GMs, What Plots do you use a lot?

[Agamon]

I'm told that some of my themes follow along the same lines as my life experiences. For example, it's gotten to the point where my players never trust a female NPC. Apparently I do the "friendly female NPC eventually stabs you in the back" thing a lot. Not intentional, I assure you, but I can see how my sub-conscious might bring it the fore. Now I consciously do my best to make my female NPCs trustworthy.

I've done the whole "Find the McGuffin" thing to death in the distant past, so I avoided that for the past 15 years, but I think it's time to pull it out again.

"Against all odds" is a fun one. Either an invading army or super powerful monster is crushing everything in its path and they have to find a way to stop, or at least survive, the onslaught.

 

[Orius]

Don't really have any favorite themes. I tend to make the campaign up as I go along. I did try the "It's your destiny to save the world!" plot once and it was a huge mistake. Never again.

Enemies. I like goblins a lot at low-levels, and I've used kobolds and gnolls on occasion. Never made much use of orcs, goblins just have more versatility I guess. For dungeons, lots of undead, vermin and the like. I try to make things logical, and there's nothing logical about opening a door that's been locked and sealed for 1,000 years only to find a 10'x10' room with 20 orcs. Now orc skeletons, that's different.

Dungeons that have humanoid occupants will be lighter on the traps and locked doors (at least the inhabited and/or used sections), but the occupants patrol and call for help. Like the one dungeon I did where a gang of bandits were squatting near the entrance. The PCs engaged the ones in the first room, I rolled to see if any other bandits heard the fighting, and the dice roll came up that every bandits in all the adjacent rooms heard the trouble. So the next round they went from fighting 2 to 11 bandits at first level. Having just gotten TPKed in the previous campaign by underestimating the opponents, the party ran like hell. The bandits sent one grunt to scout after them, a loser with just 1 hp (I always roll randomly for hp to keep the players who might count hp on their toes). To my amusement, this guy shoots an arrow at the party fighter, crits, knocks him down to exactly 0 hp, while all the party's arrows missed.

 

[Nymrohd]

Not so much a plot as a theme, but my campaigns always make my players visit a lot of places partly because I love describing them especially the architecture of other races. I am all about terrain and thematic monsters.

 

[Mark]

Not so much a plot as a theme, but my campaigns always make my players visit a lot of places partly because I love describing them especially the architecture of other races. I am all about terrain and thematic monsters.

Based on historical real world architecture or completely fantastical stuff of your own imagination?