Help! I need novel ideas for starting a campaign.

[der_kluge]

The campaign I am currently designing is thus:

The PCs are hired by a famous archaeoligist and explorer to help him explore an unknown land that lies 4 months travel to the east, by ocean. Previous explorers had at least mapped parts of the coastline, so they know it's there.

Once there, the party goes aboard on a skiff, and while on land, the ship, with all the crew and supplies is attacked by dragons, and sinks off the coast, the crew dying a horrible death.

So now, the PCs are stranded with their employer on a lost continent, with no hope of returning home (house-ruled teleport to ensure that).

Can the PCs survive in this treacherous land?
Can the discover the evil that is about to reawaken, and stop it before it's too late?!

 

[EOL]

Well, I am from Hoorn originally, lived in Amsterdam for a few years, and that is where I am going to return to hopefully, though the housing demand is high and this would make it hard to get a decent place on my money, so I might move back to Hoorn first.

Ahh... how I miss the heroin addict who would sit in front of the Amsterdam central train station, beat on his white bucket and yell, "Opa gaat trouwen!"

 

[humble minion]

6. Frozen
Our great-great-grandfathers still lived in freedom. The Lords teach that mankind was a constant threat to itself in those days, always warring and fighting with each other, raping the land and killing the beasts - but that is a lie. Before their high mages called the ice to crush our empires, all men were free and brave. And the Lords lived hidden in the remote wilderness. But then came the darkcloud, the great famine, and the War of Winter - and mankind lost. Rome fell, Byzantium fell, even the norsemen, the persians, the huns, and the legendary empire of Cathay fell. Today we live as servants to the Lords: the sidhe, the elfs, the dwarfs, the goblins, the giants, and the djinn. They use us as workers and slaves, the men as warriors, the women as whores, the children as food - and they say it is just. But we know it is a lie, and we will vanquish them?
System: GURPS

Damn you, Cardinal! I'm trying to run Star Wars! Stop giving me ideas like this, damn it!!

 

[Ravellion]

I asked my players all right, but they seem to be quite apathetic about the thing.

I want something I can reasonably tinker with, and my current PbP is a mix between episodic and epic quest (on finding an artifact, instead of destroying it ). I would like something where I can sink my teeth into, something that will be alkot of work for me as a DM: that's what I get part of my fun from.

Rav

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Isn't there a whole campaign settings contest database around here somewhere, you could filter some good ideas out of that

Well, here is my entry in that database:

Urbis - A World of Cities.

The standard D&D rules still apply. The same spells work here that work elsewhere. All the familiar monsters are out there somewhere.

What's different is the attitude.

Instead of having small villages dotting the landscape, you have gargantuan city-states with populations ranging into the hundreds of thousands, or even millions of people. Instead of magic barely having an impact on a pseudo-medieval society, you have an Industrial Age society that regards magic as one of the vital tools that keep the cities functioning. Bless Plant spells to feed the teeming masses, golem-drawn railways, raise dead to keep the rich and powerful around until they die of old age...

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

For a published setting I like Oathbound. The basic idea is that the characters are fairly high level heroes in their own worlds, they are then snatched up, powered up, and sent to a world that is subtly at war with itself. The world is in fact a giant eternal prison for a god and the caretakers have grown weary of their duties and seek to circumvent the oaths that bind them by encouraging the development of immensely powerful, clever, and angry heroes who will rise up and either destroy or supplant them. Each caretaker has thus developed a 'realm' which challenges the heroes in unique and horrible ways to develop their heroic potential.

Escape isn't impossible, but it is challenging since the land itself is both intoxicating and addictive and the world is protected by many defenses.

Homebrew Ideas:

1.) Adventuring in a world which only has nascent civilization. Most people are hunter gatherers, magic is more common as a result of the lack of technology, and the ecology is extremely robust so that humans and humanoids need heroes simply to survive. I base mine on the US southwest, Mexican North in the middle ages, but I am also intrigued by developing similar concepts around a fertile crescent or Minoan style culture. High magic and low tech.

2.) A 'frontier' style adventure in which the PCs actually participate in the creation of a new community in an old land with help from another old land. Recently, I saw an idea on a thread on ENWorld to play in a setting where humans numbered only a cool million and were refugees from another planet trying to make their way in a strange terrain. There's a lot that you could develop out of this, but I just like the idea of the PCs being new heroes in a new place. That and using modifed plots from some of the better western novels. Low magic and low tech though improving.

3.) A 'refugee' style campaign in which the players are involved with a culture that is caught in a war between two unimaginably powerful and distant cultures. Both cultures are willing to use and/or destroy the PCs' peoples. Even though one of these cultures is friendly, it is still very alien, has its own umcompromisable motivations, and is only able to protect the players' peoples to a limited extent. Forcing the PCs to become heroes in their own right and expert diplomats in order to use and acquire the aid they need. Wildly varying from extremely low levels of power to extremely high magic and high tech.

 

[s/LaSH]

You could do what I did and remodel medieval Europe for D&D-style fantasy. There's all sorts of cool stuff out there, and the chronicle linked below is only starting to touch on the mythic themes and cultures available to play with. Bonus points: You can have elves reminiscing about the time they sacked Rome.

Or you could try playing Avernum (http://www.spidweb.com) or Final Fantasy, which would both be full of ideas in completely different ways...