D&D General The campaign you will never get to run

[nomotog]

I have a small handful of campaign ideas that I want to run where, but I have almost no change to make them work. I am thinking that posting this is a good way to get them out of my system and it will also be neat to see what other ideas people have that they don't think will work.

My never going to work idea is to have a military campaign based around mass combat. Players would be different military commanders & they would get to level-up and customize different army regiments. Combat would be based around swarm-style mass combat rules where regiments are represented as a kind monster with special traits. It would put the focus on trying to include as few special rules as I can to leave the system open. For example, there would be no rule stopping you from using single target spells on a regiment.

I don't think this idea would work in practice because of 3 compounding reasons. One military setting is not too appealing to most players I know. Next, most of my players don't like playing with new rules subsystems, especially mass combat rules. Lastly, my idea not only requires it's own rules on mass-combat, but rules for players to be able to make their own regiments, so more work on my end. It all adds up to be a lot of work for something that would not really appeal to most.

Ok. That is it out of my system. Does anyone else have ideas for campaigns that for one reason or another you won't be able to run?

 

[RogueRonin]

Kinda in the same boat. I've always wanted to get into some nitty gritty domain level play, but my group has no desire to even build a stronghold.

NEVER is a long time, but I've been wanting to do it for years with no luck. Maybe someday with a different group.

 

[aco175]

I had an idea for a Stargate like campaign where the PCs could portal around to cool places each week. I thought that the players could have a few PCs that they could choose from and have a couple PCs going at once but play only one each week.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Oh dog, so many.

Beyond the Keep on the Borderlands. Players get to play characters from the Humanoid races - orcs, gobbos, kobolds, lizardfolk. They can oppose the bad guys from the Keep. Or oppose the other bad guy who is totally "Not Sauron." Or not - the setting I drew up is more than big enough for the players to wander far away from such troubles.

Jane Austen's Cthulu. 'nuff said.

Winter Whispers, Summer Swords. An L5R game that focuses on intrigue in the Winter Court in the lead up to an inevitable war in the summer. Played in two parts with the allies and enemies made at court having a major impact on how the war turns out.

Scions of Olympus. Where the characters are, well, descendants of various Olympians and wander an archipelago righting wrongs etc. No overarching plot for this one - it's just peripatetic wanderings with a distinct flavour.

My Players Design the World game. I've mentioned this one a couple of times in different posts recently. The plan was to get the players to sit around and brainstorm ideas for what they'd like to see. Then rate those ideas. Then build a campaign based on that. But nope, yesterday I got gazzumped when on of the players said "Hey, when we (finally) finish this campaign I'll a bunch of classic dungeons that have been updated to 5e." <grrrrrrr>

Bound to be others I've forgotten about.

 

[MNblockhead]

I've been wanting to run a campaign where the entire party are wizards in a world where arcane magic is suppressed and very rare. Quests designed around acquiring spells, spell components, and magic items would make up much of campaign with some larger story threads for the players to interact with. Not sure my current group would want to limit their class choices in this way, however, and I don't have time to run a second campaign.

 

[Gilladian]

I want to run a game at the Library where I work, for library patrons. It would be set in a vast half-ruined city where they are watchmen learning to defend their community from what lurks in the sewers, alleys, rooftops and guildhalls.

 

[cbwjm]

I want to run a primitive world exploration game. The players are all from a human tribe, the classes are restricted to "early man/tribal" classes (no wizard, instead sorcerer and warlock. No shining knight paladin, instead restricted to barbarian, fighter, ranger; druids instead of clerics, etc.). As they explore the world, they may run into new races like elves and dwarves. As they explore the world, the players discover they aren't in a primitive world, rather they are in a post apocalyptic world and as they leave their valley to learn more about the world they find ancient ruins and skeletal remains of a people that look a lot like them. Suddenly it changes from primitive exploration to what happened to our ancestors.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Got lots. See the Campaign Ideas link in my sig.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Seems my sig is either invisible or missing for now, soooo:

Campaigns in a nutshell. Adventures in a sentence.

Let us gather a mighty hoard of adventure and campaign ideas, compressed to what was most important about them. From me: Tides of Homeland: Four heroes with no place to call home come together to stop a mind flayer's attempt to save his people by destroying all other races. The mind flayer...

www.enworld.org

 

[mrpopstar]

I want to run a game at the Library where I work, for library patrons. It would be set in a vast half-ruined city where they are watchmen learning to defend their community from what lurks in the sewers, alleys, rooftops and guildhalls.

Shoutout to a fellow library professional!