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

[Ancalagon]

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.

My next campaign will be in Yoon Suin and I am stepping away from the historical / geographical accuracy thing (I need a change). However, the real world is still a useful resource. How is the weather like in the Yellow City? I don't know, but the internet can tell me all about the weather in Dhaka!

 

[Ancalagon]

Same here. Missed out on it back in the day, and wish I hadn't.

Right now my big “one day” campaign wish is to do a Sword and Planet campaign. It’d be so easy to do with 5e…

I had an idea for a post-apocalyptic D&D campaign where everyone had been driven underground. I might do that one day, but right now I’m mulling turning it into a concept album for a possible musical project of mine.

Sword and planet would totally work with 5e

 

[Ancalagon]

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.

Oh!

So I was thinking about this and thinking "so if the distance are doubled, the weight of the planet would be 8 times higher, so gravity would be crushing". That's kinda sucky. And you could just hand wave it away I guess... but what if there was another reason? What if *the world was hollow*!?

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

Ptolis sits on my shelf and mocks me from time to time.

 

[JonnyP71]

I have a massive collection of pristine MERP sourcebooks and adventures...

Most of them have never been used in a game, which is a shame as the material and its presentation is outstanding.

 

[Shasarak]

My favourite campaign that I have never run is the one that I have just started now, A Spelljammer campaign based on the Rock of Braal.

So far we have Elves....in Space!, Scro, Mindflayers, Dwarven Citadels, Cannibalistic Reavers, Lost Treasure, Simon and Garfunkel.

 

[Ancalagon]

Simon and Garfunkel.

The horror

 

[TwoSix]

A druidic strike force of the swamps, deserts, and ancient forests versus Soviet halfling warlocks remaking the world into one communal Shire.

 

[Quickleaf]

Just for fun--and to get back to discussing cool ideas, as a break from some of the rules arguments...

Describe your favorite idea for a D&D (or related/similar game) campaign that you'd really like to run, but have never had the chance.

Great topic Ari Thanks! Have you answered your own question yet?

For me it would be a campaign that mirrors the style of fantasy found in the Beyond the Wall RPG, the movie Willow, and writings of Lloyd Alexander and Ursula K. LeGuin. Small beginnings from a humble village, and grow the world with the players. In particular, I'd like to start with a scary wizard emissary known as a "witch-finder" demanding a mage PC or allied NPC be turned over into his custody by a local ruler, and to "encourage" the decision he unleashes something vile like a plague or an insidious demon upon the town. So it becomes a question of loyalty, trust, one vs. many, and more of a character study while having all the familiar tropes of a pseudo-medieval fantasy adventure.

Honestly? 2e AD&D Dragon Mountain. I would LOVE to run that. Sadly my box set of it got destroyed in a flood - but the concept of it was genius. I still smile thinking about what my old group would have done with those Kobolds. Though I'm sure the swearing would be impressive!

Oh man, I ran this for my friends under 4e and it was so much fun. I still have my old maps drawn on gaming paper. I thought for a while it'd be fun to ship those maps to someone on ENWorld gearing up for a Dragon Mountain game...sort of make them a living dungeon that got sent between fans over the years. One of the highlights was a new player running a paladin PC opening a pouch given by a kobold tribe as a "peace offering" to placate the angry adventurers which ended up being a bag of devouring.

I never managed to run the 2e Night Below adventure, though I bought it and I loved reading it. I never managed to run my 2e Masque of the Red Death campaign either. My friend and I co-developed a post-apocalyptic fantasy world inspired in equal parts by Stephen King's Gunslinger books, The Seven Altars of Dusarra by Lawrence Watt-Evans, and Dune, but the campaign fell apart at the end of a school year, after maybe 5 sessions total.

I was running Night Below for my friends until this year when we've taken a hiatus, but it's a great great campaign. All the praise it's been given over the years is entirely merited. However, like most Underdark campaigns it takes a considerable amount of work to cut out the extraneous stuff and gather resources for running an Underdark game.

I had once designed a whole pirate islands campaign, linked to the backgrounds of two of the characters who were by that stage at level 5. But on the way out from the mainland the characters twigged something was off about the captain of the passenger ship they were on. They jumped ship, swam to shore and then decided to head inland. They never went back to the coast so all my planning came to nothing.

That would have been the most awesome campaign ever run. I'm sure of it.

Pirates! That's like the Spell & Crossbones campaign I'm running now by PbP here on ENWorld!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

My favourite campaign that I have never run is the one that I have just started now, A Spelljammer campaign based on the Rock of Braal.

So far we have Elves....in Space!, Scro, Mindflayers, Dwarven Citadels, Cannibalistic Reavers, Lost Treasure, Simon and Garfunkel.

"...Like a Giff out in troubled Wildspace,
I will hunt you down..."