Campaign Ideas You Have Had

[spinningdice]

Monolith realm, an ancient world near covered in city, pretty much everything had been tamed, civilised, or explored. Sort of Shadowrun but pure fantasy. Ancient guilds scheme against each other, hiring adventurers to make runs against opposition.
Sort of magic matures and controlls near everything. Of course a few years later I found out about Ravnica, which is kind of similar concept.

Broken City of Doors: One of the largest cities is laid under seige by powerful magic, the warring wizards tear reality apart in the city. What's left was sealed away for a decade in the hopes the tears would heal. Now the rulers have allowed explorers into this city and found these rifts lead to other worlds and planes... some of which have valuable resources.

Not Cthulhu: Using Call of Cthulhu rules, let the players know that's what it is. Have every adventure actually turn out to be completely conventional in nature with no supernatural elements at all (figure I can probably get about 2 adventures before the players catch on... At this point maybe actually introduce supernatural elements - make them investigate it more like normal investigators would, rather than expecting mythos elements everywhere.

[Kane0]

Oh one time I planned a BBEG to do the final confrontation inside a battlemech, the party fighting it from the rooftops of the city as it unloads weapons and tries to stomp PCs.
Missiles equate to Minute Meteors, lasers to lightning bolts, flamers to Ag's scorchers, etc

There was also the planned mini-campaign to start at a fort and slowly turn it into a training ground of fiend-hunter zealots, eventually taking a crack team into hell or the abyss to wreck some face doom-style.

And that reverse-hexcrawl idea. Party were monstrous PCs in the wilderness that had the job of pushing back and raiding the omnipresent 'civilization' that kept expanding and encroaching. Get off my lawn!

[Bohandas]

Oh one time I planned a BBEG to do the final confrontation inside a battlemech, the party fighting it from the rooftops of the city as it unloads weapons and tries to stomp PCs.
Missiles equate to Minute Meteors, lasers to lightning bolts, flamers to Ag's scorchers, etc

The oasers; treated as electricity damage or treated as searing light but with lightning bolt's damage and range?

[Draconi Redfir]

Small Woodland Critters
in a forrest or grove, a small collection of creatures begins to grow. each born of unique circumstances, giving them abilities and templates that allow them to just BARELY pass the border between ferality and Sentience. Each is unique in orgin, but eventually they all share the same home. Then... /something/ happens. no idea what. but the small magical woodland critters must band together to save the forrest.

Unique creature concepts only, no "awakend fox" or anything like that. Be a rabbit that was once a holy avenger that was hit with a polymorph spell, a squirrel that was struck by lightning while eating the acorn of a magical tree, a hedgehog who wandered in on a cult's summoning ritual and crossed the circle as it flooded with hell-energy, giving it a demonic template. something unique. MAYBE one "escaped famillier" critter. but no more then that. And no dialouge. comminicate with actions, not words.

Mainly born after i played a paladin who found a holy avenger, which was then transformed via polymorph spell by an evil loremaster into a Baby Celestial Dire Bunny. figure this could be a neat story for the rabbit to meet up with other critters with simmilar stories and go on adventures together. this idea was only enforced when i joined a comminity who later came up with the idea that someone's pet rabbit in minecraft who was killed came back as an evil spirit and started haunting everyone.

would really like to play this game as a player in a play-by-post setting, but have never been able to find a story, a DM, or a way to reasonably run a campain where the PC's have very few, if any ability scores higher then a 5. if i could just think of a plot i might try to run it as a DM, and just have everything that isn't a woodland critter have super high ability scores, multiply a goblin's scores by ten and give him a "huge" template to make up for the fact that he'd be facing off against rabbits and weasels and the like.

So after a recent Way of the Wicked session (Don't worry, spoiler-free.) i /think/ i might have a possible plot for this, or at least one arc of one.

during way of the wicked, we entered an encounter and our witch spent her turns using summon monster 1 to summon in a bunch of frogs to help out. Near the end of the battle, only one frog was left, and it got drained by a Wraith, turning it into a frog-wraith before dissapearing again. The GM then make an off-handed remark about how the Frog's home swamp will soon be covered in frog-wraiths. Soo that could be a possible plot for the small woodland critters campain. A sudden outbreak of critter-wraiths in the woods.

Not sure if it'd be able to carry an entire campain, but it'd be a start if nothing else.

[8BitNinja]

In the Army Now: You are a member of an army or a militia defending against the impending monster and/or human invasion. The catch? You aren't special adventurers with special snowflake powers, you're regular infantrymen.

[Vknight]

It all starts with a bang and the party has too deal with the fact they are in a group of Case Morphs(The system is Eclipse Phase), and are playing the characters they made but they are missing about 24 hours are all now on Venus and in Case Morphs with no clear rhyme or reason too it

[Christopher K.]

I've been toying with a small Star Trek campaign, following a ship somewhere around Ferengi space on a five-year mission. Along the way, they find out that a fugitive from the Federation has been hiding out among a race of humanoid plants, and the crew has to negotiate the return of the fugitive, making a peaceful First Contact, and all the classic Trek trappings, including a few sessions with some clear or at least deliberate allegory for present-day issues.

In terms of where it'd stand in relation to the current Star Trek stuff(barring Discovery, obviously), probably a few decades after Beyond, so there's opportunity to explore the consequences in the setting that the Abrams reboot brought about, but also late enough that some of the later concepts such as holodecks and more peaceful contact with iconic races like Klingons and Romulans would be possible.

[Bohandas]

Small Woodland Critters
in a forrest or grove, a small collection of creatures begins to grow. each born of unique circumstances, giving them abilities and templates that allow them to just BARELY pass the border between ferality and Sentience. Each is unique in orgin, but eventually they all share the same home. Then... /something/ happens. no idea what. but the small magical woodland critters must band together to save the forrest.

Unique creature concepts only, no "awakend fox" or anything like that. Be a rabbit that was once a holy avenger that was hit with a polymorph spell, a squirrel that was struck by lightning while eating the acorn of a magical tree, a hedgehog who wandered in on a cult's summoning ritual and crossed the circle as it flooded with hell-energy, giving it a demonic template. something unique. MAYBE one "escaped famillier" critter. but no more then that. And no dialouge. comminicate with actions, not words.

Mainly born after i played a paladin who found a holy avenger, which was then transformed via polymorph spell by an evil loremaster into a Baby Celestial Dire Bunny. figure this could be a neat story for the rabbit to meet up with other critters with simmilar stories and go on adventures together. this idea was only enforced when i joined a comminity who later came up with the idea that someone's pet rabbit in minecraft who was killed came back as an evil spirit and started haunting everyone.

would really like to play this game as a player in a play-by-post setting, but have never been able to find a story, a DM, or a way to reasonably run a campain where the PC's have very few, if any ability scores higher then a 5. if i could just think of a plot i might try to run it as a DM, and just have everything that isn't a woodland critter have super high ability scores, multiply a goblin's scores by ten and give him a "huge" template to make up for the fact that he'd be facing off against rabbits and weasels and the like.

Check out The Noble Wild

[8BitNinja]

I thought of one game for GURPS (or any other generic system) where a squad of future or modern explorers/soldiers/idiots messing with time and space travel end up in a medieval fantasy world. Other the gear they have at the start they have no support from the other side.

[JBPuffin]

I thought of one game for GURPS (or any other generic system) where a squad of future or modern explorers/soldiers/idiots messing with time and space travel end up in a medieval fantasy world. Other the gear they have at the start they have no support from the other side.

Minus the magic, I remember that Creighton novel :).

[Eladrinblade]

Basically a heroes of battle campaign, where the PC's are elite special forces for a magical city, and are sent on difficult missions after a briefing/visit to the quartermaster/getting spell buffs/etc

Campaign for a specific PC my cousin made, an evil fiendish-blooded half-orc barbarian/sorcerer/spellsword, set in faerun. He basically just wanted to do adventuring as an evil character. I had him start as a member of an orc tribe that was assaulting a dwarf stronghold in the spine of the world, got caught between two tunnel collapses and had to navigate caves to get out. Navigated a labrynth made by umber hulks and fought monstrous spiders at the exit, won, fell unconscious from poison and woke up as a captive of drow slavers. He was going to survive being a prisoner in a gladiatorial arena in a drow city, get sold to a noble house to be a slave soldier, and somehow escape and navigate back to the surface. Deal with the elves and fey of the forest he escapes into. He could then decide what to do from there. Either go adventuring in the silver marches, or go back to his tribe and eventually take it over, maybe form a horde. I had ideas for his eventual party members, including a female drow rogue/assassin and a temporal-stasis'd netherese archmage.

I'd love to play as a solitary elf in a campaign set exclusively in a massive elven forest.

Likewise with a party of dwarves in some big mountain range full of enemies and monsters and lost holds and caves.

I'd also love to play as a full party of adventurers (6-7 member crew that's perfectly well-rounded) who can just do anything. Eventually get an airship crewed by a clan of gnome experts, use that as their mobile base of operations, maybe with a portal back to a floating castle. Just a full world sandbox. I'd need a godlike AI to run something like that, though.

I'm currently running a very slow-paced campaign for my wife's first D&D character, a half-elf druid. It's set in a rural land of ranchers and farmers adjacent to a big elven forest and a human knights'n'lords kingdom. It's a sandbox. Her father was killed right before it started. Right now she's leaving her home village to find out why her elf mom left them when she was a small child and is tracking her down. She'll gradually form a group of her own. The campaign is about her taking over as the local druid and also at least temporarily as the local ranger until she finds a replacement for her father. There'll be a war that rages across her homeland that she can react to in some way. The BBEG is an ancient elf lich witch that leads a coven of witches who in turn lead a savage realm of human/elf/orc separationists. The BBEG created a slenderman and it acts as the BBEG of the first ten levels or so of the campaign, though it has yet to get involved. After that, the lich witch wants to summon zalgo to the world and use it to merge with and take control of the giant tree of life. But that's all a slow burn and it'll mainly be a sandbox with a soft time limit.

I intend to run a pbp sandbox campaign on here someday that'd be set in the same setting, but closer to the knights'n'lords kingdom (it's frontier, actually). That one will be a pure sandbox experience with no big apocalypse-preventing plotline. The group starts in the only large town of the region and can do whatever they feel like, as long as it's adventuring. Hard cap of 12th level, can't leave the sandbox. Tons of dungeons and plot-lines to be done, big hex map to explore. Craft their own items, own property/vehicles, use mounts and animals, plan expeditions, hire npc's, the whole shebang. Core only, but with some of my houserules. No kid gloves.

Solo campaign as a half-elf beguiler detective in Sharn. Start off as a night beat patrolman in a particular neighborhood. Become a watch detective, then a crime task force operative, then a freelance inquisitive and royal anti-spy. Write for a newspaper as an investigative reporter, save the city from insidious monsters and crimelords and foreign operatives, do some cat-burglary or ocean's 11 stuff himself. Pretty noir, of course.

I'm basically a big fan of sandboxes that have plot-lines that need attended to eventually, but not Oots-style constant anti-BBEG save-the-world quests. Like, a plot-line where you ought to hurry is fine every now and then, but I want lots of free time too. Freedom in general, really. I also prefer to have one player, one DM, where the player can either run one character with soft control of npcs (like BG) or a full party (like IWD).

[Aneurin]

Fools Rush In

An Only War game where, instead of being members of the Imperial Guard, the PCs are actually serving as armsmen and armswomen aboard a Rogue Trader's ship. So instead of loyal service to the God-Emperor of Mankind killing His enemies, the PCs are working for a profit-driven sociopath and trying not to get gruesomely killed by his latest scheme. It's proving to be a pretty interesting experience, on the whole, and enjoyable. I'm certainly having fun converting some of the classic RT adventures for a grunts-eye view.

The Devoured

Haven't run this one, but kind of want to. Another 40k game, but a cross-line one about the tyranids attempt to eat an Imperial world - with the PCs playing the defenders.

Several groups of PCs, that the players swap between for different missions. So, a Dark Heresy party who does the Enemy Within (rooting out Genestealers, and opportunistic cultists and maintaining civil order), a Rogue Trader party acting as a Navy crew and fighting the space war, and the poor Only War PCs who get the hold the line. Probably no Deathwatch, definitely no Black Crusade.

The game would start with the Dark Heresy team investigating a cult and, eventually, finding genestealers. Then the action would switch to the Only War group, who're investigating a listening post gone silent - they find bodyparts and either a lictor or a brood of hormagaunts or five. Then the group would switch to their RT characters, off investigating some strange sensor readings on the edge of the system...

The pace would be demanding, and the game split into three arcs: Infestation, Invasion and either Consumption or Extermination depending on whether the PCs' actions are tipping the balance or not. It would also be highly lethal, especially for the DH team who'll be up against genestealerson a regular basis.

The missons, of course, are interlinked - and have consequences for each other. If the DH party got murdered by the 'stealers before they could report their presence, the Only War party aren't issued much in the way of additional heavy gear for their recon mission. If the OW and the DH parties died or otherwise failed tor report the 'Nids' presence, the RT party's ship is the only one sent to investigate. If the Only War party manage to defend the generatorium plant against all the odds, there isn't a riot later... and far fewer civilians get eaten when the cordon does eventually break.

Sadly, it's a little more abitious than I want to take on right now.

[Bohandas]

The gods' magic hat with the names of all intelligent beings in it has been stolen by the dark lord. It's become clear that a bunch of normal prople are going to have to go after it because the gods cannot choose champions without it.

[Bohandas]

The Call of not-Cthulhu
This is a Call of Cthulhu campaign in which the Cthulhu Mythos has been replaced by something similar but distinct such as the Ruinous Powers or the Ogdru Jahad

[Durkoala]

Not Cthulhu: Using Call of Cthulhu rules, let the players know that's what it is. Have every adventure actually turn out to be completely conventional in nature with no supernatural elements at all (figure I can probably get about 2 adventures before the players catch on... At this point maybe actually introduce supernatural elements - make them investigate it more like normal investigators would, rather than expecting mythos elements everywhere.

You could call it Scooby-Doothulu...

[Vknight]

Oh a colony game where the group are on a lush fertile and relatively hospitable planet with mostly Oceans. Subnautica style but well; 1 they wanna get back through the Pandora get too confirm this. 2 they are the initial scouts not colonists so they need to survive with minimal equipment. 3 as always... is it really truly as safe as you think it could be?

[spinningdice]

The Call of not-Cthulhu
This is a Call of Cthulhu campaign in which the Cthulhu Mythos has been replaced by something similar but distinct such as the Ruinous Powers or the Ogdru Jahad

I kinda like Call of Cthulhu, but I go hot and cold on the cthulhu mythos, I've thought about just ignoring the core mythology and just use Werewolves, Vampires, orv pick a mythology and stick with stuff from there (Roman might be good, or Norse & Celtic).

[2D8HP]

....Not Cthulhu: Using Call of Cthulhu rules, let the players know that's what it is. Have every adventure actually turn out to be completely conventional in nature with no supernatural elements at all .....

The Call of not-Cthulhu
This is a Call of Cthulhu campaign in which the Cthulhu Mythos has been replaced....

I kinda like Call of Cthulhu, but I go hot and cold on the cthulhu mythos, I've thought about just ignoring the core mythology......

Back in the 1980's I did use the Call of Cthullu rules to GM a modern day espionage adventure game without any supernatural elements (discovering and foiling an assassination plot).

I thought it worked well.

[Potato_Priest]

I want to DM a game where the players get to make up details about the world.

Give each player, say, 3 "setting points" where they get to describe practices, locations, nations, or whatever else.

Have them tell me everything at session zero, and I'll fill in the rest.

[Cluedrew]

There are some pretty awesome ideas in this thread. Most of our campaigns take the form of "well let's get people together and see what happens" so I usually don't aim for anything to crazy myself.

One idea I always wanted to run but never have (and probably never will for reasons) is pitch a campaign with a hidden twist that will push people out of their comfort zone. Get people to write character sheets and character descriptions. Then: "Everybody ready? OK, hand your character sheet to the person on the left. Let's go." An interesting twist on pre-gens.

[Blue Duke]

I want to DM a game where the players get to make up details about the world.

Give each player, say, 3 "setting points" where they get to describe practices, locations, nations, or whatever else.

Have them tell me everything at session zero, and I'll fill in the rest.

Look up Dawn of Worlds - its pretty neat for world building (if you remember that you can have Avatars do stuff for much cheaper once you get to certain stages)

[Bohandas]

Go To Hell
The party are a demonic warband fighting their way from the Abyss to Baator


Double Reverse Dungeon
The party are mind flayers defending their settlement from an outbreak of spawn creating undead that has already turned all of their thralls

[Drakeburn]

Superheroes + My Little Pony

One idea I had for a campaign I had a while ago was a superhero campaign that took place in the My Little Pony Universe. Well, more specifically taking place in the world of enchanted comic books. Not Power Ponies, but rather a different kind of superhero team (from what you can call a competing comic book company).

For this idea, I wasn't sure about a few things...

- Whether these comics were in Equestria, or in the Equestria Girls world.

- What system to run this idea on. The best systems that come to mind is Fate Core with Venture City rules, or Mutants and Masterminds.

- Even if it can be run with Mutants and Masterminds, how exactly would you stat ponies, unicorns, and pegasi?

[Bohandas]

There's No Such Thing As A Rare Book

A Call of Cthulhu game set in modern times in which paranormal mythos activity has skyrocketed due to the fact that the Necronomicon, Pnakotic Fragments, Book of Eibon, Revelations of Glakii, etc are now freely available on the Miskatonic University website (and those of similar institutes of higher learning) to anybody who is interested.

This campaign idea was inspired by the realization of how many occult texts I have saved on my actual real life cellphone (I've got the Lesser Key of Solomon, the Greater Key of Solomon, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Revolt in The Stars, Zhuangzi, Works and Days, the Principia Discordia, the Prose Edda, a document detailing the Catholic rite of exorcism, and the Jefferson Bible. None of these were particularly hard to come by)

(EDIT: And in the time since I posted that, since I was thinking about it, I've also picked up the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Zohar, and the Gospel of Judas)

[spinningdice]

Reminds me of a campaign I read about where some entrepreneus put signs uncovered in an old tomb onto biscuit tins and sent them around the globe. IIRC correctly it was an odd subplot since among the symbols were an elder sign which kept the others in check, but had the players tracking down where these symbols came from thinking it was some global conspiracy.

[Joe the Rat]

I'm using something like that for a recurring villain. He's basically a disembodied intelligence that can see and influence the would through instances of is personal symbol. Which a millenia ago he managed to introduce as a letter in the local "evil tomes and dark cults" language.

It's like having the poop emoji as your phylactery... every poop emoji.

[Breitheamh]

One idea I've had was a short one off adventure mystery based on the Pied Piper.

The PCs wander into a town and find that there is growing suspicion and fear because some local children have gone missing. After some investigation, they find that the friendly bard who everybody loves is not quite as friendly as he seems...

I've tried to run it a couple times, but I keep screwing up the reveal. I'm just not very good at running mysteries.

[Arbane]

A few games that might be good for these:

Oh a colony game where the group are on a lush fertile and relatively hospitable planet with mostly Oceans. Subnautica style but well; 1 they wanna get back through the Pandora get too confirm this. 2 they are the initial scouts not colonists so they need to survive with minimal equipment. 3 as always... is it really truly as safe as you think it could be?

Blue Planet, maybe?

For the 'fuzzy woodland creatures' game, maybe Bunnies and Burrows.

For the 'aspects of gods' idea, Godbound?

[Bohandas]

I'm using something like that for a recurring villain. He's basically a disembodied intelligence that can see and influence the would through instances of is personal symbol. Which a millenia ago he managed to introduce as a letter in the local "evil tomes and dark cults" language.

It's like having the poop emoji as your phylactery... every poop emoji.

That reminds me a bit of two things

1.) Good Omens, by Sir Terry Pratchett, wherein a minor plot point was that a demon had meddled with the design of one of the UK's highways, causing it to be shaped like a rune of dark and occult significance with the upshot that that rune now appears on maps of England and every time someone drives down that highway it acts as a sort of demonic prayer wheel sending out evil energies

2.) The webcomic All Night Laundry, which involves, among other weird things, a lovecraftian entity trying to gain entry into our world via a means that seems to involve trying to get a certain symbol distributed around

[MrNobody]

Devourer Dungeon.
All players wake up in the same room: they don't know each other, they come fron different regions, settings, timelines.
They were exploring a dungeon with their former party until they opened a door, all went black and they woke up in this current situation.

They are in the Devourer Dungeon, a living demiplane that feeds out of adveturer he 'fishes' around in real dungeons.
The DD replicates real dungeons, in a random sequence (you wander around in a kobold cave, you think you found the exit and... boom! Prisons in hell!) filled with traps and monsters, that are its digestive system. Everyone that dies is in fact eaten by DD itself (body... and soul).

Dungeon after dungeon, trap after trap, this game would be a survival game where each dead weights on the group. In fact each death in a dungeon makes DD stronger, which means that in the next dungeon traps will have an higher DC, or monsters will have more HPs... and so on.