Tell me your great campaign ideas!

So though a series of unfortunate events, I'm thinking about taking a break from my D&D game, and running a D20 Modern game.

Unfortunately, I don't really know what kind I want to run. Which is my biggest problem with the system...one can run anything with it, and so I have so many half developed ideas that I have a hard time picking one and running with it, without second guessing myself and going "..but that would be really fun too...."

I think if I came to my players and had a solid "This is the sort of game I'm pitching, I want to use the d20 modern rules" it might help us come to consensus sooner than "Do you guys want to play D20 modern?

So I though I'd run my problem by you guys and see if you would brainstorm with me.

[As an aside, I own the D20 modern core book, Menace Manual, D20 Future, D20 Future Tech, D20 Apocalypse, D20 Past, and Elements of Magic, Mythic Earth.]


But I guess to get to the point of the thread: What ideas have made for great d20 campaigns, and what sort of adventures did your heroes have?

One of my campaign ideas for d20 Modern was this:

1) Campaign begins with PCs being 1930 types of characters, in the Call of Cthuhu genre.
2) Quickly the world appears to be not what it should be. Beyond the town's outskirts are vast tracts of more and more strange wilderness, not the normal backcountry.
3) Campaign takes on a more "Indiana-Jonesque" flavor, with investigation of stange pyramids and what not.
4) Eventually the PCs discover the hidden hideous truth: they are not on Earth anymore! Long ago, before the campaign started, they had been abducted by Cthuloid aliens and brought on some other planet, and put in a false Earth-like environment for hidden and incomprehensible purposes.
5) PCs (who are from the 1930s) get across more futuristic technology, and will, at some point, find themselves into a "Alien vs Predator" situation.
6) They can finally go back to Earth, yet not in the 1930s, but in our present days. Convincing the world of the hideous threat it faces will prove arduous...

Turanil said:

One of my campaign ideas for d20 Modern was this:
<snip>

Click to expand...

That sounds vaguely familiar.....

Another vaguely familiar variant of my d20 modern ideas:

1) Campaign begins abord a ship on the Mediteranean sea, around 1938. PCs are after an esteemed savant who disapeered in Lebanon (or somewhere in the vicinity), and must find him before the nazis catch him. In any case, the campaign must already have strangeness and illogical events thrown in.
2) When they arrive on land, it will eventually appear they are not in the real middle-orient, but in the Dream-Land. With but a difference: there, technological device can exist, from 1930 guns and cars, to futuristic devices, although all of them remain rare.
3) PCs, as well as most inhabitants of the dream-land, actually were abducted by Mi-Go aliens, and kept in some suspended-animation state, while their brains are linked together and immersed into a Matrix-like world. Outside, its probably early 21st century, not 1930.
4) Then, some secret faction of early 21st century has access to alien technology so can travel to Pluto (where the PCs were abducted) and deal with the Mi-Go. PCs would learn this faction helped with the abduction in exchange of technology.

The PC's are a team of researchers and journalists affiliated with a website devoted to the examination of urban myths and Fortean phenomena. Over the course of the campaign, they're assigned missions to research and catalogue the validity of any number of urban myths (aligators in the sewers, livers being sold on the black-market, bigfoot, area 51), most of which will turn out to be real.

Oh I always have lots of ideas for campaigns I am never going to get to run (although before I get into that I have to say you should take a moment out and check into Etherscope as an excelent variation of the d20M system and a great setting):

- Exiles: The PCs come from a variety of alternate realities, but all from the 20th Century (or its equivalent on worlds not using that calander). They have been plucked from their home realities by a trandimensional organization dedicated to saving the structure of the multiverse from collapse. In each adventure they are tasked with doing a specific thing in a new alterante universe to bring it back into harmony. Eventually they discover a rival organization is responcible for much of the disharmony, but their is evidence to suggest that things may not be exactly what they have been told and the two organizations are actually alt.universe dopplegangers -each with their own view of the shape of the universe.

-Invasion: Magic has erupted at ley nodes acorss the world, and with it the apperance of the Towers - bastions of near immortal mage-kings who invade world after world and suck them dry of all magic. With them come armies of inhuman creatures, magic plagues that transform the native populations and enviroments, strange technology, and everywhere the laws of physics are changing. Worse yet, the mage-kings only seem to cooperate long enough to jump from one world to the next, and now they are fighting a war not only with the natives of Earth but each other. Mix and match until your heart's content. The PCs start near whatever major city you want (although one close to your Real Life location would be great) where a Tower has appeared. One could be transformed by the magic plagues into something strange (a Moreau, werecreature, vampire, etc), one could fidn that his own magical abilities are awakened and he is now being hunted by a capture squad from the tower one that is drawn to him each time he uses magic, otehrs could be cops, doctors, etc. who are dealing with the change. Adventures could be things like rescuing a group of prisoners from a concentration camp where they are slated to become experiments, capturing an national guard base/hosptial/police station that has supplies and weapons, winning the trust of a group of insurrgents who were dragged along when the tower moved, going on into high level and even epic play if you like as the PCs overthrow the master of the tower and begin to turn their attention to the others.

- Friendly Neighborhood Warlocks - Taking the scale down to street level, this campaign focuses on the PCs as members of a seemingly normal community that is at the boundry between our world and the world of magic, or the Shadow Veil. These adventures are simple, the PCs are all friends (or not so much friends but have a common cause) and all they want to do is protect their neighborhood and keep it the way it is. Challanges include dealing with the goblins that have moved into a local condemend building and are hunting neighborhood pets, the demon that was accidentally summoned by a group of kids that stole something they shouldn't have from the local occult shop, an Oni that has come for the owner of the martial arts studio, progressing to an invasion by unseelie fey, a bug worshipping madman and his army of roach thralls, etc. And all the while trying to keep nosey reporters from knowning to much about what goes on in the seemingly quiet little community. The key here would be creating interesting NPCs and a real feel for the neightboorhood with odd buildings, shops, and people. Think DeLint's Newford stories+Buffy.

Oh, there is more. But that may be enough for now.

An eclectic team of scientist-adventurers, trained by an ancient Tibetan grandmaster in the One True Martial Art and funded by an enigmatic billionaire, travel the world exploring unexplained phenomena and fighting threats to humanity and time-space itself.

Sort of "Challengers of the Unknown" meets "The Destroyer" meets "Global Frequency."

1) Stargate: Atlantis, Only Not Really

When an earthquake causes a new island to surface off the coast of California, a mixed corporate and military team explores it and discovers that, impossible as it may seem, it appears to be the lost city of Atlantis. Portals on the island lead to what may be alternate realities, different timelines, or complex immersive holograms, while evil AI guardians mysteriously surface on the island and corporate espionage suggests that the ancient rulers of Atlantis are still on Earth...

2) Not the X-Files

The PCs are members of the underfunded paranormal investigations unit of the Bureau of Indian Affairs handling cases that range from brutal slugfests (Vietnam marines killed after commiting war crimes come back as skeletal warriors, take over a biker gang, and terrorize a largely Vietnamese town in the American southwest) to bizarre mysteries (hit men use local urban legends as their cover, but after their latest hit, the urban legends strike back).

3) Call of Sopranos

PCs are members of a mob family that must juggle day-to-day goodfellaness while protecting their turf -- and the innocent civilians from whom the mob makes its living -- from nameless horrors beyond the ken of man.

I've got others, but those are the ones that a) are modern (ie, using something that resembles the real modern world) and b) I actually ran one or more sessions of.

I ran this one very successfully as a d20M campaign for almost two years:

The Wild, The Beautiful, and the Damned:

This is the teaser:

"Nina Delmare, amnesiac foundling turned homicide detective in the college town of Cantabrigia, is on the trail of a murderer who is stalking homeless men. Looking at their records, it appears they were all veterans of the same special forces unit. Their only surviving common acquaintance is a social worker named Powers Smith, a former military comrade. At first fingering him as the chief suspect, Delmare finds that Smith is also being hunted down, when the two of them are attacked by mysterious assailants in a city park, who possess unbelievable powers..."

The backstory here is that Smith and his comrades once served in a US military unit attached to a secret arm of the CIA that investigates the occult. This unit performed recon and first-contact missions in Faerie until the commander "went native" and decided to join the Seelie Court in their struggle against the Unseelies. Smith and a few others made it back to our world, but have been haunted by the sublime beauty of Faerie ever since, driving some to madness, others to depression. Furthermore, Smith carries the knowledge that the Unseelie Court has allied with Hell and is setting its sights on Earth, once the legendary lands of human myth, dream, and lore have been conquered and ruined. Only Smith (and whatever rag-tag band of PCs he can convince to join him) can blunt the invasion of Earth, free the other legendary lands from hellish occupation, and join in a final battle against the infernal forces for control of the multiverse.

This was one of my favorite campaigns ever. It took us from a slightly fictionalized version of our own corner of Massachusetts to the dreamworlds of classic film (the PCs had to storm Dracula's castle, and at one point ended up in a Hope/Crosby road picture) to a ruined Albion where the last surviving knights of the round table were protecting the grail from the armies of hell until the artifact could be used to heal their stricken king. The revelation that my wife's PC, Nina, was in fact the Lady of the Lake, was one of the best moments ever.

The other PCs included a former mob strongman (actually a werebear), a psionic college student, and an MIT grad student in robotics who created mana-powered constructs. The arc of the campaign, with reveal after reveal, and a constantly widening scope, was quite thrilling. I have a campaign log that's about 50 pages long -- maybe I'll post it some time.

There is also of course... Modern Greyhawk!!