D&D sessions you wish you had

[laeZ1]

So, there's another thread going on, and one of the posts in it made me curious. What are some campaigns you got really excited about, but the DM flaked, or something happened that caused a premature end? Does anybody else have a DM with "campaign A.D.D."?

I suppose, as OP, I should lead by example.

Time Travel. I've had two DMs try it (one of them tried it twice), and it was... very rough going. One of the time our characters had adventures in their dreams, and several times we "woke up" out into "reality". I like the idea of time travel, and I wish I could play in a game where the DM does it well, and with other players who wouldn't abuse (or rather, their characters would abuse) the space-time continuem(sp).

[Story]

It's impossible to have time travel played seriously and maintain suspension of disbelief. Any character with half a brain would abuse the crap out of it. Then your plot goes away and it's just a question of who can become God faster.

[hymer]

I could be said to suffer from that sort of ADD you indicate. I guess about 1/3-1/2 of my campaigns end up shorter than intended. TPK, two players need extended leave, or I just can't seem to find the inspiration I need. It happens.

Some of my friends have tried GMing and after one or two sessions ground to a halt. Which is sad. Others just can't find the time to be DM as much as they (and I) would like. So I'm often enough stuck with the post. Unfortunately, nothing tires me out more than being DM 3-8 times per month and being player once every two months or so.

But what can you do?

[Kaje]

There was one session that actually happened, but I had to miss it for a funeral. It was a game of Returner's Final Fantasy RPG, in a world similar to Stephen King's Dark Tower. The previous session ended with us uncovering a portal that obviously led to our real world, and in the session I missed, the party encountered at least one of the players and waged battle against the demon-possessed GM. They had gotten back to their own world by the end of the session so I missed out entirely.

[SowZ]

It's impossible to have time travel played seriously and maintain suspension of disbelief. Any character with half a brain would abuse the crap out of it. Then your plot goes away and it's just a question of who can become God faster.

That's been the opposite of my experience. You give intense drawbacks for Time Travel and serious risks and this is not the case. I've seen it give great plot.

[HunterOfJello]

A single 3.5 d&d game with a competent DM in the room other than me.

Actually, I'd settle for almost any DM at all as long as they aren't terrible.

[mishka_shaw]

That's been the opposite of my experience. You give intense drawbacks for Time Travel and serious risks and this is not the case. I've seen it give great plot.

Ditto on this. I used time travel and the players did not abuse it one bit (and they are really the sort of people that go out of their way to make things hilariously bad).
I guess the reason they didn't abuse it though was due to them not really knowing how to since the plot of my campaign is all about not knowing what the past was.

My session I wish I had was just recently when the players wanted me to play but I left my campaign notes at work. I caved in and said I would fabricate it on the fly but the whole thing was just lackluster...and it was a really pivotal moment as well.

Edit: Instead of a nice evil speech and kick-ass sub-plots they instead got a rubbish fetch quest and a summary of what the speech WAS going to be.

[AzazelSephiroth]

I have one that was fairly recently to be honest.
A friend of mine had agreed to DM via online video (since I live fairly far away), a steam-punk fantasy. Dark and gritty our first plot hook involved a Jack the Ripper type murderer running around in a strange shadow of Victorian London.
Me and the other players had really gotten into the setting and world concept and my character in particular was quite exciting! I had crafted an Psychic warrior built on maneuverability and "clouding minds"... think Dishonored+The Shadow
I was super excited but after only one session we have yet to play again... a month now... I fear I may never again know what evil lurks in the hearts of men

Another was when I crafted a D20 Modern Apocalypse game that involved cryo-sleep, mutants, an evil mastermind, personal dramas and family connections... all set with cameos from real world people... and then the players just stopped showing up, I lost them one by one to "real world" commitments and just plain lazy attendance... sigh Everyone keeps telling me how much they want to play it again too, but no one will ever show up!

[Twilightwyrm]

I was involved in an Avatar campaign setting a while back (see: https://sites.google.com/site/avatard20/). The game, unfortunately, got off to a rocky start, since the DM was apparently taking a bit too hands off of an approach, and we pretty much ended up just fighting bandits. However, I would have liked to see it through a while longer. Tragically, the other player did not feel the same way, and decided to effectively end it for everyone by walking out (if we had continued, it would have just been me and the DM).

[Krazzman]

There was one PF based campaign. It failed due to me, my GF and another player. At the end we couldn't find any more meetings and dropped it. (I explained it then in somewhat greater detail).

Another Campaign, same DM was an All Dwarven Party. Dwarven Cleric of Clangeddin, Dwarven Cavalier, Angry Dwarven Barbarian and Dwarven "Geomancer" (Druid). We travelled to Baldur's Gate (or a city next to it, can't recall it properly), fought some goblins and investigated a case of comb-stealings. We got to know that this would be a case of Tiamat Cultists and well then it died out due to the DM calling in sick. This was a few months back and well... I never got to the point to play the Dwarven Earth Elemental in a Stone plate... sadly. (I think we reached 3rd level...)

[Pilo]

I wish I had a session where everyone were not cold blooded murderers, where there was an other solution than kill or get killed. Where you put the bad guys in jail instead of burning their maybe-even-not-dead-yet bodies.

[LadyLexi]

I had a D&D campaign that had a really good romance going on between my character and a Paladin on the other side of a war. We left each other at a climatic moment as I went to head off his nations forces that were marching on the capital of my nation and he went to beg his king to seek out peace. We never played out the final battle, the DM became unavailable.

[prufock]

I come up with far more campaign ideas than I actually have time to plan and run, given that we play once a week at most and rotate GMs. The best ones usually get played, but sometimes I wonder if good ideas fall through the cracks. Here's a list of my current plans:

1. Band of the Rose Cross. A long-term, "save the world" type adventure running from level 1 to level 20+. Characters are currently level 6 after about 6 months of play (15 sessions). This is going to be run in stages, taking a break after every 5 levels or so to do something different.

2. The East Road. Another long-term, 1-20 adventure, but more sandbox. Inspired by the West Marches, the players are frontiersmen, going forth and exploring uncharted land at the edge of their expanding empire. Again, this will probably take 2 years or so to actually get through, if it gets that far.

3. Star Wars Shadow Saga. This takes place sort of in parallel to episodes IV-VI. The PCs are rebels, and I'm open to the world changing by their actions. They find Vader and kill him... well, who knows what will happen? Doing this one next as we take a break from Rose Cross. I expect this to last around 6 sessions (two per episode), but it could go longer, hopefully not more than 10 or 12.

4. The Normals. Mutants and Masterminds game where the players make PL 2 regular joes who wake up one morning with superpowers, and no idea why. Total sandbox; the idea is not quite to play yourself, but to do what you would actually do if that happened to you. At the players' request, I've generated their power suites randomly using the Superpower Wiki - I hit random page 3 times for each to create a theme, then built powers around those themes. Expect this to run no more than 5 or 6 sessions.

5. Tomb of Horrors: The Final Chapter. Every year at Halloween I run a horror-themed game. I've done the 3.5 Tomb twice, and updated Return to the Tomb of Horrors and run that. This year people were kind of tired of the Tomb and dying constantly, so we ran something different, but I want to return to it next year. Every time I run it I change things, insert new story elements, twist the original somehow. For this one I'm thinking of changing it dramatically so sections of it should be nearly unrecognizable, though important elements will still come into play, and the layout of the tomb is essentially the same. I'm taking some inspiration from the SAW series.

6. League of Hope: One Year Later. League of Hope was a M&M campaign I ran a few years ago. We finished the main story, but there were plenty of loose ends and I always wanted to return to the story, as did my players. Unfortunately, only two of the original players are still in my group, the others having moved away. I'd still like to run a few one-offs with the group I have now.

7. Paranoia! A one-off session that another group wanted me to run and we just haven't gotten around to it yet.

8. The Weird Wild West. This is more of a setting I've been working on than a story, but I'd love to run a game in this world. It's got cowboys, mages, monsters, trains, and basically a low-powered mishmash of fantasy and western.

I've got a few more seeds of ideas on the backburner as well (including one with time travel, a groundhog-day style adventure, and a godslayer campaign), and a couple that I've abandoned as not up to par.