Earthdawn. The party are in a small sealed kaer. The people do not want to open the kaer, as their needs are met, and they are afraid of the outside. The party are established as part of the faction that wishes to open up and explore, but the rear guard turn sinister. A rash of murders occur, and a distraught public blames the party.
Everything changes when a party of outsiders opens up the kaer to loot it. They manage to get in without breaking the wards, and report that a great horror has been gnawing at the edges of the kaer for centuries. The party must choose whether to support the strangers against the only people they know.
The catch. A lesser horror managed to get inside the kaer as it was being built, to escape from the greater horror outside. Unable to take the kaer outright, and afraid of detection, it has worked subtly to make the inhabitants of the kaer a captive population. Centuries of conditioning have made the people dangerously xenophobic. Unsure of its power, it has never attempted to mark an adept. Now, to preserve its pocket kingdom, it causes the people to rise up and rinse in blood the ones who would threaten it.
Vampire the masquerade. The party were a group of small time hoods from the fifties. They decided that they liked their small town just the way it was, and tried to keep it from changing.
They expended their unlives making a pocket of the fifties that they could control, and faced the challenges that entails.
It started with the soda fountain. They didn't want a price hike of a cent on the burgers.
It ended with things spiralling out of control in the eighties.
It was a great campaign, with unique challenges, like a vampiric version of Goodbye Lenin!
The most enjoyable D&D games, plotwise, that I played in were actually published modules. The last 2E game I ran was the Dragonlance Chronicles, from the DL Classics series. The characters were enjoyable and the plot was epic and entertaining.
In 3.5, a recent game I ran to introduce some noobs, was the Eberron path of adventures, The Forgotten Forge, Shadows of the Last War, Whispers of the Vampire's Blade, and Grasp of the Emerald Claw. I heavily modified the campaign to fit into my homebrew world but the pace and characters and such made for a wonderful experience. I followed the game up with Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, which was also amazingly fun and then Greg Vhaughn's classic Istivin: City of Shadows series.
Scariest plot: the vanishing village (from dungeon 19): the PCs arrive at a small village in the mountains, which actually consists of "house hunters" (a colossal variant of the mimic). I played this with my group about 20 years ago and they are still talking about it today.
Most action-packed plot: a race against time (dungeon 81): PCs have to disarm 7 magical bombs which are randomly hidden in a large city. They have only 3 hours to do this. This adventure resulted in a rollercoaster ride which can best be compared with the TV series "24".
Weirdest plot: the group gets trapped in the dreams of a cursed evil wizard. This was an adventure of my own that took several sessions and was very Ravenloft-like. They had to find the way to get out of the dream, which was by breaking a sword which represented the curse lying on the wizard. It was in the hoard of a dracolich, which regenerated every time it was defeated. The funny thing was that only the weakest character in the group made his strength check (this was in the old days of the first edition; they had to make a bend bars check to break the sword). The character breaking the sword earned the epithet "doombreaker" and has become a legendary character in my campaign world because of this deed.
Funniest and scariest plot: an NPC adventuring party captures a very young white dragon. Since they originally come from a very small village, they hatch the following plan: they give the dragon a cave somewhere near the village. The dragon was subdued (this was first edition again), so would not escape. They give him a lot of copper peaces turned into fake gold by "fools gold". Then they consult with the villagers. They all agree to spread the rumor that their village is threatened by a horrible monster (i.e. the dragon). Then lots of adventurers will come to the village and spend lots of money there, so the village will thrive. The trick is to never let the adventurers find the dragon, so they target not too high level parties (since they can trace dragons with powerful magic). Moreover they have spies in the village who have to spy on the adventurers in order to check whether they get too close to solving the mystery.
The adventure started with the PCs finding a map of the village with a cry for help written on it. Of course every party goes to the village at once. When they arrive there, the prices in the inn are exorbitant, there are guided tours in various wilderness areas around the village, you can buy monster souvenirs (for exorbitant prices again) and lots of villagers tell stories of having spotted the monster or of missing children, wives, husbands or lovers (of course no one is really missing).
Me and my husband ran this adventure with 2 groups. With one group this resulted in lots of laughs, with the characters having a great time. With the other this became a very scary adventure, since the second group was convinced the NPC group was evil and kidnapping and murdering people in order to pretend these people were killed by the monster. Neither of the groups defeated the dragon. So the village is still thriving :-)
The most enjoyable D&D games, plotwise, that I played in were actually published modules. The last 2E game I ran was the Dragonlance Chronicles, from the DL Classics series. The characters were enjoyable and the plot was epic and entertaining.
In 3.5, a recent game I ran to introduce some noobs, was the Eberron path of adventures, The Forgotten Forge, Shadows of the Last War, Whispers of the Vampire's Blade, and Grasp of the Emerald Claw. I heavily modified the campaign to fit into my homebrew world but the pace and characters and such made for a wonderful experience. I followed the game up with Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, which was also amazingly fun and then Greg Vhaughn's classic Istivin: City of Shadows series.
I'm running that series now. It's pretty good for when it was made.
Hiya.
Oriental Adventures (1st Edition, of course).
The PC's all start off with general run-of-the-mill mini-adventures (you know, "Kill the goblin", "Defeat the Oni of...", etc.). Of course, as they keep comming back into town (they are on Kozokura), they start to notice something. The daimyo keeps having official representatives showing up. This is costing him a fortune. More and more merchant ships are showing up because of it (word is that this little city has the eye of the Emporer...), and the people are happy to make more money.
All during this time (about 5 or so actual months of play; everyones around 4th level now) I have a bajillion sub-plots and sub-sub-plots going on (it *is* Oriental Adventures after all...more plots and things going on than you can shake a tonfa at). The PC's start to suspect some heavy ninja-infiltration.
Thats when Shidora attacks. :) Shidora is Kozokuras local giant monster; a Gargantuan Preying Mantis. He comes down from the mountains every now and then to eat a village and generally rampage a bit, then goes back to whence he came. The city the PC's are in is attacked, and much crazed panic ensues. Fires break out and hundreds die. After a day of quick clean up, a flotilla of ships bearing the standard of the Shogun arrive. The Shogun takes over the town. The Daimyo is disgraced, and kills himself in his room, along with his immediate family. Rumors spread about ninjas again, assassinating the Daimyo. This is answered with more of the Shoguns men on the street, "keeping order". The city folk start to grumble.
A couple of weeks go by. The two samurai PC's have a hell of a time. On one hand, they have to obey the top dog...the Shogun...then again, they are/were sworn to protect the former Daimyo and his family. During a public ceremoney, the Shogun officially announces he is taking control of the city. He gives all currently surviving samurai (Shidora did a number on 'em) the option to renounce their former ties to their dead master and serve him. One of the PC's says no, then promptly turns and flees into the crowd like a coward (she was always a bit flakey on the whole "serve-unto-death" thing). The other PC says no, but he can not bear living without his master, so he commits sepukku on the spot (everyone, including the Shogun, is very impressed; iirc, I let the PC make a new guy at level 2 and his dead character got the 'Great Honor' death bonus).
To smooth over the populace, the Shogun holds a huge celebration on the outside fairgrounds...all food, drink and entertainment paid for by him. Attendance is mandetory, of course. The PC's head out and start to enjoy the festivities; the new PC is introduced, the sumo-monk starts to get hammered, and the wu jen picks up some magical trinkets. Then the bushi gets an odd feeling. He hasn't seen anyone enter or exit a city gate in well over three hours...
The PC's approach the gate and ask to be let in. They are refused ("Attendence at the festivities is mandetory!"). The PC's decide to find an out of the way place, climb the wall, and check things out. As they climb down into the city and start to wonder around, they are creeped out by how quiet things are. Nobody is around. Not even guards. They pass by houses and businesses, their doors wide open, creeking and clapping aginst their hinges in the gentle sea breeze. As they approach the castle, it start to hit them. The castle is completely ungarded! Not even a servent in sight. Looking down towards the waterfront they are completely stunned at what they see. Not one single ship is moored save a few rowboats or a beaten down junk in need of repair. Just off into the horizon they see the entier navy and merchant fleet sailing away.
...turns out the Shogun and all the merchant vessels were members of a rather gutsy barbarian clan. They just finished looting everything of value in the city. That's right, they *stole an entier city* from under the noses of the PC's and it's entier populace!
Needless to say, the rest is history. :)
^_^
Paul L. Ming
Return to the Tomb of Horrors (not the Tomb of Horrors but the Return)
As a DM I always hated to hear how so an so killed this Dragon or "When I played with this DM I killed several Dragons all by the time I was 7th level."
So with the release of my most favorite book, "The Draconomicon". I created some of the scariest Dragons my PC's ever ran into, from the Albino Red wyrm ( they didn't know which way to run, being prepped to withstand the cold ), to my personal fav, Napalm. He was a red/black crossbreed, with a breathweapon that, well his name says it all.
My other favorite as a player occured while stationed in Germany, I was PCSing back to the states, so we were trying to finish up the campaign before I left. So scouring the Backstreets of Waterdeep and the depths of Skullport to find the missing children that were of course missing. Me, being the slightly evil Drow FMT that I was, conspired with the DM. So that when we found where the children were being taken and sold into slavery, I made a side deal with the Drow slavemasters and sold my party in to slavery. Wanting nothing more then 1 or 2 special items, some of the others had on them.
If I had players trying to eat sentient flesh (Orc) and the didn't have an evil alignment, I probably would have had one of the orcs infected with wereboar lycanthropy, just to teach them not to be lazy about their food supply. (There are too many spells that can create food). That and eating sentient flesh even if it is an orc is still an evil act. not quite cannabalisim but close.
One time to stave of starvation my players butchered and cured an orc party to make 'orc jerky'. This was classically set in the mountains during the winter, of course.
It set me about creating an adventure where a cities meat supply industry was being run in this fashion. It had a Necromancer and trained Ware-Rats, some sewers, a royal family (specifically the princess), and a port were the meat was going to start being shipped 'internationally' (or maybe extra-planar.) In the end it had too much of a "Soylent Green" theme and I scrapped it.
Plus, it was just gross.
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Orcs are made of fungus dude. They are grown and harvested from
the earth. But I like your idea.
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