Weird adventure ideas

[Soel]

Well, I came close to having my players play roaches in Sigil for a session (basically showing their own little society had its own cause and effect in the city on truly large events.)

Inspired by a book called The Roaches Have No King (which I never read, yet was intrigued by its similar premise of such creatures having a real effect on their surroundings,) and a short film by animator Ladislaw Starewicz (sp) entitled Frogland where frogs are shown to be just like us.

Never got to do it, though.

I was also gonna have the pc's minds be placed in illithid bioconstructs by Githyanki so that they could infiltrate an Illithid city and kill the brain. (wasn't to be by their own choosing though) Also, never got to happen.

 

[GwydapLlew]

'Twas an excellent game session, marred only by my leaving the cell phone at their place!

I mentioned something similar at the game, vis-a-vis using a prelude (or prequel) before starting my next campaign. I don't think you'd be surprised that I'm a fan of meta- thinking.

I know Erik Mona did something similar with his AoW playtest; from what I understand, he gave the players pregenerated characters to portray in a battle sequence. The PCs then stumbled over the aftermath of the battle ICly in a later session.

I steal from the Joss Whedon theory of the Buffyverse in my own games; something one party might accomplish in one game affects plot in my other game, and vice versa. Sometimes I have the same players in the different games, but I don't think they've copped to it yet.

I have very much wanted to run a historical game (Werewolf: the Apocalypse or Mage: the Ascension) where the players portray different avatars/ancestor spirits in different time periods, but shift the avatars/ancestor spirits to different players in different vignettes.

I'm also tinkering with a gestalt D&D campaign where one of the gestalt classes is predicated by a 'previous life' - and that the PCs slowly uncover what those previous lives where during the game.

 

[Melan]

I don't know how weird that is, but I once did a very elaborate whodunnit complete with NPC portraits, conflicting testimonials and hidden agendas, where one of the PCs was the killer - under the influence of a demon-possessed gemstone. The look of shock when they were getting close to the truth, and the desperate rush to try and cover the tracks by fabricating a convincing false case really made the session for all involved.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

That's very cool Melan. Did you tell the player in advance of what his character had done, or did he learn it in the game?

 

[freyar]

I've never run or played it, but there's an adventure in the 2e Tales of Lankhmar book in which the PCs are shrunk to the size of rats and run around in mouse tunnels all over the city. The goal is to help the Lawful Rats escape from a band of tyrannical evil rats. The weirdest thing is the description of the shrinking effect: pools of flesh, cloth, metal, etc, form around the shrunken characters as they drop the excess matter from their bodies and equipment. But those Lankhmar modules are full of quirky stuff like that.

 

[Melan]

Varianor: I let him figure it out himself. He progressed from the general somewhat blasé "I am familiar with this, so let's get it over with" jaded player attitude to "now wait a minute, what was that?" and later to utmost desperation. It was a fun session. Of course, it's a trick you can only do once per player group. I need to make up something similar for my new campaign.

 

[Napftor]

Weird things with adventures? Oh, let me count the ways. Since you likely know my penchant for time travel, keep that in mind when reading these...

*2e game: A death knight had gotten ahold of a time travel artifact in Ravenloft (no, not Soth). Unfortunately for him, using it proved more difficult than he thought and the item sent out periodic waves of time distortion. Throughout the adventure, I had spots where a single PC (called a DPC in my notes for "displaced PC") would jump forward in time. One was able to see an attack by manticores before it came. Another jumped back in time to just before the adventure. A third DPC travelled forward to the battle with the death knight's forces to witness a sneak attack kill a PC (which he could then prevent). A final time jump sent a DPC forward to the campaign's finale (which I had only sketched in my mind) to see the party try and release an elf from some kind of stasis only to have the room they were in seal around them ominously.

*2e game called "No Regrets": My NPC Napfor (FR cleric of Lathander) was a member of a group before the current PCs. Something he did killed that group and he lived with that grief everday (unbeknownst to the PCs). When Napftor was hit by a special psionic dart (aka plot device) at the start of the adventure, the effect somehow trapped all of the PCs in this memory of the cleric's past. They played through that disastrous adventure in his mind, Napftor none the wiser and calling the PCs by his old companions names. The PCs discovered that an adventure to slay some ice creatures turned bad when a green dragon inhabiting the same caves returned home. Napftor had an opportunity to bring down the cavern on his doomed companions while they fought the dragon. Since it was the only way to kill the creature, his friends had told him to do it but that was the decision he regretted. When the PCs realize what has happened they too know Napftor must make that same choice and that also frees them from the psionic coma.

2e game called "Revelations, part II": while my main FR campaign at this time involved thwarting the return of Bhaal to the pantheon, it also involved a solo mini-campaign with one of the players. He wanted to play an evil PC so I agreed. I had the enemy group of the main campaign offer him work after they "enhanced him" with powers. The evil PC (named Crius) worked to secure something needed for Bhaal's re-ascension and was then handed a special mission--kill the Open Lord of Waterdeep (where the main campaign took place). To do this, Crius was given a special item that would swap his personality with someone else. The best way to get at the Open Lord was to switch with someone who often saw him (which the good PCs qualified as!).

As DM, I knew it would be great fun to let the evil PC get amongst the good PCs so I told the player it was OK to have Crius' target be his bladesinger PC named Kaliban in the other group. The switch went flawlessly and disguised Crius joined the campaign. However, before he could carry out his mission, a Napftor from the future brought the good PCs forward a day or two in time to witness the aftermath of an enemy attack the enemy that wanted Bhaal's re-ascension). To make a long story short, Crius tried to kill a PC while in the future who was learning too much about him and was revealed for the enemy he was. A phaerimm that owed the group a favor was able to split the evil body from the good and Crius escaped before the companions could slay him (although he was left in the future).

2e game called "To Best Wishes": A long term foe used a wish ring to turn most of the PCs into goblins. I gave them goblin stats to use for the adventure. The mage Blackstaff in Waterdeep offered to change them back if they would perform an errand for which they were now perfectly suited. They carried out the mission (which turned out to be good reconnasaince for the campaign finale) and had their old forms returned.

2e game called "The Road Not Taken": When the group's time device is destroyed by enemy attack at the adventure's start, the waves of power throw the PCs into an alternate timeline wherein a previously defeated enemy group is now powerful and at war with the Realms at large. The PCs escape from behind the lines and eventually deduce that they must recreate the explosion that brought them here by destoying this timeline's time device (all the while avoiding death during the epic struggle going on around them).

If you're into time-related adventure, there's a short adventure I wrote which is on sale from Ronin Arts called "The 11th Hour." You can find that here: http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=5628&

 

[Nuclear Platypus]

Well.. one DM I have had the group kick the stuffings out of a group of bad guys for a FR version of Face/Off (no John Woo gunfights tho). It was funky to say the least to have my halfing in the body of a troll for instance. We also had to worry about the new body 'rejecting' our minds and once our mission was completed, we'd be switched back.

A different DM based an adventure off of Groundhog Day and another off of Hotel California.

There was a round robin DM group I had where we were doing the Time Bandits / Sliders thing (map and a watch) with a new world meaning a new DM. Similar to this was the group (different campaign) again doing the Time Bandits thing to jump earlier into Dragonlance history to possible avert the Cataclysm. Scarily enough, my character almost did a Phillip J. Fry but became my own dad instead.

Um... after jumping into the past to prevent a future event from occurring, we changed our present. So we jumped back into our bodies in our correct time. After the DM described what our situation was, I did a classic "Oh boy." as he ended the session. Does that count too?

 

[paradox42]

I too have used time travel plots many times. But the PCs in my games tend to use their time-travel powers to just gain "extra time" in their "present," for example a recent item creation gig which was to take 5 days of down time ended up taking about 6 seconds in game time as far as the main plot was concerned, because the PC with the time travel power used it to jump the party back in time 25 days, to when they knew the area they were in was both sealed off and empty, and then Teleport to a remote wilderness area, use a Magnificent Mansion to avoid drawing any attention even there, and proceeded to go through the down time outside of ordinary reality. And at the end, the procedure was reversed- Teleport back to the sealed chamber, then time-jump futureward to six seconds after the party left the first time.

But for truly weird fun, I've made liberal use of the Region of Dreams, which I borrowed ideas from Wheel of Time and other sources to make more than what it is in the basic Manual of the Planes version. I normally run "Dream Sequences" which represent "special dreams" the actual PCs themselves have while sleeping, in-game, and we allude to the Dreams during regular game sessions. The Dreams play out like any other game session really, with the characters playing themselves, though they're almost never in a place resembling their "current" (meaning, when they go to sleep) surroundings and the Dream landscape sometimes never resembles anything the actual PC ever encounters in the "real world."

Where the weird fun comes in here, is that I make time a fluid and unpredictable thing in these Dreams, so that PCs often get hints of planned future campaign events in them, meet beings they wouldn't otherwise meet in them, and otherwise get to do really crazy stuff. Another thing I've done on several occasions is allow players who have had multiple PCs, or are playing in different campaigns of mine set in the same world, to use their alternate PCs for the Dream instead of the one which should be in the party with the ones having the Dream- so I get campaign crossovers and chances to say goodbye to old friends that way. On one occasion, the PCs having the Dream actually carried the crossover into the "real world," by having one Dreaming PC from one campaign send a letter to where the Dreaming PC in the other campaign said he was, and since both characters remembered the Dream that would have weirded out most players quite enough. I went further though- the two campaigns were on slightly different timelines at the time; one of them was taking place a couple of weeks before the other, and so what I had happen in the "real world" was that the letter arrived for the recipient character the day after he had the Dream- but the kicker was that in order for the letter to arrive that way, it had to have been sent at least a week earlier in game time. So the PCs had their Dream interaction, and both had the same Dream, but they had it two weeks apart.

Boy that was fun.

Another thing I did was have an NPC I expected to have the party meet in the future, show up briefly in the game at one point and greet them like they were old friends, before vanishing through a portal to the Far Realm. When the PCs actually met this character some months (in game time and real time both) later, the NPC didn't know them and was meeting them for the first time, from its perspective. Ah, the joys of tangled timelines.

 

[FnordBear]

Details area little fuzzy as it was long ago but back in 8th or 9th grade I ran a 2e adventure where the characters were working for a local barony who was buying up private lands. There was one obstinant old man who wouldnt sell and after awhile every person sent to buy his farm never returned.

The PCs were sent to first investigate and to secondly move from diplomatic/mercantile tactics to strongarming the fellow off his land. this went over badly as the fellow happened to be a retired wizard who promptly used a wand to polymorph the party in to goats and add them to his flock.

The entire 3 game adventure was spent with the PCs in goat form trying to get the wand.