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We've all got them . . . .
Here's mine, stuck in my head like a song -- but I have a feeling it's going to be a long long time, if ever, before I can run it. So, next best thing, I'll share it.
It's a combo of three published adventure scenarios, rewriten somewhat to fit together. I'd probably throw the whole thing in The Demiplane of Dread and run it near Mordent and The Sea of Sorrows in Ravenloft -- maybe not. Anyway:
"In Pursuit of the Slayer" by Carl Sargent, Dungeon 15
"The Heart's Final Beat" by John Mangrum, TSR Jam 1999
"Strike on the Rabid Dawn" by Frank Brunner, Dungeon 111
Anywhoo, that's the gist of it; three of the all time great adventure scenarios that I think would be great fun to string together.
-W. E. Ray
I always wanted to run a prehistoric campaign where the PCs were scouts from their tribe, looking for a new homeland. There would be lots of dinosaurs, dire animals, and reptilian humanoids and monstrous humanoids (yuan-ti, troglodytes, lizardfolk, etc.).
I ran it once as a one-shot deal at the local UB-Con, but it wasn't as fulfilling as I'd hoped. Also, there were a lot of cheaters in the game, which ain't fun for the honest folks.
Yeh I've also been tickled by the idea of a society where dinosaurs are very much part of civilisation (not necessarily a pre-historic earth) - but have yet to put that one into action. (I have a lot of plastic dinosaurs just waiting to terrorise the D&D miniatures - haha!)
Other various ideas I've never run but might one day hit the table:
Some kind of attempt at 'final' events in the CoC mythos.
A few movie/TV inspired jaunts - I wouldn't mind doing something in the Buffy mythos but probably never will. Also 'The Crow' I'd like to explore that idea in an era other than modern America (most likely 18th Century France and/or medieval Britain).
Inspiring books/comics - I had a great campaign going based on 'The Prince of Nothing' Trilogy (a story in fact inspired by the authors own D&D campaign and a bloody good read), and also had success using Gene Wolfe's 'New Sun' books as a setting. All good D&D fodder, but for other flavours I'd like to steal from King's 'The Talisman', Matt Wagner's 'Grendel', and Alan Moore's 'Endgame' run on Captain Britain. I definately want to run a vigilante-themed campaign sometime.
After my current D&D campaign, I'm going to be running a campaign in the Firefly 'verse, probably a year or so after Serenity.
I had a campaign idea for a world where all the adventure was gone. Monsters exist, for sure--and if you pay 2 gold you can go to the museum and see them. The gods, satisfied that their powers had brought peace and stability to the world, gradually weaned their powers away from the clerics, who now turned to internecine fighting for converts. Magic was regulated, and those who recklessly invented new spells were prosecuted by their ilk for their unsafe arcane practices, and usually stripped of their rights to practice the art--enforced with application of antimagic tattoos--while the rest argued in endless circles in periodic journals of magical lore, hashing and rehashing the same old arguments, beating the same dead horses to a dry dusty pulp. Sure there were wars from time to time, but no glories really--no unseen vistas, no rumored treasures. Just the world, totally mapped, totally explored, and dying.
Then, suddenly a ship blown off course returns with news that rocks the world to its foundations. A new land. Untamed, unknown, at the opposite end of the ocean. Suddenly life in the Grey Lands has a purpose again. Ships are built, expeditions are chartered. Lazy gods get up from their dusty thrones with the glint of childhood in their eyes.
And I never got to run it. BLARGH!
OOOOooooohhh!
Grim that's a nice one. I love it.
After my current D&D campaign, I'm going to be running a campaign in the Firefly 'verse, probably a year or so after Serenity.
Dude, there are some serious Firefly wackos in here. You need to run this pbp.
That's very strong Grimcleaver, not least because the PC's will not be the only ones wanting to explore the new land - and a great many interesting situations can develop and new frontier territories are established and perhaps struggle to enforce law and order (a la 'Deadwood'), rival adventuring parties hit the same locations and new evils expand beyond the new realm to effect the peace of the wider world - that's a gem - you should run it now!
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Here's some of my never-run campaign ideas.
The Inner Sea
Idea for a campaign where the PCs begin as guards or minor agents aboard a merchant ship and may end up working their way up to run a large trading company, whilst establishing and guarding trade routes, preventing (or starting) wars between neighbouring city-states, fending off pirate attacks, rival merchants, goblinoid uprisings and terrors from the deeps. (The Inner Sea of this campaign idea is no relation to Golarion’s Inner Sea in case you were wondering … I came up with this during the second edition days).
The Warbringers and the Worldeaters
Set in Hugh Cook’s world of darkness (or at least my take on it) this campaign would see the PCs playing in a “sandbox” type setting on the mystical continent of Argan, during a time when it is being invaded by the Collosnon Empire from the north and the monsters of The Swarms from the south. The PCs would need to survive (or avert) these threats whilst pursuing their own personal goals (which might range from ‘get the girl’ to ‘rule the known world’).
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Set in a city that owes more than a little to New Crobuzon and a similar amount to the Styes, and that city’s hinterlands (which owe more than a little to Blackmoor), this campaign would start with petty crimelords, creepy villagers and sadistic serial killers, and works its way up to Lovecraftian horrors and reality warping threats.
Around the Wheel in 80 Weeks
The PCs race against time and other factions in a type of scavenger hunt around the Great Wheel and beyond to recover (or stop others recovering) the parts to a universe ending Doomsday Weapon (yes, one of those). Partially inspired by Downer.
The Wild Frontier
The PCs must start from humble beginnings to tame a wilderness area and establish their own fiefdom against various threats.
Wolves of the Apocalypse
In a setting inspired by Norse and Russian mythology (and popular depictions / interpretations of that mythology) a group of destined heroes must rise up to prevent the end of the world, even if that means challenging the gods.
The Last Days of Atlantis
The PCs in this would play kings, sons of gods, renowned warriors, powerful seers etc, who must run around a mythical version of the Mediterranean, interacting with various mythical and semi-historical places, people and monsters in an effort to prevent the doom of Atlantis (or possibly to prevent Atlantis from destroying the rest of civilization).
All That Glitters
The PCs begin as residents of a small village in or near the borders of Faerie. The village is threatened by something that they cannot hope to defeat (a powerful dragon, an ancient curse, an evil witch, or the attentions of the Unseelie Court), and the group must go on a long and arduous quest around Faerie seeking a way to defeat it.
City of the Dead
A Ghostwalk campaign dealing with a slow building Yuan-ti invasion that culminates with the PCs having to enter the lands of the dead to find a way to defeat the serpent folk, and then find a way to get the information back to the land of the living.
Sharn Inquisitive
The PCs run a detective agency based in Sharn. This campaign would be set around several Eberron adventures from Dungeon mag, with Nic Logue’s trilogy as it’s centerpiece. As an interesting aside, Ithuriel is running a pbp game here at Paizo with a similar premise.
The Five Nations
A series of seemingly unrelated adventures lead the PCs to believe that someone is trying to restart the Last War. The PCs must prevent this, and then delve further into the real reasons why this was happening and confront the masterminds behind it (The Lords of Dust, the forces of Xoriat, The Blood of Vol or one of the other usual suspects probably).
Around Dark Corners
A Dark Matter campaign (that I was going to run using the Alternity rules) based around several types of cryptoids, a Sandman invasion and trouble within the Hoffman Institute.
Last Human?
This was going to be a spin off from a Dark Matter campaign that I did run which ended with most of the party killed by drug runners and the one surviving member kidnapped by aliens. It was going to be about this guy dropped off on some remote planet or abandoned space hulk at the other edge of the galaxy and having to find his way back home. It was obviously more than a little inspired by Red Dwarf, the Space Quest computer games and a good sci-fi novel I was reading at the time whose name escapes me now…
Excalibur
Set in the Alternity Star*Drive universe, the PCs were to be the command crew, away team, scout crew or marine squad of the CSS Excalibur, a ship on a long range patrol of the Verge. The campaign would begin with planetary exploration and corporate intrigue and lead on to first contact with the Externals. At least partly inspired by Star Trek, and also Aliens.
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After running 2e Ruins of Greyhawk, Vecna Lives and 1e Throne of Bloodstone, I wanted Vecna to discover the Forgotten Realms world and invade it with daemons, taking it over the way he attempted on Oerth. The PC's would quest to find his phylactery, hidden deep within Hades (he is still a lich after all) and touch it to the obelisk that exists in the center of all crystal spheres (Oerth is at the center of its solar system, and that's where that sphere's obelisk was).
I was going to incorporate elements of the PC game Doom (who wouldn't want to fight a Cyberdemon? A technological moon was engulfed into Hell! Sure, why not.), and involve Spelljammer (Forgotten Realm's central body is its sun, so the obelisk would then be at its center). Imagine an undead spelljamming ship... perhaps a modified floating dracolich?
The campaign never took place. But it was to be the PC-retiring campaign, since frankly there was very little left to challenge PC's with.
O.O what a bunch of fantastic ideas .... Here's a couple I wanted to do:
The SkySpear Mountains expedition: The Old Ones were a race long disappeared from the world. The few aritfacts that had come down over the millenia were highly coveted. A wizard had discovered that there was a complex they dwelt in that could be untouched ... only problem is that it is 50,000 ft up the side of a ginormous mountain. This was inspired by my recent rereading of the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft.
Magic Apocalypse: Basically an hommage to The Empire of the East by Fred Saberhagen, but set closer to the actual catastrophic event than the book. The modern world is on the brink of nuclear war. An untested defense screen is triggered that is supposed to warp the physics of time space just enough to casue the atom bombs to go inert. Instead it fundamentally changes the physics of the world, making them magic rather than science-oriented. A nuclear blast gets off right before the physics change and is transformed into the BBEG, demonic ravager type of thing. Players would have to adapt to magic suddenly working as guns suddenly don't.
The idea I've had in my head for the longest time is the undersea campaign. A Sea Elf Paladin on Hippogriff, Noble Malenti Scout, Triton Fighter, Mermaid Cleric, Dolphin Wizard, and Orca Bard join forces to stop the machinations of the Kraken who is trying to sink the island of Humans who eventually become the Aventi when their God grants them the power to breath water.
I'd run it except for
1. Three dimensional combat;
2. Many skills become less useful (Climb, Jump, Balance) and might require class skill changes;
3. Many spells become difficult to adjudicate and might require spell list changes.
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I have an idea for a Wraith: The Oblivion campaign that I've always wanted to run. Basically, the PCs stumble upon a conspiracy between a group of Giovanni vampires and Spectres who are trying to use a spirit nuke to rip a hole in the fabric separating the world from the Shadowlands. The key to their plan is a young medium (one of the PCs - still alive while everyone else is dead), so they have to protect her from harm from both the living and the deceased and try to bring down enemies on both sides of the Shroud.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Started and aborted,
Campaign started great, forgotten realms, players are kind enough to release a Fey'ri prince, and find out they need the MacGuffin to stop him. Party learns that it was secured in the Well of Worlds and they need the 6 keys to open the gate, retrieve the MacGuffin, and stop him.
We got through the first key before the campaign collapsed. The hook was going to be they needed a 7th key to get through the Well of worlds and that it was going to be at the Well itself, imbedded in the floor. Then they just need to figure out the order needed on the well, and find the symbols among the other 39...
... at which point they end up in the Artic and have to find their way to England, then back to the Artic, finally breaking into Cheyene Mountain to get back home... ;-)
I was expecting many object thrown at me when they find out that it's a stargate. No one had a clue.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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another one I forgot...
I always wanted to try an oWoD 'Leftovers' game. Hedge mages, ghouls/revenants/dhampires, kinfolk, mediums, and dhampyri as options. Set at a university, and they find someone, a Sam Haight type, has kidnapped/killed/done a terrible something/ to their mentors. So they have to become reluctant allies to save/avenge them.
What would be interesting would be after the campaign is over, going back to their 'normal' lives. How do you hunt down that rogue lupine when you know you just had class with his sister?
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The one campaign I wanted to run was an archipelago-based (inpsired by Earthsea with a subtropical twist) game of adventure and intrigue. A tense political environment, a race of free-willed, rapacious skeleton pirate/traders (just can't get enough of skeletal sailors ya know?), and the rumored "lost history of the time before the floods" and "the isles beyond" would draw the characters from their island homes and into the wide world to become captains of their own ship, traders, explorers of "primitive isles", treasure hunters or even pirates.
Alas...
If you do so, count me in.After my current D&D campaign, I'm going to be running a campaign in the Firefly 'verse, probably a year or so after Serenity.Dude, there are some serious Firefly wackos in here. You need to run this pbp.
How does Play By Post work? I've never done it. I might consider it, if only as practice for when I run it "for real."
I already have the Level 1 adventure set up.
Basically, the PCs inherit/steal/win in a poker game/purchase at auction/etc. shares in a ship. The ship is ALMOST free and clear, except the lien on the ship is owned by the Circe du Celeste, a traveling carnival. The PCs are invited to a meeting with The Dauphine, the daughter of Papa Legba and the owner of the circus.
The PCs have to pick up a shipping container from a wrecked hulk, transport it to a third party, and deliver the payment for it back to the Dauphine. Easy, right? ;-)
Also, did you know Steven Brust's Firefly novel is available free online?
http://dreamcafe.com/firefly.html
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Other campaigns that have never run:
The Emperor’s Children
Set in a sort of mythical China type setting, the PCs are special envoys of the Emperor who form this sort of ghostbusters / fiend slayers / monster hunters type group, going around dealing with various supernatural threats and eventually discovering and confronting the source of those threats.
On the Cold Edge of Hell
A Buffy inspired campaign where the PCs would play modern day monster killers trying to keep the big bads at bay.
Into the Dark City
Inspired by the Mordheim game and also Pool of Radiance (etc), this one is set in a ruined city, its central district vaporised by a mysterious shadowy blast. PCs may wish to try to discover why the city was destroyed, cleanse it of evil, claim its treasures for themselves, or some combination of the above, all the while fighting off attacks by rival warbands, degenerate mutant survivors and vile things from the darkness at the centre of the city.
I don't even know how they're run. Do you all get online at the same time, or just post when you can get to it, or what?
It might be easier to PBP because then I don't have to come up with a RIDICULOUS over-the-top French accent for the Dauphine.
Interesting.
I've had this one rattling around for a while.... the PCs are long dead legends, heroes of yore, sealed in limbo for millennia. Locked in stasis, they waited to be recalled when the need was dire. Summoned forth by the desperate rulers of the wasting away remnants of the empire they sought to safeguard in the past, the PCs are confronted by a massive plot orchestrated by a cast of otherworldly evil devourers to fulfill a prophecy that would end with the PCs' world enslaved and harvested for its resources. The PCs, once the embodiment of nobility and virtue, have been corrupted from endless years of dormancy. Their enemies have pried away at their sanity while the PCs slumbered....so the PCs emerge flawed, on the verge of insanity, fighting baser instincts.... The world has changed and is bereft of calloused, hard men as the PCs past exploits led to an era of unprecedented peace that created successive generations of atrophied heroes and show warriors. The PCs set off and attempt to stop the prophecy and the evil descending on their world. They attempt to marshal their world’s weak armies against the legions pouring through from another plane. In the end I want the PCs to fail...the prophecy is fulfilled but as they say the world ends not with a bang but a whimper and as the crops fail, and the sun goes black, the PCs are charged with leading the survivors to a new world...and redemption...
The campaign I'd like to try and run again (this time with more prep work, now that I have a solid idea) involves a mirror of our own world about 1000 years ago. Christianity never took hold, and the gods are all very real and will occassionally walk the world (and interfer with each other). And the fantasy races exsist, but come from different sources (Elves are Tuathua de Dannan, Orcs are one of the bastard children of Loki, et.)
The main crux of the campaign involves Loki discovering a piece of the Sampo (from Finnish mythology) and throwing it into the world to see what it would do. The PC's unknowingly keep passing it off to one wizard or sorcerer (or cleric or druid) and it continues to wreck havoc where ever it goes. (The idea is it "chooses" where it goes. It aides in magic, but corrupts the magic being done horribly. Then it moves on to the next spell caster either via the actions of the party, or but some other means (being sold, stolen, looted from the battlefield). The whole time this is happening Loki follows the players occasionally providing encouragement, though typically throwing up obstacles in their way.
I came across the campaign by accident while play testing Castles and Crusades (to see if the rules were for me, and the other players). The campaign sort of took shape organically from there. The players picked their gods based off real world myths (as well as their origins), and the idea of using the Sampo sort of struck me one night a few days before we started. From there each game session added a bit more to the idea till I had an inkling of how I wanted the end game to play out and several contingencies for when the players went off the rails. Now that I won't be doing a lot of gaming for a while (aside from running my niece and nephew through Keep on the Borderland) I intend to plot this campaign out and have it take more logical routes than it was when I initially began it.
2e Time of Abandonement: Gods are gone, in a matter of months theocracies have crumbled, and chaos washes over the land. After a few decades of war, only a few places have managed to stabalize, in the West, a council of mages (including one of those liches that are so old they are only a skull), and in the Central Continent, a rogue necromancer with his demon-bred ogre horde.
To add to the mix two sets of gods have emerged granting clerics their powers, the New Gods-Cthulhu mythos, and the Forgotten Gods-Primeval elemental forces.
The heroes would begin as hired soldiers, but eventually stumble across the reason for the Abandonement, all while trying to help establish a peaceful country and stop the Necromancer.
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I don't even know how they're run. Do you all get online at the same time, or just post when you can get to it, or what?
It might be easier to PBP because then I don't have to come up with a RIDICULOUS over-the-top French accent for the Dauphine.
SmiloDan, you might be able to find out a bit about pbp games work in the How about a pbp FAQ thread and/or the General Discussion for all pbpers thread.
But to answer your specific question, no, you don’t need to be online at the same time, you just post when you are able. It makes for a pretty slow paced game a lot of the time, but is often easier than trying to coordinate schedules (especially when wildly different time zones are a factor) and playing by chat or something.
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A few games that have been running through my head for a while.
This was an idea that cooked up shortly after the Eberron book came out. It's been sitting on the back burner since then. I've only got the first adventure written so far, but 7 or 8 in outline form. This is what I was going to use to get my players interested:
"Eberron: The Rise of Xoriat: Nine thousand years ago the Plain of Madness, Xoriat, became coterminous to the world of Eberron. In that time the daelkyr and their minions flooded into Eberron in an effort to rule the world. Their plans failed due to the Druidic sect known as the Gatekeepers. The Gatekeepers succeeded in sealing the entry points from Xoriat, blocking the daelkyr invasion, but at great cost. To seal the dimensional rifts, the lead orc druids of the ceremony sacrificed their lives, leaving only a crystal skull. These skulls hold the power to open a sealed gate, or close an open one. To keep the skulls safe, and to make sure the seals remained closed, the Gatekeepers scattered them across the whole of Eberron, from the primeval jungles of Xen’drik to the Mountains of the Mror Holds to the mysterious, far off continent of Sarlona.
Now, the gates are opening, the seals are weakening. A mysterious force is looking for the Skulls and, more and more, attacks by the daelkyr are increasing. Can the Heroes recover all twelve Crystal Skulls before the dimensional seals can be opened? Or will the all of Eberron spiral into madness?"
Once the Eberron books come out next year, I'll do some converting.
A similar idea came to me for either a d20 Modern campaign or True20. Again it dealt with the Crystal Skulls (damn you George Lucas for making me look unoriginal now!) and the Mayan prophecy that the world as we know it will cease to be in the year 2012. The players were going to be part of either a government organization or a private institute that is sent to stop an organization who's leader is bent on performing a ritual to harness the power of the Event to bend the world to his evil vision.
I was planning to lead the players to believe that the Event could be stopped, and as the Ritual of Evil™ is disrupted the Event takes it's natural course and Earth "Awakens" as magic and myth are reintroduced. Not quite to the lvl that is in Shadowrun, but close.
Also using True20 was a fantasy campaign that I've had running in my head for about 10 years now. It starts off 80 years after an invading army from across the sea suddenly stopped after gaining a large foothold on the main continent. Starting with the invasion of the players home town, they would have to rescue (or escape if they were captured) family and friends from a slave camp, convince surrounding nations that they need to join forces in pushing back this invading force and finally taking the fight to the bad guys, discovering that the whole war was orchestrated as a mass sacrifice to resurrect a ancient, dark god of destruction.
I was going to use True20 instead of D&D because the magic system was going to be elemental based for all races except for elves, who would communicate with the spirits of nature to cast their spells.
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The Sacred Lands
Millennia ago, the gods dwelled in the mortal world in holy cities spread around a particular area of a continent. After they left to allow mortals to rule themselves, the various races and religions began warring over control of the sacred land (and its residual divine magical power). Now most of the cities are in ruins and the sacred land is scarred by centuries of fanatical conflict, both martial and magical. A tenuous peace is about to be broken as a nearby empire prepares another massive crusade into the gods' former kingdoms.
I came up with this for a homebrew adventure path setting, but it turned out to be too close (for my comfort) to the setting of Glen Cook's Instrumentalities of the Night series. I may still change up some of the details and try it at some point.
I don't even know how they're run. Do you all get online at the same time, or just post when you can get to it, or what?
It might be easier to PBP because then I don't have to come up with a RIDICULOUS over-the-top French accent for the Dauphine.
SmiloDan, you might be able to find out a bit about pbp games work in the How about a pbp FAQ thread and/or the General Discussion for all pbpers thread.
But to answer your specific question, no, you don’t need to be online at the same time, you just post when you are able. It makes for a pretty slow paced game a lot of the time, but is often easier than trying to coordinate schedules (especially when wildly different time zones are a factor) and playing by chat or something.
Thanks, I will have to look into this.
Using D20 Future and the PL system is a little wonky with the Firefly 'verse. They have enormous terraforming skills, including manipulation of gravity on multiple scales (a ship with AG flying through an atmo of a moon with AG). But they also still rely on gunpowder weapons, except for evil douche bags (Rance Burgess) and some Alliance flunkies (those knockout guns used in "Ariel" and "Trash.")
I have a few (long) ideas so for the next few posts...
Campaigns I wanted to run (and yet may)
The first uses the cosmology of Greyhawk, and the PCs are living during an age of exploration analogue on a world called Aneinthes (I can’t actually claim credit for creating it-I enjoy the Civilization series of computer games and in Civ III there was a map I really like called an eye in the sea so I shortened the name a little: an e in the s-Aneinthes). Anyway it is a multiracial empire that the PCs hail from where all the common races (including orcs, goblinoids and reptilian humanoids) live in relative peace (more on that later) that still has some wild frontiers (the two northern continents of the world are home to this empire), but ships have begun to traverse the oceans south of the empire opening up new lands to exploration. The empire was forged in a terrifying war, when the ethergaunts emerged from the deepest recesses of the Ethereal Plane intent upon conquering the Material Plane and their first strike killed a champion of Bahamut and a champion of Tiamat, and all the gods, of humanoids, dragons, monsters and giants alike, looked into a vision of the future and saw the ethergaunts destroying not just the Material races but the inhabitants of all the other planes as well, and eventually the gods themselves. So the gods met on the demiplane known as Common Ground to form a unified defence against this horrendous threat. The gods agreed to put aside their animosities and lead their followers, side by side, into battle. Although they agreed to work together, initially the gods did not overly trust one another. Over countless battles, however, the former enemies began to appreciate one another, with champions of former enemies standing together and striking down their hated ethergaunt foes. The war lasted much of an age, and finally, the ethergaunts numbers were depleted enough that the gods could summon sufficient power to drive the ethergaunts into the very deepest reaches of the Ethereal plane and bind them there forever. The war had led to new friendships and reconciliations among the deities and their followers and the humanoids forged the empire that unified their home continents and now all the humanoid races work together to expand the empire. The giants and dragons went their separate ways and became more individual creatures, living away from the humanoids. Elves and orcs, dwarves and goblinoids, gnomes and kobolds all are able to stand as friends and explore the world beyond the borders of the empire together. The imperial council (a hereditary parliament of sorts) has one representative of each race and is matrilineal: the representatives are always female, passing from mother to (usually eldest) daughter (and imperial bloodline mages make sure that there will always be at least one daughter for each councillor) but the frontiers of this young empire are not completely tamed and the lands across the raging seas are filled with barbaric tribes and mysterious artefacts, ready for exploration. (Other notes for the setting-the imperial mates (that is the fathers of the councillors children), can be any male of the same race who is sufficiently distant (bloodline wise) from the councillor of his race and has earned a certain amount of distinction-maybe even one of the PCs potentially! The bloodline mages use a spell developed from Detect Magic, called Detect Bloodline, to check potential imperial mates-basically the longer you concentrate on a subject, the more distant the ancestors you learn the identity of-first round, identity of parents, second round grandparents, third round great-grandparents etc, for up to 10 rounds or 10 generations back)
And...
Another campaign I came up with was based on the modified races presented in Dragon Magic. [note]It should also be noted that the humanoids, the dragons and associated now native outsiders (see below) all start as basically neutral and can develop any alignment they choose (Eberron rule on dragon alignment, basically).[end note] The ancestors of the modern representatives of the humans, elves (but no drow), dwarves, gnomes, halflings, orcs, hobgoblins and lizardfolk, along with numerous other humanoid and monstrous humanoid races lived under the rule of a powerful empire of giants as slaves and, occasionally, food. There was an empire of dragons (black, blue, copper, gold, green, red, silver and white) north of the realm of the giants and other dragons living in various other parts of the world. The dragons saw the brutality inflicted upon the humanoids by the giants and liberated the humanoids taking them to the dragons’ particular lands. The traits presented in Dragon Magic for the races come about from the dragons exposing their protégés to specific magic, and only some members of each race manifest these variant traits (there are still a fair number of wild lesser dragons roaming about, so anti-dragon abilities (such as the variant dwarves possess) are still useful). The magic that the dragons exposed these races to also caused the creation of the dragonmarks among the different races other than the lizardfolk. The specific realms (and marks) of the dragons and their protégés:
-the white dragons took the orcs to the great northern wastes and turned them into skilled hunters and trackers (finding, storm)
-the greens took the elves to the great forests stretching across vast areas of the continent and taught the elves the secrets of taming and breeding beasts (handling, healing)
-the reds took the dwarves to the western mountains and taught them the methods of metallurgy and mining (making, scribing)
-the golds took the halflings to the expansive plains and taught them methods of settlement and cultivation, allowing for the development of cities (hospitality, warding)
-the blacks took the lizardfolk to the swamps, lakes and rivers of this continent and instructed them to act as guardians of the land (aberrant marks)
-the coppers took the gnomes to the lower lying eastern mountains and taught them many secrets of magic (shadow, detection)
-the blues took the hobgoblins to the southern deserts and turned them into powerful warriors and guardians, facing the frontline of the war against the giants (sentinel)
-the silvers had always been wanderers, living amongst the other dragons without a unique realm of their own and the humans inherited that wandering nature from their patrons (passage)
Various types of lesser dragons (feldrakes, dragonnels, wyverns, drakken animals and pseudo dragons) can be found as allies or trained beasts under the humanoids and dragons, but many are still wild.
When the dragons liberated the humanoids, the giants placed a curse upon the dragons that causes their eggs to hatch more often as dragonspawn (spawn of Tiamat, in other words, since I will probably be using the Golarion or Eberron deities) or landwyrms than as true dragons, and producing spawn or draconians as often as half-dragons when mating with humanoids, but these offspring, as well as the elite agents called the dragonborn, are key parts of the army against the giants (I wanted to have spawn and dragonborn on the same side and recasting the dragonborn as elite, specially prepared draconic agents and soldiers seems to fit). The curse has, over time, weakened the dragons and reduced their numbers as has the war the giants keep fighting, often by sending in their cannon fodder: the lesser giants (ogres, trolls, hill giants), their slaves (goliaths, quinamentin) and halfbreed offspring (half-ogres, half-giants and eneko). The war has reached a stalemate on a thin bridge of land linking the two empires. When the giants placed the curse, their ancient paragons, the titans, were the ones who provided the power to create the curse, but the dragons paragons, the epic dragons, destroyed the titans (and most of their own kind) before the curse could be fully implemented and so it only has a partial effect upon the dragons (the curse was intended to render the dragons completely sterile and so eventually lead to the dragons extinction and then the conquest of the dragons realms).
Other dragons from distant lands also saw humanoids they wanted to rescue and a coalition of the bronzes, mercurys, mists, and dzalmus’ (see DR 349) along with N hound archons, N avorals and N vrocks lead the raptorans, aarakocras, lupins and laikas in a distant land across very dangerous seas, while a land just beyond that is ruled by the lung dragons, lillends, couatls, yuan-ti, and the nagas (both MM and OA nagas) and inhabited by the humanoids the lung dragons liberated from the giants (the bhukas, goblins, xvarts, tortles, kobolds, t’kels, and poison dusk lizardfolk). An island near the lung dragons realm is held by the ferrous dragons (zinc instead of chromium), leonals and rakshasas, and the inhabitants of this island are the tibbits, catfolk, hengeyokai, and phanatons. The steels and brasses took the vanaras and hadozees to another set of islands close to realms of the lung dragons and ferrous dragons. Meanwhile, another great continental mass holds 2 realms: In the west is a realm of fey, beasts, animals and plants (including the fey races of: the killoren, gruwaar, jaebrin, uldras and asherati (now fey type) as well as the quasi-humanoid plants called the adu’jas) and in the east, monsters and aberrations rule the land. On an island near the fey and plant realm, the Arcane dragons rule over the krynnotaurs (the 1 HD minotaur race from Dragonlance), the MM minotaurs, the tsunos from OA and the greathorns from MMIV. Islands on the edges of the aberration and monster area are held by the orange, purple and yellow dragons, with the beings they rescued from the aberrations living on the respective islands (maenads and xephs with the purples, elans with the yellows, and dromites with the oranges). The seas are home to various monsters-leviathans, aboleths, krakens, dragon turtles, sea drakes, sea serpents, dragon eels, sea linnorms and others. Many smaller islands hold nesting grounds for monsters like giant eagles, giant owls, griffons, hippogriffs, rocs, pegasi and lammasus. All across the world powerful natural forces (storms, volcanoes, earthquakes, etc) spawn elementals, paraelementals, elemental drakes, storm drakes, elemental creatures, elemental demons, energons, genies (all N), arrowhawks, salamanders (N rather than E), tojanidas, and xorns, but these forces must be very powerful to spawn such beings. There are still many wild frontiers to explore, and intrigues amongst the dragons and other ancient ruling races (the outsiders, etc) although the wars against the giants and/or the aberrations will also be key.
Now, I looked at various Civilization and Alpha Centauri maps to come up with an idea for the layout of this world after coming up with the basic ideas of who is associated with whom and relative locations, but nothing I found in either Civ or ACen really worked. Then I was walking outside one day and it hit me: I had the perfect map (quite literally) right at my feet right at that moment: Earth itself would be the map. Dragons and humanoids in North America, giants in South America (the frontline would be right through the middle of the Yucatan peninsula). The bronze, mercury, mist and dzalmus realm is on New Zealand; the lung dragons realm is Australia; the ferrous dragon realm is New Guinea; the steel and brass’ territory is on other islands of Indonesia; the arcane dragons-Madagascar; Africa, Europe and the Middle East are the realm of the fey and plants, while mainland Asia is the realm of the aberrations; Japan is the purple dragons land; Taiwan is held by the yellows and Sri Lanka is the domain of the oranges. Of course this did pose one problem: Antarctica. In addition to the storms generating the various quasi-elemental beings, I also added an additional defence to the frozen continent: N Xixecal abominations that tolerate and guard native species but are brutally hostile to intruders.
The cosmology will probably be a mish mash of things although I still haven’t worked out the particulars.
And...
I have also had an idea for a few other campaigns, these ones a bit less fleshed out, but here it goes. My inspiration for the first of these came from 2 sources-Dragon 310 (and UA)’s variant monk fighting styles and Dragon 319’s Animal shen PrC article. This world has a number of towns and villages clustered around 8 great monastery fortresses and within each monastery a coalition of monks and druids teach their students (monks and druids) particular fighting techniques. This later progresses to a mystical bond with the natural world, represented by one of the shen paths and each monastery is specifically associated with a particular path (this means that you can only take 1 shen PrC and it must match your monastery).
-The heron (cobra) strike style leads to the crane shen
-The denying stance style leads to the monkey shen
-The hand and foot style leads to the snake shen
-The overwhelming attack style leads to the tiger shen
-The passive way style leads to the mantis shen
-The sleeping leopard (tiger) style leads to the panther shen
-The undying way style leads to the dragon shen
Now before anyone complains, yes there is also the invisible eye style, but since there are only 7 shen PrCs, I was thinking of choosing a different PrC (tattooed monk or drunken master, perhaps) to associate with that style and any good suggestions are welcome. When I was matching these classes up I took a look at the crunch and the fluff to see which ones should be matched up together and chose the ones I did because the crunch at least somewhat worked together (feats granted by the fighting styles are required by the shen class, skills focused on are a common focus for both) and the fluff also links in (and that is going to get tweaked anyway). These monasteries also serve as training areas for the local militias (duskblades, fighters, rangers and scouts), as study facilities for wizards, clerics, cloistered clerics, archivists and warmages, schools of music (bards) and centres of governance (paladins and knights (PHBII) as royal guard type classes, rogues as courtiers). The monasteries will serve as the starting place of adventures, akin to the classic “adventures meet in a tavern and head out to adventure” idea, except that this background at a particular monastery will be the bond that the characters share. The centres outside the monasteries will hold various common people and adventurers could arise from these places as well; barbarians, sorcerors, rogues, fighters, favoured souls, ninjas, warlocks, beguilers and healers. Beyond the relatively narrow reaches of civilization, however, lie wild lands filled with treasures and monsters.
And...
Other ideas: a multiracial Rokugan but each family of each clan is a different non LA race
Crab -Hida - Dwarf
-Kaiu - Kobold
-Hiruma - Nezumi
-Kuni - Gnome
-Yasuki - Xeph
-Toritaka - Laika (Wis 11+ can take scent as a feat at 1st level)
Crane -Doji - Elf
-Daidoji - Half Elf
-Kakita - Bhuka
-Asahina - Raptoran
Dragon -Mirumoto - Neraphim
-Togashi - T’kel
-Hitomi - Buomman
-Tamori - Killoren
-Kitsuki - Halfling
Lion -Akodo - Human
-Ikoma - Tibbit
-Kitsu - Vanara
-Matsu - Shifter
Phoenix -Isawa - Spellscale
-Agasha - Asherati
-Shiba - Spiker
-Asako - Kalashtar
Scorpion -Bayushi - Hengeyokai
-Shosuro - Changeling
-Soshi - Kenku
-Yogo - Maenad
Unicorn -Moto - Orc
-Shinjo - Half Orc
-Utaku - Lupin
-Iuchi - Gruwaar
-Ide - Goblin
Mantis -Yoritomo - Darfellan
-Moshi - Spiritfolk
-Tsuruchi - Hadozee
Fox -Kitsune - Grippli
Dragonfly -Tonbo - Daelkyr Halfblood
Sparrow -Suzume - Deep Imaskari
Badger -Ichiro - Phanaton
Hare -Shiro - Synad
Tortoise -no family name given - Faun
And finally...
A fair number of crossover campaigns, where the PCs discover a gateway to another world (and a suitable motivation in said world to have them adventure there for a while): from one homebrew to another homebrew; to Eberron, the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Golarion, Dark Sun, Dragonlance, Rokugan, Planescape, Spelljammer, Ravenloft, Warcraft, Red Steel, Mystara; or to places further afield, such as LotR, Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Wars, Star Trek (DS9 is the setting I’d envision for a D & D meets Trek trip simply because: 1 it already has quasi-magical beings getting involved on a regular basis-Prophets and Pah Wraiths, 2 it stays in one place for the most part so a gateway is not necessarily as difficult to keep track of, 3 it can serve as a meeting point so you could bring in TNG and (depending on timing) Voyager if you wanted to without having to overly engineer the circumstances, 4 what self respecting adventurer stuck in the 24th century would NOT take an opportunity to visit Quark’s Bar at some point), Law and Order, CSI, Criminal Minds, The West Wing, Transformers, X-men, Batman (or other media series as well, depending on one’s taste - I just selected a few that I happen to know something about). Some of these crossovers might require d20 modern material to properly execute. One concern I’d have with an X-men (or other superhero) linked campaign is how to represent the superheroes’ powers: most would be taking an existing spell and turning them into at will (or many uses per day) spell-like abilities, or taking special attacks and/or special qualities and/or class features and mixing and matching to produce the desired results but that would still leave at least 3 X-men mutants I can think of out: Cyclops, Magneto and Juggernaut, since I can’t think of any D & D abilities that quite match their powers.
Another possibility is something out of actual history. Back when WotC released the Axis and Allies miniatures game, the D&D site had the article “Atomic Terror from Space!” detailing an invasion of D & D monsters going up against circa 1950 military forces in Manhattan - this particular article got me thinking about what would happen if D & D organizations, heroes and villains got involved in the World Wars or other historical conflicts through one of these gateways and how that could become an interesting (or frightening, depending on circumstances) campaign.
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oh jeez...I have maybe a dozen floating around my brain....
but here are the big three...
1) Party is hired my a coastal community to stop 'bandits' from interrupting the flow of trade through a 'haunted forest' to their community. With no goods coming from inland, their community is being 'strangled'...trade is grinding to a halt...and the leaders are worried.
Seems innocent enough right?
Bandits turn out to be a tribe of Kobolds....who as it turns out are working for a 'Vampire'. What the party wasnt told by the city council is loggers supposedly disturbed the resting grounds of a Vampire who had been staked and left.....Hes back and hes pissed....
oh but wait the story gets more convoluted.
The Vampire...isnt a vampire at all, merely a Druid whos pretending top be one to play on local superstitions...The party wont find that out until they are about 12th level, and only after the unlock the real tomb of holding the Vampire of legend...and release him....
twists and turns...;) I love it.
2) Party is created at about 12th level...but build thir characters showing what they gained at each level on sheets to the DM...Party goes through a portal..after visiting a sage to get information on an old treasure map.
after going through the portal, they find themselves on a strange water world called "Edils S'egas". Its a flat world with island chains. A cult of religious zealots worship the great one...and an underground movement headed my wizards and druids are fighting them...Theres a lot of changes to magics in the realm..and things dont work as they once did...When the party starts 'losing' things...(abilities, skills, hit points, and levels...) they realize something is horribly wrong in this world...and the rush to find the way out as the time is ticking.
They stumble on some information that the Cult is behind it...and later learn that the cult guards the way out. later the party finds out that they are part of a strange socialogical study....It turns out the sage the visited way back when 'brings people to this world to watch them...the problem is the material he uses to transport them to his world causes long term amnesia...and they gradually forget who and what they are until they settle in and become an NPC class in this new world...The world that is really a "sage'S slidE"
3) Something more simple on this one...The party is sent to a Frontier Town to help settle it. Take every cliche from Westerns and put it in a D&D setting....Simple and fun
I'm guessing I'm not the only one reading this and seeing a few campaign ideas proposed by others that you have in fact tried (ideas collecting in the cosmic ether I guess).
I like many of these but wanted to comment on Galdor's idea about the players being the first of their race - that's top notch in my opinion : ) Like yourself I also feel that the players shouldn't be the only movers and shakers in the world and that the success and failure of other heroes/factions is changing the campaign world - although I don't always remember to do it : )
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Here are a few of the ones that I like, but will probably never run.
The World's Largest Dungeon. I bought this book and it is massive, and really neat. I wanted to run it slightly differently though and have the PCs be thrown in as a punishment for their crimes. I am a fan of the Exile series of games by Spiderweb Software and would have patterned it after Exile 1; Escape from the Pit. Instead of some of the places leading to exits from the dungeon they would lead to still larger caverns and underworld civilizations, some lost and some just starting. The main thrust of the game would be exploration and trying to find their place in this huge new world. Could they actually escape and gain revenge? Or should they just stake out a cave as their own and start farming mushrooms.
I love the setting of Space 1889. I had the idea that a colony ship was sent out from Sol using new battery technology as well as several other inventions. They end up on a world that is one complete ocean. Now, several years later, the colony lives in a floating city and is filled with submersible ships and strange aquatic peoples.
Another idea would use the Space 1889 setting again, and have the backdrop be interplanetary war. Mars has been largely united by an ambitious and charismatic general who believes in the dream of Martian independence. Those seeking to throw off the yoke of the Earth and her empires have flocked to his banner, and the High Martians have joined him. Now the battle rages across the deserts of Mars, the fields of Earth, and the darkness of space as soldiers and fledgling space fleets clash in an attempt to gain freedom, or maintain the power of their empires.
Here Are my top ideas i want to try, but my players are running off to the corners of the world and it's hard to find new ones.
1) We are not Monsters
The players are part of the races plower gamers and slayer players "love to hate": kobolds, gobins, orcs etc. One day an epiphany comes over them: why not civilze their races? Instead of living as looters, The players and their allies are either trying to reform their "monster society" or move off to a distant land and start a new nation. And/or the players spy on the "monsters" of this campagin: Humans, elfs dwarfs etc. and steal their "secrets" to build a different society for their own races.
Of course traditional orcs, goblin etc are not very much in favor of this, so the PCs will have to fight on more than one front. And, if the players try violent reform of their societies they will learn that violence won't change anything. Ah ... a goblin king and the orc ruler discussing the art of gouvernance, kobold courtly intrigue ...
Part of the fun is that D&D and philosophical intrigue based immersion playing are somewhat at odds.
2) After Evolution and Before
Takes place in the world of Monte Cooks Arcane Evolved.
The great war between the Dragons and the Giants happened. But much worse was the catastrophe that happend then. Noone really knows what happend, but most people died one fateful day and came back as the undead. The akashic record is also blocked, you cant learn what happend by this method. The survivor fled south to the Free City and are now
organzing a campagin to take back the diamond throne from the undead.
This campagin was ultra-high powered (point build 35 pts + ArcanaEvolved and Iron Heros + Gestalt characters plus more more power ups avaible in the form of soul pearls), and Anime influenced (Bleach, and Full Metal Alchemist. And battletalk was practically required).
Eventally the characters would learn the truth, but it would call into question almost everything the characters belived to be true and good. Power, development (=Evolution) would be a major background theme, shown from multiple perspectives.
I had planned 20 Episodes, and 9 were actually played before players moved away.
3) One magic
In the Shadowrun 'verse, magic and technology are incompatible. The might be otakus, with their own special brand of wizardy, but everyone seems to know that there is a metaphysical abyss beteen magic and tech that cant be briged. The characters are living counterevidence, otakus discovering that they have magical talent.
Of course, there are people in the know, and they want to keep it all under covers. And: will the characters untimatly jion the secret powers that hide the unified truth, or will they fight them to the end?
4) Space 1889 (yeah, me, too)
The idea would be to advance the timeline, introducing all the inventions outlined in the rulebook. THis is mainly an alternate history setting, explornig the 20th century if the ether really existed. WIll there be still 2 great wars? The cold war? The roaring 20ties?
What about genetics? [pulp ether transhuman space =) ]
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"Expedition to the Barrier Peaks"
I always hated, hated, the concept for this adventure. I swore I'd never run it despite its iconic status. (I love to rewrite and run the "Great Ole Ones")
But a few days ago I had an epiphany. I was reading "Flowfire" by the Steve Kurtz and for the first time EVER got a real hankerin' to do a Spelljamer-like adventure.
So I figure I could do a Spelljammer adventure with "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks" and "The Black Egg." Then maybe lead into "The Lich-Queen's Beloved" somehow.
Now all I got to do is rewrite 'em and then run it.
(Oh, how I long for a day of every week to dedicate to D&D)
-W. E. Ray
Wouldn't it be fun to run something evocative of those novels that follows the story of young people in mundane England who become caught up in supernatural forces?
This is a genre which includes stories like Darren Shan, The Dark is Rising, Narnia and Harry Potter - although some of those examples are somewhat unsubtle versions of the theme. Or for an example in U.S. literature and setting 'The Talisman' (King/Straub).
I feel the real flavour is that of foreboding, unseen forces that very gradually extend their influence into the real world. Can be spooky if done well, and as per the examples above, could go in any direction.
I also feel theres a classical Greek mythology campaign in me waiting to get out, if only I could think of an interesting take on it... especially with players who've watched a lot of Xena and already seen many tales re-imagined.