My game ended. Give me campaign ideas.

[KingOfChaos]

Well, if you want something truly dark for an adventure idea, I have a lot of them floating around in my head. I'd rather not post them here, though, because some of them I might wish to turn into a D20 product. You can e-mail me, though. (RoETyrant@aol.com)

When I say truly dark, I don't mean the PCs being evil. I mean they'll hate the villain with all their being

 

[Dirigible]

Not sure exactly why someone would want to do it [tap intot he plane of lost dreams], but I'm thinking it'd be for some noble reason, that just happens to destroy life as we know it.

This, I like.

* He was the counselor to a great, ring-spanning nation [or a nation on another world, perhaps]. This nation was ruled by a paladin-queen of legendary justice, vision, strength and compassion, who was gradually leading her realm to a state of harmony, uniting the entire world with her vision of the way the world could be. The paladin-queen had been a general in one of the factions of the Millenium War, a seeminly endless conflict that had enveloped the land since time immemorial. Only she could bring peace to the blood-baptised factions, using wise words when possible, and unflinching strength when not. OVer many years, she forged the ancient hatreds into a new vision of a prsoperous, unitied society, and peace reigned.

Then, she died.

And the dream of peace, held by ten million citizens, died with her.

As the world plunged into a era of carnage unparalleled before it, the counselor realised what he had to do: find the place where lost hopes and broken potentials go to die, find the Vision again, and bring it back to the world. It was the only way to honour his queen's memory.

* The villian is simply trying to find his purpose in life. Once, he was a man of consequence and power, a great adventurer who had lead mercenary armies, rescued princesses, slain dragons, reunited warring clans and won and lost more treasure before breakfast than most kings do in their lives. Every bard told his tales, every child wanted to be him, every monster feared his name.

But he grew jaded. Being reputed as able to do anything, he came to beleive he could, and those few things that proved impossible chaffed him awfully. He battled his way through Trema's underworld, slaying countless creatures and shattering chthonian empires as he plunged ever deeper... until at last he came to the palace of the daemon king at the centre of the world. After disamring the king's greatest champions, the legendary character demanded a boon from the daemon king, who naturally agreed.

"I want to do something new..." he instructed. "I want new challanges, new vistas of potential. The opportunity to do such things as I have enver done before..."

"Granted" laughed the king.

I'm sure you can guess what happened next.

All the hero's acheivements were stripped from the Coda, the chronicle on the Plane of Time that records history and damend to the plane of lost dreams. Only a fraction of his personal power remained (ie, he's now an appropriate level to challange your aprty ), and great gaps opened up in his memory. His deeds and reputation were entirely lost to the world, and when he returned, none knew him, and laughed at him for a fool when he claimed to be their champion.

Brooding bitterly over his loss, he finally settled on a plan: hsi epic deeds must be preserved somewhere on the plane of lost dreams, and he would do whatever it takes to free them... no matter the cost.

(Chades of Planescape:Torment, methinks.)

 

[Impeesa]

Hey, Ranger Wickett. This is kind of off topic, but if you're having trouble brainstorming or getting away from cliches you should check out the Oblique Strategies. They were designed to help musicians and artists break out of creative slumps, but really they can be used for almost any purpose. My roommate swears that they got him through art school.

A Primer on Oblique Strategizing

draw a card

You know, I never really thought about how handy those could be for campaign design. My dad has a real set, one of the original printings from the 70's, so I've read through most of them. I wonder if that's cheating..

--Impeesa--

 

[Plane Sailing]

Does ENworld still host all those pages of unsuccessful fan submissions to the setting search contest?

I bet that one or two of those would get your creative juices going!

 

[Veritas]

Yeah... this link was posted in another thread. It has many of the campaigns there, along with websites for most, if not all.

 

[Zappo]

A weird and cool campaign we recently started is set on a world where pervasive divine influence allows any character who follows his deity's dogma to gain special powers through faith points. Any character can gain faith points and receive special powers, but clerics and paladins get more of them and better abilities.

With this premise, we decided (much to the DM's surprise) to make a party entirely composed of clerics and paladins. Right now, we have a fighter-oriented paladin, a mystical-oriented paladin, a pure-spellcaster-cleric, a warrior-cleric, a mystic theurge, a rogue (going for Olidammara's Temple Raider or whatever the cleric/rogue prc is called), and an astral deva (with savage species rules). We call our party the Crusade. Starting at 6th level, we got to 7th/8th in a flash thanks to such a party's tendancy to easily kill monsters several CRs above ours and to get to full HP after each and every encounter. It's a blast to play, provided that the players are imaginative enough to each find his own spin. But "religion" is a vast, vast topic; it isn't too difficult to create lots of unique characters.

 

[RangerWickett]

Actually, I'm edging more and more toward a Planescape-esque "belief shapes reality" setting. The problem I'm having is that I want to integrate an existing campaign setting, where there's no notable planar travel, with this new idea, and make it fit. I don't want to shoehorn something in, or just say, "Oh yeah, and there's a bunch of infinite planes too." I want the planes to be a reflection of this world, and to have their emergence be a possibly temporary event.

Part of the history of the setting is that the world used to connect to many other worlds, but that mortals managed to seal it off from the more dangerous planes. They knew that every plane needs access to some other planes for requisite magical forces -- the elemental planes, some manner of source for time and dreams, and a place for the dead to go -- but they wanted to seal out the other planes that were just sources of demons and such.

Thus was created the Ban of Pleian, a massive magical ritual that selected a few planes that had the necessary traits, organizing them into a self-contained system of nine planes. While each plane has at least a few portals to other realms, none of the planes that are immediately connected can sustain life. Thus, sure, you could planeshift from the plane of dreams to any of several other locations, but the only ones that are safe are the ones located in the local system. Like islands on an infinite sea, there may be marvelous lands beyond the horizon, but you'll never reach them if you cannot make it past those islands nearest you.

The more I think about it, the more I'm tempted to post a new thread just asking for ideas on the planeshifting idea. But because sideways brainstorming is good, I'm going to reread this thread and steal ideas from it, even if they just show up as minor elements.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I'm thinking of doing homebrew. I just got done with a travesty of a comic Steampunk setting. Good ideas, the wrong characters. I want something more upbeat this time around -- not silly, but not as like to make the PCs opt for villainy.

If you don't have the Dictionary of Imaginary Places, see if you can find it in your local library. Something like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen would be absolutely brilliant, probably using D20 Modern as the base engine, with some standard D&D classes reworked into prestige classes.

As another (albeit, kinda related) idea:

I have been thinking about a Civil War-era setting set in a fantasy version of the Americas, where there are several American Kingdoms, several areas still controlled by Native Americans or European Powers, and Cortez was killed by the magically powerful South American Empires. Most of the standard races would be right out the window, but hengeyokai (from Oriental Adventures) could be Animal Brothers (or Sisters) -- basically animals that can take on human (Native American) form. Slavery would be an issue in some places, as would racial and gender stereotypes (an exploration of this would be part of the theme of the setting). Not a lot of humanoids. Perhaps some troglodytes in Mammoth Caves, and some Kuo Toa or other Lovecraftian humanoids located around New England.

Classes would have to be modified, but you could use modified classes from Deadlands D20 as well. If I was doing this one (and I might yet), I would use a very low-powered, low-magic set-up.

One of the really neat things about the CWE Fantasy Americas idea is that lots of historical maps could be used with little or no modification. You could also do fantasy builds of historical figures, like Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. One of the problems (for some) with this setting would be the lack of normal dungeon adventures. Sure, Mammoth Caverns, some Pueblos, and the zuggurat temples of the Mayas and Aztecs could be considered "dungeons" (maps are available, too), but overall you'd be dealing with Railroad Barons, Cattle Rustlers, and Hostile Incursions. And Exploration.

When the U.S. purchased Alaska from the Russians, one of the primary reasons was that the government wanted to get it on the search for living mammoths. Could there be living mammoths in the Fantasy Americas? Darn tootin! And dinosaurs in South America.


RC

P.S.: On second thought...forget that idea. Fantasy Americas is mine.


RC


P.P.S: Seriously, though, you'd need better rules for draw speed than simply using Quick Draw, or shoot outs at High Noon just won't be as much fun. And rules for Poker. Profession (gambler), Bluff, Sense Motive, and Innuendo would all be useful. Innuendo especially for partner games like euchre, where overt tabletalk might get you strung up as a cheat.

RC


P.P.P.S: Speaking of getting strung up, you'd also need rules for the ever-popular Tar-and-Feathering. Otherwise, you couldn't emulate some wonderful scenes from Huckleberry Finn.

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

Actually, I'm edging more and more toward a Planescape-esque "belief shapes reality" setting. The problem I'm having is that I want to integrate an existing campaign setting, where there's no notable planar travel, with this new idea, and make it fit. I don't want to shoehorn something in, or just say, "Oh yeah, and there's a bunch of infinite planes too." I want the planes to be a reflection of this world, and to have their emergence be a possibly temporary event.

Part of the history of the setting is that the world used to connect to many other worlds, but that mortals managed to seal it off from the more dangerous planes. They knew that every plane needs access to some other planes for requisite magical forces -- the elemental planes, some manner of source for time and dreams, and a place for the dead to go -- but they wanted to seal out the other planes that were just sources of demons and such.

Begin the new campaign on one of the worlds that was sealed off. Don't tell the PCs what you are doing. Then let them do something that undoes the Ban of Pleian from their side, and allows them access to the old campaign world (and possibly several other worlds that the Ban had also....um....banned).


RC

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

You could shift the type of game you're going to run:

I got inspired by an Ars Magica game I played in. The PCs have a home base - possibly a weird castle or settlement:

The first part of the campaign should involve siezing it from the people currently running it. Probably helps if the current rulers are evil... otherwise it's bad party time again!

Gets the feeling of building something up... Interacting with the people in the site, the people who sent you there and dealing with problems that crop up. Debts or problems the previous owners ran up. Jealous neighbours. Etc.

Eventually we got to setting our own goals, which drove the campaign. The politicing was a lot of fun. Found it played very differently to the wandering adventurer type game.

In fact, I liked it so much that I'm running it as my current campaign - now 1 session in! Just converted the basic idea to DnD.


If you wanted to go planar with it, the site could be particularly important because it regularly relocates itself - that could provide some interesting adventures?

Perhaps it can survive in some of the planes others can't travel in - as long as you can work out how to steer it - it's current motion is (seemingly?) random.

If you want to slot it in with the Ban - the relocating whatsit was used to construct the Ban and would be needed to unlock it?


With 100% more Tentacle Horrors:

Maybe the Ban was created to keep out the Cthuloid horrors that have devoured (some/part/all) of the rest of the universe?

The guys who sent the players there did so because they wish to remove the Ban - Could they be foolish, nihilists, ignorant, Cthuloid horror cultists, imagine they can defeat or even harness the Cthuloid stuff?