So it has occured to me I have soo many ideas I want to game, and I'll never probably get a single one off the ground. So I decided I should share them and at least open the potential for someone else to swipe them. So here goes a few thoughts. One of the games I really want to run is a series of mini campaigns that take place in an alternate earth history. Use all the D&D stuff we're familiar with (elves, goblins, Dragons, etc) and use them to replace various figures and cultures on earth. In a sense fit them into a setting of "What if earth had evolved as it is today except D&D races existed as did magic?" I'm thinking a pulp WW2 era game where goblinoids vie for world domination, or an Old West shoot out between Billy the Kobold and an elvan Doc Holiday. Maybe even 1920's mobster action where some Ogres make you an offer you can't refuse, ala the godfather. Now I understand d20 modern, and it's books Urban Arcana, and D20 Past handle this stuff, but I want actual 3.5 mechanics for alot of it (Not a huge fan of the generic classes of d20 modern, nor a fan of the weath DC, or it's handling of spells and the like). But regardless, I just think it would be a lot of fun.
Another one I had in mind was a huge silent war between the mages, the clerics, and the Psionics. I envisioned this idea where there was kind of like this big great game so to speak being played behind the scenes between a group of the most powerful movers and shakers in all 3 power spheres and anyone caught in the wake was used as apawn, especially if they were one of the three. To this end I would want a pc cleric or mage/sorcerer and if not an actual psionic I would give the non caster a wild talent and basically focus it around the three of them being picked as "procies" for the game and the group gets tested and then the leaders use a convoluted method of keeping score through the groups trials and tribulations and in the end the group takes them on.
Anyone else have crazy settings you'd like to explore but probably never will?
The setting will be my front room, and the adventures of the microscopic people and societies that live in my carpet. An entire age will pass while me and the wife are out one saturday after doing the cleaning (which is known in legend and time that the gods looked upon the evil of societies and through them all down).
The Dwarfs will mine the great Iron mountians (the carpet runner) and the drow capital will be built on the corpse of a spider that is underneath the sofa.
All the rest of the cities live in the "world Trees" (i.e the carpet fabric) and no one goes down to the surface.
I write down all my ideas in a file, no matter how weird. Sometimes I get to use them after all.
For years I wanted to do a gothic steampunk campaign in 3.5. There was never a group for it, but now finally there is, and I am going to do this campaign for real, in about a month or 2.
I always wanted to mix D&D and d20 Modern to run a Thudarr the Barbarian type campaign.
I also had started a campaign based around a world built on a dead god. One of the other gods had people collecting up the various aspects of the god to take its power. The game ended when the group fell apart.
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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I keep toying with the idea of a campaign where all the PCs were born and raised as slaves to a beholder and have to do missions assigned by it to ensure the safety of their family and freinds who stay behind as hostages. (And they're all charmed)
Eventually, they'd break free of the charm and the campaign would end with their attempt at freedom by beating the beholder. The whole campaign would be all underdark, all the time.
I write down all my ideas in a file, no matter how weird. Sometimes I get to use them after all.
For years I wanted to do a gothic steampunk campaign in 3.5. There was never a group for it, but now finally there is, and I am going to do this campaign for real, in about a month or 2.
w00t for ideas that get to be used! My fiancee keeps telling me I should put the time into building the realworld with magic and monsters setting I described. She says I should build it and get it nice and polished and if I did that I could run it. She's probably right, the only thing stopping most of my good ideas is the fact that they aren't actually put together and written out so I feel like there's just to much work to be done to make iit the epic I want it to be. That seems to be biggest problem as a writer, especuially for gaming, that I have what I feel is an awesome idea but I don't feel I could do it the justice of how awesome I have built it up in my mind. *sigh* I should just startr writing things and see if I can even finish them. After I finish running SD, I think that group will go on hold while I write the campaign..... we'll see how far that goes :P
A Wild West type campaign, but with gunfighters replaced by jousters. Maybe in a world where evil took over, but there are still some agents of good (or at least LN) left.
A campaign where binders, sorcerers, warlocks, possibly druids, shadow casters, etc. are being witch hunted by clerics, wizards, warmages, and truenamers.
My d20 Firefly campaign.
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I've been doing work on a campaign world that I may or may not get to use; I can never decide which part of the world I want to start it in (as they are vastly different, even in the laws of physics and they way magic operates).
My world is made up of fragments of different planes that were fused together in an ancient catastrophe. The different planes are mainly divided into continents, although a few have overlapped here and there. There's a land that is so infused with magic that almost every person carries the spark within them (for this place, I would be using the recharging magic variant from UA, and everyone would have at least one level in a spellcasting class). The Island of the Dead, which is, as the name suggests, overrun by the living dead, although there are still a few bastions of the living still fighting the good fight. An endless desert, where the heat has spelled doom for many ill-prepared travelers looking for the hidden fortunes beneath the dunes.
But I switch from ideas so fast that I can't ever choose which of the many, many areas I want to start in.
w00t for ideas that get to be used! My fiancee keeps telling me I should put the time into building the realworld with magic and monsters setting I described. She says I should build it and get it nice and polished and if I did that I could run it. She's probably right, the only thing stopping most of my good ideas is the fact that they aren't actually put together and written out so I feel like there's just to much work to be done to make iit the epic I want it to be. That seems to be biggest problem as a writer, especuially for gaming, that I have what I feel is an awesome idea but I don't feel I could do it the justice of how awesome I have built it up in my mind. *sigh* I should just startr writing things and see if I can even finish them. After I finish running SD, I think that group will go on hold while I write the campaign..... we'll see how far that goes :P
That is why I write it all down, no matter how silly. Then once in a while I read it all through, add ideas together, expand upon ideas and then let it simmer for a while again, just like a good stew.
Sometimes this suddenly develops in an adventure, a plot, a trap or whatever...One idea I will probably never use is the idea where the minds of the PCs switch bodies (e.g. because of a curse). I simply see no way how to simulate this within the rules and still keep the adventure exciting and at a fast pace. Having to deal with a lot of new rules usually slows down the adventure too much. But then again, who knows...
One idea I will probably never use is the idea where the minds of the PCs switch bodies (e.g. because of a curse). I simply see no way how to simulate this within the rules and still keep the adventure exciting and at a fast pace. Having to deal with a lot of new rules usually slows down the adventure too much. But then again, who knows...
Maybe get a hold of the PC's sheets, and make all new sheets with one PC's mental stats and the other PC's physical stats. You might want to look at the polymorph rules and Magic Jar spell for BAB, Saves, Skills, Spells, Supernatural abilities, Spell-like abilities, etc.
Then, when the switcheroo happens, presto: Everyone gets a new character sheet!
Hey smilodan, can you email me at scarkitty at yahoo dot com please.
One idea I have been toying around with for years goes like this:
The characters awake somewhere in the wilderness, naked, alone and without any clue why they are there or even who they are. The first part would be getting them together somewhere in that wilderness (a huge tropical jungle, probably), and then as they seem equally clueless, probably they want to find out more. Nevermind the direction they take, someday they encounter some sort of native village (amazingly, they understand the natives language - or probably not). They probably range farther and farther in a search for the answers, and discover a whole world (most probably a fantasy setting). Bit by bit, they discover that the jungle they found themselves in was once the site of a huge battle long in the past, and that they probably have been part of that battle. (Or the seat of a high civilisation in ages past). Maybe they find some sign of their participation in some world-shaking event where everyone involved died long ago. It seems that some otherworldly force brought them back to life after aeons - but why? After yet more search for answers, they come upon an eternal conflict of some greater force (gods or something similar). This force needs the characters as proxies in the ongoing conflict, but could not intervene any more than calling them back from the dead after aeons, and had to trust the characters to find out the purpose on their own. There might even be a rematch of the battle of old, with the knowledge the characters gathered being an decisive advantage.
It is not designed through to the end, just some unkempt ideas.
Stefan
This would be a great beginning of any new campaign. Much better than "you meet each other in an inn."
I've been kicking around an idea for a campaign that begins with the PC's as low level slaves of Githyanki. They have little or no idea where they are or even who they were (torture, magic and such having erased parts of their memory) before the life of servitude.
An opportunity arises to escape the Gith city and they do, perhaps with the aid of an older, more knowledgeable slave. They find themselves hunted and lost inside the ancient body of a dead god, adrift in the astral plane. The elder slave gives them some small glimmer of hope by describing a craft or item, lost years ago, somewhere in the extremities of this Brobdingnagian corpse that may allow them to escape to their home. If they can remember where home is.
To provide some variety of set pieces, I imagine some sort of force at work trying either to revive or destroy the body of the dead god, which causes small rifts in reality. That way I could run encounters based in other terrain (and/or worlds/planes/settings) without stretching disbelief too thin.
It's still very rough and given my new work schedule and that we're still only about halfway through RotRL and 5/6 of the way through CotCT it may be a while if ever, before I can complete the actual work on any significant portion of it.
My homebrew setting: Goblinoids are the dominant race, with Hobgoblins are the first among equals. Humans and Demihumans are slaves, apart of a poorly organized resistance, or are in savage tribes that wander the empty spaces where the goblinoids do not frequent. Ruins abound from the time when Humans and their ilk were the main race.
Players start off at first level. It starts off similar to RotRL, but in reverse (wild halflings attack a hobgoblin town). The players start off as slaves going to be sold, but in the midst of the confusion, they are unwatched long enough for them to escape. From there it depends largely on my players.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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My homebrew setting: Goblinoids are the dominant race, with Hobgoblins are the first among equals. Humans and Demihumans are slaves, apart of a poorly organized resistance, or are in savage tribes that wander the empty spaces where the goblinoids do not frequent. Ruins abound from the time when Humans and their ilk were the main race.
Damn dirty apes!
Many cool Ideas
Funny I was just thinking over one similiar to that. The party awakens in the rubble of a building, no gear or anything (may even be 1st level npc classes ><) and have no memory. After looking around they realize the city/ruins they are in is underground like the earth had swalloed it up and dropped them into an underdark style setting. All kinds of craziness abounds with almosty a touch of horror theme as wierd stuff happens and they fight for their lives. Long story short they learn they were the victims of some sort of powerful maze like spell as punishment for heinous crimes. In the end they learn what their individual crimes are and the scope (I was thinking they were all dieties who basically were so bad that they were punished this way, made mortal and punished by the other dieties of their specific worlds.) I may still run it. Lots of exploration and rp I think witha tinge of survival horror and less focus on combat. :P
This one : ) ::shameless plug::
A friend of mine started running it in a 3.5 game. A startup Hogwarts, if you will. We had skill tests and encounters at the end of each year. There was also an "Eliminator" event one year where one of the "Draco Malfoy" type characters tried to throw mine off the top of a 30' wall. Was pretty cool!
I don't DM often, so who knows if it will happen...
ive been wanting to do a d20 modern campaign of G.I. Joes (the 1980s action figures)
i have been working on classes for it. it will never get played im sure, but i am working on all the vehicles, and feats specific for it.
so, gi joe....thats my campaign that will never get run
ive been wanting to do a d20 modern campaign of G.I. Joes (the 1980s action figures)
i have been working on classes for it. it will never get played im sure, but i am working on all the vehicles, and feats specific for it.
so, gi joe....thats my campaign that will never get run
Nice, I know some people who would jump at the chance to game that. I will say Mutants and Masterminds would handle that idea well also. :P
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one idea I have had in the past that works fine for a starter game but never seems to go anywhere is:
You find yourself alone on the road and hordes of (take your pick, usually orcs) Invade and you find yourself and some random allies working together to survive behind enemy lines.
It works fine but as I said I can never develop it well enough past that point. Works fine as well for hordes of zombies and plagues ect.. One day I want to expand it logically in a direction the pcs can actually accomplish something.
I played in one v&v game (superhero) where we had been built. We did a couple of missions (recover a stolen laser, rescue someone from a secret prison) then worked out we were the bad guys. We tried to switch sides to be good guys but suddenly we were on the run...
It was fun.
One I like the idea of as a starter is that you are a bunch of low level characters who have diverse backgrounds and have been petrified and kept by a medusa etc some of you kept for a hundred years. the campaign starts when the NPC adventurers (high level but from elsewhere so they cant tell you much like what year it is- or they just cant be bothered) cast a break enchantment and free you. They cant be bothered with you, escorting you back to civilization (though they sketch you a map)etc as there is more of a dungeon to explore but they warn you not to go deeper...
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One thing I've been wanting to do is start a campaign where all the characters are prisoners. I'm thinking I'll be starting the prologue to my homebrew(link in my profile) this way.
I'll set up lots of pregen characters for the players, include an envelope with the reasons they've been imprisoned(seperate for each character) and whether or not their incarceration is legitimate.
It'll be like a dungeon in reverse: the purpose is to get out, the loot will be the character's starting gear, and whether or not they tie up all loose ends, they may find themselves on wanted posters.
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One thing I've been wanting to do is start a campaign where all the characters are prisoners. I'm thinking I'll be starting the prologue to my homebrew(link in my profile) this way.
I'll set up lots of pregen characters for the players, include an envelope with the reasons they've been imprisoned(seperate for each character) and whether or not their incarceration is legitimate.
It'll be like a dungeon in reverse: the purpose is to get out, the loot will be the character's starting gear, and whether or not they tie up all loose ends, they may find themselves on wanted posters.
I played in a (short lived) campaign that started like this. We were all started in jail, and the first adventure was to escape. My character was in there because he burned down a tavern in the middle of a bar fight :). You end up with a group of evil and chaotic neutral characters along with a few good characters that were incarcerated for the wrong reasons, but are now stuck with these ACTUAL criminals because in the eyes of the law they are in cahoots, as it were. Great fun, especially with the hair-brained schemes players will think up if they think they're about to be executed.
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I have a list that is three out from being a 101 Adventure Ideas list...Here is a Steamtech Spelljammer.
89. The Derelict (The Ironclads Part 1)
The Captain ordered the helm to take a closer look and the Hammer adjusted course. It was a strange looking derelict of iron.
"Bring us up along side and prepare a boarding party."
The hammership slowed to one quarter.
Metal shutters lifted and the alarm sounded.
"Its a Trap!" The Ironclad ran the cannons out.
"My god they are mad. Get us out of here." The Captain was screaming to the Helm when the Steam Cannons fired broadside and ripped the hammership in half.
"TweeeT!" The Sound of a boarding whistle sounded.
DM Briefing: The PCs encounter a derelict Ironclad. This is simply an ambush, and the PCs soon find themselves hostages of Steam Age Pirates.
90. The IronClad Citadel (The Ironclads Part 2)
Syler looked at it as the pirates pushed their hostages onto the deck. Even from this distance it looked gnomish with the great steam engine bellowing steam to drive the great wheels in an effort to resist the flow.
"Take a look children. You will spend the rest of your life stoaking its boilers."
"Thats insane, it should explode in the flow..."
The Pirate laughed.
"Not this one. We have mastered the flow."
DM Briefing: New Steamtech has fallen into the hands of Pirates. They have built a steam powered port in the deep Phlogiston somewhere between the crystal spheres. Here the great citadel and ship building port is turning out new steam powered ironclads and steampowered cannons that can be used in the flow itself simply with a heat metal spell.
A neat idea a friend of mine had for a video game that with a skilled GM could be a great campaign. The player characters set out to right the wrongs of the world and get opposed at every turn, eventually they take control only to realize that they have become the villians.
Then you start over with a new group who sets out to actually take down the original group and stop their evil reign. It would be tricky, but I can see how it could work. Especially if the first party had recieved power from a creature that was actually corrupting them and their intention as things went on.
I ran a d20 future campiagn a few years back and(apart for it cementing in me a firm hatred for the d20 modern rules) half way through the campaign the PC's where captured and imprisoned. I then tooke control away from the players of those characters, and created them a new group of "mission specialists" who were tasked with making sure the original PC's didnt reveal the information that they had discovered or blab about the rebellion they were part of. It really gave the players a true impedous to stage what was the most stunningly planned and excuted rescue ive seen in an RPG (although on player was just in favour of nuking the prison from orbit).
One thing I've been wanting to do is start a campaign where all the characters are prisoners. I'm thinking I'll be starting the prologue to my homebrew(link in my profile) this way.
I'll set up lots of pregen characters for the players, include an envelope with the reasons they've been imprisoned(seperate for each character) and whether or not their incarceration is legitimate.
It'll be like a dungeon in reverse: the purpose is to get out, the loot will be the character's starting gear, and whether or not they tie up all loose ends, they may find themselves on wanted posters.
I've actually played in a game similiar a freind of mine has tried to run. The pcs were all in prison and then brought before a seer who decrees they are picked by fate for some task he doesn't know and basically are to escorted to this other more powerful seer and while being transported a group shows up to kill us and things go crazy from there. We never really got past the first part, due to too many of the yahoos that played at the time played Chaotic Stupid/evil. The ensuing chaos was them doing horrible things and making the rest of us give them odd looks (I was playing an evil character and I still had to say WTF to everything they were doing ><) But yea had a cool premise but player choice is key in a game like that :P
One idea I will probably never use is the idea where the minds of the PCs switch bodies (e.g. because of a curse). I simply see no way how to simulate this within the rules and still keep the adventure exciting and at a fast pace. Having to deal with a lot of new rules usually slows down the adventure too much. But then again, who knows...
I just had this idea 10 minutes and went a-searching the messageboards. Surprisingly, not much discussion of it.
I was thinking that I would time the moment of transfer with the end of a session, collect the character sheets (as I always do, in case someone is absent next time), and follow a few guidelines for making the new sheets.
I wouldn't create the new sheets before the game with the switch, because which PCs wind up involved in the switch might be random (it should be more fun that way).
ABILITIES
The abilities would be the first thing to work with. Intelligence and Wisdom would swap. Strength and Constitution would stay the same. Dex and Charisma I think should be split to an average, as they are, more than the others, a mix of physical and non-physical factors.
SKILLS
The same rules would apply to skill ranks, moving, keeping and splitting the total based on the applicable ability. The number of ranks gained would be retained, however, so each new character sheet would have to add or subtract based on the old character's
FEATS
The deciding factor is, again, how much the feat is based on the PC's knowledge versus their physical make-up.
GEAR
All gear, at least initially, would stay with the body, unless it had a magical enhancement that would follow the mind.
I'm sure there are more considerations, but this would require enough work already and it might be best to make a judgement call as concerns arise.
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One idea I will probably never use is the idea where the minds of the PCs switch bodies (e.g. because of a curse). I simply see no way how to simulate this within the rules and still keep the adventure exciting and at a fast pace.
A module like this exists. I forget the name at the moment, but it starts with the party being transported to a planet that is basically a moon-sized beholder. Within moments of their arrival one of the creature's eyestalks zaps everyone and the GM says, "Everybody hand your character sheet to the person sitting to your right." No special rules involved. It's just that simple. The players don't get their original characters back until they find their way off the moon-beholder. IIRC, anyone who dies inside somebody else's body ends up causing the physical death of the body they inhabit + the mental death of their own character so somebody gets stuck with a new character (short of using Wish magic and the like.)
Oh, wow, I had all but forgotten this thread. Regarding my ideas posted back then, I was even thinking how I could pull it off no matter what the backgrounds of the original characters were - so, having, say, a mechwarrior, a vampire, a paladin, an US marine, some steampunk character tossed into it and see what comes from it. Perhaps some godshard hit them and tore them out of their continuum, transported them and some parts of their world into a whole different continuum, where they promply died, to be resurrected by a force bent on collecting the godshards now again. So, I might have a mechwarrior crawling out of a millennia old ruin of a mech, to meet an US marine that crawled out of the remains of some helicopter.
I have put a few here. look under the non-politically correct campaign ideas link.
Warning!!!! These are non-politically correct - of course, I wrote the page while in the combat zone. But, if you are easily offended, take a bye on these.
One thing I've been wanting to do is start a campaign where all the characters are prisoners. I'm thinking I'll be starting the prologue to my homebrew(link in my profile) this way.
I'll set up lots of pregen characters for the players, include an envelope with the reasons they've been imprisoned(seperate for each character) and whether or not their incarceration is legitimate.
It'll be like a dungeon in reverse: the purpose is to get out, the loot will be the character's starting gear, and whether or not they tie up all loose ends, they may find themselves on wanted posters.
There are some famous, published D&D adventures that start that way.
Concur that these are less fun for the players than most GMs think.
;-)