Campaign Hooks?

[RIPnogarD]

I'm looking for new original campaign hooks. I was wondering if anybody here would be willing to share ideas. I'll show you mine if you show me yours! (Besides, my players have done this one already.)

Everthing goes BLACK​

With this campaign setting I have the players pick from any class and almost any race, the weirder the better as far as race is concerned, (it helps explain why they were kept around so long). I have them roll for a starting XP, but I keep them at 1st or 2nd level, (this helps with backgrounds somewhat). Gear and items are of no real importance let them pick whatever they like. For starters anyway, with this campaign it doesn’t really matter if you have one player with a Drow Priestess and another with a Paladin of Odin. It kind of falls into the enemy of my enemy is my friend category. The players must work together from the get-go or be doomed. One NPC is necessary right off the bat, he can be killed off when you think the party has the gist of what they’re up against (or not). I like to use one of two character types for this NPC, either a Meader (male medusa) or a Paladin (if there isn’t one in the party already). You can also have one of the players play the meader if you have one that can handle such a race. The start of this campaign is usually on a second sitting because of the work involved in the start-up. Now I take all the character sheets from the players and write up a one or two page story explaining the last day they remember. This is where you can take away undesirable items and gear they selected. This story will consist of what they were doing and where they were at when they inexplicably stumbled into a titan medusa, (size large, snake body, snake hair, forked tongue) we’re not talking the sexy little female with pretty eyes here we’re talking the serious, mess you up kind. A shortened summary of a story might go like this...

You hear a strange garbled noise coming from the dark ally. Curiosity gets the better of you and you look just in time to see somebody or something being forced into the sewer. Cautiously you approach the small archway leading down to what you know are the city sewers. You pear into the darkness and see a large form huddled over a smaller motionless form. You realize at once that something is definitely wrong with this picture. Something isn’t right about the motionless smaller form but you can’t make out what’s wrong. (Lets say this character is a halfling thief.) Without even realizing it you move silently forward blending with the walls and shadows of the tunnel. You stop suddenly when you realize that there is a very large snake of some sort involved in this altercation. It looks as if the snake has stunned one person and is in the process of eating the other; her arms, head and shoulders are still protruding from the snake’s mouth. With the pitch darkness in the tunnel and from your hidden vantage point it’s hard to tell for sure. You decide for some reason that you can help, being that the snake’s mouth is occupied, so you slowly and silently draw your short sword. You slink to a better position to attempt your rescue. In one swift motion you run your sword into the body of the snake and grab one of the arms of its victim. The woman lets out a pained scream and you tug even harder yelling “I’m here to help lady!” This is when you get your first good look at the woman’s face; her dark complexion is intensified by her piercing green eyes. You feel strangely attracted to those eyes that seem to glow in the dark. You think there is something odd about this woman’s hair but pay little attention, as you sink deeper into those eyes. You realize time is of an essence and try to shake free of the spell those eyes have cast on you. Your movements seem to be getting slower, your feet feel rooted to the floor. The woman stops screaming and begins to laugh; “You’re trying to rescue me!” the laugh turns wickedly evil…
EVERYTHING goes BLACK!

This is where the campaign actually begins. You’re party is being rescued from the medusa’s lair. The male meader is either the child or slave of the medusa and is being mistreated. He wants to escape but knows he would never be able to survive on his own. Meader can change stone to flesh and he has a couple of potions of stone to flesh to boot. So he decides to pick the more promising of his mothers favorite statues, rescue them, and they can assist him when he runs away from home. He of course has heard all the stories of most of these statues. They were kept and not eaten because of either the stance they were in when they were stoned or there was a story behind them that made them a keeper. Once all the party members are back to flesh they will be totally disoriented. They have no idea where they are or how they got here. Hell one or two may even have amnesia. The NPC needs to take charge at this point and get the party together. Explain quickly what’s going on and the necessity for haste. The NPC might know some or all of the medusa’s lair and can point out the shortest/safest route out. If one of your players decided to go the escape alone, kill ‘em! Of course they will get spotted and they will need to fight their way out. This is where you can loose your NPC if you like. (I like to use Yaun-ti, Naga and snakes as medusa henchmen.)/(Don’t kill off the titan medusa, you will need her later.) Of course you probably want to let the PC’s get out, (or not). Once free the party will find that things are different, things have changed. The amount of time they were ‘stoned’ is a factor, (who knows how long a titan medusa can live!) They have no clue where in the world they are, languages are slightly different their coins are obsolete (except for material weight)/(I downgrade all coin value one slot). They may even find some of the races they use to know are now extinct, (including their own!) Fingers, ears or hands may be missing due to breakage as a statue. The possibilities are endless…
All this makes a common bond between the PC’s (although this is where you may have trouble with Paladins and thieves getting along) making it somewhat of a necessity that they stick together. After a while they will realize that the titan medusa (you may want to give her an actual name by the way) is after them. She is pissed off that they escaped, wants vengeance against the being the made the escape possible and wants her favorite statues back! No matter where they go or how far they run the “Medusa’s” henchmen are always around trying to kill and or capture them! One day they may get tired of running and actually want to go back and face her…​

 

[RandomPrecision]

Not to spoil anything, but since we're all players of real D&D much more so that Neverwinter Nights, but in the first expansion, Shadows of Undrentide, that's the hook for the second part of the campaign, essentially. You have a mythallar, and meet a cloaked figure that you know is the villain, but she throws off her cloak, looks at you, then takes the mythallar from your stony hand. When you become unstoned at last, you're a slave of a statue-collecting creature in the Netherese city of Undrentide.

I'm a fan of a sort of in media res style of hooking. I intend to start a campaign sometime in the future with undead attacking a number of villages in a certain region of my campaign world. To introduce this, the PC's are going to be in one of the villages that gets attacked. Maybe they'll investigate the area to figure out how and why an undead army attacked them, which will lead them to an eastern citadel. If not, perhaps the second wave will convince them to take action. If they still don't bite, the third wave should be enough to force them out of town, but of course, NPC's hinting of a larger invasion should pique their interest.

While many people dislike railroading, myself included, I don't mind asking a player to trade some of their freedom for plot devices (before the campaign begins, of course). One campaign I've been planning requires a protagonist to be a lich, for example. My plot was that the lich was slain by a typical party of goodly and noble heroes. The brave adventurers found a small box with strips of arcane parchment inside, and knowing that a lich with a phylactery is only temporarily defeated, destroyed the box. The victorious heroes basked in their triumph, but eventually split up, ending a tour of great adventures to help society in different ways. Now, some time later, the lich and several allies (the party) want revenge. From this point, there's no railroading, but ironic endings for the heroes are welcome and encouraged.

I usually have rather large campaigns, however, so hooks aren't usually necessary. If a character wants to do something, they tend to go off and do that, making their own sidequest. Otherwise, if I need a sidequest for a specific character or cause, I rather make them up off the top of my head as I go along. By merely observing the characters and the situations they find themselves in, you can come up with hooks and plots that would not be applicable in any other situation.