DMs: What is the campaign concept or idea you've never had the opportunity to DM?

[Allanon]

Wormwood, Allanon, try what we do. I had the problem of owning a bajillion RPGs that I never got to play. So once a year, we invite friends over for the weekend and play all the games we've wanted to try but couldn't. The one rule is no D&D. It's been incredibly successful - and because each is only a four hour game, there's no resistance to giving new games a try.

That ain't a bad idea, I'll have to suggest that next time. And if I arrange good handouts the cry that they'll have to learn "all these rules" won't hold up too long. Thanks PC.

 

[Bloodstone Press]

I have a big, super-epic, war-type story that I've been kicking around for over 10 years now. Every time I work on it, I get sidetracked and end up doing something else.

Someday we'll play it... someday.

 

[Mouseferatu]

One idea I always wanted to try was to have all the players make characters that all were born and raised in the same small village and have never left the immediate area. It's a concept I really like, but the two times I suggested it to groups, both immediately said that it was stifling and it wasn't fair that I 'limited' their choices in making characters.

That's really too bad. I've done just that on two separate occasions. The first was a Ravenloft mini-campaign where most of the players didn't know it was a Ravenloft game until the end of game one. That campaign, designed to run for five games or so, went to completion, and is still the single best mini-campaign I've ever run.

The second was set in a world a bit more like historical Earth than most D&D. Only humans were available as PC races, magic-users were rare and mysterious, magic items even moreso. The campaign died after a few games for totally unrelated reasons. But those few games we got to play, everyone had a blast. You just have to have players who understand that not every option is (or should be) available in every setting.

 

[Wippit Guud]

Armegeddon scenario - most of humanity wiped out, living underground for a few hundred years, and now people are starting to emerge on the surface again... never worked out quite the way I wanted.

Living Kobold - haven't had a chance to try it yet, have all the PCs play kobolds in a tribe, and go from there. The majority of the campaign would be in a jungle environment, and can still incorporate many of the things with more standard campaigns (find a lost tomb, visit a small village for trading), but with an evil humanoid twist.

 

[Cor Azer]

One idea I always wanted to try was to have all the players make characters that all were born and raised in the same small village and have never left the immediate area. It's a concept I really like, but the two times I suggested it to groups, both immediately said that it was stifling and it wasn't fair that I 'limited' their choices in making characters.

I've done this a few times, with varying levels of success. Fortunately, when it has failed, it was due to outside issues and not the 'stifling of character concepts' that the idea 'promoted'.

As for ideas I'd like to try someday

- A modern or futuristic campaign of any sort. I've just never been able to get one to work.

- Discover a new world/continent. Have the character start some place like Europe, spend several sessions on boats crossing a great ocean, and then crossing a new and unexplored continent to reach the (spice/silk/gold) trade on the other side.

- Fairy Tales are real. I started working such things into another campaign, and might try again once I pick up Horizons: Grimm from FFG. A bit of a light-hearted campaign, with the characters doing stuff like defeating the troll on the bridge, rescuing a princess from a tall tower, battling an evil sorceress with a penchant for sleep spells and effects, etc.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Actually, I did do the "all from the same small village" game. It worked amazingly well. The players still remember it to this day, 10 years after it ended. The trick is to do it with a bunch that are primarily roleplayers. If you have too many Power Gamers (a la Robin Law's definitions), it won't work.

As for ideas I'd like to try someday
...
- Fairy Tales are real. I started working such things into another campaign, and might try again once I pick up Horizons: Grimm from FFG. A bit of a light-hearted campaign, with the characters doing stuff like defeating the troll on the bridge, rescuing a princess from a tall tower, battling an evil sorceress with a penchant for sleep spells and effects, etc.

This is one of mine. After reading Stardust, by Neil Gaiman, I really wanted to do this. But I got a severe lack of interest. Go figure.

The other game that I've always wanted to do is a setting where the world is what I called GURPS Yrth 3000, which was a Matrix-inspired version of the old GURPS setting. Replete with the Machine Barons (technology kings) emerging from behind a magical force field, a Church that controlled the Web (fantasy cyberspace), Templars in the Web fighting demons loose in it, etc. That kind of gritty cyberpunk atmo having faded, I suspect it won't ever happen. Even sent a proposal to SJG and got rejected.

Mind you, I'm taking the original question as something that one might invest a lot of time into. We're not talking the sparks of ideas that one gets every day. "Hey, that would make a cool campaign. Bogarts working in a diner. Yeah."

 

[Shallown]

I've always wanted to do A campaign based around the characters being resistance fighters/underground of an oppressive regime.

The basic idea was a lich king sort of ruler who had been around for a thousand + years and having locked down the society a great deal. magic sniffing mutated beast so mages had to cast and run as the beast could track individual caster's by their magic scent. A very limited number of weapons available and practically no armor. Players coul dbe merchants, nobles, ex-city guard on the run, or present city guard living a double life hoping to avoid detection.

I just thought it would be fun to be the underdogs. I had the whole city etc thought out and reason's for why no outside forces had tried to overthrow the despot etc.

But My group will never play in it becuase they would say they were willing but then be a pain in the hiney when it wasn't traditional enough. Their willingness is often nixed by their perceptions and general not "getting it".

Later

 

[Wippit Guud]

in the back of my head, always considered running a Xanth campaign... which would be really weird

 

[Nightchilde-2]

Theldia and Carcerian Nights, a campaign in which the PCs started out having been wrongly (or rightfully and just escaping) imprisoned in Carceri and had to find a way to get free and (hopefully) join a band of underground rebels that helped fight against the jailers.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I've always sort of wanted to run a campaign that begins with a bunch of evil PCs being killed in the first game. Their souls wind up as conscripts in the Blood War for a few decades or so, and then, due to some outside interference, they are given the opportunity to escape into the planes, and eventually (despite technically being dead) back to the Material Plane. There, they not only have to dodge the fiends who are searching for them, but they are forced into doing good--despite their initial evil alignments--because every evil act they commit draws fiendish attention to them, while good acts tend to deflect it. By the end of the campaign, those who have truly reprented, and now believe in doing good for the sake of doing good, might be allowed a second chance, while those who haven't would probably be recaptured and dragged back to Hell. (Or not. I don't predetermine the ends of my campaigns; I just like to have an idea of where it'll go if the PCs don't drastically change things.)

Never actually got it off the ground, and it's going to require a group of players really ready to get into it, but I think it could be fun.