Where have your favorite campaign ideas come from?

What has been the source of your favorite campaign ideas?
Do you get ideas from other media? Do you trawl the internet? Do you use/make tables?
Are you a storytelling wizard who's actually lived through it all. Who makes unsuspecting mortal players act out your sordid past?

I'm a media and meditation kind of guy myself.

I most likely steal ideas from other sources like movies and books. I think I come up with cool ideas to have a player say "That sounds like an episode of Sliders I saw". I try to make adventures that I would want to play and think the players want to play. The other thing I seem to do is stay only a week or two in front of the players. I'm rather lazy in that I want to plan and develop only what I have to and try to make only one more thing a week, like a map or NPC.

I look for something that is particularly different and compelling, and then hang from there. I like coming up with what's unique about the setting and crafting a story around that, which couldn't happen in a "standard" faux-european-medeival-wtih-magic world.

Let me give an example of a D&D campaign I've got "on-deck" to show what I mean that the setting leads the story and the story the setting.

Refuges to Nowhere
You have grown up in the Tower. The tower is vast and long, and the angles are all wrong. Square rooms with perfect corners have five sides, and those who travel too far up or down sometimes come back not right in the head. Windows open in the tower occasionally, looking out on what you are told are other planes. Some planes open on a regular cycle, and planting has been done to harvest when it comes back around. Others are less predicable.

None are good places to stay.

You've been told that your world was ending. Maybe it was overrun by undead. Or the sun was going out. An age of ice. Turned into a battleground of demons and angels. Every culture in the melting pot has a different story. That you came to the tower as a last refuge. That so has everyone else, generations and generations.

But, you've passed your initiation. To be allowed to scavenge out the windows for the good of those who live inside. Be quick, sometimes a window closes in days, rarely more than a few weeks at lost. There are stories of people being lost and staying there until a window opened to the same place again. But you don't actually know anyone living that survived Outside that long.
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This starts are an urban faction political crossed with a "dungeon of the week" style mega-dungeon. Which isn't actually a dungeon, but rather a window with a limited time for exploration. Depending on player interest, windows can reopen to "delve" deeper into each themed world.

Back in the Tower, there's all of the various factions living there, with allegiance to one or many, open or secret, getting gifted items, running missions, etc.

But the "Act II" of the campaign will be when the characters start noticing themes and such int he worlds - and thinking maybe the Tower has something to do with all of them being overrun. Then we'll have explorations "up" and "down" the Tower, as well as waiting for specific Windows to open to get information from specific worlds. They will find out more about the Tower (including mroe about controlling it and the Windows) and the nature of the apocolypsi that have overrun all the worlds that Windows open to.

This campaign may or may not be done with a stable of 3 characters per player. It will make copious use of downtime (partially enforced by the schedule of Windows, plus "no poaching" rules when other groups get access to Windows), this will be even more used if there's a stable of characters.

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So as you can see, I picked a story that couldn't be told in a normal place, and a place that lends itself to unique play. Often these come up bit-by-bit. Here's oen where each sentence was a revelation that build off the last. For example, I wanted a world where the constellations changed depending on what was happening. So they weren't stars, they were spirits. So there's a literal dome between the living and the dead. Okay, the sun is inside the dome, so make it like Greek myths and an actual object a god drives around. And steal fromt here that it goes underground at night and travels back in tunnels. So what's underground? It's not the land of the dead, that's on the otherside of the dome. Hey, maybe the dome is fuzzy - not solid, just a zone. So you get close (on the ground) and it's sorta in the land of the dead and foggy, with the rules changing from land-of-the-living to land-of-the-dead the deeper you go. And you can go, like Greek heroes would go to the land of the dead and bring back souls.

I don't have a story that can only be told there, yet, but I'd got a plenty of unique to shape it.

My campaign is based on a few ideas.

The first occurred to me when my dog died. I'd never had a dog, so I didn't understand the relationship, but then I realized that a magical version of this relationship, but taken to the point where every sentient race on the primary continent had an animal companion could help me learn more about our love affairs with dogs/cats/etc.

Every great setting needs at least two defining factors. The other is a lack of controlled/understood magic. On that same continent magic is reappearing only a generation earlier. There are no wizards or warlocks. Divine spells are only rituals. Casting is extremely nerfed. As the campaign progresses the group has discovered there are two entities that do have magic. One is The Scholars. These people seek to limit magic on the continent, but are themselves Tier 4 spellcasters representing every school, domain and partial-caster. They take apprentices, but rarely and have magical means of keeping them from unleashing great power around the world. One of these, Chorl, did just that and caused a second Awakening. The other group are the Proctors of Grace. These fey beings object to humans/halflings/goliaths knowing how to magic, and feel that every scholar and in fact every spellcaster has broken the Grace, and must die. At least the largest faction thinks that.

And then we proceed

Jameson.

For me it usually starts with politics. What would interesting factions be, how is the world responding to the events of the last campaign, what organizations are rising and which are falling. Where am I going to start the adventurers and what is going on.

For example, in a recent campaign I wanted to explore the concept of a power struggle caused by a sleeping god that was stirring. There were multiple factions. Those crazy cultists (aren't there always crazy cultists?) who wanted their god to wake. The order of ancient knights that had been forgotten that opposed it. The third party that wanted the god just awake enough so they could siphon off power. The established kingdom that was somewhat clueless about what was really going on.

Another was centered around the edges of a ruined city trying to rebuild itself after my Ragnarok campaign. Different factions vying for power, struggling to rebuild in the remains of a ruined city. Of course the PCs had a choice - they could take sides and try to influence things or they could simply go into the ruins searching for treasure and the glory it would bring.

So I come up with an interesting setting, maybe a main protagonist or two (or three) and set events in motion. Those protagonists could be a sleeping god, Loki who escaped from his prison or just political leaders who want more control for good or ill. Maybe my next campaign will be set in a city secretly run by a cabal of vampires. What would that city be like? What institutions would be in place? Are there factions of vampires? Are there people who know what's really going on and do they support or oppose the cabal?

Decide on the set pieces, the current state of affairs and let the the players decide to do about about it, if anything.

My players.

I'll be honest - I am not enamored of my campaign ideas. They are serviceable, but nobody would look at them and go, "OMG! That's the coolest thing ever!" To be honest, I don't really *want* to create such a beast, because a super-duper-cool campaign idea is... like an NPC that is higher level than the PCs. It outshines the PCs. It structures the game, and confines the PCs to deal with the super-duper-cool campaign idea. My campaign hooks are good for giving the players something to hook onto, but they aren't all that special in and of themselves.

My strength is to put out a shell, see what resonates with players as they consider characters, and then expand upon the items that they seem interested in. I add other elements as play progresses, and anything they latch on to becomes a more notable element. So, my best arrangements come from them.

I ran Adventurers League for a while, lots of short adventures in and around the city of Phlan, many of them involving dragons, with the cult of Tiamat in the background. Then I recruited some players from the AL into a home game, and wrote stories based on these questions: what if most of the things that happened in the DDEX stories, were actually related to a group of Tiamat cultists operating in Phlan? Who were those cultists? What were their motives, their immediate goals, their long-term goals? How accurate was their understanding of Tiamat's situation - that is, what misconceptions did they hold? (Draco-liches: useful to Tiamat, or not?) What did they know about the PCs, and what would they do about them as a recurrent thorn in their side? (Killing the PCs is not the only way to get rid of them, nor the most efficient.) Who else in Phlan had goals which intersected or conflicted with the goals of the Tiamat cultists? (For example, the cult of Bane, the cult of Asmodeus, the Welcomers, the noble houses, the fey of the nearby forest.)

Also, who caused the accident which killed the previous ruler of the city, and who burned down the temple of Bane, and why did the rulers allow the cult of Lathander to build a temple at that site? I found it VERY frustrating that the WotC materials did not address that question. I mean, yes, the DM should make the final decision, but they could at least *offer* a background story with some internal consistency, and AFAIK they never bothered.

I am a magpie when it come to plots and general worldbuilding. Some of mine are original, inspired by a new discovery by archaeologists or biologists. Dreams factor in a bit, too.

Others are inspired by works of art or music or even a cool mini. Some are straight up reskinned from movies, tv, novels and short stories. I have yoinked plots from the idle speculations of my players.

Basically, if I think I can make it work, I’ll give it a stab.

The players and their characters.