Worst campaign setting concepts you've ever played

[Silver Moon]

A bad gaming concept. How about combining two different gaming groups for a single game. I've seen it attempted three times, never successfully. One group always seems to feel like they are the fifth wheel on the car (or wagon) with the action never being split evenly between the two.

 

[gunter uxbridge]

Why is it that the second I saw this thread, the word "Spelljammer" jumped into my head? Hmmm....
D&D in space.....leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Then again, its the same reaction every time I see an old Star Trek episode revolving around an Ancient Rome theme.

 

[Remathilis]

A campaign (in 1979) where I discovered that the BBEG was a powerful wizard called Emperor Palpatine(?) whose chief minion was a powerful death knight called .......... yea, you quessed it - Darth Vader.

This wizard owned ---- yep....a Death Star in orbit and a fleet of Star Destroyers.

And he had all these Stormtroopers which were ........Flesh Golems in armor.

Aaaiiiiieeee. Was that campaign truly horrible.

And if the very off chance that that DM (whose name I have mercifully forgotten) is a member of ENWorld.......

I hate you...... still

Well, in my young days as a DM, I had a Horrible Star Wars Rip-off in my world, complete with Emperor Palpatine as a powerful wizard with an artifact called the Death Star.

Then I turned 13, and tried to remove the abomination, but my long time players have never let me live it down...

 

[MarauderX]

Then there was the DM in high school who made us play ourselves. He assigned stats for each one of us and had us play in present day. The sessions were diceless... and pointless. We kept asking what we were supposed to be doing, so he would split us up and "role play" each of us separately. Too bad all he could do was talk, talk, talk and left the rest of us without a clue to some super-mysterious plot that he concocted that none of us could seem to ever get close to.

So we mutinied and I DMed ever since that experience, as we knew what we didn't like more than what we loved to play back then.

 

[elbandit]

Gah

I played in a champions game that was a mixture of the Hellraiser movie series, and any random anime series the GM liked. Yes, we had the actual anime characters running around in the game and it hurt so bad to play because the NPCs were cuter and more powerful than you.

 

[bwgwl]

a Shadowrun game where the players were roadies of a band touring the Pacific Rim.

the lead singer of the band had just given birth to the reincarnation of the Buddha and we had to get the kid to Tibet while every evil thing in the world was trying to get their paws on him.

 

[ForceUser]

a Shadowrun game where the players were roadies of a band touring the Pacific Rim.

the lead singer of the band had just given birth to the reincarnation of the Buddha and we had to get the kid to Tibet while every evil thing in the world was trying to get their paws on him.

To me that actually sounds like a cool campaign premise

 

[bwgwl]

To me that actually sounds like a cool campaign premise

that's the best kind of "worst" campaign... one that sounds cool on the surface and then drags you into a dark, tarry abyss of pure suckiness.

 

[Eosin the Red]

I ran a few one off games about the return of the Slayer. He was a do-gooder and his return would revitalize the flaging spirits of the good folk. He had these elves who invented all kinds of strange contraptions and Minotaur survants only they looked like moose instead of cow. 9 Minotaur men had these multi-color exploding globes that they threw at party members.

It actually took until the last session for the players to figure out that Slayer was Sliegher, elves was elves, and the moose were Riendeer. The all enjoyed the heck out of it but we still laugh at the silliness of the concept more than a decade after.

Or I could mention the dude in the military who sent a dragon after the PCs who was bigger than our moon and had his own gravity well. Did I mention infinite hit points?

 

[Dagger75]

My games are perfect and should be emulated for all time except

We were in 6th or 7th grade, a Dragon magazine had an article, Jester PC class. So we made 2. Hey look at all these magic items they have, Yo Yo +2, some dorky hats and a Paddle Board of Wonderous Tranformation. Haha 2 Jesters armed with Paddle Board of Wonderous Transformation.

First Encounter 200 Rats, I strike with my Paddle Board, Bam they are changed into 200 Bronze Dragons all fiercly loyal to me. Well whats a person to do with 200 Adult Bronze Dragons? Well we build a huge wooden platform and strap it onto these dragons to fly us around Keramekios. Ah the good old days.

We had an adventure group of 60 characters. It was Me, my friends Scott and Mike, thats it, we each ran 20 PC's. Alternated DM's. The adventures we had in Junior High. Sailing all over this ocean of islands looking for a lost castle with Dragons and Demons on the wrong ones. We found the castle and the HUGE spellbook in the basement. By huge I mean imagine a football stadium, now the playing field is the book, there was an Platform hovering above it and you magicaly turned the pages. I think it was a gods spellbook. Well anyway it had the secret to making magic items, Each one of those 60 PC's had +5 Weapons and Armor. We thought we were bad. We brought some of our Favorite characters into another DM's game, he let us have our "little" weapons. We knew out game was Monty Haul (old school term for munchkin) but this took the cake. Don't remember much only Thor worked for the group. Left after the first game.

And I think I still have most of those 20 PC's I played somewhere