D&D General The campaign you will never get to run

[Blue]

An all dwarf campaign ultimately leading to search for a kingdom lost to dragons.

Pretty straightforward, right? Sure, except I always have at least one player who refused to play a dwarf. Which doesn't really work, because one of the things I want to do is take advantage of long lifetime and stretch the campaign over a century or more.

Float a similar idea about an all elven party and every player is already writing up a PC before I finish my sentence

Darn racist (speciest?) players.

We played this! We had an all dwarf* campaign back in AD&D 2nd in FR. Later in the campaign, we went on a (published/Dungeon!) adventure where there was a diamond citadel in an active volcano. We ended up clearing whatever was in it and foudn tghat in our DM's FR it had been the last holdout of Clan Melairkyn. We all took oaths and restarted the lost clan with us as the elders. Lots of fun as we both adventured but also nourished and recruited a new clan, set up trade routes, etc.

* "Dwarves" included one dark elf who thought she was a dwarf that we had eventually accepted. shrug It was 30+ years ago. PC tee shirts, eh?

I played Morinn of the Mask, an urban bounty hunter who became a grand master of the crossbow. "Crossbows are good for ..." was a catchphrase. Sometimes it backfired, like we saw the unsuspecting "prisoner" in a vampire lair whom we thought was really a vampire trying to trick us. "Crossbows are good for detecting vampires". Shoot one wooden crossbow bolt into it's heart. End up apologizing for several sessions to the paladin of Lathander the vampires had captured. Ooops.

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

I always wanted to be a dm+player in a campaign that lasts decades of real time where the levelling up pace is progressively slow, to the point of taking tens of quests to gain the next level, and the PCs growing old with the players.

What I'd like to do is similar - run repeated campaigns at normal pace, but in a world that evolves due to the actions of previous campaigns, with PCs and their descendants becoming key NPCs and historical figures. As I might be pretty settled for the next decade and a half, perhaps my current campaign is the beginning of this...

 

[Blue]

The Demise of the Lady of Fate
When I used to play 10-14 hours every weekend when I was a student, I loved the idea of a megadungeon. I've never actually played in one for an extended period, and never run one. This was inspired a bit by that idea, plus some Sluggy Freelance.

The Goddess of Wyrd, Fate, Destiny and Time has been slain. Time has stopped. Living beings generate a bit of Wyrd, but quickly slowed and stopped - unless they were in large enough groups. The three cities, a metropolitan area at the border of three countries, each with their own "city" though they have really grown together. This provided enough Wyrd/Time/whatever to keep the city and some surrounding areas moving in time, so they could grow food and such.

Recently, they have learned how to store time and radiate it out. So they can send out people into the never-changing areas of no-time. Young people seem to spend it slower, so the groups they send our are full of young people (i.e. the players).

Now, there are a lot of threats out there, but they don't "activate" until the party gets close. Might be a blizzard going on, captured from when it froze. There are creatures out there, and the stored time will "activate" them well before the PCs get close because it combines with the Wyrd they have already. For the same reason the PCs can remain active a good distance from the time lanterns.

Eventual goal would be to restart time. Now, the death of the Lady of Fate destroyed all prophecy and such, and the players would need to decide and enact if they want a world where such a thing (the providence of the gods to affect the mortal world) exists again, or if the world is free from the meddling of the gods.

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

The Goddess of Wyrd, Fate, Destiny and Time has been slain. Time has stopped. Living beings generate a bit of Wyrd, but quickly slowed and stopped - unless they were in large enough groups. The three cities, a metropolitan area at the border of three countries, each with their own "city" though they have really grown together. This provided enough Wyrd/Time/whatever to keep the city and some surrounding areas moving in time, so they could grow food and such.

Recently, they have learned how to store time and radiate it out. So they can send out people into the never-changing areas of no-time. Young people seem to spend it slower, so the groups they send our are full of young people (i.e. the players).

This reminded me of a campaign that I always wanted to run based on Final Fantasy Chrystal Chronicles. For those unfamiliar it's essentially a setting that encourages finding and exploring new dungeons. The world is covered in a substance called miasma that turns living things into monsters. There exist crystals that can ward away the miasma in a large area and each surviving city and town has one. However, in order for the crystals to continue to work they must be powered by another substance called myrrh. Myrrh is produced by special trees that mysteriously only grow in dangerous places that monsters flock to.

Thus every village sends out a caravan of adventurers carrying a chalice which has the ability to ward off miasma in a smaller area and can hold myrrh. Caravans seek out dungeons, fight past it's horrible denizens, locate the tree (inevitably protected by a boss) and collect the myrrh. Once enough myrrh is collected it's brought back home to recharge the crystal in an end of the year festival.

I would pretty much apply this structure to a D&D setting instead of using the Final Fantasy one. But it was always the tone that struck me as interesting. Despite this bleak, post-apocalypse feeling setup, the game still manages to have a warm, comforting and optimistic feeling when it needs to. There are sad moments like when you find a dungeon that was once a town much like the one you came from where the caravan never made it back. But it's balanced by a cute charm.

 

[Panda-s1]

I started this campaign so idk if it counts, but during 4e I was going to do a campaign where a group accidentally gets teleported to Sigil and can't go back home 'cause their planet was conveniently cut off from the rest of the multiverse. like history indicates that used to not be the case, but now the outer planes are regarded as a myth. this being 4e they'd travel across the astral sea on a ship to different worlds and try and find a way to get back home. unfortunately the group kinda fell apart after two sessions, which was okay, one of the players was new and decided they weren't into the d&d thing, another player who was new was kinda problematic anyway. also bait and switch campaigns are generally considered not the best idea, and I had to be like "lol just don't be attached to anything ;U".

never did plan out much either, tbh. though later I decided something bad was lurking on that planet (some kinda eldritch horror?), and they'd probably end up being the BBEG at the end.

 

[Xeviat]

Red Hand of Doom from 3E. I bought it when it came out, started running it, got to mid chapter 1, group fell apart.

Started it again, group got through chapter 1, fell apart.

Started rewriting it for 4E. Was really excited because it was easy to rebuild the encounters. Got 2 sessions in. Group fell apart.

Started rewriting it for 5E. Got halfway through chapter 1, it fell apart.

Trying to run it one last time. If it doesn't work, I'm throwing in the towel on Red Hand of Doom.

 

[pukunui]

Red Hand of Doom from 3E. I bought it when it came out, started running it, got to mid chapter 1, group fell apart.

Started it again, group got through chapter 1, fell apart.

Started rewriting it for 4E. Was really excited because it was easy to rebuild the encounters. Got 2 sessions in. Group fell apart.

Started rewriting it for 5E. Got halfway through chapter 1, it fell apart.

Trying to run it one last time. If it doesn't work, I'm throwing in the towel on Red Hand of Doom.

That's sad! I managed to get all the way through to the end of the second-to-last chapter. It was fun but a bit demoralizing at times, especially when we had a near-TPK to some blackspawn assassins. The end was also something of a pyrrhic victory, and none of us had any stomach to do the tacked-on Tiamat temple chapter at the end, so we finished it off with victory at Brindol.

I wouldn't mind trying it again in 5e, though ...

 

[MoonSong]

Red Hand of Doom from 3E. I bought it when it came out, started running it, got to mid chapter 1, group fell apart.

Started it again, group got through chapter 1, fell apart.

Started rewriting it for 4E. Was really excited because it was easy to rebuild the encounters. Got 2 sessions in. Group fell apart.

Started rewriting it for 5E. Got halfway through chapter 1, it fell apart.

Trying to run it one last time. If it doesn't work, I'm throwing in the towel on Red Hand of Doom.

Reminds me of the first adventure I made. It is a straight dungeoncrawl with goblins, dragons and lots of hidden rooms. No party has ever finished it whenever I tried to run it.

 

[Bitbrain]

Greyhawk-based 5e game combining Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, Blades & Blasters for 5e by Seth Tomlinson, and Pathfinder’s Numeria, Land of Fallen Stars sourcebook into a full-blown campaign centered in the Sheldomar Valley.

Nothing has come of it, and I’m more than a little frustrated.

 

[pogre]

My never going to work idea is to have a military campaign based around mass combat. Players would be different military commanders & they would get to level-up and customize different army regiments. Combat would be based around swarm-style mass combat rules where regiments are represented as a kind monster with special traits. It would put the focus on trying to include as few special rules as I can to leave the system open. For example, there would be no rule stopping you from using single target spells on a regiment.

A mass combat campaign is right in my wheel house. I do run mass combat in my regular campaign on rare occasion, but a dedicated campaign would be a blast.