New Group, Help with Ideas?

[Reaver25]

Hello Playgrounders!

I am going to be DMing for a new group, likely of 3 to 4 players, and would love to hear some ideas for a storyline/story hook. Could be anything!
I can say that I have done the following and would enjoy doing something different:
-Tavern beginning
-Goblin raids/Orc attacks
-Undead plagues
-Lich as BBEG
-Vampire Lord as BBEG

Yeah. I'm super open to new ideas though. Thanks in advance!

[iTreeby]

Do a game where monsters start appearing from the shadowfell and feywild because of weakening planar boundaries, and the players have to go into these other planes and destroy the nests on the other side to spare the mundane material plane. But then it turns out to be a cult trying to shift the planar leylines to create a nexus that will let them command the powers of a stillborn God.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

I am a fan of running sandbox games.

There is almost always a PC background that gives you a villain or maybe the PCs are the world villains(it happened to us by accident in our last sandbox game).

[Bjarkmundur]

Make a campaign that happens at the same time as the first shrek movie, but never make it obvious to the players they are in the same universe.

[solidork]

The death and rebirth of the god of dreams causes a catastrophe where dreams become a reality.

[firelistener]

The campaign I'm running right now had the adventurers come to an island after seeing a centuries-old bounty being raised from 50,000gp to 100,000gp. The bounty is for the death of an evil wizard who lives in a tower on the north side of the island. The twist I have planned is that the wizard is actually a monster and a demon lord's warlock. The rest is pretty sandbox. The party is free to look for dungeons, try to gather money, train themselves fighting demons, or hunt down powerful magic items I scattered on the island.

I find the open-ended nature helps the players take ownership of the narrative and helps me discover what motivates them. For example, I now know my party prefers VERY obvious guarantees on getting a reward. They avoid making any kind of deals or taking "quests" from NPCs and prefer to just go find dungeons.

[Wildarm]

Hello Playgrounders!

I am going to be DMing for a new group, likely of 3 to 4 players, and would love to hear some ideas for a storyline/story hook. Could be anything!
I can say that I have done the following and would enjoy doing something different:
-Tavern beginning
-Goblin raids/Orc attacks
-Undead plagues
-Lich as BBEG
-Vampire Lord as BBEG

Yeah. I'm super open to new ideas though. Thanks in advance!

As a short term hook, steal some ideas from many time travel related stories. The town the group is in is stuck in a temporal bubble leading to odd happenings.

Each player arrives separately at the town for some purpose(have them come up with a reason) and happen to meet up at the tavern. Provide some clues that they are all from different times(clothing style, seasonal weather changes, political knowledge). No one else in the town seems aware of a problem but few people come and go from the area and have been caught in the effect yet.

Add in NPCs afflicted with it if the players don't figure it out quick enough. Start adding in other weird time related effects(NPC you talked to yesterday is now much older), change historical events like a building burned down that was standing yesterday. Make sure the townspeople see everything with proper continuity.

You'll can come up with your own reason for all this to be happening(God of Time has gone missing, Demons twisting a hole in reality to come through, Tricks from an Archfey, etc). Players need to find out what is going on and stop them. You'll need a reason why all the players can see the continuity changes.

[moonfly7]

Have the group be fallen gods, slain and overthrown they all just barely managed to send themselves to the mortal plane. Now they seek to take back their thrones, as they slowly navigate the material world, learning along the way that, through the eyes of mortals, the gods aren't as good as they thought.
Just an idea, but a mostly sandbox and fun one.
They could even choose gods from the handbook to base characters on, great inspiration for new players.

[Reaver25]

Love all of the thoughts coming in. Definitely getting my creative brain flowing here.

A Planar struggle is definitely something I would enjoy doing, but I am unsure of how to totally deal with that, mainly because I'm not an expert in Planar stuff D&D related, but also because I tend to homebrew a lot, so I may not even use current D&D Planar stuff. Or maybe I will, Who KNOWS?! :D

I really like the idea of doing a true sandbox. Flesh out a world, have some "villains" and some "heroes" in the background doing stuff, and just let the characters sort of happen. I would probably just have a few story "hooks" to get them going, but then really play up the idea of consequences being a big deal. Idk. Thoughts.

I have also been inspired by many of the greatest campaign journals and works, such as Kaveman26 or SilverShiftClaw (was that her name?), Matt Mercer, High Rollers D&D podcasts, Adventure Zone, and so on. Point is, I love using other people to get my creative juices flowing. Lol.
That said...
Any more ideas for me? Or for anyone else, really?

[malachi]

Have the PCs already know each other because they were drafted for some petty squabble between nobles that turned into a minor war (all class levels come from the training the PCs received to be some sort of special ops strike force or something). Also, several towns on the border between the nobles' fiefdoms have gone missing (which is why a special strike force was envisioned in the first place). But, that's all in the background, because the first session starts with them waking up in the prison/laboratory of an evil hag who has been abducting humans to the realm of the Faerie, outfitting them with the colors / livery of one of the Courts and depositing them in the territory of the other Court.

This lends itself towards sandbox (with options to try to find the survivors of the abducted towns and make a single consolidated settlement, try to return to the mortal world, try to attain great power and take over the Faerie world, try to continue the war with the opposing noble's forces that showed up there, etc) if you want, or you could make it more of a linear string of quests by having the PCs find out that the deranged hag cursed them with something that is going to slowly corrupt them and turn them into mindless slaves.

With this idea, you'd be better off just homebrewing what the planes are, and not going with the D&D base. This does mean some spells would have to change, but that'd be on a case-by-case basis (Plane Shift would definitely be out, while Conjure Elemental might not). For extra points, go with some of the non-D&D faerie lore where they're unable to lie or touch iron (possibly any refined metal, according to some sources I've read), and the PCs have to find faerie weapons and armor instead (because their metal equipment didn't shift to this world with them).

For extra, extra points, have time and space work strangely there. For time, you could have the in-game day/night cycle be based on the passage of real-world time during the session (which would make time pass quickly whenever they fight, and slowly whenever they travel). For space, you could randomly roll the distances between regions every in-game day (and have fun stuff, like if they camp next to a small brook, it might end up becoming a mile-wide river by the time they wake up in the morning).

[Reaver25]

Have the PCs already know each other because they were drafted for some petty squabble between nobles that turned into a minor war (all class levels come from the training the PCs received to be some sort of special ops strike force or something). Also, several towns on the border between the nobles' fiefdoms have gone missing (which is why a special strike force was envisioned in the first place). But, that's all in the background, because the first session starts with them waking up in the prison/laboratory of an evil hag who has been abducting humans to the realm of the Faerie, outfitting them with the colors / livery of one of the Courts and depositing them in the territory of the other Court.

This lends itself towards sandbox (with options to try to find the survivors of the abducted towns and make a single consolidated settlement, try to return to the mortal world, try to attain great power and take over the Faerie world, try to continue the war with the opposing noble's forces that showed up there, etc) if you want, or you could make it more of a linear string of quests by having the PCs find out that the deranged hag cursed them with something that is going to slowly corrupt them and turn them into mindless slaves.

With this idea, you'd be better off just homebrewing what the planes are, and not going with the D&D base. This does mean some spells would have to change, but that'd be on a case-by-case basis (Plane Shift would definitely be out, while Conjure Elemental might not). For extra points, go with some of the non-D&D faerie lore where they're unable to lie or touch iron (possibly any refined metal, according to some sources I've read), and the PCs have to find faerie weapons and armor instead (because their metal equipment didn't shift to this world with them).

For extra, extra points, have time and space work strangely there. For time, you could have the in-game day/night cycle be based on the passage of real-world time during the session (which would make time pass quickly whenever they fight, and slowly whenever they travel). For space, you could randomly roll the distances between regions every in-game day (and have fun stuff, like if they camp next to a small brook, it might end up becoming a mile-wide river by the time they wake up in the morning).

This is a fantastic idea.
I wonder these kinds of things in that type of world:
Who was the hag?
What was her goal?
Does she serve anyone or is she ultimately trying to gain her own power?
Who were the nobles in their past lives?
What is their purpose now?
Are there people who shifted and became monsters?
Are there evil people who shifted and became good (or vice versa)?
A shifting and changing map, how could I do that?

And so on. Doesn't mean you have to answer these questions, obviously, that's where I would come in as the DM and answer them and fluff out the world. Then the PC's would be tossed happily into it and I would have my DEVIOUS ways!!! lol.
Such a great idea. Thank you!

[malachi]

This is a fantastic idea.

Thanks! I've been mulling over it for a while!


I wonder these kinds of things in that type of world:
Who was the hag?
What was her goal?
Does she serve anyone or is she ultimately trying to gain her own power?

The hag, specifically, doesn't matter. Because all hags know each other (which seems super sketchy, but that's in the fluff). All hags are sadistic, and take joy in making other people's lives difficult, particularly mortals. In my concept, the Conspiracy of Covens (because if you have factions, you should name them all :p) wants to learn how to break the limitations they have from being Fae (can't lie, can't touch metals, being somehow limited by / attracted to boundaries, other things I haven't researched), and the first step in their plan for doing that to themselves is to figure out how to turn mortals into Fae creatures (this has some odd interactions with the elven Fae Ancestry feature, which I haven't decided if I'd want to play off of, rename, or remove). Then, they'll work on how to change themselves (which would eventually result in the creation of Annis Hags who literally have iron embedded into them).

Once the hags change themselves, they believe they'll be able to conquer the mortal world, amass a supply of metal, and use that to conquer the Faerie Realm and then they'd be able to torture everything that exists (not sure if I'd have demons / celestials exist in this setting or not).



Who were the nobles in their past lives?
What is their purpose now?

I'm not sure what I said that implied past lives for the nobles.
But, as far as anything / anyone that still exist in the Mortal Realm, I don't have any definite ideas, but would work with the PCs to set up that background info.
I wonder what impacts there would be if the nobles who controlled the fiefdoms were all long-term, intelligent ghosts or something.


Are there people who shifted and became monsters?

Oh, definitely! Well, technically not "monsters", but there's a faction that I started calling Twisted Men. I probably need to rework the general ideas (see the spoiler at the end for where the ideas came from) to make sure that they're adequately representing some Fae trait, but I had envisioned that at certain boundary times (either noon/midnight, or dawn/dusk) the Twisted Men would change from being ordinary-looking mortals and become twisted and different.

A few examples:
* Mirror-Watcher - A woman focused on her self-image / thinness would change into a rail-thin woman carrying around a mirror, and anyone who looked into the mirror would trade places with her.

* Lonely Recluse - A recluse would turn into a spindly-limbed creature that would crawl, climb, and jump around in the shadows while waiting for someone to be isolated and distracted (such as the wizard at the back of the combat) before jumping in to KO, grapple, and drag off. They are literally incapable of attacking anyone who is close to others or is being watched - not sure how to make the mechanics of this, since 5e doesn't have facing or anything.

* Fearful Monger - A xenophobe would become... something (I don't know what they'd look like, but for some reason an image of a ratty tophat is coming to mind. Maybe like a twisted Uncle Sam, assuming that you and your players are in the US?), but would toss out AOEs that deal more damage based on the number of enemies inside it.

* Barren Mother - A woman, probably elderly, who wants children but can't have them, changes into something that looks like a Regurgitator from Diablo 2, but with an engorged abdomen. Whenever an enemy tries to use an AOE within a certain range of her, she'll eat it (basically as a counterspell to protect her "children").


Also, I had a couple of other ideas for more weird things:
* Motes of Light / Floating Crystals (I call them Nightlights) that aren't sentient, but are attracted to life / blood / combat / emotion / whatever you need to say to get them to randomly show up and disrupt combat. They all have auras that do various obnoxious things (damage, forced movement, disadvantage on saves / attacks, whatever) to everyone.

* Living plants (I call them the Primal Swarm) that have weak shapeshifting powers (I feel this feature is a little off and needs some work). During the day, they're indistinguishable from the "ordinary" plants of the Faerie Realm. At night, they pull up their roots and go looking for any light sources they can find (such as torches, fires, Nightlights, etc.)

* Twisted Fae, which were the first attempts at being able to ignore the Fae rules. Now, they practically follow now rules. In social interactions, they're crazy and make very little sense. In combat, they take random actions each turn against a random target (I was looking at making each type have 6 attacks, each targeting a different save, and just roll a d6 each turn to see what they do).

* [unnamed], which are giant [something]. They're followed around by random "minions", and have Legendary Actions / Legendary Resistances. The set of LAs is based on which "minions" exist. Whenever they use a LR, it destroys a "minion". "Minions" take no actions but to move (while staying within a certain range of the main form), and have higher AC / Saves than the main form. Whenever a "minion" dies, the main form takes damage equal to the "minion"'s HP. The main form can use a LA to create a new, random minion. (This idea was basically a thought I had when reading this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?595151-Is-Legendary-Resistance-a-Lazy-Mechanic).



Are there evil people who shifted and became good (or vice versa)?

In terms of alignment, I prefer to basically pretend that doesn't exist. But no reason why someone's personality wouldn't change.


A shifting and changing map, how could I do that?

Make a weighted graph, where each node is a particular location, and each link between nodes is a path that can be travelled, while the weight determines how far it is between these points on a given day. On the master graph, give each node a set of dice to roll to determine what the distance is. For something fairly consistent, you could have 4d6. For something extremely variable, 1d100.
For extra points, give each node itself a weight to say how big it is (with each node having some difference based on how big it is).
I'm not sure whether to just allow the PCs to have a map that shows the current weight of everything, or whether to require them to use other methods, allies, spells, etc. to determine if they can even get to where they want to go in the amount of time they want.


And so on. Doesn't mean you have to answer these questions, obviously, that's where I would come in as the DM and answer them and fluff out the world. Then the PC's would be tossed happily into it and I would have my DEVIOUS ways!!! lol.
Such a great idea. Thank you!

:p I answered a lot of them, which was fun! I'm glad you liked the idea.
If you want to use any / all of this, don't feel like you have to keep anything the way I talked about it. Freely steal and modify to your heart's desire!



The idea of this setting came from a couple of sources over time.

First, I was thinking of a homebrew enemy for another system / setting called Iron Kingdoms Full Metal Fantasy - there is a 2d6 version of the system, and an older 3.5 spinoff. There is a type of monster called 'Grymkin' in this setting, and they are tied in some way to the depravity of humanity. The 3.5 Iron Kingdoms Monsternomicon contains a lot more info on them, as well as this faction book (https://www.amazon.com/Privateer-Press-Forces-Hordes-Miniature/dp/1943693536/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=grymkin+wicked+harvest&qid=1565895610&s=gateway&sr=8-1) for the Warmachine tabletop wargame.

The first Grymkin I envisioned was a Lonely Recluse, which was basically a human that was so afraid of social interaction, and yet so lonely at the same time, that he became a Grymkin that shifted to resemble a spider, and would lurk around the edges of groups and try to find someone isolated to knock out and drag away.

Later, when I realized that everyone I know who would want to play an RPG would only be willing to play 5e, I started looking through random stuff, and read stuff about hags in the monster manual. That combined with things I've read about faeries in the Dresden Files, heard about them on the Myths and Legends podcast, etc., and resulted in this idea.

[NRSASD]

Thanks! I've been mulling over it for a while!

Thank you! This is brilliant material to work with! I'll add some stuff of my own when I have a moment, because I too have been wanting to do a Fey campaign and just finished one with heavy Fey themes.

Have you looked at the sorrow-born (?) from Mordekainen's Tome of Foes? They're shadowfell beasties that seem awfully similar to the Grymkin

[Reaver25]

Thanks! I've been mulling over it for a while!

CLIPPED



Malachi. This is some seriously awesome material. It makes me think of a buddy of mine that is super into real world lore and stories about "creatures," and using that lore rather than D&D lore. Very interesting indeed.
So far, I'm thinking of running a campaign where this is something that happens to them:
1. Party meets up/knows each other. Thrown into perilous situation. They survive.
2. They grow steadily in power, finding out more and more about the conspiracies behind missing people. Of all races ages and sizes.
3. Just when they think they are close and are finally used to the way things work BAM .... Feywild. Or fae realm. Yeah.
4. Chaos of being in a different plane or realm. Why are they there, how did they get there and how do they get out, Who put them there, and oh yeah, they have to get out because those missing people- one of them was their *some family member*
5. No idea from there! Lol.

But malachi. So many ideas. Thanks so much!