Blech. Out of campaign ideas.

[Vitruviansquid]

I'm at a point in the game I'm running where I have run out of ideas for what to make the players do or where to make the players go. This is rather embarassing because I came up for the format of the campaign specifically so I wouldn't run out of ideas. In any case, I'd like to hear what you guys make of this.

1. The game I'm running is in Savage Worlds, not DnD. Therefore, I basically have a carte blanche regarding what monsters I put in the game and what stats they would have because Savage Worlds is not really level-dependent in the same way as DnD is. I stat every monster to fit the players, I don't have to find monsters from a Monster Manual to match the players' levels.

2. The basic premise of the game is that the players work for a monster slaying guild (think the Ghostbusters) in a Renaissance Europe(esque) time period. The players' world is much like our Earth, except that monsters, fairies, and other such fantasies from folklore are real. When those malign supernatural forces threaten humanity, someone would pay the monster slaying guilds to take care of the problem. Each session, the players are sent to investigate an occurrence of supernatural forces, ending with the slaying of some sort of monster.

3. What I really want the game to be about, though, is the monstrousness in humanity. If the actual monsters are analogous to symptoms of a disease in humanity, then the evil in humans is the actual germs causing the disease. For instance, the players might be hired to exorcise a malevolent ghost. It would turn out that the ghost is malevolent because the person who hired to players was the person who killed the ghost in life. Thus, the players' morally correct goal is to bring their employer to justice, not to simply exorcise the ghost.

So basically, I guess what I'm asking is if any of you know some folklore monsters with moral significance or symbolism that I could harness for my campaign. Extra credit if you could take the folklore entity and then put another spin on them so that the moral decision the players end up making is not obvious from the start to a genre-savvy player.

[Totally Guy]

Have your players expressed any indication of where they want the game to do?

I'd ask each of your players for 3 personal goals that they have for thier characters (yes I prefer player goals for the character! Character goals for the character is certainly possible too though). Then use that information to craft a scenario with some element of each of the player's goal.

[BobVosh]

Corrupted local spirits are always popular. Forest spirit is angry because people X is destroying its forest. Assumes hideous form and rampages.

Steal a variant of Hot Fuzz. Evil cult is stealing and sacrificing people. They blamed the local peaceful tribe of X, the Always CE race. People who are innocent of the crime hire you to take down tribe X. Or make it a legend of something comes and kills so many people, and the town covers it up as it gives em good crops and stop anything else from doing such.

There was a thread here about how mindflayers could be slaves to those brain things that rule them. They only are so evil because of it. This is mainly suitable for really high level play, but if you get to 17 or so you could search these forums for that plot thread.

http://community.wizards.com/go/thre...e_Burning_Hate
This could be an overarching thread of good pretentiousness.

[JeminiZero]

My first thought was to send your players on a quest to kill TwiVamps. Their appearance has caused half the town to do nothing but stare at them all day, leading to mass starvation as the fields go unworked. (The other half of the town were so utterly sickened by them that they have fled to other cities entirely). The local lord has decided that it would be in everyones best interest to wipe out TwiVamps before the plague spread.

Alternatively, the TwiVamps have caused the first half to lower their guard. No more golden crosses under the pillow, no more garlic draped across the bed posts. As a result the real Vampires are having a field day.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

Wizards (or your campaing equivalent) are binding outsiders into (fairly universally used) magical things to power them. This could be a magical transport, divination device, protection item - anything that gets used regularly and is produced frequently. The outsiders could be anything sentient, from elementals or demons, to ghosts or souls - they're only being used to provide some magical energy to the device they're bound to.

Stealing the outsiders to bind them is causing grief to the plane or dimension where they come from.
Allies of the bound outsiders are trying to exact incomprehensible vengeance on the wizards and their friends, and the party are tasked with defeating the outsiders.

Through contact with the outsiders, the party need to discover why they are attacking - and decide what to do about it.

[CDR_Doom]

Cerberus. A terrifying 3-headed giant dog shows up and is seen apparently killing people at random. In reality, as the guardian of the gateway to Hell charged with keeping mortals out and the dead in, Hades has sent him to stop an underground cult of necromancers who have been robbing Hell of souls.

[Guinea Anubis]

So it sounds like you are playing Rippers, its a great setting

So with what you said I think if you made the 7 deadly sins in to monsters it could work well. The best part is that they would never really die, just reform in to some new form later. So after the players figure out they have killed Sloth 3 or 4 times they can try and figure out out to seal them away since they can't kill thim