D&D 5E Your favorite campaign you've never run

[bromleylaerchenheim]

A campaign involving a lot of exploration to recover relics and lore from a previous civilization that was destroyed by a celestial event that's coming to pass once more. It's based on the whole Nibiru/Planet X myth or conspiracy (depending on your point of view). It would focus on two factions - one trying to uncover knowledge, the other trying to keep secrets - and lore would be a fungible resource like gold to encourage players to dig around to uncover useful tidbits.

I've been noodling this game for years and only recently have I put pen to paper. You might be seeing it soon...

You should have a look at the Numenera source book which is exactly that.

 

[bromleylaerchenheim]

I have more campaign ideas than I have time. But one that would be interesting would be if you, the player, are sent to a realm where the world works exactly as described in the D&D books. You were accidentally summoned and in return the people who summoned you give you enough training to be somewhat competent 1st level characters.

You know, of course, that you are in a game world and can use any knowledge you would have to overcome foes. The difficult part would be assigning stats of course. Short of going to the gym to see how much you can bench press and taking IQ tests of course.

Ultimately it is revealed that this has happened at least once before, and that the people (Gygax, Arneson, etc) somehow managed to return home.

Dena hi. I did that back in the early years of the red box. The party was on a mission to save a dwarves kingdom or something but were captured and imprisoned beyond any chance to escape. The only folks that can possibly save them were... The players themselves! Do in opened a portal between the real world and the fantasy world and let them start over as 1st level characters...
Lots of fun!

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I have been blessed with ample opportunity to run the vast majority of campaign concepts I've ever become attached to, so while my first viewing of this thread was when there was only 1 or 2 posts it has taken me this long just to think up what reply I can actually give on the topic; a thing that has given me an even greater sense of appreciation for my current group than I already possessed, as it is only because of my group that all of my "bucket list" campaigns are now fond memories instead of desperate hopes.

That said, the few things left to desire:

I'd really like to run another AD&D 2nd edition campaign that lasts as long character-development-wise as those of my youth (getting a party to 20th again would be great, but the high-score, so to speak, I hope to match is 50th). My current players are absolutely the long-haul type... the issue is that only 1 of them actually likes that rule set, most tolerate it because mechanics don't much matter to them, 1 disdains it because he loves to play dwarf characters and hates being restricted in class choice almost as much as he hates the idea of having to make a significant alteration to the rules in order to not hate them, and the last is not at all interested in learning a D&D rule set that much different from those he already knows. So I hope that I either luck into the group being struck by flight of fancy that changes their minds on the matter, or that I otherwise find myself with interested and fine quality players for such an endeavor.

Another is that I'd like to run a long-form game of Call of Cthulhu, but I keep managing to end up trying to get such a game off the ground only when something that my group of players would rather play comes along (the release of Shadowrun 5th edition, D&D 5th edition, and now Exalted 3rd edition, as some examples - and I'd almost be willing to lay down money that whatever the first rulebook released by the new White Wolf publishing is will be timed perfectly to foil the plan yet again).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

A campaign involving a lot of exploration to recover relics and lore from a previous civilization that was destroyed by a celestial event that's coming to pass once more. It's based on the whole Nibiru/Planet X myth or conspiracy (depending on your point of view). It would focus on two factions - one trying to uncover knowledge, the other trying to keep secrets - and lore would be a fungible resource like gold to encourage players to dig around to uncover useful tidbits.

I've been noodling this game for years and only recently have I put pen to paper. You might be seeing it soon...

You should have a look at the Numenera source book which is exactly that.

In point of fact, the Isaac Asimov story "Nightfall" (and its Robert Silverberg novelization) and the Nibiru myth helped from the core of my as-yet unused campaign idea.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightfall_(Asimov_short_story_and_novel)

Good to know there's a Numenera sourcebook for it...

 

[DM Howard]

I have always wanted to run an Eberron game where the beginning of the campaign starts off really nuts. The PCs basically start in the Temple of the Silver Flame and they are standing over the body of the Voice of the Silver Flame with no memory of how they got there or who they are. "You hear alarm bells and the armored footsteps of what are surely Knights of the Silver Flame. What do you do?"

The problem is that I like Eberron so much that if we decided to play an Eberron campaign I would want to be a player.

 

[Ancalagon]

I've always been curious about running the gates of Firestorm Peak, and I've just realized it would fit very well in a Yoon Suin campaign...

*tents fingers*

A planet that is all water, but islands of land float above the ocean (maybe 1,000-2,000 above). These islands vary from the size of a village to some as large as a small nation. They float on magical currents and from time to time come close to or collide with one another. Effectively, each island can remain isolated for years and then slowly come into contact with or interact with whatever culture or creature inhabit an island. Presumably, you'd be able to see an island coming towards yours for weeks ahead of time, and legends would tell of encounters with islands in the past and what horrible or good things came from them.

Very cool! This reminds me of a series of novel called the Death Gate Cycle (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_Gate_Cycle ) - specifically the world depicted in the first novel.

the world had been shattered by a grand ritual into four "elemental" world. The world with floating island was the world of air. Water was a very scarce resource, worth fighting over.

 

[Blue]

I have more campaign ideas than I have time. But one that would be interesting would be if you, the player, are sent to a realm where the world works exactly as described in the D&D books. You were accidentally summoned and in return the people who summoned you give you enough training to be somewhat competent 1st level characters.

You know, of course, that you are in a game world and can use any knowledge you would have to overcome foes. The difficult part would be assigning stats of course. Short of going to the gym to see how much you can bench press and taking IQ tests of course.

Ultimately it is revealed that this has happened at least once before, and that the people (Gygax, Arneson, etc) somehow managed to return home.

Joel Rosenberg's Guardians of the Flame series is precisely what you describe, with a bunch of college students transported to the world their gamemaster runs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardians_of_the_Flame

I played in something similar, amusingly back in college, but it was ourselves finding a time (and dimension) hopping device. Played in GURPS. And things like accidentally stopping the Kennedy assassination and then finding out the new timeline was much worse and needing to "undo" it. Lots of fun.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Joel Rosenberg's Guardians of the Flame series is precisely what you describe, with a bunch of college students transported to the world their gamemaster runs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardians_of_the_Flame

Yep. Fun books, too.

I played in something similar, amusingly back in college, but it was ourselves finding a time (and dimension) hopping device. Played in GURPS. And things like accidentally stopping the Kennedy assassination and then finding out the new timeline was much worse and needing to "undo" it. Lots of fun.

Was somebody in the party jonesing for a curry?

 

[Jester David]

I considered am "Age" based game, where the world had various eras: the Age of Dragons, the Age of Conflict, the Age of Peace, the Age of Adventure, etc. But each Age wasn't applied retroactively to an era, but applied to a century at the start of that Age. At the heart of the world (or something) was the Throne of Ages, and whomever sat on it at the appropriate time could name the upcoming age, subtly changing the world, natural events, and the mindset of people.
The current age (Prosperity) would have been ending and entering an intra-Age period of chaos where elements of all the previous ages overlapped and people were unfocused. Meanwhile, various factions would be setting out to find the Throne of Ages and name the next age to be favourable to them and their faction.

 

[77IM]

I always wanted to run a science-fiction game in which the PCs start alone on a spaceship with no memory of their previous lives.

Then I watched season 1 of Dark Matter and was like, "Dammit! Stole my idea..."