if you could run or play in ANY campaign RIGHT now...

Crothian said:
Thieves World, but why wait? I have the old TW books and they are as good and useful today as they were back then. I have campaign and character notes from past games, and laminated maps of the city and sewers. I so want to run a TW game, but alas I have no players who want to...... :(

This thread got buried fast!

Why must you live in Columbus. Curses! *shakes fist in air*
 

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This thread got buried fast!

Well since I started this thread, I'll post my wish list to give it some life.

PLAY:

- Midnight. I'm actually going to get a chance to do this. I'll be playing a Bbn/Defender grappler in Jan in a campaign run by NTZ.

- All Flesh Must Be Eaten. I've never played it but I love the whole zombie genre.

- Call of Cthulhu with an awesome DM who can really scare the beejeesus out of everyone.

- Shadowrun. Played a few sessions a few months ago with an awesome GM and had a BLAST. Hopefully I'll have another chance soon. No matter how good your plans are, things will always go wrong.

- Grim Tales Slavelords of Cydonia. Unfortunately I've already read it but this would be amazing to play through.

RUN:

- just a standard PL10 Mutants & Masterminds campaign. Nothing like good old superheroes trying to stop the bad guys from taking over the world.

- a Grim Tales campaign based on the Thief video games. I'd throw Steam & Steel in the mix for all the Hammerite machinations.

- PIRATES! Probably using Green Ronin's Freeport setting. I'd use firearms since I've never played a game that used flintlocks and muskets, etc. Definitely a Pirates of the Carribean vibe.
 

GlassJaw said:
Cite the system you would use, general premise, setting, any particular house rules or things you would change, etc. (it doesn't have to necessarily be 3.x or even fantasy)

I would like to suggest some general guidelines instead :)

If you want something new, and you choose to follow the homebrew route, I'd say change something, but don't change everything. You may decide for example to change one or more of the following:

- character creation options
- technology level
- world ecology
- religion/alignment
- location type
- rules

For example, a simple thing to change in "world ecology" (and "c.c.o." as well) is races. You may just have an approach like this:
1. start with the 7 PHB races
2. choose some of them which don't exist in your world, and take them away
3. add other races from monster books
4. modify the races role in the world, their culture and eventually their stats
5. decide which of the the races are allowed to characters
In this process you may even want to base your decisions on what is cliche' in D&D and change it. Do you usually see too many elves and dwarves? Ditch them from your world entirely. Find a couple of underused evil races and make them the most important in your campaign: e.g. no more orcs and undead (either they don't exist, or they're unimportant), main villains are yuan-ti and rakshasa. Just a few changes like this are guaranteed to make your setting different than usual.

Going further with the changes to character options, you may try to rearrange core classes (removing/adding), to restrict some classes to higher levels, to limit PrCls to a small group of selected ones... lots of options.

Another possibility is to change religion issues entirely. Don't just bother to write up new deities (i've done it before, it's a waste of time game-wise). Consider instead some structural change: maybe your world is monotheistic, duotheistic or animistic. You may want to adopt a religion like in Rokugan for example. You may strengthen the link between magic and religion (everyone's spells come from a divine source) or cut it off entirely (that of priest is a job, completely separate from the cleric class which becomes just a different type of arcane caster).

Then you can change something in the technology level. This is not an easy issue however and I don't think you should design it yourself. But if you have a d20 book about firearms, steamworks, clockworks, air vessels or magic-as-commodity you can try adopt it in its entirety. Usually just one of these options is enough to complicate the game a lot.

An easier choice may be the "location type". Try setting the campaign on the open seas, underwater, underground, on high peaks, airborne over the clouds, on shifting landmasses, in hell, in ysgard, in the world serpent inn or something else. Otherwise, just pick up a couple of striking features for your world, with mostly just an aesthetic consequence: colossal trees, flying mountains, blue snow, talking winds.... :p

Finally, you may change a couple of rules. Beside small changes, you may consider one or two big shifts (UA is full of them). Just browse UA's later chapters: weapon groups, recharge magic, armor as DR, spontaneous metamagic... These will definitely create new strategic issues that your players may find interesting.

In conclusion: those are endless options, but in practice you need few of them to make your setting very different, and easily your players will remember it for years. If I randomly pick just one-two ideas from each category above look what comes out:

- only Humans, Gnomes, Halflings plus Lizardfolks (more water-oriented) and Aaracockra
- main villains are Yuan-Ti (a lot everywhere, from weak to powerful), with Rakshasa being their spiritual counselors
- Fighters, Barbarians, Paladins, Rangers, Bards, Clerics are out; Swashbucklers, Favored Souls, Hexblades are in; no spellcasters before level 4
- religion completely free (believe what you want, that won't change your PC's abilities); most common faiths are dualistic (good deity-evil deity), druidic (no deities) and animistic (spirits)
- introduce a small book of firearms: they've just been invented so they are expensive and unreliable
- world is full of rivers and lakes, landmass/oceans scattered -> more importance to naval transport and activities
- when the wind blows strong in this world, you can hear it speak (main hook for the animistic belief)
- use Defense Bonus and Weapons Groups from UA

That will probably result in a slight swashbuckling-pirate feeling overall.
 

What I would like to GM: Post Apocalyptic/ Darwin's World II - oh yeah. Of course I have and do and its a lot of fun.
D20 Future/Star Frontiers
The Wilderlands (Judges Guild)/Blackmoore (no reason Blackmoore can't be placed to the north of the Wilderlands)

What I would like to play:

Babylon 5
Midnight
Hamunaptra (Green Ronin)/Mesopotamia (Necromancer Games)(hey, why not combine the two?)
 

What would I like to run most right now?


Nothing! That's not where I'm at right now.

What would I most like to play in right now?


A good Firefly inspired sci-fi campaign!

I'll admit that a good part of that is nostalgia for the Traveller games I played as a kid. Now that I'm middle-aged those childish sessions wouldn't wear well, but every time I've watched Firefly I've been *siezed* by the urge to play in that type of game.

I want to play a Firefly game.

Sam
 



Crothian said:
I so want to run a TW game, but alas I have no players who want to...... :(

patience is a virtue seldom practiced.

give it time.

i did.

took me almost 7 years of hounding people on the computer and at stores and at conventions and...

but i found gamers for my OD&D campaign

and you will too. just stick to your guns and give it and the them the time to come to you.
 

johnsemlak said:
Wow, lots of great campaign ideas in this thread, especially LiShenron's...

And you know what? Except for Lizardfolks and Weapon Groups (which have been in my mind for a while), everything else was completely... RANDOM! :lol: I just made it up on the fly while typing, to show how easy one can come up with simple ideas to make a setting different to what your group has been playing so far :) Only now that I have posted, I am actually starting to giggle about that idea of Yuan-Ti & Rakshasa... :cool:
 

Here are my top 3 picks in each category. Of course, there is a lot more material out there on both sides (and miles to go before I sleep).


PLAY:

1. Star Wars. Maybe I could play a jedi allied with the Rebellion at last.

2. Omega World. Same DM as above in a conversion of an old Gamma World module.

3. Deadlands Hell on Earth. We have an old game in which we're crossing the U.S. on a mission.


RUN:

1. Shackled City with Star Wars, Judge Dredd & Omega World mixed in. I'm already running this weekly, so it has to get top billing.

2. Judge Dredd. My player are 2 modules in with about 4 more to go.

3. Mesopotamia. Looks awesome.
 

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