal skill? That could wind up killing you very easy. The players do get some assistance by choosing the type of mission they accept but who knows what could come up. I've kinda wanted to run it since so many people have said "Well of course they are ignoring skills and focusing on combat, no GM is going to kill you by lack of skills." I wouldn't run this as a main campaign but it could be a fun one to run once every couple of months as a palate cleanser.

Misereor
2017-09-06, 02:57 PM
Speaking of which: a massive interplanar war, spanning the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Spelljammer, Planescape, Ravenloft, and Dark Sun settings, using a ton of BattleSystem (2e). The players control 3 parties: the Main Party (traditional D&D stuff, serving as special forces), the Support Party (logistics, diplomacy, etc., using a lot of stuff from Birthright), and the War Party (BattleSystem). Bad guys are led by an Evil party of former PCs, so we're basically killing our own characters. It's a hell of a mess, but a fun one.

Sounds pretty cool.
We tried playing the Battlesystem mini campaigns in the Castles boxed set, but we didn't have enough figures, and eventually we got tired of using cardboard chits.
Battlesystem 2e had some conversion rules for characters in the back, that my players abused horribly.
(If you ever have your players going toe to toe, may I recommend you GM'ing to do fog of war and similar stuff.)

FreddyNoNose
2017-09-06, 03:02 PM
0th level campaign. (AD&D 2nd ed.)
All players started off as kids from the local village (level 0 commoners) who had to earn 500 XP before they could select a class.
Lots of roleplaying in that one.


I ran a children campaign long ago. It was very fun. They started out in a slave camp and eventually escaped and learned their respective classes. Had some mystery in the camp as well. Started with low attributes and they had to "earn" improvements.

JAL_1138
2017-09-06, 03:26 PM
A couple for D&D:

The Mystery of Fort Kwis-en-Arte:

Pronounced "Cuisinart." For good reason.

Sending the players on, effectively, a reclaim of one of my Dwarf Fortress forts.

The players discover the gibbering insanity the dwarves inside devolved into, seeing how they cast their own nobility in obsidian through elaborately-designed traps, carved horrific scenes of madness and debauchery into the very walls, made inexplicable and ludicrous artifacts, and succumbed to bizarre possession-like changes in personality as they were overwhelmed by mad creative urges that drove them insane when unfilfilled, all the while growing greedy and nearly digging too deep in their quest for cotton candy—the Hidden Fun Stuff can be heard scratching through the thin walls of the strange material. And deep in the vast caverns below, something foul and terrible from before the world of mortals—a creature abandoned by the gods, older than written memory and time itself—lurks in the dark, waiting for some foolish explorer to breach the hastily-constructed plug sealing the fortress off from the caves beneath.

The traps lie long-defunct, inactive, its defenses inert. Those who dorfed manned them are long dead. But suddenly the sound of hobgoblin war-horns splits the still, miasmic air—shut the gates, for the Last Siege of Fort Kwis-en-Arte has begun.



The Matrix Has You, Neo:

A seemingly-ordinary campaign is peppered with numerous smallwake upclues that the PCs areplease wake upunder the thrall of a lichthis isn't realor abolethWAKE UPand are really justthis isn't real moldering away instead ofWAKE UP adventuring, and have been for years...

IntelectPaladin
2017-09-06, 03:41 PM
Allow me to share one of my best known ideas with a simple word.
Or, rather, two words. It depends on your perspective.
Not the artistic sort of perspective, of course, unless you prefer that sort.
Candyland.

ko_sct
2017-09-06, 04:18 PM
One I've been meaning to make for quite some time and may end up doing after my current game is this :

Accomplishers of Prophecy !
You see, there is an old prophecy about the nect ruler of the land who will unite the nobles under a single kingdom and only YOU can accomplish the prophecy ! Well, not you per see. The first part of the prophecy as to do with the birth of the next true king, and only this guy over there fit that part. But the problem is that he's kind of useless, so only you guys (the party) are competent enought to make sure the prophecy unfold.

I was thinking of running it as some kind of sandbox game. The party would start with this looong prophecy and relativly few ressources but also little opposion. As the game progress, they would get a lot of ressources but also a lot of push-back from lords and the like who don't want a king above them

8BitNinja
2017-09-06, 05:34 PM
Sure you can. What stops those princesses busting out themselves, and having to adventure back to their kingdom, avoiding the dragon? There's plenty of potential there if you're willing to write out the hero character

(Though personally, I prefer the bold epic of a band of heroes having to save a poor dragon from an evil princess ^^)


They're different princesses who are lesbians and hoping to win the hand of the kidnapped princesses in marriage


To quote a certain shirt, "I can save myself."

Mind you, I'd also be inclined to make the "knight in shining armor" the Big Bad of the campaign (scion of the evil empire that's trying to take over, likely to doom the kingdom of whomever he rescues into a subjugated vassal-state at best, and he's kind of a dink).

Okay, I thought you said it was a typical setting.

you can put the keyboard Molotovs down now

8BitNinja
2017-09-06, 05:37 PM
Ninjas playing basketball in space.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3ALwKeSEYs

MintyNinja
2017-09-06, 05:49 PM
Saurizin Island:

A low levelled group is contacted by the Emerald Enclave for a secret mission. One of the oldest Archdruids has knowledge of a secret island where great reptilian beasts roam freely. It just so happens that things seem to be going wrong on the island, and they need to keep it a secret from their own people for political reasons. Using a Transport Via Plants spell, he sends them to Saurizin Island and directs them to discover what's going on and to contact his dear friend, Archmage [InsertName]. The island is teeming with dinosaurs and other wild jungle beasts. There's a local population of Lizardfolk lead by a Druidic Shaman. There's at least one Weretiger on the perpetual hunt, happy in his own private paradise. The Archmage's tower is at the highest peaks and requires much adventuring to reach, only to learn of the old man's death at the hands of a Vampire Mage that tracked him here via magic and is now bent on conquering the island for his own usage.


Underworld In Motion:

A Star Wars SAGA game where the players start as level 1 criminals crashlanded on Tattooine and find themselves privvy to the whereabouts of a secret Asteroid City. It's then a Thieve's World-esque conquer the city with your own faction while also fighting off the others as best as you can. Lots of updated lore and little to no force users. I've always valued the Scum and Villainy of Star Wars more than the Force.

Sredni Vashtar
2017-09-06, 06:32 PM
One idea I keep coming back to is a typical D&D dungeon crawl set up around the premise of it being a high fantasy reality show run by a very bored draconic demigod. I'd encourage the typical reality show cut away "confessionals" by handing out hero points/inspiration for fun roleplay.

UndeadArcanist
2017-09-06, 07:46 PM
One idea I keep coming back to is a typical D&D dungeon crawl set up around the premise of it being a high fantasy reality show run by a very bored draconic demigod. I'd encourage the typical reality show cut away "confessionals" by handing out hero points/inspiration for fun roleplay.

Totally stealing that one, thanks!
One of my own:

The players are sent to Carceri, the prison plane (DMG pg. 63). While the DMG states that getting out of Carceri is difficult but not impossible, this version is completely unescapable. Because of this, no one actually knows what it's like.

When they get there, they find that, over the centuries, the banished and their offspring have built a civilization. New arrivals are screened for villainy, and those that are determined to have been banished for good reasons are locked up. Those who do not appear to pose a threat are welcomed. The players have plenty to do, especially when they discover who, or what, the prison plane of Carceri was made for... Dun dun dunnnnnnn!

Jay R
2017-09-06, 10:05 PM
You grew up in a small village in the middle of a haunted forest, with no knowledge of the rest of the world except that some old folks talk about how much better it was back when there was a king.

Several adventures into it, you will get past the forest into the bigger cities, and learn that it all went bad after one of the knights led a revolt against the king.

Eventually you will learn that you are adventuring in the lawless times 50 years after the fall of Camelot.

TurboGhast
2017-09-07, 11:42 AM
I would find that very hard considering you have to take care of a whole party yet only one can play at a time. If I ever split the party it would be into two groups.



Lots of princesses.

Yeah, getting the campaign to move at a reasonable pace would be a serious challenge. The easiest way I can think of to get it to work is Play-by-Post, since that allows you to move multiple plot threads forward simultaneously easier because there's more time between each player's action and the DM's response. I'd have to prepare a lot before actually starting the game, since running five or so solo campaigns in one connected world would be the greatest DMing challenge I've ever faced.

Bohandas
2017-09-07, 03:52 PM
The Matrix Has You, Neo:

A seemingly-ordinary campaign is peppered with numerous smallwake upclues that the PCs areplease wake upunder the thrall of a lichthis isn't realor abolethWAKE UPand are really justthis isn't real moldering away instead ofWAKE UP adventuring, and have been for years...

Or that the monsters and villains they've been fighting are actually the controller's enemies (granted Apocalypse Stone already sort of did this)

Drakeburn
2017-09-07, 06:35 PM
Princess Power! :P

I'm not entirely sure why, honestly.

Does it always need to be princesses? What is wrong with Princes?

For instance, five young men of noble blood are to wed to five young noble women in an arranged marriage. Where those five "princes" go from there might be really interesting.

[BTW JNA, can you please clear out your inbox? I've been trying to get a hold of you for a while now]

NickChaisson
2017-09-07, 10:43 PM
I have three game ideas that I've been wanting to do for ages now but my players aren't as excited as I am about the ideas so they are on hold at the moment lol.

One is an Animorphs game in Mutants and Masterminds for awhile now. Basically the same premise of the books. Having the players covertly fighting the alien invasion while anyone they know could be a yerk host.

Another idea is a Harry Potter game. Basically it is summer break but none of the parents have seen/heard from their kids. No one at the school has responded to anyone either. So the players (playing as the parents) show up at Hogwarts to find out what's going on. It appears that the school is on a lock down of sorts and no one who's gone in as come out. So they must venture in. I would try to run this by emphasising resource management and having a large, explorable map that has lots of secrets and such.

The last is a power Rangers game. There are elves who feed off of human creativity. So one human discovered them and betrayed humanity by showing the elves how to access the mortal realm (their society is falling apart as it has been sealed off for the most part). Power Rangers are recruited as part of a band and must use rock and roll to defeat creativity stealing elves.

The largest issue with me running these games is that none of my players care about Animorphs, Harry potter or power Rangers lol

Mikemical
2017-09-08, 08:17 PM
World of Darkness meets Ugly Americans: There is no Masquerade, Paradox or Veil, and magical creatures(Vampires, Ghouls, Werewolves, Mages, Fey, etc) have to integrate into society working whatever jobs they can find, occassionally stopping those who would try to destroy the frail peace there is(the Sabbat, Black Spiral Dancers, Nephandi, ISIS, Cthul-tists, etc) all the while trying to pay their taxes. May or may not decay into "MAGICAL AS F**K GTA".

JAL_1138
2017-09-08, 09:35 PM
Or that the monsters and villains they've been fighting are actually the controller's enemies (granted Apocalypse Stone already sort of did this)

Ah, Apocalypse Stone, or "How to absolutely, definitively, once-and-for-all end the campaign and characters forever."

Anyhow, I was actually thinking of avojding the "the monsters are really your captor's enemies or innocent civillians" thing; it's been done too often. That's likely where their first thoughts will go—and then the owlbear mauls the heck out of them while they're standing around trying to decide if it's really an owlbear or a poor peasant villager they're being tricked into fighting. Muahaha...

For extra effect, in addition to the creepy littlewake up hints, you might throw in "nightmares" of being chained up in a prison cell, so malnourished and withered as to barely be able to struggle, hair and teeth falling out, with oozing open bedsores and with skin so ruined from starvation and infection it splits or sloughs off at the slightest movement in the shackes. Keep these visions infrequent, but make sure the descriptions are consistent each time they have these "nightmares."

Spice it up with sudden, but brief pangs of crippling hunger or debilitating thirst that nothing can sate, no matter how much they consume, or severe pain in their wrists and ankles, or suchlike when the PCs are awake.

The real question is: are any of these thingsthis isn't realindications of something that's actually happening? Are they getting glimpses of true reality when they see this stuff, or is someone just messing with their heads?

8BitNinja
2017-09-08, 09:51 PM
Does it always need to be princesses? What is wrong with Princes?

For instance, five young men of noble blood are to wed to five young noble women in an arranged marriage. Where those five "princes" go from there might be really interesting.

[BTW JNA, can you please clear out your inbox? I've been trying to get a hold of you for a while now]

Think of what you can do with all of that influence and resources.

Bohandas
2017-09-08, 11:19 PM
"The Political Campaign" - Set in the Planescape multiverse but possibly more like Paranoia in tone. The PCs are devils living in Avernus. An election is coming up to determine who will control the civil internal matters about which Bel does not care as well as the 1% of the layer's budget not earmarked for military spending. The PCs are attached either to the Authoritarian-Fascist Party - whose ideology promotes brutal rigid heirarchies in which the powerful prey upon the weak, or the Procrustean Party - who seek to stamp out all individuality and make everybody exactly identical and interchangable. The protagonists will dig up dirt on rivals, assassinate political enemies, and fill out reams and reams of forms notifying intent to dig up dirt and assassinate political enemies.

JBPuffin
2017-09-09, 12:02 AM
Lights Out! - Everyone over 18 disappears suddenly, and monsters are popping up from God knows where; fortunately, whatever forces that stole away the adults have also granted the kids superpowers! Hurray...right? I'd probably use this as an opportunity to use Maher's system by the same name as the campaign (kicked it, been keeping up with news, but haven't done much with it), but the idea began as a setting for Mutants and Masterminds based on a dream.

Multiversal Maelstrom - Somewhere between Homestuck (the webcomic) and Fudge/FATE (the game systems) lies a campaign about a group of video gamers being sucked into the game, handed a random set of powers based in part on their personalities/previous playing, and given a new life as part and pixel of their Server. Each character would have a title consisting of Role (constant throughout a character's in-universe career) and Element (chosen randomly upon creation); the abilities from these grow naturally as the character gains experience. Multiple magic systems would exist (stolen from the players' favorite media) and be mechanically distinct from one another to enforce the notion. Beyond that, it's a sandbox setting with events happening at all scales. Go crazy.

Bohandas
2017-09-09, 02:24 AM
Ah, Apocalypse Stone, or "How to absolutely, definitively, once-and-for-all end the campaign and characters forever."

Anyhow, I was actually thinking of avojding the "the monsters are really your captor's enemies or innocent civillians" thing; it's been done too often. That's likely where their first thoughts will go—and then the owlbear mauls the heck out of them while they're standing around trying to decide if it's really an owlbear or a poor peasant villager they're being tricked into fighting. Muahaha...

For extra effect, in addition to the creepy littlewake up hints, you might throw in "nightmares" of being chained up in a prison cell, so malnourished and withered as to barely be able to struggle, hair and teeth falling out, with oozing open bedsores and with skin so ruined from starvation and infection it splits or sloughs off at the slightest movement in the shackes. Keep these visions infrequent, but make sure the descriptions are consistent each time they have these "nightmares."

Spice it up with sudden, but brief pangs of crippling hunger or debilitating thirst that nothing can sate, no matter how much they consume, or severe pain in their wrists and ankles, or suchlike when the PCs are awake.

The real question is: are any of these thingsthis isn't realindications of something that's actually happening? Are they getting glimpses of true reality when they see this stuff, or is someone just messing with their heads?

Or we could combine both. The heroic adventure is the first matrix with the drab office buildings, the monstrous-looking peasants are the second matrix with the robots and the post-apocalyptic wasteland, and chained to a wall hallucinating is the unseen true reality

8BitNinja
2017-09-09, 11:24 AM
My oldest ever campaign idea involved an antagonist named The Dragon King who was a guy who had a scepter to control dragons. He then used his power to build up an army of monsters and tried to conquer the entire land. Besides that, that was about it when it came to the plot. Also, dungeons doubles as an underground network to different towns. The world had no roads, but they had subterranean mazes instead.

Never thought about it until recently, but that is a terrible mode of transportation.

Bohandas
2017-09-09, 11:58 AM
My oldest ever campaign idea involved an antagonist named The Dragon King who was a guy who had a scepter to control dragons. He then used his power to build up an army of monsters and tried to conquer the entire land. Besides that, that was about it when it came to the plot. Also, dungeons doubles as an underground network to different towns. The world had no roads, but they had subterranean mazes instead.

Never thought about it until recently, but that is a terrible mode of transportation.

What if all planets shared a single underworld, so by building your roads underground you could potentially build roads to anywhere

Draconi Redfir
2017-09-09, 12:49 PM
none of these have born fruit sadly, mainly just ideas i had in my head.

The Necromaster
Years ago a powerful necromancer ruled the land. but was defeated by a group of heroes, his power destroyed, and his spirit crushed. Despite all of this, he was able to kill the adventurers in his death throes, leaving the lot of them as corpses in his throne room. Years later, and much of the world has forgotten and recovered, the necromancer's tower still standing as a decaying landmark and little else. Eventually however, the necromancer's spirit returns to his body, but with only a fraction of a fraction of the power he once had. unable to move his body, the necromancer re-animates the heroes who had killed him as various undead. a skeleton that pulls himself out of his own decaying flesh, a ghost, a ghoul, a mummy, anything he can get. the newborn undead must now go out and collect crystals and artifacts of power, so their master may drain their magic to restore his own.

This concept was mainly done to subvert the "your first deventure starts in a tavern" trope, as well as playing the "good and just heroes". as my real-life D&D group doesn't allow evil or undead characters. planned on dming this for my real life freinds, but then i never worked on it and we kinda drifted apart.


Godless
on a world with a starless night sky, only one god exists. and he is dying. Sevral hundred years ago, the one god took half of his power and divided it into many fractions, sending these fractions out to be born as souls of various races, spread out so every race would have an equal chance at birth, from the long-lived elves, to the short-lived Goblins. Once the last of these "god-souls" reached the age of maturity, the quest would begin. "All must follow their own path" would echo through the minds of the god-souls, and they would know, now was the time to seek their destiny, do what must be done, and become the new gods of this world. Some may try to do this by defeating other god-souls in combat, others may try to gather a following, others may find that consuming the heart of a god-soul gave them it's powers and abilities. no matter the way, all must follow their own path.

The game would feature a low-magic setting in wich every god-soul takes a sorccer bloodline and levels up in it as if they had levels in sorccerer, even if they don't. any spells they gain from the bloodline would be allowed, even if it was not on the availible low-magic spell list. Wizards would not be allowed, sorccerers must be god-souls, and other arcane casters would either not be availible or otherwise limited. divine magic would also likely be limited due to the dying status of the god. only those born with magic would ever be truly able to weild it. Would also feature Dragons who weren't intelligent and couldn't talk (unless god-souled), religious plots to destroy the god-souls to save the one-god, and giant talking trees providing guidance.

main concepts were to subvert the "don't split the party" trope at least once, thinking a maze in wich the only way to progress was for everyone to split up and face a unique challenge specialized to them, as well as run a low-magic world in general. with non-intelligent dragons. because i always thought that was a silly idea.

sadly while having the most promice, this one never took off because while i had a lot of big encounters planned, a dragon, a tree, a maze, a cult, an empress from across the sea. i had no idea what to do for the intermediaries, no plan for levels one through five. what brought the PC's together? what do they do? why do they stick around long enough to encounter all these other things? how do they all interract? etc.


Small Woodland Critters
in a forrest or grove, a small collection of creatures begins to grow. each born of unique circumstances, giving them abilities and templates that allow them to just BARELY pass the border between ferality and Sentience. Each is unique in orgin, but eventually they all share the same home. Then... /something/ happens. no idea what. but the small magical woodland critters must band together to save the forrest.

Unique creature concepts only, no "awakend fox" or anything like that. Be a rabbit that was once a holy avenger that was hit with a polymorph spell, a squirrel that was struck by lightning while eating the acorn of a magical tree, a hedgehog who wandered in on a cult's summoning ritual and crossed the circle as it flooded with hell-energy, giving it a demonic template. something unique. MAYBE one "escaped famillier" critter. but no more then that. And no dialouge. comminicate with actions, not words.

Mainly born after i played a paladin who found a holy avenger, which was then transformed via polymorph spell by an evil loremaster into a Baby Celestial Dire Bunny. figure this could be a neat story for the rabbit to meet up with other critters with simmilar stories and go on adventures together. this idea was only enforced when i joined a comminity who later came up with the idea that someone's pet rabbit in minecraft who was killed came back as an evil spirit and started haunting everyone.

would really like to play this game as a player in a play-by-post setting, but have never been able to find a story, a DM, or a way to reasonably run a campain where the PC's have very few, if any ability scores higher then a 5. if i could just think of a plot i might try to run it as a DM, and just have everything that isn't a woodland critter have super high ability scores, multiply a goblin's scores by ten and give him a "huge" template to make up for the fact that he'd be facing off against rabbits and weasels and the like.

Bohandas
2017-09-09, 04:54 PM
Small Woodland Critters
in a forrest or grove, a small collection of creatures begins to grow. each born of unique circumstances, giving them abilities and templates that allow them to just BARELY pass the border between ferality and Sentience. Each is unique in orgin, but eventually they all share the same home. Then... /something/ happens. no idea what. but the small magical woodland critters must band together to save the forrest.

Unique creature concepts only, no "awakend fox" or anything like that. Be a rabbit that was once a holy avenger that was hit with a polymorph spell, a squirrel that was struck by lightning while eating the acorn of a magical tree, a hedgehog who wandered in on a cult's summoning ritual and crossed the circle as it flooded with hell-energy, giving it a demonic template. something unique. MAYBE one "escaped famillier" critter. but no more then that. And no dialouge. comminicate with actions, not words.

Mainly born after i played a paladin who found a holy avenger, which was then transformed via polymorph spell by an evil loremaster into a Baby Celestial Dire Bunny. figure this could be a neat story for the rabbit to meet up with other critters with simmilar stories and go on adventures together. this idea was only enforced when i joined a comminity who later came up with the idea that someone's pet rabbit in minecraft who was killed came back as an evil spirit and started haunting everyone.

would really like to play this game as a player in a play-by-post setting, but have never been able to find a story, a DM, or a way to reasonably run a campain where the PC's have very few, if any ability scores higher then a 5. if i could just think of a plot i might try to run it as a DM, and just have everything that isn't a woodland critter have super high ability scores, multiply a goblin's scores by ten and give him a "huge" template to make up for the fact that he'd be facing off against rabbits and weasels and the like.

D&D's lack of granularity and resultant poor handling of very small creatures has always bothered me as well. In fact the game in general doesn't do a good job of handling anything not in the small medium or large size categories. Anything smaller than small or larger than large doesn't work quite right and while the poor handling of little creatures is annoying but sort of excusable the poor handling of big creatures is not excusable given that the game has "Dragons" right in the title

Vknight
2017-09-09, 05:04 PM
I got so many I could make dozens of posts on it.

One of my favorite is the idea for a group of players 4 too 6 the campaign starts right after they all murdered a notorious person in town and have covered all there tracks with alibi's and more.
Unfortunately the man turned out too have far deeper and more evil connections and things spiral out of control as his criminal empire starts too collapse and the party has too avoid the landfall without implicating themselves

Misereor
2017-09-11, 03:07 AM
Back when World of Darkness was still fairly new, we were three GM's from our local gaming club who set up campaigns for Mage, Vampire, and Werewolf respectively. (I was the Werewolf guy)
The big plan was to run parallel campaigns around a common behind the scenes plot and finish off with a big bang where all the groups met and played together to save the world.
Then I lost two of my three players, and ended up as a player in a Paranoia game instead. But the other two groups had a hoot, even though they had to rewrite the plot a bit.
Still a bit disappointed about that one, more than 20 years later. :smallfrown:

kraftcheese
2017-09-11, 04:45 AM
I always thought an interesting idea for a Shadowrun...uh...run would be the PCs being hired to extract a test subject from a corps research into linking groups of cyberized animals with an AI controller.

When the PCs look deeper into it, they realise they haven't been hired by a rival corp, but by the AI/animal hivemind, and that it's actually a breakout as many of the components of the hive as can get out.

Pugwampy
2017-09-11, 05:23 AM
My first ever campaign was an orc war campaign which basically gave me an excuse to toss my favorite monsters at the players every second or third encounter .
My hub town was an insignificant little tourist site of dwarven ruins in Fearun Damara called Palaschuk , which i made into a massive thriving underground city of half orcs with a main Temple of Luthic the cave mother and wife of grumsh . My half orcs were not evil and I always felt the cave mother is better option than Grumsh
Basically i wooed players with multiple factions making the foreign legion military faction extra sweet with free daily magic potion , AC amulets for casters and fullplate for fighters . Players flew on direbat mounts to locations and every mission completed got them rank.


My second campaign, I got the idea of building it around my basic game set 2006 . The main quest was the dungeon module which mentioned Players start at a town called Griffinford which i am unsure if it exists on any DND forgotten realms or greyhawk map .The basic game heroes you start off with became the ruling council of the town Griffinford which included Regdar the fighter which we all find in the 3.5 PHB . Naturally players built their own heroes .


My third campaign was a combination of those two ideas. Players started in the hubtown of Palaschuk , which I moved from forgotten realms Damara to Golorion Realm of the mammoth lords.

The main dungeon and quest was Basic game 2004 . What was interesting here was , I kept building extra rooms onto this basic game dungeon long after they killed the dragon. If you undestand basic game sets usually the dungeon has rooms that lead to nowhere for DM "convenience" excuse

I also introduced non Dnd approved fey themes which came about from this dirty lil booby trap right at the start . basically a spirit in a mirror called Alyssa who is helpful with info if you are polite and eventually offers to let some player join her . If a player bites he is never heard from again so says the mod .
I was so enchanted by this idea , I made the spirit a fairy queen with nymph stats and the mirror itself was a magical doorway between the worlds of golarion and fearun . The timezone seems equal but i basically 1 day in Golorion is one year in Fearun. Players need help if they want to return back to their own time.


This led to the birth my new Hubtown which i fixate about for a future campaign . Players will now start off in a Fairytopia hub town called Thelenea ruled by fairy queen Alyssa .
Surrounding this town is a protective mist barrier which lead to Jurassic park land of Chult on Fearun . I wont have a temple but a unicorn that heals players for free
I will have a second possible Hub town for player to feel normal again called Stone Town a colony mining town extra boring dwarves who dont believe is fairies.

The unicorn and the mining town comes from yes you guessed it , yet another basic game set module which i will incorporate . I will exchange gobs and hob gobs for trogs and kobs in the main dungeon which is an overrun dwarven fortress to stay with the Jurassic park theme .

Players will enjoy and insane hippy fairy culture and quests mixed with basic game quests surround by hungry dinosaurs . Non DND approved fairy funny things . Oh yes i wish to add Ewoks as part of my fairy community . They are cute walking teddy bears why not ? Starwars no use for them it seems.
Pugwumpies of course will be my black market fairy arms merchants.

I have dreams of Fairy queens , and Dinos eating hero spleens .....Now i just need players .

Misereor
2017-09-11, 05:50 AM
I always thought an interesting idea for a Shadowrun...uh...run would be the PCs being hired to extract a test subject from a corps research into linking groups of cyberized animals with an AI controller.

When the PCs look deeper into it, they realise they haven't been hired by a rival corp, but by the AI/animal hivemind, and that it's actually a breakout as many of the components of the hive as can get out.



I think Deus actually did that during the Arcology shutdown. It hired runners to extract "victims", who had parts of it's code embedded, making them Deus nodes.

Draconi Redfir
2017-09-11, 09:36 AM
I always thought an interesting idea for a Shadowrun...uh...run would be the PCs being hired to extract a test subject from a corps research into linking groups of cyberized animals with an AI controller.

When the PCs look deeper into it, they realise they haven't been hired by a rival corp, but by the AI/animal hivemind, and that it's actually a breakout as many of the components of the hive as can get out.

fun little twist that one is :P

sengmeng
2017-09-11, 11:44 AM
I thought it would be fun if the players were low-level squires to a powerful but idiotic knight. Basically Don Quixote with 3-5 Sancho Panzas. They'd all wear matching red shirts and die constantly, with newly rolled up characters joining with the explanation that they were recruited from the nearest podunk village. I'd probably have them downgrade each time too, so your first character could be a fighter, your second a warrior, then commoners after that. It'd be hard to find people who were all on board and the knight's brain dead antics would have to be really entertaining.

Lord Torath
2017-09-11, 12:33 PM
I always thought an interesting idea for a Shadowrun...uh...run would be the PCs being hired to extract a test subject from a corps research into linking groups of cyberized animals with an AI controller.

When the PCs look deeper into it, they realise they haven't been hired by a rival corp, but by the AI/animal hivemind, and that it's actually a breakout as many of the components of the hive as can get out.In the "Dragon Hunt" adventure, the runners are hired by a dragon that was undergoing cyberware experiments and ended up buying the company that was performing the experiments on him, but lost his memory "extracting" himself. The runners are hired to find out who he is and how he ended up on the top floor of the local hospital.

I had an idea for the PCs in a D&D game to encounter a group of Draconians that wanted to be restored to their full draconic glory (after I read the story about the draconian patrol in Dragonlance Tales: vol 1). They had a polymorphed silver dragon helping them, and were seeking out a series on magic pearls called The Tears of the Dragon and a magic fountain that, combined, could restore one or more of them to full dragons. I didn't know at this point that draconians' souls were abishai from the Abyss.

On Dragonsfoot (http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=77482), there's an idea (from Mark Hall, I think - I'm sure he'll correct me if I'm wrong) called Advanced Dungeons and Kittens. The entire party is made up of cat familiars whose wizards have disappeared. He's got rules for five or six different "classes" of cat familiars.

Samzat
2017-09-11, 12:34 PM
A mini-campaign set mostly in Byzantium where the players, a group of citizens from different backgrounds, get caught up what seems like a typical regicide plot, but is actually part of something much greater...

JBPuffin
2017-09-11, 05:46 PM
Monsters and Mayhem: A 5e or 4e DnD game in which the players use the standard array/point buy, the monster creation rules, and DM guidance/approval to build a diverse party of varying levels of monstrosity. End result would look something like a Gamma World campaign - P1's a swarm of sentient rats, P2's a smallish stone golem, P3's a young dragon, P4's a telepath, et cetera. Giving players a glimpse into the work required to create custom monsters ought to give them a newfound appreciation for the work they do :smallbiggrin:. My dad and I playtested this sort of idea in 4e using humanoids, 1d10+8 for ability scores, and the "add class as a template" system to create a party of four, then had a human wizard running alongside.

Vogie
2017-09-13, 11:05 AM
I've thought of a Redwall-style campaign as well, possibly based off the old movie Secrets of NIMH

I've heard of a Jason-Bourne-style campaign, where the players don't have their character sheets, and figure out what their stats/abilities and whatnot are on the fly through roleplay. I don't have the amount of knowledge required for such a thing yet but one day...

Some Black Mirror episodes would be fascinating as campaign skeletons. Men Against Fire, specifically.

I think having a low-magic Oregon Trail-style West Marches campaign would be fantastic. Gritty realism, plus I started writing out possible rules for fording rivers with oxen. Harder than I thought. Added problem was, when ran past my players, didn't like the idea behind the other aspect of Oregon Trail - death is fairly common, and require lots of rerolls due to bad luck (and also dysentery).

Someone had posted an idea of turning a normal campaign into an X-men game by giving players a cantrip-esque "mutation", a 0-3 level spell they can use at will, in addition to their normal class abilities, which I thought was absolutely awesome. I love the Godsfall podcast, which did something similar on a much larger scale.

I think it could be interesting to do a Harry-potter-esque "Wizard School" type game, where the players would build non-wizard characters that can either focus on their class abilities, study more into the Wizard aspects, or both.

denthor
2017-09-13, 02:14 PM
Not entire campaign one set up valley of the sun.

Sun god needed. The people in order to get to the good spot they want to be keep attacking random caravans. They attack with out weapons and hope the gaurds kill them on the way in.

Good characters must find a way to put them down but not kill. After a while the church will ban the practice since they run out of flock quickly.

JAL_1138
2017-09-13, 05:16 PM
Or we could combine both. The heroic adventure is the first matrix with the drab office buildings, the monstrous-looking peasants are the second matrix with the robots and the post-apocalyptic wasteland, and chained to a wall hallucinating is the unseen true reality

Or just keep going after that. There's no "real" reality for them to find. It's turtles all the way down.

Bohandas
2017-09-13, 08:14 PM
Or just keep going after that. There's no "real" reality for them to find. It's turtles all the way down.

Or it turns out the first one was the real one after all and so eone just slipped them some acid

8BitNinja
2017-09-13, 09:28 PM
Maybe the matrix idea would be cool, but they were stuck in a multi layered dream. Every time they think they escape, its because the puppet master controlling the dream wanted them to think that.

Lacco
2017-09-14, 12:45 AM
I've heard of a Jason-Bourne-style campaign, where the players don't have their character sheets, and figure out what their stats/abilities and whatnot are on the fly through roleplay. I don't have the amount of knowledge required for such a thing yet but one day...

I once tried it with Shadowrun. Didn't work so well as imagined.

I want to try it again, this time with Fate. However... I won't make their character sheets. They get them empty (I'll just have a pyramid checklist to check off which skill level I gave them) and once they decide to try something, they will place the skill they used on one of them. Basically - they'll create characters in play and we'll fill in the gaps.


I think having a low-magic Oregon Trail-style West Marches campaign would be fantastic. Gritty realism, plus I started writing out possible rules for fording rivers with oxen. Harder than I thought. Added problem was, when ran past my players, didn't like the idea behind the other aspect of Oregon Trail - death is fairly common, and require lots of rerolls due to bad luck (and also dysentery).

I'd love to play in such campaign... :smallsmile:


I think it could be interesting to do a Harry-potter-esque "Wizard School" type game, where the players would build non-wizard characters that can either focus on their class abilities, study more into the Wizard aspects, or both.

I thought about running something similar to the Princess Maker game - in potterverse. They have to allocate time for studying, practicing spells, training for Quidditch (if they decide) and balance it with exploration of school (dungeon-crawling) and various events. Non-linear story, which will progress one way if they decide to not look into it, and other way if they do (and succeed).

Bohandas
2017-09-14, 12:09 PM
Antihero campaign: "The People's Terminationary Front" (or "Won't Get Fooled Again" or "Revolution Means 360°")

The characters' homeland is under the control of an oppressive regime and has been oppressed for centuries. There are periodic successful revolutions but they never seem to improve anything. In truth the government and the revolutions are both secretly under the control of baatezu soul harvesters bent on turning people to lawful evil causes and then getting them killed. The only hope of breaking this cycle lies with the "Terminationary Front", a demon led conspiracy bent on taking advantage of the strife of the latest ongoing revolution to smash both the state AND the revolutionaries and also raze the capitol completely to the ground

CadeStyle
2017-09-14, 04:34 PM
I haven't ran a D&D game in quite a while, but one of my hobbies has always been designing adventures that I'll probably never get to play. A little disheartening, but I still enjoy it.

The campaign starts out pretty normally, with a group of adventurers finding themselves in a tavern in a walled off town. But the group doesn't remember much, if anything about where they are, how they got there, or even who they are. The characters would need to be of a fairly high level, at least 10+, in order to survive what lies outside the gates, though they have no knowledge of how they obtained their abilities. The first portion of the campaign would revolve around discovering the secret behind where they are, which would then lead to what I hope is a pretty interesting quest of discovery.

Kane0
2017-09-14, 06:36 PM
Half baked adventure ideas? Oh wow, take a seat my friend I got tons.

A Mage's Solace (Wizard Did It): Demiplane of an archmage that houses a small city with it's own population. He rarely interacts with the subjects he experiments on but they still regard him as godlike. His most recent breakthrough is a magical device that allows the use of magic when surgically attached to the spine (side effects include but not limited to psychosis, addiction, blackouts, etc)

Dungeon Defender: Party comes across a dungon with a vacancy sign out front. It's their job to repopulate and refortify it in order to attract other adventurers, successfully kill them within the dungeon and take their stuff. At later stages other dungeon owners in the area become competition.

Genesis: The party is amongst the first intelligent humanoids created by the gods. The powers are still getting the hang of the 'governing mortals' thing and hilarity ensues

Ivan: Stock standard adventure but the BBEG is like a Babuska doll. Each time you defeat him he sheds another layer until you get to the final one.

LCB Squad: The party are elite agents of a nation at war with another nation. They are handed a wand of Locate City Bomb with 1 charge and instructed to detonate it at the enemy's capital or right in the middle of their marching army. This will obviously kill them in the process but that's a soldiers life.

Phylactery: A lich pops up and starts doing lich stuff. He's not terribly concerned if he is defeated because he just comes back using his phylactery. He has left a couple red herrings for adventurers to chase but his actual phylactery is a bloodline of humanoids. In order to properly kill him you'd need to do some serious genocide.

Visionary: A low level cleric receives a vision from their god meant for a totally different and unrelated higher level cleric. Of course the acolyte dutifully attempts to carry out his 'mission' anyways, even if later learning that it wasn't actually supposed to be for him.

The Temple of Reshar: Based on the philosophies of the Book of Nine Swords, the Temple of Reshar is sending out initiates into the world to recover powerful weapons to add to their collection and use to further the development of Blade Magic. The PCs are one such group.

Bohandas
2017-09-14, 08:00 PM
Some relevant links

Funky Settig Ideas (http://secretsofthearchmages.net/Threads/Wotc/2015/PreviousEditionGeneral/1136716.htm)
Fleeting Random Ideas (http://secretsofthearchmages.net/Threads/Wotc/2015/PreviousEditionGeneral/2199051.htm)

Special thanks to Solauren (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/member.php?41283-Solauren) for saving these.

AMFV
2017-09-14, 09:59 PM
Ivan: Stock standard adventure but the BBEG is like a Babuska doll. Each time you defeat him he sheds another layer until you get to the final one.


Does he get smaller with each iteration?

Lord Raziere
2017-09-14, 11:00 PM
Does he get smaller with each iteration?

and do you have to face him in the year 1999 before they destroy all of civilization?

Kane0
2017-09-15, 02:42 AM
It was something like
Stage 1: illusory/fake Ivan
Stage 2: Animated armor Ivan is wearing
Stage 3: Ivan
Stage 4: Zombie Ivan
Stage 5: Skeletal Ivan
Stage 6: Spectral Ivan

I think I named him Ivan because its A) a russian name and B) the mysterious guy that my father mentioned but never explained when my father was drunk enough.

Edit: Crap forgot polymorphed Ivan, i knew there was 7

Shark Uppercut
2017-09-15, 04:31 AM
It was something like
Stage 1: illusory/fake Ivan
Stage 2: Animated armor Ivan is wearing
Stage 3: Ivan
Stage 4: Zombie Ivan
Stage 5: Skeletal Ivan
Stage 6: Spectral Ivan
Edit: Crap forgot polymorphed Ivan, i knew there was 7

This is similar to a boss idea I had!
1) Nika the humanoid.
2) Nika the corporeal undead.
3) Nika the skin balloon rips itself off and stands up.
4) Nika the muscle and tendon tentacle monster knits itself together a few rounds later.
5) Nika the skeleton assembles a few rounds later.
6) Nika the pool of blood (water necromental) collects into one blob a few rounds later.
7) Nika the incorporeal undead provides spell support a few rounds later.
If they visit the same place after a significant time delay, Nika the bone dust cloud (air necromental) gets one last go.

Then there's also Penanggalens, who by default just leave behind a lifeless and organ-less torso and legs. The template could be tinkered with to make it a legit splitting monster, the torso could make melee attacks or trip people.

Pleh
2017-09-15, 06:25 AM
Nerull's Plot
Any D&D edition (originally planned for 3.5).
This concept actually won me a prize at a small, local plot submission contest at my dorm in college. Not a huge pool for competition, but an interesting point.

Ancient prophecy has foretold the coming of The Hands of Fate, basically a party of Chosen Ones whose lives have ultimate agency over events on the material plane (yes, the PCs). Nerull has dealt with Vecna to obtain the secret knowledge of the names of the next incarnation of these individuals (helping him ascend to the status of demigod in repayment). Nerull immediately sends his servants to seize these individuals and gather them together before their potential is noticed by themselves or other gods.

The campaign begins with describing to the players that they are helplessly restrained, minimally equipped, and ritually CdG'd (there may be a little railroading as this is more of a cutscene than an active scenario). Their characters die in a ceremony that denies their souls access to their rightful afterlife determined by alignment and hands their souls instead into the control of Nerull, who basically tortures them eternally until their will is broken and they swear themselves into his service (in a timeless dimension where eternal torment requires no passage of time back on the material plane).

After breaking them into his service, Nerull ressurects them from their graves on the material plane. He commissions them to sow death among the mortals (inconspicuously, the other deities might intervene if they aren't careful and Nerull would be displeased if any hero were negligent or beligerent in their duties). This quest will involve some petty murder, but moreover will involve political assassinations and the ultimate effort to push the world deep into WW2 style genocide, hopefully with some religious crusades fueling it all. The goal is to Total Civilization Kill all sentient races, giving the god of death supreme power over the material plane and substantially advance his standing in the pantheon (possibly giving him the ability to overthrow other deities).

He grants his servants each Relics that serve as both Carrot and Stick as they reward the "correct" behavior and punish "incorrect" behavior and help the heroes succeed in their given goals (such as a holy symbol for ex-paladins that make them seem like they haven't fallen).

From here, the campaign actually begins. Players may run it as a "way of the wicked" campaign, serving Nerull faithfully to obtain positions of favor in the next life, or they can carefully try to subvert his will (as good or evil characters), alert the other deities, and break free from his influence, possibly saving the world from the catastrophes that Nerull is setting up to take place with or without the Hands of Fate.

Sandbox Star Wars
Star Wars Saga Edition
Setting is the Dark Times (after episode 3, but before episode 6). The primary galactic events of the movies/books/games are only vaguely true.

For example, Darth Vader is now a seperate character from Anakin (who officially died confronting Vader), his true identity is actually unknown to the players (and actually needs no secret meaningful reveal, he can just remain a threatening enigma). Obi Wan isn't hiding on Tatooine, but raising Luke in the heart of the Rebellion and training him as needed. Most other characters and events aren't substantially changed (Han is probably working with the rebellion as a smuggler with rebel sympathies and debts with the Hutts).

For PC interest, playing Jedi is not advised: most force traditions are oppressed and users are hunted. Lightsabers will bring the local trooper barracks down on you. It isn't banned, just be aware of the consequences. You also present a danger to your allies should any inquisitors (or Force forbid, Vader himself) sense your presence.

Let the sandbox begin.

Dark Souls
I've seen others express this idea as well, but I've wanted to try it for a while now. Dark Souls is really not a sandbox adventure quite like other TTRPG sandboxes. Dark Souls is a bit more like Metroid in that the map is a puzzle box adventure (move this piece to unlock the next piece). You can go in any direction, but not every direction is equally easy or helpful in progressing to the objective.

You could try a true sandbox Dark Souls (an open world of hollows with undead society collecting anywhere they can), but the idea has less appeal to me than constructing a set play area like the games do. Because Dark Souls is really about mastering the system, including the map. An endless map just can't be mastered the same way as a set area can.

After all, what else can be the point of making an endless respawn system canonical than to imply that the character remembers how they failed and eventually learn how to overcome a specific set of challenges? This is the excuse to make your challenges excessively, trollishly difficult: your players can retry an infinite number of times.

Hamste
2017-09-15, 07:30 AM
One I have wanted to do is a game based around the horseman of the apocalypse.

The players would play War, Pestilence and Famine after being recently defeated by a god-king leading a holy kingdom (3 people playing and death has always been the odd one out in the horseman).

Their goal is to destroy the world by any means possible. The problem is the god-king stands in their way along with several other nations. Via manipulation, deceit and cunning they would have to slowly destroy crops, cause disease or stir up strife. A cult will slowly grow behind them as they do so and they will have to search out magical items or spells to further increase their power. All leading up to a confrontation with the God-king in their last bastion of hope to totally anhilate the world.

Lord Torath
2017-09-15, 07:57 AM
Ivan: Stock standard adventure but the BBEG is like a Babuska doll. Each time you defeat him he sheds another layer until you get to the final one.I think it's called a Matryoshka doll. Babushka is Russian for "Grandmother". Just FYI.

Joe the Rat
2017-09-15, 09:19 AM
I think it's called a Matryoshka doll. Babushka is Russian for "Grandmother". Just FYI.
Why not both? You defeat the first three layers, only to find out the BBEG is actually your grandmother.

Or Baba Yaga. The giant-sized mortar and pestle parked out back should have been a clue.

Bohandas
2017-09-15, 11:10 AM
For example, Darth Vader is now a seperate character from Anakin (who officially died confronting Vader)

Maybe just run the game in one of Lucas' earlier drafts of the setting. Maybe also replace Palpatine with Cos Daghit and/or Master Valorum, that kind of thing

Bohandas
2017-09-15, 11:14 AM
I think it's called a Matryoshka doll. Babushka is Russian for "Grandmother". Just FYI.

I've heard it called both

Bohandas
2017-09-15, 11:29 AM
6) Nika the pool of blood (water necromental) collects into one blob a few rounds later.

I believe there was an official blood elemental in [i]Denizens of Dread[/i[

Samzat
2017-09-15, 11:38 AM
In the grim darkness of the 41st millenium (warhammer 40k), a unit of guardsmen 40-60 strong struggle to survive and undermine the forces of chaos that now reside upon their hive world, as well as try to call reinforcements and wait for them. This would be a sorta 40k/xcom fusion, with each player having a 10 character pool.

Tinkerer
2017-09-15, 11:45 AM
In the grim darkness of the 41st millenium (warhammer 40k), a unit of guardsmen 40-60 strong struggle to survive and undermine the forces of chaos that now reside upon their hive world, as well as try to call reinforcements and wait for them. This would be a sorta 40k/xcom fusion, with each player having a 10 character pool.

Sounds similar to my heavily plotted Necromunda campaign. Only replace guardsmen with gangers. It was fuuuuuuun.

Lord Torath
2017-09-15, 12:05 PM
I've heard it called both"I've heard it both ways! The right way and then yours! I've heard it both ways! Let's not open any sores; I've heard it right, and wrong! Don't Cheech my Chong, anymore!" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BGQCVOqvHA)

Also, a quick Google search shows they are called both Babushka and Matryoshka dolls.

Somewhat related to the post above me, I first came across "Matryoshka" reading a story of the same name here: http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/List_of_Short_Stories

Vknight
2017-09-15, 12:59 PM
A few more

A group of F.B.I. Agents are called in on a double homicide the problem?
Well one victim is in one state and the other across the border in another state.
The precarious thing is they both share the same injuries, and even more complications adding up.

AMFV
2017-09-15, 05:23 PM
A few more

A group of F.B.I. Agents are called in on a double homicide the problem?
Well one victim is in one state and the other across the border in another state.
The precarious thing is they both share the same injuries, and even more complications adding up.

And then somebody who was in neither State confesses to the crime, and those details that have not been released today the media that only someone familiar with the crime could know.

JBPuffin
2017-09-15, 07:57 PM
I've got another one, thanks to a post in the 3.5 thread.

JumpChain: the Tabletop Campaign - Basically, each of the players is pulled into a fictional universe and does their best to survive and grow in power before they are moved to another one. I'd probably set this up as a Fudge game: each world comes with its own quirks, but there would be an attribute system behind it to tie everything together somewhat. Order of jumps would come from a priority list based on each of the players and sorted with a Borda count. So, for example:

Player 1 has P1 Harry Potter, P2 Dresden Files, P3 Magicka, P4 Magic: the Gathering (any plane). They are strongly interested in mage characters, but aren't familiar enough with DnD mechanics to use their spellcasting.
Player 2 has P1 Eberron, P2 Kaladesh, P3 Spelljammer, P4 Golarion. This player wants awesome tech, preferably magitech, and each world has at least some of that going on. Coming into Pathfinder with a Spelljammer ship sounds especially tasty.
Player 3 has P1 PTUniverse, P2 Persona 4, P3 Fallout 4, P4 Fate Grail War. This person wants pets of all kinds - Pokemon, a Persona, a Fallout Companion, and a Grail Servant, to name a few.
Player 4 has P1 Magicka, P2 Persona 4, P3 Eberron, P4 Harry Potter. This one knows a couple of things the other players want, and has picked four of those they'd like to visit.

Alright, time to bring out some voting. Borda count says 4 points for 1st place, 3 for 2nd, 2 for 3rd, and 1 for 4th,
which gives us
Harry Potter 5
Dresden Files 3
Magicka 6
Kaladesh (including generic MTG points) 4
Eberron 6
Spelljammer 2
Golarion 1
PTUniverse 4
Persona4 6
Fallout4 2
Fate Grail War 1


I throw the top three back at them, and the order goes Magicka, Eberron, Persona 4. After all three of those jumps,
we'll go back through and vote again, adding new votes to the old ones.

I love me some crossovers, so doing something like this actually sounds like a lot of fun. If I were absolutely mad, I'd use a more robust system to simulate this mess, but I can only go so far :smallbiggrin:.

Bohandas
2017-09-16, 10:45 AM
Doomed Quake-Life
Someone attempts to build a Tippyverse style series of teleportation circles, but all of the resultant permanent astral conduits provide the perfect vehicle for a Githyanki invasion of the material plane

RedMage125
2017-09-16, 01:05 PM
In His Majesty's Service
The players are all dwarves or gnomes (in my world, many rock gnomes live in dwarven territory), and members of the dwarven military. First few sessions will be training. Later adventures will involve scouting, Search And Rescue, and of course, infiltration and destruction of dwarven enemies (orcs, drow, etc).

Bohandas
2017-09-17, 01:45 AM
The characters are all aspects of deities

JAL_1138
2017-09-17, 10:59 AM
Just had a thought for a CoC game. Whatever horrible insane cultists are trying to summon some kind of great old one or outer god or what-have-you, or whatever abominable creature(s) have broken through and are wreaking havoc, are so far along that the investigators can't possibly disrupt the ritual or fend off the critters or otherwise solve the problem by conventional means. The only option would be to find a way to consult Yog-Sothoth itself for some ritual that would stop it, without going too insane in the process to do what's necessary once they gain the requisite knowledge. Instead of investigating the cults and the monsters, the goal would be to find ways to contact the Lurker at the Threshold, 'Umr-at-Tawil, the All-in-One and One-in-All without being obliterated, driven mad, or ascending beyond the concerns of petty mortals to such a degree they no longer care about earth and trivial things like an insignificant blue planet in an outer spiral arm of a backwater galaxy getting conquered by Hastur. In essence fighting fire with fire, becoming cultists themselves to fight the other cultists.

2D8HP
2017-09-17, 04:14 PM
You grew up in a small village in the middle of a haunted forest, with no knowledge of ..


...the players don't have their character sheets, and figure out what their stats/abilities and whatnot are on the fly through roleplay.....


Ooh!!! I like these "veil" of ignorance" ideas!

My campaign ideas are rather more prosaic and unoriginal, basically: Viking kids vs Morlocks

The PC's are adolescents and very young adults in an isolated village where two summers ago all the fighting age men, and many of the women left on a "trading" mission, and have not returned, so the elders of the village at a moot in the godshall have some of the youth accompany "old Ragnar", a one armed former Viking (who will die of natural causes soon after they set sail) as their guide.

What they find is that nearby they are de-populated and sometimes burned towns with no bodies and little evidence of what happened.

Upon returning home (assuming they do), they find their village simillarly emptied, with cooking fires still smoldering, and in the distance a low thumping sound, like a muffled hammering.

If they seek out the source of the sounds, they find what look to be new wells outside the village, but they see no water at the bottom, and ha hand and foot holds along the sides, and descending and exploring leads them to discover albino "Goblins" leading the enchanted people of their village deeper into the earth, and then....
....well basically the Goblins are the Morlocks in the 1895 Time Machine novella, and the 1960 film, led by albino Drow/Elves not unlike the character played by Jeremy Irons in the 2002 film.

Further exploration by the PC's leads them to find tunnels made by digging machines (like in At The Earth's Core), and locales like in Journey to the Center of the Earth (ruins and dinosaurs!), and a civilization a bit like the Selenites in First Men in the Moon.


https://i.pinimg.com/originals/be/cd/be/becdbe61eaa6aecd066a697cbef57715.jpg

https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/2x/z2tm2qgh2h31.jpg

https://ingeld.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/stave-church11.jpg?w=218&h=300

https://68.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9wv1dc6LR1r9gwhe.bmp

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-w1U7VldXczM/VtcnnDjKVdI/AAAAAAAALGk/dVZdltN5_vM/s280/Eoli%2Bunderground.jpg

https://68.media.tumblr.com/0e9aca8fe922c2ef369ba370d70a66be/tumblr_o2afjzv7Ek1syptjoo7_500.png

https://68.media.tumblr.com/e247703f22fbaa609cf56741365b1706/tumblr_o2afjzv7Ek1syptjoo1_500.png


https://pre00.deviantart.net/6570/th/pre/i/2004/09/e/b/morlock_emerging_from_a_hole_.jpg

https://pre00.deviantart.net/0caf/th/pre/i/2012/057/2/2/here_be_morlocks_by_mattpocalypse-d4r2eg6.jpg


https://68.media.tumblr.com/2022bb37f8ba55fe62daadcbc61a1df2/tumblr_o2afjzv7Ek1syptjoo4_500.png


http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s8l-yu7AZLM/SVppXmlmMYI/AAAAAAAAFdM/_uaE0SOEVds/s280/tm13.jpg

http://pages.erau.edu/~andrewsa/sci_fi_projects_fall_2015/Project_1/Charalab_Constantine/Updated_Project_HU338/Morlocks.jpg

https://cdn3.bigcommerce.com/s-x8dfmo/products/11724/images/34773/Jeremy-Irons-in-The-Time-Machine-2002-Premium-Photograph-and-Poster-1023101__47680.1432433158.386.513.jpg?c=2

http://cinefantastiqueonline.com/wp-content/uploads/011.jpg

http://cinefantastiqueonline.com/wp-content/uploads/FIRST-MEN-IN-THE-MOON-Bedford-and-MoonCalf-300x147.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_TRju1TnYfxU/TN5ipt5ZoqI/AAAAAAAAAjY/GCUVQIL_CO0/s280/Mushroom+forest.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_TRju1TnYfxU/TN5iQWoLrxI/AAAAAAAAAi4/mXGlR6nEiyU/s280/cave+5+-+Alantis.jpg

http://cdn.thinglink.me/api/image/515889167041822721/640/10/scaletowidth

http://www.pellucidar.org/moleh3.jpg

Vogie
2017-09-18, 07:37 AM
The characters are all aspects of deities

If you like this, Check out Godsfall... they're releasing a worldbook soon for a campaign with precisely this core.

Joe the Rat
2017-09-18, 02:11 PM
I've heard of a Jason-Bourne-style campaign, where the players don't have their character sheets, and figure out what their stats/abilities and whatnot are on the fly through roleplay. I don't have the amount of knowledge required for such a thing yet but one day...
Hmm, missed this earlier. I was in a Pathfinder convention game on this premise. To the point that we couldn't even see our own character portraits (until we looked in a mirror, which we managed to not do for four hours of play).

It was both interesting, and annoying. It's certainly worth a short play, but unless you can settle on character types beforehand, it could be frustrating over the long haul.

8BitNinja
2017-09-18, 05:23 PM
I've heard of a Jason-Bourne-style campaign, where the players don't have their character sheets, and figure out what their stats/abilities and whatnot are on the fly through roleplay. I don't have the amount of knowledge required for such a thing yet but one day...

You would need a trustworthy DM.

spinningdice
2017-09-19, 09:36 AM
Monolith realm, an ancient world near covered in city, pretty much everything had been tamed, civilised, or explored. Sort of Shadowrun but pure fantasy. Ancient guilds scheme against each other, hiring adventurers to make runs against opposition.
Sort of magic matures and controlls near everything. Of course a few years later I found out about Ravnica, which is kind of similar concept.

Broken City of Doors: One of the largest cities is laid under seige by powerful magic, the warring wizards tear reality apart in the city. What's left was sealed away for a decade in the hopes the tears would heal. Now the rulers have allowed explorers into this city and found these rifts lead to other worlds and planes... some of which have valuable resources.

Not Cthulhu: Using Call of Cthulhu rules, let the players know that's what it is. Have every adventure actually turn out to be completely conventional in nature with no supernatural elements at all (figure I can probably get about 2 adventures before the players catch on... At this point maybe actually introduce supernatural elements - make them investigate it more like normal investigators would, rather than expecting mythos elements everywhere.

Kane0
2017-09-20, 01:55 AM
Oh one time I planned a BBEG to do the final confrontation inside a battlemech, the party fighting it from the rooftops of the city as it unloads weapons and tries to stomp PCs.
Missiles equate to Minute Meteors, lasers to lightning bolts, flamers to Ag's scorchers, etc

There was also the planned mini-campaign to start at a fort and slowly turn it into a training ground of fiend-hunter zealots, eventually taking a crack team into hell or the abyss to wreck some face doom-style.

And that reverse-hexcrawl idea. Party were monstrous PCs in the wilderness that had the job of pushing back and raiding the omnipresent 'civilization' that kept expanding and encroaching. Get off my lawn!

Bohandas
2017-09-20, 05:31 PM
Oh one time I planned a BBEG to do the final confrontation inside a battlemech, the party fighting it from the rooftops of the city as it unloads weapons and tries to stomp PCs.
Missiles equate to Minute Meteors, lasers to lightning bolts, flamers to Ag's scorchers, etc

The oasers; treated as electricity damage or treated as searing light but with lightning bolt's damage and range?

Draconi Redfir
2017-09-22, 01:52 PM
Small Woodland Critters
in a forrest or grove, a small collection of creatures begins to grow. each born of unique circumstances, giving them abilities and templates that allow them to just BARELY pass the border between ferality and Sentience. Each is unique in orgin, but eventually they all share the same home. Then... /something/ happens. no idea what. but the small magical woodland critters must band together to save the forrest.

Unique creature concepts only, no "awakend fox" or anything like that. Be a rabbit that was once a holy avenger that was hit with a polymorph spell, a squirrel that was struck by lightning while eating the acorn of a magical tree, a hedgehog who wandered in on a cult's summoning ritual and crossed the circle as it flooded with hell-energy, giving it a demonic template. something unique. MAYBE one "escaped famillier" critter. but no more then that. And no dialouge. comminicate with actions, not words.

Mainly born after i played a paladin who found a holy avenger, which was then transformed via polymorph spell by an evil loremaster into a Baby Celestial Dire Bunny. figure this could be a neat story for the rabbit to meet up with other critters with simmilar stories and go on adventures together. this idea was only enforced when i joined a comminity who later came up with the idea that someone's pet rabbit in minecraft who was killed came back as an evil spirit and started haunting everyone.

would really like to play this game as a player in a play-by-post setting, but have never been able to find a story, a DM, or a way to reasonably run a campain where the PC's have very few, if any ability scores higher then a 5. if i could just think of a plot i might try to run it as a DM, and just have everything that isn't a woodland critter have super high ability scores, multiply a goblin's scores by ten and give him a "huge" template to make up for the fact that he'd be facing off against rabbits and weasels and the like.



So after a recent Way of the Wicked session (Don't worry, spoiler-free.) i /think/ i might have a possible plot for this, or at least one arc of one.

during way of the wicked, we entered an encounter and our witch spent her turns using summon monster 1 to summon in a bunch of frogs to help out. Near the end of the battle, only one frog was left, and it got drained by a Wraith, turning it into a frog-wraith before dissapearing again. The GM then make an off-handed remark about how the Frog's home swamp will soon be covered in frog-wraiths. Soo that could be a possible plot for the small woodland critters campain. A sudden outbreak of critter-wraiths in the woods.

Not sure if it'd be able to carry an entire campain, but it'd be a start if nothing else.

8BitNinja
2017-09-22, 07:15 PM
In the Army Now: You are a member of an army or a militia defending against the impending monster and/or human invasion. The catch? You aren't special adventurers with special snowflake powers, you're regular infantrymen.

Vknight
2017-09-22, 07:27 PM
It all starts with a bang and the party has too deal with the fact they are in a group of Case Morphs(The system is Eclipse Phase), and are playing the characters they made but they are missing about 24 hours are all now on Venus and in Case Morphs with no clear rhyme or reason too it

Christopher K.
2017-09-22, 10:35 PM
I've been toying with a small Star Trek campaign, following a ship somewhere around Ferengi space on a five-year mission. Along the way, they find out that a fugitive from the Federation has been hiding out among a race of humanoid plants, and the crew has to negotiate the return of the fugitive, making a peaceful First Contact, and all the classic Trek trappings, including a few sessions with some clear or at least deliberate allegory for present-day issues.

In terms of where it'd stand in relation to the current Star Trek stuff(barring Discovery, obviously), probably a few decades after Beyond, so there's opportunity to explore the consequences in the setting that the Abrams reboot brought about, but also late enough that some of the later concepts such as holodecks and more peaceful contact with iconic races like Klingons and Romulans would be possible.

Bohandas
2017-09-23, 10:12 AM
Small Woodland Critters
in a forrest or grove, a small collection of creatures begins to grow. each born of unique circumstances, giving them abilities and templates that allow them to just BARELY pass the border between ferality and Sentience. Each is unique in orgin, but eventually they all share the same home. Then... /something/ happens. no idea what. but the small magical woodland critters must band together to save the forrest.

Unique creature concepts only, no "awakend fox" or anything like that. Be a rabbit that was once a holy avenger that was hit with a polymorph spell, a squirrel that was struck by lightning while eating the acorn of a magical tree, a hedgehog who wandered in on a cult's summoning ritual and crossed the circle as it flooded with hell-energy, giving it a demonic template. something unique. MAYBE one "escaped famillier" critter. but no more then that. And no dialouge. comminicate with actions, not words.

Mainly born after i played a paladin who found a holy avenger, which was then transformed via polymorph spell by an evil loremaster into a Baby Celestial Dire Bunny. figure this could be a neat story for the rabbit to meet up with other critters with simmilar stories and go on adventures together. this idea was only enforced when i joined a comminity who later came up with the idea that someone's pet rabbit in minecraft who was killed came back as an evil spirit and started haunting everyone.

would really like to play this game as a player in a play-by-post setting, but have never been able to find a story, a DM, or a way to reasonably run a campain where the PC's have very few, if any ability scores higher then a 5. if i could just think of a plot i might try to run it as a DM, and just have everything that isn't a woodland critter have super high ability scores, multiply a goblin's scores by ten and give him a "huge" template to make up for the fact that he'd be facing off against rabbits and weasels and the like.

Check out The Noble Wild (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/77980/The-Noble-Wild-An-Animal-Players-Handbook-for-Fantasy-RolePlaying-Games-Pathfinder-Edition)

8BitNinja
2017-09-23, 07:49 PM
I thought of one game for GURPS (or any other generic system) where a squad of future or modern explorers/soldiers/idiots messing with time and space travel end up in a medieval fantasy world. Other the gear they have at the start they have no support from the other side.

JBPuffin
2017-09-23, 09:39 PM
I thought of one game for GURPS (or any other generic system) where a squad of future or modern explorers/soldiers/idiots messing with time and space travel end up in a medieval fantasy world. Other the gear they have at the start they have no support from the other side.

Minus the magic, I remember that Creighton novel :).

Eladrinblade
2017-09-23, 10:20 PM
Basically a heroes of battle campaign, where the PC's are elite special forces for a magical city, and are sent on difficult missions after a briefing/visit to the quartermaster/getting spell buffs/etc

Campaign for a specific PC my cousin made, an evil fiendish-blooded half-orc barbarian/sorcerer/spellsword, set in faerun. He basically just wanted to do adventuring as an evil character. I had him start as a member of an orc tribe that was assaulting a dwarf stronghold in the spine of the world, got caught between two tunnel collapses and had to navigate caves to get out. Navigated a labrynth made by umber hulks and fought monstrous spiders at the exit, won, fell unconscious from poison and woke up as a captive of drow slavers. He was going to survive being a prisoner in a gladiatorial arena in a drow city, get sold to a noble house to be a slave soldier, and somehow escape and navigate back to the surface. Deal with the elves and fey of the forest he escapes into. He could then decide what to do from there. Either go adventuring in the silver marches, or go back to his tribe and eventually take it over, maybe form a horde. I had ideas for his eventual party members, including a female drow rogue/assassin and a temporal-stasis'd netherese archmage.

I'd love to play as a solitary elf in a campaign set exclusively in a massive elven forest.

Likewise with a party of dwarves in some big mountain range full of enemies and monsters and lost holds and caves.

I'd also love to play as a full party of adventurers (6-7 member crew that's perfectly well-rounded) who can just do anything. Eventually get an airship crewed by a clan of gnome experts, use that as their mobile base of operations, maybe with a portal back to a floating castle. Just a full world sandbox. I'd need a godlike AI to run something like that, though.

I'm currently running a very slow-paced campaign for my wife's first D&D character, a half-elf druid. It's set in a rural land of ranchers and farmers adjacent to a big elven forest and a human knights'n'lords kingdom. It's a sandbox. Her father was killed right before it started. Right now she's leaving her home village to find out why her elf mom left them when she was a small child and is tracking her down. She'll gradually form a group of her own. The campaign is about her taking over as the local druid and also at least temporarily as the local ranger until she finds a replacement for her father. There'll be a war that rages across her homeland that she can react to in some way. The BBEG is an ancient elf lich witch that leads a coven of witches who in turn lead a savage realm of human/elf/orc separationists. The BBEG created a slenderman and it acts as the BBEG of the first ten levels or so of the campaign, though it has yet to get involved. After that, the lich witch wants to summon zalgo to the world and use it to merge with and take control of the giant tree of life. But that's all a slow burn and it'll mainly be a sandbox with a soft time limit.

I intend to run a pbp sandbox campaign on here someday that'd be set in the same setting, but closer to the knights'n'lords kingdom (it's frontier, actually). That one will be a pure sandbox experience with no big apocalypse-preventing plotline. The group starts in the only large town of the region and can do whatever they feel like, as long as it's adventuring. Hard cap of 12th level, can't leave the sandbox. Tons of dungeons and plot-lines to be done, big hex map to explore. Craft their own items, own property/vehicles, use mounts and animals, plan expeditions, hire npc's, the whole shebang. Core only, but with some of my houserules. No kid gloves.

Solo campaign as a half-elf beguiler detective in Sharn. Start off as a night beat patrolman in a particular neighborhood. Become a watch detective, then a crime task force operative, then a freelance inquisitive and royal anti-spy. Write for a newspaper as an investigative reporter, save the city from insidious monsters and crimelords and foreign operatives, do some cat-burglary or ocean's 11 stuff himself. Pretty noir, of course.

I'm basically a big fan of sandboxes that have plot-lines that need attended to eventually, but not Oots-style constant anti-BBEG save-the-world quests. Like, a plot-line where you ought to hurry is fine every now and then, but I want lots of free time too. Freedom in general, really. I also prefer to have one player, one DM, where the player can either run one character with soft control of npcs (like BG) or a full party (like IWD).

Aneurin
2017-09-24, 10:47 AM
Fools Rush In

An Only War game where, instead of being members of the Imperial Guard, the PCs are actually serving as armsmen and armswomen aboard a Rogue Trader's ship. So instead of loyal service to the God-Emperor of Mankind killing His enemies, the PCs are working for a profit-driven sociopath and trying not to get gruesomely killed by his latest scheme. It's proving to be a pretty interesting experience, on the whole, and enjoyable. I'm certainly having fun converting some of the classic RT adventures for a grunts-eye view.

The Devoured

Haven't run this one, but kind of want to. Another 40k game, but a cross-line one about the tyranids attempt to eat an Imperial world - with the PCs playing the defenders.

Several groups of PCs, that the players swap between for different missions. So, a Dark Heresy party who does the Enemy Within (rooting out Genestealers, and opportunistic cultists and maintaining civil order), a Rogue Trader party acting as a Navy crew and fighting the space war, and the poor Only War PCs who get the hold the line. Probably no Deathwatch, definitely no Black Crusade.

The game would start with the Dark Heresy team investigating a cult and, eventually, finding genestealers. Then the action would switch to the Only War group, who're investigating a listening post gone silent - they find bodyparts and either a lictor or a brood of hormagaunts or five. Then the group would switch to their RT characters, off investigating some strange sensor readings on the edge of the system...

The pace would be demanding, and the game split into three arcs: Infestation, Invasion and either Consumption or Extermination depending on whether the PCs' actions are tipping the balance or not. It would also be highly lethal, especially for the DH team who'll be up against genestealerson a regular basis.

The missons, of course, are interlinked - and have consequences for each other. If the DH party got murdered by the 'stealers before they could report their presence, the Only War party aren't issued much in the way of additional heavy gear for their recon mission. If the OW and the DH parties died or otherwise failed tor report the 'Nids' presence, the RT party's ship is the only one sent to investigate. If the Only War party manage to defend the generatorium plant against all the odds, there isn't a riot later... and far fewer civilians get eaten when the cordon does eventually break.

Sadly, it's a little more abitious than I want to take on right now.

Bohandas
2017-09-25, 08:14 PM
The gods' magic hat with the names of all intelligent beings in it has been stolen by the dark lord. It's become clear that a bunch of normal prople are going to have to go after it because the gods cannot choose champions without it.

Bohandas
2017-09-28, 05:35 PM
The Call of not-Cthulhu
This is a Call of Cthulhu campaign in which the Cthulhu Mythos has been replaced by something similar but distinct such as the Ruinous Powers or the Ogdru Jahad

Durkoala
2017-09-28, 05:58 PM
Not Cthulhu: Using Call of Cthulhu rules, let the players know that's what it is. Have every adventure actually turn out to be completely conventional in nature with no supernatural elements at all (figure I can probably get about 2 adventures before the players catch on... At this point maybe actually introduce supernatural elements - make them investigate it more like normal investigators would, rather than expecting mythos elements everywhere.

You could call it Scooby-Doothulu...

Vknight
2017-09-29, 01:02 AM
Oh a colony game where the group are on a lush fertile and relatively hospitable planet with mostly Oceans. Subnautica style but well; 1 they wanna get back through the Pandora get too confirm this. 2 they are the initial scouts not colonists so they need to survive with minimal equipment. 3 as always... is it really truly as safe as you think it could be?

spinningdice
2017-09-29, 02:26 AM
The Call of not-Cthulhu
This is a Call of Cthulhu campaign in which the Cthulhu Mythos has been replaced by something similar but distinct such as the Ruinous Powers or the Ogdru Jahad

I kinda like Call of Cthulhu, but I go hot and cold on the cthulhu mythos, I've thought about just ignoring the core mythology and just use Werewolves, Vampires, orv pick a mythology and stick with stuff from there (Roman might be good, or Norse & Celtic).

2D8HP
2017-09-30, 04:47 PM
....Not Cthulhu: Using Call of Cthulhu rules, let the players know that's what it is. Have every adventure actually turn out to be completely conventional in nature with no supernatural elements at all .....

The Call of not-Cthulhu
This is a Call of Cthulhu campaign in which the Cthulhu Mythos has been replaced....

I kinda like Call of Cthulhu, but I go hot and cold on the cthulhu mythos, I've thought about just ignoring the core mythology......


Back in the 1980's I did use the Call of Cthullu rules to GM a modern day espionage adventure game without any supernatural elements (discovering and foiling an assassination plot).

I thought it worked well.

Potato_Priest
2017-09-30, 05:50 PM
I want to DM a game where the players get to make up details about the world.

Give each player, say, 3 "setting points" where they get to describe practices, locations, nations, or whatever else.

Have them tell me everything at session zero, and I'll fill in the rest.

Cluedrew
2017-09-30, 09:09 PM
There are some pretty awesome ideas in this thread. Most of our campaigns take the form of "well let's get people together and see what happens" so I usually don't aim for anything to crazy myself.

One idea I always wanted to run but never have (and probably never will for reasons) is pitch a campaign with a hidden twist that will push people out of their comfort zone. Get people to write character sheets and character descriptions. Then: "Everybody ready? OK, hand your character sheet to the person on the left. Let's go." An interesting twist on pre-gens.

Blue Duke
2017-10-01, 12:14 AM
I want to DM a game where the players get to make up details about the world.

Give each player, say, 3 "setting points" where they get to describe practices, locations, nations, or whatever else.

Have them tell me everything at session zero, and I'll fill in the rest.

Look up Dawn of Worlds - its pretty neat for world building (if you remember that you can have Avatars do stuff for much cheaper once you get to certain stages)

Bohandas
2017-10-01, 10:18 AM
Go To Hell
The party are a demonic warband fighting their way from the Abyss to Baator


Double Reverse Dungeon
The party are mind flayers defending their settlement from an outbreak of spawn creating undead that has already turned all of their thralls

Drakeburn
2017-10-01, 03:58 PM
Superheroes + My Little Pony

One idea I had for a campaign I had a while ago was a superhero campaign that took place in the My Little Pony Universe. Well, more specifically taking place in the world of enchanted comic books. Not Power Ponies, but rather a different kind of superhero team (from what you can call a competing comic book company).

For this idea, I wasn't sure about a few things...

- Whether these comics were in Equestria, or in the Equestria Girls world.

- What system to run this idea on. The best systems that come to mind is Fate Core with Venture City rules, or Mutants and Masterminds.

- Even if it can be run with Mutants and Masterminds, how exactly would you stat ponies, unicorns, and pegasi?

Bohandas
2017-10-03, 02:27 AM
There's No Such Thing As A Rare Book

A Call of Cthulhu game set in modern times in which paranormal mythos activity has skyrocketed due to the fact that the Necronomicon, Pnakotic Fragments, Book of Eibon, Revelations of Glakii, etc are now freely available on the Miskatonic University website (and those of similar institutes of higher learning) to anybody who is interested.

This campaign idea was inspired by the realization of how many occult texts I have saved on my actual real life cellphone (I've got the Lesser Key of Solomon, the Greater Key of Solomon, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Revolt in The Stars, Zhuangzi, Works and Days, the Principia Discordia, the Prose Edda, a document detailing the Catholic rite of exorcism, and the Jefferson Bible. None of these were particularly hard to come by)

(EDIT: And in the time since I posted that, since I was thinking about it, I've also picked up the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Zohar, and the Gospel of Judas)

spinningdice
2017-10-03, 02:34 AM
Reminds me of a campaign I read about where some entrepreneus put signs uncovered in an old tomb onto biscuit tins and sent them around the globe. IIRC correctly it was an odd subplot since among the symbols were an elder sign which kept the others in check, but had the players tracking down where these symbols came from thinking it was some global conspiracy.

Joe the Rat
2017-10-06, 09:13 AM
I'm using something like that for a recurring villain. He's basically a disembodied intelligence that can see and influence the would through instances of is personal symbol. Which a millenia ago he managed to introduce as a letter in the local "evil tomes and dark cults" language.

It's like having the poop emoji as your phylactery... every poop emoji.

Breitheamh
2017-10-06, 09:36 AM
One idea I've had was a short one off adventure mystery based on the Pied Piper.

The PCs wander into a town and find that there is growing suspicion and fear because some local children have gone missing. After some investigation, they find that the friendly bard who everybody loves is not quite as friendly as he seems...

I've tried to run it a couple times, but I keep screwing up the reveal. I'm just not very good at running mysteries.

Arbane
2017-10-07, 02:56 AM
A few games that might be good for these:


Oh a colony game where the group are on a lush fertile and relatively hospitable planet with mostly Oceans. Subnautica style but well; 1 they wanna get back through the Pandora get too confirm this. 2 they are the initial scouts not colonists so they need to survive with minimal equipment. 3 as always... is it really truly as safe as you think it could be?

Blue Planet, maybe?

For the 'fuzzy woodland creatures' game, maybe Bunnies and Burrows.

For the 'aspects of gods' idea, Godbound?

Bohandas
2017-10-07, 03:08 AM
I'm using something like that for a recurring villain. He's basically a disembodied intelligence that can see and influence the would through instances of is personal symbol. Which a millenia ago he managed to introduce as a letter in the local "evil tomes and dark cults" language.

It's like having the poop emoji as your phylactery... every poop emoji.

That reminds me a bit of two things

1.) Good Omens, by Sir Terry Pratchett, wherein a minor plot point was that a demon had meddled with the design of one of the UK's highways, causing it to be shaped like a rune of dark and occult significance with the upshot that that rune now appears on maps of England and every time someone drives down that highway it acts as a sort of demonic prayer wheel sending out evil energies

2.) The webcomic All Night Laundry (http://www.all-night-laundry.com/post/2), which involves, among other weird things, a lovecraftian entity trying to gain entry into our world via a means that seems to involve trying to get a certain symbol distributed around

MrNobody
2017-10-07, 04:55 AM
Devourer Dungeon.
All players wake up in the same room: they don't know each other, they come fron different regions, settings, timelines.
They were exploring a dungeon with their former party until they opened a door, all went black and they woke up in this current situation.

They are in the Devourer Dungeon, a living demiplane that feeds out of adveturer he 'fishes' around in real dungeons.
The DD replicates real dungeons, in a random sequence (you wander around in a kobold cave, you think you found the exit and... boom! Prisons in hell!) filled with traps and monsters, that are its digestive system. Everyone that dies is in fact eaten by DD itself (body... and soul).

Dungeon after dungeon, trap after trap, this game would be a survival game where each dead weights on the group. In fact each death in a dungeon makes DD stronger, which means that in the next dungeon traps will have an higher DC, or monsters will have more HPs... and so on.

Bohandas
2017-10-07, 12:49 PM
Phylactery: A lich pops up and starts doing lich stuff. He's not terribly concerned if he is defeated because he just comes back using his phylactery. He has left a couple red herrings for adventurers to chase but his actual phylactery is a bloodline of humanoids. In order to properly kill him you'd need to do some serious genocide.

That's what Agathon, Belierin, and Carceri are for

Bohandas
2017-10-07, 08:34 PM
The Pre-emptive Macguffin
A new type of wondrous item has become very very popular among people who can afford magic items. The PCs have been tasked by the church of the god of magic to track down the original prototype of this item. This prototype is (at the moment) crude and non-descript but must be secured because magical prototypes have a tendency to acquire powerful legacy and/or artifact powers as more and more copies enter into circulation.

DigoDragon
2017-10-10, 11:06 AM
In terms of where it'd stand in relation to the current Star Trek stuff(barring Discovery, obviously), probably a few decades after Beyond, so there's opportunity to explore the consequences in the setting that the Abrams reboot brought about, but also late enough that some of the later concepts such as holodecks and more peaceful contact with iconic races like Klingons and Romulans would be possible.

A friend in my local group wants to run the maiden voyages of the NX-01 Enterprise, but built within the Abrams universe. He knows our group prefers zap guns to diplomacy, so his main campaign arc was giving us the mission to deal with the aftermath of Starfleet's botched first contact with the Kzinti. We'll travel through a disputed border zone with dozens of worlds that we need to use a balance of diplomacy and force in order to secure from Kzini incursion. Our characters are primarily the away team that gets shuttled down planet-side to deal with problems.

My friend encouraged the other players to come up with their own alien races too, which would become the founders of the Federation later on (he wanted me to play a modified version of my pony character from the Fallout Equestria RP I'm in online, because he feels Trek needs less bipedal humanoid-looking aliens. I don't disagree).

Sadly the rest of the local group hasn't embraced the idea. They cite either it's not "pure" enough to be Trek, or it's too open ended. I thought it was a pretty good idea. >.>

Bohandas
2017-10-14, 09:51 AM
I've been toying with a small Star Trek campaign, following a ship somewhere around Ferengi space on a five-year mission. Along the way, they find out that a fugitive from the Federation has been hiding out among a race of humanoid plants, and the crew has to negotiate the return of the fugitive, making a peaceful First Contact, and all the classic Trek trappings, including a few sessions with some clear or at least deliberate allegory for present-day issues.

In terms of where it'd stand in relation to the current Star Trek stuff(barring Discovery, obviously), probably a few decades after Beyond, so there's opportunity to explore the consequences in the setting that the Abrams reboot brought about, but also late enough that some of the later concepts such as holodecks and more peaceful contact with iconic races like Klingons and Romulans would be possible.

Speaking of Star Trek, how about a d20 Modern campaign set in Star Trek's alternate 1990's (wherein Khan Noonien Singh conquers half the Earth)

Potato_Priest
2017-10-15, 11:08 AM
Invasion from the Upper Planes

The PCs are a cult trying to open a portal to the upper planes so that an army of angels can fortify the material world, and a ramshackle group of adventurers is trying to stop them.

ViciousMockery
2017-10-19, 06:00 PM
2017 campaign! A group of modern-day peeps have to battle an epic evil. It would take some serious homebrewing, possibly turning spells into ammo types.

exelsisxax
2017-10-20, 02:01 PM
I want to run an Elder Scrolls pathfinder campaign. No prepared casting if I allow vancian magic at all, grant spells and martial techniques as found knowledge items and not by just leveling up. Make things somewhat lower-magic than standard so that finding a +2 item is a major piece of loot rather than chaff for selling.

The setting has interesting lore-delivery systems, a bunch of possible content, and a huge timeline available. In theory, a great starting point for a campaign.

But my players won't read half a page of setting information before a session zero, so instead of any of that being interesting i've just got a ready-made "you know nothing!" cop-out, in true TES tradition. They also can't make characters properly or in a timely manner, so it'll just be handing them the blank slate in homage to source material, rather than anyone actually starting off with an interesting character idea. So it sort of works out anyway, just for all the wrong reasons.

TL:DR my group is so bad at homework I don't understand how they made it through high school, let alone college.

Jama7301
2017-10-20, 03:14 PM
I've been attempting to run a campaign (one session in, did nothing related to overarching plot) that involves a Gate that can grant the first person who passes through it, after it's activation, a wish.

The catch is that the wish is granted, but it 'paves' over the previous world in the process, going so far as to even create people with false memories. That old sage you find who has this expansive history of his people? Fabricated. He's only been around for 10 years.

Last time someone went through the gate, they wished their lands would be safe from it's effects, as they were able to discover the truth. Now, they're a small island nation.

The nation that existed two steps back was Eberron.

You can see the cracks of information if you look close enough, but for most, the facade works.

The game started off as an introductory one-shot to introduce a friend to the game, but after playing the session, the group indicated they wanted to keep playing, so I started to solidify ideas I had tumbling about. One person playing a Warforged who had been 'asleep' for a long time was beautifully serendipitous to me.

Potato_Priest
2017-10-20, 04:33 PM
TL:DR my group is so bad at homework I don't understand how they made it through high school, let alone college.

This is why no matter the setting I use a real world pantheon. The players actually know the gods much better than if I gave them a "deities" list to not read, and I don't have to spend time reinventing the wheel.

Edit: Plus, my players hate vidarr too much to let him go now.

Worldbuilding is fun and all, but players aren't going to care if they aren't a part of it. That's why in the future I want to have the players help me build the setting during session zero.

sengmeng
2017-10-21, 12:38 PM
A powerful and mysterious noble family rules over an island province and is very isolated from the rest of their kingdom. They conduct most of the sea trade and operate most of the navy of their kingdom, but pay little attention to court politics, don't intermarry with the rest of the nobles, and pay much more in tribute than their peers in order to be left alone. Rather than a den of inbreeding, they have the opposite policy: their family tree includes human nobility from faraway exotic nations, elf royalty, even at least one orc chieftain, and some even more obscure bloodlines such as celestial and draconic. In fact, every generation's scions go on quests to find a bride or groom and return and make as many heirs as possible.

This is what is commonly known.

The reason behind this practice is that the lordship of the island comes with more than a crown and a throne. Each lord plays host to an almost dead deity; they need stronger than human blood to withstand the draining effect of keeping their god alive. They believe when they have found the perfect mixture of powerful bloodlines and create a host which can survive indefinitely, the god will be reborn. They believe this will be good, for them at least.

The party's role in these events is ambiguous, as is the morality and nature of the dormant god. It may start out as a mystery in which they seek to discover why this family is so weird. They may be hired by a curious wizard who wants a blood sample from one of the nobles. They may be hired as bodyguards by one of the scions of the family searching for a spouse. The PC's could even be potential spouses. They may help or hinder the prophecy coming true. There are many possibilities.

Bohandas
2017-10-22, 03:47 AM
A combination of the Atropus campaign from Elder Evils with the modules Temple of Elemental Evil and Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil and parts of the plot of the movie The Fifth Element. Basically, the trip to the surface of Atropus is replaced by a scheme to sieze control of the Temple of Elemental Evil and reconsecrate it to a good power thus allowing the magical mechanism intended to smash the metaphysical walls of Tharizdun's prison to be reconfigured into a positive energy weapon capable of destroying (or at least turning) Atropus. (this discharge of positive energy may have the side effect of attracting Ragnorra and thus leading to a sequel)

Solaris
2017-10-23, 08:48 PM
I've had an idea bouncing around in my brain-meats about a pet monster type game where everyone plays a summoner. The basic idea is that the characters are based in a city located near an enormous dungeon, with the principle local entertainment being arena battles of eidolons against eidolons and eidolons against monsters (the characters can cast spells on their eidolons, they just can't fight directly). The players would spend most of their non-plot time either fighting in the arena for experience and prestige or delving the dungeon for experience and loot (which can include monsters for the arena).
Essentially, d20 Monster Rancher.

I'm toying with some house rules for it: Summoners are unchained, but the evolutions of the APG summoner that were dropped from the unchained version are added back in. Non-level-based restrictions are looser. IE: You can get pounce by having claws + bite + 4+ legs; constrict by having the serpentine base type, tentacle, tentacle mass, or pincers; rake just requires 4+ legs. Mount requires any base form other than aberration or biped.
Eidolons may either have the evolution pool of the APG summoner or select a subtype and get the evolution pool of the unchained summoner.
No alignment restrictions on the character for eidolon subtypes.
Eidolons have class levels instead of HD. Recommendations include paladin, ranger, barbarian, bard, rogue, fighter, knight, dragonfire adept, and Magic of Incarnum classes (incarnate, totemist, soulborn).
Eidolons and summoners share the limit on spells cast per round; you can't spam them from both character and critter.
Summoners don't get the summon monster SLA.

Bohandas
2017-11-05, 07:01 PM
I've always wanted to run a campaign that's like Futurama, but for fantasy instead of sci-fi.

By "Like Futurama," I mean a fantasy world that is just as stupid and tacky as the real world.

That was the premise of Futurama III: Bender's Game

8BitNinja
2017-11-05, 09:04 PM
I once had an idea for a campaign where the players left home, wandered around in and Odyssey-like fashion, and then eventually just return home. It would be like a life threatening road trip.

Bohandas
2017-11-11, 04:09 PM
I've Come for What's Mine
A Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil campaign in which the players play as aspects of Iuz, Zuggtmoy, and/or Lolth

Yora
2017-11-12, 03:08 AM
My current idea is a continent of five powerful Bronze Age Kingdoms that are being ruled by god kings, quite similar to Morrowind and Dark Sun. The god kings draw in the supernatural energies of their lands, which weakens the power of the spirits and gives them control over the weather and disasters. This makes the kingdoms much more stable and prosperous than the tribes of barbarians that live in the wilderness at the whim of the spirits. Even if the god kings and thei administrator-priests aren't beloved, losing them is the most horrifying thing imaginable to the civilized people.
Common people don't really understand the nature of spirits and magic beyond the version they are being told by the priests. But there are many groups that are dealing with it anyway in a semi-secret underworld similar to the kung-fu societies in wuxia. And there are actually lots of holes in the lands controlled by the god kings where spirits have almost free reign over haunted forests and swamps.
PCs are initiates of the arcane arts (though this mostly means warriors and rogues with collections of charms and potions) who frequently venture into the patches of dark magic or the savage wilderness, where they regularly clash with competing orders and societies over who gets the arcane secrets and artifacts.

Potato_Priest
2017-11-12, 12:22 PM
I once had an idea for a campaign where the players left home, wandered around in and Odyssey-like fashion, and then eventually just return home. It would be like a life threatening road trip.

I've done this. The problem is the players didn't want to return home, because then the game's over.

Arutema
2017-11-15, 10:25 PM
On the way to the altar at her wedding, the princess is carried off by a dragon. In response, her father the king hires the best mercenary dragonslayers he can find.

Complications arise when it's discovered that the dragon is the princess' girlfriend, rescuing her from being magically compelled into an arranged marriage.

TurboGhast
2017-11-16, 07:35 PM
I've done this. The problem is the players didn't want to return home, because then the game's over.

You could prevent that by starting a new campaign arc based on the consequences of the PC’s absence instead of immediately ending the game when they return home.

Solaris
2017-11-18, 10:05 PM
You could prevent that by starting a new campaign arc based on the consequences of the PC’s absence instead of immediately ending the game when they return home.

Yeah, in the original Odyssey, Odysseus's troubles didn't magically end when he got home. Dude had to earn that happy ending.

Bohandas
2017-11-19, 12:14 AM
Yeah, in the original Odyssey, Odysseus's troubles didn't magically end when he got home. Dude had to earn that happy ending.

Yeah there was an enormous superfight against all the guys trying to mack on Penelope

Jay R
2017-11-19, 04:05 PM
Decades ago, I set up a world in which The Prophecy had recently occurred. For one week, every attempt to see the future gave The Prophecy -- even ones like tea leaves that usually don't work at all.

After that week, no attempt at gaining information - magical or mundane - would answer any question about The Prophecy.


A one-time slave will escape across the great desert. He will grow in power and abilities until , with the help of his patron, he becomes one of the greatest heroes of the age. Through aiding this hero, the patron will grow in power beyond that of the gods.

Obviously, all PCs would be escaped slaves who began by crossing the great desert.

This ensured not only that PCs would have the help of patrons, but that powerful people would be extremely interested in who they were serving. Their current patrons would be the main targets of any other powerful and power-hungry individuals.

Unfortunately, I had to drop out of gaming for awhile about this time, and the the campaign never took off.

LordofGoats
2017-11-19, 07:09 PM
Here is mine. I have been reading Volo's Guide and came up with a Nautical sea-faring campaign.

Working title is : Man-eating Treasure Island.

It begins with the party on a massive ship on the way to a port. The players can get to know the crew, the most important of which is the human Captain Blath. On the journey the party hears that an island has been spotted that wa not on the map. The island grows closer rapidly. Suddenly the head and fins of a dragon-turtle appear from under the island and the ship begins to rumble. The ship is quickly sunk and the party falls into the ocean, losing their weapons in the process. The dragon-turtle eats the majority of the crew but takes the party safely into its mouth without swallowing.

The dragon-turtle spits the party out on land near a cliff where escape is impossible. A group of Sea Spawn walk forward menacingly. The dragon-turtle demands the Sea Spawn throw the party back their weapons. A check revesls many of the Sea Spawn were former crew of the ship. The dragon-turtle tells the party "If you are able to overcome my minions I might have use for you." Cue the fight.

After the party wins the dragon-turtle tells them, "I am impressed. If you value your lives I have a proposition for you. If you agree you will be spared the sad fate of these pitiful Sea Spawn just as I spared my servant the dreaded pirate, you know as Captain Blath, long ago." He tells the party the party that he is known as Aspidochelone and that a Morkoth moved its extraplanar island onto his back at their mutual agreement. At one time this was beneficial as it provided extra protection for the Morkoth and the island attracted ships to the dragon-turtle. But their relationship soured after the dragon-turtle realized that the Morkoth was having its servants steal from the dragon-turtle's treasure. Since if he sent any if his own servants after the treasure the Morkoth would move his extraplanar island he needs the adventurers to infiltrate the Morkoth's lair on the island and slay him so that Aspedocgelone can both keep the island and obtain the Morkoth's treasure. He expkains that if he sent his seaspawn or a long time servant of his to do the deed the Morkoth would know the betrayal and could move his extraplanar island to another realm so it must look like simple survivors. He agrees to give the party 1/10th of the Morkoth's treasure for completing the task.

The rest of the adventure is in the extraplanar island on Aspedochelone's back. It is extraplanar so even if the dragon-turtle goes underwater the trees and inhabitants of the island are uneffected. Besides the temple which deep into it houses the Morkoth's lair there is a Kobold village which worships the dragon-turtle which the adventurers can explore and buy from. There is also an underground slave colony of Humans, Elves and Dwarves that the players can meet and free as well.

The adventure concludes when the party kills either Morkoth, The Dragon-turtle or both.

Darokar
2017-11-21, 11:36 AM
Some goblins are trying to summon Maglubiyet, but don't have the materials to build a shrine a god would notice. Because of this, they are raiding temples to get the supplies they need. Eventually, they will open a portal, and the party will have to fight Maglubiyet or a deathknight or something. I haven't thought that far yet.

Couatl
2017-11-22, 04:48 AM
A combination of the Atropus campaign from Elder Evils with the modules Temple of Elemental Evil and Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil and parts of the plot of the movie The Fifth Element. Basically, the trip to the surface of Atropus is replaced by a scheme to sieze control of the Temple of Elemental Evil and reconsecrate it to a good power thus allowing the magical mechanism intended to smash the metaphysical walls of Tharizdun's prison to be reconfigured into a positive energy weapon capable of destroying (or at least turning) Atropus. (this discharge of positive energy may have the side effect of attracting Ragnorra and thus leading to a sequel)

I used exactly the same thing in my grandest campaign so far, but instead of Temple of Elemental Evil I used the rift to the positive energy plane on Orcus' layer of the Abyss that is hinted in the Fiendish Codex. I also combined it with material from Paizo's Distant Worlds, where they state that the sun is a huge portal to the Positive Energy Plane that is set on fire and I had Asmodeus and the other devils set on fire the opened rift in the Abyss to win the Blood war as a subplot.

Now I am running the sequel campaign but so far they do not know about Ragnorra.

weckar
2017-11-22, 06:01 AM
I tried to get an Alternate History version going of the construction of the first cross-continental railroad, in M&M3ed at a reasonable PL but with a massively reduced points pool.
The group did not go for it.

Rater202
2017-11-22, 09:31 AM
A friend of mine back in high school had talked about wanting to do a campaign based on Morrowind that was just "a second catastrophy happened at the same time as the plot of Morrowind and you have to stop that while I cna't spell his title is doing Morrowind."

I remember that one, because we talked about me playing a Nord-Hircine Worshiper(I'd have been a werewolf with full control in liue of a class) and my motivation for being in Morrowind was that I'd come all the way from Skyrim trying to hunt down and take revenge on the witch that stole my clothes.

One of his friends wanted to do a Superhero game where you rolled randomly on a list to get five or six useless Super Powers and you had to figure out how to combine them to get something effective(He mentioned the abillity to absorb the properties of something but only in one arm combined with the power to control the length of grass to give yourself a stretchy arm by absorbing the properties of grass.)

More recently(about a year and a half, maybe two years ago), I got the idea of either a Superheroes game or a Free-Form where each player made an OC from a differant Superheroes or Urban Fantasy setting, and they all ended up in Worm's setting and basically had to derail it's canon while reacting to each other's metaphysics and that of the World they found themselves in... while Bad Guys from their various worlds were also suddenly in the Worm setting as well.

I eventually recycled that campaign idea and one of my sample Marvel OCs for a Worm/Marvel crossover fanfiction.

8BitNinja
2017-11-22, 12:44 PM
On the way to the altar at her wedding, the princess is carried off by a dragon. In response, her father the king hires the best mercenary dragonslayers he can find.

Complications arise when it's discovered that the dragon is the princess' girlfriend, rescuing her from being magically compelled into an arranged marriage.

"Dragonborn huh? So was your ma or pa the dragon?" -Hadvar, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Lord Raziere
2017-11-22, 01:16 PM
"Dragonborn huh? So was your ma or pa the dragon?" -Hadvar, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

My snarky response: "Mother. She laid an egg and I hatched fully formed, I'm actually only a week old. Just learned how to walk correctly. Very loving mother, everything I know I learned from her, the lessons of how to fly and breathe fire were particularly hard but I got them down."

QuintonBeck
2017-11-22, 02:08 PM
Don't restore balance you idiots!
A sizable Good-aligned kingdom is having trouble with so-called preservers of the balance trying to undo their Good acts to bring things back to Neutral. The Good guys want these balance idiots dealt with but not killed outright.

I want to run this for PCs built around non-violent resolution. Bring on your Redemption Paladins and Monks of Tranquility.

Pugwampy
2017-11-24, 08:06 AM
I am involved in a 60 plus chapter ongoing mega novel involving an Island of superhuman cannibals . Endless blood guts and porn and also giant black snake in the swamp .

I could easily convert that into a DND campaign sandbox and also possible tempt the players into chaotic evil . Partake of a certain exotic meat and gain +4 on STR DEX and CON , become CE .

Bohandas
2017-11-29, 03:17 AM
How about a Spelljammer campaign where the gimmick is that it's Star Trek except with all the technobabble replaced with mystic new-age woo.

"Crystal energy is down to 50%"
"Divert pyramid power and apply snake oil to the accumulator"

"A concentrated beam of orgone might disrupt the bad vibrations long enough for us to break free of their negative energy"