The Traveling Circus (aka Truly Peculiar Campaign Themes)

[utopia27]

yacht race

I ran a short-lived (relatively - 10-12 sessions...) "chapter" of a broader campaign that focused on a yacht-racing team. IN SPACE.

Sounds goofier in retrospect - but the premise is that the Galactic Overlord races have discovered Earth, and supported its expansion. They've fostered a competition among several interest groups for grant of the next homesteading permit. Part of the competition involves sport.

Well... sports. in cross-species pan-galactic culture. kinda tough. However... solar sail yacht racing turns out to be an excellent analog for hyperspace navigation (in the same way that sailing sunnies around Annapolis is a good analog for tooling around the Gulf in Destroyers...). And it's pretty straightforward to appropriately handicap different galactic races for solar sailing
- what - y'all are energy creatures with no mass? no problem, we'll just add some lead to your sailing capsule so that's not a bonus. and.. your navigational controls will work fast, but you're going to have a rough time with any EVA work on the fly. sounds about balanced.
- lifespan of 7 hours? with dynamic mental templating for life-experience transfer? OK, then your chaser ship can maintain a steady stream of update shuttles to transfer corpses off and fresh bodies on. mass transfer rates have to stay in the same zone as the high-metabolism feeders... templating equipment is allowable, but can't be cannibalized.

fortunately, there wasn't an awful lot of race-the-aliens going on. mostly competition between the 6 factions of humans wanting the next colony. So the other faction folks became rival NPC groups, and the PCs got to know them pretty well.

This structure also had the advantage that the PCs were the most mobile and footloose of their interest-group. They had a big, interstellar-capable ship, a couple shuttles, a couple solar-sail ships, and a pretty high degree of engineering and navigation skills. So the PCs ended up running errands and doing light-duty Spy Stuff.

Overall a decent platform for a mid-length campaign. It sorta tailed off into the chaos of grad school. But the next step was to gilligans island/lost them (stranded on a low-tech but fairly idyllic world). Before Lost, of course...

 

[utopia27]

As an NPC - I insert the caravan pulled by giant hamsters into every campaign I do, even if it is just a passing reference "as you arrive at the city gates you pass a gaily painted caravan being pulled by a pair of giant hamsters. The gnome driver gives you a wave as he rides on towards his destination" Other times he is athe Day man of the PC circus troupe (ie the one who travels ahead of the main troupe arranging venues and living markers for the troupe to follow) and sometimes he is an information source 9afterall he has seen a lot)

<scarf>

Official group of new itinerants for the D&D game I'm running. TY!

 

[Wik]

I remember someone mentioning wanting to play a campaign almost exactly like yours, Mouse. They made an eerily similar post, to the point that I thought this was a thread necro.

The point is, that campaign took off and the players loved it. And it had a lot of traction with EN worlders. I think you're good to go. Have to say, though, I think 3.5 would be the better system for it, much as it pains me to say (as there are more "non-combat" options).

My weird one was a "prison planet" campaign -everyone would be a convict, and then dropped on a prison planet. they had to survive the various gangs while tryhing to find a way off the planet. It never saw fruition, simply because I had no idea how to do it. We DID do this with a D&D campaign, where the PCs were sent to Carceri.... and the campaign fizzled shortly thereafter. Whoops.

 

[Tonguez]

My weird one was a "prison planet" campaign -everyone would be a convict, and then dropped on a prison planet. they had to survive the various gangs while tryhing to find a way off the planet. It never saw fruition, simply because I had no idea how to do it.

Thats not a campaign - thats Australian History

 

[twintails]

I've been wanting to do Traveling Performers for months now but have no idea what the story could be. Just that it would be really fun with the right DM who is unfortunately not me.

As for other odd campaign Ideas I've toyed with what basically amounts to a brothel, with an Assassin or other poisony class as the Madam, a Dervish as a Pole Dancer, and maybe a Bard as some sort of Geisha or Courtesan. I had more ideas for playable characters that fit in the general theme but forgot them.

 

[pukunui]

Dude! That sounds awesome! I bet it could even work in a setting like Star Wars - a futuristic circus, with maybe a Force user of some kind as the "magician" and a replica droid as the "strongman" or something.

 

[Redshirt]

I think it would be a bit more fun if you had it based on something like the Red Boat Opera Company from Chinese history. A group of spies and assassins who travel around under the disguise of an Opera troupe.

You would still have the Carnival feel with a bit more crunch to the story.

 

[Barastrondo]

Ha, I totally have "Traveling Circus With a Secret" in my List of 30 (which is to say, a list of D&D pitches I will throw at players when starting a new game and see what they bite at).

Most of them don't really hit the "truly peculiar" watermark, though. Most are pretty non-standard -- a Ramayana-inspired pseudo-Indian "Tiger Princes" campaign, for instance, but that's not peculiar, just unfamiliar to a lot of people. Or arguably I am currently running and have already run some of the other peculiar ones: "penal colony in an abandoned underground city" and "immense, mostly empty city that has no contact with the outside world" could likely qualify.

Oh, wait, "Escape from the City of Brass." A City of Brass-themed game starting at 1st level. That's pretty bizarre, I guess.

 

[Oryan77]

Check out the old Ravenloft book [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Carnival-AD-Ravenloft-John-Mangrum/dp/0786913827"]Carnival[/ame]. It may give you some ideas for this type of game.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

Check out the old Ravenloft book Carnival. It may give you some ideas for this type of game.

Ninja'ed! That was the first thing that came to my mind too.

I think this concept has great potential especially with some added depth like Redshirt suggested. A Bard for this campaign would make for a great sideshow barker.