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D&D 5E Your favorite campaign you've never run
- Thread starter Mouseferatu
- Start date
Another idea of mine was to have people on floating islands in individual "spheres" like a giant magical space station.
People live on the "surface" of the islands while dark things live below. All of the spheres are linked, but the spheres are in disrepair, with some having environments more harsh than others. Some are nearly completely flooded, others have little or no water, for some the magical-artificial gravity has failed.
The spheres are maintained by magical-mechanical spider-like servants. In general the spiders are friendly unless threatened or if you get in their way. How the spheres were created or by whom is unknown, although some people worship The Creators as gods, while others claim to be descended from the creators, etc.
Different spheres are controlled by different factions, in some cases clusters of spheres are controlled by a single group.
Kind of my take on a giant dungeon. Well, a giant dungeon orbiting in geo-synchronous orbit.
People live on the "surface" of the islands while dark things live below. All of the spheres are linked, but the spheres are in disrepair, with some having environments more harsh than others. Some are nearly completely flooded, others have little or no water, for some the magical-artificial gravity has failed.
The spheres are maintained by magical-mechanical spider-like servants. In general the spiders are friendly unless threatened or if you get in their way. How the spheres were created or by whom is unknown, although some people worship The Creators as gods, while others claim to be descended from the creators, etc.
Different spheres are controlled by different factions, in some cases clusters of spheres are controlled by a single group.
Kind of my take on a giant dungeon. Well, a giant dungeon orbiting in geo-synchronous orbit.
The Slave Lords series was the only classic campaign from 1st edition that I never got a chance to run. Thankfully, 5e makes converting a cinch and I'm currently taking my group through it. It's been a blast so far.
Return to the Tomb of Horrors is another I'd really like to run one day. Ditto for Gygax's Necropolis.
Slumbering Tsar. This one we started a few years ago, but only scratched the surface and never made it to the city of Tsar itself. After an astounding ten character deaths in five sessions, we moved onto greener 5e pastures. I'd love to try this with 5 e rules, but shudder at the sheer volume of conversion work.
Finally, one campaign I'm eager to try that gets released later this year for 5e is Frog God Games' The Blight - Richard Pett's Crooked City. Like Tsar, this is a 900+ page monstrosity. It will keep us busy for years to come.
Return to the Tomb of Horrors is another I'd really like to run one day. Ditto for Gygax's Necropolis.
Slumbering Tsar. This one we started a few years ago, but only scratched the surface and never made it to the city of Tsar itself. After an astounding ten character deaths in five sessions, we moved onto greener 5e pastures. I'd love to try this with 5 e rules, but shudder at the sheer volume of conversion work.
Finally, one campaign I'm eager to try that gets released later this year for 5e is Frog God Games' The Blight - Richard Pett's Crooked City. Like Tsar, this is a 900+ page monstrosity. It will keep us busy for years to come.
Ancalagon
Dusty Dragon
I've done something similar to this (using the warhammer 2nd ed system) and it was tremendously satisfying. It was set in 1150, in Anatolia. The party ran around there, Syria and Iraq, interacting with the Selhuk Turks, Arabs, crusader states and byzantine. In the second arc, which I am still running today, the party headed east on the silk road chasing the legend of an ancient powerful being. It is now 1154 and they are on the shores of the Kara Sea north of Siberia...
If you want more ideas etc PM me
Tony Vargas
Legend
Consider:[sblock]
Yep, Dark Sun, was Sword & Planet.
You could run Sword & Planet in 5e, but it'd be a stretch, most of the sub-classes cast spells, or at least use some sort of magic. The forthcoming Mystic could help, since psionics are much more S&P-appropriate, but Monk, Ardent, Battlemind, & Psion could help even more. Besides, most characters in that genre would be martial. Slayers, Weapon Masters, Thieves, Rogues, Scouts, Hunters, Assassins, alien Berserkers - heck, John Carter was the eponymous Warlord* of Mars.
* we can say that word again.[/sblock]
Oh, the sincerest form of flattery, thank you so much.
I actually submitted Seven Cities to that 'Setting-Search'/Eberron-promotion-stunt they did back in 2002. The other one I submitted, Cinnephar, I went on to actually run (the only 3e campaign I ran, actually, and it was very much inspired by the 3.0 ruleset - a lot of work, but fun).
Just remembered another one. This is in the No Particular System game engine, because nothing really fits, which I suppose contributes to my never running it. That and I doubt I could ever find interested players.
The set-up is that the PCs are a group of young people who have grown up together. In fact, they are the youngest people they know. They're each the only child of a long noble line living on adjacent estates, with no others around, the tenants/peasants/slaves/whatever working those estates are all 50+ years old. Each of their manor houses contains a library filled with books, all written in the same language (represented by English, of course, but not really English - 'common' or 'Standard,' say). All are written in the style of first-person accounts, biographical novels and the like. You have no idea which are history, which are fiction. The library in your manor house consists of /every book you, the player, has ever read/, short of boring old technical manuals and textbooks (and, heck, novelizations of every movie/tv-show/whatever, for good measure). Among each of your family traditions is a 'secret' style of swordsmanship (not really secret, you guys spar with eachother all the time) and a 'family bible' showing dozens of generations, that filled up before your great-grand-parent's were born (and there's been no paper available - just slates & chalk - since long before that), so you have an oral history back a few generations, that you just kind of assumes picks up where the family bible ends. There are no dates (at least, that make sense) on anything, not the books, not the family bibles, nothing - everyone goes by seasons. Each fall, a taciturn old man poles a barge up the river to collect your families' taxes (which are pretty light, just produce from your estates), your only connection to the outside world. This year he hasn't come.
The farthest you've ever been from home is a stone bridge a full summer's day walk down river. You figure it can't be that much further to the city the old man delivered your taxes to, so off you go to re-establish contact...
The final conceit of the campaign is that each player picks a book that his character believes is a true history.
They'll find out which, if any, of them is right by the end of the story.
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Edwin Suijkerbuijk
Explorer
A campaign idea I have been thinking about for a while but never got to do is the following.
A wold that is dying becouse of the use of magic, much like what happened to darksun.
As the map I would use some kinf od terraformed mars map.
Eventualy the players would find a way to leave the world and end up on prehistoric earth.
A wold that is dying becouse of the use of magic, much like what happened to darksun.
As the map I would use some kinf od terraformed mars map.
Eventualy the players would find a way to leave the world and end up on prehistoric earth.
Croesus
Adventurer
One idea I've had for a few years now, kind of a mix of Avatar and Well World:
Modern day, our world. A buried city (Atlantis?) is discovered with advanced technology. Within the city are pods roughly the size of coffins. Someone placed in a chamber awakens to find him/herself in another world. Could be magical, peaceful, devastated, whatever. Is that world real or virtual? The government and business entities controlling the city want to find out and recruit people to enter the pods and discover the secrets, especially anything that could be used in our world.
The players would have two connected characters, one modern day, one fantasy. The modern day folks will have to deal with intrigue, plots, political issues, power plays, and just plain keeping their jobs. The fantasy characters would have to learn about the new world they've arrived in, build a base, communicate with the natives, all the while trying to figure out if they are in a "real" world, or a simulation. Moving between the worlds (you can't stay in a pod forever), the combined characters might have the same or very different goals. Moral choices become very tricky - who cares if you kill someone in a simulation, but what if it's real?
Modern day, our world. A buried city (Atlantis?) is discovered with advanced technology. Within the city are pods roughly the size of coffins. Someone placed in a chamber awakens to find him/herself in another world. Could be magical, peaceful, devastated, whatever. Is that world real or virtual? The government and business entities controlling the city want to find out and recruit people to enter the pods and discover the secrets, especially anything that could be used in our world.
The players would have two connected characters, one modern day, one fantasy. The modern day folks will have to deal with intrigue, plots, political issues, power plays, and just plain keeping their jobs. The fantasy characters would have to learn about the new world they've arrived in, build a base, communicate with the natives, all the while trying to figure out if they are in a "real" world, or a simulation. Moving between the worlds (you can't stay in a pod forever), the combined characters might have the same or very different goals. Moral choices become very tricky - who cares if you kill someone in a simulation, but what if it's real?
Nemesis Destiny
Adventurer
I've been chewing on an idea for some years now.
Basically a mashup of Darksun with Golden Axe; sword-and-sorcery set in a blasted land of powerful tyrants and oppressed peasants, focusing on a pivotal (near-apocalyptic) event in my campaign world's history. Lich-kings, city-states, hostile points-of-light style wilderness, and a Tarrasque from Space (brought down in a meteor, no less). The Tarrasque is basically an unexploded bomb from a long-forgotten war between two powerful nations at the dawn of civilization that is discovered and exploited to the horror of everyone.
I originally envisioned doing this as an excuse to use 3e's gestalt rules, 1-20th, but it will probably work better in 4e as a 1-30, since I've been down the path of high-level 3.x and I'm never, ever, doing it again. Maybe I'll even use some crazy 4e gestalt type setup.
I currently have a game started, then back-burnered, that lays the groundwork for this campaign, where the players are the unwitting agents of one of the Lich-kings. I'll get to it someday.
EDIT: I've also thought it would be fun to run games in Diablo's world of Sanctuary, or Tamriel from The Elder Scrolls, or a bunch of other non-D&D sci-fi/space opera things, with settings like Star Wars, Robotech, or even StarCraft. I've also always wanted to run a Superhero & Spies type thing using Palladium's Ninjas & Superspies + HEROES Unlimited. All this stuff, I probably will not get to, someday.
Basically a mashup of Darksun with Golden Axe; sword-and-sorcery set in a blasted land of powerful tyrants and oppressed peasants, focusing on a pivotal (near-apocalyptic) event in my campaign world's history. Lich-kings, city-states, hostile points-of-light style wilderness, and a Tarrasque from Space (brought down in a meteor, no less). The Tarrasque is basically an unexploded bomb from a long-forgotten war between two powerful nations at the dawn of civilization that is discovered and exploited to the horror of everyone.
I originally envisioned doing this as an excuse to use 3e's gestalt rules, 1-20th, but it will probably work better in 4e as a 1-30, since I've been down the path of high-level 3.x and I'm never, ever, doing it again. Maybe I'll even use some crazy 4e gestalt type setup.
I currently have a game started, then back-burnered, that lays the groundwork for this campaign, where the players are the unwitting agents of one of the Lich-kings. I'll get to it someday.
EDIT: I've also thought it would be fun to run games in Diablo's world of Sanctuary, or Tamriel from The Elder Scrolls, or a bunch of other non-D&D sci-fi/space opera things, with settings like Star Wars, Robotech, or even StarCraft. I've also always wanted to run a Superhero & Spies type thing using Palladium's Ninjas & Superspies + HEROES Unlimited. All this stuff, I probably will not get to, someday.
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Erik Westmarch
First Post
I had this idea for a campaign I thought of as "double Earth". As in, it was a fantasy version of Earth but all the geography was doubled. So the mountains were twice as high, the oceans twice as deep, the distances between civilized cities were twice as far. So basically you could have fantasy versions of all the Earth civilizations (Magical India!) that were the same size and population as historical equivalents, but there would still be HUGE gaps of untamed wilderness between India and Persia, or between fantasy Persia and fantasy Arabia.
Plus the mountains being twice as tall meant that they became unbreathable to humans only half way up their slopes, with the high peaks being the realm of Storm Giants and dragons. Same for the deep forests, the jungles of the Amazon or Africa, Arabia's desert, etc.
That doesn't sound like much, I know, but I was jazzed at the idea of using all of the historical and mythical material I had available. I had just read parts of the 1,001 Nights and bought a copy of Yoon-Suin, which I was going to put in place of Dhaka (Bangladesh).
I still want to use this one day, and probably will.
Plus the mountains being twice as tall meant that they became unbreathable to humans only half way up their slopes, with the high peaks being the realm of Storm Giants and dragons. Same for the deep forests, the jungles of the Amazon or Africa, Arabia's desert, etc.
That doesn't sound like much, I know, but I was jazzed at the idea of using all of the historical and mythical material I had available. I had just read parts of the 1,001 Nights and bought a copy of Yoon-Suin, which I was going to put in place of Dhaka (Bangladesh).
I still want to use this one day, and probably will.
