Campaigns in a nutshell. Adventures in a sentence.

[Bohandas]

Some door based non-combat encounters:

Trap: Exploding Door- A door whose interior is under tension, like a coiled spring, if the structural integrity of the door is compromised by someone trying to break it down it bursts and sprays the immediate area with shrapnel. It does have the drawback that due to the internal tension it will fail in this way after recieving less damage than it would take to hack through an ordinary door of its general type

Exploding door trap- Magical variant This versi9n of the above trap is held together by magic emitted by the door frame. The key also emits similar magic. If contact with the frame is broken by the door being opened without the magic key (suck as being forced, or having the lock opened by picking or the Knock spell) the door explodes as above

Corrugated door- This door is made of a very very long sheet of metal that has been folded back on itself many many times. The bolt of the lock passes through every layer of folds. Because of its unusually high surface area it requires a higher caster level knock spell to bypass its lock than would be normal for a door of its size

 

[CleverNickName]

The scariest, shortest ghost story I've ever read. It would make an excellent adventure hook.

"I can't sleep," she said, as she slid into bed beside me.​

I wake up cold, holding the dress she was buried in.​

 

[Bohandas]

Terrorist Solar Cell
For a superheroes or spies type game. A mad scientist (and/or rich lunatic with mad scientists in his employ) who harbors Unabomber-esque political views is building a doomsday device designed to provoke a Carrington scale solar storm that will destroy all advanced technology on Earth. The PCs will confront the villain's forces on Earth before traveling to space to throw down against the villain himself in an ironically high-tech fortress orbiting the sun which houses the superweapon

 

[Orius]

Then there's the Japanese druid whose battle cry is, "Bonsai!".

 

[Bohandas]

The Sword In The ... what?

During a succession crisis a portentous object appears. A sword driven through an anvil which rests atop a vampire who is splayed over a large stone. Whoever can pull the sword from the stone is the rightful king but will have to deal with the vampire

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I can figure out a possible, partial solution for the vampire…the embedded sword may be tricky, though.

 

[Bohandas]

Rot Bots

Ok, so I'm watching Transformers: BotBots on Netflix and I had the thought that if that energon burst had hit a cemetery instead of a mall that town would be overrun with robot zombies (and robot headstones too, but that's a different matter)

 

[Bohandas]

Humanati- A tribe of lizardfolk has been infiltrated by an evil cabal of human politicians with nefarious goals

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The Questing Cursebreakers

Each member of the party has had their life profoundly affected by some kind of curse or spell. Under the tutelage of a mage who had his OWN curse broken, they have banded together to find cures for their afflictions…or ways to live with their burdens in ways they- and hopefully, society- can accept.

Note: this is a campaign that can be geared for gamers of any age. Look to Disney & Pixar films, or movies like Ladyhawke for examples of people dealing with curses that don’t necessarily involve body horror and gore.

 

[Bohandas]

*D20 Modern, or possibly Call of Cthulhu, adventure where vampire hunters must destroy Lenin and Chairman Mao (who are clearly vampires because their bodies haven't decayed and they were both evil in life, both easily the equal of Vlad the Impaler)

*On a related note, Call of Cthulhu adventure involving vampires, who are interpreted as minions of Nyarlathotep (who has an existing semi-canonical association with bats). But the twist, as the PCs will discover at an inopportune time when they think they have the upper hand, is that all the well known vampire weaknesses are closer to a cultural or psychological thing and not a true part of their constitution, and if actually imperiled they can ignore things such as garlic or sunlight or the cross as easily as a human in a burning building could run outside without getting dressed. These things have no real power, Nyarly just thought it would be more interesting for himself if his minions had restrictions; he has nothing really to gain by winning nor is he at any real risk from losing. If the minions break the rules too many times he may punish them himself, but even this is not reliable and will certainly stop being the case if the PCs try to force more than two into this situation in close succession

 

[Orius]

Have you ever heard about the gnoll who likes to hunt his prey on the prairies and steppes while wearing a ghillie suit?

He's the grassy gnoll.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Have you ever heard about the gnoll who likes to hunt his prey on the prairies and steppes while wearing a ghillie suit?

He's the grassy gnoll.

Have you heard about the former boxer who does the same, but just punches his targets into orbit?

He’s called de grassy Tyson.

 

[Bohandas]

Indecision- Exalted adventure or campaign set in Malfeas. One of the Yozis is having difficulty making a decision on an important matter. This takes the form of a war between two or more of this Yozi's third circle demons, which the PCs get caught up in

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Indecision- Exalted adventure or campaign set in Malfeas. One of the Yozis is having difficulty making a decision on an important matter. This takes the form of a war between two or more of this Yozi's third circle demons, which the PCs get caught up in

Once upon a time, there was a product called The Primal Order.

The Primal Order - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The group I was in at the time planned to do a campaign in which each player designed some kind of deity, and each deity would have champions working for them within campaign worlds. We never got that far with it, though.

 

[Bohandas]

I have this half formed idea to somehow combine Clarice's childhood trauma seeing the sheep being slaughtered The Silence of the Lambs with the cult of Hastur (who was originally characterized as a god of shepherds when he first appeared in the short story "Haita the Shepherd")

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I have this half formed idea to somehow combine Clarice's childhood trauma seeing the sheep being slaughtered The Silence of the Lambs with the cult of Hastur (who was originally characterized as a god of shepherds when he first appeared in the short story "Haita the Shepherd")

Maybe throw in some Wicker Man (original) for flavor…

 

[Orius]

Ah yes, the first of several attempts by WotC to break into the RPG industry until they just did the easy thing by buying D&D.

 

[Bohandas]

Mind-flayer mummies. Something with mind-flayer mummies. They already canonically prepare their dead by removing the brain (in order to graft it to the elder brain) and it jives well with the egyptian space aliens sci-fi trope (ie Stargate, Khai of Khem, A Pharaoh to Remember, etc.)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Mind-flayer mummies. Something with mind-flayer mummies. They already canonically prepare their dead by removing the brain (in order to graft it to the elder brain) and it jives well with the egyptian space aliens sci-fi trope (ie Stargate, Khai of Khem, A Pharaoh to Remember, etc.)

Hmmm…

You know those pathogens- parasites, prions, fungi, etc.- that spread by infecting a host and altering their behavior so they get consuned? Some even consume the bodies of their hosts to a certain extent, creating macabre “zombie” creatures.

Imagine a more parasitic cousin of Mind Flayers whose larvae are not tadpoles, but a little more like the parasites that create zombie snails:

As they dominate their hosts bodies directly, they use their Psionic abilities to become powerful leaders, When their host bodies are almost completely consumed, they simulate their deaths and invariably demand a specific form of mumification, The mummy becomes a walking chrysalis of sorts, the creature within transforming into their reproductive stage. Instead of mummy rot, their touch is used to infect targets with larvae…

 

[Yora]

"Town starts simping for snake."