Need to spice up a campaign

I've got a campaign I've been playing with my players since September, we started at level 9, and have been moving along slowly. It's set in the technological fantasy future, and is based around a group of unlikely heroes, who, due to being in the wrong place and the wrong time, have found themselves caught up in a large criminal organization, and are now running from the organization. They are now stranded on a backwater arctic planet, trying to make it back to civilization, fighting their way through various challenges (mostly a large string of dungeons)... and as the DM, I am getting very bored. One of my other players has expressed boredom too, but the rest of my group are overly enthusiastic...

I don't know what to do to bring the campaign back to life again.. any ideas that don't change the basic storyline too much..?

Nothing cranks up a campaign like some good NPCs. Either good guys or bad guys, troubled townspeople or hearty warriors, doesn't matter.

Stories are all about interesting characters, and the most interesting thing any character does is interact with other characters. Bring in some bad guy more powerful than they who has some reason for keeping them alive -- maybe he wants them to recover some device or whatever. Just an enemy the players can't defeat and have to deal with socially. That's always lots of fun.

Have one of your players suddenly develop some strange condition or power. They start having precognitive dreams -- which you hand out to them between sessions so they have to try and ponder out the meaning. Or some bizarre character attaches themself to the party -- one of my players has an insane ghost woman madly in love with him. She follows the party everywhere and causes no end of trouble for them. But they don't really want to destroy her because she never means to -- she's just so in love with this poor guy and doesn't really know what she's doing.

Kill somebody. It's harsh, but it always gets people's attention. Put them in a tough fight against smart monsters that they're not going to get out of easily. Overload them, make them retreat -- and if they don't pull out fast one or more of them is going to get nailed.

Have some prophet-figure make dire pronouncements about them. "You are the Chosen One. Only you can prevent the relentless onslaught of the -- urk!" Thunk. Prophet-guy falls over dead. That always gets them going.

Blow up the planet. I've used this one once or twice. The downside is you have to draw a whole new world map (assuming you're not just ending the whole campaign), but on the plus side you get to start all over again.

Get crazy, get freaky, go all out. Have the Great Cthulhu rise from the deeps. Have the world overrun by fire-breathing lemmings. Turn your entire party into yellow and green faeries. I'm totally serious. You're GOD. There's nothing you can't do. There's never any reason to be bored with your own campaign. If you're not having fun, CHANGE IT!

But try the "good characters" idea first.

bump

barsoomcore, I like the way you think.

Anything else?

If you have one bored player, why don't you two get together and make a plan to shake up things?

Use anything that will turn that player's character into an (at least initially) unsuspected problem - a cursed item; domination by a powerful enemy; the PC is killed and replaced by a doppelganger ... ; or maybe the PC develops his own secret agenda all on his own.

Then lean back and watch the others go slowly paranoid.

What is it that's boring you about your campaign? Is it the not-another-jungle aspect of it? Do something different. Perhaps the players need information from, I dunno, Rothgar the assasin. But his latest assasination attempt went terribly wrong. He's in hiding, and the PCs need to find him before either the authorities do, or the person he tried to kill does.

Is it the world? Blow it up? PCs manage to get teleported off their artic world, before it blows up. Problem is, no one knows how or why the world was destroyed, and now it's the players job to find out.

A little party conflict never hurt anyone, if done right. One of the players(the bored one, preferably) keeps getting mind controlled to attack the other players. When he snaps out of it, he doesn't remember a thing. This happens with increasing frequency until the players find a way to stop it.

Unnecessary warfare is another good one. Nation X attacks nation Y, for no good reason, with devestating results. The players have to stop the war(caused by doppelgangers? Boredom? Who knows)

Have everyone start speaking in a different tongue, for no good reason(that they know of). The players now have no way of communicating with anyone outside of their party.

Basically, start changing the dynamics of the game until you find something that interests both you and the players.

Cullain

StalkingBlue said:

If you have one bored player, why don't you two get together and make a plan to shake up things?

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Of course! Brilliant! Done it myself, doing it right now, in fact.

The great fun with this sort of approach is that once the other players figure out that you and this one person have cooked up something in private, they'll all want to have their own little secrets. Then it starts getting REAL fun -- and you don't have to do a thing. The players will be having a blast tying each other up in knots.

And let's be honest, DMs, our greatest pleasure in life is the expressions on our players' faces when they realise that they've been royally reamed.

I'm not the only one who thinks that, am I?

barsoomcore said:

Kill somebody. It's harsh, but it always gets people's attention. Put them in a tough fight against smart monsters that they're not going to get out of easily. Overload them, make them retreat -- and if they don't pull out fast one or more of them is going to get nailed.

Click to expand...

On this note you might want to set the trap listed under the OBVIOUSLY BASTARD heading here.

http://www.criticalmiss.com/current/bastardgm2.html

That will fix your players.