CHALLENGE: Campaigns that NOBODY would want to play in

[Retreater]

How can you possibly not be able to sell Napoleonic sea combat? That alone makes this worth playing!

[MENTION=20564]Blue[/MENTION] - that declining-levels idea is brilliant!

My groups consider it a "boring" era of history.

 

[Jhaelen]

All PCs are required to play as my homebrewed race, the Potato-Kin…

If it's anything like this, I might be in!

 

[Jacob Lewis]

The players are henchmen and hirelings for real heroes. While their employers enter the dungeons, fight the baddies, and win all the phat loot, the party must stay out of danger, tend to the horses, cook for the adventurers, and become proficient in largely ignored rules like encumbrance and paying taxes.

 

[Tonguez]

My groups consider it a "boring" era of history.

Your group would be entirely wrong, have they not read the Alvin Maker series or Mr Norrel and Johnathan Strange?

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Hahahah, there truly is a game for every person's tastes.

If it's anything like this, I might be in!

 

[Blue]

The players are henchmen and hirelings for real heroes. While their employers enter the dungeons, fight the baddies, and win all the phat loot, the party must stay out of danger, tend to the horses, cook for the adventurers, and become proficient in largely ignored rules like encumbrance and paying taxes.

Not as a campaign, but I did hear about a tournament model back in the AD&D (unsure 1st or 2nd) days where it starts with a whole bunch of big heroes - who get wiped out in the opening narrative. Left is their halfling henchman, who is an NPC, and a bunch of powerful, sentient magic items the halfling loots from their bodies.

You guessed it, the players are the items. And back then there was a whole mechanic about sentient items taking over the host, and I don't think any of the player items could do it alone, but could with others. And of course as sentient items they all had (part of the design of that era) a Special Purpose, so they had very different things they wanted that poor halfling to accomplish, while he just wanted to get out of the dungeon.

 

[Nytmare]

A retelling of the Black Plague. Only races are humans and halflings (reskinned as human children). Only classes allowed are fighter and rogue. There are no monsters. Just saves vs. disease.

I once played three whole sessions of a mundane, magicless, bronze age Rolemaster campaign. We were all Sumerian farmers and after the second session some invading force rode through our town and practically slaughtered us and everyone we knew. I kept on expecting it to take some kind of magical or supernatural turn, but it was mostly just a history lesson in a period of history I wasn't too keen on spending my weekly allotment of gaming time learning about.

 

[Nytmare]

Right, so you turn it into the medieval fantasy version of Star Trek. The characters all man the "bridge" of their space/dimension faring vessel.

I ran a short lived Deep Space 9 inspired "you're all different types of Mimic stuck in a dungeon" game.

 

[MarkB]

A "System Neutral" campaign. Each player picks a different RPG system and makes a character using that system. In-game they each use their own system's rules when taking their own actions, and the GM adjudicates how those actions interact with the game world, and with each other.

 

[Gavin O.]

A campaign in which the DM wants one of the characters to quit the game but doesn't want to tell him to leave, and so tries to make the game unfun for him by deliberately targeting his character and asking the rest of the party not to help him behind his back.

...or is this not what you meant?