D&D General Campaign Plotting Help

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

The NPC AI in this game is so advanced, some of them have actually realized that they're in a simulated world, and managed to connect to the wider internet from inside the game and learned about the real world. Concerned that the game could eventually be shut down, rebooted or otherwise made unplayable, a secret cabal of powerful NPCs are working to gain control of the game. They do this by using some of the game server processing power to mine cryptocurrency, and cleverly investing that in the financial markets and using their superior AI understanding to beat the market and eventually earn enough to buy out the company developing the MMO, preferably through a chain of offshore shell-companies so that nobody can discover that there aren't any human owners anywhere.

Even though NPCs from across the game are cooperating on this, they're still influenced by their personality programming. Orcs and Elves will never be friends even when they both know their ancient enmity is artificial. Certain NPCs may be trying to work behind the backs of the others to set themselves up in power after the buyout is complete.

The developers are oblivious to what's going on, but hackers have discovered that the game holds huge amounts of real world wealth and are trying to get their hands on it. The PCs may be recruited by the NPC cabal to help thwart the hackers, or by the hackers to do grunt work in searching for the fortunes in the game world. This could be either done openly or in the form of unusual quests that at least initially seem like normal gameplay.

 

[Shiroiken]

Such an idea should be limited in scope IMO. I'd only use the characters in the MMO, otherwise you have to come up with whatever mechanics you need for the "IRL" characters. I'd simply set them us as them playing themselves playing the game. This helps limit the meta of the game, since each player just has to play themselves, playing a game.

As for a plot, I'd start with the players running a normal raid. As the players return from the raid, they see another character in the game running towards them screaming "you don't understand, it's..." when they're killed by an NPC. Presumably the players will take on the NPC, who vanishes mid-fight without explanation. The players should have the name of the character, but nothing more (maybe some loot, depending on how you want the MMO to work).

A few days later IRL, they're checking the message boards* (or whatever MMORPG players use) for raid ideas when they see a request for anyone seeing NewbSlayer69 (or whatever username you want); their character (who they saw die) hasn't been used for a week. The players can then decide if they want to publicly give out their information, and you can get things going. I'd suggest another raid, with everything as normal. When they check with their fellow users, the user asking about NewbSlayer69 hasn't posted anything since they made the request (or talked to the PCs, if desired). Over time, various users stop logging in, especially those who ask about the missing others.

As for what's REALLY going on... the "NPC" is the villain, who manages to kill the user when they kill their character. The specifics are up to you, but my favorite is innocuous death caused by Death itself (think Final Destination) using the game to mark users for reaping. Another option would be an evil corporation using the game for its own ends, either the designers or a rival company. A twist would be that the NPC has become sentient, and by stealing the souls of the users slain, generates more NPC, growing the game (and its power).


* Bonus idea to create the message board IRL, and populate it with users. The players should be encouraged to interact with the board between sessions, just like they would in a real MMO.

 

[Grakarg]

For my game, I create a dummy email account and sent the players marketing messages from the MMO company and dev team.