Awesome Campaign Ideas (You Know You'll Never Use)

[FreakyCheeseMan]

For the most intricate, most ambitious, most devious campaign ideas that are just too long or too amibitous for you to ever use.

Secrets of the Grave

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All characters begin play at level one, with only basic equipment and no memories: At start of play, they have all just been raised from the dead, together, by an unknown person.

The premise of the game is that unknown person is actually a beyond-ancient Lich who has been fighting against mortality for millenia, and aged so long that even their own grasp of necromancy is becoming insufficient to hold their tattered soul in the mortal plane.

The characters are all figures from throghout history who, at some point in their lives, came closer than any others to fully understanding the nature of mortality. The lich brought them back in hopes of learning their secrets - but, they've all been dead for so very long that they've lost most of their power and memories, so the lich is now hoping they'll reclaim their old knowledge if he lets them loose on the world for long enough.

Potential Backstories (Based on class):

Sorcerer, Psion, Wizard, Etc: One of the Lich's old friends, involved with originally bringing him to power, before the group turned on eachother in a rapid series of murders and betrayals.

Cleric, Favored Soul, Archivist, Etc: High priest(ess) and lover of a lesser god or godess, up until the day that god/godess was killed. Spent the rest of his/her life trying to make contact with their lost lover and restor them to life/divinity.

Rogue, Factotum: Good Spymaster for an evil king, in a time of great political turmoil: Believed that the death of the king would bring about chaos that would be even worse for the realm than his reign. Tried (and ultimately failed) to protect the life of his king through every mudane, magical, necromatic and alchemical process he could, against an endless number of assasins.

Barbarian, Fighter, Warblade: Legendary hero from the dawn of time. Unlike the others, this guy didn't seem to have any special knowledge of mortaity - he just wouldn't die, or wouldn't stay dead. After having one too many evil plots foiled y his stubborn refusal to stay in a grave, a cabal of evil mages found a way to bind his soul to the lower planes - the necromancer didn't even have to resurrect this guy, just break their spell.

Monk, Swordsage, Psychic Warrir, Incarnate Classes: Old ascetic who explored the nature of mortality and the planes through pure meditation, rather than magic or the divine.

As a bonus, several of the players may have been contempories or rivals in life. Also, the secret sauce:

One player is actually a two-bit criminal thug or petty demon, who "hijacked" a resurrection spell intended for the others. Unlike the others, he retains his memories - including his memory of who some of the others, who had made a name for themselves in hell, had been.

[Kid Jake]

I've always wanted to run a low/no magic game where the PCs represent 'Knights of the Church', a human-centric religion based on taming the world and bringing civilization to the masses whether they want it or not. Everywhere they go the world is crazy and they end up protecting people that don't even want to be protected.

You see, outside of the Church's influence are the old gods, the river spirits and the forest deities and all of the other little niche portfolios and even some of the big guys that represent people like Odin or Ares. The old gods show their favor in exchange for sacrifice, so set a pretty little virgin on fire in your cornfield and you'll have the best harvest ever; but forget the annual Drowning Festival and half the village will be washed away. It's not ideal, but so long as you aren't one of the people who draw the short straw then things are pretty nice.

The PCs would go to all of these exotic locations, bear witness to the strange customs of the various gods and then kill them to spread the glory of civilization to the savages. At first it'd be all fame and glory, but eventually they discover a horrible secret: The gods are literally what make the world go 'round.

They stabbed the Great Wolf in the throat to save the fair maidens, but without his protection the forest is disappearing. They slew the River King so that he could no longer withhold his bounty from the fishermen who need it; but without the River King all of the fish are dying. They killed Thor to prove to the pagans that their religion was powerful, but no mere mortal has the power to call the storms and so drought is sweeping over the land.

Basically everything is becoming nice and tidy and civil, but without the wild power of the old ways the world is doomed to stagnate and die. So either they can have faith in a well-meaning doctrine and keep at it; hoping that things will work out in the end but having no guarantee that anything will survive, or take the side of genocidal monsters that demand constant tribute for the right to simply live; but have a pretty good track record on the whole 'humanity not going extinct' thing.


I doubt I'll ever get to run the game though, my group meets way too sporadically to have a really story heavy game.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

I've always wanted to run a low/no magic game where the PCs represent 'Knights of the Church', a human-centric religion based on taming the world and bringing civilization to the masses whether they want it or not. Everywhere they go the world is crazy and they end up protecting people that don't even want to be protected.

That's actualy similar to a thing I actually ran once. However, the church - and a collection of LG establishment gods - had already "Tamed" the world, or at least, as much of it as anyone cared about. This basically worked by shunting everything unacceptable onto another plane; this included most fonts of magical power. Arcanists still existed, but the equivalent of 10th level power was something only a few archmagi could ever reach, and going beyond that was unheard of. It was, essentially, an E6 world.

The game started when a conspiracy of cultists managed to break the mystals keeping the planes apart; suddenly, and rather violently, they started to merg. This made things, temporarily, even worse then they would be normally - horribly extreme weather effects, rampaging monsters, demons and elementals taking over sections of the kindgom. As an upside, primal power came back into the world, and those with the most exposure to the "outside" influences soaked it up - adventurers started to level up by simple fighting and killing, which was much faster than the years of study and training it took them otherwise. :P

If it had gone on, players were ultimately gonna be responsible for choosing whether to re-establish the mythals or let the old way run once more. As it was... they spent some time trying to stop a village from starving to death in the middle of a blizzard, and then it fell apart. :P

[NichG]

Mine would probably be 'Descent of the Dynasties', which would be a campaign with a custom system designed to span a couple centuries and multiple generations of characters. The idea would be that players have two characters - a permanent one who is an 'ancestral spirit' of a given clan, and a temporary one who is the current heir to the clan (or current favorite of the ancestral spirit). Characters who have the blessing of the ancestral spirit gain powers and abilities beyond the norm, but also make themselves vulnerable to being possessed to greater or lesser degree by their ancestral spirit. Each spirit is bound to a particular clan/bloodline, but their motivations are not necessarily the same as the motivations of the clan - they may in fact be quite at odds in places. Furthermore, all the spirits share the same looking glass into the mortal realm, so the actions of each champion are always known to all the other champions - if their spirit wishes it.

Basically the idea would be that the players actively play their mortal character over a series of mini-campaigns that cover periods of their life. These would be about 3 sessions long, after which would be a 10 year timeskip. Eventually characters get old, die, are replaced by their descendants, etc. However, the existence of the ancestral spirits allows the player to choose how much continuity of character there is when this happens - a particularly overbearing spirit may just fully dominate their host and always have the same personality, memories, etc regardless of what their host was like; another spirit may adopt particular personalities of past hosts and carry them forward; another spirit may allow the host full control - its all up to the player.

One of the gimmicks is that when a character dies, they grant a certain amount of points to the ancestral spirit that can be used to buy advantages for all future characters. Things would be set up in such a way as to encourage a bit of a calculation of 'when is the best time to die?', and to actually reward players for letting their characters get killed in awesome ways (e.g. there would be a multiplicative bonus to the xp gained if the death was significant or poignant in certain specified ways).

I had this idea, then my players informed me they didn't really like heavily political campaigns, so...

[FreakyCheeseMan]

I had this idea, then my players informed me they didn't really like heavily political campaigns, so...

Ouch. Players really are the worst thing about D&D, aren't they?

[2E Phoinex]

I have this really underdeveloped idea for my AD&D 2e game in which I would give each player full reign in making their character sheets. They could have access to about all the magic Items/spells/wealth they could want and they could start at 20th level with all the awesomeness accumulated from years of adventuring together. Basically, they would create the character concept and see him at maximum unrestrained glory.

They would have some time to be amazing and wreck stuff.
Then I would put them in an no win situation. A total railroad to death at the hands of some magnificent evil that they were called on to save the world from. Screw fun for players and sense of fair play: I would stop at nothing until their massive HP piles were whittled down to -10. Whatever it took to kill them all. No player choice would matter; all the creative thinking and skillful play in the world would crumble before my predetermined plot and the Evil would triumph.

After the inevitable TPK I would pass out revised character sheets of their same character designs starting with new names, crushed by poverty, and at level 1. I will explain that it has been 200 years or something since the heroes had been vanquished and the world has been dominated by the evil. The players would come to realize that they had been reincarnated to fight the evil once again and they would quest to reclaim their former glory and find a new way to combat the evil which so easily slew them the first time.

Of course at that point the railroading would cease and they could choose to follow the path of their predecessors, reclaiming old artifacts they had owned and such, or go their own way.

Lots of flaws with the idea of course. It's built around one somewhat interesting thought that requires being a lame DM in order to work. But, I do like the Idea of characters adventuring in a world that their predecessors helped shape now dominated by the evil that slew them. Reclaiming the lost power, discovering the types of people they were in the last life, choosing when to follow the legacy and when to make a change- it all sounds like a neat campaign. My players don't mind the occasional railroad if it leads to a fun place for them to explore, but I doubt I'll ever have time to complete a fun and unoffensive campaign with this idea.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Another of mine from the vaults:

Foundation

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This game would be based on Asimov's foundation series, with a number of twists to make it playable.

The cosmology consists of a HUGE number of planes, including multiple inner and outer planes, with different levels of geographical overlap. (The planes you can plane shift to here may be different from the ones you could plane shift to fifty miles east of here.) Planes are themselves laid out throughout the astral sea - to reach a different plane, without being able to go to the astral sea directly, requires traveling through several different in-between planes, and moving geographically across each.

At some point in the past, all of these planes were ruled by a powerful Magocracy on Trantor, a "Central" plane. That magocracy either fell from slow decay, losing control of the more distance planes, or something more catacylsmic (below) happened.

The players would start off on a small, out-of-the way plane called Terminus, which hosts a library of magical work, supposedly intended to preserve the empire's knowledge in case of catastrophe. In reality, the Foundation at Terminus was created by a group of seers who foresaw the fall of the empire, and manipulated things so that Terminus would be in a position to create a new Empire from the wreckage.

The players job - once tehy establish themselves on Terminus - is to found that new empire by any combination of diplomacy, mercantilism, conquest, prosthletization or politicing they so choose. WBL and general power levels will be COMPLETELY broken - it wouldn't e surprising for players to intercept shipments of thousands of wands of Cure Minor Wounds, or to have a hundred warforged artificers come under their control. Their encounters would be likewise extravagent: One enemy empire might field Terrasque Cavalry brigades or defend itself by animating entire forests at once.

One alternate idea I had was for Trantor to have fallen to a singular catastrophe, rather than a slow decline - and that catastrophe would be a sudden shift in how time flowed across the planes, resulting in Trantor moving much slower, relative to the outer planes. By the time the players reached the old seat of the empire, thousands of years would have passed on Terminus - but only a few days on Trantor. This would hopefully mean that, when players went back to visit planes they'd been to previously, they'd get to see the results of their actions over the long haul - though, it would make things pretty awful if the party ever split.

[Cowardly Griffo]

I'd love to run a game of Dungeons: the Dragoning 40,000 7th Edition where the players aren't allowed to brew OCs. Instead, they'd roll out totally metal, postcyberpocalyptic incarnations of their favorite Saturday Morning Cartoon Characters and other fictional metaphorical totem animals. Just take all your childhood icons and turn the 90s dial until it snaps under the high dynamic pressure. Think Charles Barkley's Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden. In Space. Featuring Keith David as The Voice of Keith David as Your Inner Narrator.

Cryogenically frozen and mildly cybernetic Commissioner James Gordon, with the ghost of Batman as a spirit guide? On-theme.

Carmen San Diego pirating the Crystal Spheres in a stolen time ship? On-theme.

Sonic the Hedgehog merged with the Speed Force and charting a path through the aether in search of crystal space dragons fused with Chaos Emeralds? On friggin' theme.

The setting would be a mishmash of all things childhood, too. God-Emperor Godzilla, ruling the 4th Great and Bountiful Kaiju Empire from his Golden Throne. Nightmare Moon's New Lunar Republic on an endless refugee pilgrimage on board Spiral King Lordgenome's Cathedral Terra, in search of a way to combat the Harmonious Spiral Nemesis. And at the center of the galaxy, locked in a prison of spiraling black holes and gamma ray bursts, an endless fight rages between Unicron and Galactus, their mutual hatred and hunger fueling Bruce Banner's Red Lantern Corps, a galactic mercenary force that will enforce any law for the right price. Due to their reputation for operating in shades of gray, some have taken to calling them the Shadow Proclamation...

And so on. But I'm way too intimidated to run the danged thing. Such is life. :P

[NichG]

Ouch. Players really are the worst thing about D&D, aren't they?

Nah, my players are great, but you always have to run the right thing for the people you've got. Instead of the one thing I'm running a total amnesiac game where power is gained by consciously writing your own past and forcing the universe to adapt.

[elliott20]

I wanted to run a supers game where you aren't the super heroes, but the people who have to live in the super hero world and survive. Our party would be a construction company who has to fix the damage from all of the super fights that go on around the city. However, each one of our characters all have incredibly dark secrets and agendas that we pursue.

[prufock]

Bards on the Run: The PCs are all bards that have formed a troupe in hopes of making it big. Each bard should focus on a different instrument as well as different "bardic focus," such as a primary spellcaster bard, face bard, healer bard, melee, ranged, etc. They start at level 1 trying to secure their first big gig (a local tavern, whoopieee!) eventually gaining levels (probably to 6) and hoping to make the big time... playing at the castle for the royals. In between they have to deal with all the pitfalls of a musician's life (shady bookers, no money for rent, in-fighting, lead singer disease) as well as more fantasy-type adventures and Scooby Doo-esque mysteries!

Why it won't work: Not everybody likes playing bards, and becoming a musician doesn't interest all the players as a motivation.

Godslayers: In an E6 world where the gods are epic, and everyone else is 1st level. The gods (7 of them, styled on the seven virtues/sins) have turned their backs on mankind and become petty and cruel. Prophecy has told of those who would free the people from this tyranny. Are the PCs the ones? PCs start at level 6, becoming epic after defeating the first god, and each gaining a shred of divinity with every deity they take down. They form their own godly identities and portfolios, becoming the new gods of the realm.

Why it won't work: Players struggle to accept level 6 characters as "gods," particularly one player who hates low-powered/leveled games.

[Sartharina]

I just made my players feel like bastards: This is more of an overview to vent my trollish attitude on imagining, inspired by a certain real-world faith I respect, and a badly-written module. There are two points to the campaign:

1. The goblins are a race of misunderstood, ugly pacifists with awkward body language (what we consider aggressive behaviors, such as snarling, fierce movements, and shrieks, they consider friendly). Language involving quests against them are designed to turn players against the goblins through terminology like "Ransom" (They sell what they have for money, and release prisoners who wrong them for compensation), "Kidnap" (People want the goblins dead, and send adventurers to take them out - the goblins incapacitate and imprison those people), "Took over"(They moved into a place nobody else was living, and started making a living there)), "Infest" (They live there), and the like, trying to continue to paint them as bad guys while their actual actions really indicate they're actually a bunch of harmless, trying-to-be-friendly, and tolerant pushovers (And pacifists).

2. There's a widespread doomsday cult of fanatic martyrs that meets once a week that engages in several occult rituals tied to all sorts of things and preaches the end of days. It's actually a Neutral Good organization, they are not trying to hasten the doomsday they await, and said Doomsday is actually a day of mass resurrections, immortality, and freeing the world of the necessities that drive Evil (No starvation to drive people to kill each other for food, enough space for everyone so no competition for resources, and removed violent/negative emotions/thoughts). This one would be hard to pull off - those affiliated with the source material would probably be offended for portraying them explicitly like a doomsday cult, and too many who aren't likely wouldn't see the problem with treating them like any other cult.

[Grimtina]

Bards on the Run: The PCs are all bards that have formed a troupe in hopes of making it big. Each bard should focus on a different instrument as well as different "bardic focus," such as a primary spellcaster bard, face bard, healer bard, melee, ranged, etc. They start at level 1 trying to secure their first big gig (a local tavern, whoopieee!) eventually gaining levels (probably to 6) and hoping to make the big time... playing at the castle for the royals. In between they have to deal with all the pitfalls of a musician's life (shady bookers, no money for rent, in-fighting, lead singer disease) as well as more fantasy-type adventures and Scooby Doo-esque mysteries!

I would so want to play this!

[bulbaquil]

Bards on the Run: The PCs are all bards that have formed a troupe in hopes of making it big. Each bard should focus on a different instrument as well as different "bardic focus," such as a primary spellcaster bard, face bard, healer bard, melee, ranged, etc. They start at level 1 trying to secure their first big gig (a local tavern, whoopieee!) eventually gaining levels (probably to 6) and hoping to make the big time... playing at the castle for the royals. In between they have to deal with all the pitfalls of a musician's life (shady bookers, no money for rent, in-fighting, lead singer disease) as well as more fantasy-type adventures and Scooby Doo-esque mysteries!

I kind of want to play this. It would mesh particularly well with Pathfinder's archetypes system - everyone plays a different bard archetype, as well as specializing in a different type of perform. For added fun, no duplicate races.

[Cowardly Griffo]

Pathfinder's where my head went, too. Especially once you throw in archetype packages, so some of the bards can trade in spellcasting or performing (heresy!) for other class's abilities.

[Grimtina]

I kind of want to play this. It would mesh particularly well with Pathfinder's archetypes system - everyone plays a different bard archetype, as well as specializing in a different type of perform. For added fun, no duplicate races.

Yeah my thoughts exactly! It's like the beginning of a joke. A party of halfling, dwarf, elf and gnome bards went to perform in a bar...

[Grinner]

Bards on the Run: The PCs are all bards that have formed a troupe in hopes of making it big. Each bard should focus on a different instrument as well as different "bardic focus," such as a primary spellcaster bard, face bard, healer bard, melee, ranged, etc. They start at level 1 trying to secure their first big gig (a local tavern, whoopieee!) eventually gaining levels (probably to 6) and hoping to make the big time... playing at the castle for the royals. In between they have to deal with all the pitfalls of a musician's life (shady bookers, no money for rent, in-fighting, lead singer disease) as well as more fantasy-type adventures and Scooby Doo-esque mysteries!

Why it won't work: Not everybody likes playing bards, and becoming a musician doesn't interest all the players as a motivation.

I would so want to play this!

I kind of want to play this. It would mesh particularly well with Pathfinder's archetypes system - everyone plays a different bard archetype, as well as specializing in a different type of perform. For added fun, no duplicate races.

Pathfinder's where my head went, too. Especially once you throw in archetype packages, so some of the bards can trade in spellcasting or performing (heresy!) for other class's abilities.

Looks like you've found your players.

[Mr.Sandman]

Bards on the Run: The PCs are all bards that have formed a troupe in hopes of making it big. Each bard should focus on a different instrument as well as different "bardic focus," such as a primary spellcaster bard, face bard, healer bard, melee, ranged, etc. They start at level 1 trying to secure their first big gig (a local tavern, whoopieee!) eventually gaining levels (probably to 6) and hoping to make the big time... playing at the castle for the royals. In between they have to deal with all the pitfalls of a musician's life (shady bookers, no money for rent, in-fighting, lead singer disease) as well as more fantasy-type adventures and Scooby Doo-esque mysteries!

If you ran this on the forums, I would be interested.

[ChaosArchon]

Mine would probably be 'Descent of the Dynasties', which would be a campaign with a custom system designed to span a couple centuries and multiple generations of characters. The idea would be that players have two characters - a permanent one who is an 'ancestral spirit' of a given clan, and a temporary one who is the current heir to the clan (or current favorite of the ancestral spirit). Characters who have the blessing of the ancestral spirit gain powers and abilities beyond the norm, but also make themselves vulnerable to being possessed to greater or lesser degree by their ancestral spirit. Each spirit is bound to a particular clan/bloodline, but their motivations are not necessarily the same as the motivations of the clan - they may in fact be quite at odds in places. Furthermore, all the spirits share the same looking glass into the mortal realm, so the actions of each champion are always known to all the other champions - if their spirit wishes it.

Basically the idea would be that the players actively play their mortal character over a series of mini-campaigns that cover periods of their life. These would be about 3 sessions long, after which would be a 10 year timeskip. Eventually characters get old, die, are replaced by their descendants, etc. However, the existence of the ancestral spirits allows the player to choose how much continuity of character there is when this happens - a particularly overbearing spirit may just fully dominate their host and always have the same personality, memories, etc regardless of what their host was like; another spirit may adopt particular personalities of past hosts and carry them forward; another spirit may allow the host full control - its all up to the player.

One of the gimmicks is that when a character dies, they grant a certain amount of points to the ancestral spirit that can be used to buy advantages for all future characters. Things would be set up in such a way as to encourage a bit of a calculation of 'when is the best time to die?', and to actually reward players for letting their characters get killed in awesome ways (e.g. there would be a multiplicative bonus to the xp gained if the death was significant or poignant in certain specified ways).

I had this idea, then my players informed me they didn't really like heavily political campaigns, so...

Wow that sounds like an awesome campaign idea, if you'd be willing to try it in a pbp format I'll love to give it a spin

[prufock]

I would so want to play this!

I kind of want to play this. It would mesh particularly well with Pathfinder's archetypes system - everyone plays a different bard archetype, as well as specializing in a different type of perform. For added fun, no duplicate races.

Pathfinder's where my head went, too. Especially once you throw in archetype packages, so some of the bards can trade in spellcasting or performing (heresy!) for other class's abilities.

Looks like you've found your players.

If you ran this on the forums, I would be interested.

Alas, I really have no interest in running play-by-post games. D&D is very much a face-to-face social event for me. However, feel free to steal this idea!

[BeerMug Paladin]

This would be a D&D campaign, probably. Day 1 goes more or less like this.

The players find an innocuous lead on a job, culminating in discovering that the world is coming to an end via an evil doomsday cthulhu-esque cult. At the end of the day, the player party witnesses the end of the world, as all the prophesized events of doom take place one after the next and the world's greatest champions (gods and mortals alike) are powerless to fight against it and fall.

The players discover a clue that leads to immortality is also prophesized, so they attempt to pursue it in hopes it will give them the power to stop everything in its tracks. Or at least make their novice contribution to helping a little more helpful. They arrive in the location and are slain by one of the rampaging eldritch horrors tearing the world apart.

The player party awakens in the inn they had been sleeping in at the start of their day. They discover that what had once seemed a horrid nightmare is coming true. The day seems to play out exactly like their supposed dream...

Every time the player party dies, they awaken at the start of the world's final day. They are effectively immortal.

The reasons I could never use this are pretty numerous:

I would have to have a detailed timeline of the day's events. Every NPC (an entire campaign's worth) would have to have a detailed account of what they are doing (or might do instead with influence) on this day. Also, I'd have to have an account of what things the player party could do to change the activities of NPCS as well. Obviously, a player party is also going to try to influence NPC behavior in ways I can't anticipate, but some things (like what can convince the various guild leaders to go cult-hunting and how they go about that goal) should be decided before the campaign begins.

No randomly generated loot. It would ruin the consistency of the theme. There's a modest to high level adventurer who is staying in the same inn as the player party. Nobody has seen them for a few days, but the innkeep and regulars know that's nothing unusual. There is a full allotment of useful gear that wasn't sold yet left in that room and sealed in an adamantine chest with a complex lock. When/If the player party discovers these facts and have the relevant skills, they could go acquire that loot using a few minutes at the start of every day and use it in their quest. The start of every day would involve the players using low-level equipment until they discover (or retrieve) other equipment. I'd need to have hundreds of substantial loot caches just like this of various levels all over the place for player parties to discover. It would also have to include spellbooks, scrolls, potions, etc... The positive part of this, is that in some parts of the campaign, low level characters could make use of some seriously awesome gear they should by no means otherwise possess. As the horrors in the timeline unfold, it's easier to stumble across equipment that would not otherwise be left unattended. The same non-randomness of the loot would also hold for the encounters, which means that every dungeon and encounter is prepared beforehand.

A full campaign worth of plot hooks. I'd have to have all the investigative information of what is happening divided up into many, many different plot hooks. Enough for a full campaign. Obviously, this idea could be done in a general RPG 'wander around killing random mooks until high level, then beat the end boss' kind of style, but that would get boring really fast. To really do this right, I think I'd have to give the players believably useful leads on information that they could pursue from the very start. Things that, while not necessarily greatly helpful individually, together would help flesh out the story of the cult, the mythology of the end of the world, the people interacting with said cult, etc... There would have to be room enough for the players to experiment with different strategies to avert the cataclysm. That would give the players some believable leads to investigate in their attempts to figure out how to ultimately stop it. Eventually, they'll learn about other plot hooks that get closer to the true nature of the problem because of information they learned on a previous attempt.

Although I do occasionally consider this idea, about what the nature of the end is, why the immortality loophole exists, why the cult leaders are doing this and so on, there's just far too many time-sink issues with this idea in order to ever really pull off.

[prufock]

Day 1 goes more or less like this.

That sounds really cool, but a few issues come to mind:
- Does the party gain levels? They are presumably reset to original configuration except for their memories every day.
- Is there actually a way to stop it?
- What if one PC dies early in the day? Do the others keep going until the day resets? Can the dead PC be resurrected? Can the player adopt another NPC to play?

I don't think you would need it laid out as much beforehand as you think. Each NPC doesn't really matter unless the PCs interact with them in some way, and when that happens you can make your notes from there. You would need your broad strokes laid out first, but details can be filled in as you go.

Have it take place in February. Start every day with a hotel worker giving the wake-up call: "Okay, campers, rise and shine, and don't forget your booties 'cause it's cooooold out there today."

[Grimtina]

That reminds me of my own improbably idea.

Similar "can't stop doomsday" situation, just in our modern world. In the last moment, the PCs could sneak back in time to try to stop it, but it would probably lead to the same situation, and again, and again, until they find a solution.

Problem, the only group in theory able to play that is 1) busy with a long running campaign 2) some of the players would get bored with repeating situations and 3) the rest might just solve the problem in the second run.

[Lakaz]

The main reason i'll never actually play this one is because i am TERRIBLE at running sandbox games. It's just not my playstyle as a GM. I try not to railroad anything but full-on sandboxes just don't work for me. And this idea was basically the ultimate sandbox.

Essentially, the players are a group of time-travellers. The first session is essentially a "Let's kill hitler" scenario, just replacing Hitler with some other guy who has wronged their families, or caused them significant grief in some way. They go back in time and kill this guy as a child, and return to their original world, as per the cliché, as a dystopia. It's just gone horribly wrong, as a result of their killing the guy who wronged their families.
So they go further back to fix it. And of course make it worse. Essentially, they have the option to go anywhere in time they like to try to alter events to allow themselves to return to their home universe. Or just to make a new world in their liking, it's really up to them.

Here's the twist though: The antagonists are them. A second group of time-travelling thems from the dystopia who've gone back in time to track them down, kill them, and stop the dystopia from being destroyed. (And then probably thems from OTHER universes who show up to try to create/stop the destruction of their own respective worlds).

Yeah, as you can tell, there's a reason i'm never gonna use this campaign idea.

[Grimtina]

Yeah, that would be the song that never ends in RPG adventures. Would make for a cool story though.

[BeerMug Paladin]

- Does the party gain levels? They are presumably reset to original configuration except for their memories every day.

Yes, levels are gained. Apart from that, every physical item is what they began with in their backpack.

- Is there actually a way to stop it?

Spoiler: Irrelevant Idea Details

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Yes, there is a way to stop it. When the world was first formed out of the primordial chaos beaten back by the gods, the Book of Eternity was formed. It is said that the BoE has every deed and event in history recorded in its pages, and if one possessed the book and had knowledge of the True Words, they would have the power of prophecy. In addition, if the Divine Quill used to write within it was possessed, it would grant the writer the power to change the future. If they acquire these things, in theory, the player party could avert the events. But there's more going on they don't know.

The end of the world is essentially the point when the BoE's divinely written entries reach their natural conclusion, and so with the events within its pages complete, the world is returning to its natural state of primordial chaos. The doomsday cult is attempting to use the Book for their own goals. Specifically, extend the lifetime of the world using the book, without inflicting the 'fate' it enforces onto its denizens. They believe this is what the Book itself says is going to happen.

But using the Book correctly is a tricky thing. The god of prophecy that was the Book's caretaker was tricked by the Evil One into writing a loophole into it which allowed it to become lost. In ages past, it is rumored that mortals have come across it before and managed to use it, but it's been lost soon after every time. It's also very difficult to use it without introducing unintended consequences by creating loopholes which play out in the world.

One of the major plot arcs will involve the player party tracking down this artifact in the hopes they can use it to avert the catastrophe and eventually discover it's in the cult's possession. A big part of discovering what's going on will have to involve revealing just what the nature of the apocalypse is very gradually.

The players are immortals due to the same loophole plot by the Evil One to make the Book of Eternity become lost. If the original timeline did continue, then it is known that the Evil One will get ahold of the Book soon after the events that kills the player party.

Eventually the player party finds out that they CAN be killed for good in a very specific way, so must avoid that at all costs (the servants of the Evil One know how to kill them. They know about the immortal beings, but think they must be members of the doomsday cult.) Probably the best way to do that is to have an NPC who was with the player party on that first day, so knows all about this, but is slain by one of the Evil One's servants and doesn't come back on the next loop. There would be a way to reverse this process, but having a way to have the player characters all get killed 'for real' and end the campaign would be needed to reintroduce tension into the game. But by design, I would also make sure this TPK is something very easy to avoid.

Stopping it involves three things. Acquiring the Book. Acquiring the Quill. And learning enough of the True Words to know what needs to be written into the book in order to avert the calamity. This is the outline of what my idea is, but if I were to seriously run this, I would want to get into much more detail about just what goes wrong with the doomsday cult's attempts at using the Book, the different choices of solutions the player party could discover, and the timeline of whom has the Book and Quill during what part of the day and what they do with them. So, again, detailed timeline stuff. The player party gaining possession of the Book or Quill makes them high-value targets for everyone.

- What if one PC dies early in the day? Do the others keep going until the day resets? Can the dead PC be resurrected? Can the player adopt another NPC to play?

The dead PC could be resurrected. I'd also expect this scenario would have a lot of TPK encounters in it, especially early in the campaign if they do a direct assault (a favorite tactic in my gaming groups). Maybe now and then a single player would escape a TPK situation, but then they would have severely reduced options in so far as what they could accomplish on their own. It really depends on how it's set up, but I don't think a scroll or two of resurrection/reincarnate that's possible to acquire at low levels would really be that bad a thing for a game like this.

I don't think you would need it laid out as much beforehand as you think. Each NPC doesn't really matter unless the PCs interact with them in some way, and when that happens you can make your notes from there. You would need your broad strokes laid out first, but details can be filled in as you go.

I didn't mean every NPC needs to be plotted on a timeline. Just that every NPC that could significantly impact the day's events needs to be plotted on a timeline.

Spoiler: Overly Long Explanation

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That includes things like:
guild leaders learning about the day's unfolding events, the city's ruling council members, the high clergy of various deities, any significantly leveled adventurer types who might try to engage in heroics. The cult leadership. The Evil One's followers, and their leadership.

In a city, that's going to be a lot of people. For example, if it's day two and the party decides to get advice from the church of the god of prophecy, I need to know whether they can talk to the high priest when they arrive there at 3 PM. Maybe instead the high priest is out because they're investigating a portent about the Evil One's return that was brought to her attention at 2 PM by the leader of the mages' guild. (The moon is the Evil One's prison, and someone in the mages' guild noticed something was unusual about the moon.)

If instead, the party starts roaming the streets early in the day talking about the various things that are going to happen throughout the day in the hopes of rallying support for a direct strike on the cult's known location, I need to know who would respond to the party's prophetic knowledge and how.

Really, PCs are wildly unpredictable. And part of why I'd want to approach it in this way is I'd just want to be really careful not to accidentally introduce plot holes into this. If I say they see an NPC at one point in time, I need to know that NPC isn't going to be in another place doing something important at the same time in the future.

In normal games, plot holes are easy to steamroll over and resolve for the most part. But with the added constraints here, I could see the normal attempts to fix plot holes quickly descending into an avalanche of plot implosion.

Have it take place in February. Start every day with a hotel worker giving the wake-up call: "Okay, campers, rise and shine, and don't forget your booties 'cause it's cooooold out there today."

You know, I was looking at this for a while before I realized what this was. That probably would be a good idea.

[Grinner]

Alas, I really have no interest in running play-by-post games. D&D is very much a face-to-face social event for me. However, feel free to steal this idea!

That's understandable.

What's your opinion of IRC games?

[Raine_Sage]

Campaign Idea 1: The Heroic Road Trip

- The PCs all start out as the level 5 heroes of a large city state. Each of them has something to anchor them to this place, be it a loved one, a dream job, or just having lived there all their life and helped to save it from countless perils. Then during the course of what should be a routine adventure, a magical incident flings them halfway across the world, and if they want to see their home again they have to trek all the way back the old fashioned way.

Would obviously require some house rules up front, namely vetoing teleportation, giant eagles, or other means of magic travel. Probably takes place in a low magic setting just to head off those questions, with the event that flings them there being a massive anomaly. DM could add urgency and keep track of the number of days it takes them to make it home again possibly to try and prevent some calamity.

Why I'll never run it: The sheer amount of world building, location fleshing out, and general bookkeeping needed to run a sandbox game of that nature.


Campaign Idea 2: Kingdom Building

- The PCs are each monarchs of a small kingdom. Either currently ruling or in line for the throne, and the game is a heavily political drama based around forming alliances with each other and NPC kingdoms, while expanding their borders and waging war and eventually becoming legendary heroes in the vein of king Aurthur.

Why I'll never run it: Even trimming the kingmaker rules down to the bare minimum when it comes to the actual kingdom building system, it's still too much bookkeeping for the players.

[Silus]

A "story accurate" Fallout: Equestria game using the 3rd party Ponyfinder book for Pathfinder coupled with the 3.5 D20 Modern Apocalypse book. Just...let the players run around a bit and maybe pick up a plot somewhere.

Can't run it because, well, ponies. Almost all of the current players in my group are in that "Ponies are stupid and you're stupid for liking them" category. Also requires a basic understanding of the Fallout: Equestria world, which requires reading/listening to audiobooks.

Also a NWoD game with as many elements as I can fit in (Werewolves, vampires, hunters, etc) in a general Sci-Fi setting.

[Doorhandle]

Granted iu may use this one eveutally buuuuut....

All the elder evils awaken at once. ALL OF THEM. It's a race against time to ensure the're enough earth left behind to save.

Reason I don't wish to run it: Tracking all of the signs is going to be very annoying.