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I just had an idea for a campaign in which the players are trapped in the forms of 1/60 miniatures, and can only move when no one normal-sized is looking. The goal of course is to break the curse.
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I would love to run a game set in a world that has a big anachronism split between the usual pseudo-medieval techs and modern-day or even futuristic techs. I take a core fantasy rules-set (like Pathfinder, ignoring Technology Guide and whatnot) and anything I don't have to create rules for can be as advanced as I want (a train, for example, doesn't need rules because it can be treated as a moving piece of scenery; TV similarly) and anything I would have to create rules for gets chucked in favor of the good old pseudo-Olden Times rules (cars and cellphones stay horses and yelling).
An interesting game would be "all of the humans died out long ago and now all the other races are exploring the world they left empty". Think of how much space humans occupy in most standard fantasy settings. Now imagine all that space has been depopulated for a long time. And since there aren't any humans anymore it has to be adventured in by elves and dwarves and all the other racial choices and how their stereotypes will color that. No lazing back on the bland choice!
I just finished a 22-page guide for a campaign I'm starting up next week. The 20,000 ft view (or 20,000 millennium view), is that an ancient race colonized the galaxy untold millions of years ago, but something happened and they all died out. One world was used for biological experiments and even though the ancient race is long gone, their machinery is still working, or at least some of it is.
Recently the machinery has reset the planets atmosphere to be more conducive to life again. Various species are coming out from underground safe-havens (the labs they were kept in) and populating the surface again.
The ancient race discovered ways of utilizing the fundamental forces of the universe and somehow converted them into physical form, a sort of loose Dust. This Dust is the essence of life, elemental energy, can manipulate gravity, pretty much whatever you can think of, as long as you know how to do it (it's not nanites, or anything else that I even want to really try to explain). All magic exists, but it's just different traditions and methods for using Dust. Dust is so pervasive and useful, it's even used as the fundamental currency.
Due to the time crunch (we decided last night I should run a campaign and had to be ready by this Thursday) I cribbed the setting from a PC strategy game. The cool part is it comes with a bunch of art and blurbs for lore that I can steal.
The only "standard" human race are nomadic merchants who build their cities on the backs of enormous beetles.
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He should.
If you can have jumbo shrimp, you can have a giant dwarf.A guy in our tabletop rpg group, literally has the stout, stocky figure of a dwarf, and is bearded like one (he is not the friend with a beautiful beard although his beard is also quite nice), but is like 5'10
He also loves dwarves and plays dwarves more often than any other race.
There are many dwarf fans all over the world who fit that description...
There are many dwarf fans all over the world who fit that description...He should.
If you can have jumbo shrimp, you can have a giant dwarf.A guy in our tabletop rpg group, literally has the stout, stocky figure of a dwarf, and is bearded like one (he is not the friend with a beautiful beard although his beard is also quite nice), but is like 5'10
He also loves dwarves and plays dwarves more often than any other race.
Not me apparently!
Maybe if I ate larger portions
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Not kind of weird or ridiculous, just a bit silly, in a way.
My campaign idea is a typical fantasy setting but with animals instead of humans, dwarves and elves. My intent is attract my younger sisters for the hobby.
I have had similar thoughts about an anthropomorphic campaign based on Darksword's miniature line. A frog kingdom, a mouse kingdom, you get the idea. It would be easy to tag the various critters to existing races/monsters and wholesale borrow parts of Modules and AP's to craft fairytale-like story lines. I haven't had any takers yet, though. It seems more likely to appeal to children than adults.
More seriously, I have long been planning and collecting material for an alternate earth ancient campaign that combines Greco-Roman, Persian, Egyptian, and various Middle eastern mythos (mythoses?) into an ongoing setting for ancient Heroes and their interactions with the gods of the various pantheons. I just don't think Pathfinder is the best system for this though.
Years ago (decades, really) I ran a campaign based on the Xanth series by Piers Anthony and made the mistake of running it off our ongoing DnD campaign. It was a disaster. My casters were very frustrated and the Martials became all-powerful. It neede a lot more tweaking to be viable.
Not kind of weird or ridiculous, just a bit silly, in a way.
My campaign idea is a typical fantasy setting but with animals instead of humans, dwarves and elves. My intent is attract my younger sisters for the hobby.
I have had similar thoughts about an anthropomorphic campaign based on Darksword's miniature line. A frog kingdom, a mouse kingdom, you get the idea. It would be easy to tag the various critters to existing races/monsters and wholesale borrow parts of Modules and AP's to craft fairytale-like story lines. I haven't had any takers yet, though. It seems more likely to appeal to children than adults.
More seriously, I have long been planning and collecting material for an alternate earth ancient campaign that combines Greco-Roman, Persian, Egyptian, and various Middle eastern mythos (mythoses?) into an ongoing setting for ancient Heroes and their interactions with the gods of the various pantheons. I just don't think Pathfinder is the best system for this though.
Years ago (decades, really) I ran a campaign based on the Xanth series by Piers Anthony and made the mistake of running it off our ongoing DnD campaign. It was a disaster. My casters were very frustrated and the Martials became all-powerful. It neede a lot more tweaking to be viable.
Try Runequest/Legend (at least one edition should be freely available as SRD under OGL) or GURPS Lite (freely available to download from GURPS webpage/webshop).
It reminds me of one of the past ages in Runes Of Magic MMORPG: one of the previous human civilizations mastered magic and the most powerful of them became what is now known as "demons". Another human civilization died out leaving their magical automatons roaming around.
The current humans IIRC are actually coming from another continent where some of the survivors of the past few ages might have fleed (but I am not sure about that one, the current humans might be separate branch that has little connection to the past fallen civilizations).
I just say "no two people can play the same class or race".
Usually goes over okay, and I only end up with one human.
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More of a one-shot than a campaig, but this is what I had planed for last halloween (life happened and it couldn't be, but it's still in store):
Secretly, tell all of my players they will be playing a shapechanger for this sesion. They have kidnapped their own character, taken on their likeness and infiltrated themselves into the group. They had to try to not be caught, and kill all others.
Trick was, they were all shapechangers...
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I have more than a few unorthodox campaign ideas:
X-Crawl Road Trip: The PCs are an internationally famous crew of gladiators in the Roman Empire's most popular reality television contest. Their next destination is a dungeon-crawl in Lawrence, Kansas, and they travel in a luxury entourage of limousines and summoned mounts. Unfortunately their magically-powered transportation runs out of gas smack-dab on a highway somewhere in Middle America. Celebrity status can only get them so far, and they need to get to Lawrence within 72 hours or else their position is forfeit! Do they go monster-hunting to raise gas money, hitch-hike with a bus full of demon-worshiping metalheads, or steal their rival crawlers' truck golem when they stop at the local bar and grill?
Yes, I'm partially inspired by Final Fantasy XV for this.
Sword of Levity: A campaign utilizing the Sword of Air sandbox adventure by Frog God Games, only this plays up some of the more whimsical and sillier elements.
Red Dragon Inn: I actually played 2 sessions of this before, but I'd like to run it again someday. Basically I utilize the rules from Red Dragon Inn: Guide to Inns & Taverns. The PCs inherit an inn which has a statue dedicating to a goddess of hearth and home in the basement. Satisfied customers generate energy of positive feeling, which the statue can then convert into magical items and other things PCs enjoy. Meanwhile the surrounding lands contain room for adventure, such as a fabled magical icebox which can preserve perishable food for weeks. There are also potentially interesting encounters, such as a 1st-level destined hero who stops at the inn...while the demon lord's agents tasked with her destruction are also staying there!
Slay la Slay: A Tome of Battle/Path of War-centric game where the PCs are students at a fabled Battle Academy, disciples of a monk's monastery, or some other environment heavily inspired by shounen/seinen fighting anime. And yes, it's expected that people will shout out the names of their maneuvers in combat.
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Slay la Slay: A Tome of Battle/Path of War-centric game where the PCs are students at a fabled Battle Academy, disciples of a monk's monastery, or some other environment heavily inspired by shounen/seinen fighting anime. And yes, it's expected that people will shout out...
Do the pc's don extremely skimpy power armor?
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Do the pc's don extremely skimpy power armor?
Only if they want to. :P
I do plan on having a storm giant NPC with a size-category-changing ring in charge of student discipline if I ever get around to it.
The Stars Go Out-As the last humans are being wiped out, the sky disappears and a weird mirrored surface starts to come downward. Contact Other Plane was used and it turns out people are the whole point of the universe. A team of monsters is assembled to find another world to escape to. PCs are monsters that can increase in level(vampires, werewolves, Goblins, ect) who journey to Glorion and other game worlds to kidnap people and place monsters.
Inspiration comes from Gilgamesh, After Humans, Resident Evil, ect.
While I was not a fan of the Magic the Gathering card game, the world was super-evocative, and I wouldn't mind playing a Pathfinder rules game set in that world, with an assortment of thematically appropriate green, red, black, white and blue spellcasters.
Once ran a 3.5 game in the world of Ravnica.
People loved it.On that note, I homebrewed a system based on Apocalypse World for MtG games where the characters are planeswalkers.
Still need to try it out...
*snip*
:P
Took me a minute there, but once I saw it...
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the world was super-evocative, and I wouldn't mind playing a Pathfinder rules game set in that world, with an assortment of thematically appropriate green, red, black, white and blue spellcasters.
Ever seen The Flight of Dragons?
Wizards of Green, Blue and Gold (white) do battle against their "brother wizard" who is Red and Black.
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I want to run a convention game where everyone is a member of an all male tribe of Blues who have a titan wizard terrorizing them with his displacer beast familiar. He believes that Blues carry the long lost secret of an ancient magic that upon discovery will win him the adulation of the mages who scorned him. Each tribe member is marked by his white phyrigian hat, save for one, who is the tribe leader who wears a red coloured hat.
Possibly followed by reincarnation as catfolk who are all synthesists who, upon combination of their eidolon powers create a super eidolon who eventually fight the king iof the blues, a half titan, half blue prince who is seeking the hand of a human princess who may or may not control the pink eidolon of the combination. Upon such combinatioon they will create an artifact sword and they will live upon an island that is an intelligent artifact that can fly.
:P
As long as the Blues racial weapons are hammer and sickle. :P
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I'm still trying to find a group just to play an evil kingmaker style game. We started once, awesome fun. A Spriggan rogue, drider priestess, human ghost and a cursed human (actually a sword as we found later when he died and a brand new body appeared with all his prior knowledge, the only common factor he had the same sword, three times later and it clicked).
Aside from that I'm also trying to coax a group into a smaller kingmaker style game. No magic items except what they can make (using unchained crafting at a more difficult level), home base building (cross between downtime and kingdom building), above and below ground exploration and Kingdom, duergar with high tech clockwork technology, an intelligent ghoul Kingdom, both working to prevent the Kingdom from expanding into the mountains wher both empires once flourished and now another empire emerges....
Post acocalyptic cross of fallout and mutant epoch. World layer waste, mutants and technology, he'll yeah.
Two groups working in the same kingmaker scenario from opposite ends. One group directly opposing the second leading to the inevitable clash of titans...
ALL OF THIS
Y-E-S!
I would so join up on any of those.If, ya know... I could... :(
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I'm still trying to find a group just to play an evil kingmaker style game.
After the Faction Guide came out, I wanted a Kingmaker style game in which the PCs were members of factions, such as the Kalistocracy, or the Whispering Way, or Varisian Wanderers, eager to form a nation-state in which they could thrive and prosper.
X-Crawl. Sigh.
Not sure if we all want to see it but it has been a long standing wish of mine to see an RPG based around a Death/Combat Sport like Blood Bowl where players would be members of a professional team. TV shows like SupaStrikers and comic strips like Mean Arena and Mean Team (both from 2000AD) would provide plenty of inspiration for adventures based around a sporting team.
If I am bored enough I may even write the thing myself one day.
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You know how when you cast a Summon Monster spell, it pulls in a random creature from another plane? What's to stop a wizard on another plane from casting Summon Monster V and conjuring 1d3+1 random adventurers? You return home when you die, yeah, but extraplanar wizards cast Summon Monster fairly often... cue shenanigans.
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You know how when you cast a Summon Monster spell, it pulls in a random creature from another plane? What's to stop a wizard on another plane from casting Summon Monster V and conjuring 1d3+1 random adventurers? You return home when you die, yeah, but extraplanar wizards cast Summon Monster fairly often... cue shenanigans.
Not only was that a noted planar hazard in the AD&D 2nd Ed Planescape campaign, there was even an adventure based around the idea. :)
I wish I had the creative capacity to world build and story write. I'd be all over stealing the purgatory idea and the splintered mirror.
I want to do a Wizard of Oz/Alice in Wonderland mash-up. Starting the players off in a real world and unexpectedly drop them in a dream world without knowing
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Disgaea style campaign to level up and become Overlords.
I actually was once in one game like that, it was a modified 3.5e run.
And I have to say it was easily the most fun time I've ever had playing a TTRPG.
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You know how when you cast a Summon Monster spell, it pulls in a random creature from another plane? What's to stop a wizard on another plane from casting Summon Monster V and conjuring 1d3+1 random adventurers? You return home when you die, yeah, but extraplanar wizards cast Summon Monster fairly often... cue shenanigans.Not only was that a noted planar hazard in the AD&D 2nd Ed Planescape campaign, there was even an adventure based around the idea. :)
Have you ever read Prince Caspian?
I've read the entire Chronicles of Narnia series, which, now you mention it, I notice that it has has the same cross-over theme, yes. :)
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Ah, what the heck. I'll throw a few more onto the list.
How bout a... is it called round robin? A game where everyone takes turns DM-ing. the framing narrative is that a bunch of non-magical rich folk (played by the PC's) are travelling from one place to another, and along the way their guide insists they each tell stories, and the best storyteller will buy everyone else a round of drinks at his bar. In other words, the Canterbury Tales.
Another one which I have no real idea how I'm going to do: one, some, or all of the characters are lesser gods that must gain power through the adoration of followers. They perhaps start out with one small city, and the more followers they have the higher level they are. Perhaps even in the case of disaster they could go down levels if their followers die or decide to find a better god.
And lastly, something like shadow of the colossus, but instead of killing the colossi you build cities on their backs... Because that seems like a reasonable thing to do. That one's also partially inspired by "mortal engines" by Phillip Reeve.
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How bout a... is it called round robin? A game where everyone takes turns DM-ing. the framing narrative is that a bunch of non-magical rich folk (played by the PC's) are travelling from one place to another, and along the way their guide insists they each tell stories, and the best storyteller will buy everyone else a round of drinks at his bar. In other words, the Canterbury Tales.
Sounds pretty soote
I'd play that
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How bout a... is it called round robin? A game where everyone takes turns DM-ing. the framing narrative is that a bunch of non-magical rich folk (played by the PC's) are travelling from one place to another, and along the way their guide insists they each tell stories, and the best storyteller will buy everyone else a round of drinks at his bar. In other words, the Canterbury Tales.Sounds pretty soote
I'd play that
Ugh... I know the first few lines by memory and I still had to google search "Definition Soote."
I am far too sleepy for poetry.
Another one which I have no real idea how I'm going to do: one, some, or all of the characters are lesser gods that must gain power through the adoration of followers. They perhaps start out with one small city, and the more followers they have the higher level they are. Perhaps even in the case of disaster they could go down levels if their followers die or decide to find a better god.
Through simple player desire, that is basically exactly what my 5e group is doing right now :)
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Chariots of the gods. The characters find or build a space craft like a spell jammer. The first planet they find has humanoids, or even humans, stuck in a hunter gatherer lifestyle. The characters have to teach them to build walls and develop a society so they can defeat and kill off the predators that have been preying off them.
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What started me writing my own stuff was making a rules-light game based on Eternal Darkness.
I couldn't quite get it all done right back then.
I have one I'm working on right now that has many inspirations, and will be introduced to people in stages. Stage one has a lot to do with Monster Hunter.
But I always had one in mind that was an over-the-top crossover with Street Fighter and F-Zero. High octane racing action and overly competitive personalities breaking each others machines and resorting to fisticuffs frequently.
My friends and I homebrewed a system for a Shaman King game, it ended when my friend got pissed off when for all intents and purposes I made his character Daredevil. He didn't like that I blinded him.
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I've wanted to run a "campaign" wherein there is a party of orcs/goblins/half-orcs from Belkzen and a party of core races from Lastwall, each playing through skirmishes/battles/missions that are designed to have an impact on the ongoing conflict across the border.
Separate players, separate game nights...right up until they finally collide.
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One I'm going to be doing for my fiance that I never knew I always wanted to do until now.
Starts out as a typical Monster Hunter campaign, with monster job boards and such to capture monsters and strange creatures for rich people's menageries or city zoos and so on, right? After the first few levels, her PC will wind up "finding", in the latest monster's loot, a Throne card from the Deck of Many Things, which just so conveniently spawns the castle right where a mystical spring basically turns monsters into more humanoid-esque shapes, immediately bumps int and wis to at least 10s, and forcibly rewrites their alignment to neutral.
Basically, the spring (which becomes a fountain in her castle courtyard), coupled with the castle, turns the whole thing from "Monster Hunter/Wrangler" to "Ruler of a Monster Kingdom". Plus, she gets her harem of sexy monster guys, lol.
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How bout a... is it called round robin? A game where everyone takes turns DM-ing. the framing narrative is that a bunch of non-magical rich folk (played by the PC's) are travelling from one place to another, and along the way their guide insists they each tell stories, and the best storyteller will buy everyone else a round of drinks at his bar. In other words, the Canterbury Tales.Sounds pretty soote
I'd play that