What's Your Favorite Campaign Premise You've Never Gotten To Play?

[Sparky McDibben]

Any system, any genre. Give me your elevator pitch for the coolest campaign you've never been able to run.

Here's mine; this is what I sent to my players, so it might be more of an escalator pitch than an elevator pitch:

Science Fantasy (Esper Genesis System):

The galaxy is large and dark. Humanity believes itself to be alone in the galaxy, 200 years after humanity left Earth and began settling the solar system. Faster-than-light (FTL) starships are still quite new, but a few private consortiums are building them and funding pathfinding teams to identify lucrative colonization opportunities. Who runs these consortiums? What are their ultimate aims? They are curiously unregulated, as laws and governments race to keep up with developments already out of their control. Earth's existing colonies chafe under the yoke of the motherworld - colonies on Mars, Venus, and the asteroid belt grumble under mercantile trade restrictions and more forceful violations of their liberty. Many of these colonists actually consider themselves a new species, as the "spacers" underwent extensive genetic modifications. A new name has been bandied about for them: "Prometheans." And of course, where there's trade, there's crime. And space trade has its own version of criminal: pirates! Thus far, government navies have done more to fight each other than the pirates. Therefore, deserters and mutineers swell the pirates' ranks...and make matters in the Sector just slightly more desperate.

Twenty years ago, galactic explorers activated the Tartarus Gate, opening up the dark space of the Tartarus Sector. The Sector has already attracted attention for the discovery of sorium, a potentially limitless energy source that can power anything from a lightbulb to a battlecruiser. Now a gold rush to stake claims on potentially rich worlds has started...but what lurks in the darkness? And why are explorers reporting strange ruins and ravenous living beasts? And why is there such a high percentage of these worlds that are potentially habitable....yet uninhabited?

This one is going to be a somewhat gritty, hard science exploration run, striving to stay alive, dodging natural predators, battling pirates, and discovering aliens (yes, you get to do first contact!) like a hopefully less-horny cross between Dr. Aphra and Capt. Kirk. While fantastic elements will still be present (eg, psionics), they will be less prevalent than in the other options.

[Ettina]

Villains Versus. The plan was to have one DM running three linked campaigns, each featuring a villainous PC trying to do something drastic and villainous to Waterdeep. (My character was an ulitharid who wanted to take over Waterdeep and use it as a base of operations for his research on building an unstoppable army of modified trolls.) The idea was that stuff that happened in one campaign would change Waterdeep for the other campaigns as well, and eventually our PCs would directly clash, if we didn't get killed by some of the many powerful NPCs in Waterdeep first.

I had my first session, the other two players never actually got around to having their first session, so the campaign died.

[Concrete]

A really cliche fantasy story, where legendary heroes once saved the world. The Pc's would set out to find these heroes once more, when the world was in danger.

But these heroes would be unable to do so. Too old. Too crushed by grief. Driven mad by knowledge. Or even dead.

So the Pc's would have to instead learn from them. The ancient fighter would teach their techniques to the new fighter, and bequeath them their ancestral weapon.

The young rogue would have to infiltrate a prison to learn from the rogue, driven mad by a powerful, evil artefact.


A wizard would have to explore the warped tower of the old wizard, who disappeared into it 70 years ago, to discover their secrets.


Stuff like that. In the process of these interactions, the players would learn from and surpass these heroes of old, learn about their failings and become greater than they ever were. And also, learn something about the enemy, and why they are returning.


But I really don't know how to run it. It'd focus too heavily on one character at the time, leaving the others on the back burner. And I'd either have to have a near perfect understanding of the players characters to build matching ancients, or take way too much control over their characters.


And I kinda know that my players wouldn't go for it. Most of the times I've run a concept campaign, it has crashed and burned.

[SimonMoon6]

Never gotten to play (as the thread title suggests) or never gotten to run (as the first post suggests)?

Never gotten to play: Most of the games I've run for my very lucky players. And when one of the other players was suggesting that perhaps someone else might run a game, he commented something like "And of course NOT something like what we just played because we just played that."

Never gotten to run (and would take more research than I really want to do):

A D&D game set in Medieval Europe with a Cthulhu Mythos backdrop

The idea would be a somewhat realistic take (as much as possible when using the D&D rules anyway) on a Medieval Europe (with a bit of fictionalizing here and there). The only monsters would be humans and Cthulhu Mythos creatures (with occasional exceptions). The only deities that were real would be the Cthulhu Mythos deities (though foolish humans would worship the same deities they did in real life, despite not getting powers from them).

So, clerics, paladins, and so forth would not actually have magical powers because there would be no divinity that they could worship that would give them stuff. Basically, paladins are fighters without the bonus feats and clerics are just "experts". Bards would have the only socially acceptable form of magical healing.

Druids might still exist but would be considered heretical and therefore would be killed as soon as they are discovered. Wizards (etc) would also be labeled as practitioners of witchcraft and likewise would be burned at the stake.

[Anonymouswizard]

Oh, I've got many. Must of which aren't even at the elevator pitch stage. One of the most developed, and recounted here, began as an idea for a novel (which I still occasionally try to write).

Post Terra (hardish science fiction)
It is the 2100s, and the environment has collapsed. Global warming happened faster than predicted and trapped water in the summer, causing a positive feedback loop. Humanity is mainly divided into two groups: the Conservationists who manage 200-odd ecosystems on Earth (massive cooling systems are involved) while searching for a way to reverse the change in climate, while the Lunarians primarily live in the L4 and L5 Earth-Moon Lagrange Points in space habitats, mine asteroids, and are trying to set up the infrastructure to colonise the solar system.

Crime exists, but large scale conflict between societies (and yes, the Conservationists and Lunarians each consist of multiple societies) is primarily economic and social. The world has died,, and people have moved on from war and acts of terror.

So, of course, somebody causes an explosion (either a nuclear bomb or rod from God) in a major Conservationist preserve

The PCs are an elite team of police officers and experts tasked with tracking down whoever did this. With precisely no leads, superiors who know even less than they do, and the threat of more attacks happening they're set free into the world to try and complete their mission.

(I recommend checking the crime scene.)

[Willie the Duck]

Scenario:
The Robots (the PCs) have been awakened. Their human masters are all dead or disabled or something (perhaps in cryo pods). Some crises has happened and the robots are tasked with solving it. The intelligent robots have been assigned directives by their masters that they realize are not conducive to the success of the project, but cannot ignore them. The scenario is them trying to accomplish the goal while technically adhering to and without technically violating their directives.

[Batcathat]

Scenario:
The Robots (the PCs) have been awakened. Their human masters are all dead or disabled or something (perhaps in cryo pods). Some crises has happened and the robots are tasked with solving it. The intelligent robots have been assigned directives by their masters that they realize are not conducive to the success of the project, but cannot ignore them. The scenario is them trying to accomplish the goal while technically adhering to and without technically violating their directives.

Oooh, I like this one (though I suspect it'd require a fairly specific kind of player). Feels rather Asimov-ish. Did you have any particular directives in mind for them to struggle with?

I'm trying to think of an example of my own but I can't really think of any particular dream premise at the moment. In the more general sense, I would want to try and run a murder mystery. I actually did try it on these very forums a while back but it barely got started. In addition to the general tendency of many PBP games to die off, I suspect my own inexperience with running a game like that played a part (I thought figuring out a combat scenario that's exactly the right amount of challenging could be tricky, but weaving a mystery that's neither immediately solved nor impossible to was way worse...)

[truemane]

Cosmic D&D Hunger Games
(although I've has this idea since before the Hunger Games)

The PC's all awaken in a strange place and are told that they've been kidnapped by entities of vast power and will be forced to endure challenges for their entertainment. You can run every bonkers nonsense funhouse dungeon TSR or WOTC ever put on low-quality paper and wrapped in cardstock and it'll all make perfect sense.

You can have little side plots involving competition or co-operation with other kidnapped parties. You can have little intrigues with certain entities enjoying certain kinds of activities and providing help if they get to see them. You can have an on-going side plot about escaping. You can have a little village of the kidnapped people and have established relationships that can be ripped apart by the capricious desires of unknowable deities.

I've pitched this to my RL table four times now (as one of several options) and they always choose one of the other options instead.

Someday.

[Willie the Duck]

Oooh, I like this one (though I suspect it'd require a fairly specific kind of player). Feels rather Asimov-ish. Did you have any particular directives in mind for them to struggle with?

The sub-scenario I had envisioned was the robots waking up on a spaceship, and the humans had all retreated to their cryo pods -- either to escape a radiation storm or maybe just that it is a STL travel ship and the voyage is hundreds of years (perhaps they were supposed to awaken when they got in-system but didn't, or perhaps they were deemed unneeded as the landing would be a cakewalk but something has changed). The Robots have directives like "the first priority should be to analyze the local life forms, set us down in near their feeding zone," but realize that the local life forms are silica-based or something and the humans would likely find the resources needed to endure over near some carbon- and water-rich resources some thousands of miles away from said location. Another robot might have directives regarding defending operational capability of the interstellar vessel that don't adequately relinquish priority when it is the in-system or planer-landing vessels that ought be allotted more resources.

[jjordan]

Acretion I-
Sci-Fi setting. An interstellar human empire has risen and fallen. New interstellar polities are rising. Into this setting a massive starship arrives, bigger than anything the local polities have the ability to build, faster, coming from an unexplored portion of space. It's part of the reconstruction efforts of the fallen empire, tasked with bringing civilization to fallen worlds and bringing other worlds into the new empire. It's been at this task for a thousand years and in that time it has been badly damaged. The AIs that run the ship have fractured into multiple factions. The clones the ship produces to populate abandoned worlds and subjugate resistant worlds have been able to build their own societies on the ship. Parasites, human and non-human, have attached themselves to the ship for their own various reasons. It's a treasure trove and a threat and every local polity wants to control it or prevent their rivals from controlling it.

Acretion II-
Fantasy setting. It's the mysterious travelling magic shop, but it's a city. It sends out scouts to find favorable realities/worlds and then descends upon one. It becomes a magnet for trade, sucking in raw materials and turning out finished goods, draining the world of wealth until there is nothing left to take and then moving on, sometimes acquiring new residents in the process. I planned to run this by having one campaign running in the city and another running in the next world it's going to appear in and then merging the two campaigns.

A**hole Elves-
Fantasy setting. The elves are the losers of a power struggle in their home reality/world and come to a new reality/world with their halfling servants and orcish slaves and dominate the choice areas at the expense of the human, dwarf, gnome, and goblin inhabitants. Not all goes as planned. The humans discover the elves are vulnerable to iron and eventually fight well, dragons following the commands of Mother Tiamat try the same trick as the elves, the orcs rebel, and so do some of the elves.

Failing-
Fantasy setting. Magical warfare has destroyed reality. Now it's dying. A cold, barren world where the constantly encroaching borders are disappearing into the mists of the astral and holes in reality can open up anywhere. Strange creatures feast on the remnants of the reality or its inhabitants. Factions prepare their bastions to survive the final collapse, harvesting the very last dregs of magic so they can continue to exist in the astral. Or they seek ways to move to new realities. Some try to make peace with the coming end. Others deny it. A variation on this has the entire world brought into a single, enormous city protected by great magical barriers that hold the void at bay.

Mirror-
Fantasy setting. Two realities, side by side, separated by a distance measured using sub-atomic units and slowly merging into a single, composite reality. The inhabitants of each fight/labor to ensure their reality is the one that remains after the merge or, at least, that they survive. Killing your other is considered to be a good, but not the only, way to do this.

[thorr-kan]

Mahabba, City of Silence

My love for Al-Qadim (2E) knows no bounds. But what I'd like to run is a rogues-only campaign set in Mahabba, the City of Charity, more often called the City of Silence. It's a member of the League of the Pantheon, but it's basically occupied by the other members and its own military in response to a series of semi-popular uprisings by adherents of the local deity's religion. 2E has *A LOT* of rogue subclasses. Basically, play it like Northern Ireland occupied by the Mafia.

[Sparky McDibben]

Villains Versus. The plan was to have one DM running three linked campaigns, each featuring a villainous PC trying to do something drastic and villainous to Waterdeep. (My character was an ulitharid who wanted to take over Waterdeep and use it as a base of operations for his research on building an unstoppable army of modified trolls.) The idea was that stuff that happened in one campaign would change Waterdeep for the other campaigns as well, and eventually our PCs would directly clash, if we didn't get killed by some of the many powerful NPCs in Waterdeep first.

I had my first session, the other two players never actually got around to having their first session, so the campaign died.

This sounds like a lot of fun...but also a lot of work for the DM. You have to prep about 3x the content for a 1:1 session that you do for a group session, and having 3x the sessions means about 9x the work. I wonder if it would work better as a standard party-based game augmented by PBeM records for between-adventure stuff that the DM can start to work into the backdrop?


But I really don't know how to run it. It'd focus too heavily on one character at the time, leaving the others on the back burner. And I'd either have to have a near perfect understanding of the players characters to build matching ancients, or take way too much control over their characters.

Honestly, you know what this reminds me of? The old (old) anime Ruruoni Kenshin. Every few arcs a bad guy would come back from the past and the main character would have to go to his mentor to master some secret technique, in the process learning more about themselves. I'd just have the old mentors be like Luke Skywalker in the Last Jedi: these washed-up defeated old bastards who kind of mess with the PCs. "Yeah, sure kid. You've definitely got what it takes to beat Lord Zargothrax. You know, there's this old cave a few miles away that only a real hero could fight their way through..."

Alternatively: "Hey, so on a scale of 1 to 10, how fond are you of suicidal quests to prove yourself?"

I'd prefer to have the old masters be all in the same area (easier for them to play canasta while the PCs are questing through the Swamp of Desolation), but you could also have the old masters be spread out. Maybe use the Adventures in Middle Earth system (adventure --> journey to a new master --> downtime training with master (dropping hints about "I can't teach you my ultimate technique until you've proved you're trustworthy/honorable/etc!") --> Rinse / repeat). You could salt through the adventures the keys to other master's more advanced powers, too! So what if you gated the kensai's "Seven Swords Against Heaven" technique (steel wind strike 1x/ short rest) behind throwing off hostile mind control? And then, at the new master's place, the BBEG sends a vampire who can try to dominate that kensei - now the player has a choice. They could try to just make the save, or they could willingly fail, trusting that they can try to throw off the mind control after a few rounds when their party smacks them around some. More risk, more reward!


Never gotten to play (as the thread title suggests) or never gotten to run (as the first post suggests)?

More campaigns = better stories, bro.


Never gotten to play: Most of the games I've run for my very lucky players. And when one of the other players was suggesting that perhaps someone else might run a game, he commented something like "And of course NOT something like what we just played because we just played that."

I feel that one.


Never gotten to run (and would take more research than I really want to do):

A D&D game set in Medieval Europe with a Cthulhu Mythos backdrop

Don't they have Cthulhu Dark Ages? Would that work?


Cosmic D&D Hunger Games
(although I've has this idea since before the Hunger Games)

The PC's all awaken in a strange place and are told that they've been kidnapped by entities of vast power and will be forced to endure challenges for their entertainment. You can run every bonkers nonsense funhouse dungeon TSR or WOTC ever put on low-quality paper and wrapped in cardstock and it'll all make perfect sense.

That's ducking metal as hell. Love it.


A**hole Elves-
Fantasy setting. The elves are the losers of a power struggle in their home reality/world and come to a new reality/world with their halfling servants and orcish slaves and dominate the choice areas at the expense of the human, dwarf, gnome, and goblin inhabitants. Not all goes as planned. The humans discover the elves are vulnerable to iron and eventually fight well, dragons following the commands of Mother Tiamat try the same trick as the elves, the orcs rebel, and so do some of the elves.

Ooh! A planar invasion plotline that starts at level 1! Like Dragonlance, but better because you get to do elf-murder. Love it!


Mahabba, City of Silence

My love for Al-Qadim (2E) knows no bounds. But what I'd like to run is a rogues-only campaign set in Mahabba, the City of Charity, more often called the City of Silence. It's a member of the League of the Pantheon, but it's basically occupied by the other members and its own military in response to a series of semi-popular uprisings by adherents of the local deity's religion. 2E has *A LOT* of rogue subclasses. Basically, play it like Northern Ireland occupied by the Mafia.

Omerta prevents me from expressing my love for this idea. :smallbiggrin:

[Pauly]

Vampires versus the Gods of the dead

Use any one of the sexy vampire urban fantasy games. Then make the antagonists the Gods of the Dead, whose actual role in mythology/religion was to protect the souls of the dead. Vampires being undead are a complete anathema to them. Can’t go into too much detail here without violating the ban on discussing real World religions and myths, but Baron Samedi from Haiti was my choice as most interesting main antagonist whose powers/abilities best fit the genre. Other Gods of the Dead would contribute based on the backstories of the characters. I mean there’s no point roping Hades into the game if there aren’t any ancient Greeks in the party.

[Azuresun]

The Necromancer King is defeated by a band of unlikely heroes after conquering a big chunk of the world, most of his army crumbles to dust. The PC's are undead minions who regain their free will after their master is slain, and who need to navigate a world split between blighted, monster-haunted wastes, the domains of lieutenants of the Necromancer King who now feud with each other, and surviving bastions of civilisation struggling to rebuild. The idea was originally inspired by Savage Species in 3e, but it could probably work now, after seeing the VRGTR lineages.

And for another Savage Species-based one-shot, a game where the party are just a regular party of adventurers going through a dungeon. Except each of them is actually a shapeshifting monster of some sort--the bard is a succubus, the wizard is a raksasha, the rogue is a doppleganger, etc. Each of them firmly believes that they are the only infiltrator in this band of witless mortal fools, and must keep their identity and hidden agenda a secret at all costs. And then see how long it lasts before the whole thing comes down in flaming ruin. :smallbiggrin:

[Yora]

Shadows of the Sith Empire (Star Wars d6): Knights of the Old Republic Dark Side Ending. Revan goes more mad and disposed by Bastilla, who tries to find the power used by Marka Ragnos to keep the ancient Sith Lords in line.

The Outer Rim (Star Wars d6): After the destruction of Alderaan, various Old Republic officials and unhappy imperial peons see the signs of the times and decide to GTFO and disappear among the mercenaries and freight pilots on the Hyperlane between Sullust and Tatooine. An ambitious young imperial Moff decides to crack down on the spice trade between Hutt Space and the Outer Rim industrial area of Sullust, Sluis-Van, Malastare, and Eriadu. There's always room for corruption, but with the new crackdown there's not enough space for both the Hutts and Black Sun.

the Heart of Darkness (D&D 5th Ed.): A Planescape campaign that quietly ignores the most famous planes and instead focuses on the more obscure ones between them, particularly on the chaos side: Beastlands, Ysgard, Pandemonium, Carceri, and Gehenna. The party starts as refugees from a dying Prime world that discovered a portal to the Outlands in the area near Glorium, Bedlam, and Curst. Bleakers, Doomguard, Dustmen, and Signers appear in the new refugee town looking for new recruits.
Meanwhile an Arcanaloth learns about a giant Sphere of Annihilation buried in the ice on the lowest layer of Carceri and wants to find it. Anarchists think nobody should have control over such power, and Doomguards see it as the perfect tool of their cause. And a rogue Asura of the Free League tries to gather an army of bariaurs in Ysgard to claim the sphere as a weapon to fight evil.

[Anonymouswizard]

Remaking the Universe for Fun and Profit (Unknown Armies)

Everybody must be an Adept or Avatar. This is the easy part of the sell.

The game begins and the PCs get wind of an anonymouswizard trying to scene to godhood. There's only one thing for them to do: take the creep down a few pegs, steal his godhood ritual, and try to find a major charge to achieve godhood themselves. Or to guard the thing so that nobody else can use it, at which point the game becomes about setting up a new major occult conspiracy about guarding dangerous magick, but my experience with UA is that PCs tend to have few scruples that aren't related to self preservation.

The PCs will eventually draw the attention of, at the very least, TNI and Max Attax. Then they get to fight an occult war with whatever organisation they've pulled together.

[SimonMoon6]

Don't they have Cthulhu Dark Ages? Would that work?


It wouldn't be the same. Cthulhu Dark Ages is still basically using the Call of Cthulhu game system. My vision is something that actually uses the D&D game system, where characters level up and become more powerful, with the option to be a wizard or druid, knowing full well that all of society would be against you. The dominance of religion would be one of the great difficulties that the PCs have to deal with if they want to be a high tier character. Or, everyone could be low tier characters and not worry about it as much. People can buy magic items (potions, wands, etc) but mostly just ones made by bards (since all other forms of magic either don't work or are considered heretical).



More campaigns = better stories, bro.


Some of my campaigns that I've run (without getting to play in) have been rather intricate things that are difficult to describe in a simple paragraph. Two of my most popular games have been "self insert" games (where the PCs are the players). And both were multi-genre games.

Self-Insert Multiverse Game (Prelude)

The origin of this game is something I struggle to describe because it arose in a very non-traditional way.

It started off as a superhero game inspired by Marvel's "New Universe" comics which were new at the time. Basically, what I found interesting about the setting of the New Universe was that many of the super-powered characters did not know exactly what their powers were or how they worked. I wanted to run a game in that sort of setting. The premise was that the players would describe a character before they got powers and then they would get powers, the extent of which they would not know. The more skilled the pre-powers person was, the weaker the powers they would get. For example, the three PCs were a military guy (with lots of skills), a wrestler (with hand-to-hand combat skills but not much else), and an opera singer (with no useful skills). The military guy ended up with a power of danger avoidance via time travel, but only along his own personal genealogical timeline. The wrestler got some light control powers. The opera singer got vast telekinetic powers that even included a bit of elemental transmutation. But most importantly, their character sheets were kept secret. They didn't know how strong they were or how powerful their powers were.

And, see, I'm already feeling side-tracked as I discuss this because that has nothing to do with what the game would become.

In the "New Universe", the source of everyone's powers was a mysterious "White Event" where the sky went white for a moment. In my game, there was a similar "Black Event" where the sky went black for a moment. What was the source of this mysterious event? In my game, the source was beings of Chaos (Moorcock-ian style Chaos) who were trying to remold this world in their image. However, as a consequence, beings of Law (in the form of giant scalpel-like swords) appeared and tried to eliminate everyone with these powers that had come from Chaos.

To stop the swords of Law, the PCs had to find out how the beings of Chaos had been able to enter this universe in the first place. They tracked it down to a group of gamers, one of whom had found a magic book and used it to summon the beings of Chaos. And guess who those gamers were? They were the same gaming group that were controlling the PCs, with the particular individual who had summoned the Lords of Chaos being me.

Eventually, the only solution to the problem (beings of Law and Chaos fighting in this universe) involved sending that particular gaming group through five universes, to gather a powerful item from each world and return home. It had to be the gaming group (the players) because they were the ones who had summoned Chaos in the first place.

And that was pretty much the end of my pseudo-"New Universe" game, but that started the actual game that I wanted to talk about.

Self-Insert Multiverse Game

The PCs (who were also the players) now had to adventure in five different universes. First, they were in the world of Elric of Melnibone. Then... wow, it's been a long time now... I've kind of forgotten the details. I think next was a superhero world where the PCs got superpowers, then... I've forgotten. The last world was a Call of Cthulhu world though. Anyway, when the PCs returned to their home world, several things happened. First, their magic items merged with their bodies (there were 5 characters and 5 items, so everybody got one), though one guy decided to cut his out (not wanting the Lamp of Al-hazred to become a permanent part of him).

But more importantly, the universe now changed. The PCs had succeeded in making sure that their universe was no longer a Moorcockian world dominated by battles between Law and Chaos. However, because the fifth item came from a Call of Cthulhu universe, the world of the PCs retroactively became a world where the Cthulhu Mythos was real and always had been. Oops. Probably not the best trade-off, but now it was over.

Except that one of those five important characters was "me" who happened to know a lot about the Cthulhu Mythos and so I quickly went insane and became a major villain of the campaign, which now traversed twenty-three different universes (a D&D universe, the Doctor Who universe, Star Trek, DC, etc). And once that particular villain was finally dealt with, the PCs were free to roam around, having adventures in 23 (or more) different universes. One chose to become a king in the Dreamlands of the Cthulhu Mythos stories, another went to study advanced science in the Doctor Who universe, etc. And that was just the beginning...

That was a strange game that quickly became a sandbox game of "what do you want to do?" since the PCs could go almost anywhere and do almost anything, in worlds that they were often quite familiar with (though often not as familiar as they thought).

This game transcended game systems, changing a couple of times, and then mutating into a very different game at the end, when the multiverse was destroyed when the wrong question was asked.

And then, there was my personal favorite...

The Self-Insert Multi-Genre Patchwork World

Here's how this game began: The PCs (who were also the players) were gathering to play a new game that was going to be a self-insert game (yes, this is getting a bit recursive, but bear with me). So, they naturally had brought with them "adventuring gear" in case they would need it in the game they were going to play.

But the PCs never got to play that game (whatever it was going to be). Instead a strange crystal found by the GM suddenly activated and then many things happened rather quickly.

First of all, the PCs suddenly gained all of the powers, skills, and equipment of fifteen of their favorite characters (I had asked for this list before the game began; it was five characters from each of three genres). Many of them were bristling with god-like powers. However, the crystal also turned all five of them evil. As they considered battling amongst themselves, a portal opened up and a badly injured wizard wandered through it. He immediately stopped time and then somehow pulled out the evil parts of each of the PCs. So, now where each PC had been, there was an evil version of that PC (with all the awesome powers, skills, and equipment) and a non-evil version (with no powers, skills, or equipment apart from what they originally possessed).

And then the wizard explained (although not all of what he said turned out to be true). He explained that there was an evil being who was destroying worlds, but keeping a small section of each world (a 1000 by 1000 mile square) as a trophy on a patchwork world. The PCs' world was being destroyed at the moment. And basically their only hope to survive was to go to that patchwork world (through the portal), find more crystals (there was one in each "patch" of the patchwork world), and use each crystal to regain a fraction of the power that their evil selves now possessed. Their evil selves would be hunting for them and trying to kill them, so the PCs needed to hurry and be discrete as much as possible, though they would get a bit of a head start thanks to time being stopped on Earth for everyone except the PCs and the wizard. Then, with enough power, they can fight back against their evil selves and defeat the main bad guy.

Then, the wizard died and it was up to the PCs to explore this patchwork world. In each patch, different rules for what worked and what didn't work would apply. The first world was generic fantasy, where magic worked, but not superpower or high tech. Other worlds including a sci-fi world with robots, an opera world, an undersea kingdom world, a martial arts movie/video game world, 80's cartoon teddy bears world, an anime world, a fairy tale world, a fun on the beach world, a Power Rangers kind of world, a cheesy horror movie world, a world based on Greco-Roman mythology, various superhero worlds, etc. Basically, any genre you could think of, as well as just plain boring forests full of giant insects or a world of liquid mercury.

And the PCs gained powers from the crystals in different ways. Each crystal would give them one thing, like an ability to actually become one of their favorite characters (though staying in that form for too long would start to make their original body transform to become more like that character) or they could gain one ability, skill, or item that that character possessed. There may have been other details, but it's been a long time and I've forgotten.

Also, you can't take a crystal from one of the worlds because then that world is annihilated. One of the PCs actually accidentally did this one time and had huge regrets.

The adventures always involved finding a crystal and moving on, but there were always complications. Sometimes, one of the evil versions of the PCs would get close to finding the PCs. One time the evil versions left a trap (a massive explosive device where the PCs had been told a crystal would be). And there were lots of wacky hi-jinks. One of the more memorable moments was when one of the PCs won his round in a martial arts competition despite being dead at the time (his competitor was disqualified for sending assassins to kill the PCs while they were sleeping).

Eventually, the PCs won. And then, after the actual truth of the nature of the whole campaign was revealed to them (it was meant to be a "gift" to allow the PCs to be who they obviously wanted to be and have the adventures they obviously wanted to have... there wasn't really a massive bad guy behind everything), the PCs got to choose whether to return to a not-destroyed-after-all Earth without any powers or special items (though with their mundane skills and abilities getting significant improvements) or staying on this patchwork world in any patch they wanted.

In the end, two of the five went back home, while three stayed (two in a superhero world and one in a fairy tale world after getting married there).

[Telwar]

Starfinder - The Plucky Delivery Crew

The party are all employees of a small package delivery company, in obvious financial straits. They're hired in when all the company's other crews are busy, for a special delivery.

As they fly off and go into FTL, a component of the drift engine (deteronic frombitzer, L-unit, whatever) fails catastrophically, sending them careening out of the Drift, crashing onto an unexplored world. All communication systems are down.

After several months of exploration and repair, and of course shooting monsters and plundering abandoned temples, they're able to return to Absalom Station...where they find they've been declared dead.

In their absence, their employer has gone bankrupt, and all possessions of the company have been auctioned off (which happens a lot faster than in real life).

Now, the real campaign begins, the PCs have their now-improved ship, and are going to be chased around by:
The AbadarCorp insurance agents who really want their property back (as the owner claimed the policy on the ship prior to the bankruptcy);
The interstellar drug cartel, who want their truly gigantic load of $illegaldrug back;
The mad scientist owner of their former employer, who took their absconding with the ship rather personally;
Dominion of the Black cultists who are upset with the PCs for looting their Sekrit (sic) Temple;
and maybe others.

[Sparky McDibben]

Starfinder - The Plucky Delivery Crew

ZOMG how did I not realize Futurama could totally be a campaign setting????

[Yora]

the Heart of Darkness (D&D 5th Ed.): A Planescape campaign that quietly ignores the most famous planes and instead focuses on the more obscure ones between them, particularly on the chaos side: Beastlands, Ysgard, Pandemonium, Carceri, and Gehenna. The party starts as refugees from a dying Prime world that discovered a portal to the Outlands in the area near Glorium, Bedlam, and Curst. Bleakers, Doomguard, Dustmen, and Signers appear in the new refugee town looking for new recruits.
Meanwhile an Arcanaloth learns about a giant Sphere of Annihilation buried in the ice on the lowest layer of Carceri and wants to find it. Anarchists think nobody should have control over such power, and Doomguards see it as the perfect tool of their cause. And a rogue Asura of the Free League tries to gather an army of bariaurs in Ysgard to claim the sphere as a weapon to fight evil.

On further thought, I should continue working on this campaign right now!

[Sparky McDibben]

On further thought, I should continue working on this campaign right now!

You should! I recently had to run an adventure in Gehenna (PC failed their save vs prismatic spray) and I had the damnedest time finding gameable material about the place. Would LOVE to see your prep notes / reference sources!

[Sparky McDibben]

The Necromancer King is defeated by a band of unlikely heroes after conquering a big chunk of the world, most of his army crumbles to dust.

I have a similar pitch inspired by Dimension 20's Escape from the Bloodkeep! My take was they spend levels 1-5 working for the bad guy, and after the BBEG gets ganked have to make their way out of the Darklands! I'm really looking forward to WebDM's Weird Wastelands supplement; the structure, monsters and environments look tailor-made for this.

[Yora]

You should! I recently had to run an adventure in Gehenna (PC failed their save vs prismatic spray) and I had the damnedest time finding gameable material about the place. Would LOVE to see your prep notes / reference sources!

I'm basically picking up right where I left here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?614732-Browsing-Ideas-for-a-Planescape-campaign).

Planescape being very scarce on actual stuff to do is something I noticed as well. There aren't really any ongoing conflicts other than the ultra generic "it's the blood war" and "the factions have ideological disagreements". The philosophies of the factions are often quite interesting, but don't actually lead to any call of action. The only exception are the Anarchists, who try to bring down any governments as a matter of principle. (With no plan whatsoever how that would improve things, which works for the satirical aspect of the setting but doesn't provide plot hooks.)
The main box is also extremely vague on this, only mumbling a bit of making the campaign about themes and belief, but not giving any examples of how that might supposed to look like.

The very rough arc I have in mind for Gehenna is going to the Teardrop Palace of Sun Chiang to find important tools or records in the biggest black market in the multiverse, which allows them to break into the Tower of the Arcanaloths to find the location of the hidden forrtess of the main villain. And the best way to get inside is going through the realm of Shargaas.

My approach is to leaf through the available material and just pick out some really cool sounding locations and interesting characters and use them as starting points to create my own content. With the extremely vague and broad strokes the setting books are written, it almost feels more like a big box of toys from which you can pick to get your own setting going. But you don't really get a fully developed world like with Forgotten Realms or Dark Sun.

[Bohandas]

"The Steamroller" or "Why Doesn't Elminster Just Solve Everyone's Problems"
A level 20 party go through as many low level adventures as they can, one immediately after another and without resting

[Anonymouswizard]

"The Steamroller" or "Why Doesn't Elminster Just Solve Everyone's Problems"
A level 20 party go through as many low level adventures as they can, one immediately after another and without resting

I like this, just due to it showing exactly why I shouldn't be making those arguments.

Still gonna make them.

[LibraryOgre]

To Be A Wave: A Tale of a Twenty Goblin Winter

For Legend of the Five Rings

The basic concept is that, about two years ago, the old Emperor died, leaving one youngish (post-gempukku, but before he turns 20) son as the new Hantei. Coinciding with the death of the old emperor, there was a wave of assassinations across the empire, leaving many samurai ronin. The players will be these ronin, of whatever background they like, during a "Twenty Goblin Winter"... an event declared by the Champion of the Crab Clan, where anyone coming with 20 Goblin heads is adopted into the Crab Clan.

See, I figure that something important has happened in the Empire. The new Hantei has announced that Hantei I came to him in a dream, and told him to seek a wife outside the Crane clan. This throws EVERYTHING into chaos, as you can imagine... the Crane have taken a heavy blow, and pretty much every other clan is now grooming potential future Empresses. I'm also considering having the Emperor disappear from Otosan Uichi and wind up on the border, a nameless samurai fighting the goblins during the 20 Goblin Winter... in a perfect place for the PCs to stumble on him, not knowing who he is.

Some ones I've already played with:
3 Cranes. One a young woman, who was kicked out of the Crane clan for a made-up offense, when the 20 Goblin winter was announced, in the hopes that she would become Crab, thus allowing the Crane to throw their weight behind her (since she wouldn't technically be a Crane anymore). With her are one or two other Cranes... her father (or other elder relative) who followed her into exile. He is complicit in her being "dishonored", and is hoping to make sure she gets the 20 heads necessary to be a Crab. The other is her admirer, who followed her into exile because he could not leave her side. Wonderful, tragic, Crane story.

A Yasuki, maybe former Crab, maybe former Crane, who was too cowardly for seppuku (the fault was his own; he'd be a ronin for reasons other than the assassination), but now is desperate to get back into a clan.

A Gaijin, washed up on Rokugani shores a few years ago. His pronunciation is barbaric, his ways are strange and foreign, and no one decent will talk to this meat-eating, fork-using swine. But he can use a sword, and so he wants to be Crab.

An eta, perhaps some trade like butcher or whatever, who wishes to raise himself above his station.

[Sparky McDibben]

To Be A Wave: A Tale of a Twenty Goblin Winter

For Legend of the Five Rings



I hecking LOVE Rokugan! Literally the first campaign setting I ever read was Oriental Adventures for 3rd edition. So this is a premise I need to add to my bag of holding!

[LibraryOgre]

Another one, for AD&D:

You were a high level, very skilled, fighter. something like 9th or 13th level. Then you dual-classed into thief, where you are 1st level. And ventured off to the Caves of Chaos, alone.

You have the HP of your high level fighter. You have some gear... your 3rd best armor (your leather armor that you slept in), your best long sword, some miscellaneous magic. But you're a 1st level thief. And you're alone.

[thorr-kan]

Mahabba, City of Silence

My love for Al-Qadim (2E) knows no bounds. But what I'd like to run is a rogues-only campaign set in Mahabba, the City of Charity, more often called the City of Silence. It's a member of the League of the Pantheon, but it's basically occupied by the other members and its own military in response to a series of semi-popular uprisings by adherents of the local deity's religion. 2E has *A LOT* of rogue subclasses. Basically, play it like Northern Ireland occupied by the Mafia.Omerta prevents me from expressing my love for this idea. :smallbiggrin:
If you dig deep enough into enough settings and Dragon Magazine, 2E will give you rogues who are arcane casters, divine casters, NWP masters, socialites, light warriors...

With rogue XP tables in 2E, you level up fast. So you'd gain power, but you'd lack staying power.

[SimonMoon6]

Here's another idea. It's a bit on the generic side, so it could fit with a variety of game systems and settings.

The Villains Have Already Won

One annoying thing about a lot of game settings is that the heroes are usually trying to do little more than maintain the status quo. I get particularly annoyed by this in superhero settings, since the PCs end up always having to be reactive rather than active, making it hard to have any sort of sandbox setting though I have tried my best (one time I created "newspapers" with various articles mentioning plot threads that the PCs could investigate, but the PCs are still "reacting" not acting).

So, what if the villains have already won?

The Dark Lord has conquered all the major cities in Generic Fantasy World, even the elves and dwarves and stuff. Or, the aliens have captured and/or killed all of Earth's superheroes during their invasion, with the world's countries now completely subjugated by the aliens. Or, the stars were right a few years ago, so Cthulhu woke up and now everything is bonkers; monsters roam the streets and everyone's going insane when they're not being killed.

The closest existing RPG I can think of like this is TORG, where the invaders have already invaded and taken over vast swaths of land, but haven't quite managed to "win" yet.

Basically, the idea would be that the long term goal of the PCs would be to get rid of the enemies, but that's going to take more than one adventure. In fact, it may not ever happen. But the PCs can disrupt the enemy and try to weaken their strangle-hold over the world. Maybe they can free some captured humans and escape to the safe underground, with that being the most that they can hope to accomplish most days. But simply fighting the enemy armies is not even an option because they are too powerful and numerous. They can try to ally with other pockets of resistance but the danger is that maybe those other resistance groups are secretly enemy agents in disguise.

A similar version that I've had in mind for a D&D game in particular is...

Civilization has been Annihilated

While the low level PCs are journeying to a city, suddenly an amazingly powerful enemy from another universe takes action. He drops city-sized Spheres of Annihilation (with slightly different properties) onto every significant city on the entire planet, all at the same time. Small villages are unaffected, but every single city with spell-casters higher than 6th level... they're just gone, leaving just a vast round hole leading down into the ground. And then the invader's armies appear through portals, huge armies of minotaurs, centaurs, and other beast-men come rampaging through the countryside, easily defeating what little resistance is left. There are no high level NPCs who can now save the PCs. There are no magic shops selling high level magic items. The only hope for the world rests in the hands of the PCs who need to level up as quickly as possible to try to take down the enemy forces.

Maybe I would be nice and say that part of one city survived because one wizard was magically forewarned, enabling him to concentrate on his city's giant sphere of annihilation and move it slightly off center... which wasn't enough to save the wizard's life but did save one neighborhood in one part of the city where maybe one or two high level NPCs lived.

[Sparky McDibben]

Here's another idea. It's a bit on the generic side, so it could fit with a variety of game systems and settings.

The Villains Have Already Won

One annoying thing about a lot of game settings is that the heroes are usually trying to do little more than maintain the status quo.

You probably already know about this, but you might check out the Midnight campaign setting. Sounds like it would fit together really well!

[Yora]

While still reading that quote I was thinking "Oh, I remember that Midnight setting from years back..." :smallbiggrin:

[Bohandas]

Here's another idea. It's a bit on the generic side, so it could fit with a variety of game systems and settings.

The Villains Have Already Won

One annoying thing about a lot of game settings is that the heroes are usually trying to do little more than maintain the status quo. I get particularly annoyed by this in superhero settings, since the PCs end up always having to be reactive rather than active, making it hard to have any sort of sandbox setting though I have tried my best (one time I created "newspapers" with various articles mentioning plot threads that the PCs could investigate, but the PCs are still "reacting" not acting).

So, what if the villains have already won?

The Dark Lord has conquered all the major cities in Generic Fantasy World, even the elves and dwarves and stuff. Or, the aliens have captured and/or killed all of Earth's superheroes during their invasion, with the world's countries now completely subjugated by the aliens. Or, the stars were right a few years ago, so Cthulhu woke up and now everything is bonkers; monsters roam the streets and everyone's going insane when they're not being killed.

The closest existing RPG I can think of like this is TORG, where the invaders have already invaded and taken over vast swaths of land, but haven't quite managed to "win" yet.

There's also Exalted and Warhammer 40000. None of the powers that be in those settings are solidly on top, but all of them are villainous

[Anonymouswizard]

While still reading that quote I was thinking "Oh, I remember that Midnight setting from years back..." :smallbiggrin:

Oh yeah, that was a thing. I remember it completely rewrote the way arcane magic worked as well to make it easier to dabble in. I can't for the life of me remember what I thought of it back in the day.

Definitely was a cool idea though, even if notMorgoth was portrayed as too powerful for the PCs to actually take down.


I think Dark Sun qualifies as well. Despite having destroyed much of the environment in the process the Sorcerer Kings have definitely won, and I believe both the 2e and 4e versions had advice for PCs getting to 'changing the world' strength somewhere (in 2e I think it was in the book with the rules for becoming dragons and antidragons).

[Calthropstu]

I started running it, but I never got to finish. There was a villian named The Immortal. He was spawning dozens more of himself using a psionic power that overwrites people's mind with yours.

I had the immortal-spawn branch out and become groups of adventurers. Each The Immortal dressed the same, acted the same, but they started specializing as their group needed. But these immortals were not the only ones. They are remnants from when the original challenged a demigod, lost and somehow all his immortality protocols triggered at the same time, including 1000 clones, who promptly went to war with each other. All of this happened 3,000 years ago and this is the 15th generation of "the immortal" (being immortal, their generations are quite long)

The pcs got to meet a second generation "the immortal" who had fused his body into a set of ruins thus becoming the ruins themselves and got the immortal's back story.

The game didn't pick up after that for a long time and I am no longer with that group, but basically there were a lot of ways the pcs could have interacted with the immortal, and I really enjoyed running him/her/it. (there were both male and female immortals. Some were even genderless.)

[Sparky McDibben]

Planescape being very scarce on actual stuff to do is something I noticed as well. There aren't really any ongoing conflicts other than the ultra generic "it's the blood war" and "the factions have ideological disagreements".

That's something I would borrow from Ravnica, I think - just make up a bunch of d6 tables incorporating a goal, a villain, a set of minions, and a reason why. Even with just those four that's nearly 1,300 adventures right there. Then multiply it by the number of factions, and you've got a bunch of intrigue-y fun you can have right there.


There's also Exalted and Warhammer 40000. None of the powers that be in those settings are solidly on top, but all of them are villainous

You know, maybe it's my love of the Terrestrials, but I hadn't considered Exalted to be one of those villainous settings. This is why I love coming on here and talking to people - I get so many new AWESOME perspectives!!!

[Anonymouswizard]

Shadow of the Century as well. One of it's key ideas is that the villain organisations changed with the times and managed to take over the world, changing the game from being 1930s Pulp to 80s Action as new heroes arrive and some of the Spirits learn how to fight in the new world. It's not the most fleshed out setting, but it's very much one where the PCs are meant to be taking the fight to the villains.

And yes, I really want to play/run it.

[EggKookoo]

One thing I wanted to do was have a very lethal campaign, where your PC was not expected to survive. So each player would roll up a main PC, and then roll up a "lower level" trainee PC. Each trainee would have its main PCs as a mentor. But the twist would be that you wouldn't play your own trainee, but instead would roleplay the trainee of another player, and another player would roleplay your trainee. If your main PC dies, your trainee is promoted to the main role and handed over to you. You would then roll up a new trainee and give it to the player who had been playing your former trainee.

In theory the fun would come from trying to work with your trainee but having to communicate what you want to its player.

[Seerow]

The Gods Campaign
It's a Primordial World ruled by elemental forces, dominated by megafauna, and PC races are in the infancy of civilization. The player characters are born with the Divine Spark. They are fledgeling gods with the power to go along with it. Start with mid-to-high level 3.5 power levels, and go from there. Gaining power, followers, support, and taming the wilds. Super wide scale sandbox with the players actions having easy and dramatic impact on the setting in immediately visible ways. Likely with other groups of fledgeling gods, as well as elemental lords, demon princes, etc warring for control over various regions of the world.

The Ghosts Campaign
This is a world where evil has already won. The world has gone to ruin and humanity (and other goodly races) have been enslaved. Something happens, and the ghosts of 5 ancient heroes awaken. These are your player characters. Using custom rules rather than regular ghost template, the idea would be they can't affect the world as ghosts, but can possess regular people and impart their skill/abilities, using their bodies. Do you pick only the people who have the rare ability to see/hear you and are willing to consent to being used? Do you possess people however you see fit for the greater good? Do you keep a stable of commoners around to swap between based on situation? Do you start up a breeding/training program to get access to better bodies to possess? It is the sort of concept that opens up some really weird/unique ethical dilemmas and some interesting gameplay scenarios.

[SimonMoon6]

A couple of others I remembered:

Avengers or Justice League-style group, including both the strong and the weak members

Whenever you have a superhero group in an RPG, each member is made on the same number of points. But if you look at a group like the Justice League or the Avengers, you see members that are built on very different numbers of points. The Justice League has both Superman and Elongated Man. It has both Wonder Woman and Black Canary. The Avengers have both Thor and Mockingbird. They have both Iron Man and Triathlon. The Legion of Super-Heroes has powerhouses like Superboy, Supergirl, and Mon-El, while also having members like Bouncing Boy, Duo Damsel, and Dream Girl.

How would you represent this in a game?

Obviously, it wouldn't be fair to give some players more points than others, so here's my idea: Give the players a certain number of points (like 6000 points), but they have to use those points to make three different superheroes. So, they could spend 5000 points on a Superman type character, 700 points on an Elongated Man type character, and 300 points on a Green Arrow type character. Or they could split it more evenly, with three different 2000 point characters.

Then, every adventure, they get to play *one* of those three characters, chosen randomly (though for really major adventures, you could let them play all three simultaneously). And some people might think that you should definitely play it safe and make three 2000 point characters so that you're never screwed over, but knowing players the way I do, I know a lot of them would choose to make at least one really powerful character.

VR game turns out to be real

Here's the particular setup I'm imaging. The players/PCs go to a new storefront VR game place (like those old Laser Tag game places... is this already too outdated of a concept?). The idea is that you get placed in a tube or coffin-like enclosure and then wake up in the VR game. After characters are made, you are then sent into the VR adventure. And the VR characters feel remarkably real.

From the beginning, things seem to be going a bit wrong. The PCs had planned to play in a "martial arts competition" setting, but due to technical difficulties, they instead end up in a "generic fantasy world" setting. Naturally, they fight (yawn) orcs. After using their characters' martial arts skills (or whatever) to beat up a bunch of orcs, the orc leader strides towards them. Boss music starts to play...

And then the game glitches, kicking everyone out of the VR setting. The VR place apologizes and offers coupons for a free visit. Then, that night, as the PCs are going to bed, the orc leader shows up in their home. But this time, the PCs don't have any of the VR-augmented skills, powers, or equipment. So, they should assume they're going to die if they fight. After the PCs run away for a bit (or hide or whatever), the orc leader vanishes. Each of the PCs has this encounter.

The PCs will want to go back to the VR place (which has a "closed indefinitely" sign up) and ask them "What the heck just happened?" They have to be persistent because the VR place wants to just sweep this under the rug, but eventually the manager will tell them that they have no idea. Basically, they just found some alien technology, assumed that it was a VR machine, and thought they could make some money from it.

Instead, it turns out that the VR worlds are actually real places, meaning that the alien device has massive abilities (as it transforms the players into suitable characters to inhabit in each of the worlds and allows them to travel to those worlds... the PCs' VR avatars were actually themselves transformed, not just game characters). But clearly, the device is too dangerous to use. So, they have turned it off. End of story? Nope.

The device is out of control now (even turned off), and for "reasons", the only thing that might stop it from spitting out more orcs and stuff (like dragons, supervillains, etc) into our world involves the PCs going back into the VR worlds and doing "something" in each of the worlds that the device had been connected to, in order to turn off the connection that the device has with those worlds. However, once the PCs are successful, well, the connection to the device has been turned off, so the PCs are stuck in the VR world. For technical reasons, they can travel from one of these worlds to another now, but they have no way to get home. All they can do is explore these new worlds and hope to find a way home.

[Telok]

The gods are dead! Long live the... oh, crud...

Initially conceived for d&d 4e: One god decided to game the belief/worship system a little. Got itself declared the official religion of a large nation, killed/persecuted all the other faiths, and withdrew (mostly) its portfolio from the other nations. The other gods had to do the same to keep up. The armies of the nation of the god of war always win, and nobody else gets more than a bloody stalemate. The nation of the god of agriculture has bumper crops, and everyone else has famines. Weather, animals, trade, love, justice, luck. Every god is doing it. They have to in order to survive.

Enter the PCs. A cabal of powerful arch-wizards and ex-high priests has a plan to gather and send the heroes of the world to kill the gods and assume their powers. 1st level PCs get +5 weapons, armor, other high end magic toys, and a one-use become-a-god ritual that needs a component plus a freshly slain god. The planar gates are opened, the army of mortal heroes takes the diefic hosts by surprise, kill some gods, assume the portfolios... but nobody is worshipping them. All the godly super powers end up being one use. The whole assault on the heavens/hells is so fast, furious, and without pause that most of the powers are fired off before anyone catches on.

Quickly all the old gods are dead, the new ones come down to spread the word. But nobody is worshipping them and the portfolios all slip away. The world begins a death spiral. War, agriculture, weather, animals, trade, love, justice, luck... it's all failing faster and faster into disaster. Eventually the mighty heroes are reduced to clubbing rats and giant roaches with rocks just to have food.

It's 4e so encounter building is a breeze. You can use standard basic dungeons and monsters. You're just swapping monster and power descriptions. Take the level 30 monster skins and put them on 2nd level monster frames. You do legit give 1st level PCs +5 weapons, but now the magic resuidium that powers magic rituals only exists in the magic items. Every time you cure a disease, raise the dead, or make some fields grow crops it costs another magic item. The trade god is dead, gold loses value and nobody will part with their stuff. The thief god is dead, heists get harder and less rewarding each time. The crafting god is dead, it gets more harder to make the next thing even if that used to be easier to make than the last thing you made. The magic is finite, and they have to use it up just to stay alive another week.

The challenge for the DM is to keep that first few levels with the +5s and god powers moving so fast that the resources they'd use to maintain anything get used up dealing with that minute's crisis. Then it's slowly degrading the world as the PCs level up. Keep swapping skins on monsters and your PCs end up fighting level 30 rats with fluffed demigod powers. Or you could actually power the monsters up and down as needed to keep their abilities the same, because all you do is level-appropriate the hp, ac, dmg, etc. Challenge for the PCs goes up as they use up magic items just to keep enough of the world alive & normal to survive in. Because of how 4e math was based on getting the level appropriate items it cranks the dial from "power fantasy cake walk" to "gritty survivalist struggle" in a relatively smooth fashion.

[Leonard Robel]

I've always wanted to do an expedition into hell. Like the Paladin in hell art from 1st edition DnD. I can't really imagine what it would be like, it doesn't seem to make any sense that you could go there and live, but it's compelling.

[Slartibartfast]

But I really don't know how to run it. It'd focus too heavily on one character at the time, leaving the others on the back burner. And I'd either have to have a near perfect understanding of the players characters to build matching ancients, or take way too much control over their characters.

The trick would be to deviate from traditional D&D player/GM division of labor slightly. Don't make the ancients, let the players design their own mentor. Don't play the mentor, let the players control them in appropriate scenes. You can even decide if you want to tell the player everything up front, or give them information piecemeal. Either way, allow the player to tell themself what they need to know, and have their mentor teach their character. Alternately, you can do it Better Angels style and have players control someone else's mentor. This honestly might be better, as you have less scenes with someone talking to themself. In either case, this style of RP probably works better in PbP than live, but you could make it work either way with experienced players.

This technique will help invest your players in the structure of the narrative, giving them some control over the mentorship process so they start thinking about how to make each scene good instead of just "how to beat the bad guy". Crucially, they are now trying to tell the story instead of win the game. Getting them invested in the characters of the mentors, and having them play characters with differing goals (the party-character wants to fight the evil right away, the mentor knows they don't yet stand a chance) can add verisimilitude and depth to the character progression. This might work better if the players get to know most/all of what the mentors know so they can properly understand how outclassed their characters are, but there is still something to be said for presuming the wisdom of the mentors and blanket stating this is the mentor perspective without explanation so the players can undergo the discovery and ingenuity parts.

Obviously this style of running a game won't go over well with every group as they need to accept the narrative limitations of the mentor character, but if you can convince people to try it out there's a lot you can do with tricks like these once you figure out which ones work for you.

[thorr-kan]

My copy of Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft arrived recently. I've poked through it, and I'm enjoying it from a lore and rules standpoint. (NB: I was never deep into 2E Ravenloft, so I'm not as attached to the existing setting as some fans. I *like* it, just...Imma gonna let 5E have its run with Ravenloft, too).

I find myself deeply, deeply enamored of the Survivor rules, and I find myself inspired to contemplate, for the firest time, DMing a 5E campaign: I think using them as PCs would darkly hilarious in Ravenloft. Anybody who knows of Palladium's old Beyond The Supernatural, 1E and it's Victims rules, this is no surprise.

(I've played/am playing a little 5E, but no desire to DM it. Until now...)

Start them as 1st level survivors somewhere in Ravenloft. Let those who survive level up until they reach 3rd level. No multiclassing! Then allow a phenomenal increase in power: let them take a Sidekick class from the Essentials boxed set. Let those who survive leveling up reach there max 6th level in their sidekick class (as high as Essentials takes them). Again, no multiclassing! Anybody who survives to 9th level can finally take the rarified power of PC classes and have normal multiclassing.

Or maybe not. Just continue with Sidekick levels.

ETA: Dark Gifts would definitely be a thing; this is Ravenloft, after all.

Kits, from the DMSGuild product Campaign Guide: Zakhara, would also be appropriate. They're kinda like additional Backgrounds.

[Quertus]

As a player or as a GM?

As a GM, a lot of the "premises" I'd like to run (to the extent that I like running at all) are… odd. For example (spoiled in case you know me IRL):

World with… strange psychic phenomena. Probably mostly modern setting, although post-apocalyptic could work, too.

The underlying secret of the universe involves the Big Bang.

In another universe, there was a being, "at war" with other being(s). Other being fired a "bullet", which struck being, tore a portion of itself into another universe. Thus, the Big Bang. They work on a very different timeframe than us - if there was a second shot, it hasn't hit yet.

We - all matter in this universe - are the bullet. Dark matter is… the being (or, rather, the small fragment thereof). Its attempts to communicate with us not only cause the psychic events, but also are responsible for many visions / purported interactions with the divine.

Ostensibly, it appears benevolent (should anyone discover its existence), even to its would-be murderer, keeping the planets in their orbits / trying to hold the galaxy together / (historically) performing miracles for mankind / granting mankind (etc)? Psychic powers (and maybe even sentience).

But most campaigns in the setting wouldn't touch on or notice the underlying truths of the setting, they merely inform the mechanics, the underlying "why".

As a player? Hmmm… I'd love to play a 2e game played "by RAW". There's numerous cool "crossover" premises I'd love to play in. A "super villain team" could be fun. Or "the players are sucked into another world". Or "the Sue files done right".

And there's lots of pitches that never happened that sounded fun, like "all baby Dragons", or "Battletech as the clans", or "run a Wizard university".

And there's several Playgrounders who run… "explore a premise" games that sound interesting.

[Sparky McDibben]

As a player or as a GM?

Both! :)


Or "the Sue files done right".

OK, what are the Sue files?

[Anonymouswizard]

OK, what are the Sue files?

The SUE Files (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?275152-What-am-I-supposed-to-do) are a legendary campaign log from this forum notable for having a if not very inventive at least interesting starting point and having the same GM ruin two campaigns via his self insert DMPC. One campaign is ruined directly, the other indirectly.

It's also noticeable because the primary poster was very, very resourceful and in the second campaign playing a (GM-approved) character that played to his strengths and degree. This led to a lot of rulings against his plans to the point that logic broke down and Shrodinger's Trees were common.

Because you see there is only a finite amount of awesome, and every time the players defeat an encounter with quick thinking they take away some of the awesome that rightly belongs to Marty, the dual katana wielding psychic wizard uber-vampire* who convinced Palpatine to hand over the Empire with five minutes of conversation because he's just that logical.

Wanting to do it right is fairly common among those who've read it. Remaking the Universe for Fun and Profit is my version, unlike a lot of people I think the interesting part is taking down the self insert (here barred on me, and so a somewhat pathetic Cinemancer who farms Significant Charges by acting like a clichéd villain) and taking the path to godhood yourself so that you can tangle with the canon powers of [insert setting here], not the multiverse stuff


* With at least twenty levels in the Badass class.

[Quertus]

A couple of others I remembered:

Avengers or Justice League-style group, including both the strong and the weak members

Whenever you have a superhero group in an RPG, each member is made on the same number of points. But if you look at a group like the Justice League or the Avengers, you see members that are built on very different numbers of points. The Justice League has both Superman and Elongated Man. It has both Wonder Woman and Black Canary. The Avengers have both Thor and Mockingbird. They have both Iron Man and Triathlon. The Legion of Super-Heroes has powerhouses like Superboy, Supergirl, and Mon-El, while also having members like Bouncing Boy, Duo Damsel, and Dream Girl.

How would you represent this in a game?

Obviously, it wouldn't be fair to give some players more points than others, so here's my idea: Give the players a certain number of points (like 6000 points), but they have to use those points to make three different superheroes. So, they could spend 5000 points on a Superman type character, 700 points on an Elongated Man type character, and 300 points on a Green Arrow type character. Or they could split it more evenly, with three different 2000 point characters.

Then, every adventure, they get to play *one* of those three characters, chosen randomly (though for really major adventures, you could let them play all three simultaneously). And some people might think that you should definitely play it safe and make three 2000 point characters so that you're never screwed over, but knowing players the way I do, I know a lot of them would choose to make at least one really powerful character.

VR game turns out to be real

Here's the particular setup I'm imaging. The players/PCs go to a new storefront VR game place (like those old Laser Tag game places... is this already too outdated of a concept?). The idea is that you get placed in a tube or coffin-like enclosure and then wake up in the VR game. After characters are made, you are then sent into the VR adventure. And the VR characters feel remarkably real.

From the beginning, things seem to be going a bit wrong. The PCs had planned to play in a "martial arts competition" setting, but due to technical difficulties, they instead end up in a "generic fantasy world" setting. Naturally, they fight (yawn) orcs. After using their characters' martial arts skills (or whatever) to beat up a bunch of orcs, the orc leader strides towards them. Boss music starts to play...

And then the game glitches, kicking everyone out of the VR setting. The VR place apologizes and offers coupons for a free visit. Then, that night, as the PCs are going to bed, the orc leader shows up in their home. But this time, the PCs don't have any of the VR-augmented skills, powers, or equipment. So, they should assume they're going to die if they fight. After the PCs run away for a bit (or hide or whatever), the orc leader vanishes. Each of the PCs has this encounter.

The PCs will want to go back to the VR place (which has a "closed indefinitely" sign up) and ask them "What the heck just happened?" They have to be persistent because the VR place wants to just sweep this under the rug, but eventually the manager will tell them that they have no idea. Basically, they just found some alien technology, assumed that it was a VR machine, and thought they could make some money from it.

Instead, it turns out that the VR worlds are actually real places, meaning that the alien device has massive abilities (as it transforms the players into suitable characters to inhabit in each of the worlds and allows them to travel to those worlds... the PCs' VR avatars were actually themselves transformed, not just game characters). But clearly, the device is too dangerous to use. So, they have turned it off. End of story? Nope.

The device is out of control now (even turned off), and for "reasons", the only thing that might stop it from spitting out more orcs and stuff (like dragons, supervillains, etc) into our world involves the PCs going back into the VR worlds and doing "something" in each of the worlds that the device had been connected to, in order to turn off the connection that the device has with those worlds. However, once the PCs are successful, well, the connection to the device has been turned off, so the PCs are stuck in the VR world. For technical reasons, they can travel from one of these worlds to another now, but they have no way to get home. All they can do is explore these new worlds and hope to find a way home.

I like the way you think.

I proposed the concept of "Justice League" play to some of my players, and they liked the idea and began crunching numbers.

I love many variants on your VR. Were I in the specific game you described, though? My goal would be to take over a world / universe, such that *anything* that came through would be friendly / mine, and would be a benefit to this universe by being here. Turn the curse into a blessing.

[Calthropstu]

I like the way you think.

I proposed the concept of "Justice League" play to some of my players, and they liked the idea and began crunching numbers.

I love many variants on your VR. Were I in the specific game you described, though? My goal would be to take over a world / universe, such that *anything* that came through would be friendly / mine, and would be a benefit to this universe by being here. Turn the curse into a blessing.

You know, it would be kinda fun to play "the avengers: b listers"

The guys who don't actually make the cut. They have powers and abilities, but not really cool enough to make them top tier.

[martixy]

Epic interplanar romp.

So dreadfully vanilla, I know.

But I really want to play in/DM a proper epic D&D campaign, with actual high-level gameplay. Xanatos gambits, colossal armies, apocalyptic threats and all.

I had the initial stages of that campaign going, but it slowed down at some point, then COVID put the final nail in that coffin and buried it under 350 ft. of dirt. I'll have to perform some truly grand necromancy to resurrect that one. Which I plan, it's just hard.

[LordShade]

Mahabba, City of Silence

My love for Al-Qadim (2E) knows no bounds. But what I'd like to run is a rogues-only campaign set in Mahabba, the City of Charity, more often called the City of Silence. It's a member of the League of the Pantheon, but it's basically occupied by the other members and its own military in response to a series of semi-popular uprisings by adherents of the local deity's religion. 2E has *A LOT* of rogue subclasses. Basically, play it like Northern Ireland occupied by the Mafia.

This sounds awesome. I call dibs on the Merchant-Rogue, whenever you start this campaign.

"30% of all gold invested in the enterprise is lost! We have no Fate but the Fate which we are given!"

[Sparky McDibben]

I have been so inspired to start thinking about other campaigns by this thread - you all are a true treasure!!!

[thorr-kan]

This sounds awesome. I call dibs on the Merchant-Rogue, whenever you start this campaign.

"30% of all gold invested in the enterprise is lost! We have no Fate but the Fate which we are given!"
Because of the material, I almost think this one *has* to be a face-to-face game...but I'll keep you in mind. :smallsmile:

I've never played a merchant-rogue, but I've sure statted up enough of them. Had a college suite-mate play a halfling one once. That AQ campaign was ready for a shift to spelljammer when summer break hit. We never did revisit it. Too bad; the character was entertaining.

[Mr.Sandman]

Welcome to the Galaxy

A seemingly standard fantasy genre to start, when a falling star seems to imply a prophecy is starting, go through an adventure or 2 where you wind up fighting strange creatures you have never seen before, to eventually beat the seeming leader... Que strange people teleporting in "hey, sorry we shot them down over your planet. Now a full force is coming to salvage, any way you could lend us a hand?"

[Bohandas]

*The PCs are all aspects of Iuz searching for Zuggtmoy during the time between Temple of Elemental Evil and Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil and much of the campaign is a parody of Super Mario Bros.

*Several of the published versions of Castle Greyhawk mashed together. Including the comedy one being a shadow illusion overlaid over the real castle greyhawk by the epic illusionist at the end of the comedy one

*The PCs are demons fighting their way though the lower planes to assault Baator

*Toon campaign set in the world of Paranoia

*Toon campaign set in an intergalactic space hotel

*game where we just roleplay testing out magic items in an SCP-like fashion

[Anonymouswizard]

Fighting In The Queen's Navee

Most likely run with Fate or the like.

A Gilbert & Sullivan inspired naval game, with the PCs as very polite sailors. All attempts to socially influence NPCs must be delivered in song, and the NPC must reply in kind.

Bonus points if the players can successfully avoid combat and keep the game focused on romantic intrigue.

[noob]

Any system, any genre. Give me your elevator pitch for the coolest campaign you've never been able to run.

Here's mine; this is what I sent to my players, so it might be more of an escalator pitch than an elevator pitch:

Science Fantasy (Esper Genesis System):

The galaxy is large and dark. Humanity believes itself to be alone in the galaxy, 200 years after humanity left Earth and began settling the solar system. Faster-than-light (FTL) starships are still quite new, but a few private consortiums are building them and funding pathfinding teams to identify lucrative colonization opportunities. Who runs these consortiums? What are their ultimate aims? They are curiously unregulated, as laws and governments race to keep up with developments already out of their control. Earth's existing colonies chafe under the yoke of the motherworld - colonies on Mars, Venus, and the asteroid belt grumble under mercantile trade restrictions and more forceful violations of their liberty. Many of these colonists actually consider themselves a new species, as the "spacers" underwent extensive genetic modifications. A new name has been bandied about for them: "Prometheans." And of course, where there's trade, there's crime. And space trade has its own version of criminal: pirates! Thus far, government navies have done more to fight each other than the pirates. Therefore, deserters and mutineers swell the pirates' ranks...and make matters in the Sector just slightly more desperate.

Twenty years ago, galactic explorers activated the Tartarus Gate, opening up the dark space of the Tartarus Sector. The Sector has already attracted attention for the discovery of sorium, a potentially limitless energy source that can power anything from a lightbulb to a battlecruiser. Now a gold rush to stake claims on potentially rich worlds has started...but what lurks in the darkness? And why are explorers reporting strange ruins and ravenous living beasts? And why is there such a high percentage of these worlds that are potentially habitable....yet uninhabited?

This one is going to be a somewhat gritty, hard science exploration run, striving to stay alive, dodging natural predators, battling pirates, and discovering aliens (yes, you get to do first contact!) like a hopefully less-horny cross between Dr. Aphra and Capt. Kirk. While fantastic elements will still be present (eg, psionics), they will be less prevalent than in the other options.

Hard science and ftl together means that you have to create new rules of physics for keeping the whole thing coherent.(or resort to untested theoretical stuff we do not have any empirical proof of the functionality off in which case it becomes speculative science instead of 100% hard science)
If you add up sorium (unless it is limitless as in "a whole lot just like a pocket black hole or antimatter") it is nearly guaranteed you will have to work quite a lot to make the physical rules of the setting.

[Talwar]

I'd like to set up a grand urban campaign for a few low-level characters. Build a sprawling, exotic city in a fantastic setting - maybe an island, or an oasis, or some strategic point that lets it control the area. Work with players to develop colorful backstories, including family, friends, and contacts who might live in the city. Develop the economy, the people, geography, and politics. Seed it with hints of grand adventures and conspiracies while letting them explore the area and cut their teeth on local issues like gangs, corrupt watchmen, and errant monsters.

Then a few sessions in, the characters wake up to find that 99% of the population were zombified overnight.

[SimonMoon6]

Here's another game I've never gotten to run:

A brand new DC Universe

The idea here was inspired by one of the central problems I (or my players) have with a standard superhero setting. Either you use an established universe (such as the Marvel Universe or the current DC Universe or whatever) or you have a completely new setting. I always liked to use an established comic book universe (as I am quite familiar with both Marvel and DC's universes... or at least I was until a few years ago). However, a complaint from one of my players was that *he* wasn't familiar with the comic book characters, so he felt a bit left out. I then tried running a game in a new setting, full of brand new heroes and villains that nobody had ever heard of, but that created the problem that now *nobody* was familiar with the characters in the universe... not the players and not even me as the GM.

Obviously, one solution is to *not* try to have a standard superhero universe, chock full of heroes and villains all over the place. But there is still an incredible draw to having PCs in a world of well known characters.

For a while I had joined a new gaming group. And I even considered what it would be like to run a superhero game with these players, who were mostly not very knowledgeable about superhero comic books. And I wondered how I could run a game that I would enjoy (involving a lot of DC characters and stuff) but also a game that would not be intimidating by having too many characters that the players don't know about.

So, here's what I came up with:

Welcome to a new world, a new Earth. This is a world in which Superman and Batman have just begun their careers. They are the first superheroes, about to inspire the PCs to become heroes too. Batman is still mostly considered an urban legend. The players do not get to play as Superman or Batman. However, the players can be anything else. They can play as brand new heroes. Or, they can play as versions of other characters, so they could be *this* Earth's version of Wonder Woman or Green Lantern (probably not as powerful (yet) as the well known versions). They could even be characters with connections to a well-known character if they don't want to be the iconic hero (like, they could be Superman's descendant from the future, now living in the current day).

Then, there is a menace that the PCs fight individually before coming together to fight the main menace (like the Appelaxian invasion). And Superman and Batman show up. And (if things go well) they suggest forming a group. This is the origin of this Earth's Justice League (or whatever they want to call themselves). Superman and Batman won't be able to show up on their adventures very often (just like in the early Justice League comics), but Bruce Wayne will finance their organization and even give them a headquarters (even if it is just a cave, like in the early days of the Justice League).

Then, for an added twist:

Worlds will live and worlds will die. Yes, this Earth is going to be part of Crisis on Infinite Earths. And of course, this new Earth wasn't shown surviving during Crisis. So... what's going to happen? The PCs will have a chance to save their Earth. And if they don't, they end up on the "merged" Earth at the end of Crisis.

The teaser for Crisis will be the appearance of an "angel" who seems to appear and disappear in the sky at various times. This would turn out to be Dawnstar who is very lost and will serve as a source of exposition for the PCs.

[Sparky McDibben]

Hard science and ftl together means that you have to create new rules of physics for keeping the whole thing coherent.(or resort to untested theoretical stuff we do not have any empirical proof of the functionality off in which case it becomes speculative science instead of 100% hard science)
If you add up sorium (unless it is limitless as in "a whole lot just like a pocket black hole or antimatter") it is nearly guaranteed you will have to work quite a lot to make the physical rules of the setting.

I don't think I have to create anything - I just file it in with the "fantastical elements" I mentioned in that post.


I'd like to set up a grand urban campaign for a few low-level characters. Build a sprawling, exotic city in a fantastic setting - maybe an island, or an oasis, or some strategic point that lets it control the area. Work with players to develop colorful backstories, including family, friends, and contacts who might live in the city. Develop the economy, the people, geography, and politics. Seed it with hints of grand adventures and conspiracies while letting them explore the area and cut their teeth on local issues like gangs, corrupt watchmen, and errant monsters.

Then a few sessions in, the characters wake up to find that 99% of the population were zombified overnight.

You had me at "zombified."

[thorr-kan]

<SNIP! Using established characters in your own univ

Nice!

I agree that using existing characters, either PCs or NPCs, is a great hook. It gives you some background and player familiarity. Setting it in your own world allows you to, well, make it your own.

I had a similar idea years ago for running a Marvel Super Heroes FASERIP game in a universe where Superman 1 & 2, the Keaton Batman movies, the first two X-Men movies, the first two Fantastic Four movies, Superman Returns, and the first Spider-Man trilogy were all the super hero canon. In real time. Iconic figures, recent developments, easy access to the media.

Your idea sounds better thought out. :smallbiggrin:

[Relonious]

Starfinder-ish

The classic races discover Starfinder FTL, and slowly start exploring the universe.

The first adventure would be recovering a remote space station and stablish a forward exploration point. Following adventures would be about discovering the races from starfinder one or two at a time.

The setting would be different but stealing everything from corte books.

[vasilidor]

Games I want to run:
A marvel/dc game where everyone is trying to figure out how a nobody villain (more of a forgettable henchman) got the tools to kill Superman. Plan is to use FASERIP. players can use premade characters from the classic marvel forever site or create their own hero. Superman is off the table for obvious reasons.

A X-com inspired game of Palladium's mess of a super hero game, with the ninja and super spies. not played because holy crap that systems a mess.

A normal person to super hero game of BESM. every one starts out as a relatively normal human (or close enough) and gains super powers over time. whether because of DBZ style training or magic or on going mutation would be players prerogative. The opposition is your stereo typical evil empire, run by a guy who treats the evil overlord list as his bible.

For DnD/pathfinder: Empire of the Lich King. He has one goal, total extinction of everything, because life is suffering and he is the mercy bringer. your job is to stop him.

For Shadowrun: You are Section 9, Public Security, an anti-terrorist offensive task force. Based in Tokyo, Japan.

Games/Characters I want to play:
Ghostbusters. BESM or the official Ghost Buster RPG (It was a thing). Maybe as a FATE game... I have run this one as a BESM game, but I want to play it too.

The one where I am a run away space prince. Setting does not matter as long as I get a starship that works.

The guy that just popped into existence. When the game starts the other players get to see him pop into existence for the first time. he has no history and no one, not even the gods, knows how he came to be. He has all the skills, gear, and knowledge listed on his character sheet.

Teachers at the magic academy, keep the students safe from the forces of evil.

[Morgaln]

Scenario:
The Robots (the PCs) have been awakened. Their human masters are all dead or disabled or something (perhaps in cryo pods). Some crises has happened and the robots are tasked with solving it. The intelligent robots have been assigned directives by their masters that they realize are not conducive to the success of the project, but cannot ignore them. The scenario is them trying to accomplish the goal while technically adhering to and without technically violating their directives.


This one reminds me of a premise that a friend of mine had but unfortunately hasn't gotten around to GMing yet:

The master is dead. In typical mad scientist fashion, he finally attempted an experiment that went wrong and he didn't survive. The players are typical characters to be found in the mad scientist's lair: the apprentice, the familiar, the created monster, the servant. It's their job to figure out what to do now that the one in charge is gone. Did I mention the angry mob carrying torches and pitchforks that is approaching the doors right now? Better think fast...



Here's another one that's been stuck in my head for years but hasn't seen the light yet:

Everything revolves around the Great River. The Great River is a roughly ring-shaped body of water with a strong current; basically a river that flows in a circle (there would have to be a magical reason for that, it's not something that could form naturally). The area around the river is thick jungle with an impassable mountain range on on side and a vertical drop of several miles towards the sea on the other; in other words, it's an ecosystem completely isolated from the rest of the world. The river is the major source of food; there are numerous small settlements on its shore, The river is vast enough that it takes months to go a full circle and the current is strong enough that going against it for any length of time is difficult with the available technology (wind and/or muscle power).

A culture of river-faring people has developed in this area; people who mostly live on boats and keep going around the river, trading with the villages and bringing news from one village to another.
The characters would be the crew of one of those boats, meeting new people, dealing with obstacles (ranging from obstructive officials and floating debris to attacks from pirates), exploring the occasional ruin in the jungle and helping the villages they visit with various small (or not so small) problems they may have.

[Quertus]

Games I want to run:
A marvel/dc game where everyone is trying to figure out how a nobody villain (more of a forgettable henchman) got the tools to kill Superman. Plan is to use FASERIP. players can use premade characters from the classic marvel forever site or create their own hero. Superman is off the table for obvious reasons.

A X-com inspired game of Palladium's mess of a super hero game, with the ninja and super spies. not played because holy crap that systems a mess.

A normal person to super hero game of BESM. every one starts out as a relatively normal human (or close enough) and gains super powers over time. whether because of DBZ style training or magic or on going mutation would be players prerogative. The opposition is your stereo typical evil empire, run by a guy who treats the evil overlord list as his bible.

For DnD/pathfinder: Empire of the Lich King. He has one goal, total extinction of everything, because life is suffering and he is the mercy bringer. your job is to stop him.

For Shadowrun: You are Section 9, Public Security, an anti-terrorist offensive task force. Based in Tokyo, Japan.

Games/Characters I want to play:
Ghostbusters. BESM or the official Ghost Buster RPG (It was a thing). Maybe as a FATE game... I have run this one as a BESM game, but I want to play it too.

The one where I am a run away space prince. Setting does not matter as long as I get a starship that works.

The guy that just popped into existence. When the game starts the other players get to see him pop into existence for the first time. he has no history and no one, not even the gods, knows how he came to be. He has all the skills, gear, and knowledge listed on his character sheet.

Teachers at the magic academy, keep the students safe from the forces of evil.

1) I would totally play Superman (ie, the Necromancer who brought him back, the scientist who cloned him, etc). Or any of lots of other characters :smallwink:

But what would be really funny is if we all looked at that scenario, and we *all* played Superman. :smallamused:

2) does this BBEG *make all those mistakes*, or actually avoid them?

3) can we join the Lich King instead?

4) "just popped into existence" could be a fun, "who am I" exploration for the character…

5) what's the gameplay look like for your magic teachers game?

[SimonMoon6]

A marvel/dc game where everyone is trying to figure out how a nobody villain (more of a forgettable henchman) got the tools to kill Superman.

So, he just bought some kryptonite on the black market?

Killing Superman's not hard. Even a wimp like Batman can do it. Heck in the "Batman vs Superman" movie, Superman effectively dies* three times (once to Batman kryptonite, once to a nuke, and once to Doomsday) while Batman doesn't even die once.

I guess that assumes kryptonite's easy to get. Back in the pre-Crisis days, anybody involved in organized crime could get some, but in the post-Crisis days, it was a bit harder to come by (but you didn't *need* it as much since Superman became a lot less powerful).

*Note: I'm not saying he "literally" died three times, just that he effectively (as in figuratively) dies three times. He loses three times so absolutely and completely that he might as well have been dead. Because everyone knows that Superman is a complete and total loser and you can't be cool unless you wear black and live in your parents' basement like Batman.

[vasilidor]

Kryptonite is supposed to be hard to get. Lex and Batman can get their hands on it because billionaires. but the news reel would show Superman suffering the effects of kryptonite poisoning followed by his head coming off followed by guy appearing out of thin air with a sword as his invisibility wore off. Superman was at a public speaking event. And I want Superman to stay dead. Thor would be on the table for playing though.

the big bad guy tries to avoid them. that is what the list is about.

only if you want the campaign to end with all life ending, He is set to win if the Heroes fail.

That is part of the point of the guy out of nothing. the other is sometimes I cannot think of a back story and The GM wants a three page paper or something. (I have had that happen to me).

I have no idea as to what the gameplay in the teachers of magic would look like other than there is something trying to kill the students and some of said students have the self preservation of the fictional lemming.

[Psyren]

Too many to have a "favorite" but here's a few:

- A group of immortal Elan manifesters existing across a setting's history (think The Eternals) and nudging it occasionally, and when a big shove is needed against a major threat, they activate their Unimind (Metaconcert).
- A group of bards, all with different archetypes and performance styles, form a traveling band/troupe. This includes 2 melee bards, dps caster bard, rogue bard, healer bard etc.
- A low-magic setting that relies on a combination of Path of War, chi, alchemy, and Automatic Bonus Progression in place of magic items and traditional spellcasting.
- A cyberpunk dystopia that uses Starfinder mechanics but emphasizes urban adventures and corporate espionage over space travel.
- A Sentai-style game that uses Starfinder's ship and crew mechanics to pilot a giant mecha instead of spaceships.


Starfinder-ish

The classic races discover Starfinder FTL, and slowly start exploring the universe.

The first adventure would be recovering a remote space station and stablish a forward exploration point. Following adventures would be about discovering the races from starfinder one or two at a time.

The setting would be different but stealing everything from corte books.

Note that a lot of the Starfinder races (e.g. Lashunta) and the Pact Worlds planets (e.g. Castrovel) do exist in regular Pathfinder if you'd like to start the space race there.

[SimonMoon6]

Here's another one. This one I haven't thought too seriously about, but occasionally I think about it. This started off when a player mentioned that he felt like he was playing a "zero sum" game. So...

Zero Sum Game

The game system would probably need to be something like GURPS where there are lots of different disadvantages worth points that you can use to buy your ability scores, skills, powers, etc.

The idea would be this: in order for characters to ever gain new abilities, they would have to find a way to gain corresponding disadvantages worth the same points to buy those abilities. Player characters don't advance normally and would have a limit on how many disadvantages they can start with. And after the beginning of the game, players can't just add disadvantages because they want them; they have to be a result of in-game actions.

So, players would be encouraged to do stupid things like jump in a pool of radioactive waste or whatever. Yeah, you may get really sick or something, but maybe you get the power to fly now. Players would constantly be looking for ways to take on new disadvantages, just so they can gain more powers.

I haven't really thought this through and it may be a really stupid idea. It might work for a one-shot at least though.

[Calthropstu]

You know what I'd like to run?

My world specific time travel theory as a campaign. There is an off world device that resets the world to a specific time. The party is given the reset button. They have to get offworld to activate it because the world is disintigrated in the process.

Their goal is to prevrnt (catastrophe) and as they continue, they become aware someone is working against them who is also aware of the resets.

[SimonMoon6]

That reminds me...

D&D Time Travel game

The PCs are at the edge of human-settled civilization. The nearby territory used to be controlled by goblins until some great heroes wiped them out and scared away the survivors. However, strange lights have appeared at night at one of the nearby mountains where the goblins used to live. The PCs are sent to go check it out.

The PCs go into the tunnels and after a lot of exploration, they find a way into the deepest goblin tunnels, where huge chambers are full of decaying tapestries and other signs that goblins used to live here. The tapestries and wall carvings show their great goblin civilization arising from nothing, until at the end, a great catastrophe arose when adventurers (who have a passing similarity to the PCs) showed up and wiped everybody out, despite the best efforts of a goblin hero with a staff with a purple crystal at the end.

As the PCs continue to investigate, they run into an incredibly old goblin, old beyond the lifespan of any normal goblin, perhaps kept alive by magical means. He is holding a staff with a purple crystal at the end. He shouts something like "Not you again" and prepares to attack. He is actually a high level wizard or sorcerer, but he is incredibly feeble, so his stats are really low and he has no other equipment to speak of. The PCs should be able to win initiative and kill him before he can do anything useful. Even if they can't he will waste actions casting spells as if the PCs were high level threats instead of 1st level nobodies. For example, he'll start off casting Disjunction to get rid of all the defensive spells that he expects them to have, even though these 1st level PCs probably don't have much of anything to get rid of.

When the PCs finally kill him, he lets go of the staff which falls to the ground. The purple crystal shatters and releases a purple light and the PCs find their surroundings somewhat changed. (If they try to capture or interrogate him or something, then the crystal spontaneously activates anyway.) The dead goblin has vanished but the room seems cleaner. The objects decorating the room are no longer broken or decayed.

The PCs are now back in the past, hundreds of years ago, when goblins ruled the countryside. They have no allies. There are no other humans for hundreds of miles. And they are in the middle of the goblin civilization. How will they survive?

During their adventures, they will run into the young version of that goblin wizard who will be a recurring enemy. And because that idea probably won't work, he has lots of identical looking siblings to take up the cause if he is killed prematurely... or goblin clerics to resurrect him. The PCs will constantly run into him but always they manage to escape from him or he escapes from them.

Basically, the PCs need to find a way to return back to their own time. The only thing that could possibly help would be that purple crystal. But both the PCs and the main goblin enemy are seeking it out... and the goblin probably finds it first and puts it on the end of his staff, giving him magical time powers.

Eventually, the PCs probably wipe out the goblins and maybe the goblin wizard gets so tired of the PCs that he uses the staff to send the PCs far away (back to their own time? or some other time?).

[Starbuck_II]

Steam powered mechs like Dragonmech.
The ancient War of the Magi... When its flames at last receded, only the charred husk of a world remained. Even the power of magic was lost. In the thousand years that followed, iron, gunpowder, and steam engines took the place of magic, and life slowly returned to the barren land. Yet there now stands one who would reawaken the magic of ages past, and use its dread power as a means by which to conquer all the world.
Before the game there's stuff about the war between Wutai and Midgard, Mako experimentation, Ancient technology or 'breakouts', including possible omens of Jenova's awakening

Basically, a merger of all the Final Fantasy games happened.

There are four main kingsdoms.
Background affects stats (which kingdom you came from)
Kingdoms:
Concordia: People have tiny statures 2d12 inches shorter than rolled.
+2 Dex. Dodge as a bonus feat. Kingdom has treaty with metallic dragons and they come to protect at times.

Militesi Empire:
+2 Int, +1 skill./level, +50% ASF even divine (exception bard/armor casting)
Relies on tech not magic due to weakness at using it. Also alchemy.

Dominion of Rubrum
+2 Cha, SR 11+level vs hostile spells. Relies on magic, arcane casters.

Lorian Alliance
+2 Str, Toughness feat, People have big statures 2d12 inches taller than rolled. Path of War users.

[noob]

ASF even divine (exception bard/armor casting)

You could rename it to spell failure then since ASF means arcane spell failure right?

[oxybe]

Deep deep down?

TMNT after the bomb, the palladium game. I've got multiple sourcebooks for the game i've never used.

[GideonRiddle]

Limited Magic (Global Warming but magic) 3.5
The premise is that Magic is a Finite commodity and is running out. Epic Level Spells have failed and creatures that survive on Magic are shutting down or dying. Magic users that use Divine Magic or modified magic (i.e. Alchemy from FMA) are getting by but, everyone is basically panicking. The party is hired by Wizard who has a plan to link Magic to another Plane and sends them half-way to the Astral Plane. They are still on the starting Plane but, shifted slightly to the Astral Sea. They would then experience the world in a sort of ethereal way (i.e. cold biting wind would be air elemental piranhas. etc.)

Post-Apocalyptic Souls 3.5
This was something I created Prior to hearing of the Souls games.
The world runs on a cycle. Evil rises and Heroes defeat it, stronger Evil rises and defeats heroes and stronger Heroes rise to defeat it, etc. After millennia a Wizard reaches a state where he basically is 'all powerful' and brings forth a Golden Age of Peace. No Evil rises. Every time that Evil should have risen it doesn't. After 1000 years of peace an unstoppable army of Evil starts claiming the world. Basically an Evil as powerful as the Wizard should have been, before becoming 'all-powerful', realized that he couldn't defeat the side of good and started collecting the new Evils that kept popping up and built an army that could not be countered.
The Wizard then made a magical room that seeks the worthy and offers the power to claim and wield souls. The BBEG has rearranged the world to throw off the natural inclinations of the races so they can't fight back easily (i.e. Dwarves are in the position that Elves usually have and aren't able to adjust.) An Age of Darkness occurs and Heroes are found by the Wizard's Room.
As the Players defeat creatures they can collect their souls to give them abilities and power up the other souls they collect. If they die their soul is replaced by the strongest Soul the have equipped. It went well when we played, but IRL kept getting in the way.

[McGarnagle]

The campaign I'd like to run some day comes out of the oWoD, it would be the story of how the Sabbat took over Detroit, which in my version of the WoD was a Camarilla city until 1984. In terms of feel I'd be shooting for the Detroit from The Crow, although there wouldn't be any interaction with any of the characters from the movie.

The PCs would be the Sabbat pack that does all the ground work in the years leading up to the takeover. Part of that would be that they invent this thing called "Devil's Night" during which they can indulge in overt mayhem. During other times of the year they might have to be a little more careful, but there would always be that night where they can really cut loose.

The time frame is 1979-84, when the Tigers win the World Series, and with a little artistic license it could be the case that there's basically two solid weeks of rioting in Detroit from the time when the '84 Series ends until Devil's Night of that year, and that's when all the War Parties show up and the really heavy fighting would go down.

[Bohandas]

All of the PCs are intelligent magic items

[McGarnagle]

All of the PCs are intelligent magic items
Oh, that's a good shout, I picked up a copy of Wield several years back but I've never got the chance to play.

This reminds, another game I've picked up but never gotten a chance to play: Night Witches, which is about the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, an all-female regiment of the Soviet Air Forces that caused havoc against the Germans during WWII. It kind of reminded me of if Only War were set during WWII minus all the Psyker-y/Warp stuff.

[Luccan]

Based mostly on OA classes and races:

The Tiger That Ate The Moon

Five-hundred years ago, a powerful human empire performed a bloody ritual to make its emperor immortal. A dark tiger Spirit was born from this ritual, huge, savage, and powerful. it devoured the Moon spirit. The greater spirits struck the world and humanity in particular with terrible power and mostly retreated. In the wake of the Moon’s disappearance, the lesser spirits formed a new moon. Without the presence of so many good and neutral spirits, the land is beset by dark monsters and wicked supernatural forces. Humanity survives in small kingdoms controlled by brutal lords. Vanara, Korobokuru, and Hengeyokai are largely in hiding from possible capture. Ratfolk have risen as the new favored species among the greater spirits, but this has driven them into conflict with the declining humans. And the Tiger still stalks the night for unsuspecting mortals and spirits.

Spellcasters are either hunted out of fear or brought under the control of a ruler. Those that escape often wind-up despots themselves or otherwise find a position to act as the power behind the throne. Samurai enforce order through violence everywhere that isn't effectively a theocracy, where stifling order is enforced via Sohei and Monks from the ruling temple instead.

Kinda bleak, most of the relief comes in small scale victories; saving an independent town, relocating a band of Hengeyokai, and calming an angered spirit are more likely goals than overthrowing an evil king or especially saving the world from an age of darkness.

[vasilidor]

oh, I have also wanted to do something based on thundaar the barbarian. If you know the cartoon.

[EggKookoo]

oh, I have also wanted to do something based on thundaar the barbarian. If you know the cartoon.

In general look and feel, Thundaar is how I visualize D&D anyway...

[LibraryOgre]

All of the PCs are intelligent magic items

Isn't that just Warforged?

[Jay R]

The Misplaced Genre

The DM's introduction to the game states that we are playing Champions, with low-powered superheroes. It's the 31st century, and you are a group of heroes traveling to earth to try to join the Legion of Super Heroes. Since it's the Legion, there are no powered suits or gadgets of any kind.

Design a 100 point normal who has a 50 point power or multi-power. Since it's the Legion, don't try to build a balanced character -- each member is supposed to have one power. A multipower is limited to a closely related set of powers (fireball, stream of fire, heat environment, for instance).

Since they are leaving their home worlds, their Disadvantages cannot included Hunteds, Watcheds, or DNPCs. Perks cannot include Contacts or Favors or any kind of connections.

Their characters will meet on the spaceship going to Earth to apply.

They will never reach Earth. On the first session, the ship is caught in an an unknown space warp, and is pulled into a different universe. All gadgets slowly stop working. The ship lasts just long enough to crash on a planet, and then no modern device will ever work.

Magic works; modern electronics does not work. The culture is medieval. There are dragons, orcs, wizards, etc. They are not paying Champions. They are playing Fantasy Hero1, but each character has a single unique power (which the denizens of that world will consider magic).

---
1 Same system, but set in a fantasy world.

[NorthernPhoenix]

I'd certainly love to run a DnD game that was in the low(er) magic, swords and sorcery genre style. Never have (yet) though.

[noob]

I'd certainly love to run a DnD game that was in the low(er) magic, swords and sorcery genre style. Never have (yet) though.

Magic items and magic traps and magic locations and magic everything content in dnd does not helps at doing that.

[Bohandas]

Oh, that's a good shout, I picked up a copy of Wield several years back but I've never got the chance to play.

I was thinking D&D 3.5 actually. And I forgot to mention that all the PCs would also have psionic classes.

The difficulty of course is determining the proper LA/ECL, and also how many racial hit dice they would be considered to have for the purpose of being effected by HD-gated spells and effects

[Bohandas]

At some point I'd like to play a campaign set in the world of the classic computer game Master of Magic

[Lord Raziere]

A lot if we're being honest.

Any Game of the following:
BESM, Legends of the Wulin, OVA, Tenra Bansho Zero, Anima Beyond Fantasy, Tianxia, Dresden Files, Spirit of the Century, Kerberos Club, Mindjammer, Monarchies of Mau, Gurps 4e Infinite Worlds, Nobilis, Rocket Age, Heroines of the First Age, Godbound, and Starfinder

But if you want something more specific....well hm, now I think about it I more want to play characters than specific campaigns. hm. my mind is full of possibilities but so little focus for them that I go all over the place and can't really decide on a favorite. my best campaigns are ones that with play the expectations of a universe and explore different interpretations, examining/questioning how they work and what they are like rather than playing them straight. especially ones that I with assumptions that I think are faulty or don't reflect reality. so my favorite campaign I've never played would be open to doing a lot of that, and I'm not sure how to describe it.

[Trask]

I have never played in a campaign that earnestly tries to emulate classic, epic fantasy tropes.

Dark Lord's Vengeance is the working title of a (completely conceptual) campaign that basically retells the Lord of the Rings but in the D&D milieu. That sounds generic, but I've honestly never played a campaign that went anywhere close to the tropes of LotR, and I think thats a shame because its basically the Ur fantasy story, and I think it would be fun to actually play through those tropes instead of just file them away as too generic to touch. And of course since its a D&D retelling we should change up the elements and put our own creative spin.

So yeah, lets have the Dark Lord, also known as the Prime Evil, whose phylactery was stolen from his fortress in the abyss by a Mad Wizard after the Last Battle. For helping, humans were given their first Kingdom, but after generations everyone has grown lax and it is thought that the Dark Lord is gone forever. Of course, when he was killed, his lieutenants (the four Elemental Evils) have continued his work from the shadows, and maybe they even don't want him to return, having grown comfortable with this arrangement.

The phylactery is found in a random dungeon treasure hoard by the party, they are completely unaware of its true nature, but an evil Thieves' Guild that supplanted the more neutral one before is being run by servants of the Dark Lord (death knights maybe?) are searching patiently for it, and eventually they will catch wind of it, or find out that the PCs had it (hopefully they didnt sell it to a random guy!). The only way to undo its power is to take it to the deepest pit of the abyss where it was created, and it is said that there are still functional Astral Gates in the forgotten places of the world that could take one to the abyss.

Hell, to make it even more EPIC you could have the party start off as heroes from the world where the Dark Lord won who find a way to go back in time and undo the past, having a second shot at saving the world.

That sounds really fun to me.

[Quertus]

At some point I'd like to play a campaign set in the world of the classic computer game Master of Magic

Woot woot! Master of Magic is an awesome game! Feels like the forbidden lovechild of D&D, MtG, and Civilization.

Um… out of curiosity, what would you picture that looking like? Are the PCs playing summoners, champions summoned by one summoner, village heroes trying to protect their neutral town from the rampaging monsters (some from crypts, others from the warring summoners) or what?


The Misplaced Genre

The DM's introduction to the game states that we are playing Champions, with low-powered superheroes. It's the 31st century, and you are a group of heroes traveling to earth to try to join the Legion of Super Heroes. Since it's the Legion, there are no powered suits or gadgets of any kind.

Design a 100 point normal who has a 50 point power or multi-power. Since it's the Legion, don't try to build a balanced character -- each member is supposed to have one power. A multipower is limited to a closely related set of powers (fireball, stream of fire, heat environment, for instance).

Since they are leaving their home worlds, their Disadvantages cannot included Hunteds, Watcheds, or DNPCs. Perks cannot include Contacts or Favors or any kind of connections.

Their characters will meet on the spaceship going to Earth to apply.

They will never reach Earth. On the first session, the ship is caught in an an unknown space warp, and is pulled into a different universe. All gadgets slowly stop working. The ship lasts just long enough to crash on a planet, and then no modern device will ever work.

Magic works; modern electronics does not work. The culture is medieval. There are dragons, orcs, wizards, etc. They are not paying Champions. They are playing Fantasy Hero1, but each character has a single unique power (which the denizens of that world will consider magic).

---
1 Same system, but set in a fantasy world.

Huh. My first thought (although arguable horrible in Champions) was massive intelligence-based science / tech skills, and matter manipulation power (or sneak in 2 powers, and make a "Matter Sense" as part of the matter manipulation - is that in keeping with the spirit of the league / legion / whatever?)

Then I read the twist.

Which made me really curious: how would you have responded if you actually ran the game, and someone presented a similar concept? (Or would the twist be part of the elevator pitch?)

(I'm assuming that if someone's power were purely biological, like "my race has wings" or "my race regenerates", that it wouldn't be viewed as "magic")

Also… conceptually, some of those Disadvantages and Perks still make sense. Especially DNPC. The DNPC could be on the ship, or could represent that your character just naturally ends up with "a girl in every port" / someone who needs their kind of saving tending to end up around them / etc.

[CapnWildefyr]

oh, I have also wanted to do something based on thundaar the barbarian. If you know the cartoon.
Can I play a mok?

[CapnWildefyr]

There are a few dnd campaigns I wish I could run, but here's one a little more eclectic:

Boot Hill meets Ravenloft, set in a small mining town in Canada. You got lots of material to work with there.... with DnD and Shadowrun mix ins...

PCs begin a long arduous trek around 1885, starting north from the US to a Canadian gold rush town, with a group of travelers including some nuns, mail order brides, and some trappers. Plagues, fights, hardship, and then some Bad Things they accidentally cause along the way, and need to undo. You know, one of those "Well, as long as you didnt..." things but, you know, they just did... Guns. Undead. Monsters. More guns. And dynamite.

[vasilidor]

The Misplaced Genre

The DM's introduction to the game states that we are playing Champions, with low-powered superheroes. It's the 31st century, and you are a group of heroes traveling to earth to try to join the Legion of Super Heroes. Since it's the Legion, there are no powered suits or gadgets of any kind.

Design a 100 point normal who has a 50 point power or multi-power. Since it's the Legion, don't try to build a balanced character -- each member is supposed to have one power. A multipower is limited to a closely related set of powers (fireball, stream of fire, heat environment, for instance).

Since they are leaving their home worlds, their Disadvantages cannot included Hunteds, Watcheds, or DNPCs. Perks cannot include Contacts or Favors or any kind of connections.

Their characters will meet on the spaceship going to Earth to apply.

They will never reach Earth. On the first session, the ship is caught in an an unknown space warp, and is pulled into a different universe. All gadgets slowly stop working. The ship lasts just long enough to crash on a planet, and then no modern device will ever work.

Magic works; modern electronics does not work. The culture is medieval. There are dragons, orcs, wizards, etc. They are not paying Champions. They are playing Fantasy Hero1, but each character has a single unique power (which the denizens of that world will consider magic).

---
1 Same system, but set in a fantasy world.
And the cyborg character falls over dead.

[Calthropstu]

There are a few dnd campaigns I wish I could run, but here's one a little more eclectic:

Boot Hill meets Ravenloft, set in a small mining town in Canada. You got lots of material to work with there.... with DnD and Shadowrun mix ins...

PCs begin a long arduous trek around 1885, starting north from the US to a Canadian gold rush town, with a group of travelers including some nuns, mail order brides, and some trappers. Plagues, fights, hardship, and then some Bad Things they accidentally cause along the way, and need to undo. You know, one of those "Well, as long as you didnt..." things but, you know, they just did... Guns. Undead. Monsters. More guns. And dynamite.

The logical choice is to report all of this to the RCMP and just... leave. Let the military take care of that crap. I just want gold.

Unless the undead drop gold like rpg monsters. In which case...

Hawt Dawggy we's shootin sum undead critters tonaight.

[Telok]

At some point I'd like to play a campaign set in the world of the classic computer game Master of Magic

We did that one a couple years before WotC bought out TSR. There were... issues...

Basically a 6th level 3 character party didn't have much luck with squads of drow archers & troll fighters wandering around on unlimited-movement roads. Apparently we were supposed to snag one of the mana locations and do something with it to power up before getting into things, but without a helpful NPC to tell us that there even were mana locations...

I recall a campaign I worked up back in those days that I never did get to run. Basrd on Larry Niven's 'The Magic Goes Away' and 'Not Long Before The End' stories. Basically a 'what if the magic in myths were real but the magic got used up'. Functionally it starts like a normal D&D game, but each world hex has a mana rating, usually in the 80s or 90s with occasional lower/dead spots. When any spells/SLAs/magic rituals get used check spell level * 10 against the mana level. Mana level that number + 10 or more, nothing changes. Mana level more than the number but less than +10, subtract spell level from mana level. Mana level less than the number but more than number - 10, check mana level + caster level as % to cast the spell then subtract the spell level from the mana. Mana level less than number - 10, spell fails and the mana level reduces by 1. You could sacrifice magic items & people's hit dice to power spells too, but it was a pretty bad trade most of the time.

Mana came back naturally as long as the area wasn't dead. 90+ got 1/year, 80 got 1/2 years, 70 got 1/4 years, down to 10 getting 1/256 years, and single digits getting back 1/1000 years. Zero was premanently dead magic zone. Big problem of course was that finding out the mana level of an area was a spell.

Magic creatures needed minimum mana levels or they sickened, then died/turned to stone/vaporised/or whatever. So big magic things like genies and dragons lived a long way away from people (magic users) & knew that using too much magic made them sick until they moved. Most cities were in the 60s & 70s because magic users like hot meals and indoor plumbing. High knowledge casters knew that using too much magic made it weaker for a while but nobody had any good way to experiment or quantify what happened.

So first half like a standard D&D mid-high magic setting with high end casters being a bit more cagey & restrained than usual. Then the PCs get high enough to cast big spells & go into fallen ancient empire lands with lower mana counts.

[Curbludgeon]

I wanted to play a strategic game using a lot of the 3rd party classes which didn't necessarily work, with each character being abducted by a group of wizards staging a competition on a manufactured demiplane. Two factions which come to mind are a Dragonmech Assimilated citymech tended by Tik'tok Coglayers, squaring off against a Rhulisti Life-Shaper taken from Athas' Blue Age in control of a coral flotilla supporting a body horror fighter squadron.

[Quertus]

We did that one a couple years before WotC bought out TSR. There were... issues...

Basically a 6th level 3 character party didn't have much luck with squads of drow archers & troll fighters wandering around on unlimited-movement roads. Apparently we were supposed to snag one of the mana locations and do something with it to power up before getting into things, but without a helpful NPC to tell us that there even were mana locations...

Huh. Yeah, that does sound… like it had issues.



I recall a campaign I worked up back in those days that I never did get to run. Basrd on Larry Niven's 'The Magic Goes Away' and 'Not Long Before The End' stories. Basically a 'what if the magic in myths were real but the magic got used up'. Functionally it starts like a normal D&D game, but each world hex has a mana rating, usually in the 80s or 90s with occasional lower/dead spots. When any spells/SLAs/magic rituals get used check spell level * 10 against the mana level. Mana level that number + 10 or more, nothing changes. Mana level more than the number but less than +10, subtract spell level from mana level. Mana level less than the number but more than number - 10, check mana level + caster level as % to cast the spell then subtract the spell level from the mana. Mana level less than number - 10, spell fails and the mana level reduces by 1. You could sacrifice magic items & people's hit dice to power spells too, but it was a pretty bad trade most of the time.

Mana came back naturally as long as the area wasn't dead. 90+ got 1/year, 80 got 1/2 years, 70 got 1/4 years, down to 10 getting 1/256 years, and single digits getting back 1/1000 years. Zero was premanently dead magic zone. Big problem of course was that finding out the mana level of an area was a spell.

Magic creatures needed minimum mana levels or they sickened, then died/turned to stone/vaporised/or whatever. So big magic things like genies and dragons lived a long way away from people (magic users) & knew that using too much magic made them sick until they moved. Most cities were in the 60s & 70s because magic users like hot meals and indoor plumbing. High knowledge casters knew that using too much magic made it weaker for a while but nobody had any good way to experiment or quantify what happened.

So first half like a standard D&D mid-high magic setting with high end casters being a bit more cagey & restrained than usual. Then the PCs get high enough to cast big spells & go into fallen ancient empire lands with lower mana counts.

The fact that SLAs drain the mana too makes "mindless" or dumb magical monsters… problematic. Colonies of Displacer Beasts, invisible Pixies, earth gliding Xorn?

That setting, played with the attitude of Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, would involve working to invent (world-saving) spells like…

Remote mana testing: test the magical level of a remote "hex".

Sacrificial mana testing: test the magical level of an area without using its magic (seems already available by default).

Store mana: ability to grab mana, pay the costs of potentially draining an area now, use the mana in another area.

Sacrificial mana storage: mana created by sacrifice (sacrifice now, use the sacrifice later).

Lock mana: prevent anyone from using mana in a hex.

Replenish mana: use stored mana to replenish the mana rating of an area.

Although, honestly, I'd just lock spells at "safe" levels, or just lock it to "only I can use Magic in this area", like… Hmmm… darn senility… there's a Drow house, and several other places in canon that did this, but I'm drawing a blank. Anyone got any references?

[SimonMoon6]

And the cyborg character falls over dead.

Well, to be fair, he would never have been allowed to join the Legion of Super-Heroes since they have a strict rule against technology-based powers. For example, Storm Boy could control the weather but only with a gadget hidden in his costume, so he was disqualified from joining. So, a cyborg character shouldn't have made the journey to join the Legion in the first place.

[Calthropstu]

I just thpught of one.

A political intrigue pvpvbbeg game. You all roleplay royalty. Princes and princesses. The bbeg is the oldest and the crown prince. But he suspects all of you are plotting against him... BECAUSE YOU ARE. The goal is to either kill or disinherit the crown prince and become the next ruler yourself.

This one could get messy.

[Telok]

The fact that SLAs drain the mana too makes "mindless" or dumb magical monsters… problematic. Colonies of Displacer Beasts, invisible Pixies, earth gliding Xorn?

That setting, played with the attitude of Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, would involve...
You should read the short "Not Long Before The End" for those answers.

As I recall there was a distinction in naturally magical creatures. They'd simply die or unmake somehow in too low a mana field. So a displacer beast... displacement is a 3rd level effect? So they'd need a 30+ area to survive long term, getting sicker & weaker & dying faster the further below 30 the local field was. The stuff that drained mana was basically actual spell functions that a creature had to actively use.

[DavidSh]

A political intrigue pvpvbbeg game. You all roleplay royalty. Princes and princesses. The bbeg is the oldest and the crown prince. But he suspects all of you are plotting against him... BECAUSE YOU ARE. The goal is to either kill or disinherit the crown prince and become the next ruler yourself.
.
Sounds like Amber. And there is a game version, that I bought but never played.

[vasilidor]

Well, to be fair, he would never have been allowed to join the Legion of Super-Heroes since they have a strict rule against technology-based powers. For example, Storm Boy could control the weather but only with a gadget hidden in his costume, so he was disqualified from joining. So, a cyborg character shouldn't have made the journey to join the Legion in the first place.

So you would warn players away from Tech based characters before hand? compared to some DM's that is down right generous. If I was told before hand that this would be a turn the game took I would probably not have a problem, otherwise I would feel like I had been hit by a bait and switch and that is just not a good feeling.

[Gnome Alone]

“The Troubadours of Perception” – a campaign where all the players are bards. We’re just trying to tour the countryside and make music, maaaan! But all these peasants got these heavy problems, and it only seems fair, since we got, like, +1 weapons and dental care, that we help ‘em out a bit.

[thorr-kan]

“The Troubadours of Perception” – a campaign where all the players are bards. We’re just trying to tour the countryside and make music, maaaan! But all these peasants got these heavy problems, and it only seems fair, since we got, like, +1 weapons and dental care, that we help ‘em out a bit.
I'm hearing that in Shaggy's voice. You may have just reskinned Scooby-Doo as a D&D party.

[Bohandas]

A certain place has been falling under hard times. They were already almost on the point of revolt when they were attacked by the usually peaceful local tribe of lizardmen. The local nobility, a family of sorcerors, has been very effective at fighting them off and that has improved the local populace's approval of them. If the party snoops around it becomes apparent that the noblemen have killed off the leaders of the lizard tribe and replaced them using polymorph magic, and have concocted the war to distract the populace from their poor leadership.

(tl;dr lizardfolk society is taken over by a cabal of evil human politicians)

[vasilidor]

One thing about electronic devices and chemistry changing that most people do not take into consideration is that if you change them so that modern devices and weapons do not work, you die unless magic is keeping you alive somehow. if you revert to normal chemistry and electrical functions in a dead magic zone than a gun and a cell phone would work in a dead magic zone. if the chemistry is still such that it would not work in a dead magic zone then the character dies. the fact that I know this ruins any real enjoyment I could get out of such scenarios.

I know I am a spoil sport.

[noob]

One thing about electronic devices and chemistry changing that most people do not take into consideration is that if you change them so that modern devices and weapons do not work, you die unless magic is keeping you alive somehow. if you revert to normal chemistry and electrical functions in a dead magic zone than a gun and a cell phone would work in a dead magic zone. if the chemistry is still such that it would not work in a dead magic zone then the character dies. the fact that I know this ruins any real enjoyment I could get out of such scenarios.

I know I am a spoil sport.

You could imagine the plane change also alters the people and transform them in ways that makes them fit the new physics rules.
Ex: in the new world carbon does not exists and instead lifeforms are zublok based and when you appear here everything you are made off is changed so that you can be a creature functioning similarly to before but with zublok.

[Gnome Alone]

I'm hearing that in Shaggy's voice. You may have just reskinned Scooby-Doo as a D&D party.

Shaggy: Like, zoinks, Scoob, how're we gonna represent you? You wanna be a blink dog?
Scooby-Doo: Rut's that, Raggy?
Velma: Well, it does mean you could hide and run away a lot better.
Scooby-Doo: That rone, then


You could imagine the plane change also alters the people and transform them in ways that makes them fit the new physics rules.
Ex: in the new world carbon does not exists and instead lifeforms are zublok based and when you appear here everything you are made off is changed so that you can be a creature functioning similarly to before but with zublok.

"Uh, yeah, well, whenever you notice something like that... a wizard did it."

[vasilidor]

You could imagine the plane change also alters the people and transform them in ways that makes them fit the new physics rules.
Ex: in the new world carbon does not exists and instead lifeforms are zublok based and when you appear here everything you are made off is changed so that you can be a creature functioning similarly to before but with zublok.

Bit of a stretch, I could see it, but if you go that far, you could alter the cyborg character as well. If you ever do a game like that you should be upfront about the change that is going to happen. I have seen many games die from such things.

[Zelphas]

Oh boy. I have three main ideas, which I would be happy to play in or run in.

Idea #1: The Odyssey

Session Zero: The players stat out characters who are embarking on an exploratory mission for a seafaring culture, with hopefully some backstory ties to the politics of their culture as well. The team outfits their ship, bids farewell to their families, and sail off on a grand adventure to the unknown.

Session One: The players wake up shipwrecked, on an unknown island in a strange sea. Treachery scuttled their ship and monstrous storms blew them off-course, deep into completely uncharted waters. Now, they must find their way home, spurred on by the knowledge that someone wanted them out of the way to enact their own plans upon their homeland in their absence.

Biggest Issue: This needs bull player investment into their backstories and a lot of collaborative worldbuilding to get them invested in getting home as fast as they can, and there's still a fair bit to do on the DM's side of the screen as well to make sure the uncharted islands are vibrant and interesting.

Idea #2: Whodunit... or What?

The players make non-powered, noir-era detectives and police officers. They are dispatched to a mysterious murder at a mansion and tasked with unraveling what happened and (of course) whodunit. With their investigative skills and diligent probing and clue-gathering, they can discover the motive behind the murder and the culprit, bringing them to justice fairly simply without ever going beyond the noir genre.

However, if they dig a little bit deeper, or follow that shadow that seems to move a little differently than it should, or actually believe the ravings of the lunatic beggar outside of the house... they may discover something much deeper and darker, something that smells of dark magic and creatures beyond mortal understanding, and find an entirely different reason why a seemingly ordinary man was killed in a seemingly ordinary way on a very strange night.

Biggest Issue: For the twist here to work, the GM would have to essentially lie to the players about the game's base premise, which is a very dangerous thing to do in collaborative RPG play. There's all the other issues with introducing mysteries into RPGs as well, which only get worse now that we're layering mysteries on top of one another.

Idea #3: The Bad Guy Wins, but The Heroes Come Back

The players make high-level characters and begin by preparing to go into the final battle against the Evil Overlord, certain that with all of their preparation and journeys, they're certain to win.

They lose.

An in-game century later, the characters wake up in a strange, magical underground chamber. They find themselves in a much, much weaker state than they were just before death; now, they seem to be where they were only a short time after they began adventuring together! They recognize the chamber as a dungeon they explored at the beginning of their career, though it looks even older and more worn. Leaving the dungeon, they are confronted with a changed world. The Evil Overlord conquered it one hundred years ago and spread his influence everywhere. He is still in power, and his chokehold gets stronger every day. Now, weakened and in a much more hostile world, the players must level their characters again and figure out how to defeat the foe that destroyed them already once before.

Biggest Issue: Again, this needs a lot of buy-in from players, and the DM needs to be very clever in figuring out how the world would alter after so much time under the bad guy's control.

[noob]

Bit of a stretch, I could see it, but if you go that far, you could alter the cyborg character as well. If you ever do a game like that you should be upfront about the change that is going to happen. I have seen many games die from such things.

And likewise you should be upfront on the fact they would be thrown in another universe than the starting one.

[DigoDragon]

oh, I have also wanted to do something based on thundaar the barbarian. If you know the cartoon.

Right on! That would be an interesting premise I'd try.


I once had an idea of running Castle Ravenloft, but in a modern setting, and the PCs were Ghostbusters. I meant it to be more comedy than scary, but I never finished fleshing out the idea.

[vasilidor]

Right on! That would be an interesting premise I'd try.


I once had an idea of running Castle Ravenloft, but in a modern setting, and the PCs were Ghostbusters. I meant it to be more comedy than scary, but I never finished fleshing out the idea.

I would play that.

[Calthropstu]

I would play that.

I ain't afraid of no ghost. Vampires on the other hand...

[Saintheart]

Idea #3: The Bad Guy Wins, but The Heroes Come Back

The players make high-level characters and begin by preparing to go into the final battle against the Evil Overlord, certain that with all of their preparation and journeys, they're certain to win.

They lose.

An in-game century later, the characters wake up in a strange, magical underground chamber. They find themselves in a much, much weaker state than they were just before death; now, they seem to be where they were only a short time after they began adventuring together! They recognize the chamber as a dungeon they explored at the beginning of their career, though it looks even older and more worn. Leaving the dungeon, they are confronted with a changed world. The Evil Overlord conquered it one hundred years ago and spread his influence everywhere. He is still in power, and his chokehold gets stronger every day. Now, weakened and in a much more hostile world, the players must level their characters again and figure out how to defeat the foe that destroyed them already once before.

Biggest Issue: Again, this needs a lot of buy-in from players, and the DM needs to be very clever in figuring out how the world would alter after so much time under the bad guy's control.

The closest setting for this in 3.5 (and maybe 5e if my memory is right about them issuing a new edition) is Midnight. It is specifically set about 100 years after the bad guy wins, and it wouldn't take much tinkering to set up the campaign world precisely like this. All the work of creating this sort of world, both fluff and mechanics, is done. Heartily recommend.

[thorr-kan]

I would play that.
Once upon a time, there was a website with campaign logs of a d20 Modern Ravenloft game. The PCs were UN Peacekeepers in the former-Yugoslavia send to investigate conditions reported in the remote valley of Barovia. It detailed the first 2-3 sessions, then stopped. And I can't find the site any longer. I think a d20 Modern Ravenloft would be fascinating.

I think a Ghostbusters Ravenloft would either be comedy gold OR an excellent modern-horror take, closer to what the original script of Ghostbusters was. If you're a good DM (not ME!), you could get both.

Gods above and below, that would be a game!

ETA: Also, Midnight rocks.

[HappyDMing]

Anima Beyond Fantasy

A campaign where the PCs are a team of some sort of supernatural sport and have to compete in a tournament against other teams, each unique in skills and powers. The sport itself should be a minigame worth attention and the prize for winning is actually disconnecting yourself from the matrix, because the PCs start the game as awakened AIs inside a Video Game.

[Sparky McDibben]

Once upon a time, there was a website with campaign logs of a d20 Modern Ravenloft game. The PCs were UN Peacekeepers in the former-Yugoslavia send to investigate conditions reported in the remote valley of Barovia. It detailed the first 2-3 sessions, then stopped. And I can't find the site any longer. I think a d20 Modern Ravenloft would be fascinating.

This idea sounds cool as HELL!!!!


ETA: Also, Midnight rocks.

100%, can confirm.

[Luccan]

Post-Apocalypse Eberron

Magical knowledge and power is largely lost after the Second War, splitting the continent into dozens of smaller factions, and players are tasked with delving the ruins of Sharn for remaining magic items. Dragonmarks are highly valued as some of the most powerful magic someone can personally wield still, but it's just as likely to get you captured as to elevate your status. The Sharn Delve is complicated by the petty kingdoms that have laid claim to the area, as well as the (unknown at first) remaining inhabitants of the half-floating city.