Campaign Concepts You've Got On Deck

[hawkeyefan]

Currently running a Galaxies in peril game where the team is a group of rebel superheroes on a fictional archipelago nation run by a cabal of evil scientists and engineers. About to drop a major twist on the setting that will shift the game and be the focus for the coming months. I think we’ll be playing this for a while.

My next game will likely be Spire. The theme is pretty much baked into the setting; the PCs are drow insurrectionists determined to overthrow their Aelfir overlords. I have a couple of pre-written scenarios that I’ll steal from to create a campaign.

I also want to play a short Alien campaign with the basic premise lifted from the Alien: Isolation video game, with the PCs being recruited by Amanda Ripley to help her find her missing mother. I’m torn on using the Alien RPG rules or going with Mothership instead.

I’m currently reading Legacy: Life Among the Ruins, and I’m eager to try that game. It’s not really one you plan without player input, but it’s post-apocalyptic and I have some ideas about what I’d like the world to be like.

And at some point, when we get back to face to face play, I want to resume my group’s ongoing 5E campaign. It’s a continuation of several campaigns we’ve played in several different editions and it’s meant to kind of put a ribbon on all the D&D games we’ve ever played. It simply doesn’t work for online play, so we’ll resume that when we can. I’m 90% sure it’ll be the last D&D campaign I run, for at least a few years if not for good.

So...kind of a lot on the agenda. Hopefully we can do it all!

 

[der_kluge]

I had some posts about this in the D&D forum here.

Working on the structure for a 1-20(?) D&D campaign.

Basically, city-based campaign to start. PCs do odd-jobs for nobles for a few levels, and then a plague hits the town. The dead are taken away on boat to be dropped at sea, only they aren't. So, the PCs are hired to find out where the bodies are going, and why. That leads them to get taken into slavery, and then hunted by priests of Malar, hopefully escaping.. wandering around in the wilderness for a while (perhaps also doing odd jobs to earn some coin and gear), and then chartering a boat BACK to city, whereby they'll be hired (Again) to figure out where all the slaves were taken. (dead bodies aren't actually dead, and are being revived with a simple antidote and placed into slavery). That takes them back to an island of slavers, where they'll investigate where they were taken, which leads them to another island where there are a LOT of villains doing all kinds of nefarious things. So, multiple BBEGs all happily plying their terrible trades on one single island. Which eventually will probably lead to a mind flayer who has replaced all the BBEGs with intellect devourers, for ... reasons. Not quite sure yet. lol
Oh, and there's a Tarrasque. lol

 

[Bohandas]

Various ideas:


*The PCs are all demons and they get involved in the blood war and fight their way all the way through the lower planes to Hell, and then they start wrecking up Hell

*All the PCs are intelligent items

*The PCs are all lizardfolk and they gradually discover a conspiracy in which their society is being infiltrated and subverted by an evil cabal of human politicians.

*Series of TOON adventures where the PCs are employees on a a Mythbusters-esque television show called "Factbusters" wherein the myths being tested tend to be either stupid bar bets ("you can't drink more than me without passing out"), health advice ("if you keep eating so much fast food you're going to have a heart attack" and then eventually the character dies of liver failure and diabetes. "myth busted!"), and places where people have used the word "can" to mean "may" ("you can't bring those TV cameras into Area 51!" and then they tunnel under the fence or somethig "So as you viewers can see, we can get TV cameras into Area 51 after all"...)

 

[MGibster]

I also want to play a short Alien campaign with the basic premise lifted from the Alien: Isolation video game, with the PCs being recruited by Amanda Ripley to help her find her missing mother. I’m torn on using the Alien RPG rules or going with Mothership instead.

I'm starting a short Alien campaign this Sunday. The PCs are all prisoners at the Union of Progressive Peoples Collective Labor Station 243. When crew of one of the station's ship salvages a Weyland-Yutani ship it causes an international incident. Worse yet, there's some mysterious sickness going around that causes tumors to burst out of people's chests!

 

[Bohandas]

Combinati0n of Planescape and Paranoia. Sigil is Alpha Com0lex, the Lady of Pain is Friend computer, the wacky factions are the wacky secret societies, etc.

 

[R_J_K75]

*All the PCs are intelligent items

I don't know why but this just made me laugh, great idea, but probably hard to pull off. If I get to play in this campaign I got dibs on the Teapot...short and stout.

 

[Richards]

All the PCs are intelligent items

That is a rather cool idea. So as a player in this campaign you could, say, be an intelligent longsword and roll up stats for the fighter who's currently wielding you. And if later on in the campaign the fighter gets killed, you might whip up (say) a ranger who next picks up the longsword and becomes overcome by its will. I like it!

Johnathan

 

[MGibster]

I've got another idea for a Conan campaign. The PCs are all from different countries but are united for the purpose of killing the sorceress Hemetre who has wronged each one of them in a serious way. Hemetre is an ancient being who made a pact with some otherworldly entity to extend her life but her time draws near as she must make good on that bargain. So the players must track her across the whole of Hyboria. I'd like to throw in a mellified man into the mix if possible.

 

[JPL]

That tavern the party gets in the Waterdeep setting? The whole campaign shifts to focus on running a small business in a fantasy world. Bob's Burgers meets Lankhmar.

I have some kind of Fringe-meets-Johnny Quest-meets-Buckaroo Banzai thing percolating . . . globetrotting adventure and science mysteries.

 

[Ringtail]

I have a few waiting in the wings, but it isn't my turn to DM right now.

• OSR style D&D game set in a home brew world inspired by The Witcher, Warhammer Fantasy, & traditional folk/fairy tales. (The Brother's Grimm versions, to keep things dark and bloody.) The main area of the campaign is a small Kingdom called Starova, which is an inauthentic Slavic pastiche. It's a mini setting like the Nentir Vale, Dolmenwood or Barovia but a proper sandbox with dungeons and adventure hooks sprinkled all over. I want to use an OSR ruleset, like Old School Essentials, but it might become a 5e game with a level cap and a few house-rules.
• 1-20 Border Kingdoms game, D&D 5e. I really like the Border Kingdoms area of the Forgotten Realms. It has all that Ed Greenwood original flair without the successive generations of writers and editors mucking about in the world. It's also a perfect little region for politics and kingdom-building, which is my plan. I plan to have 4 major "arcs" corresponding to the different adventuring Tiers, though so far I haven't written anything past the first session, since I'm not sure when this campaign will start, if ever.

I've had lots of other ideas that have spiralled into a folder full of Google Docs that eventually get forgotten, these are just the most recent two.