Old Drew Id
First Post
1) Gurps got the license years ago for War against the Chtorr
http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/chtorr/ but if you just do some Googling of the term Chtorr, you can get the basic idea and come up with your own stats for the worms and worm-related creatures without needing to buy a new book. Add Set the PC's in a small town in Kansas, maybe somewhat near a military base, and you've got an entire campaign.
2) Based on a supers campaign that we've been running off and on between other campaigns, you could do the tour of the 20th Century and do it just as well without superheroes. It goes like this:
Start as level 1 characters sometime in the five-year window between 1901 and 1905. Have a brief adventure with some kind of pulp or supernatural undertones, enough to be self-contained and to get you enough XP to level.
Jump ahead five years, to some point between 1906-1910. Use the same characters, who are now five years older and are level 2, or bring in some new characters (a mixture of old and new works pretty well as the older ones age.) Have another adventure enough to get to level 3.
Repeat each adventure with the PC's gaining a level and jumping ahead about 5 years. You can use any year and location within that five-year window, so you can hit major historical events or skip them entirely depending on your wishes. You will reach the end of the 20th century when the characters reach level 20. Eventually the older PC's will be forced to retire from their age and newer ones will come in, so using some sort of institution to maintain a continuity is a good idea. The campaign should gradually shift from pulp adventures in the early years to gangster-era adventures, world war i and ii military adventures, 1950's and 1960's spy epics, 1970's blaxploitation stories, through 1990's anti-terrorist adventures. We've been running this same thing with the addition of superpowers, and it has been really fun. Obviously, you want recurring villains, NPC's, settings, and themes to connect the entire century, and to watch how the culture changes along with the technology and the heroes themselves.
3) We did a fun one-shot adventure unrelated to the above campaign that was just a 1980's cop action movie cliche adventure. Check out pierceatwork's story hour for part of that.
4) Check out the Medallions story hour for our x-files-ish campaign.
5) Any type of invasion and/or resistance scenario; from movies you could do something similar to Independence Day, V, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Red Dawn, Terminator 3, etc.
6) Night of the Living Dead works great for short campaigns
7) Warlocks: This is an idea for a campaign that I've toyed with for a while but have not run. The PC's are all adopted children scattered around the country, with the youngest being about 18, with no knowledge of each other and with different birth mothers. They all receive notice that their biological father has passed away and that they should come to New York to receive their inheritance. Once there, they find out their biological father was a very wealthy tycoon/philanthropist who left them his mansion and his money (in a trust fund). They get a steady income from the trust fund at first and will get the whole thing if they live together in the mansion for the next 2 years and "continue his work". What they uncover, however, is that he was a warlock, and they have each inherited some portion of his powers, plus his basement laboratory, his secret attic library, his enemies and his debts, etc. They gradually get pulled into the New York occult underworld and adventures await.
http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/chtorr/ but if you just do some Googling of the term Chtorr, you can get the basic idea and come up with your own stats for the worms and worm-related creatures without needing to buy a new book. Add Set the PC's in a small town in Kansas, maybe somewhat near a military base, and you've got an entire campaign.
2) Based on a supers campaign that we've been running off and on between other campaigns, you could do the tour of the 20th Century and do it just as well without superheroes. It goes like this:
Start as level 1 characters sometime in the five-year window between 1901 and 1905. Have a brief adventure with some kind of pulp or supernatural undertones, enough to be self-contained and to get you enough XP to level.
Jump ahead five years, to some point between 1906-1910. Use the same characters, who are now five years older and are level 2, or bring in some new characters (a mixture of old and new works pretty well as the older ones age.) Have another adventure enough to get to level 3.
Repeat each adventure with the PC's gaining a level and jumping ahead about 5 years. You can use any year and location within that five-year window, so you can hit major historical events or skip them entirely depending on your wishes. You will reach the end of the 20th century when the characters reach level 20. Eventually the older PC's will be forced to retire from their age and newer ones will come in, so using some sort of institution to maintain a continuity is a good idea. The campaign should gradually shift from pulp adventures in the early years to gangster-era adventures, world war i and ii military adventures, 1950's and 1960's spy epics, 1970's blaxploitation stories, through 1990's anti-terrorist adventures. We've been running this same thing with the addition of superpowers, and it has been really fun. Obviously, you want recurring villains, NPC's, settings, and themes to connect the entire century, and to watch how the culture changes along with the technology and the heroes themselves.
3) We did a fun one-shot adventure unrelated to the above campaign that was just a 1980's cop action movie cliche adventure. Check out pierceatwork's story hour for part of that.
4) Check out the Medallions story hour for our x-files-ish campaign.
5) Any type of invasion and/or resistance scenario; from movies you could do something similar to Independence Day, V, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Red Dawn, Terminator 3, etc.
6) Night of the Living Dead works great for short campaigns
7) Warlocks: This is an idea for a campaign that I've toyed with for a while but have not run. The PC's are all adopted children scattered around the country, with the youngest being about 18, with no knowledge of each other and with different birth mothers. They all receive notice that their biological father has passed away and that they should come to New York to receive their inheritance. Once there, they find out their biological father was a very wealthy tycoon/philanthropist who left them his mansion and his money (in a trust fund). They get a steady income from the trust fund at first and will get the whole thing if they live together in the mansion for the next 2 years and "continue his work". What they uncover, however, is that he was a warlock, and they have each inherited some portion of his powers, plus his basement laboratory, his secret attic library, his enemies and his debts, etc. They gradually get pulled into the New York occult underworld and adventures await.
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