Project Purity - The PCs are get involved with a plan by the followers of Murlynd (or some other good aligned god of magical technology) to build an eldritch machine to convert an entire river into holy water. Lots of fetch quests for rare components, bodyguarding NPCs important to the effort, etc.
The rise of technomagery has ushered in things that were once deemed the stuff of fiction and pure fantasy. Unfortunately, mirroring fiction, the ubiquity of powerful tools in everyone’s hands has led not to Utopia, but a world at war. The PCs live in these tumultuous times: are they a force for good or ill?
The Macrocosm- Partially crossposted from Worlds In A Word, Planes In A Paragraph. The PCs are anthropomorphic rats in a setting where the intelligence and scale of everything in the world is increased. Takes place in a planetary system where each planet corresponds to one of earth's continents. Possibly Africa, Europe, and Asia are all moons of a single (uninhabited) gas giant*, and north and south america are a double-planet system. The setting's intelligent equivalent of animals have a red-in-tooth-and-claw society vaguely like the one in the webcomic Kevin and Kell, and a late-20th-century to modern level of technology (they can with great difficulty get between planets and moons but not from planet to planet) but they are not the dominant lifeforms in the system (the greys are, see below). The PCs are the ship's rats in an interplanetary spaceship built by setting's equivalent of humans - grey alien type creatures with an interplanetary civilization (verging on becoming interstellar), frightening levels of individual intellignece, a language too complicated for anyone else to speak, cat and dog servitor races that worship them as gods (and who will try to sacrifice the PCs to them), and a cthulhu-like disregard for the other creatures of the system.
*(edit: as a matter of fact, just name the Europe moon Europa after the jovian moon)
“As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods,
They kill us for their sport.” ~ Shakespeare
A small scenic village has a long history of having an inordinately high murder rate. Some of them quite…unusual. Many unsolved.
Fortunately, the village has, from time to time, attracted the attention of sharper minds whose presence leads to increasing numbers of murderers brought to justice. But those times never last- eventually, the “sleuths” move on or pass away. And the deaths continue to disrupt the otherwise idyllic, sleepy settlement…until the next hero or heroes arrive.
What the root cause for the town’s bloody history is unknown to mortals.
But among those beings in higher realms, there is no mystery. Well, at least, to two in particular. To them, the settlement is a game board, and the lives of those within its boundaries are their playthings. Each player takes turns provoking bloodshed, while the other tries to thwart the killings its opponent provoked.
The Past is A Hostile Power- (aka "regression" aka "unpleasantville"). Another idea that is more like a story that I don't have time to write. Basically a high-concept campaign wherein the undead are used to represent the past and regressive values. The vilain is the reified concept of "The Past", similar to how "Death" was the villain of Final Destination. The story will combine elements such as ghosts playing out their former lives, unaware that they are dead; the related idea of the ghosts of dead soldiers endlessly refighting the battle that killed them; Themed zombies*; the idea of people stealing other people's bodies to extend their life or return from death**; the return or attempted return to the world of Lamashtu (the mesopotamian demon who represented how serious and dangerous pregnancy and childbirth were before we had c-sections, blood transfusions, and doctors who wash their hands); sort of a vibe like the movie Pleasantville but going in the wrong direction, so that things that were colorful are turning grey; and also a vibe like the story Ubbo-Sathla except if instead of taking him to Ubbo-Sathla, the cursed seeing stone had instead taken the protagonist to J. Edgar Hoover
*(the cliche nazi zombies are joined by confederate, mccarthyist, marxist, victorian, robber baron, big tobacco, yuppie, religious, traditional gender roles, and meathead jock zombies)
**(as in The Thing On The Doorstep, Soulkeeper, Child's Play, Star Wars 9, Ghostbusters 2, and Get Out, etc.)
A Troubling Mather- Supernatural historical conspiracy investigation wherein it turns out that Cotton Mather got involved with all those witch hunts to throw people off the trail of the fact that he himself was secretly a witch
Cosmic Wine - A certain society or the societies of a certain planet has been deliberately set up to grow too great too fast so that when it inevitably collapses in on itself the people who set it up can scavenge through the remains, like the yeast in a fermenting wine
I think the explosion one is the standout of this batch
Planescape Paranoia - A cross between Planescape and Paranoia with the Factions as the Secret Societies or vice versa. (And Sigil crossed with Alpha Complex and the Lady of Pain as Friend Computer. etc etc etc.) (Did I suggest this already?)
The Eleventh Vault of the Abyss - The premise of Vault 11* from Fallout: New Vegas would work well as something concocted by the tanar'ri, as its premise is basically to brutally punish obedience and reward dissent
The Blood of Voles - Toon parody of Eberron featuring a rodent lich named "Erandis da vole"
Tequila Castaigne - It's a rehash of the premise of The Repairer of Reputations except it's set in LA and Hildred Castaigne is replaced by controversial singer Tila Tequila. I can't be the only person who sees parallels between those two .
GOTO Zoo - Humorous non-combat downtime encounter in a zoo on Mechanus where all the animals are various bad puns and refrences to science, engineering, and machines. It has things like a spherical cow, and a binary adder, and a donkey engine, and a crane, and a worm gear, and so on.
The Repairer of Mentation - lethal chambers from repairer of reputations as mind upload chambers using a destructive recording process; cf. inhabitant of carcosa: "Sometimes, as is veritably attested, it dieth with the body, but after a season is raised up again in that place where the body did decay."
The Elemental Plane of Explosions - Going through my notes I found an old idea that says "explosion elemental". I'm thinking some kind of advanced or templated fire or smoke elemental. Possibly altered in form or temperment by taking stimulants. Possibly the stimulant (to fire elementals) is gunpowder. or thermite. or ANFO. Possibly the PCs need to clean up a town in the Elemental Plane of Fire by getting gunpowder and ANFO off the streets and out of fire elementals' noses.
Headshot - Some kind of encounter at sea in which enemies shoot undead heads and skulls onto the PCs' ship with a cannon
Shush - RP encounter where the PCs need to look up some piece of information in a lobrary owmed by a tome dragon** without getting kicked out and/or stabbed by the sadistic and authoritarian kobolds that the tome dragon employs as librarians.
Fallout Paranoia - Alpha Complex is a Vault-Tec vault
*a nuclear bunker from one of the Fallout games in which the residents were subjected to an unethical social experiment in which the people sheltering in the bunker were locked in indefinitely and told to sacrifice one of their own every year or else. But in actuality (as the vault dwellers discovered after rioting over who was to be sacrificed reduced their number to only five) the doors were set to allow egress when, and only when, the residents flat out refused the sacrifice.
The Mean Streets of Middle Earth - police procedural LotR parody. People are getting addicted to magic rings and the PCs need to take out the cartel that's bringing them into the city.
Party Till You Die - The demon lord of parties has taken over a town or city. It's kind of like the Powerpuff Girls episode "Painbow", but with blackjack and hookers...and crossed with the combination cocktail/raiding party from Life, The Universe, and Everything...and with the drug fiend gang from Fallout New Vegas...and - depending on your table's stomach for mature content - also crossed with the party from Salò.
Suffice to say that in the weeks that the party has lasted:
*they've used up all their food and turned to raiding and cannibalism
*all regular work has ceased
*many people have been turned into flesh pinatas and been whacked open and had their insides devoured, including the town's government and captains of industry and the parents of children age 5-14
*the entire city is addicted to drugs
*many have died from drugs
*there's a unique type of undead running around that's kept up and moving entirely by speed and cocaine, and lapses back into death without regular doses
*there's demon strippers (succubus brd 1) running around
*most of the water has been transmutated into hard liquor
*work animals are no longer useful. animals who enter the area become only interested in mating.
*Most of the area's females are pregnant with demon spawn
The demon lord who is responsible for all this is looks like sort of a cross between a slaaneshi daemon, a character from GWAR, a Cenobite of the Order of the Gash, and a douchebag DJ. He has two mouths, one of which constantly sucks on a ventilator mask that constantly delivers dream-mist (BOVD pg 42); he slowly suffocates if this ventilator is severed. A cloud of dream-mist constantly surrounds him. Deafening music surrounds him as well; it originates from no visible source. Armor is of limited protection against him unless one has a high will save, as those who come near him are compelled to disrobe.
The city in question was previously under the austere and authoritarian thumb of Dispater, and was targeted by the tanar'ri for this reason. Devils trying either to reestablish control and/or to liquidate the city in order to collect any souls to which they still have a claim may exist as a significant faction in the adventure
See View Single Post: Unique Fiends
Recommended music: "Le Galop Infernal (Can-can from Orpheus In The Underworld)" (by Jacque Offenbach), "Party Til You Die" (by MakJ and Timmy Trumpet) "Ragnarok" (by GWAR) "Headless Boogie" (by ICP) "Party In The Gutter" (by Richard Gein) "Lit Up" (by Buckcherry) "Acid Queen" (by The Who)
the AI couldn't handle the extra mouths, the monstrous shape, or the death, but I think it's captured the seediness, the gas mask, and the party atmosphere
The Bloodsucking Robot Zombie Pod People From Another World - Toon. The world is simultaneously overrun by zombies, vampires, pod people, The Thing, and a race of assimilating cyborgs (and maybe also "The World's End" style robot replacements, and also dopplegangers). And now everyone, including the monsters, is paranoid that any one of them might have been secretly replaced
The Sector of the Phoenix* - The Humanists are breeding (as in breeding, not clones, so they're unregistered and unknown to Friend Computer) an army to overrun Alpha Complex in an abandoned sector
* Title is a parody of La Secta Del Fénix by Jorge Borges
Be Vewy Vewy Quiet, I'm Hunting Robots - sci-fi. long ago humanity sent out fleet of self-replicating von neumann probes out into the solar system to mine the system's mineral wealth and send it back to Earth. But after many generations the self-replicating robots have evolved away from their original programming; the ones that don't make trips back and forth to earth to drop off minerals have a reproductive advantage and so they are now the norm. They still gather minerals though, but now they must be hunted for them.
Troll Jailbreak - The PCs are trolls or some other regenerating monster. They're thrown in a dungeon; like a dungeon dungeon. But because of the regeneration thing they just rip off the limbs that the shackles were attached to. Now they need to break the rest of the way out of jail.
Marx Man - superheroes. your superheroes must fight a communist sniper named "Marxman"
Clean Kill - The party needs to assassinate a target without killing anyone else. Get back to what (I am given to understand) are the roots of D&D, where combat was usually to be avoided
Tattoos - Did I already suggest one where they have to spring some kind of hipster from a prison ship because they need some kind of artifact level psionic tattoo and this combination hipster/prisoner/sailor is the only guy who can make it happen?
Soul Rustlers- Conflict between Baatezu. Some are luring LE mortals out of another's hunting ground and killing them in their own hunting geound to get credit for the soul while leaving the other to do all the work.
The Sun - The PCs are somehow caught up in scheming of the setting's various sun gods against each other to try to obtain uncontested control of the sun
Spelljamer campaign where the PCs are searching for an alleged planet made entirely of gold (or some other valuable substance), attested in some combination of rumor and/or divination/prophecy and/or borgesian reasoning that in an infinite universe there must be at least one such planet. In practice this search would probably work best simply as a framing device for a bunch of largely unrelated ancillary adventures occurring during the search.