Campaign Ideas You Have Had

[Jay R]

You grew up in a small village in the middle of a haunted forest, with no knowledge of the rest of the world except that some old folks talk about how much better it was back when there was a king.

Several adventures into it, you will get past the forest into the bigger cities, and learn that it all went bad after one of the knights led a revolt against the king.

Eventually you will learn that you are adventuring in the lawless times 50 years after the fall of Camelot.

[TurboGhast]

I would find that very hard considering you have to take care of a whole party yet only one can play at a time. If I ever split the party it would be into two groups.



Lots of princesses.

Yeah, getting the campaign to move at a reasonable pace would be a serious challenge. The easiest way I can think of to get it to work is Play-by-Post, since that allows you to move multiple plot threads forward simultaneously easier because there's more time between each player's action and the DM's response. I'd have to prepare a lot before actually starting the game, since running five or so solo campaigns in one connected world would be the greatest DMing challenge I've ever faced.

[Bohandas]

The Matrix Has You, Neo:

A seemingly-ordinary campaign is peppered with numerous small_{wake up}clues that the PCs are_{please wake up}under the thrall of a lich_{this isn't real}or aboleth_{WAKE UP}and are really just_{this isn't real} moldering away instead of_{WAKE UP} adventuring, and have been for years...

Or that the monsters and villains they've been fighting are actually the controller's enemies (granted Apocalypse Stone already sort of did this)

[Drakeburn]

Princess Power! :P

I'm not entirely sure why, honestly.

Does it always need to be princesses? What is wrong with Princes?

For instance, five young men of noble blood are to wed to five young noble women in an arranged marriage. Where those five "princes" go from there might be really interesting.

[BTW JNA, can you please clear out your inbox? I've been trying to get a hold of you for a while now]

[NickChaisson]

I have three game ideas that I've been wanting to do for ages now but my players aren't as excited as I am about the ideas so they are on hold at the moment lol.

One is an Animorphs game in Mutants and Masterminds for awhile now. Basically the same premise of the books. Having the players covertly fighting the alien invasion while anyone they know could be a yerk host.

Another idea is a Harry Potter game. Basically it is summer break but none of the parents have seen/heard from their kids. No one at the school has responded to anyone either. So the players (playing as the parents) show up at Hogwarts to find out what's going on. It appears that the school is on a lock down of sorts and no one who's gone in as come out. So they must venture in. I would try to run this by emphasising resource management and having a large, explorable map that has lots of secrets and such.

The last is a power Rangers game. There are elves who feed off of human creativity. So one human discovered them and betrayed humanity by showing the elves how to access the mortal realm (their society is falling apart as it has been sealed off for the most part). Power Rangers are recruited as part of a band and must use rock and roll to defeat creativity stealing elves.

The largest issue with me running these games is that none of my players care about Animorphs, Harry potter or power Rangers lol

[Mikemical]

World of Darkness meets Ugly Americans: There is no Masquerade, Paradox or Veil, and magical creatures(Vampires, Ghouls, Werewolves, Mages, Fey, etc) have to integrate into society working whatever jobs they can find, occassionally stopping those who would try to destroy the frail peace there is(the Sabbat, Black Spiral Dancers, Nephandi, ISIS, Cthul-tists, etc) all the while trying to pay their taxes. May or may not decay into "MAGICAL AS F**K GTA".

[JAL_1138]

Or that the monsters and villains they've been fighting are actually the controller's enemies (granted Apocalypse Stone already sort of did this)

Ah, Apocalypse Stone, or "How to absolutely, definitively, once-and-for-all end the campaign and characters forever."

Anyhow, I was actually thinking of avojding the "the monsters are really your captor's enemies or innocent civillians" thing; it's been done too often. That's likely where their first thoughts will go—and then the owlbear mauls the heck out of them while they're standing around trying to decide if it's really an owlbear or a poor peasant villager they're being tricked into fighting. Muahaha...

For extra effect, in addition to the creepy little_{wake up} hints, you might throw in "nightmares" of being chained up in a prison cell, so malnourished and withered as to barely be able to struggle, hair and teeth falling out, with oozing open bedsores and with skin so ruined from starvation and infection it splits or sloughs off at the slightest movement in the shackes. Keep these visions infrequent, but make sure the descriptions are consistent each time they have these "nightmares."

Spice it up with sudden, but brief pangs of crippling hunger or debilitating thirst that nothing can sate, no matter how much they consume, or severe pain in their wrists and ankles, or suchlike when the PCs are awake.

The real question is: are any of these things_{this isn't real}indications of something that's actually happening? Are they getting glimpses of true reality when they see this stuff, or is someone just messing with their heads?

[8BitNinja]

Does it always need to be princesses? What is wrong with Princes?

For instance, five young men of noble blood are to wed to five young noble women in an arranged marriage. Where those five "princes" go from there might be really interesting.

[BTW JNA, can you please clear out your inbox? I've been trying to get a hold of you for a while now]

Think of what you can do with all of that influence and resources.

[Bohandas]

"The Political Campaign" - Set in the Planescape multiverse but possibly more like Paranoia in tone. The PCs are devils living in Avernus. An election is coming up to determine who will control the civil internal matters about which Bel does not care as well as the 1% of the layer's budget not earmarked for military spending. The PCs are attached either to the Authoritarian-Fascist Party - whose ideology promotes brutal rigid heirarchies in which the powerful prey upon the weak, or the Procrustean Party - who seek to stamp out all individuality and make everybody exactly identical and interchangable. The protagonists will dig up dirt on rivals, assassinate political enemies, and fill out reams and reams of forms notifying intent to dig up dirt and assassinate political enemies.

[JBPuffin]

Lights Out! - Everyone over 18 disappears suddenly, and monsters are popping up from God knows where; fortunately, whatever forces that stole away the adults have also granted the kids superpowers! Hurray...right? I'd probably use this as an opportunity to use Maher's system by the same name as the campaign (kicked it, been keeping up with news, but haven't done much with it), but the idea began as a setting for Mutants and Masterminds based on a dream.

Multiversal Maelstrom - Somewhere between Homestuck (the webcomic) and Fudge/FATE (the game systems) lies a campaign about a group of video gamers being sucked into the game, handed a random set of powers based in part on their personalities/previous playing, and given a new life as part and pixel of their Server. Each character would have a title consisting of Role (constant throughout a character's in-universe career) and Element (chosen randomly upon creation); the abilities from these grow naturally as the character gains experience. Multiple magic systems would exist (stolen from the players' favorite media) and be mechanically distinct from one another to enforce the notion. Beyond that, it's a sandbox setting with events happening at all scales. Go crazy.

[Bohandas]

Ah, Apocalypse Stone, or "How to absolutely, definitively, once-and-for-all end the campaign and characters forever."

Anyhow, I was actually thinking of avojding the "the monsters are really your captor's enemies or innocent civillians" thing; it's been done too often. That's likely where their first thoughts will go—and then the owlbear mauls the heck out of them while they're standing around trying to decide if it's really an owlbear or a poor peasant villager they're being tricked into fighting. Muahaha...

For extra effect, in addition to the creepy little_{wake up} hints, you might throw in "nightmares" of being chained up in a prison cell, so malnourished and withered as to barely be able to struggle, hair and teeth falling out, with oozing open bedsores and with skin so ruined from starvation and infection it splits or sloughs off at the slightest movement in the shackes. Keep these visions infrequent, but make sure the descriptions are consistent each time they have these "nightmares."

Spice it up with sudden, but brief pangs of crippling hunger or debilitating thirst that nothing can sate, no matter how much they consume, or severe pain in their wrists and ankles, or suchlike when the PCs are awake.

The real question is: are any of these things_{this isn't real}indications of something that's actually happening? Are they getting glimpses of true reality when they see this stuff, or is someone just messing with their heads?

Or we could combine both. The heroic adventure is the first matrix with the drab office buildings, the monstrous-looking peasants are the second matrix with the robots and the post-apocalyptic wasteland, and chained to a wall hallucinating is the unseen true reality

[8BitNinja]

My oldest ever campaign idea involved an antagonist named The Dragon King who was a guy who had a scepter to control dragons. He then used his power to build up an army of monsters and tried to conquer the entire land. Besides that, that was about it when it came to the plot. Also, dungeons doubles as an underground network to different towns. The world had no roads, but they had subterranean mazes instead.

Never thought about it until recently, but that is a terrible mode of transportation.

[Bohandas]

My oldest ever campaign idea involved an antagonist named The Dragon King who was a guy who had a scepter to control dragons. He then used his power to build up an army of monsters and tried to conquer the entire land. Besides that, that was about it when it came to the plot. Also, dungeons doubles as an underground network to different towns. The world had no roads, but they had subterranean mazes instead.

Never thought about it until recently, but that is a terrible mode of transportation.

What if all planets shared a single underworld, so by building your roads underground you could potentially build roads to anywhere

[Draconi Redfir]

none of these have born fruit sadly, mainly just ideas i had in my head.

The Necromaster
Years ago a powerful necromancer ruled the land. but was defeated by a group of heroes, his power destroyed, and his spirit crushed. Despite all of this, he was able to kill the adventurers in his death throes, leaving the lot of them as corpses in his throne room. Years later, and much of the world has forgotten and recovered, the necromancer's tower still standing as a decaying landmark and little else. Eventually however, the necromancer's spirit returns to his body, but with only a fraction of a fraction of the power he once had. unable to move his body, the necromancer re-animates the heroes who had killed him as various undead. a skeleton that pulls himself out of his own decaying flesh, a ghost, a ghoul, a mummy, anything he can get. the newborn undead must now go out and collect crystals and artifacts of power, so their master may drain their magic to restore his own.

This concept was mainly done to subvert the "your first deventure starts in a tavern" trope, as well as playing the "good and just heroes". as my real-life D&D group doesn't allow evil or undead characters. planned on dming this for my real life freinds, but then i never worked on it and we kinda drifted apart.


Godless
on a world with a starless night sky, only one god exists. and he is dying. Sevral hundred years ago, the one god took half of his power and divided it into many fractions, sending these fractions out to be born as souls of various races, spread out so every race would have an equal chance at birth, from the long-lived elves, to the short-lived Goblins. Once the last of these "god-souls" reached the age of maturity, the quest would begin. "All must follow their own path" would echo through the minds of the god-souls, and they would know, now was the time to seek their destiny, do what must be done, and become the new gods of this world. Some may try to do this by defeating other god-souls in combat, others may try to gather a following, others may find that consuming the heart of a god-soul gave them it's powers and abilities. no matter the way, all must follow their own path.

The game would feature a low-magic setting in wich every god-soul takes a sorccer bloodline and levels up in it as if they had levels in sorccerer, even if they don't. any spells they gain from the bloodline would be allowed, even if it was not on the availible low-magic spell list. Wizards would not be allowed, sorccerers must be god-souls, and other arcane casters would either not be availible or otherwise limited. divine magic would also likely be limited due to the dying status of the god. only those born with magic would ever be truly able to weild it. Would also feature Dragons who weren't intelligent and couldn't talk (unless god-souled), religious plots to destroy the god-souls to save the one-god, and giant talking trees providing guidance.

main concepts were to subvert the "don't split the party" trope at least once, thinking a maze in wich the only way to progress was for everyone to split up and face a unique challenge specialized to them, as well as run a low-magic world in general. with non-intelligent dragons. because i always thought that was a silly idea.

sadly while having the most promice, this one never took off because while i had a lot of big encounters planned, a dragon, a tree, a maze, a cult, an empress from across the sea. i had no idea what to do for the intermediaries, no plan for levels one through five. what brought the PC's together? what do they do? why do they stick around long enough to encounter all these other things? how do they all interract? etc.


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.

[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.

D&D's lack of granularity and resultant poor handling of very small creatures has always bothered me as well. In fact the game in general doesn't do a good job of handling anything not in the small medium or large size categories. Anything smaller than small or larger than large doesn't work quite right and while the poor handling of little creatures is annoying but sort of excusable the poor handling of big creatures is not excusable given that the game has "Dragons" right in the title

[Vknight]

I got so many I could make dozens of posts on it.

One of my favorite is the idea for a group of players 4 too 6 the campaign starts right after they all murdered a notorious person in town and have covered all there tracks with alibi's and more.
Unfortunately the man turned out too have far deeper and more evil connections and things spiral out of control as his criminal empire starts too collapse and the party has too avoid the landfall without implicating themselves

[Misereor]

Back when World of Darkness was still fairly new, we were three GM's from our local gaming club who set up campaigns for Mage, Vampire, and Werewolf respectively. (I was the Werewolf guy)
The big plan was to run parallel campaigns around a common behind the scenes plot and finish off with a big bang where all the groups met and played together to save the world.
Then I lost two of my three players, and ended up as a player in a Paranoia game instead. But the other two groups had a hoot, even though they had to rewrite the plot a bit.
Still a bit disappointed about that one, more than 20 years later.

[kraftcheese]

I always thought an interesting idea for a Shadowrun...uh...run would be the PCs being hired to extract a test subject from a corps research into linking groups of cyberized animals with an AI controller.

When the PCs look deeper into it, they realise they haven't been hired by a rival corp, but by the AI/animal hivemind, and that it's actually a breakout as many of the components of the hive as can get out.

[Pugwampy]

My first ever campaign was an orc war campaign which basically gave me an excuse to toss my favorite monsters at the players every second or third encounter .
My hub town was an insignificant little tourist site of dwarven ruins in Fearun Damara called Palaschuk , which i made into a massive thriving underground city of half orcs with a main Temple of Luthic the cave mother and wife of grumsh . My half orcs were not evil and I always felt the cave mother is better option than Grumsh
Basically i wooed players with multiple factions making the foreign legion military faction extra sweet with free daily magic potion , AC amulets for casters and fullplate for fighters . Players flew on direbat mounts to locations and every mission completed got them rank.


My second campaign, I got the idea of building it around my basic game set 2006 . The main quest was the dungeon module which mentioned Players start at a town called Griffinford which i am unsure if it exists on any DND forgotten realms or greyhawk map .The basic game heroes you start off with became the ruling council of the town Griffinford which included Regdar the fighter which we all find in the 3.5 PHB . Naturally players built their own heroes .


My third campaign was a combination of those two ideas. Players started in the hubtown of Palaschuk , which I moved from forgotten realms Damara to Golorion Realm of the mammoth lords.

The main dungeon and quest was Basic game 2004 . What was interesting here was , I kept building extra rooms onto this basic game dungeon long after they killed the dragon. If you undestand basic game sets usually the dungeon has rooms that lead to nowhere for DM "convenience" excuse

I also introduced non Dnd approved fey themes which came about from this dirty lil booby trap right at the start . basically a spirit in a mirror called Alyssa who is helpful with info if you are polite and eventually offers to let some player join her . If a player bites he is never heard from again so says the mod .
I was so enchanted by this idea , I made the spirit a fairy queen with nymph stats and the mirror itself was a magical doorway between the worlds of golarion and fearun . The timezone seems equal but i basically 1 day in Golorion is one year in Fearun. Players need help if they want to return back to their own time.


This led to the birth my new Hubtown which i fixate about for a future campaign . Players will now start off in a Fairytopia hub town called Thelenea ruled by fairy queen Alyssa .
Surrounding this town is a protective mist barrier which lead to Jurassic park land of Chult on Fearun . I wont have a temple but a unicorn that heals players for free
I will have a second possible Hub town for player to feel normal again called Stone Town a colony mining town extra boring dwarves who dont believe is fairies.

The unicorn and the mining town comes from yes you guessed it , yet another basic game set module which i will incorporate . I will exchange gobs and hob gobs for trogs and kobs in the main dungeon which is an overrun dwarven fortress to stay with the Jurassic park theme .

Players will enjoy and insane hippy fairy culture and quests mixed with basic game quests surround by hungry dinosaurs . Non DND approved fairy funny things . Oh yes i wish to add Ewoks as part of my fairy community . They are cute walking teddy bears why not ? Starwars no use for them it seems.
Pugwumpies of course will be my black market fairy arms merchants.

I have dreams of Fairy queens , and Dinos eating hero spleens .....Now i just need players .

[Misereor]

I always thought an interesting idea for a Shadowrun...uh...run would be the PCs being hired to extract a test subject from a corps research into linking groups of cyberized animals with an AI controller.

When the PCs look deeper into it, they realise they haven't been hired by a rival corp, but by the AI/animal hivemind, and that it's actually a breakout as many of the components of the hive as can get out.

Spoiler

Show

I think Deus actually did that during the Arcology shutdown. It hired runners to extract "victims", who had parts of it's code embedded, making them Deus nodes.

[Draconi Redfir]

I always thought an interesting idea for a Shadowrun...uh...run would be the PCs being hired to extract a test subject from a corps research into linking groups of cyberized animals with an AI controller.

When the PCs look deeper into it, they realise they haven't been hired by a rival corp, but by the AI/animal hivemind, and that it's actually a breakout as many of the components of the hive as can get out.

fun little twist that one is :P

[sengmeng]

I thought it would be fun if the players were low-level squires to a powerful but idiotic knight. Basically Don Quixote with 3-5 Sancho Panzas. They'd all wear matching red shirts and die constantly, with newly rolled up characters joining with the explanation that they were recruited from the nearest podunk village. I'd probably have them downgrade each time too, so your first character could be a fighter, your second a warrior, then commoners after that. It'd be hard to find people who were all on board and the knight's brain dead antics would have to be really entertaining.

[Lord Torath]

I always thought an interesting idea for a Shadowrun...uh...run would be the PCs being hired to extract a test subject from a corps research into linking groups of cyberized animals with an AI controller.

When the PCs look deeper into it, they realise they haven't been hired by a rival corp, but by the AI/animal hivemind, and that it's actually a breakout as many of the components of the hive as can get out.

Spoiler: Shadowrun did almost this exact thing

Show

In the "Dragon Hunt" adventure, the runners are hired by a dragon that was undergoing cyberware experiments and ended up buying the company that was performing the experiments on him, but lost his memory "extracting" himself. The runners are hired to find out who he is and how he ended up on the top floor of the local hospital.

I had an idea for the PCs in a D&D game to encounter a group of Draconians that wanted to be restored to their full draconic glory (after I read the story about the draconian patrol in Dragonlance Tales: vol 1). They had a polymorphed silver dragon helping them, and were seeking out a series on magic pearls called The Tears of the Dragon and a magic fountain that, combined, could restore one or more of them to full dragons. I didn't know at this point that draconians' souls were abishai from the Abyss.

On Dragonsfoot, there's an idea (from Mark Hall, I think - I'm sure he'll correct me if I'm wrong) called Advanced Dungeons and Kittens. The entire party is made up of cat familiars whose wizards have disappeared. He's got rules for five or six different "classes" of cat familiars.

[Samzat]

A mini-campaign set mostly in Byzantium where the players, a group of citizens from different backgrounds, get caught up what seems like a typical regicide plot, but is actually part of something much greater...

[JBPuffin]

Monsters and Mayhem: A 5e or 4e DnD game in which the players use the standard array/point buy, the monster creation rules, and DM guidance/approval to build a diverse party of varying levels of monstrosity. End result would look something like a Gamma World campaign - P1's a swarm of sentient rats, P2's a smallish stone golem, P3's a young dragon, P4's a telepath, et cetera. Giving players a glimpse into the work required to create custom monsters ought to give them a newfound appreciation for the work they do . My dad and I playtested this sort of idea in 4e using humanoids, 1d10+8 for ability scores, and the "add class as a template" system to create a party of four, then had a human wizard running alongside.

[Vogie]

I've thought of a Redwall-style campaign as well, possibly based off the old movie Secrets of NIMH

I've heard of a Jason-Bourne-style campaign, where the players don't have their character sheets, and figure out what their stats/abilities and whatnot are on the fly through roleplay. I don't have the amount of knowledge required for such a thing yet but one day...

Some Black Mirror episodes would be fascinating as campaign skeletons. Men Against Fire, specifically.

I think having a low-magic Oregon Trail-style West Marches campaign would be fantastic. Gritty realism, plus I started writing out possible rules for fording rivers with oxen. Harder than I thought. Added problem was, when ran past my players, didn't like the idea behind the other aspect of Oregon Trail - death is fairly common, and require lots of rerolls due to bad luck (and also dysentery).

Someone had posted an idea of turning a normal campaign into an X-men game by giving players a cantrip-esque "mutation", a 0-3 level spell they can use at will, in addition to their normal class abilities, which I thought was absolutely awesome. I love the Godsfall podcast, which did something similar on a much larger scale.

I think it could be interesting to do a Harry-potter-esque "Wizard School" type game, where the players would build non-wizard characters that can either focus on their class abilities, study more into the Wizard aspects, or both.

[denthor]

Not entire campaign one set up valley of the sun.

Sun god needed. The people in order to get to the good spot they want to be keep attacking random caravans. They attack with out weapons and hope the gaurds kill them on the way in.

Good characters must find a way to put them down but not kill. After a while the church will ban the practice since they run out of flock quickly.

[JAL_1138]

Or we could combine both. The heroic adventure is the first matrix with the drab office buildings, the monstrous-looking peasants are the second matrix with the robots and the post-apocalyptic wasteland, and chained to a wall hallucinating is the unseen true reality

Or just keep going after that. There's no "real" reality for them to find. It's turtles all the way down.

[Bohandas]

Or just keep going after that. There's no "real" reality for them to find. It's turtles all the way down.

Or it turns out the first one was the real one after all and so eone just slipped them some acid

[8BitNinja]

Maybe the matrix idea would be cool, but they were stuck in a multi layered dream. Every time they think they escape, its because the puppet master controlling the dream wanted them to think that.