Campaigns in a nutshell. Adventures in a sentence.

[Dannyalcatraz]

In the vein (*ahem*) of Elisabeth Bathory and Delphine LaLaurie...

Hell House
A group of travelers (including the PCs), storm-tossed and weary from the road, happens upon the house of someone of means. They knock on the door, and are granted not just admittance, but lodgings for the night.

By sunrise, however, two of the group have gone missing. Despite the continuing storm, the house's owner asserts they must have left.

By dinner, yet another person has gone missing.

Then another vanishes in the depths of the night.

Finally, someone realizes that the missing are not on the road, but are indeed dead, killed by their host who is seeking an alchemical path to immortality- a living lichdom, if you will.

And she and her minions are ruthless...

 

[LostSoul]

Sorcerer game:

In an ancient wasteland ruled by a necromancer-king:

An honourable man sought revenge for his wife's murder. He walked between the world of the living and the damned to get it, trading his humanity for bloody revenge.

A nomad who turned her back on her kin in order to save them sought to free her sister from a slaver's cruel hands and did, losing her forever.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Another nice thread about adventure/campaign ideas can be found here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/245660-adventure-ideas.html#post4577526

 

[roguerouge]

Bard adventure: Prevent your play from going all "Noises Off!"

Backstage murder mystery (see wiki 3e adventures)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Found a similar old thread full of ideas that shouldn't be forgotten.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...ve-exercise-worlds-word-planes-paragraph.html

 

[fruitbane]

In the tradition of Moorcock's Corum books... Fantasy adventure for demihuman characters - no humans!

Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Halflings, and the like have inhabited the world for millenium (may need to extend some racial age limits). Ages ago they exiled the foul, violent Orcs to the western continent, a land harsh and unforgiving, too brutal for the civilized races to inhabit. The Orcs were eventually largely forgotten except as boogeymen in children's tales. Only the Orcs thrived in their exile-home and evolved... into humans. Humans aren't distinctly evil, but they are violent and chaotic, and also uncouth and uncivilized. They are also smart enough to craft boats and cross the ocean. The elder races, the Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, and Halflings, learn about the humans the hard way as their peaceful lives are shattered by human raids.

The PCs consist of some of the first of their respective races to rediscover the ancient arts of combat and take up ancestral weapons in defense of their lands. A gathering of elders of the various races chooses the PCs to investigate, as a party, the source and motivations of these new savages and to, wherever possible, thwart their advance across relatively unspoiled lands.

 

[fruitbane]

Inspired by Don Quixote and the earlier "PCs as ghosts" scenario, I present an idea for group hallucination/dream adventuring.

PCs are ordinary characters with ordinary stats and abilities. They have dreamlike alter-egos which are themselves as adventurers or heroes. The party either suffers from a curse, or a disease, or drug, or other paranormal circumstance which causes them to be ripped from their normal lives into a fantastical dream world which is really just a gloss over the real world. PCs might end up destroying property, killing innocents, or otherwise causing havoc and getting in trouble with the law or other figures or authority or power. At first dream states would be sporadic and short, but as they become hunted their dream states extend far longer, leaving them on the run from, on one hand, the law, and on the other, demonic or horrific monsters. Good opportunity to raise questions about which world is actually real and which is the dream. Probably not compatible with highly alignment-governed play.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Another lift from Moorcock:

Let your players design a PC from a (limited) selection of D20 FRPGs, with the equivalent power of a 5th level or better 3.X PC. (After the campaign starts, however, they'll only be able to improve by whatever it the core ruleset for your campaign.)

They all awaken on a dais, each on a marble slab, in a darkened circular room lit only by guttering torches. There is a crowd of people in the darkness surrounding them, chanting their names with reverence.

They have been summoned...summoned out of time and space by the beleaguered subterranean peoples on the verge of extinction...

They have been summoned to be heroes- the saviors of an entire race.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Here's an interesting fact: Aspen Trees are a clonal species- they can spread by runners. One of the largest organisms on Earth is an Aspen grove in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains that has 41,000+ trunks.

That inspired this:

No Man's Land:

5000 years ago, a druid (whose name is lost to humanity...) of great power picked a large and remote island devoid of human life as his home, choosing a grove of aspen trees his most sacred space. At some point, he chose to cast Awaken upon one of the aspen...and the entire grove came to life! He had forgotten that Aspen spread by runners...the entire grove was actually one plant- and now it had a mind equal to his own. He trained it in the ways of the druids.
<edit>

I just read this:
Oldest Sea Creatures Have Been Alive 4,000 Years

It reminded me of my previous post (above) and made me think- depending on how you think of corals mechanically (IOW, if they can be targeted by "Awaken"), you could potentially have some truly alien and powerful intellects in the deep waters of the world. Possibly even a challenge to Aboleths and the like.

Coral colonies, as I recall, grow by cloning themselves. Imagine, if you will, a coral polyp being awakened, then cloning itself over and over again, for thousands of years...a colony of intelligent clone-siblings.

A coral colony could be a truly formidable opponent, especially if the sedentary lifestyle of coral is unsatisfactory to the awakened polyps...and they go insane.

OTOH, they could also have quite a sophisticated culture.

Possibilities. Possibilities...

 

[fruitbane]

They have been summoned...summoned out of time and space by the beleaguered subterranean peoples on the verge of extinction...

Ah yes, the old 2E Monster Summoning (because PCs are monsters, too) trick, essentially. That can indeed be quite fun with the right trappings.