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Draig
2010-12-21, 01:37 PM
Ok so i decided a while ago to hang up my DMing spurs and take a break and ive realized that the real world sucks lol i will never not wanna be a DNDer SOOOO here is my problem. My group and i went to start up a new campaign and ive realized that halfway through the campaign i was actually running one we did 3 years ago! :smallfurious: So i need some new creative ideas for a campaign setting and story. Just ideas lol so you dont have to post an entire story but a few cp's for your thoughts.

Moginheden
2010-12-21, 01:53 PM
well there are plenty of "the big nasty moved in next door and started eating people" quests. You can do pretty much anything for who the big nasty is. You can even have it be a pair of nasties that may work together against the players, or might eat each other.

Then there's the "you hear about ancient treasure that mysteriously no one has looted yet, you want to try looting it?"

And the ever popular "someone's trying to blow up the world, go stop them!"

Volos
2010-12-21, 01:54 PM
You could always use published materials by WoTC such as the adventure paths. Buf if you are already part way into a campaign, individual adventures could be useful for you. Why not give us an idea of what level your are running at and what sort of chararcters there are in the group? A group with a paladin and a monk will play different than the one with the druid and the ranger. Just off hand I would suggest looking at the Elder Evils for a good idea of something to introduce early in a campaign. It could all build up to a big finish for the PCs, making a good series of adventures without railroading it too hard.

Draig
2010-12-21, 01:58 PM
Well as of right now the party consisted of a Samurai, a Wizard, a Cleric, and a rogue, all of which were roughly in the low levels (below 5th) then the bright idea to pull a mystery machine and "Split up" happend so now i have two parties, one is the Wizard Samurai and the other its the Cleric Rogue.

SamsDisciple
2010-12-21, 02:03 PM
Whenever a group splits up I love to have the creepy insane adventures like a recent one from my group where the group entered a valley of insane people and we had to find the source of all the insanity and shut it down.

Volos
2010-12-21, 02:42 PM
Mind Control, Illusion Magic. Wait untill they are asleep (aka willing to fail their saves) and give them all hell. Make the two parties turn on eachother in turns, having one half awake and aware of what is going on but illusioned to think the other party is monsters. And have the second party mind controlled to fight against the others (maybe illusioned as well if needed).

Have fun with that.

Draig
2010-12-22, 02:20 PM
see one of the biggest problems with illusions is that even though in game knowledge would suggest it was something they have never encountered my group and i have been playing for the past 8 years so its hard to actually stump my players or even excite them to new lengths.

Trekkin
2010-12-22, 02:39 PM
Have you asked your players if they want to abort or take a break from this carbon copy of a campaign (alliteration is always awesome) and do something completely different?

Other than that...perhaps add some variant of Spelljammer rules via an incoming (ideally by crashing, implying a further external element capable of breaking spelljamming ships) neogi or illithid fleet? heck, have the lair of the local dragon be found empty, with a bunch of skeletons carting off the corpse to make a new boneship to replace their crashed one. If you want to go more deeply into it, the former ideas lend themselves well to having one ship lift off, carrying with it knowledge of a pre-spelljamming planet ripe for the conquering...and the PCs rushing to cobble together enough of a ship to fly after it and stop it.

nedz
2010-12-22, 02:51 PM
Its hard to know what problem you want us to help you with ?

Are you simple out of fresh ideas ?

Or is the problem that you have a split party ?

Well I'm going to try suggesting answers for both of these questions at the same time.

Give both groups contradictory missions.

Have them both end up supporting different sides in the same dispute. I can't provide the details here, I don't know your players. Do try to avoid deus ex machina though, base your plot upon choices you expect them to make.

Create an interlock.
Have group A acquire, at some trouble, some McGuffin X
Have group B acquire, at some trouble, some McGuffin Y
Make both groups require X+Y

Or A requires Y, and B requires X.
This works best if X and Y have similiar names, and possible also look similar.
Ideally their names can be confused verbaly:smallbiggrin:
Best still if they don't realise their error for some time.:smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

Draig
2010-12-22, 03:22 PM
oh yeah i should simplify my question.

What are some exciting campaign or quest ideas?
How can i make it more interesting with two split parties?
Is there a way i can make my players start actually acting like their characters as opposed to Jim,bob,stan, and steve (not real names just they act like themselves too too too too too too friggin much in the campaigns n thats where we hit alot of problems)

nedz
2010-12-22, 07:02 PM
Its very tricky.
I like to occasionally pose moral dilemmas.
Its interesting to see which players choose options which disagree with their own preferences instead of their character preferences. Its often suprising.

Mylee
2010-12-22, 07:11 PM
A very good way to make your players act more like characters is to have them all write character background. I will help them develop character flaws and emotions.
On of my DMs made the whole party do this and it helped us all be stronger as a party. It can also make for fun side adventures.

Draig
2010-12-23, 01:51 PM
Its very tricky.
I like to occasionally pose moral dilemmas.
Its interesting to see which players choose options which disagree with their own preferences instead of their character preferences. Its often suprising.

I do too except after the first couple of moral dilemmas my party has defaulted to the "Will it get us gold?" and the "If i DONT help so and so with this problem can i still continue the main quest?" and when i answer to the second "No u have to help this person to proceed" i have a few of my players start to make choo choo sounds.


A very good way to make your players act more like characters is to have them all write character background. I will help them develop character flaws and emotions.
On of my DMs made the whole party do this and it helped us all be stronger as a party. It can also make for fun side adventures.

i ALWAYS have them write backstories and a few are interesting except i have a player who started his with "Long ago in a galaxy far far away" for a 3.5 dungeon crawl... i kinda didnt push that issue.

randomhero00
2010-12-23, 02:01 PM
I've been toying with the idea I got from "Lost" the tv show. Make a huge mysterious island that messes with time. The only way to get off is to build a ship. If they sail west, they head backward in time and find the island again. If they head East they go forwards in time (and find the island again). To leave they must do something illogical, like heading north for a few days, then turning around and heading south.

Draig
2010-12-23, 02:06 PM
I've been toying with the idea I got from "Lost" the tv show. Make a huge mysterious island that messes with time. The only way to get off is to build a ship. If they sail west, they head backward in time and find the island again. If they head East they go forwards in time (and find the island again). To leave they must do something illogical, like heading north for a few days, then turning around and heading south.

That is amazing like seriously with dnd physics and all unfortunatly the team in which i have now is kinda... well dumb. Two of them might be able to figure it out on their own but the others well.... lets say they would deem themselves lords of the island kingdom and start a "Lord of Flies" disaster. plus i dont need our few female players scared off by the rest of the team trying to "increase the population"

Sillycomic
2010-12-23, 06:30 PM
Ideas for a dumb party?


Hmmm.

Macguffin fell out of the sky that is powerful and awesome and causing lots of monsters and bbegs to want to get it.

It split into 2 as it fell out of the sky. One fell on the west side of the continent, one on the east side.

So, now they gotta go get it. They gotta fight their way to each piece of the maguffin, get it, fight their way back and on top of that put the thing together so it can stop...

Ummm, I don't know, an alien apocalypse? Sure, that works.

Moginheden
2010-12-23, 07:44 PM
If you've been playing for a while bring back an old campaign, but about 20 years, (or more) into the future. Start the players as lowbies trying to get by in the world their "will it get us gold?" counterparts have looted dry.

Depending on how selfish the players were in that campaign you could have their old characters setup as the bad guys.

By having them face their old selves you theoretically will make them try out something new and role play new character types to beat them.... in practice it probably won't work. But could be interesting.

Moginheden
2010-12-23, 08:03 PM
Another thing you could do since you've already started the same campaign that was run before is make it obvious that it IS the same campaign, but the PCs aren't the same party. Possibly have them meet their previous selves from afar and make the new PCs do setup tasks that are required for the old PCs to have succeeded. You could even throw in a new BBEG that the old PCs didn't know about because the new PCs dealt with it. (either working directly with the old BBEG or just with similar goals.)

Alternately have the PCs find out that whatever they did last time actually made things worse somehow and now they have to stop their old selves, (A necessary fail (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NecessaryFail)) This could be through divination spells of a friendly cleric/mage or more directly through deific involvement. If you want you could always have a time-traveling wizard to set this up... but that doesn't fit quite as well into D&D, (although I'd expect a wish spell could work.)

Gabe the Bard
2010-12-23, 08:21 PM
I agree with Moginheden. Since you've already found yourself reliving the past, you could take it even further and have them experience the aftermath of a previous campaign. If it's a campaign in a different setting, even better. Maybe the mystery machine is a plane shifting device, and it gets broken when they arrive.

Then you could show what their old characters did after the end of their story. It could have been just a few years later, or maybe generations have gone by and there's an empire that is building a death star to wipe out the rebellious continents...

You can take it over the top and have a whole world that was built up by their former characters. It could also show the players just how much their characters are being played like themselves.

Gabe the Bard
2010-12-23, 08:34 PM
If you want you could always have a time-traveling wizard to set this up... but that doesn't fit quite as well into D&D, (although I'd expect a wish spell could work.)

There were the Chronomancers from AD&D 2nd edition.