give me your over-arching plots NOW!!! please :)

[Stormborn]

Here is an idea for a campaign that never materialized for us:

-The PCs leave a major metropolis to route some bandits that have been disrupting overland travel on one road leading out of the city. They eventually discover two things. First, the bandit chief is working for some unnamed highly placed city official who is seeking certian artifacts and books and is using the bandit's ambushes as cover. Second, the bandit chief has made his lair in a cave system, but something in it has been effecting his mind. This covers the early levels. As the game progresses the PCs discover that there is an ancient hidden temple beneath the bandit lair. Built by abberations, something inside is waking up and exerting its influence, first on the bandits and then others. Meanwhile in the city strange graphitti is appearing, seemingly the work of cults. The city official that was running the bandits is the head of this cult and is working to eliminate the PCs. Aberrations are manifesting in the city and portals to the Far Realms are opening. The key to stopping it may lay in the hidden temple, but there is an ancient order of guardians who will do anything to keep it from being opened. Meanwhile the cultist seek the weapons it contains; while the order of mindflayer monks that built it want control for themselves. While they may share the same goals as the humanoid group, they have no desire to share the power. Ultimatelly the goal of the offical in the city is to turn the city into a summoning circle for a city/god/concept-thing that resides in the Far Realms and bring it in so that it overlaps the city and can be used as a base to conquerer the world. Easilly enough to take a campaign into high levels.

I have also considered taking the basic begining of Warcraft 3 and have the PCs dispatched to find out why the smaller farming communities have broken off contact only to discover a zombie plague orchistrated by a necromancer who ultimately is working for a lich with designs on the kingdom.

 

[Presto2112]

Dean, Allan, Steve, Susanne, Pierre, and Brad, STOP READING NOW!!!


Hidden powers plan and stage a series of nation-encompassing distractions (insect plagues causing food shortages, provoking wars with neighboring nations, putting adventurers on the trail of enemies to their cause), while they work to their ultimate goal - paving the way for the arrival of Baalzebul, so he can secure a large section of the Prime Material Plane for his own, absorbing the divine energy of all of the mortal life on the plane, and usurping the lion's share of power from Asmodeus to Rule all of Hell.

There.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Currently, there have been rumblings about evil stirring and a crusade being launched to the south. Eventually, the PCs will become embroiled in it. If they survive and earn their glory, they will find themselves at the forefront of battle when the forces of evil commence their counter-crusade. Eventually, they will be the ones to save the land or die trying.

It's been pretty low-key for a while, but within the next two levels, I plan on heating things up.

Previously, my last campaign was essentially Hamlet in the background. You know, the good king was killed and the queen charmed into marrying the evil magic-user. The evil wizard-king commenced with the tyranny and the PCs became more and more involved in the resistance, until the final battle wherein they overthrew the evil king and raised the queen up as the sole ruler of the realm.

 

[Gundark]

Are you looking for overarching 1-20, like the Adventure Paths tend to be, or something on a slightly smaller scale?

That's up to you

 

[Crothian]

Ebberon

The Pcs are working for the young Princess of Karnath to help eventually gain her the power and prestige to reunite Galifar!!

 

[Voadam]

Warlord freed from the Banewarrens when the party adventured there is reforging an artefact fire sword on another plane for his archdevil master using the souls of dead master smiths he ordered assassinated and soul thefted, including one a PC dwarf champion is charged to avenge. The sword will inspire a great jyhad and allow command of legions of fire creatures.

The warlord is using a druidic fire shard artefact that the human paladin god of the empire used ages ago to ascend. Currently the god is not answering any contact, and his clerics have split over control of the theocracy, both sides claiming fiendish corruption and empowerment of the other side as the empire erupts into full civil war as the party is on other planes tracking down the smith killer working up the chain of links to the warlord. Church shcims, corruption, and witch hunts have been a theme as well since the beginning of the campaign as well as druid history.

 

[blargney the second]

There are these big black pearls that turn people into monsters...

 

[Remathilis]

Spoilers just in case anyone of my group reads this

Spoiler

Eberron. The group is working for a pseudo-research group known as the Order of Ancient Mysteries (see DMGII). However, the group is actually headed up by a gold dragon who is working for a sect of the Chamber. His ultimate goal is to release all the Rajah's in one glorious battle where the "children of siberys" will defeat "the spawns of Khyber". His partner in crime? A powerful Raksasha working for the Lords of Dust who also wishes to see the final confrontation, but with a different outcome. The Gold Dragon is using the OoAM to find new ways to both release and destroy the Rajah's, while the raksasha is acting both as a foil and ally to the group (and throwing the scent off the GD). Its a variant on the classic two-man con.

 

[Tonguez]

1. The Evil One has been locked in the underworld for millenia and wants to get out
He needs to gather the scattered artifacts of power which together will form a key to unlock the Gates of the Underworld and he has minions out searching for them
2. The PCs live in a region of islands which has only had human (includes half-elf and half-orc) habitation for less than 300 years and thus much of it (including whole islands) remains unexplored.
3. A cult of Cannibalistic Zealots has arisen and is starting an aggressive expansion against the other islands (the Cults god is an agent of the Evl One)
4. After a few preliminary adventures, the PCs are sent south to an unexplored island both to gather a rare herb which former sightings suggest is abundant there and also to see if the island is suitable for colonisation
5. The PCs find one of the artifacts that is being sought by the Evil One and so become targets

 

[Plane Sailing]

My first 3e campaign had a number of plot arcs, overlapping one another.


Very big picture: The plane used to be owned by the mindflayers. They want it back. Turns out that dwarves were a slave race of theirs, although that isn't discovered until well into the campaign.

Pretty big picture: A thousand years ago the known world was ruled by the 'Jade Emperor', although he disappeared and the empire fell apart as his sons battled. His return is prophesied.

Big picture. Something is going rotten in the huge theocratic nation to the north. What starts off as a reduction in trade caravans turns into a trickle of refugees, then a flood, then they all stop coming... Possible openings for the PCs at higher level to go and fight for the remaining free city state and save a nation.

Alienist cells are discovered planted in various cities (an outgrowth of the Blessed from Speaker in Dreams, part of a big plan inspired by the Mindflayers)

A corrupt, banned sect of the cult of Asura is arising again, as Daros travels the land corrupting Asuran temples to his evil ways. He is effectively a missionary from the forces which are corrupting the theocratic nation. Once again, Mindflayers are the hidden puppets behind the throne.

Mindflayers attempt to invade the world via 'the door in the air' - a permanent portal to the elemental plane of air. Fortunately the PCs manage to stuff a cloud giant castle into the portal just before thousands of charmed elementals arrive at the scene.

The Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil planned to draw the far realm into alignment with the prime material plane, enabling unfettered access for the mindflayers and their minions of madness. The party foiled this attempt by, as it happens, waking the Jade Emperor from a thousand year slumber (who turns out to be an advanced Great Wyrm dragon) who wipes out the temple of elemental evil - but is now at large in the world again with his own plans for a new and greater empire.

The Mindflayers are all 'old style' in that they have astral projection, and they are astrally projecting from their home plane to the prime material - which means that you kill their body here and they just wake up at home, ready to astrally project forth a week or so later to start up their next plan, and with all their knowledge of the PCs abilities and tactics intact.

Ultimately, the PCs would have to develop plane-hopping skills in order to take the fight to the Mindflayers home and finish their threat for good.

I liked the way that there was a slow build of threats and events, so that when the rose bloomed, the PCs (and the players) could say 'a-ha, so *thats* what that was all about'.

Sadly the campaign ended while the PCs were attempting to finish of Daros, as they virtually forced their way into a TPK (the last party member could have let Daros get away and got his friends raised, but no, he had to keep on chasing and so got enervated to death. Damn!)