D&D 5E 101 campaign premises

[Halivar]

When the PCs frontier home province is assaulted by an invading force, the PCs must organize and lead the refugees the 1000 miles back to the home nation, outrunning and staving of the pursuers but also negotiating pass age through other hostile territories and trying to convince unfriendly rulers to recognize the threat that is following them, all while trying to keep their friends, family and countrymen alive to see their homeland.

Battlestar Galactica!

The a Dark Lord has been defeated and the Free People are no longer under his yoke. Now what? The leaders of the Last Alliance begin to squabble while mercenary commanders decide to carve out nations of their own. Suddenly unemployed soldiers turn to banditry while dispossessed masses, their lands forever wrecked by the Great War, take lands as their own. Old animosities briefly forgotten in the heat of battle reemerge and elf, dwarf, man and Orc struggle for dominance in the post war world. All the while, the PCs, veterans of the Last Alliance, must decide how to make there way in this new world. Then, they are presented with evidence that perhaps the a Dark Lord is not quite gone forever...

Lord of the Rings!

Do I win anything?

EDIT: As a mental exercise, we like to take sci-fi movies and recast them as D&D campaigns. There is a lot of good material to mine from, there.

EDIT EDIT: But the best ever was our Halloween Deadlands game on a riverboat casino from hell, a la "Event Horizon".

 

[Halivar]

#20. The PC's awake, shipwrecked, with no memory of who they are or where they are from. An ancient cult of an old evil overlord that now exists only as legend is now hunting the PC's. As memories begin returning, the PC's realize they are older than legend itself, and their memories span eons. The twist: one of the PC's was, in fact, the very evil overlord whose forces chase them.

 

[Tormyr]

21. The PCs start at level 10 as well respected members of the city. Warforged come from the stars, lay waste to the armies, kill or maim the PCs and occupy the nations. New PCs start at level 1, escape the occupation, and search the stars in a stolen ship for a way to end the occupation.

Eventually, they are betrayed by never before seen warforged that look like other races. New background available of being an early warforged sleeper agent whose programming was faulty and did not revert from the assumed identity.

 

[eMalc]

22. Two hundred years ago, the empire above ground sent all of it's criminals, unsociables and rejects into exile underground through a portal. The exiles didn't die as expected however and created a fledgeling nation under the ground. Now, they are all set to return to the surface and the player party is tasked as an expeditionary force to explore the above ground once more to determine if it is safe for the exiles to return to the open skies. The overground empire of course is now falling apart at the seams and monsters plague the lands.

Shamelessly stolen from Exile III by Spiderweb Software

 

[steeldragons]

23. "In the Shadow of the Divine." A band of cloud giants (maybe with a couple titans [empyreans] or a storm giant) has styled themselves as new "gods" in a secluded realm, where the local mortal races do worship them as such. Word has finally gotten beyond their secluded realm and, as does happen, the disenfranchised, the desperate and the wishful, pilgrims of various races, have begun to flock to this place to see the "New Gods" who actually appear and work their divine power before your very eyes.

The established churches are...not happy to say the least and the PCs have been commissioned by one [or a council of several] of the established deity's temples to go check them out...and in the event they are charlatan demonic cultist powers, as undoubtedly they must be, eliminate them. The giants are sincerely trying to regain/retrieve their legendary titanic origins, and truly believe themselves to be new divinities and will act, and react on the part of their worshippers, as such.

Now, if they are puppets of some greater thing [one of the empyreans is evil or a balor or some other servant of an evil/chaos deity looking to stir up trouble] or not, you'll have to come up with on your own.

 

[Mark CMG]

(On a side note, this makes for useful premise fodder - http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/plots.htm )

 

[steeldragons]

24. A small village is quickly becoming a bustling town as a new road from city X to castle Y has moved through. Town/city folk travelers are clashing with the rural/commoner locals as the village goes through growing pains and convergences of new races, nations, religions, and of course those seeking to carve out their own little niche or take advantage of "opportunities", move in and/or through. In the course of a year, this sleepy farming hamlet is now beset with a steadily increasing slew of crimes, back room deals, and/or larger mysteries. Who can you trust? Who should you help? Which merchant/temple/official should you take a job from? What can you do to make your own way in this burgeoning, but still somewhat new and wild, economy and borderland large-village-turning-small-town "At the Edge of Greymurk Swamp"?

 

[steeldragons]

25. "Secret of the Shoal Spirit" The PCs come to a small coastal town whose only claim to fame is a prominent temple to the sea goddess. They also purport to be "protected" by an emissary of the sea goddess herself, "the Shoal Spirit" (a sea elf sorceress who has taken a liking to these respect simple folk who revere the sea and its treasures. She possesses no actual connection to the sea goddess, though her people do worship her by a different name). Agents of evil have taken a sacred black pearl from the temple and the PCs have to get it back by daring the voyage and threats of an offshore island where dark and mysterious goings-on have been noted by the fishermen recently.

 

[Halivar]

26. A new cult has sprung up in the hill lands and is spreading into major cities around the continent. It preaches honesty, peace, and brotherly love. Its hierophants perform miracles in the streets, even bringing the dead to life. It promises followers rich rewards for simple, ascetic lifestyles and constant intercessory prayer to its deity... whose name is known to the PC's as a demon lord of the Abyss they have faced before.

 

[Blue]

(Starting mid-level) PCs are a group that has had one of them members recently ennobled for their brave deeds. Given sparsely settled frontier land that is home to rebels and bandits and attacked by humanoid tribes in the area, the group must carve out there new area, seek out the other powers in the area and deal with them with force, diplomacy or other means, protect their people, make them prosperous by doing things like clearing out mines, killing the fire lizards in the fertile plains, etc. All the while also meeting the requirements of their distant liege lord, who has his own problems.