D&D 5E What's your campaign storyline about? Here is mine.

[Fergurg]

The 5th edition campaign I am working on starting (may be a PbP, not sure yet)

In the royal courts of Zakhara, one name is hated as a traitor - Othmar bin Jaqal, former adviser in the city of Mahabba, part of the Pentatheon League. Over ten years ago, he left, revealing himself as a member of the Balanite Heresy that he was fighting against; the government of the city, and all the others, have been trying to hunt him down, all for nothing. He built himself a criminal empire, and there were rumors that he had taken leadership of one of their slayer brotherhoods.

Then one day, he walked into the Grand Caliph in Huzuz and surrendered. However, all attempts to interrogate him have failed; psychological tactics were ineffective, he was too resistant to torture, magical means revealed nothing, and even the genies couldn't penetrate his defenses. It seems that if they want the information he claims to have, they will have to do it on his terms.

And the first of those demands? He will only work with, and speak with, the PCs. All of them level 1, different walks of live, none ever met him before.

Yes, it's D&D meets the Black List.

 

[JWO]

The 5th edition campaign I am working on starting (may be a PbP, not sure yet)

In the royal courts of Zakhara, one name is hated as a traitor - Othmar bin Jaqal, former adviser in the city of Mahabba, part of the Pentatheon League. Over ten years ago, he left, revealing himself as a member of the Balanite Heresy that he was fighting against; the government of the city, and all the others, have been trying to hunt him down, all for nothing. He built himself a criminal empire, and there were rumors that he had taken leadership of one of their slayer brotherhoods.

Then one day, he walked into the Grand Caliph in Huzuz and surrendered. However, all attempts to interrogate him have failed; psychological tactics were ineffective, he was too resistant to torture, magical means revealed nothing, and even the genies couldn't penetrate his defenses. It seems that if they want the information he claims to have, they will have to do it on his terms.

And the first of those demands? He will only work with, and speak with, the PCs. All of them level 1, different walks of live, none ever met him before.

Yes, it's D&D meets the Black List.

Where do you live? Can I play in your game?!?!

 

[Herobizkit]

I'm running Kingmaker in 5e, using the hexcrawler as "stuff to do" for the players. At random, I'm hoping to insert dungeons from various earlier D&D editions.

I'm also running my own side plot inspired by one of the player's characters. He's playing a Half-Orc Warpriest of Sif; he took the Hermit background which comes with a Secret. The Secret? The world is Doomed. Ragnarok is going to happen. And the other players are going to slowly learn the same.

I'm also going to take the opportunity to throw in some Stargate-like action, something I've been dying to do since d20 Modern first came out. The players will discover a Gate, eventually learn how to make it work, and then open it to a new world... Athas.
Bizarre creatures and power-hungry Sorcerer Kings are suddenly presented with a metal and magic-rich world to invade and conquer.

With the three areas around the general region of the Stolen Lands (Brevoy, Restov and the newly reformed Elven nation whose name I can't recall), I'd like to pull a Romance of the 3 Kingdoms with them, but I'm not quite sure to what end, exactly.

And if all that wasn't enough, the world is slowly rotting away, becoming a barren world much like that presented in Dark Souls. The wind stops, the sea is wild, and the earth is becoming tainted by some foul force...

 

[evilbob]

I tend to do well with stealing large plot lines wholesale from RPG video games. My longest game ever was a rip-off of most of Elder Scrolls: Battlespire, with a little Oblivion (and other Elder Scrolls lore) thrown in to round it out. We did another one recently that was a fairly heavy copy of Vampire: Redemption, modernized and with a few bits from Vampire: Bloodlines thrown in (how can you NOT use Therese and Jeanette?). I throw out the stupid "rescue the princess" crap those old games always focus on (seriously - did every game made before 2005 involve rescuing someone?) and make up new motivations, but the major actors and set pieces are great - they're already well-developed, well-documented, and tend to work well in an open RPG environment. (Ironically, D&D-based video games I find to be terrible for this.)

My current game is an even more direct ripoff of Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions, which I have to say when I finally understood the plot of that game I couldn't believe how crappy it was. Not to mention I think there are at least half a dozen kidnappings, including the same person getting kidnapped multiple times and of course several princess kidnappings. But once you throw out all that junk, the lore and the class conflicts are actually really cool and make for a neat world. I've added the fleshed-out bits from FFT: Advance and FFXII to help make the world more cohesive. But the plot is pure War of the Lions.

 

[Raunalyn]

I am running a 5e Dragonlance campaign.

The War of the Lance never happened. In the year 348, the city of Solace was destroyed in an attack by the Dragon Armies. Most of the Companions of the Lance were killed in the devastation.

The knowledge of the True Gods remained in the hands of the Dragon Armies, and they swiftly obliterated almost all opposition. The Silvanesti elves were forced to flee their homeland...some hiding in the Balifor region, swallowing their pride and teaming up with the Kender. Others sought out their cousins, the Qualinesti, who have taken xenophobia to extremes due to the leadership of their new Speaker of the Suns. The Knights of Solamnia have nearly been obliterated, now residing on the isle of Sancrist.

Enter the PCs. They witness a young Kender female heal a barmaid when she was attacked by a drunken Dragon Army officer. Their escape from the Dragon Army, and their resulting journey leads them to Thorbardin, where the Dwarves are desperately trying to find knowledge of weapons that can defeat the evil dragons destroying their continent.

This is essentially a retelling of the War of the Lance, with quite a bit taken out and added in to create my own flavor. At one point, the group meets Astinus the Historian, who they learn is quite insane. He reveals a history that is quite a bit divergent from their own.

Currently, they are on their way to Sanction to find out where the good dragons are.

 

[PallyFire84]

I play in a custom world. Map is fairly small (real world dimensions about the size of California). There are other continents but my pcs haven't had the time or money to go there.

Taking the standard three plot hooks, low level plot hook: Puritan cult had taken over most of the continent and they have to find a way to either work sround it, incite rebellion against it, destroy it. So far they have pushed it out of the town they are playing in (nulb) but have been overall just ignoring it. May change as other plot hooks come into play.
Mid level plot hook: against the Giants (4th Ed). I had been wanting to play this for forever and finally got it to work it in to a campaign. They just finished up the steading and have to get a bit more experience before heading to the stone Giants.
High level hook: cursed grain is causing sickness across the land. In fact it's turning people to driders.

Overall arc: Lolth saw an opportunity after the 100 year dragon war and started the cult of Puritanism as a front while she rallied the Giants. Adventurers come (first in 100 years) and she plays them against the cult as a distraction while Giants are getting more power. It's a win win win situation for lolth. If the adventurers get taken out by the Giants or the cult then they are out of the picture. If the adventurers take out the Giants, the cult will be unmatched in power and take over the continent. If the adventurers take out the cult, the Giants will be unchecked and exacerbate the food shortage situation leading towards the world eating more of her cursed grain. And finally if the adventurers take out both the cults and the Giants, they will have been distracted enough that enough grain will have gotten distributed and she will have an army of dridersto challenge them.

Right now it's been mostly local issues. They are transitioning to more of the regional/ world threats and potentially starting to see the start of planes hopping.

This has been one of my more wildly successful campaigns. The players are in general more of a hack and slash with a generous dollop of rp on top. I have been able to weave in this underlying intrigue story without it being the main focus of the campaign so far and they are just eating it up. In fact when we played the steading of the hill giant king they had one of the best sessions we've ever had with rp opportunities and lots of hack and slash and lots of places for their 5e characters to shine.

 

[practicalm]

My 5e campaign has an over arching story of working to stop the infiltration of beings from the Far Realms into the world. The party discovered that Dragons originally had that task until the humanoids overthrew the dragons (many of the powerful humanoids became gods) and over the thousands of years the barriers to the Far Realms have weakened without the Dragons powering the barriers.

We've done a lot of different adventures some connected to this theme and some not. In general it has been sandbox with me providing rumors and job offers but the players deciding what do to. And if they don't do a task (because they did something else) the world changes because of it. And I've encouraged the players to have their own goals they are working to accomplish. (Right now the barbarian is working to free his family from slavery.)

 

[KirayaTiDrekan]

Everything D&D Ever - I'm attempting to cram everything officially published (excluding magazines) for D&D into one setting AND play through all of the published adventures.

The world's premise, in brief...

Earth's first great civilization, Atlantis, was a magical one, and they visited other worlds via advanced teleportation. They encountered dragons and a war ensued, during which the Atlanteans used magic to create more advanced "enhanced humans" - the first batch became demon lords, the second batch became gods.

The dragons banded together to form the Dragon Empire and created a magical artifact, the Crystal Prison, to siphon magic away from Earth, then allowed time to defeat Atlantis for them. The dragons posted a "look-out" on Mars to warn them if Earth ever became a threat again.

Jump ahead to 2052 and the first manned mission to Mars. The Dragon Empire invades and the current emperor, much too vain to allow anything less than total victory, destroys the Crystal Prison, unleashing a magical apocalypse on Earth...and crashing his capital ship in the process.

Jump ahead 1000 years and the nation of Blackmoor has discovered part of the wreckage of that ship and uses it to advance their civilization by leaps and bounds. War with the elves ensues and Blackmoor is destroyed in a massive magical explosion.

Jump ahead 10,000 years and the world is a fairly typical fantasy setting.

I currently have play-by-posts going during the Dragon Empire invasion of Earth (set aboard one of 100 evacuation ships currently lost in space), during the Blackmoor era (magical post-apocalyptic Thundarr inspired campaign), and 10,000 years after Blackmoor, with a campaign just getting started in The Village of Hommlet.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Rebels / freedom fighters against the Gnome / Halfling Overlords (The Hedgemont, Hedge for short) .

The Hedge, comes to an area with ways to improve farming and provide tech but they first weaken the area by creating chaos; a few bad winters by poisoning crops, raids from monsters (the Hedge uses hobgoblins to start guerilla warfare). They will buy land, replace key people in a government, next they start indenture servitude and slavery.

The players are working against that in the setting.

 

[Blue]

The premise for my current campaign is overfilled with awesome:

A crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These adventurers promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Waterdeep underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the PCs.

There are many fools to be pitied and much love for plans that come together.

I'm laughing, not just at your wonderous homage, but also because this describes a campaign I played in a few years ago. _Escape from Dreadhold_ was about a group of criminals* kept in the best prison in all of Eberron that has never had any escape, and were about to take advantage of an outside attempt to free other prisoners.

So we're all hunted by half a dozen houses plus the nations that put us each away, and they all think we're in league with the rather powerful folks who came in riding dragons. Early on was stealing a ship, then hijacking an airship, and then lots of things around. Deals with the gnomish information brokers, revenge, working with the Eladrin in the spires in order to get what we needed, warforged origins and the Mournland. Getting recaptured and brought to Thronehold and being put on trial. Then breaking out again, this time on our own.

Lots of fun, lots of fun. And there was always our plots as we attempted to get what we needed in a hostile world plus all of the different organizations after us, some with a lot of magical ability or political clout.

Good times.

* criminals: one of us maintained that he was just a spy and was supposed to be inserted into Dreadhold for only 10 days, but they were several decades late getting him out. The rest of of balanced "needed to get rid of but for some reason can't kill (martyr, too important, etc.)".