1 to 17 levels? Players?
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I'm guessing you aren't just looking for a AP suggestions?
Couple ideas that I've had, or heard.
The love of money:
Characters are low-level, apprentice/journeymen, members of the a mercantile house. Initially tasked with protecting shipments, handling minor disputes, and securing deals. As they rise through the ranks, their success gets them picked to secure an important trade agreement with a Raj of Vudra. Once there, they become pawns in a game with players that stretch from the Inner Sea to the Impossible Kingdoms and beyond.
A nod to wrath of the righteous.
The end times:
The year is 4606AR as the southerners call it. To us, it is when the world ended.
Characters are part of the clans that call Sarkoris home. The death of Aroden signals the opening of the Worldwound. Initially, minor demons and warped creatures threaten the tribe, but as the rift opens, it becomes clear that the only hope for survival lies in flight. Once the tribe is safely relocated, or slaughtered/corrupted, it is time to return and take vengeance on the demon(s) who drove you from your home.
The players all are descended from a fairly large group of Travelers that got lost in the Ice Cap. You now are being forced to adventure out into the world do to the fear of your tribe dying off.
Or
They hail from a Isolated Island and have only recently discovered the outside world.
They only start with Bone, Stone, Obsidian, and such.
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I have always wanted to write out a campaign inspired by Seven Samurai, (although, it would more likely be an adventure, not a campaign). Players come across/are hired to protect a town from bandits. The players are hopelessly outnumbered and their only chance is to turn the scared peasants into a militia. Maybe to pad it out, the players have to hunt down some local monsters, attack the bandit den (like in the movie) or discover some ruin while building up the towns defenses.
Maybe allow the Players to obtain Firearms to equip to some of the more Experienced Villagers.
I actually am building the basics of a 10 Level Adventure Path Set based on Samurai 7/Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven.
It is surprising how easy they all can be translated into Pathfinder.
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If there's any campaign I'd like to see in the future, it'd be a tragedy: something that captures the grandeur, horror, wonder and devastation of war, all for the folly of the vain, proud gods.
The PCs are champions of an army, fighting against one of the greatest cities of the world to right some nebulous wrong set in motion by the squabbling of the gods, with the deities picking sides and favored soldiers, each trying to tip the odds of the war in their favor, heroes dueling over honor and petty bickering, the loss of friends and loved ones on the field. It would culminate in the PCs sacking the enemy city and burning it to the ground, causing so much grief and pain that it shatters any sense of glory or honor they may have once held. The war is won, the wrong righted, but in doing so one of the last great lights of civilization has been snuffed out forever, the flower of their nations' youth have been slain, and the PCs are left among the old and broken to weep bitterly and curse their fate, while the gods glare at each other, waiting for the next argument to spark another grand war. All that's left are misty tales and poems lost...
Basically...The Iliad. In Pathfinder.
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If there's any campaign I'd like to see in the future, it'd be a tragedy: something that captures the grandeur, horror, wonder and devastation of war, all for the folly of the vain, proud gods.
After my group's World War 2 with Superheroes game kind of fell apart (Mutants and Masterminds), I debated starting a Pathfinder version of WW2. Starts off as players belong to a kingdom that is not involved in a massive war affecting the other nations until suddenly, the one nation attacks the PC's town (Pearl Harbor). The PCs are then recruited to join a group that will sail across the sea and launch an attack on the nation (D-Day). After fighting some battles, the players come across a terrible secret, the invading nation has been turning captured enemies and citizens into undead and planned on using them to push back the PC's kingdom (the Holocaust), but the PC's defeat them before they can unleash the horrors. Finally, the PC's must defeat the enemy nation and claim it before one of their ally nations does so (Russia's invasion of Berlin).
I eventually decided against it, due to the fact that I didn't want to seem like I was trying to one up the GM who ran the WW2 game and because I didn't think I could run a game with that kind of setting without either trivializing (I was super hesitant about even sharing the Holocaust part here) or getting bogged down in some kind of wargame-y rules. (Mass combat is almost always disappointing in RPGs... although I have no clue if Pathfinder even has rules for it)
I have ran a Weird War I/II campaign.
I am planning a Battlefield Campaign PbP that draws from my experience with 2 Shadow of the Colossus Inspired Campaigns (1 as a Player & 1 as a GM).
I view SotC as the epitome of a Morally Challenging Story.
How about the PCs are traveling through Himalaya-like mountains. They come upon a Caravanserai that shelters people and animals on their treks.
A fellow traveller is murdered. What starts as a murder investigation turns darker as the Caravanserai is revealed to be the top of a dungeon complex inhabited by cultists and monsters that guards a major entrance to the Drow Underhighway.
The family that runs the Caravanserai is being held hostage to these evil forces.
PF campaign setting...Golarion? I don't know much about the actual setting unfortunately. See if this can fit into any of their stuff:
A century ago elves and dwarves warred over a section of northern mountains. The dwarves living in the pass and the elves inhabiting the boreal forests nearly destroyed one another. Humans living in the area of the foothills attempted to intervene but the factions would not end their hostilities. Amid all of this a group of frost giants and their white dragon siezed upon the chaos and nearly destroyed all three. In the end the humans were able to unite the dwarves and elves against a common enemy, ending the threat of the giants.
Now its snowing in midsummer. Humanoids whelm down out of the passes and the old animosity of the elves and the dwarves rises again. The campaign is about how the war never really ended; the giants were hurled back but their power wasnt their strenght or even their dragon, but rather a godlike artifact called the Frostblight Cube.
The dragon used magic to bind all the giants to the king and in turn to the cube. When the allies attempted to slay the giant's monarch and he wouldn't die he was instead imprisoned. They subdued the dragon by powerful spells and then hurled the king and the Frostblight Cube into a dream-realm created by the slumbering wyrm. There he has remained.
The power of the cube is reanimated dead giants scattered across the land. As well it's bringing unnatural weather and inciting war. All of this can be attributed to a human wizard who seeks to master the cube for himself and claim all of these lands as his own.
If you mean Storm Of The Century campaign, here's how it works:
Levels 1-2 party explores the area; megadungeon ensues. Party gets mcguffins that have seeming non-sequitor powers against cold/undead.
Levels 3-4 prep for the midsummer festival. Elves and dwarves refuse to attend and party asked for help to get ready for the event - encounter humanoids, gather mcguffins for town, whatever.
Level 5 - siege and storm begin. Party helps w/initial siege and then gets a special mission option and a choice that helps define what kind of campaign they want it to be: 1. stay and defend the town while a special unit goes into the wild for help (military campaign - prep w/tactical battles and slowly drive the main force of giants and humanoids back into the pass); 2. go get the elves (mystery campaign - the elves refuse to aid unless their kin trapped in a demiplane controlled by a witch are returned but in order to stop the witch altogether the party must solve a mystery); 3. go get the dwarves (megadungeon campaign - the dwarves ancient necropolis Neverdawn has been compromised and only after its been cleansed and an artifact is retrieved can they join the fight).
The storm can have obvious effects (avalanches, hypothermia) but also can trigger random will saves agains confusion, uncontrolable rage, etc. As the storm lingers and worsens the effects grow more severe (DCs rise). Also as the action progresses the party meets a number of NPCs (elven sorceress, dwarf oracle, human druid) as well as monsters (the witch in the demiplane, an ancient lich, an ancient ice elemental weird in the pass) who help them understand the history of the first war. Borrowing a page from some AP's, you might even have the party sent back in time to witness the first use of the cube or something.
Level 13-17 is the endgame. All campaign paths eventually lead to Icwylaud, the Slumbering Dragon, whose dream realm is the prison to both the cube and the giant king. The king won't die until the cube is blown up and that can't happen unless the cube is returned to the material plane. The action goes through the dream realm where the party is followed by the wizard BBEG. His sole mission in life is to get that cube; either in the dream or in the real. Even if he fails the cube must still be manifested to be destroyed and the final twist of the thing is - blowing the thing up merely awakens an ancient white dragon and makes all the giants (including the king) mortal again. As the storm begins to subside the ice giants mount a final desperate attempt to swarm down on the town and regions beyond and all that that entails.
Currently I'm running a campaign that doesn't really have a lengthy, awesome step-by-step adventure guide but rather one overriding principle. There were 3 fey sisters; all were beautiful and all had the right to ascend to the throne (claim control of a First World realm). They sought a concensus from their subjects who was the fairest of them all and none could decide, so they turned to the mortal realm.
2 of the sisters were wicked. Baba Yaga cared nothing for the realm and saw it only as a means to greater power. She attempted to intimidate the mortals with power and fear. Mabbe craved the throne for her personal vanity and so used guile and honeyd promises to garner the votes of the mortals. In the end the third sister, Titania, was deemed fairest and ascended the throne.
The new queen sought to protect the mortals from retribution and so sent many of her subjects into the real world to look after them. Then she turned to her sisters and though she could not kill them (family is family after all) she punished them just the same. Baba Yaga was banished from the First World forever, doomed to wander and never have a home. When this happened and the First World no longer kept her perpetually young she became withered and crooked; the First Hag. Mabbe who had surrounded herself with light and mirrors was locked in the ubliette of a tower in the heart of the Shadow, where none, not even her own eyes) would ever see her beauty again.
So the campaign is just this: the party has begun encountering the Enshrouded - creatures of the material plane who've heard Mabbe's whispers and promises from the Shadow plane and sold themselves to her for a modicum of immortality. As the game ramps up Mabbe will be trying to free herself and has several different minions pursuing different "keys" to her prison.
Yet ANOTHER campaign I'm going to be starting is for a pair of young kids but could be adapted if you want. Its fairly linear but again, you can make it run however you'd like.
The party begins in a town that has suffered a calamity called the Wilding. The forest was induced to magically grow for nearly a century at astonishing rates and it consumed the southern hinterlands and South Ward of the town. Only in the last 5 years has Inderwick (the town) been able to reclaim part of the ruins that were once their homes.
So anyway the party begins with a trip to a wizard's tower uncovered by woodsmen in the hinterlands; they have to venture there and confirm it's the tower the adventurer's guild thinks it is. During this they also learn some disturbing rumors in town. From there, the game takes the following pacing:
1. go to tower
2. return; investigate 1 rumor - this rumor has a pre-set tie to one other, so 2 are resolved.
3. all 4 of the rumors together ALL lead to a mini-boss: a human adept who is stealing the beauty of young girls in the town (turning them into Thawns) in exchange for the power to turn her former bullies into rats.
4. Adventurer's guild calls them back to a dungeon under the tower to find a sword
5. Sword needs to be taken to a city on the coast; epic journey begins
6. stop halfway at a neighboring town and hear rumors; investigate one while contact in town takes over guarding sword.
7. sword is stolen while party deals with rumors - used as ransom to get party to deal with town mayor who is secretly a werewolf and hurting townsfolk.
8. epic journey continues, ending when party arrives at coastal city
9. sword turned over to guild there - rumors are heard and party gets the chance to investigate a couple.
10. the heroes are asked to return to the guild that now holds the sword for a revelation - turns out the sword is a "key" that must be taken to a shrine up the coast in the heart of a haunted saltmarsh
11. Party heads to the shrine - adventure ensues.
12. sword used in its "key" function: an island asea rises and the party has to get out there to explore a crypt complex for a tome before the island sinks again.
13. returning with the tome they must epic journey back to the original town of Inderwick to use the book to end an impending return of the Wilding; epic journey ensues.
14. At the zero hour the party delvers the book and reveals the true enemy - an apocalyptic frogemoth (remember: game for kids) who is an avatar of profane energy and referred to as the Devourer. The party must locate this creature and Mortal Kombat it back to oblivion.
Part 1) Kingdom falls to fiendish invasion. PCs are tasked with getting the princess and royal scepter to safety, out of immediate reach of the fiends.
Part 2) PCs quest for knowledge, artifact, and allies with which to fight the fiends, while being hunted by fiendish agents.
Part 3) PCs lead effort to retake kingdom and banish fiends.
A SOTC campaign? Howja do it?
@Mark_Hoover: I think he was talking about mine.
If he was:
Colossi Had DR/Epic unless struck in their Weak Spot.
Used the Climb and Ride rules as the Basis for a Skill Stunt for getting to the Weak Spot.
We have since used the Skill Stunt for Dragon Slayer, Monster Hunter, & Living Dungeon Campaigns.
A ok.
SotC was the confusion sorry.
An idea I've mentioned before on the boards for an all-female party, one drawn from Rod Espinosa's Courageous Princess and to a lesser extent Patricia Wrede's Dealing With Dragons series.
The PCs are all princess' captured by a dragon. They escape and have to trek home while dodging the dragon's minions and unscrupulous would-be "rescuers".
An idea I've mentioned before on the boards for an all-female party, one drawn from Rod Espinosa's Courageous Princess and to a lesser extent Patricia Wrede's Dealing With Dragons series.
The PCs are all princess' captured by a dragon. They escape and have to trek home while dodging the dragon's minions and unscrupulous would-be "rescuers".
I actually am running a similar campaign for my friend and her group...
Nothing beats being the only guy in a group of 8 players all of whom are Nerdy Chicks.