# Campaigns in a nutshell.  Adventures in a sentence.



## RangerWickett

Let us gather a mighty hoard of adventure and campaign ideas, compressed to what was most important about them.

From me:

*Tides of Homeland:*  Four heroes with no place to call home come together to stop a mind flayer's attempt to save his people by destroying all other races.  The mind flayer seeks an ancient magic to drive all the world mad with rage, and after his first defeat he secrets himself into the mind of one of the heroes, Harley, a lost and emotionally vulnerable woman whom he uses to further his plots.  Only the friendship formed within the group can free her soul and save the world.

*The Fall:*  The son of a demon summoner discovers that his mother's dying bargain was to trade his soul for the death of a paladin order that had wronged her.  The problem is, the demon never fulfilled its bargain, and the son finds himself in the middle of an infernal game.  Temptations abound -- power, fame, and vengeance -- but even the corrupted can still fight a greater evil.

*Winds of Change:*  A group of adventurers hire on as bodyguards for Vidania, an air mage apprentice on a pilgrimage to find places of great aeromantic power.  In their journeys they discover an ancient air mage who was thwarted many times in the past is attempting to dissolve the world into the elemental plane of air.  Will the winds blow in the party's favor, or has this villain's luck changed?

*Scourge of the Burning Sky:*  As a world-spanning empire falls, generals and archmages scramble for power, threatening to destroy the world amid their warfare.  Refugees from the empire assemble in a resistance and one by one take down these new emperors, walking the line between saving the world, and becoming its next tyrants.  All the 'ancient artifacts' that might exist in a fantasy setting are created and used in this war, but the most powerful force is held by a would-be ally, hidden in ever-reflecting secrets.

*The Graveyard of Steel:*  Three creators of a steamtech doomsday device flee to keep their masterpiece from destroying the world.  Heroes could have discovered the true conspiracy and saved the world, but the best hope for salvation is a group of criminals, murderers, and madmen.  The world (not to mention the GM's sanity) is doomed.


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## demiurge1138

Original campaigns/adventures, right? Then...

*Return to Kastle Kojark*: The party, finding themselves in possession of an ancient evil book, attempt to return it to Kojark, its mighty kobold owner. Kojark won't let them in without a fight, and the adventurers must navigate his chamber-of-horrors castle, er, kastle in order to get him off of their backs.

*Fulfillers of the Prophecy*: In accordance with an ancient Crab clan prophecy, a band of strangers will arrive from the sky, led by two elves, one light, one dark to stop the monstrous Fu Leng from rising from the Festering Pit. When these elves show up, the party finds themselves roped into Destiny's plan for stopping a cult, a ghost, and even the Dread Kappa Roberts.

*Death! Doom! Despair!*: Epic meets eldritch in the Forgotten Realms, as a sinister psychologist, an illithid assassin and an oozemaster of Nyarlathotep try to bring Cthulhu into the Waterdhavian harbor. Chaos ensues, as does a not-so-quick detour in infernal politics as a darkening influence in the party tries to play both sides of the Blood War for chumps.

*Kobolds Got My Campaign!*: A globetrotting expidition of kobold elite try to either destroy the entire trog race, or save it. They're not quite sure themselves, but a kobold spy, the Seven-Eyed Sorcerer, a dragon and the Order of the Black Flame all have something to say about it. A reptilian campaign.

*The City Of Life/ The Sea of Death*: The party is hired by both the legitimate ruler of a city and his underworld counterpart to help cure a plague, then dispatch of the vengeful necromancer who is responsible for it. Unfortunately, the "plague" was just an excuse for the necromancer to collect his victim's organs and make them into his greatest achievement yet...

*It Came From the Deep!*: An ancient robe is stolen from a magical museum by a posse of kuo-toa led monsters, and the party has to race to prevent the kuo-toa from literally turning the plane inside out, depositing it into the Dreamlands.

Demiurge out.


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## RangerWickett

I was fond of this thread, and I'd like to bump it to see if anyone has anything to add/brag about.


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## Mystery Man

I'm doing my very first original campaign/adventure just now actually.

*Untitled*_* (its more avant garde that way):*_ The party finds themselve in between a rock and a hard place when their neighbor the duke Sulzier seemingly has gone mad, his village is destroyed and there is patch of ground in the town square that smells, bubbles and steams, and looks like decaying death, spits out _crimson deaths_ and seems to be expanding. 

That's all I have. Until recently I really only used modules modified for my campaign.


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## Dannyalcatraz

Here's a few that aren't straight fantasy:

*Invaders from space!:* Beholders (though any Aberration will do, I felt Beholders were ideal for this role) invade from outer space- think War of the Worlds.  The initial invasion is swift and nigh unstoppable.  Can be played during the invasion or any number of years later. I designed this for Urban Arcana, CoC D20, D&D with a Spelljammer feel or Mutants & Masterminds.  If used for UA or M&M, setting works best from 1900 on, especially in a post-war period of peace (mainly because you'll be able to find LOTS of campaign info)- 1920's, 1950s and 1990's are nearly ideal.

*Superheroes 1900:* Run a traditional (low to mid-level) supers campaign in the 1900's as envisioned by H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and the writers of Space: 1899.  Players will get off on the setting.  The American West is still somewhat wild, as are South America and Africa, not to mention the Moon, Venus, and Mars.  I first ran this in HERO, and I'm currently reworking this for UA and M&M.

*Reconciliation of OtherWorld:* PCs in an utterly mundane universe are connected to a College Abroad at Sea (as students, faculty, or crew).  Over time, odd things start to happen as the Supernatural world slowly reveals itself to the PCs.  A plot is revealed- rejoining the Fallen Plane of Earth to the Greater Universe.  PCs and other forces are trying to recover great artifacts, like Excalibur, the Holy Grail, and the Spear of Destiny, which are instrumental to the Ceremony of Reconciliation.  Each artifact is disguised as a "mundane" item (the Grail, for instance, is disguised as the Stanley Cup).  Based on parts of the Bible, Clive Barker's _Imajica_ and Neil Gaiman's _Neverwhere_ and _American Gods_, written for UA and M&M


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## Dannyalcatraz

Another 2:

*Mercenaries*:  The world is at war- epic scale worldwide war.  The PCs play the roles of members of a mercenary army or people in the region in which the army is stationed.  Unfortunately for them, they were hired by the BBEG of the campaign.  Thus, regardless of alignment, their duties require them to fight some actual good guys.  Instead of being adventurers, the adventurers will be coming to them...

I suspect that the players will really enjoy the changeup until they start drawing progressively more distasteful duties.  Hopefully, they'll rebel and take down the BBEG.

Due to the structure of the campaign, no player will be able to run a LG PC of any kind-initially.   However, if/when they rebel, that stricture will be lifted.

*Cross-Plane Crusaders* PCs go to a kingdom to join in the celebration of a marriage that will end a 100 year long war.  On their way back, they are attacked by a ship that emerges from a planar rift.  After a long battle with the felinoid pirates, the ship's crew, passengers and the PCs are overwhelmed, shackled and brought belowdeck, and the ship re-enters the planar rift.  The PCs don't see the sky again until they are put ashore (naked  unarmed) on an island after being told they are to be the subject of the Emperor's next hunt...and that the senior huntsman expects them to put up a better challenge than the 2 cabinboys roasting on the spit.

The plane the PCs now find themselve in is an alternative PMP, in which the sentients are all animal-men of some kind, revealed later to be genetically engineered sentients from a fallen magi-technological race some 1000 or more years ago who wiped themselves out.

Currently, the plane is in turmoil because the felioids and ape-men have allied themselves with Demons to take over the plane.  The Dark, actual sentient darkness who embody nightmare, seek to take over the plane and devour everything (not that they've revealed THAT to their allies).  The Dark are harmed by light in all forms (lightning, fire, etc.), and as such, drain Wis to decrease the chance of that being used against them.

The PCs must win free of the island, discover the truth about the Dark, make allies, and eventually defeat the Dark.  After THAT, they must try to find their way home, a task similar to what was depicted in such T.V. shows as _Lost in Space_ or _Sliders._


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## BiggusGeekus

*Defeat the Dawn of the World* - The god Azalak has discovered what went wrong during Creation to cause all the evil in the world, he seeks to correct the error and create a utopia, but that would destroy all who currently live.  The party must stop Azalak (combat solution) or convince him that his is misguided (roleplay solution).  They will fight and ally with Celestials and Fiends alike, all have various motives surrounding the birth of a new and perfect world.


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## JimAde

*Heirs of Empire* - An unlikely group of young nobles seeks to restore one of their number (who is Chosen of the god of Death) to his usurped fiefdom, while opposing the usurper's insidious necromantic cult whose tentacles reach into all levels of power.


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## Beale Knight

*Next Age Heroes* 

Stage one: The characters discover what's beyond their very limited known world.
Stage two: The characters discover what who's really in charge of the world.
Stage two point 5: The characters start thinking about what, if anything, to do about that.
Stage three: The characters discover how the world got this way. 
Stage four: The characters, by now some of the most powerful heroes in the world, decide what to do about the world situation and act on their decision. The world now reacts to them.

We've now just gotten going good on stage two and I the DM am getting anxious to see how the players in my group react and what they plan.


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## Chaldfont

Cool thread! Here's a few I've had in mind for years but never done anything with.

*Saving Grace*
An old hero in the battle of God vs. Evil will be honored for his deeds by being sainted. The greatest heroes of the current generation are to be his honor guard as he travels from the remote mountain-top monastery where the ancient priest has meditated for decades. But how will they deal with a cleric of almost limitless power who suffers from the dementia of old age? And will his ancient nemesis, whose lich-ritual he foiled, take this opportunity for revenge?

*Fools' Gold*
The Old Man has died. His three lieutenants compete for mastery of the greatest criminal organization The City has ever known. But gang war has taken it's toll on the Great Guild. The three agree that the faction who can bring the most loot to a neutral location in 30 days will become the new master. PCs play members of the guild, trying to heist as much gold as they can while watching out for spies and hindering the other two factions.

*Nowhere to Go but Down*
The most powerful heroes of the age are cursed by their evil archenemy. They must defeat him and break the curse before their powers, skills and memories are lost to the insidious curse. In this one, players make high-level PCs. As the campaign progresses, they steadily lose levels until they can defeat their enemy and undo the curse.

*Siege, my Liege!*
The PCs are mercenaries employed by the greatest War Wizard in the land who travels the world, selling his services to the highest bidder. Need a castle destroyed? No problem.

*What if You Could...*
This one's for D20 Modern for a group of PCs who are just normal people. A group of friends discover a time machine that can travel to any place or time in the past. The device grants them the ability to speak and understand any language and can produce period clothing as if by magic. What do they do with it?


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## Evilhalfling

The players start out as apprentices or indentured servants to the court magi of a backwater province.  He sends them on errands to gather items belonging to a vanished archmage.  Each item is dangerous to the wielders sanity.  Other mysterious wizards compeate for some of the items.  Assuming the PCs are sucessfull their mentor slips further from sanity.  Eventually the old ruler is killed by a creature of chaos, and the Magi takes over. The mysterious wizards are revealed to be invaders from the far realm, the apprentices of the vanished archmage (now an Epic Psudonatural) and the court magi who was orginally against them is eventually converted. (or talked out of his quests for more of the items) 

Party enters a town cut off from magic, looking for an item that is dangerous to sanity. 
In many taverns they hear stories of the town fool.  He is the only one who knows where it is but only the local girl with a crush on a PC can get it for them. 

Army Grunts serve at a outpost that guards the realms of men from humanoids, slowly find out that true evil comes from men, either thier superiors or the people that they are trying to protect.


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## orbitalfreak

*An Undead Extravaganza*:
In the empire of Thay in the eastern Forgotten Realms, a powerful Lawful Neutral necromancer (possibly a lich) has risen to power via a pact with Devilish forces.  His plan is to utilize all the dead in the world to aid the living in the form of slave labor, freeing up the populace for more skilled, less mundane tasks.  The Demons are enraged at the Devils' plot (who secretly plan to kill the necromancer and use the undead hordes to Destroy The World (TM)), and cause chaos.  As the plan progresses over several decades in the East, there is economic upheval due to the rising power of the peasantry.  At lower levels, the party faces evil forces engaged in body-trafficking and magical experiments, higher levels involved continental-scale travels against evil religions, and finally culminates in a battle between the forces of Good, the undead army (now under control of the forces of Hell), with the Chaotic Demons trying their damndest to destroy their Infernal bretheren whilst inflicting pain and dischord upon the surface of the world.


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## Teflon Billy

*The Last City*: The Gods die in a celestial war of Good vs Evil. Priests--losing their hold as masters of civilization--get panicky and ally with Wizards to attempt a massive, multi-thousand spellcaster ritual attempting to "Raise" the Dead gods. The magical principles invovled are poorly understood and the ritual unleashes what will become known as "The Arcanoclysm". The world is, for all intents and purposes, annihilated. Nations vanish, continents warp, previously unheard of monsters appear by the thousands, previously mundane people are infused with magical power...and Cros-Mogmun, sprawling, unimaginably immense capital city of the Grune Empire, lies shattered, warped, bloodied _and_ bowed.

The PC's are the second generation after The Arcanoclysm and live in "The Gut", a vile and corrupt neighbourhood at the mouth of "The River of Filth".

Most uneducated  inhabitants of Cros Mogmun believe that the entirety of existence is comprised of ruined City...they may be correct.

*Dwarves* now live beneath the city, and have devolved to a more feral existence. Their Favored class is Barbarian, and their Combat Bonuses vs Giants is replaced by an equal one vs Vermin.

*Elves* have diminished as well, their ancient Kingdoms destroyed. Elves in my campaign are stock D&D Gnomes, except that their heights are calculated as for humans.

Due to the effects of the Arcanoclysm, every character may take levels in *Sorceror* as if it were a favored class.


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## demiurge1138

Some more that I'm running/have run/played in. Most are Eberron-y.:

*Sharn - Freelance Police:* The party is the Freelance Police, a crimefighting organization run by the Sharn Watch to deal with the crimes that are too dangerous or esoteric for the normal Watch to deal with. Although most of their cases are unconnected, the Freelance Police have become embroiled with the schemes of the Artisan, an extraplanar being who wants to recreate the Last War for the aesthetic challenge.

*In the Halls of the Goblin King:* Sent by House Orien as liasons to the Darguuni throne, the PCs find themselves tasked with labors from the Llesh Haruuc, who views them as a powerful ally in his own struggles against the warring factions of his fractious empire.

*Morgrave U:* The characters are students at the hallowed halls of Sharn's Morgrave University. This entails a lot more than most colleges do, however - research papers often take them through the depths of Sharn's ruins, and field trips are much more exciting...

*Planespotting:* A bunch of cutters team up, somewhat against their will, in the hopes of making a ridiculous amount of money. Along the way, they find themselves tasked with destroying a lost artifact that would make either side of the Blood War very happy indeed, and make enemies of just about everyone they cross paths with. No wonder the turnover rate of partners is so high.

Demiurge out.


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## JediSoth

*The Shadow Rising* - Forgotten Realms campaign in which a gnome necromancer moves into a derelict castle in Daggerdale. He sets about uncovering the three obelisks that when activated will open a portal to the Plane of Shadow and begin the process of changing Daggerdale into a shadow realm.

A math error on my part made the climatic battle a near-TPK when the necromancer snapped his _Staff of the Magi_. D'oh.

*Child of Darkness* - A half-demon man returns to Veluna to have his revenge upon the leaders of that country for their actions in banishing the demons from the world after the Greyhawk Wars. Being a child of prophecy, he can only be killed if first touched by the elemental weapons of power. 

Notable because the PCs attacked the bad guy's army and then ran away, setting into motion a chain of events that caused Veluna to be totally razed to the ground. The first time I've ever seen anyone "lose" a game a D&D.

JediSoth


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## mythusmage

*A Distant Mirror*: Wars, plagues, and intrigues. Orcs are swarming out of the north, the Huns are preparing to sail from America to invade Europe, and a plague ship sails towards Italy with a doomed crew. Alternate history with dweomercræfting.


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## Luthien Greyspear

Okay, here's one I am currently running:

*The Road Untaken*:  The characters come together by seeming coincidence, but discover that they all have some unexplained connection to each other.  It is revealed through traumatic flashbacks that they have all been cursed with a magical amnesia by an unknown villain, and they must find out who they were, and in doing so return to oppose and defeat a powerful madman.  The catch is that the villain gave them their heart's desires as their new lives: the fighter that always envied the spellcasters is now a wizard, the secretly devout rogue is now a respected priest.  Will the party want to go back to their own lives, knowing that they may lose the good lives they have now?


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## Dannyalcatraz

Hey Mythus...are you using Northern Crown from Atlas Games?  It might help you out on that one.

(Also, if you like Alt History and need some more campaign fodder, consider reading Marvel Comics' _1602_, or _The Years of Rice and Salt_ by Kim Stanley Robinson, CJ Cherryh's *Sword of Knowledge* trilogy as well as innumberable AH books by Harry Turtledove and S.M. Stirling.)


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## kroh

*Dead Wreckening* (min adventure or weird campaign):
We all have them.  That one character you really liked that either go squished, eaten, stabbed, blown up , shot or stabbed.   But for some reason you didn't throw the character sheet away.  

The characters are dead.  They are all raised as revenant spirits to deal with the enemies of the kingdom.  How long will they be under the control of he that raised them and where would they go if they rebeled?

*Fahgitahboutit* (adventure):  The Pc's are enforceers in the Orcish Mob and are hired for what starts out to be a simple job and turns into something more...

*War of Nine Rings* (campaign):
There are nine moons orbiting a gas giant style planet.  All have life and different cultures ( fantasy with each moon acting as the home world of certain races and beasts).   There are mystical gates {world bridges} thatlink the moons to each other and each one has a particular feel to it.  The campaign centers around the adventures on the different moons and the politics of such a situation.


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## Tinner

*Death of Divinity* _(Epic D&D Campaign)_
The player characters accidentally stumle upon an artifact that they accidentally use to fundamentally alter one of their patron dieties. This creates an imbalance in the heavens, and sets in motion Tiamat's plan to devour all the other gods and destroy the universe. The players are chosen by their patron dieties to serve as their agents in the war against Tiamat. God's die and the world slowly falls apart until the characters must ally with Bahamut in a final desperate gamble to invade Tiamat's realm and undo the damage she has caused. Campaign ends with either Tiamt's victory and the end of all things, or the PC's victory, and their becoming the new gods.


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## kroh

> the PC's victory, and their becoming the new gods




...err...That's Hot!  Sign me up.

Regards,
Walt


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## Kemrain

*New Raul*
Magic is failing because of a disjunction caused by the late sorceress Crystal Rose, the dethroned self styled White Queen. The wizards of the world are searching for items of power from which to free enough magic to stablize the plane's waning finite supply. A large source of magic is detected in the southern desert, and the Wizard's School of Grensha is sending new prospective professors to find the source and release it's magic. The source, however, turns out to be a subterranian civilization of humans, living in caverns and underground cities so infused with magic that it's seeped into their very beings. These people, wielding wild magical talents and following a strange religion know nothing of the hardships above, and live in peace with eachother on the bounty provided for them by their god, Janeth. But not all is as it seems, for some recall a Wizard by that name who had been searcing for the secret of immortality who was killed by demons some eighty years ago, when their god left them saying he would return. To this day they await him, and some believe these newcomers to be gods from Janeth's world. But are they good gods, or bad gods?

- Kemrain the Naughty God.


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## Simplicity

*Pick Up the Phone Booth and Die* (d20 Modern Campaign): 
The players start in a room with no exits.  In the middle of the room is a large phone booth.  If the players pick it up, they die.


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## Dannyalcatraz

I'm thinking that *Phone* belongs in a Paranoia or Cthulhu "campaign!"


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## mythusmage

Dannyalcatraz said:
			
		

> Hey Mythus...are you using Northern Crown from Atlas Games?  It might help you out on that one.
> 
> (Also, if you like Alt History and need some more campaign fodder, consider reading Marvel Comics' _1602_, or _The Years of Rice and Salt_ by Kim Stanley Robinson, CJ Cherryh's *Sword of Knowledge* trilogy as well as innumberable AH books by Harry Turtledove and S.M. Stirling.)




No money for either I'm afraid. I can recommend *The Years of Rice and Salt* as well as Turtledove and Stirling.

In any case, *A Distant Mirror* is set some time before _1602_ and starts from a far different PoD. And I'm in a position where I really don't want the work of others sneaking into mine, even inadvertly, since it could lead to accusations of plagiarism. I don't want that.


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## barsoomcore

Simplicity is funny.


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## Medwyn

*Truth of Half-Men:* The PC's whom have been making a name for themselves in the Matriarchal Jungle Kingdom of Dridi find themselves caught up with disappearing villages and strange creatures from another plane. Everything seems to point towards the Legendary Half-Men who visited well before the Great Darkness. No one seems to know who they are or even if they are really good or utter evil, but whispers coming in from the Clan Lands say that the Half-Men are returning.


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## Olgar Shiverstone

OK, here's my current campaign:

*Mistledale*.  Heroes defend their homeland from enemies within and without, as the machinations of evils new and old presage the return of a dead god.

Some campaign ideas I'd consider for the future:

*CSI: Waterdeep*.  As special investigators for the Waterdeep Watch, a group of eclectic heroes investigates crimes from the mundane to the supernatural.

*We Were Soldiers*.  A group of former mercenaries heads to the frontier to make peace, new lifes, and new homes for themselves.  But it seems they cannot leave behind their warlike ways ... or perhaps their past is hunting them down.

An adventure idea that still haunts me:

*A Soldier of the Last War*.  Locals and travellers have begun disappearing near a wood haunted by a battle-scarred veteran of the Last War who shuns all contact.


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## Herobizkit

*Bouncing Here and There and Everywhere*:  A race of small humanoids (goblins, kobolds, halflings, what have you) discover a non-magical recipe for a _potion of jumping_.  Elated, they begin to mass produce the elixir for use in raiding human settlements.  However, it is accidentally discovered that, when consumed by larger races (such as humans), the potion acts as a _potion of strength_.  Now the wee race must protect the recipe from the conniving humans, who want to steal the recipe for themselves, while simultaneously using it in excess to performs all sorts of larceny.  Hilarity ensues.

Yeah, I stole it.

So what?

No one under the age of, oh, 20 should have any idea what I'm talking about.    Happy anniversary, that cartoon I copied!


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## Herobizkit

Olgar Shiverstone said:
			
		

> *CSI: Waterdeep*.  As special investigators for the Waterdeep Watch, a group of eclectic heroes investigates crimes from the mundane to the supernatural.




Funny you should say that.  One of my higher level characters has created a new city-state that was recently flooded with refugees from a massive war.  Thing is, they're refugees from one of the more populous countries, and they believe they have the rights to the land and the rule of the city.  The city itself was designed for a couple of thousand people -- its population has swelled to 39,000!

My next character is going to be the child of said character.  I have plans to make him a Monk/something gestalt and prestige into the Watch Detective class from the Masters of the Wild splatbook.  I will get my "Gil" on and maintain the peace while investigating muders et al.


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## WampusCat43

*Return of the Fiddlin' Five* This was my first campaign after a 15-year hiatus, so I kept it simple (and unoriginal, sue me).  The PC's were hired by a kindly old cleric to find the members of his former adventuring group (my original, 1ed characters).  Various clues led them across the Western Heartlands (FR) and, unbeknownst to them at first, caused them to come into contact with the Five's ancient evil sorcerer nemesis, who was after the same information.

Nothing near the scale of most of the posts in this thread, but they still say it's been their favorite.


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## howandwhy99

*Cthulhu Undercover:* Russa, Britain, and the U.S. have sent in their best to Nazi-occuppied 1944 Paris to join forces with the French resistance and uncover the next great Nazi threat.  Top german scientists, including Von Braun and Heisenberg, are rumored to be secretly congregating within and under the city working on "the creation of world-spanning interstellar control".  Risking their lives, exposure, and an unknowable madness around every turn, the undercover agents brave the streets, sewers, soldiers, and more in hopes to stop whatever unearthly doom now rises.


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## JollieRoger

Here are some of the campaigns I have run in the past:


*Coming of Age* A barbarian tradition forces their young to go through a trial or quest to denote their coming of age.  Usually this has to do with raiding a neighboring village or hunting a special animal.  Not this year.  This year the candidates must discover and destroy the cause of concern, people gone missing, lack of wildlife and death of livestock which have hit the community over the last few months. Upon the trek they discover that a Demonologist and his demonic summonings and allies are trying to open a permenent gate between this world and the other plane.   To allow the host to pull this world into theirs so that all can be devoured.

*Weapons of the Queen* It is a trying time for the Empire they face weakness from within and powerful aggressors from without.  The hero's are tasked by the the Queen to find the legendary weapons of the Queen and to bring them back to defend the realm.  However, the hero's who own the weapons are long since dead and are part of the lands myth and legend.  So, where do they find these weapons and where are these hero's of old.  The characters must piece together the legends to save the Empire.  After many adventures and trials they return to the Empire where they find out that they are the Weapons of the Queen and all that went on before was to prepare them for the final encounter with the evil aggressor(s) and their place in history and myth.  

*End of an Age* The PC's find themselves strangers overcome by dread in the dead of a queit moonless night. The air is heavy and oppressive as they lay next to a cold dark pond which is surrounded by many bushes and trees of deep green almost black.  Around the this pond are many men dressed in a large array of uniforms and armor.  All have the look of fear, confusion or even madness about their continence.  Their armor and uniforms are tattered and torn, the weapons are battered, broken, worn or even missing. This motley group of people, including the PC's, are the remnant of a large army destroyed and overrun by an army of evil.  Some speak of the regiment they were with and what happened to that regiment in the big battle.  After a time an eerie sound breaks the silence the howl of a wolf.  The enemy has found them.  Can the PC's survive this and the future battles and harrassment they face?  Can they overcome and through might, wit and luck bring down the enemy or is this the End of an Age.


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## I'm A Banana

I'll do my most recent crop:

*Justice*: In a prison in the deapths of Carceri, six prisoners are freed. By who? By what? It's vague and undetermined...they see only a swath of destruction as they struggle to free themselves from the deapths of the Prison Plane. They find that they are being manipulated by Yugoloths, using a Gautiere godslayer to threaten Apomps and restore their hidden tower on Carceri to power...do they side with the 'loths, and gain their freedom at the expense of releasing all the evil in Carceri onto the planes? Or do they side with the 'leths, and remain captive themselves?

*Redemption*: One of the prisoners, a human barbarian with no name, finds a way to go home, and to prove that he is not guilty of the cirme that fixed him in Carceri for a decade. He finds his home is overrun with an evil empire, and his childhood friends have grown up. He also finds that the true guilty criminal is no longer the wicked being that sent him away, but a struggling ruler trying to do what is best for his people. Will they restore the lost prince to his rightful throne? Or might it be a better idea for the prince to remain lost? And why are there Yugoloths here?!

*Peace*: A third prisoner, a maenad wilder, was guilty of his crime. Yet, it was Chaos that consumed him, not Evil. He returns to his home to find it a desolate wasteland, with undead souls in abundance. Does he have the strength to face his inner demons and gain control over his own fate? Or is he doomed to be haunted by the specter of what he has done?


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## Gahnomen

*Waterworld: * A lightly toned (comedy)campaign world 90% covered with water, filled with pirates and the antipiracy militant sailors; "The Guard". Only one true nation ruled by a military commander, lots of independent tiny islands who are so spread out that they can not efficiently be governed. No magic users, but plenty of (semi) magical locations.

Good natured pirates and evil "Guard" and vice versa, an extremely rare kind of fruit that grants you a random, unique and often quite strange (super)power when eaten, as well as a great disadvantage. Tons of unexplored islands, and it's really not recommended to go sailing where "there be dragons".

Everyone having heard of, or being after one fabled treasure, though plenty of minor treasurehuntin' goes on along the way. 

Bonus points if this all sounds familiar to you


----------



## Zulithe

*West, dreams drink the world away*
In a young world, only a century settled from the forging thereof, a king's lands wither and his dead rise against him. No relief in sight, this king, Olothondor, the first of his name, beacon of the eastern shore, ruler of Prolodun'Rin, City of the Gleaming Star, commisions a party westerward across the plains in persuit of the rumored answer (or cause?) presumably raising a new empire opposite the untresspassed jungle of fallen dreams. Perilous the plains have become; Once overseen by a tribe of minotaur, they roam no longer, seemingly wiped out by their _own_ plague of undead--or so it is believed. When jungle reached, what lies within no man or beast can proclaim, yet a legend foretells. A wyrmling dreams unnaturally behest a tentacled sorcerer's art beneath branches which saw the world born. Adventurers beware, what fate in store ahead, what cost? What power cometh Westward born? What cometh?


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## Dannyalcatraz

I once proposed this as part of a PC I submitted to a contest...
*"Give me what is mine..."*

An old legend..."A proud warrior race sends an exploration party into the unknown East- they do not return for years.  A second group is sent forth - one returns alive telling of a great treasure guarded by a terrible dracolitch, and brings back an ancient coin the size of a hand to prove his claim.

1 week later, the first wave of Undead strike the Race's homeland.  The undead army is annihilated, but not without casualties.

The next week, the second wave of Undead attack, but this time the Dracolitch is leading them, and among their number are their own fallen from the previous strike!

Unable to bear the fury of the Dracolitch and the horror of their Undead kin, they break and scatter, the Dracolitch and his army following one of the groups...then another...in the same pattern, the army ever growing.  Then reports of their fates die out.

No one knows what became of the coin- either the Dracolitch found his coin, was destroyed, or returned to his (uneasy) slumbers because he wearied of the chase.

The Race still long for their lost homeland.  Because of this, they train the most ferocious undead hunters, each with the dream of being The One who destroys the Dracolitch.

Years later, in a bazaar across the sea..

"Hey...doesn't that Golden Dish look like the Coin from that old story about the Race and the Dracolitch?"


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## Tinner

Herobizkit said:
			
		

> *Bouncing Here and There and Everywhere*:  A race of small humanoids (goblins, kobolds, halflings, what have you) discover a non-magical recipe for a _potion of jumping_.  Elated, they begin to mass produce the elixir for use in raiding human settlements.  However, it is accidentally discovered that, when consumed by larger races (such as humans), the potion acts as a _potion of strength_.  Now the wee race must protect the recipe from the conniving humans, who want to steal the recipe for themselves, while simultaneously using it in excess to performs all sorts of larceny.  Hilarity ensues.
> 
> Yeah, I stole it.
> 
> So what?
> 
> No one under the age of, oh, 20 should have any idea what I'm talking about.    Happy anniversary, that cartoon I copied!




You know, I've seen d20 stats for those bouncy little bears somewhere, but now I can't find them.
I too watched that cartoon and thought "What a messed up D&D game this would make!"


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## Dannyalcatraz

*Land of the Little People* this is THE one for GMs who have toys...the PCs use standard races & classes (& whatever the GM allows).  The twist is that the PCs are all ACTUALLY 28mm tall!  Think Fuzzy Knights but even smaller...any toy you have is a potential monster!

(Just went to Michael's Craft Store & bought a bunch of 5" long partially posable spiders, scorpions, and so forth, and got inspired.)


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## Eternalknight

Tinner said:
			
		

> You know, I've seen d20 stats for those bouncy little bears somewhere, but now I can't find them.
> I too watched that cartoon and thought "What a messed up D&D game this would make!"




I read the Gummy Bears campaign and started giggling, evilly...


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## Dannyalcatraz

Here's an interesting fact: Aspen Trees are a clonal species- they can spread by runners.  One of the largest organisms on Earth is an Aspen grove in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains that has 41,000+ trunks.

That inspired this:

*No Man's Land*:

5000 years ago, a druid (whose name is lost to humanity...) of great power picked a large and remote island devoid of human life as his home, choosing a grove of aspen trees his most sacred space.  At some point, he chose to cast Awaken upon one of the aspen...and the entire grove came to life!  He had forgotten that Aspen spread by runners...the entire grove was actually one plant- and now it had a mind equal to his own.  He trained it in the ways of the druids.

Eventually, death found the druid, but his greatest student lived on.  Eventually, the Aspen grew enough in power that it began to experiment with Awaken itself.  First, it made other Aspen and a few other mighty trees as self aware as it was, forming the Green Council, each a druid, cleric or mage in its own right.  They, in time and in turn, granted awareness to some of the animals of the forest...bringing them into a society ruled by the Green Council, each day's food created by powerful magics.

As decades passed, the island became a great druidic haven, but still unknown to man.

1000 years ago, Man came...and he was not ready for what he found.  The animals and trees welcomed those who resembled the one who had made their haven possible, but the ignorant sailors who found the island hunted for food for their journeys, and were driven back by the island inhabitants.  The sailors returned to civilization to tell tales of the mysterious island to the East, where both animals and trees thought and fought as if men.

The Council's research of the civilized world (directly and through its awakened, shapechanged agents) has brought them much information about the destructiveness of man...and also solutions as to how to fight back.  Those shapechanged agents often lived lives among the so called civilized men, bringing their children, natural shapeshifters, back to the island.  The Council did much the same.

Now, the island is inhabited by more than trees and awakened animals.  Alongside them now live natural shapechangers and other curious hybrids of man and beast or beast and plant...all members of an insular society on the island.

And they are leery of Mankind's intent.

(In game terms, the island is inhabited by Awakened Trees of the Green Council (each with 20 levels of some combination of Druid, Cleric, Wizard or Sorcerer, some with Epic levels); Awakened animals (any class, Rangers and Druids most common); Anthropomorphic Animals (see WOTC's _Savage Species_); Shapeshifters (see WOTC's _Eberron_, but instead of being linked to Lycanthropes, they are linked to Druids); and Woodlings (see WOTC's _Monster Manual III_).


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## Gilladian

War in the North; my current campaign is quite generic, but the party is enjoying it. They're all members of a military group guarding the northern frontier of a dwarvish kingdom. To the north lies the home of ancient enemies - hobgoblins, giants, orcs and ogres. A new leader has arisen among them, and an ancient evil sorceress has ben awakened to join forces with him. Soon their armies will march south...


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## RangerWickett

*The Long Road:* The modern world that we know has a hidden partner, Gaia, the realm of the fey and the magical, hidden from us for over a thousand years. Now, though, even those few who knew of Gaia are mysteriously barred from traveling between the two worlds, and the Bureau, law enforcers and keepers of secrets, are unable to protect mundanes against magical threats. Chance lands a group of travelers in the same Greyhound bus as the only man who might have the power to repair the breach, but they must survive terrorists, ghosts, assassins, and far more ancient and powerful foes if they are to succeed. Indeed, as they travel this long road, they must decide if magic even should have a place in the world, or if it should be left to fade away.


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## Wystan

This is a good breeding ground for ideas. Let more spring forth.


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## SpiderMonkey

My current brand new campaign:

*Beyond Boundless Space and Ageless Time.* 

200 years ago, a catastrophic event led to the fabric of reality between the Prime and the Far Realms to become thin and torn.  The beasts that poured forth destroyed much of civilization; those who survive huddle behind the warded walls of overcrowded cities, ruled under the iron fists of the incanters (who need Forbidden Lore to learn the proper incantations).

If it were not for the fact that the outerbeasts are not acting in unison, humanity would have been wiped out long ago.  Recently, however, they have been acting with something insidiously resembling purpose...

Who is organizing them?
How?
Why?

Find out next week, same bat-time, same bat-channel.


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## the Jester

A few pieces of my campaigns, past and present:

*The Apocalypse-* a series of terrible events presages the end of all things, when Tharizdun will awake and devour everything.  Pools of blackness, called Pools of Tharizdun, are starting to appear, and they grow when things enter them (being devoured).  Ultra-powerful Angels of the Apocalypse appear, able to destroy even gods.  The pcs must go on a desperate quest to gather the pieces of an ultra-powerful artifact granting control of space, time, matter, energy, space and time in a last desperate struggles to stop Tharizudun from devouring Nature itself.

*Of Sound Mind the Halfing Way-* a group of halflings begins a series of adventures that will eventually lead them to a quest for the halfing Promised Land.  The campaign follows themes of psionics, madness, prophecy and, of course, food.  After we play this group my face often hurts because I laugh so hard.


----------



## Mr. Draco

*Karanos -* In ancient times, the first emperor made a bargain with Death to gain his power.  The current emperor tries to cheat the bargain, but the backlash destroys civilization as you know it, and seals away magic for hundreds of years as bizarre undead wander the land.  The heros died when Death punished the empire, but they're revived by a brave chieftan in the dark days, hundreds of years later, and with their rebirth, magic begins to reenter the world.  Can they set right what went so wrong so many years ago, or will all life end at the hands of undead monstrosities?


----------



## Crust

*Beneath Castle Grimstead*
Goblins lairing in the ruins of Castle Grimstead spur a call to adventurers.  Delving deeper into the ruins, a darker evil is discovered.  The heroes discover that the goblins (along with drow elves and vampires) have been collecting victims for an ancient vampire known only as The Elder, who is seeking to create a new blood pit for himself in Faerun.  The heroes must fight their way through a tribe of goblins, a drow coven, a sect of vampires, and countless guardian monsters to make their way to The Elder's blood pit, free any captives, and drive the Elder from Faerun!  This campaign arc should take PCs from levels 1 - 11.

*The Elder's Return*
After having escaped destruction at the hands of powerful adventurers, The Elder returns from his refuge on The Barrens of Doom and Despair.  With the aid of countless vampire servitors, a myriad of undead, and yugoloths from the Barrens, The Elder prepares to wage war.  The true peril of the land lies in the eclipse that has settled over Faerun's sun!  With the Elder's magic plunging the world into eternal darkness, the ancient vampire's army of daemons and vampires has surged up from the ruins of Grimstead.  Can the PCs help turn the tide of this horde, shatter the eclipse darkening Faerun, and finally cast the Elder into the Void forever?  This campaign arc should take PCs from levels 11-20.

*Into the Barrens*
With the armies of The Elder crushed and his eclipse spell disjoined, the heroes must follow The Elder into the Barrens of Doom and Despair as the vampire desperately escapes.  It is on this infernal plane that The Elder has made his home, and it is up to the heroes to track down and destroy The Elder once and for all.  Their trek will take them through the crimson landscape and into the frozen wastes of Loviatar's realm, to a great glacier where devil lords rule and guard the true sanctum of The Elder: a pocket plane full of the ancient vampire's most-deadly guardians and servitor vampires.  The final confrontation with The Elder is at hand!  This campaign arc is set for epic levels.


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## Dannyalcatraz

Personally, I'm thinking this thread needs to be sticky- from what I've read here so far, its a good resource for GMs of any level of proficiency.


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## genshou

If it's stickied, no one will ever read or respond to it.


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## awayfarer

> Defeat the Dawn of the World - The god Azalak has discovered what went wrong during Creation to cause all the evil in the world, he seeks to correct the error and create a utopia, but that would destroy all who currently live. The party must stop Azalak (combat solution) or convince him that his is misguided (roleplay solution). They will fight and ally with Celestials and Fiends alike, all have various motives surrounding the birth of a new and perfect world.




Thats awesome. A feel a big scene involving demons and archons actually fighting on the same side would be a really cool thing to include. Basically to drive home just how severe the threat was.


----------



## Templetroll

*Imperial Summons*

The campaign setting was based on the comment in the 1e DMG about there having once been 10th+ magic during which time artifacts were created.  I set an ancient empire where this was so.  The armies were all outfitted with magic armor and weapons and there were military units of magi and clerics.  They spread out conquering the world and building heavily fortified underground defense installations.  Elves held out in the deepest parts of the forests.  Dwarves moved back underground, and then these races made treaties that stopped the assault against them for work done on behalf of The Empire.

Any listing in the MM type books that attributed the existance of a creature to a 'mad godling', 'wizard's experiment' or 'occult ritual' were all due to The Emperor or at his direction.  Most Artifacts were of Imperial design.

Then, it happened.

There was a mystic cataclysm, called the Decline of Magic, that brought the level of magic possible down to _only _ 9th level spell effects.  This had the side effect of making most of the magical items created by The Empire of Calydonia lose their magic completely or in part.  This allowed the subjugated races to rise up and free themselves of The Empire.  Many magic items changed hands as the Imperial Army tried to retreat.  Some items that reatained their magic also acquired a degree of intelligence, but whether this was from the magic or by absorbing someone dying nearby is unknown.

The capital city of Calydon was devastated by the Decline; the Emperor, a mighty Lich,  disappeared that day and was believed destroyed.   The capital city became a location of monster lairs and strange magical effects.  A corridor on an upper floor of the palace would shift through time, past and future.  When it hits the time of The Decline it was deadly to be in the area.

The newly freed lands split into kingdoms and freeholds, and monsters wandered freely in newly uncivilized lands.  Time past, things settled down.

A group of youths from a small town decided to do something other than fish or farm so they looked around for something adventurous to do.  During one such journey there was a strange dark cloud flowing oddly across the sky.  A single bolt of lightning struck one of their number and left a smouldering pile of ash.   Shaken, the group continued on their journey, carrying the ashes of their friend.  A few days later, after they had accomplished their task, they once again saw the strange cloud but this time the bolt of lightning that cracked down left their friend!  He stood there smiling with tendrils of smoke rising from him.

Turns out he had spent the time with The Emperor, in the Palace of Calydon.  The Emperor only seemd to want to chat with him about his life and what he had been doing.  So it was for many adventurers over the years.  Some of the more astute noticed that not all of those they adventured with were summoned, however.

A couple of players figured there had to be a reason for it all.  I just smiled, and cringed inside because the reason was to allow me to remove absent player's characters from the game and get them back the next time the player showed up!  

So, I set out to come up with a _proper _ reason - The Emperor would be in a great battle against powerful Heroes.  He was near defeat and then took a trip back in time to set up a trap.  The Emperor put a Clone in the palace with a powerful spell set in place that would draw those Heroes to him while they were young.  

The goal was not to defeat or kill them before that great battle but to set as many up for an Imprisionment or Trap the Soul spell by permitting the clone to spend years talking to the young folks and learning all the details of their lives.  Then, at the point where the Emperor had escaped the Clone could come in and use his spells to decimate the Heroic forces.  We didn't get that far yet.


----------



## awayfarer

*Blood of the Kings* 

The PC's find out a horrible truth. The seal partitioning hell away from the material plane is due to fail soon. The solution is complicated.

Long, long ago (The exact date lost) six kings sacrificed their lives in a ritual that created six runes to seal away hell. They willingly participated in the ritual, which drained every last drop of blood from their body to write the runes. Six special swords were created which drew every last drop of blood from their bodies. Without these, the ritual would not have been possible.

Time stole the event from human memory but the gate to hell will soon open. The PC's are among a very, very small few who know the truth. Sealing away hell requires them to do the following.

1: Gather the swords. Each one must be filled with the blood of a king

2: As this story is ages ago, it will likely be difficult if not impossible to convince anyone that it is true. Trying to convince a king to kill themselves for the ritual would be nearly impossible. If they're not willing to give their blood freely, it must be taken. This opens up a lot of possibilities. 

--If the PC's are good, can they find six evil kings to "donate" the blood? If not can they bring themselves to kill a good king? For that matter, assuming the ancient kings were all good, will the ritual have a different effect if evil blood is used?
--Killing a large number of national leaders will likely destabilize a large area. The civil/international wars that could result would be catastrophic.
--Is there even enough time? How close is the day when the seal fails? Can they go around picking targets or do they just have to get the nearest monarch they can?
--Assuming the PC's succeed, they will likely be outlaws nearly everywhere.

3: Finding the ritual site and getting there in time. For that matter, finding someone who knows exactly how the long-forgotten ritual must be done.


((I listened to the band Manowar for the first time tonight. The idea was inspired by the song "Blood of the Kings"   ))


----------



## Griffith Dragonlake

*Brains…!*

*The Undead Plague Part I*
One night an empty ship crashes into the docks of a major port city.  No-one is on board, that is no-one is alive.  Contagious carnivorous zombies spew out into the city fouling the air with their breath and clamouring for brains.  This plague spreads at an alarming rate faster than any clerics can turn.  The density of the population making it easy for the zombies to feast and spread their plague.  Can the heroes stop the plague before everyone gets turned into a zombie?

*The Undead Plague Part II*
After the heroes have eliminated the plague in their home city, they must seek out the source of the plague before it spreads to rest of the world.  Already other ports are under siege from the contagious carnivorous zombies.  Can the heroes stop the source of the plague and save the world?


By the way, I ran both of these campaigns in 1994–1997 and it was a ton of fun.


----------



## Old Gumphrey

Dannyalcatraz said:
			
		

> Here's an interesting fact: Aspen Trees are a clonal species- they can spread by runners.  One of the largest organisms on Earth is an Aspen grove in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains that has 41,000+ trunks.
> 
> That inspired this:
> 
> *No Man's Land*:
> 
> 5000 years ago, a druid (whose name is lost to humanity...) of great power picked a large and remote island devoid of human life as his home, choosing a grove of aspen trees his most sacred space.  At some point, he chose to cast Awaken upon one of the aspen...and the entire grove came to life!  He had forgotten that Aspen spread by runners...the entire grove was actually one plant- and now it had a mind equal to his own.  He trained it in the ways of the druids.
> 
> Eventually, death found the druid, but his greatest student lived on.  Eventually, the Aspen grew enough in power that it began to experiment with Awaken itself.  First, it made other Aspen and a few other mighty trees as self aware as it was, forming the Green Council, each a druid, cleric or mage in its own right.  They, in time and in turn, granted awareness to some of the animals of the forest...bringing them into a society ruled by the Green Council, each day's food created by powerful magics.
> 
> As decades passed, the island became a great druidic haven, but still unknown to man.
> 
> 1000 years ago, Man came...and he was not ready for what he found.  The animals and trees welcomed those who resembled the one who had made their haven possible, but the ignorant sailors who found the island hunted for food for their journeys, and were driven back by the island inhabitants.  The sailors returned to civilization to tell tales of the mysterious island to the East, where both animals and trees thought and fought as if men.
> 
> The Counci's research of the civilized world (directly and through its awakened, shapechanged agents) has brought them much information about the destructiveness of man...and also solutions as to how to fight back.  Those shapechanged agents often lived lives among the so called civilized men, bringing their children, natural shapeshifters, back to the island.  The Council did much the same.
> 
> Now, the island is inhabited by more than trees and awakened animals.  Alongside them now live natural shapechangers and other curious hybrids of man and beast or beast and plant...all members of an insular society on the island.
> 
> And they are leery of Mankind's intent.
> 
> (In game terms, the island is inhabited by Awakened Trees of the Green Council (each with 20 levels of some combination of Druid, Cleric, Wizard or Sorcerer, some with Epic levels); Awakened animals (any class, Rangers and Druids most common); Anthropomorphic Animals (see WOTC's _Savage Species_); Shapeshifters (see WOTC's _Eberron_, but instead of being linked to Lycanthropes, they are linked to Druids); and Woodlings (see WOTC's _Monster Manual III_).




Consider that stolen and twisted to my own nefarious purposes.


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## Dannyalcatraz

OK...I'll confess to watching to much Sci-Fi today, but how about this for an adventure:

*Evard's Inspiration*:  A giant octopus* terrorizes a small fishing village by occupying the only harbor granting access to an isolated island along a minor trade route.  Drawn by preying on sharks following the scents of the refuse ships leave behind, it starts by scavenging upon the corpses of the unlucky victims of thieves and assassins dumped in the water.  It continues by plucking drunken sailors from the wharves- whose dissapearances are ignored by officials as nothing unusual.

Then it eats the mayor.  In broad daylight.

Evard, a minor mage and mayor-pro-tem calls for heroes to rid the island's waters of this black-tentacled scourge...

*To scale things up for more powerful parties, you can use a Kracken, or if you're ooooooold school, a Golden Ammonite (from Dragon Magazine)...


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## Ry

Legends of the Last Age

Four young Akavars prepare for their Naming Hunt, when they will slay a beast that will become their totem, and join the ranks of their far-travelling fathers.  The trail of the White Ape is long and hard, but when the boys return, victorious, fame and glory seem just beyond the next hill.  But as they take up their fathers' paths as mercenaries among a strange people, the Akavan of the White Ape finds that the fame earned by blood brings more enemies than friends... and their fathers' fame was the bloodiest of all.


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## Ry

Legends of Great Knights

The twisted un-god stirs within its idol, and its cancerous madness has returned to the world.  Mad cults begun to profane the West, even as the East weakens itself with incessant religious war.  As an empire crumbles, three knights must set aside the kings, peoples, and faiths that divide them.  Joined by duty, they must sacrifice family, happiness, and finally their lives to confront a horror whose slavering hunger and sick fecundity defies all comprehension.


----------



## mythusmage

There are ankhegs in the wheatfield, jermlaine in the kitchen, and the pigs have learned how to open the gate to their pen. And you thought farming was going to be easy.

Country Life, an epic misadventure for levels 1-4.


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## Dannyalcatraz

Heh- with a bit of a twist, you could make that into a dandy "Jack & the Beanstalk" adventure...

In the Giant's (Titan's?) kitchen, the ankhegs would be the equivalent of the weevils in the flour...and the thri-kreen the equivalents of the ants throughout the house...

A dire displacer beast for a housecat...preoccupied with the great white sharks in the aquarium...or the bullywugs (or slaads) in the terrarium.

Myconids are trying to escape the root cellar...


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## Dannyalcatraz

For Urban Arcana or other Modern Fantasy setting, a reverse version of _Dream Park_ or _Westworld_:

A "20th Century Waterdeep" setting, in which adventuring would be the new televised sports or reality shows- "Survivor: Myth Drannor," "The Great Race: Dragonspine Mountains," "Monday Night Dungeon-delving," "The Graveyard 500" and so forth. PCs would either be pros or amateurs, depending upon the setting. Think "Rollerball" on magical steroids.


----------



## MoogleEmpMog

*The Animus War*
A thousand years ago, the divine weapons - invincible holy mecha - fell to earth and gave primitive men the tools they needed to defeat the pre-human giants, the nephilim.  The descendents of the legendary heroes of that age rule over three mechaneer-monarchies, their weapons patterned on the sacred weapons of their ancestors.  Now populist rebels, backed by a powerful nation across the ocean, intend to bring down this ancient order.  But is their goal liberty for the common man... or for the alien titans slumbering in the depths of the earth?  An unsuspecting squad of young mechaneers is about to discover the answer!


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## Simm

Not mine but...

The Orc and The Pie: The PCs kill the Orc and take his pie.


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## Dannyalcatraz

*Borrowed Glory* :  An adventure/campaign.

A BBEG is confronted by a group of mighty heroes and their sidekicks in his lair.  The resolution of the conflict will determine whether the BBEG's hostages live or die...

In a mighty battle, the BBEG is defeated and near death...but so are many of the heroes.  And unfortunately, the BBEG's last act as a living being is to transfer his consciousness into a Cybernetic body (or an automaton, or becomes a lich) and make good his escape.

Under the tutelage of the surviving (but crippled) leader of the team of heroes, the group of hostages & sidekicks take up the mantles of the the fallen heroes in order to complete the defeat of the BBEG.

In the proceess of the hunt, they evolve beyond mere usurpers or shadows, and become greater than the heroes they replaced.


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## Dannyalcatraz

*Crusade of the Converts*

The PCs are recruited by a prominent citizen & war hero to become couriers for his merchant house.  The journeys are long, and occasionally hard, but the money is ridiculously good...

Over time, the PCs notice the increasing power of the brigands attacking the caravans...and the unsavory NPCs who both join the caravan and purchase some of the goods they protect.  And though the goods they buy are overpriced, but they always sell out.

Eventually, the PCs realize the war hero is a drug lord- and they're his hired muscle!

Do they continue to work for the war hero, or do they bring down his growing drug empire?


----------



## Brimshack

2 of my favorites:

An orc village is located just 4 miles North of a human village. To the south of the human village lies human controlled lands, dominated by a foreign invader. Locals and foreign military leaders are not friendly, but there is little chance of outright war. Leadership of the dominating military force would like to eliminate the orc threat which would mean war. To the North of the orc village is a mountainous region dominated by monsters, many of which wish to go to war with the humans to the South. Some wish to eliminate the occupation force, and some just want to eat any human they can find (local or foreign). Even the smallest of raids risks massive retaliation from the human occupation force to teh South.

There is also a drug smuggling trade from the monsters through human territory to ports in the South.

The leadership of both villages knows that in the event of war, their own homes will be destroyed and most will not survive. Both work to keep the peace against pressure from their own kind.

*The Police*: A Human police force located in the human village. It is charged with keeping the peace in the local township and surrounding region as well as preventing any incursions from orcs. They are also instructed to stop drug smugglers who are moving product through the human village. They ally themselves occassionally with a group of local monsters and eventually get enough tips to begin cutting down on the local drug trade. 

*The Monsters*: A group of orcs and related monsters is charged with protecting the pass North against human incursions. They are also charged by orc leaders with eliminating bounty hunters paid by the occupation force for each left ear of a monster. They are told to keep the peace and prepare for war. In other words, set up to win, and make sure no other orcs start things unless such an advantage is in place. In time they enter the drug trade, and pass on information on competitors to the Police force with which they are occassionally allied. After leiminatig the competition, they begin to make immense profits.


----------



## Aeric

*Armored Legend World:* The aelven empire once ruled the entire world, but is now a pale shadow of its former glory.  In their search for a way to replace their depleted natural resources, aelven explorers discoved the bones of titans buried in the earth near the shadowlands.  The Imperial warmasters, inspired by agents of the shadow, used these skeletons to create the first Armored Legends: towering warmachines powered by arcane energies, capable of wiping out entire regiments single-handedly.

As the aelven empire begins a whirlwind campaign of _reconquista_, a small band of heroes discovers the true nature of the Armored Legends, and their terrible purpose: the Legends themselves are sentient, and devoted to the destruction of the sunlit lands as commanded by their true master, the shadow.  Once the time is right, the aelven war machines will turn against their masters, claiming all in the name of shadow.  That is, unless our heroes can stop them.

And as if all this weren't bad enough, agents of the shadow seek an even more powerful weapon from ancient times: a spear created by the first children of the Overgod to use in combat against their younger siblings, the gods themselves.  A spear powerful enough to extinguish the sun and destroy the gods who live there.


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## paradox42

Dannyalcatraz said:
			
		

> For Urban Arcana or other Modern Fantasy setting, a reverse version of _Dream Park_ or _Westworld_:
> 
> A "20th Century Waterdeep" setting, in which adventuring would be the new televised sports or reality shows- "Survivor: Myth Drannor," "The Great Race: Dragonspine Mountains," "Monday Night Dungeon-delving," "The Graveyard 500" and so forth. PCs would either be pros or amateurs, depending upon the setting. Think "Rollerball" on magical steroids.



Just wanted to drop in and say that this is almost exactly the premise of the *XCrawl* series of products. It's set on what amounts to an alternate-history Earth of the 20th century, where magic is real along with the standard "demihuman" races such as elves, dwarves, halflings, goblinoids and so on, and with the aid of magic the Roman Empire never fell- instead spreading its cultural trappings across the globe. Even newly founded nations use the imperial system for their government.

In the modern day, Emperor Reagan took advantage of stories of the Elder Days told by a sentient short sword (recently found in an archaeological dig), to come up with the idea of a radical new bloodsport to keep the masses happy: professional, televised dungeon-delving...


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## paradox42

And, for my contribution,

*Legacy of the Ice Elves:* An archaeological expedition to the ancient ruin now known as the City of Death is slowly disrupted from within. One of its patrons, Frostfolk scion of a powerful merchant house, uses the trip to pursue an agenda of her own. She acquires an artifact called the Key of Ice, a tiny statue of one of the emperors of the hated, feared, and fortunately long-dead Ice Elves. The Key is supposed to unlock a vault in the City, holding the greatest treasure of the Ice Elves, which the merchant feels (since her people were once the slaves of the dead race) rightfully belongs to her people- which she can thus claim by extension when she finds it.

Meanwhile, in the vault wait two more Keys of Ice, secretly sentient (and conspiring) components of the ritual which will free their true master, Xixecal III, last emperor of the Ice Elves, from his eternal prison of black ice far in the north... and through the Keys, the mind of Xixecal reaches out and begins to manipulate the members of the expedition towards his own ends.


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## Dykstrav

*Drow in the Hood*

The characters are drow adventurers based in Waterdeep. A drow bard is tearing up the Waterdhavian music scene with his hit single, Paladin Killa. The Lords of Waterdeep concoct a variety of trumped-up charges to have drow in the city arrested, as they fear what strong drow elves can do. Capitalizing on these events, the Xanathar's agents go on a crime spree targeting the drow.

The characters must travel to Faerun's east side, where they can recruit the beholder known as the Notorious E.Y.E. (He's always wanted to move into the west side and take over the Xanathar's operation.) The characters return to Waterdeep, and by taking over the criminal enterprises there, manage to bring a halt to the persecution of the drow.

Nothing really changes in the grand scheme of things and no one learns a lesson in the end, but life goes on day by day.


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## Dannyalcatraz

> Just wanted to drop in and say that this is almost exactly the premise of the XCrawl series of products.




Yeah, it is, but I wanted to expand it a little, and introduce the concepts to those unfamiliar with the game.  (Big time Dream Park/Westworld fan)

In a similar vein (for hack-n-slashers of classic or modern FRPGs):
*
Big Game Hunters*

The PCs are hired as hunters of difficult to acquire spell components by a big Magic Supplies Company.  They not only gather what they were sent out to get, but also get special bonuses for discovering new spell components, or new uses for old ones.

Of course, if they find anything nifty in that old, lost temple, its probably theirs to keep...as long as Corporate doesn't find out...
_________

PS- loved the Drow in the Hood!

Lots of possibilities for a rap/gang war in a modern FRPG setting!  Ghost-face Killah is really a Ghost...Bloods are vampires...nobody needs a special effects budget for their martial arts infused videos.


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## Dannyalcatraz

"And now, for something completely different..."

*Gray "Elves": The Zeelee Court of Underhill* 

Zeelee, a.k.a. "Grays," a race of extraterrestrial beings, roam the galaxy on missions of exploration and occasionally war.

Many thousands of years ago, one of their warships crash-landed upon _insert name of your fantasy campaign world here_, and the survivors were forced to make the best of things.

First, Commander Orbron and his First officer Titahija decreed that they build themselves a sanctuary, and followed that up with exploration of the world that was to be their new home...only to find it inhabited by strange and powerful beings.

Using their advanced technologies, they shifted their sanctuary out of phase with the world behind a barrier rendering it invisible and intangible in another dimension, where time ran more slowly.  They hoped that they would be able to survive behind that barrier until help could arrive to rescue them.

Then they developed a technology that allowed them to move about the world freely, disguised as idealized versions of the creatures they saw around them.  Legends accumulated around the strange beings...

Some told tales of rooms bigger inside than out, or how they appeared out of nowhere, and then dissapeared without a trace save for circles in the grass or dirt...some even told tales of how they spent a day enjoying the hospitality of the "Seelie Court" only to leave and find that years had passed...

Their slender builds, the slanted eyes, their aloofness, their great "magics"...and their vulnerability to cold iron and silver...

Mankind called them Elves...


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## Dannyalcatraz

Inspired by the Retrieval Artist novels of Kristine Kathryn Rusch:

In a future where humanity occasionally runs afoul of the laws of alien empires while trying to expand their own, some so-called criminals opt to run and hide rather than face harsh justice under unfamiliar stars.  They do whatever it takes to dissapear, and agencies have sprung up to accomidate them.

And of course, there are Trackers who are paid to track them down and bring them to justice.

But there are also those who track them down for other reasons...to bring them news of their families left behind, or an inheritance they're due, or in the best cases, to tell them they're no longer wanted by the law.

Some even work to counteract the efforts of the Trackers.

(PCs can be people running from the law, enforcing the law, or helping the runners.)


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## Dannyalcatraz

*The Quixotic Campaign*:  The PCs are the servants of an older, powerful NPC (both in terms of personal abilities and politically) who has gone a bit senile.

As a result of his mental infirmity, he is often much less competent than he used to be.    His combat skills, if he had any, are greatly deteriorated.  If he is capable of spellcasting or manifesting psionics, he memorizes or casts incorrect/radically suboptimal spells and powers.  And he gets worse after sundown.

He does, however, show occasional flashes of his past competence.  Some of his political speeches are simply brilliant.  If he's a martial NPC, there are days when he fights like he did in his 20's.  If he's a spellcaster or psionic manifester, he can be roused to use his powers to great effect.  But those days are becoming rarer and rarer...

Still, he is such a great man of such great accomplishments that most people don't realize he's deteriorated (or how much) unless they spend a lot of time around him.  As a result, he has lost none of his pull in society, and is still tapped for important missions for the kingdom.  Negotiate a treaty.  Kill a fearsome beast.  Explore a new overland traderoute.  Deliver a diplomatic package.

Worst of all, he's not always aware of his disability.  He can become angry with those around him and lash out- sometimes quite dangerously- at his servants.  Fortunately, his anger passes as quickly as a summer storm, and only remembers the slights of his actual foes.

The PC's mission- however they justify it with their particular backgrounds- is to maintain the NPC's reputation by assisting him in those missions he chooses to accept.  This means they'll have to be the mind behind his voice, the sword and shield before his will.

They have to keep him alive.  They have to slay the dragons.  They must blaze the trails.  They must find the leverage that will make the treaties work.

If they succeed, their power will wax as his wanes, and eventually, they will inherit his estate.


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## Shades of Green

*Mithril Age:* Mithril is common, but with a catch: it is horribly rare on land, but found in large quantities deep below the sea (in the rocks of ocean-floor ridges). Once an expedition to the sea-floor (using Water Breathing spells/potions) discovered rich Mithril deposits in the deep ocean, the Dwarves moved in to mine them. At first they were able to mine Mithril only in the underwater roots of island, where it was of smaller quantities (digging tunnels from the island's surface until it reaches the Mithril deposits. Later on, using this Mithril to construct strong, large and light hulls, they've begun using steampunk submarines to build underwater colonies (sealed under-seafloor caverns with alchemically-recycled air) and to transport the precious material back to the surface.

*Viva La Resistance!:* A sleepy farmland inhabitated by Halflings and Humans is conquered by a steamtech-wielding army of monsters led by Kobold sorcerers. The heroes are guerillas fighting for the liberation of their homeland from the opressive Kobolds and their monstreus minions, and must learn to utilize their enemies' technology against them.

*Black Island Rising:* In a world where small islands are the only landmasses, an Aboleth Lord slowly raises a dark island from the ocean's floor; if it reaches the surface, it will release a plauge of mostrosities upon the world. can the heroes stop the Aboleth Lord and destroy is Black Island?

*Spartacus Reloaded:* PCs are Orcish slaves exploited and opressed by Elven masters. The campaign revoves around their escape and their eventual insurrection against the Elves, or, if they prefer, their escape to the Wildlands where their people are still free.


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## kroh

Shades of Green said:
			
		

> *Mithril Age:* Mithril is common, but with a catch: it is horribly rare on land, but found in large quantities deep below the sea (in the rocks of ocean-floor ridges). Once an expedition to the sea-floor (using Water Breathing spells/potions) discovered rich Mithril deposits in the deep ocean, the Dwarves moved in to mine them. At first they were able to mine Mithril only in the underwater roots of island, where it was of smaller quantities (digging tunnels from the island's surface until it reaches the Mithril deposits. Later on, using this Mithril to construct strong, large and light hulls, they've begun using steampunk submarines to build underwater colonies (sealed under-seafloor caverns with alchemically-recycled air) and to transport the precious material back to the surface.
> 
> *Viva La Resistance!:* A sleepy farmland inhabitated by Halflings and Humans is conquered by a steamtech-wielding army of monsters led by Kobold sorcerers. The heroes are guerillas fighting for the liberation of their homeland from the opressive Kobolds and their monstreus minions, and must learn to utilize their enemies' technology against them.
> 
> *Black Island Rising:* In a world where small islands are the only landmasses, an Aboleth Lord slowly raises a dark island from the ocean's floor; if it reaches the surface, it will release a plauge of mostrosities upon the world. can the heroes stop the Aboleth Lord and destroy is Black Island?
> 
> *Spartacus Reloaded:* PCs are Orcish slaves exploited and opressed by Elven masters. The campaign revoves around their escape and their eventual insurrection against the Elves, or, if they prefer, their escape to the Wildlands where their people are still free.





Wow Shades... These are Great!
Regards, 
Walt


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## Dannyalcatraz

One place you can find plotlines and/or good gossip & rumors for your game is in the lyrics of music artists who prefer ballads- usually 80s rock bands or baladeers from rennaisance fests who record their stuff.  This is especially good if your players don't listen to the same stuff you do.

Example: (exerpt of "The Temple Of The King" by Rainbow

"One day in the year of the fox
Came a time remembered well
When the strong young man of the rising sun
Heard the tolling of the great black bell

One day in the year of the fox
When the bell began to ring
Meant the time had cometh
For one to go
To the temple of the king"

That could be the cryptic prophecy of an old holy man begging for coins...

I'm thinking bands like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden could be particularly rich veins to mine.


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## The Cardinal

*Transhuman Space: Guardians of the D&Dead*

inspired by this thread:  http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=219100


In this version of TS in 2100 AD many virtual "Kingdoms" (think: WoW meets Second Life turned to 11) have become permanent havens for (legally) xoxed spirits (=software-based copies of a human consciousness) of the deceased: effectively immortal they're now roaming incredibly realistic fantasy realms - as heroes, princes, or simple priests or peasants.

Some Kingdoms are exclusive to "formerly biologically active" members, some also have "normal" (i.e. still living in a physical body) clients, who enter via special neuro-interfaces.
Recently, however, some of the largest "spirits-only" Kingdoms have experienced a severe problem: the appearance of virtual entities which are actually capable of *killing* the resident spirits, permanently destroying their data, and generally causing havoc in the system. Thus the companies behind those Kingdoms have begun hiring specialists - the PCs: You will enter those "infected" Kingdoms, provided with an in-game persona of a powerful hero, and find and destroy the "evil" forces at work there.

System: GURPS4e in the "real" world, D&D3.5 - with all options *on* and heavy meta-gaming (think Order of the Stick meets The Matrix) *expected* from the players - in the virtual reality of the Kingdoms (and some Kingdoms may use different "engines", thus requiring the use of C&C, Exalted, Anima, etc.)


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## Dannyalcatraz

Just as a further example of what I posted last time...paraphrasing from Queensryche:

Scene: a tavern, 2 weary dockworkers wander in from the storm, shake off their sodden coats and head to the bar:

Man #1 & Man #2 (in unison): "Wot's the news, 'keep?"

Bartender: "Last night the word came down - 10 dead in Shadowtown..."

Man #2: "Yeh? Innocent?"

Bartender (shaking head): "Their only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Man #1 & Man #2 (alternating): "Too bad." "Too bad."

Man #2: "What’s wrong with the kids today?"

Bartender: "Tell you right now they’ve got nothing to lose...(looking around furtively) They’re building empires!"

Etc.


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## NCSUCodeMonkey

*Deus ex Machina*: An ancient cabal of mortals who have been denied godhood at every turn begin construction of a machine that, powered by the souls of countless innocents, will destroy the multiverse and recreate it with them as the masters. A Planescape game (loosely) based on Tad William's Otherland.

*The Masters*: A hero of legend, famous for his defeat of 10,000 orcs with only a 1,000 men, has emerges from magical suspension with an army of angelic beings. In an Aurthur-esque "returning at the time of greatest need" fashion, an army of orcs invades simultaneously from the west. Unfortunately, the returned hero is a fervent believer in humans as the master race. If he wins the war, he will begin to push deeper into the orc territory, killing every orc that he can find. Eventually his hatred will spread to other races, including elves, dwarves, gnomes, etc. When will the morality of the heroes force them to turn on the "great hero" and can they stop the orcs without his army? And, since his angles are made using positive energy infused in the bodies of his fallen foes, will they be able to stop his army if they try?

*Power Corrupts*: On an extremely low magic island loosely based on post-roman britain, shortly after an apocolypse that resulted in the occupation of Scotland by a massive undead host that constantly assaults Hadrian's Wall, a new power begins to rise. A small rift opens to a power of infinite evil and the heroes must race against multiple foes, each more powerful than the last, to seal the rift before its power can be used to conquer the world. However, when they arrive at the rift they discover that they have two options: (1) seal it for the next thousand years or (2) bond with its infinite power and use it for _good_ to defeat evil forever. In a world where few can afford to eat, let alone forge magical items, which do the adventurers choose? Power or peace? And remember...power corrupts.*

* Bonus plot: If they choose to bond, the next campaign is to overthrow the evil overlords of the island who are bonded with a rift that grants them infinite power .


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## Firedancer

A multifaceted campaign and its spin offs:

Incursion of the Kai'ane
A mighty empire knows once in a 1000years the realms of this world and that of an evil world align, allowing these powerful creatures access to this world.  In the past they were thwarted, but at great cost to the land and peoples of the empire.

The last 1000 years have been spent preparing for the next Alignment (invasions of other lands for resources and power, to keep their edge - think Thay and Mulhorand mixed); it approaches now.

Core campaign; working for the empire gather together several items of power for the battle as Worldsmeet.

Sideline: assume the roll of mortal followers of invaders, try to scupper other plans (ran when player turnout was low).

Spinoff 1: The invasion was stopped, but at great cost to the Empire, their leadership decimated.  The PC's decide the future for this Empire.

Spinoff 2: Several items were recovered from the time of the alignment, artifacts used by the foe to strengthen the link to the world of the players.  This items are distributed and hidden away by the remnants of the leadership, to be kept safe until they can be destroyed.  Generations have passed since Core campaign and Spinoff 1, the players now take on new characters who explore the world as after the events of spinoff 1 have settled.  They soon discover mortal followers have been working for the other race, gathering the scattered items.

Spinoff 3: For low turnout: Players take on new characters within a country wherein the orignal PC's wrought much destruction and carnage.  Tales of the Red Axeman, Lionhead, Gravestalker and others make this a haunted city that may never recover from the scenes of slaughter it witnessed.


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## Firedancer

Woods of Urllondra (inspired by tome of magic, I think).
Players take on the role of denizens of an ancient and undisturbed elven forest.  They must defend their realm from humans, first a trickle, then a wave.  Taking the fight to the humans they learn of the truth; a demon of great power, imprisoned for centuries past has evolved its consciousness, slipping the bonds of the prison that entraps it.

For centuries it has dealt with lesser creatures, aiming for its freedom.  The leader of these humans, after decades of machination, is finally inplace to quash these elves and free its master.   Unless the PC's stop him first.


Storm of Darkness
Something huge wanders the land, destroying all life it comes across.  It's herald, a black roiling cloud, miles wide.  At the end of a rampage it seems to vanish, leaving roving undead in its tracks.

Finally the PC's get to meet it, and it is devastating.  In a vision the king learns of a weapon of power to destroy it and a race created to fight it.  The PC's must find and deal with these creatures and then return the weapon to their king.  The sword carries a terrible curse, as the wielder sinks into madness.  Will any sacrifice themselves to destroy the beast at the heart of the storm?


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## Firedancer

*Darkness Without*
The PCs live on a continent where life is near utopia.  The races live together in harmony, peaceful and prosperous.  People prize endeavour, honesty, generosity.  This has come about because of a little understood magical ritual that expels negative emotion and thoughts from the individual (supposedly a gift from The Serene).

Unbeknownst to the populace the ritual takes their emotions and deposits them into the pit.  Over the centuries these thoughts have coalesced and started to take a loose, shifting form.  The pit is now full.  Cracks appear in its surface, hairline fractures that enable the smallest of these creatures through to the peaceful surface world.

The PC's must cope with these creatures, discern what they are and where they are from and devise a means to overcome them, lest their nation descends into unending chaos.


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## Dannyalcatraz

A different take on superheroics:
*Aftermath*
It was almost like the comic books...a flash of light of unknown origins that was supposed to herald the beginning of the Era of the Gods...the superheroes who now walk among us.

But it wasn't.  It didn't.

In the comics, the only super powered beings were humans.  Maybe some aliens who come to Earth- but that's it!

Instead, the Event empowered individuals of all species...

Shortly after the first superheroes and their arch-enemies appeared in epic battle over the Football Hall of Fame in Canton, OH, a supervirus wiped out Branson, MO to the last tourist and performer.  A Galapagos turtle faster than a speeding bullet careened out of control at the London Zoo until it was killed. In Silicon Valley, a superintelligent colony of black mold got mental control of a school where helper animals were trained, and has had them build it an artificial body.

And then there was the Blue Whale that was seen flying over Hawaii, hunting krill with sonar powerful enough to kill...

Scientists estimate that 0.00001% of all members of all species have powers, but that small percentage is enough to wreak havoc.  Just because a creature gets powers doesn't neccessarily mean its fundamental nature and intellect is changed- a great white shark with bulletproof skin is still a great white shark.  Civilization is in chaos.

Something must be done...


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## Lord Zardoz

OMG Goblins:  A brutal tribe of goblins has recently turned away from Maglubieyt and started worshipping The Great Mother, a goddess of birth and fertility.  Oddly enough, it turns out that the embodiment of Birth and Fertility does not actually have any particular tenets other than "Go forth and Multiply".  In addition to some other unusual rituals have resulted in Goblins that essentially mature to breeding age within days.  The population surge has been impressive.

Save the Dragon from the Evil Princess:  A young and beautiful princess decided that she did not like her arranged marriage.  She also found an Orb of Dragonkind.  She has since denounced the kingdom of her betrothed as being wicked in the eyes of the Holy Gods, and the populace of her nation has agreed since Metallic Dragons are now frequently attacking that kingdom.

END COMMUNICATION


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## Dannyalcatraz

(Semi-Victorian)

*The Arboretum*

The PCs are invited to a sumptuous dinner at the home of world-reknown inventor, Jules G. Vernes-Wells, to be followed by news of his latest invention.  He's seeking both investors and publicity.  The meal features all kinds of exotic side-dishes with ingredients and spices from his greenhouse.

After the meal, he leads them to his laboratory- located in his house's freestanding greenhouse- where he unveils...a Time Machine!

Just as he starts his demonstration, a massive bolt of lightning strikes the greenhouse's lightning rod, overloading the Time Machine's field.  When the smoke clears, Verne-Wells is unconscious and his machine's gauges burned out.  At least its controls seem fine...

But around the party's attendees, the windows of the greenhouse no longer look out on Verne-Wells' estate.  Instead it looks out on a sunny, overgrown jungle- a veritable Garden of Eden.  Venturing out, the party finds the garden inhabited by beautiful, gentle humans who speak in an unknown "cooing" tongue.

That night, though, the dark side of Eden is revealed- in the wee hours, fierce, clawed humanoids well up from under the ground, taking with them some of the passive inhabitants of the garden...and Verne-Wells' unconscious form.

Yet Eden has an even more sinister secret- the garden's bestial raiders are but thralls to an even greater evil... a race of octopus-headed, brain-eating overlords of the dark world beneath!

The party attendees must not only attempt to rescue the unconscious inventors, they must also find a way back to the eve of their departure...

But was it in the past or the future?  And if they can't find the inventor?


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## blargney the second

Wow, I wanna play that one.


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## Dannyalcatraz

Heh- Thanks!  I'd love to run it!   Unfortunately, my current game group would never go for it- too many of them are FRP only guys, and too many of them are D&D only guys.  :\ 

That's the main reason I post in this thread- I've got a whole bunch of campaign ideas I probably can never use, but that are good enough that they _should_ be used.  Thus, I share with the world!  (Well, ENWorld, at least.)

Perhaps a good GM somewhere else can use my ideas to breathe life into his own game.

And in case anyone is unclear, Yes- I'm aware that the plot above is but a tweek of Wells' "The Time Machine," but there have been a number of people on these boards asking about "Victoriana RPG plots."

Consider Verne's stories- 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Mysterious Island, Robur the Conquerer, its sequel, Master of the World and, of course, Journey to the Center of the Earth are all IDEAL for cherrypicking for either campaign settings or adventure plots.

Wells' catalog is no different- War of the Worlds, The War in the Air, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The First Men in the Moon, Food of the Gods, The Shape of Things to Come are no less tasty.

All those and many more are ripe for the picking!


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## Dannyalcatraz

Other quasi-Victorian adventure ideas:

1) Solve a series of Jack the Ripper style killings (possibly a cult of C'thulhu worshipers?).

2) Find out who has been sinking ships in the Indian Ocean (again, devotees of someone like Dagon, or perhaps aggressive Atlanteans flexing their military might?)

3) Hunt down a pair of predators who are actual man-eaters by preference (like the lions upon which "The Ghost & The Darkness" movie was based).

4) Fight anarchists aboard a ship at sea.

5) Rescue someone lost in "deepest, darkest Africa."

6) Take down a ruthless Warlord or agitator who is raising a small army (conventional or covert operative or new tech) in some isolated backwater.  (Popular theme- used in a lot of pulp novels)

7) Take sides in a battle between imperialist forces & natives.  (Good reasons can be found on either side- the natives in question may not represent the wishes of the general populace, the Imperials may be brutal occupiers.)


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## Dannyalcatraz

*Hot Zone
* 
The PCs are all part of a UN Peace-Keeping mission in ____________.  From a nearby village comes word of an outbreak of a horrible and contagious disease, and one of the local Warlords has been hijacking Red Cross supply convoys for drugs & equipment.

The PCs are assigned to the next convoy, containing a slew of experimental meds from a multinational pharmacology conglomerate.

If and when they get past the Warlord's bandits, they find a village ravaged by a plague with an 85% mortality rate.  The medicines actually work, reducing the mortality rate of those infected to a still appaling but significantly lower 55%, and dropping the number of new infections to a mere trickle.  Eventually, the mystery disease stops infecting anyone else.

The plague now over, those the PCs saved are grateful.  A festival is held in their honor and to remember the dead.

...Then the dead start to rise up to slay the living!


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## Dannyalcatraz

The first 4 adventures from my defunct HERO 4Ed/Space: 1889 "supers" campaign.  (Note: some of the terms used below may be offensive, but they were the terms of common usage for the time period. No offense is intended, its just for flavor.)

*The Man with the Golden Sun* 

A state-of-the-art Babbage Machine (a.k.a. Difference Engine) has been stolen from the British military.  The guards who were present at the raid described assailants who defy imagination- a man who multiplied into a squadron before their eyes; a man in a suit of armor with steam-powered-pistons on the arms and legs, and nozzles that shot fire; and a "pair of Oriental bastards"- one whose dragon tattoo sprang to life, and another dressed like an Emperor who seemed to be the leader, shouting orders and seeming to cast spells.

Scant weeks later, a mirror-making factory gets hit- by the same group of miscreants.  Thousands of their best mirrors are stolen, and little else.

Then, later that same year, ships start dissapearing off of the coast of China.  Survivors report being approached by a small band of unarmed pirates, who, when the captains of their vessels laughed off the threats, signaled with a flag.  Seconds later, a burning light flashes out from a nearby island, igniting the ship and sending it to the bottom in mere minutes.

The PCs have been approached by the British government to go to the China seas to find out more, and if they can, defeat this upstart pirate Dr. Chun, the so-called Son of the Dragon.

*
The Opium War on Mars* 

The God Mars is back to rule his eponymous planet...

Someone has smuggled opium to Mars and the High Martians have developed a taste for it.  Unlike humans, opium acts as a highly addictive stimulant to High Martians, increasing their strength and endurance but with horrible withdrawal symptoms.  Some of the packets of opium are wrapped in paper bearing Chinese characters meaning "Dragon."

The addicts do hard labor for their fix, cutting down acres of their liftwood to be smuggled to Earth when they get what they crave, disrupting the official business of Earth's protectorates on Mars when they do not.

The flow of opium must be stanched, and the British Government feels the PCs are right for the job.  It seems that a few of Dr. Chun's minions have been spotted at a High Martian temple near the epicenter of most of the unrest.

*Claws of the Dragon* 

Unknown operatives of Dr. Chun's organization are raiding Fort Knox, the installation where his and his consort's corpses were being studied, and where his captured minions are being held.

The PCs, coincidentally, had been invited to inspect the base and talk to researchers about their experiences with the villains when the attack occurs.

Things are going just fine, when Chun and his consort rise up from their slabs to tip the balance!

*Warlord of the Air*

The Oriental Lich, Dr. Chun, has escaped into a base in the Himalayas, from whence he issued a challenge to the world- submit to his rule or be destroyed!

Refusing to bow to such a ridiculous demand, airships of 6 nations decend over his base- the British Aerial Ironclad _Boudicca_ carrying the PCs as luminaries...and potential combatants, should ground forces be needed.

As the warships rumble into striking distance, the weather becomes heavily clouded...

Just as the warships fire their first cannon shots, thousands of tiny one-man "sky-sleds" of Martian liftwood dive out of the cloud cover, dropping incendiary bombs upon the ponderous European airships...many of them scudding from the aerial battlefield without a mark (the cowards!), others plunging from the heavens like damned fallen angels.

Even the _Boudicca_ is driven from the sky.  Now, the ground forces must join in mortal combat for the fate of the world, but only the PCs have the ability to stand toe-to-toe with Dr. Chun and his minions!


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## The Green Adam

I love this - Excellent thread. See my recent thread on Weirdest Campaigns for other ideas. What? Ah oh, I'm on...

*The Justice Guild of Galinar*
Who can protect the world of Galinar from the forces of evil, dark magic and tyranny? None other then the Justice Guild! Imagine a medieval superhero team, not much different from most adventure parties except that their are few other adventurers. Those that are would also be considered superbeings. In addition, villains are not slain as often. I've run this format a few times with different variations and the results always rock. Plan to play D&D, but read alot of team comic books and watch Justice League Unlimited to get the feel right.

*Blast City Blues*
In high school and college my buddies and I actually made a comic book based on this campaign. The idea is 25 years ago or so, an alien spacefleet arrives in Earth orbit with a frightening message. They are being chased by terrible, world-conquering alien lizard-bugs. It has been determined that a new weapon for use against the baddies is only usable by Humans. The weapon is a special process that will give people Superpowers. Then, when the superhumans and their high tech alien allies are ready...nothing happens. The enemy never shows. Fast forward to the present and the sons and daugthers of the supers and the aliens are hanging out at the malls, going to the prom and battling each other. Inspired by _Teenagers from Outer Space_ and the anime that spawned it, this campaign had moments of serious character play, epic battles and then when no ones ready...the villains finally show.

My Star Trek adventures would be a thread onto themselves considering how often I used to run that game. I'll save that for another time.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

I saw that thread, Green Adam- there's some good stuff.

Why don't you post a link to it here?


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## The Green Adam

Dannyalcatraz said:
			
		

> I saw that thread, Green Adam- there's some good stuff.
> 
> Why don't you post a link to it here?




Why thx Danny, don't mind if I do!   

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=195775

A couple of people have mentioned Space:1889. I ran a superhero game with that system once (called Supers:1889 strangely enough). It was a blast.


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## Dannyalcatraz

That is such an awesomely worked out Vernesian/Wellsian setting!  I have something like 2 copies of the base book (hardcover) and some softcovers.  I will ALWAYS have a copy of it on my shelves.

Well, assuming I have shelves...


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## The Green Adam

Ever try Castle Falkenstein? Also an excellent source of alternative 19th century fantasy.


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## Dannyalcatraz

*Beverly Hills 90210 AD*

In a far flung future, a band of teenagers must cope with day-to-day issues about growing up atomic mutant humans in a Ch.xx.rlw dominated world.

Along the way, they must do things like defend their school's honor from attacks by the crosstown Invader HS (with Ch.xx.rlw kids), being (literally) 2 faced, and Hydrochloricaholism.


----------



## The Green Adam

In one of my earliest AD&D campaigns, my friend played a warrior-wizard who literally fell out of the sky. A Dwarven cleric rescued him from the burning crater he was in and the two became fast friends. The starfallen Mage-Knight never removed his armor as his body was horribly scarred by his arrival. Later in the campaign, it is discovered that our mysterious hero is a robot who crash to the world in an escape pod when his starcruiser was destroyed by enemy forces. When a band of goblin-like creatures with powerful magic weapons and their human leader arrived looking for him, the robotic hero's memory returns and he and his allies defeat the villains and located and destroy their ship. While this strands the robot on the D&D world, the party did manage to snag some high-tech armor, weapons and gear.

More to come...


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## Dannyalcatraz

(Inspired by the movies _Monster House_ and _The Bridge_)
*
The Hungry Bridge*

Two thousand years ago, 2 warring kingdoms signed a peace treaty, and in honor of it, they built a bridge across the sound to link their nations in peace.  It was an architectural and engineering triumph.

However, despite its beauty, it has been the scene of many a tragedy.  On average, 2 people a month die on it or fall from it to their deaths.  A scholar of some note who has been researching Peacearch Bridge, in honor of its latest anniversary is now the latest victim.

And 2 days after his burial, a package arrives, addressed to __________ personally.

"Dear _______, my most beloved and talented student,

I hardly know where to start, so I'll be brief- I believe the Peacearch Bridge is not just a site for tragedies, I believe it is haunted and is actually _causing_ the deaths to occur!  Please, meet me at its Western base this weekend- we must do something!"

The courier who delivered it said he was to deliver this letter _after_ the old man's death.

The party, intrigued by this mystery, goes to the Western shore of the bay, and at Midnight, they witness the scholoar's spectre!

"Thank the Gods you're here!..."

************

*Dead Hobbit Storage*

A so-called honest merchant with some allegedly shady ties has hired the PCs to hide his accountant from the Necromancer King's undead taxman for a while.

The Halfling bookkeeper, one N'ron Hubbard, knows a lot, and if he were taken into custody the merchant's economic empire would crumble.  The Imperial Revenant Service specialize in making people talk- even the dead- as long as the corpse hasn't been dead for too long.

So, the party and Hubbard are spirited away in the night in a pair of carriages...but are attacked by the merchant's rivals, hoping to kidnap the halfling and turn him into the IRS. Hubbard is caught in the crossfire and killed.

They must find a place to store the dead hobbit long enough to save their boss, and the boss's estate is definitely not dead hobbit storage (as he tells you many times, pointing out the lack of signage to that effect).

Where to go?

(Subplot- the boss is so stunned by their initial incompetence, he has opted for a scortched earth backup plan, and has hired an Embermage Assassin to wipe out the entire party...)


----------



## InVinoVeritas

*The Fourth Age:* The land was first colonized by the Dragons, who flew in from on high, bringing their servants: Kobolds, Lizardmen, Troglodytes. They ruled for a millennium, then were deposed by the Earth Spirits, sprouting from the ground, and carving the world by Halfling, Dwarf, and Elf. The land served the Earth Spirits for a thousand years, but was then conquered by Giants, rising from the sea. With them came the empires of Gnomes, Orcs, and Humans. Their empire has survived for ten centuries, and now they face a new threat: Fiends rising from volcanoes, deserts, and infiltrating cities, bringing forth Goblins, Bugbears, and Hobgoblins...


----------



## Grunk

*The Ol' Switcheroo* 

The party is from a small remote town high up in the mountains. One day, a bright light fills the sky and a horrible sound floats through the air. Rumors reach the village that the outside world is changed somehow; expeditions speak of cities of ghosts and of a black sky . Trade and communication ceases with areas outside of the mountain range. The PCs thus spend most of their low-levels doing standard PC stuff in the mountains (political intrigue, dungeon crawls, kill orcs, slaying dragons, rescuing princesses, etc.) All the while avoiding the outside world. 

Occassionaly, groups of ghosts wander in and ravage the towns (to be beaten back by PCs). When the PCs are high enough level, they explore the area outside of the mountain range and find that not only are all of its inhabitants ghosts, but the land itself is ghostlike as well; Everything looks slightly translucent and polarized with a strange billowing shadow. The sky and sun are black. Towns are literally ghost towns with ghost horses, ghost buildings, etc. They are attacked on sight by the ghost creatures (template can be applied to anything, giants etc.). 

Eventually, the PCs begin to notice more strange things. Through spying, they may discover that when unaware of being observed, the ghosts act "normally"; cooking, cleaning, drinking. In the outside world, everything is incorporeal. Treasure is near worthless since the PCs can't grab it. When PCs return to their home town, any dead PCs are there waiting for them. Unsure of how they got there but unhurt (no level loss). 

By this point, it should be obvious. The PCs, their land and all of its inhabitants are the ghosts while the outside world is alive. You'd probably have to institute some house rules in order to make it work (no ressurection/ raise dead from the begining, if PCs die in their homeland they are DEAD, Healing spells actually work as inflict spells though you don't have to tell them that.) It would take some serious constant misdirection to pull this off, but it could work well as a short minicampaign. Inspiration (heck, pretty much the whole idea) from The Third Policeman


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

From an as yet unpublished (heck, incomplete) short story of mine...

*The Tales behind the Fables, episode 1*

The door to the bar opens, revealing a dwarf with an odd-looking crossbow...and a few of his heavily armed buddies. 

The one in front growls, "I'm looking for Prince Charming!" his accent thick and tutonic.

One booze-brave soul speaks up, "Why should we help you, ya short bastid?"

The lead dwarf snaps a shot at the speaker, shattering his bottle...all without looking.

"The scoundrel prince knocked up our beloved Fraulein Schnee-Weiß!  He must be found to come back and be a vater vor his child!

"Prince Charming?  The one who married Cinderella?"

A second dwarf speaks up- "Aye- and Rapunzel Langenhaar before her, along with the Princesses Contraria (she of the tender sensibilities) and Grace before _her_.  The bigamist actually abandoned the woman who released him from his toadform curse"

"Said curse being placed upon him by his first wife, Arcania." a third dwarf, chiming in.

The first growls "We seek him out, over hill, over dale- through country after country...but we are not trackers and the world is vast.  Will any among you join the quest to track down this philanderer for a taste of...dwarven gold?  Will you help us bring justice to his children?"

Will you?


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

D20Modern or Spycraft + Car Wars + GTA

Simply use D20M or Spycraft to roleplay GTA type PCs in the world of Car Wars.  Use the Car Wars rules for your vehicle combat.

All you need to do is change the armor & ammo to D20M/Spycraft standards.


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## Dannyalcatraz

Not so much a campaign idea, but a different way of starting up the party...

I saw the ads for Stonehenge, the new boardgame from Titanic Games that is really 5 games from 5 designers using the same physical board & pieces, and I thought you could do the same thing with the PCs.

The Game-master generates a set of stats (using the method of his choice), and lets each Player design his PC using those stats, freely re-arranging them to fit his concept.

Its similar to a point based system, but less flexible.  It will force the Players to be creative.


----------



## The Green Adam

Speaking of starting a party...

In high school I had a reputation, both loved and loathed, for beginning campaigns 'En Media Res' (excuse my spelling at 2:30 AM). In the middle of the action.

Once adventure of Star Wars began when I said to one player, "That was close". The player's response: "What was?".

Me: "That shot."

Him: "They're still shooting at me?"

Me: "Well it was the govenor's wife."

Him:"Details, details. Am I closer to the door or the window? I want to know what I'm jumping through."


Another campaign began with my describing a player just waking up in his room and asking exactly what he did. When his feet touch the floor, his feet got wet. Between that and the rocking motion he realized he was on a ship. As he went about his business, the water on the floor rose, getting deeper and deeper. The ship was sinking. Weee!


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Use the *British Murder Mystery* model:

Start the campaign with a possible murder that might alternatively be a suicide, and the PCs are hired to figure out what happened.

Then, as they investigate, each NPC they encounter has some kind of quirk, habit or some such that is, in reality, an adventure hook.  Perhaps the Butler is a high-ranking member of a Secret Society, or the Scullery Maid is the Lord's sister (unbeknownst to both), or the senior Huntsman is a spy.

If the PCs solve the murder/suicide, great...but if they get sidetracked by one of the NPCs, also great!


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Inspired by Mark Z. Danielewski's _House of Leaves_, the _Poltergeist_ & _Hellblazer_ stories and movies, and the beautiful, beautiful setting from _13 Ghosts:_

The PCs are asked to investigate a haunted house, and shortly after entering it, they realize this is going to be a problem.  Not only is it haunted, its bigger inside than out.  Worse, its internal geometry is constantly shifting- rooms that you just exited dissapear.  The room you're in keeps getting bigger.  Or smaller.

Even the passage of time between rooms may differ...

Along the way, the party should encounter not only the beings that haunt the place, but also those who chose to investigate the house before them.  Some are still competent but others are quite mad.

Run correctly, this could be an adventure that starts off at lvl 1 and goes to level 20.

(It will also be loved by players who hate to map, and hated by those who love to map.)


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Refining something I posted in another thread:

Air-Pirates of the Serpent-Spine Archipelago

A group of brigands living in the Serpent-Spine Archipelago have trained large predatory birds which they use to ride & raid passing sea vessels.

Using giant sized eagles or osprey (any giant-sized waterfowl will do equally well, including Albatross or Pellicans), they start by attacking from the air, dropping large stones from altitude as an opening gambit... following with arrows and fire if surrender is not swift.

Once just a hazard of doing business in the southern reaches of the Starfall Sea, they have added new tricks to their repetoir, including huge floating wooden platforms made from the hulls of ships they've taken,  from which to launch attacks away from their bases...extending their power inexorably outward from the Archipelago towards the mainland...

(The concept works just as well if the pirates are riding giant penguins, Orcas or other marine life and attacking from below.)


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

The 3 Ages of Nova Luna
*
Age 1:  Age of Exploration
*
The XLIHTRE, a technologically advanced race decided to satisfy their curiosity about the universe around them by exploring remotely via completely automated interstellar starships the size of small moons.  Each was sent out in a different direction on a mission to collect data and bring back samples of flora and fauna from many worlds.  To that end, they also developed a (reversible) technology that compresses matter to 1/10000th of its normal size- a technology applied not only to the ships' supply of fuel and spare parts, but also to the specimens they were to collect.

One ship found a region full of worlds unlike any others- worlds where magic still worked- and began collecting specimens.  The New Moon was a source of wonder and fear as the lights of its specimen collecting ray lanced down from the heavens, leaving behind naught but hemispherical gouges in the earth where they struck.

Inside, specimens were nested in habitats that resembled that of their native world, and eventually, .  Unfortunately, the specimen containment technology had been constructed by a company that was controlled by organized crime, and the resultant machines had so many corners cut that the containmemt fields began to collapse shortly after having to deal with magic...and the specimens got free.

They began to explore their environment, expand into it, and inevitably, have conflicts.

(Note: at their new scale, PCs would find the nanomachines responsible for the upkeep of the starship would be as great a threat as the Replicators of Stargate SG-1.)

*
Age 2:  Age of Empires
*

The ship has been overrun by microscopic empires that now cover 95% of the available space.  Aerial races claimed the shelving. Races used to subterranean life have invaded the wiring.  Some of _them_ even mine the refined metals from the wires...

And then one scholar discovers the secret of the collection ray and its ability to shrink what it targets...and asks whether it can be _reversed._  (Whether it can or not should be answered by the DM before even running this game- either has consequences.)

This is the kind of knowledge that shakes the foundations of nations!  Wars will be fought & assassination attempts will surely follow those who seek to possess that knowledge.  Lives hang in the balance!

*
Age 3:  Age of Arrival
*

After thousands and thousands of years, the ship has finally returned to the XLIHTRE homeworld.

How will the ship's creators deal with their rampant specimens?

Will they welcome them?  Will they send in the fumigators?

Are they even still alive?  Perhaps the intervening eons have erased the XLIHTRE from the realm of the living, leaving the populace of Nova Luna on their own on a completely alien world.

***

Players can play in any era- each has its own charm.

Are they among the first to be scooped up by the ship, participating in the exploration of the new world?

Or are they caught up in the struggle to control the technology of the collection rays 1000 years later?

Or are they among the first to be released on alien soil?

This campaign also allows the DM to mix and match critters & classes from various sources- just open up your D20 sourcebooks and go nuts- DarkMatter, Star Wars, DragonStar, etc. are all fair game.

Wookie Warmages?  Check!  Kender Jedi?  Check! Sheshayan Ninja/Ghost Face Killers?  Check!


----------



## blargney the second

*applause* Another fine specimen, Danny!


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## Dannyalcatraz

What the heck...there are some good ideas _floating_ around this thread:

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=200375


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## Dannyalcatraz

An expanded version of something I proposed to Mitchbones some time ago, based on Larry Niven's "Night on Mispec Moor" (Niven's "Night of the Living Dead"- a soldier finds himself alone on a bloody battlefield...and the dead soldiers around him begin to come back to life when the sun sets), _Army of Darkness_, and _Tremors_*:
*
The Standard of Orcus*

A group of travellers (including the PCs) is beset by a group of brigands, and flee across a moor that had once been the site of a major battle a hundred years ago.

The fleeing travellers are surrounded, however, and forced to fight.  Despite being outnumbered, they manage to find a small, slightly rocky hillock where they form a circle and drive the brigands back- some using rusted weapons scrounged from the ground- just as the sun sets.  As the last brigand flees, will-o'-wisps appear at the edge of the moor to prey on _them_, forcing the travellers to huddle on the hillock for safety.

However, blood from this skirmish has fallen on a scrap of cloth partially buried in the dirt on the side of the hillock.  The cloth is a ragged battle standard devoted to Orcus- the blood reawakens its dire power...and all across the field, dead soldiers claw their way up from the dirt and head for the location of the banner!

And the battle standard is now grasped by an undead commander of no mean skill!

Can the party figure out why the dead have risen up...and can they undo this evil before it kills them?

*The action sequences in _Tremors_ should dictate some of the action: some of the undead should attack from directly below the party, and the battlefield itself should contain other rocky outcroppings similar to the one the party starts on, to replicate elements of the final battle in this movie


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

A mini-campaign

*The Apiary Masters of Cliffdale*: 

Cliffdale, a remote halfling village situated in a plain surrounded by high mountains gains acclaim and great wealth for their singular export...honey.

Its not just any honey...the town's various honey producers each have uniquely flavored blends, with such fanciful label names as "Royal Treant" or "Shambling Mound Morsels," sent out along caravan trade routes to be sold at ruinously high prices...as much as 5P per jar!

Eventually, this flow of wealth draws unwelcome attention.  Groups of brigands have attacked the caravans bearing the tasty gold, leaving few Caravan Masters willing to risk their livelyhoods for less than 85% of the price of the honey.

Instead, the halflings opt to hire their own deliverymen, chosen as much for their honesty and integrity as their martial and magical might, and at much more reasonable prices.  Since the bottles are so small, its easy for a group of adventurers to deliver the product to its final destinations without being noticed, and with almost no drop in deliveries.

However, the brigands know the money still flows to Cliffdale since the rare honeys still show up  at the best tables in the land.  They decide to attack Cliffdale itself, first in their seperate little bands, turned away by doughty halfling defenders and some of their hired men.

Then one man unifies the brigands into a large, unified fighting force with his promises of vast wealth and easy living once they learn the secret of Cliffdale.

When this force attacks, the secret is revealed...the halflings have actually have a variety of bees at their disposal sent out to gather pollen from all kinds of flora (including the sentient or mobile ones), including Giant Bees that visit the largest and most dangerous plant life around.

And some have even been trained as sentries and soldiers...and even steeds.

Cliffdale has now been under siege for over a year.  One side or the other must yield soon...

In this mini-campaign, the PCs take on the role of 1) Natives of Cliffdale and/or 2) Mercenary Adventurers hired by the Apiary Masters for delivery & defense, or 3) Brigands.


----------



## Nuclear Platypus

*tape begins to play*

Good morning, Mr. Hunt. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, involves the recovery of a valuable item designated "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." You may select any two team members, but it is essential that the third member not be a muggle. You have forty-eight hours to complete the mission before it goes live. As always, should any member of your team be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow all knowledge of your actions and J. K. Rowling will press charges with extreme prejudice. This message will self-destruct in five seconds. 

*cue Mission: Impossible intro*


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

*INTO THE ARCANOSPHERE*

For D20Modern/Dark*Matter/Urban Arcana or any supers game.

Mysterious phenomena have been documented by media with increasing regularity.  Unusual creatures being discovered in fishing nets that have no known relation to anything else in the sea...crop circles appearing while someone is filming...a waterfall of beer spouting from thin air...

Then scientists at Miskatonic University (  why not?) make an amazing announcement: Magic is real- its force is measurable by science and is either generated or focused by particular minerals.  In fact, they claim, the Earth has a natural arcanoactive field that varies in intensities, just like its magnetosphere.  Currently, that field is increasing, and scientists would like to know why.

To that end, they announce their intent to launch multiple expeditions into the world's deeper cave systems to get measurements, and are looking for volunteers...

The PCs are among the lucky few to be chosen, and delve into a cavern system in France, where they discover that not only are the scientists correct, but that there is a subterranean "fantasy" world that is slightly out of phase with what we call the "real world," and that is beginning to manifest itself with increasing regularity.

Sources & tools to consider: Second World Publication's Second World Sourcebook, Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, Flash Gordon, the John Carter of Mars and Slaine books, the Eternal Champion books by Michael Moorcock.


----------



## exile

The Dying of the Dwarves

The dwarves once ruled the entire island-continent of Australia from their capitol in the land mass' central mountains. Long at war with the goblinoids, there numbers dwindled such that their king (at the urging of an evil, deceptive wizard) activated an ancient doomsday machine. The doomsday machine (true to the wizard's word) destroyed the goblinoids (mostly), but it also destroyed the dwarven cities and surrounding lands. The dwarven royal family (and their close advisors and soldiers) fled to the west coast where the evil wizard offered them succor, ultimately becoming the duergar and derro. The other great dwarven families fled to the east coast, pursued by the remnants of the goblinoids. Realizing that that their numbers were failing, the "good" dwarves have sent out a call for mercenaries, indentured servants, convict laborers, etc. from pretty much the rest of the world. These people (and the dwarves of course) are the PCs who must build new cities along the west coast, build a great wall along the western border of the desert created by the doomsday machine, venture into the desert to reclaim lost  dwarven treasures, and avoid duergar/derro pirates raiding from the opposite side of the continent.


----------



## ssampier

Dannyalcatraz said:
			
		

> For Urban Arcana or other Modern Fantasy setting, a reverse version of _Dream Park_ or _Westworld_:
> 
> A "20th Century Waterdeep" setting, in which adventuring would be the new televised sports or reality shows- "Survivor: Myth Drannor," "The Great Race: Dragonspine Mountains," "Monday Night Dungeon-delving," "The Graveyard 500" and so forth. PCs would either be pros or amateurs, depending upon the setting. Think "Rollerball" on magical steroids.




I'm there - hopefully we can use firearms.


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## Dannyalcatraz

*Worlds within worlds within worlds...*

Inspired by the movies Cube/Hypercube/Cube Zero, Tesseracts, Dr. Who, fractals, and the description of the Abyss, this is less of a campaign or adventure idea and more of a method for randomizing a large/infinite space.

Buy a Classic 3x3 Rubic's Cube, a 4x4, or if you're adventurous (read: EVIL), a Rubic's Professor (the one with 25 blocks per side) (http://www.rubiks.com/).  Number each block face, so each now has a color and a number, such as Red 15, or Yellow 24.  On the Professor, there are 150 spaces.

Randomize the Cube- your party starts in a room/space represented by a square of your choosing, say, Blue 13, which should be face up (parallel to the surface of the table).  As the DM, you design a set of encounters in the space designated Blue 13- its size, occupants, etc, like you would any room of a typical dungeon, or a country or even a plane. There are 6 exits from that space, 1 to each side of the square (the cardinal points in 2 dimensions) plus one each "down" and "up," represented by the other sides of the Cube.  When the party completes their objectives in Blue 13 and tries to leave that area, manipulate the square on the cube any *odd* number of times (you determine how many based on your campaign design).  They must leave via one of the 6 exits, which will take them to another space, which will have a color & number which will cross-reference with your notes.  Leaving via the 4 cardinal exits is easy- you go to the square in that direction.  "Up" and "Down" may be randomized by any method you use.  I plan on using 2d4- the first one determines in which direction I rotate the cube, the second, the cardinal direction through which the party exits.  Double 1's means the party goes to the corresponding square on the opposite (face down) side of the Cube, and Double 4's means the party picks a square on the face-up side of the Cube.

The campaign ends (if you so choose) when the Cube is manipulated to having all 6 sides with single colors.

Obviously, with only 150 squares and billions of face combinations, you'll probably need to do some restocking...but that's the easy part.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

For Supers campaigns:

*Scions*

The World's greatest hero, __________ (your setting's equivalent of Superman) has been righting wrongs for nearly 100 years, seemingly ageless, not slowing down in any way.  It was an era of peace- he was the only super-being on the planet, so  it was easy for him.  Nobody knows his identity or how he got his powers.  A stoic man, he barely talks to the press.  All that anyone knows is that he has been an unwavering force for good, despite his...alienness.

Then, one day as he was delivering another batch of miscreants to prison, he seemed to be in agonizing pain.  After dropping them off, he rocketed into the sky...and just as he reached the upper reaches of the atmosphere, he dissapeared in a star-bright explosion that leveled much of the city below, and causing skies around the world to take an unusually pinkish tinge for over a week.

Then, things got strange...

As the cleanup began, other people began to exhibit powers beyond the realm of human abilities- super strength, speed, flight...and many more besides.

As far as science can tell, somehow, __________'s genes survived his mysterious detonation, which dispersed globally via microscopic shards of his body, imbedding themselves in people around the world.  Thus, his genetic information infected these people, creating newly empowered beings, called Scions of _________ in the press.

You are a Scion.  You have the power to change history, for good or ill.

And, BTW- the reason for the explosion remains a mystery to this day.  Nobody has claimed to be the one responsible, and neither detectivework nor science has revealed a satisfactory answer.


----------



## Asmor

Here's my framework for my demon hunting E6 campagin: Spanish inquisition meets Men in Black meets Pulp Fiction.


----------



## Carpe DM

Played (all in my home-made world of Arva, see the sig).

_The War of Naming_

The blackscaled soldiers of the Targolid Imperium swarm over the borders.  The Unnamed Horror has risen again to lead armies of living siege engines.  And in the small town of Westmarch in the Northern Marches, quiet country folk step out of the Sobbing Ghost Tavern and into legend.  Played from levels 1-19.

_The Messene Crusades_

Following the defeat of the Targolid Imperium in the War of Naming, the Tetrarch of Selene declares a crusade to recapture Messian, the Holy City.  Knights, pilgrims, and madmen mix with the citizens of Holy Messian, and the result is something no-one could have foreseen.
Played from levels 1-15.

_HeimskringlaSaga_

Hung from the ash-tree / gently swaying
Carved on the chest-bone / was the corpse-knot
Bound to One-Eye / Father, far-seer
We his Einherjar / He our Betrayer
Set sail the Naglfar / nail-boat of horror
Then sing the sword-song / hail the world's ending

Played from level 1-8, ongoing.

_The Graveyard Shift_

"Excellence, Integrity, Courage, Community, Service"
- Official Motto, Kingsbridge City Watch

"Why does this crap ALWAYS happen on the graveyard shift?"
- Unofficial Motto, Third Watch (aka The Graveyard Shift)

Played from level 1-10.

_The Divine Comedy_

"Nobody speaks more of nationhood and unity, and has less, than the cities of the Iostian League of Selene."

The players must survive the murky and shifting factions of Iostian politics -- no easy feat when they themselves are heretics, and the supporters of Emperor and Tetrarch are at each other's throats.  

(Modeled on medieval Italy.  Serious aside: It turns out there really have been D&D adventurers in real life -- look up "condottieri" in Wikipedia).

Played from level 1-5 (ongoing).

_Thirty Pieces of Silver_

Judas Iscariot.  Brutus.  Magneto.  Sometimes the fates decree that a soul must be damned so that the world may be saved.  Anti-heroes go where angels -- and paladins -- could never tread.

In planning.


best,

Carpe


----------



## Shades of Green

*Frozen Age:* A magical experiment gone awry has hurled the world into an ice age. As glaciers cover the old cities and blizzards terrorize the surviving populance, terrible creatures of old - mammoths, saber-tooth cats and cave-bears - roam the land. Can the heroes brave the dangers of the frozen wasteland, dig deep into the ice-choked ruins of the old cities, and recover old artifacts to bring Spring back once more, and all of this before the (now strengthened) Gods of Ice bring the world entirely within their grip?

*Evolutionary Crossroads:* In a primeval stone-age, the heroes - warriors, hunters and shamans of their primitive culture - must fight off the dreaded alien Illithids and their infernal plans to interfere with Mankind's evolution (aiming to turn men into domesticated animals fit for Illithid consumption, ceremorphosis and menial tasks). Could the brawn and brains of brave cavemen defeat the otherworldly technology of the Illithid masterminds?

*Decline and Fall:* The Empire has collapse under the pressure of Goblinoid invasions from without and a bloody struggle for the Mithril Throne from within. Now, Goblinoids and ruffians run rampart through the once peaceful land; cities lie in semi-ruin; the economy has collapsed due to the massive disruption of communications and trade; and minor warlords crave out their own pocket-empires out of the ruins of the Empire. Chaos reigns; opportunity abounds.

*Into the Stars:* The year is 2063 and Humanity is under attack by the Grays and their assorted alien mercenaries. The PCs, Human-Gray hybrids liberated from a crashed alien craft 20 years ago, posses a unique advantage: their brain structure allows them to establish the mind-machine link necessary to pilot an alien ship both in normal space and in Jumpspace. Now, piloting a captured alien craft, the PCs are sent to explore the universe, gathering information about the Gray empire, looking for technology which could be reverse-engineered, and seeking allies against the Grays. But could they unearth and defeat the Illithid masterminds who hold the real power behind the thrones of the Grays?

*Thawed Horrors (one-off):* PCs are Star Marines sent to investigate the loss of contact with a colony on a frozen world in the Outer Rim. They are armed with the pinnacles of Humanity's martial technology and posses the best combat training in Known Space, but could they survive the machinations of an Aboleth Savant, older than time itself, who was awoken from eons of frozen slumber by the colony's cursory terraformation attempts? Opposition would include various abberations frozen (and thawed!) along with the Aboleth, colonists possesed by the creature's mental powers, and Skum bred in haste by the monstrosity, not to mention the Aboleth Savant himself...


----------



## Herobizkit

RangerWickett said:
			
		

> *The Long Road:* The modern world that we know has a hidden partner, Gaia, the realm of the fey and the magical, hidden from us for over a thousand years.



This prompted a memory that I may or may not have had.

I recall there being some kind of made-for-tv movie that was supposed to be about three fantasy words existing simultaneously in the same space, so that anything that happened on one affected the other two.  I don't think it made it to air or, if it did, I clearly missed it.  Does this ring a bell for anyone?


----------



## Shades of Green

*Broken Times:* A millennium ago, the Ancients have fought a terrible war among themselves using magic and steamtech so powerful that, once they were done, reality itself was twisted fractured: hordes of abberations now live where wildlife used to be; magic works in unexpected ways near spell-blasted ruins; ancient machines roam the countryside, fulfilling orders which are now a thousand years out of date; and the dead sleep uneasily in their tombs, stirred by residual magical energies left over from bygone spells. It is now time for the PCs to rebuild civilization, to seek out the treasures of the old world, and to right ancient wrongs.


----------



## GreatLemur

Carpe DM said:
			
		

> _The Divine Comedy_
> 
> "Nobody speaks more of nationhood and unity, and has less, than the cities of the Iostian League of Selene."
> 
> The players must survive the murky and shifting factions of Iostian politics -- no easy feat when they themselves are heretics, and the supporters of Emperor and Tetrarch are at each other's throats.
> 
> (Modeled on medieval Italy.  Serious aside: It turns out there really have been D&D adventurers in real life -- look up "consiglieri" in Wikipedia).



Aw, damn, that sounds awesome.  I've been thinking for a while that medieval Italy would make a great source for a campaign: Take the religious corruption of Rome, the cutthroat mercenary families and artistic revolution of Florence, and the canals of Venice, and you've got a hell of a cool D&D setting.  Really annoyed me when I found out that Scott Lynch beat me to it (and, good Christ, it's a cool book).

But anyway, I don't think I'm seeing what you saw in the "consiglieri" article.  Were you thinking of something else?


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## funkysnunkulator

adventure in a single sentence?!?!?!?!?!?!

beer run: absolutely NOTHING could POSSIBLY go wrong for the party because this adventure is exactly what you think it is......


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## Carpe DM

Condottieri

Sorry, I'm a putz.

And, if any of you are Arthur Conan Doyle fans, and want to see the source material, check out Sir John Hawkwood and The White Company.


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## funkysnunkulator

don't be sorry. however, feel free to be a putz!! whatever blows your hair back!! hahahahaha!!

the links aren't really understood. what is the adventure here? a mercenary thing?


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## Dannyalcatraz

Based on a short story I was writing but will probably never complete...
*
Not So Charmed *(an "all-ages" mini-campaign)

The party is hunting Prince Charming, a man they now know to be a gifted Illusionist (or Enchanter) grifter, con-man, philanderer and bigamist (for the record, his title is real, but he gambled his birthright away to his brothers). Hired by a group of seven angry dwarven miners who seek to avenge the defilement of their beloved Schneweiß, the party soon finds that Charming has left a trail of broken hearts and empty royal treasuries all across Grimmlandia.

The party's mission: bring him back alive!  The dwarves want him to do the honorable thing by their mistress.

Unfortunately, others left in this fallen prince's wake are not so concerned with Prince Charming's health.  Princess Anne Phibia (his first wife), Princess Longhair, and Princess Narco-Lepsis (and several other jilted royals) have all hired their own bounty hunters, and a group of his non-royal victims (organized by a poor, bamboozled scullery maid who thought she had been rescued from her wicked stepmother & step-sisters) pooled their resources to do likewise as well...

None, however, will stoop to making a widow of another of his victims.

The sands are trickling through the hourglass as the various bounty hunters pursue the landless lothario..._who will get to him first?_


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## Dannyalcatraz

*Bavarian Stormtroopers in King Arthur's Court*

A small force of Nazis seeking the Spear of Destiny accidentally rip a hole in time & space, winding up in a fantasy world.

Initially, their superior firepower gives them a huge advantage, but since they have no supply lines nor any engineers/inventors, they can't replenish their ammo and fuel.  One of the smarter commanders, the dour Oberst Sigfried "Sauer" Ramm of the "Brennendes Augen" Armor Division, decides to consolidate his gains with his remaining power, taking over a mid-sized city-state before they completely run out of supplies.

Once the takeover is complete, the remaining firepower is on display as a potential threat- kept up as best they can, but rarely used.

In the meantime, they use their newfound authority to muster world-specific military forces in order to bring the 3.5 Reich to this new world...


----------



## Kheti sa-Menik

*The greatest of all treasures:* Millenia ago, seemingly at the order of a god, the nearly immortal Elves left our world, never to return.  Today, an ancient template, a murdered brother's journal, and the prophecies of a long dead wizard are all that guide the PCs on a world-spanning treasure hunt for a secret that could shake the foundations of faith in (the campaign world).  The Church wants them silenced, a powerful vampire-like enemy seeks the prize for himself, other treasure hunters want a piece of the action, and gangsters seek the power that such a secret would give them.  
Can the PCs survive these challenges and best their enemies to lay claim to an ancient treasure beyond all imagining and expose the secrets of the Noble Ones?


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## Dannyalcatraz

This thread is chock full of great campaign ideas:

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?p=4043977#post4043977


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## Dannyalcatraz

*The Fool's Golden Child*

It is said that "the First King was a lucky soldier."  Seth Trollslayer was that lucky soldier.  He took advantage of the fog of a war 'twixt Man & Trolls to place himself on the throne of a small kingdom in the northern mountains and take a beautiful shapeshifting sorceress as his queen.

Now, King Seth has had time to raise a family.  All three of his sons are strong, quick, and charismatic young men- perfect leadership material.  If only the youngest had the wit and wisdom required to be truly great...

Nevertheless, the youngest son took up the reins of a small company of his father's men- his long time personal arms trainer among them as his Sergeant- and regularly went out to patrol the kingdom's borders.

It was on one such patrol that a messenger arrived from his mother, the Queen, bringing word of the death of his father and 2 older brothers...and ordering his assassination.  The word was given while he was away from the camp for...recreation.  Alone among the company, the Sergeant was loyal to the young prince, and he died killing off the would-be assassins.

It seems that the family his father "displaced" had one member he didn't know about- the former King's youngest brother- whose lifelong love was the Queen whom Trollslayer married.  She ordered her entire family killed to be reunited with the long-lost flame she once thought dead, restoring him to his rightful throne.

The good but dim young Trollslayer knows none of the reasons behind the attempted assassination.  He also doesn't really know the way home.  Now he seeks his way in the world, his long-term goal to restore himself to the throne his father once held.  He is quick to show anyone who is curious the birthmark that graces his left (nether) cheek that marks him as King Trollslayer's Scion, in order to get them to help him regain what he lost, never realizing that his birthmark also marks him for death.

Can the party restore him to the throne?  Should they?  And is a Shapeshifting Sorceress Queen who kills her family the kind of person who needs to be on or near the throne of a small mountain kingdom in the North?


----------



## Squire James

Bane in a Box:  A Forgotten Realms Tale

The adventurers find Bane... in a box.  Literally.  Need I say more?


----------



## theskyfullofdust

An old AD&D game I ran started off with the 1st level PCs, each with either a cursed item or a curse upon them, meeting for an appointment with a powerful mage who could remove the curse.

In return for this, the mage sent them on tasks, the completion of each one removing a curse.


----------



## roguerouge

*The Chronicles of Dior:* Enjoy the wackiness that ensues when a shepherd's daughter tries to convince the world to worship the goddess of luck.


----------



## krissbeth

roguerouge said:
			
		

> *The Chronicles of Dior:* Enjoy the wackiness that ensues when a shepherd's daughter tries to convince the world to worship the goddess of luck.




GOOD luck.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Thought I'd post a link this older, similar thread:

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=180373&page=1


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## Dannyalcatraz

Inspired again by nature to post in my favorite thread:  All parts of the brugmansia "tree" (technically, its a shrub, but since it often exceeds 20' in height, who cares?), aka Angel's Trumpet, are highly toxic.

*The Brugmansia Strain* 

A druid outraged by the incursions so-called intelligent races were making into the wilds began to use his Awaken spell to make sentient guardians of certain animals and plants, especially plants- no one would see them coming until it was too late.

Among his favorites- his force of walking brugmansia.  Tough and hardy, they survive many climates some other green guardians couldn't...and because of their toxicity, almost nothing feeds on them.

Thus relatively impervious to most predators, they fear little but those who come with fire and axe.

And those they poison by dropping their leaves and blossoms into water supplies...with none the wiser.

A beautiful city full of awakened (but currently dormant) brugmansia and devoid of human life- as well as any carrion eaters- is the setting within which the party of PCs find themselves, trying to unravel the mystery of how the town died.


----------



## Morpheus

*The Dawning of a New Age* 

The Seneschal of Thronehold has sent out a call for agents from the various nations and factions of Eberron to re-unite under the empty Throne of Galifar. The first task: Find the hidden heir(s?) to the throne and bring them to Thronehold. The PCs will not only be fighting monsters and other nasties, but other agents who wish to prevent them from fulfilling their goal. Their first stop: An old church in Karnnath that holds the tomb of a knight with the first clue tattooed on his corpse.


----------



## Loonook

Well... This could be difficult.  Or easy; either way.  Most of these will be Modern, as I figure it would just be easier to give highlights of my last 3 years or so and not run down all of the campaigns.

*Legends of the Three-and-a-Half Samurai:* A game without a group, still think this one will play well.  Mid-level, Small PCs only, a setting that is to Asia what Tomorrowland is to the Future.  A fun one to run... we hope.

*Riders of the Plains:* Horsies and Hijinx.  One player dies 18 times in 15 sessions due to poor play/negligence.  A lot of setting, but most people wanted to hack and slash.  Campaign called on account of scattered group before 'plot' comes into play.  I blame this one on alcohol and the prison cell atmosphere of our then gaming room.

*Year of the Pretender:* Thirteen leaders attempt to take over a large city with some large problems.  Players back one of the Pretenders to the throne, and hilarity ensues.  Doppelgangers, Shadows, and the occasional Celestial dominate.  Big ending in a battle between two demigods.  Day is won by a young housewife who happens to be carrying the true heir.  A Wyrm is defeated by a paladin performing shield bashes... I still don't know how it happened.

*Hit the Road to Dreamland (D20 Modern):* Post-WW2 US, a bunch of plots; 1st game ended due to apathy.  2nd game currently being staged; we're wondering how it's to come out.

*A Hard Rain (D20 Modern):* 1964.  Watch as college students get involved in affairs of the heart and fight against madness, only to prevent the coming apocalypse as brought on by three young fiends trying to make their way in this work-a-day world.  Characters include a painting turned soldier, a folk-singer turned revenant, and a girl and her dog.

*Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine (D20 Modern):* 1976.  On the eve of the Bicentennial, a group of questionable ethics stops the opening of a Gate to Heaven.  Almost.  A ghostly wannabe mafioso, a former gun-runner, and an itinerant magus come to the show. 

*Waiting for My Man (D20 Modern):* 1984.  Sex, Drugs, and Dwarven Punk.  Death isn't just a reality; it seemed to be a PC all on its own.  Three runs, 27 character deaths . . . extremely unlucky for all involved.

*As Yet Untitled Game (d20 Modern):* 1990s.  The family of Aasimar who pray together slay together.  Homeless holy warriors, a guy who is too 'in love' with electronics to be trusted, a Fisher King in the making, a young ectomancer with hormones rivaling arcana, and a strung-out fairy as possible lynch-pin to the whole deal.  Yeah; even as the DM I'm just as confused as you are on how this one's coming out.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

*Record of the Logos War*

In a time before memory, powers unknown have created a world in which all was designed for physical recreation.  Certain adventure scenarios were acted out between live beings and androids (or homonculus or fully humanoid Warforged, for a true fantasy setting).

Then the creators died.  The planet's AI, however, lived on, and sought out inspiration for new scenarios, dispersing probes throughout the universe.  When it found Earth through its remote drones, it scoured the planet's fantasy fiction for ideas.

Now, the planet is dotted with cities plucked from the works of a variety of writers- Haven, Tanelorn, Lankhmar, Sanctuary, Ankh-Morpork and others dot the world...all rully populated with androids (including the heroes).

Now the world just needs players, and it has reprogrammed its drones to make teleporter rings to bring them to the game...

(PCs may be either be androids, homonculi/Warforged, or sentient beings from whatever race that stepped through a T-port ring.)

***

I can't take credit for this next one- it was originally proposed by a mod (Umbran, as I recall) who posted it in a thread about games centered around animals rather than humanoids.

He proposed that you could run a campaign in which the players PCs are all animals that we would normally consider to be supporting NPCs- familiars, animal companions, special mounts, etc.

One of their number is "The Annointed One" and they have all been called to gather around these humanoids in order to achieve their goals.  Essentially, the humans become the companions.

<_Edit_>

I found it!

(From this thread: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=225107&page=1&pp=15 )


> *Umbran Post #29*
> He's still young, and doesn't know it yet, but the kitten is actually The Golden Cat, a prophesied cat hero who has his own quest, and will save the world for all catkind. There will be a string of events throughout the campaign that the party will thoroughly misunderstand, where the cat's adventures impinge upon the human world.
> 
> Just like a human hero, along the way he'll pick up his own companions that start showing up and hanging around (these may include any mounts or Animal Companions the PCs may have - they think they have Human Companions...). You get the idea. One always talks about how the PCs are not the only adventuring party in the game world, right? Well, in a magical world, why do they all have to be human?
> 
> Read Tad Williams' Tailchaser's Song, or Gabriel King's The Wild Road and The Golden Cat for references.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Lifted from Simon R. Green's Haven stories (featuring Hawk & Fisher):

*On the Street of Gods*

The city of Haven has a street that is only a half mile long on the maps, but cannot be traversed end to end in less than a week...Its spacially warped length is devoted entirely to temples dedicated to the worship of otherworldy beings- Gods? Demons?  Only the beings themselves know for sure.

You don't care.  You're here because you have a job to do.

You are a member of the city's Watch, but in a division especially formed to patrol this most dangerous of wards, namely the God Squad or S.W.A.T. (*S*pecial *W*izardry *A*nd *T*actics).

The GS is composed of at least one arcane spellcaster, a divine spellcaster and "muscle"- a warrior of some type.  S.W.A.T. members may be arcane or divine casters, but their emphasis is on magic meant to be used in the tight spaces of buildings or in crowded city streets- "crowd control" you might say.

Unfortunately, things have been getting rowdier on the Street of Gods, and the City's council has decided that the ranks of the GS need beefing up, at least for now.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

*Conquistodors*

The PCs are part of a group of intrepid adventurers and explorers who have set out to find and settle a new continent to the west.  Each has his o her own reason for joining in this dangerous undertaking.

When landfall finally occurs (after many adventures at sea*), the survivors of the arduous journey set up camp and begin to build a permanent settlement.

And then the discovery comes that the new world is inhabited by beings just as intelligent as any they left behind.

Some in the expedition seek to conquer these new cultures, others seek to befriend them.

Which are you?

*fill in the blanks!


----------



## LostSoul

A campaign of Burning Empires, distilled:

Tannhauser Gate was a glittering jewel adrift in space.  Cheb, an inhuman man with dreams of glory and power, wanted it for himself.

But he fell in love.  

And so he died.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

*The Nancy Drow Mysteries* 

(D20 Modern/Urban Arcana/Forgotten Realms, PC lvl 3-5)

The PCs are all newly hired investigators at Nancy Drow Investigations, a mid-sized but highly reputable agency.  While all relatively new to "the game" they all have excellent recommendations.

On their first day on the job- just after orientation, actually- one of the agency's executive partners' kids is kidnapped.  A ransom demand is made, a timeline is set, a dire penalty is threatened.  The PCs are tapped for the investigation since- as newbies- they're unlikely to be recognized as NDI agents, and even if they are, their sheer newness may lead the kidnappers to underestimate them.

Can they bring the villains to justice?  Can they rescue the little girl?

_Can they do so in time?_


----------



## nerdronomicon

*Twisted Fairy tales*

I had an idea for a campaign based on a series of twisted fairy tales. Basically take a fairy tale and switch something up, swap gender roles so brave princesses are saving handsome princes, evil orphans are terrorizing good hearted witches, that sort of thing. I started the thread here and was told I ought to post a link in this thread. So here it is. 
 
I'm still working on it, have some new ideas for it. I'll probably beef it up and post it in my blog eventually.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

*Draconibone*

Michael Moorcock's Melnibonean environment, with a 4Ed twist.

Substitute Dragonborn for the Melniboneans (I know, I know- what about the Eladrin?  See below.).  After eons of global domination and many wars with the Tieflings, the Draconibonean Empire is in decline, so they've sealed their borders nearly completely.  Their True Draconic ancestors slumber in an extradimensional space, waiting for release.  Modern Dragonborn adventurers are extremely lassaiz faire, and make their way through the world as if they still ruled it.  (If you have the linguistic chops, use Latin as their language.)

Use Tieflings as Pan Tangians.  To challenge the Draconibonean Empire, Pan Tiefians made infernal pacts to improve their sorcery.  However, their repeated clashes ruined both empires.  Both nations are still powerful, but neither is as ascendant and dominant as once they were.  Play up their infernal nature.

Now, merchant kingdoms rule the world, run by humans.  Most powerful is a confederation of allied island city/states.

Elves?  Forget 'em for the most part- especially the half-elves- but choose one kind of Fey to represent the Winged Folk.  Eladrin with wings might work.

For additional fun, represent the barbaric races of the savage lands with Dark Sun style feral Halflings.  You could also use Hobgoblins.

Warforged, if you want to use them, could be the remnants of arcane forces from both the Draconibonean and Pan Tiefian empires.  They would also make excellent Agents of Law.

Similarly, any shapechanging race- Shifters, Changelings, Doppelgangers and Lycanthropes- would make fine Agents of Chaos.

Minotaurs could be the failed experiments in Pan Tiefian infernal pacts, exemplars of what could go wrong...or they could be a brutish but _desired_ effect of an infernal pact, making them the martial equivalent of the more sorcerous Tieflings.  IOW, Tieflings and Minotaurs are magical "close cousins," and could arise in the same family.

Oni could be the "secret masters" behind the Pan Tiefian empire.


----------



## Weregrognard

*My next 4E campaign's hook:*

  The PCs wash up on the shores of an island, remembering very little.  Can they survive the dangers of the _Isle of Dread _and remember their forgotten mission in time to complete it or will they fall prey to the machinations of the isle's Yuan-ti masters?


_Note:_ It is ironic that a horrible movie like_ 10,000 B.C._ can inspire ideas for a cool campaign


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## blargney the second

Spam post reported.


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## Dannyalcatraz

In the vein _(*ahem*)_ of Elisabeth Bathory and Delphine LaLaurie...

*Hell House*
A group of travelers (including the PCs), storm-tossed and weary from the road, happens upon the house of someone of means.  They knock on the door, and are granted not just admittance, but lodgings for the night.

By sunrise, however, two of the group have gone missing.  Despite the continuing storm, the house's owner asserts they must have left.

By dinner, yet another person has gone missing.

Then another vanishes in the depths of the night.

Finally, someone realizes that the missing are not on the road, but are indeed dead, killed by their host who is seeking an alchemical path to immortality- a living lichdom, if you will.

And she and her minions are ruthless...


----------



## LostSoul

Sorcerer game:

In an ancient wasteland ruled by a necromancer-king:

An honourable man sought revenge for his wife's murder.  He walked between the world of the living and the damned to get it, trading his humanity for bloody revenge.

A nomad who turned her back on her kin in order to save them sought to free her sister from a slaver's cruel hands and did, losing her forever.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Another nice thread about adventure/campaign ideas can be found here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/245660-adventure-ideas.html#post4577526


----------



## roguerouge

Bard adventure: Prevent your play from going all "Noises Off!"

Backstage murder mystery (see wiki 3e adventures)


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Found a similar old thread full of ideas that shouldn't be forgotten.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...ve-exercise-worlds-word-planes-paragraph.html


----------



## fruitbane

In the tradition of Moorcock's Corum books... Fantasy adventure for demihuman characters - no humans!

Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Halflings, and the like have inhabited the world for millenium (may need to extend some racial age limits). Ages ago they exiled the foul, violent Orcs to the western continent, a land harsh and unforgiving, too brutal for the civilized races to inhabit. The Orcs were eventually largely forgotten except as boogeymen in children's tales. Only the Orcs thrived in their exile-home and evolved... into humans. Humans aren't distinctly evil, but they are violent and chaotic, and also uncouth and uncivilized. They are also smart enough to craft boats and cross the ocean. The elder races, the Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, and Halflings, learn about the humans the hard way as their peaceful lives are shattered by human raids.

The PCs consist of some of the first of their respective races to rediscover the ancient arts of combat and take up ancestral weapons in defense of their lands. A gathering of elders of the various races chooses the PCs to investigate, as a party, the source and motivations of these new savages and to, wherever possible, thwart their advance across relatively unspoiled lands.


----------



## fruitbane

Inspired by Don Quixote and the earlier "PCs as ghosts" scenario, I present an idea for group hallucination/dream adventuring.

PCs are ordinary characters with ordinary stats and abilities. They have dreamlike alter-egos which are themselves as adventurers or heroes. The party either suffers from a curse, or a disease, or drug, or other paranormal circumstance which causes them to be ripped from their normal lives into a fantastical dream world which is really just a gloss over the real world. PCs might end up destroying property, killing innocents, or otherwise causing havoc and getting in trouble with the law or other figures or authority or power. At first dream states would be sporadic and short, but as they become hunted their dream states extend far longer, leaving them on the run from, on one hand, the law, and on the other, demonic or horrific monsters. Good opportunity to raise questions about which world is actually real and which is the dream. Probably not compatible with highly alignment-governed play.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Another lift from Moorcock:

Let your players design a PC from a (limited) selection of D20 FRPGs, with the equivalent power of a 5th level or better 3.X PC.  (After the campaign starts, however, they'll only be able to improve by whatever it the core ruleset for your campaign.)

They all awaken on a dais, each on a marble slab,  in a darkened circular room lit only by guttering torches.  There is a crowd of people in the darkness surrounding them, chanting their names with reverence.

They have been summoned...summoned out of time and space by the beleaguered subterranean peoples on the verge of extinction...

They have been summoned to be heroes- the saviors of an entire race.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Here's an interesting fact: Aspen Trees are a clonal species- they can spread by runners.  One of the largest organisms on Earth is an Aspen grove in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains that has 41,000+ trunks.
> 
> That inspired this:
> 
> *No Man's Land*:
> 
> 5000 years ago, a druid (whose name is lost to humanity...) of great power picked a large and remote island devoid of human life as his home, choosing a grove of aspen trees his most sacred space.  At some point, he chose to cast Awaken upon one of the aspen...and the entire grove came to life!  He had forgotten that Aspen spread by runners...the entire grove was actually one plant- and now it had a mind equal to his own.  He trained it in the ways of the druids.
> <edit>




I just read this:
Oldest Sea Creatures Have Been Alive 4,000 Years

It reminded me of my previous post (above) and made me think- depending on how you think of corals mechanically (IOW, if they can be targeted by "Awaken"), you could potentially have some truly alien and powerful intellects in the deep waters of the world.  Possibly even a challenge to Aboleths and the like.

Coral colonies, as I recall, grow by cloning themselves.  Imagine, if you will, a coral polyp being awakened, then cloning itself over and over again, for thousands of years...a colony of intelligent clone-siblings.

A coral colony could be a truly formidable opponent, especially if the sedentary lifestyle of coral is unsatisfactory to the awakened polyps...and they go insane.

OTOH, they could also have quite a sophisticated culture.

Possibilities.  Possibilities...


----------



## fruitbane

Dannyalcatraz said:


> They have been summoned...summoned out of time and space by the beleaguered subterranean peoples on the verge of extinction...




Ah yes, the old 2E Monster Summoning (because PCs are monsters, too) trick, essentially. That can indeed be quite fun with the right trappings.


----------



## fruitbane

Dannyalcatraz said:


> I just read this:
> Oldest Sea Creatures Have Been Alive 4,000 Years
> 
> It reminded me of my previous post (above) and made me think- depending on how you think of corals mechanically (IOW, if they can be targeted by "Awaken"), you could potentially have some truly alien and powerful intellects in the deep waters of the world.  Possibly even a challenge to Aboleths and the like.
> 
> Coral colonies, as I recall, grow by cloning themselves.  Imagine, if you will, a coral polyp being awakened, then cloning itself over and over again, for thousands of years...a colony of intelligent clone-siblings.
> 
> A coral colony could be a truly formidable opponent, especially if the sedentary lifestyle of coral is unsatisfactory to the awakened polyps...and they go insane.
> 
> OTOH, they could also have quite a sophisticated culture.
> 
> Possibilities.  Possibilities...




One key problem is that coral colonies are, well, stuck. They can expand, slowly, but they can't really move themselves once they are established. Awakened or not they simply lack the physical means. As for what a coral intelligence might be like, Corey Doctorow has a story that addresses that somewhat. At least, I know I read a story like that and I think Corey Doctorow wrote it. His stuff is CC, so check out "I, Rowboat". I think that's the right story. Even if it isn't it's good and should be freely available to you.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

> One key problem is that coral colonies are, well, stuck.




Right...which is why I said:


> A coral colony could be a truly formidable opponent, especially if the sedentary lifestyle of coral is unsatisfactory to the awakened polyps...and they go insane.




Imagine being a human stuck in the deep sea for a few thousand years...You'd probably be a nutter.

I was thinking more along the lines of them using their time to develop unique magics or psionic abilities that let them expand their zone of influence.

They might even be a good alternative to the Elder Brains of Illithid biology...or there could be a little magical convergent evolution, and they could develop a motile form...


----------



## fruitbane

Sorry, I misunderstood the going insane part. My mistake.

Also, since coral reefs expand slowly, if the reef is awakened long enough who knows what kind of structures it could erect?


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Enough people have complemented me on this campaign idea that I thought I'd add it to this thread:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...27-starting-new-m-m-campaign.html#post4793004

and _hopefully _re-energizing* this* thread in the process.


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## Dannyalcatraz

Cool stuff here:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/256538-pitch-your-homebrew.html


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## rogueboy

A reimagining of the races, with Moa-riding, nomadic, honey-farming humans as the best developed so far: http://www.enworld.org/forum/plots-places/256063-what-would-society-look-like.html


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## Dannyalcatraz

This sounds like a pretty cool campaign...and the guy could probably use some brainstorming help.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...were-mechs-aka-mecha-omega-design-thread.html


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## kitsune9

RangerWickett said:


> Let us gather a mighty hoard of adventure and campaign ideas, compressed to what was most important about them.
> 
> From me:
> 
> *Tides of Homeland:*  Four heroes with no place to call home come together to stop a mind flayer's attempt to save his people by destroying all other races.  The mind flayer seeks an ancient magic to drive all the world mad with rage, and after his first defeat he secrets himself into the mind of one of the heroes, Harley, a lost and emotionally vulnerable woman whom he uses to further his plots.  Only the friendship formed within the group can free her soul and save the world.
> 
> *The Fall:*  The son of a demon summoner discovers that his mother's dying bargain was to trade his soul for the death of a paladin order that had wronged her.  The problem is, the demon never fulfilled its bargain, and the son finds himself in the middle of an infernal game.  Temptations abound -- power, fame, and vengeance -- but even the corrupted can still fight a greater evil.
> 
> *Winds of Change:*  A group of adventurers hire on as bodyguards for Vidania, an air mage apprentice on a pilgrimage to find places of great aeromantic power.  In their journeys they discover an ancient air mage who was thwarted many times in the past is attempting to dissolve the world into the elemental plane of air.  Will the winds blow in the party's favor, or has this villain's luck changed?
> 
> *Scourge of the Burning Sky:*  As a world-spanning empire falls, generals and archmages scramble for power, threatening to destroy the world amid their warfare.  Refugees from the empire assemble in a resistance and one by one take down these new emperors, walking the line between saving the world, and becoming its next tyrants.  All the 'ancient artifacts' that might exist in a fantasy setting are created and used in this war, but the most powerful force is held by a would-be ally, hidden in ever-reflecting secrets.
> 
> *The Graveyard of Steel:*  Three creators of a steamtech doomsday device flee to keep their masterpiece from destroying the world.  Heroes could have discovered the true conspiracy and saved the world, but the best hope for salvation is a group of criminals, murderers, and madmen.  The world (not to mention the GM's sanity) is doomed.




These are cool Ranger.


----------



## RangerWickett

My latest mini-campaign:

On a covert mission to infiltrate the organization of Sir Nicholas, a famous dragon-slayer, the PCs must face two wyrms -- the blind serpent Ugra Vyakti in his lair where the eyes of a dead mad god sear insanity into the minds of any who carry light, and the leper drake Wazir Ghul Khota, who holds a kidnapped princess in his canyon river labyrinth where he intends to sacrifice her on the summer solstice to break his curse -- in order to win Sir Nicholas's trust. Then they undertake their true mission: to fight alongside Sir Nicholas as he aids the prince of a warlike nation in a battle against Lsi Rae Bo, lord of the four winds, a mighty elemental dragon whom the prince must defeat in order to succeed his ailing father. Fighting atop a sentient airship in the chaos of a giant storm, the PCs must sabotage Sir Nicholas's efforts and ensure the prince dies, without implicating the nation that hired them.


----------



## SteelDraco

Reign of Steel, the King Returns: This one's set in the GURPS Reign of Steel setting, where the world has been taken over by Artificial Intelligences, and humans scrape out an existence where they can. In this world, the PCs are reborn Knights of the Round Table, questing to reawaken Merlin and Arthur and return England to humanity.

Lifewarpers: An heir of House Vadalis, the breeders and animal-herders of Eberron, starts breeding enhanced human shock troops to replace warforged... and intends to restart the Last War to make sure there's plenty of customers. Little does he know that the daelkyr are behind his inspiration, and seek to spread their lifecrafted creations through his House throughout the world.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

This is the game I'm running right now:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-rules-discussion/255927-starting-new-m-m-campaign.html


----------



## Shades of Green

*Gateway to a Thousand Worlds*
Sometime in the 21th century, a strange gateway buried under some half-ruined medieval castle was found, an arcane gateway to worlds beyond. Now, the Government sends you - an elite squad of soldiers and scientists - to investigate what lies beyond. And there, in the darkness, lie other worlds: worlds where magic is still alive, worlds warped and different, worlds ranging from the familiar to the alien. While your modern weapons give you an edge against the lesser horrors found behind the gateway, the greater horrors can only be fought and defeated by utilizing their own magic against them - and they must be defeated, lest the devour our earth!


----------



## Shades of Green

*For our Mother Earth!*
In 2111 AD it has finally happened. Earth was successfully invaded and turned into yet another subject-world of the alien Imperium. But not all is lost: some of earth's colonies managed to escape subjugation, joining forces with the Imperium's sworn enemies: the reptilian Renya-kin of Nayen Tellana. The PCs are the human and Renya-Kin crew of a privateering spacecraft, out to exact revenge on the Imperial fiends, terrorize the enemy's trade-routes and bring back much needed supplies to the besieged colonies. But can they survive against the cybernetic horrors used as space-marines by the Imperium?


----------



## Orius

Off the coast of the great Celestial Kingdom in the far West, are a chain of islands ruled by feudal warrior lords.  Waves of raiders from the sea have plagued several of the remote islands now for a few generations.  These raiders steal the few valuables possessed by the poor inhabitants of the isles, and these inhabitants have begun to fight back.  Instead of fighting them directly, they fight using methods of steath, infiltration and fear against these raiders and their trained monkey and parrot minions.  Which side will win in the end?


----------



## Herzog

Just discovered this beauty of a thread, and like to add my own campaigns:


*Mage Wars*
Centuries ago, the Mages waged their wars. From their towers, constructed both using their own magic and the engineering knowledge of the Dwarves, they waged war upon eachother.

The lesser mages soon fell, as did the temples of the priests, and everyone and everything else that happened to be in the line of fire. Only once the remaining mages where out of reach did the war halt.

The world's population was decimated. Races intermingled, orc mixing with human, halfling mixing with elf. Over time, the concept of Gods was forgotten, people focussing on everyday life, with the constant threat of a Mages Tower reminding everyone that the use of Magic of any kind was a sure way to get you killed. Swift, Violently, and without concern of bystanders.

Now, something has changed. A small group discovers that there are magic users active again. Some of them among their own. The effect is local, which is made painfully obvious when they enter the realm of another mages tower and witness the destruction of an associated magic user there.

Theirs is the task to gather information from the ruins of the small mage towers, to rekindle the believe in the Gods, to fight the evil magic users that rise alongside them, and to find out what happened. 

(campaign with an abundance of half-races, with the 'evil' race being Dwarves (because they helped the Mages build their towers). PC's used currently include a half-ogre barbarian, a half-stonechild Cleric, an Elan Psion, a tiefling Wizard, an elf Ranger and a Draconian Dragon Shaman. )

*Time Campaign*
A small group of neanthertalls go on their quest to bring down the mighty mammoth. 

Then, after centuries, stoneage people rember their former lives and adventures as Neanthertalls.

Again, centuries later, memories are awakened, the same group realising they have met before. They start to wonder about the reason, and start encountering others that live beyond the single life. Where does it lead to? 

(A campaign with rotating DM's, each subsequent DM starting after several 100 years with the same characters, but (obviously) in a new time period, in a semi-historical setting located in the Netherlands. We've gone from neanthertalls 'till 30 BC now, and we're not sure where it will end....)


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

This thread should be a lot of fun:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/plots-places/260572-you-all-start.html


----------



## Orius

Damn, I had a pretty good idea for this thread a few days ago and now I can't remember what the heck it was.


----------



## lectric

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Imagine, if you will, a coral polyp being awakened, then cloning itself over and over again, for thousands of years...a colony of intelligent clone-siblings.
> 
> A coral colony could be a truly formidable opponent, especially if the sedentary lifestyle of coral is unsatisfactory to the awakened polyps...and they go insane.
> 
> OTOH, they could also have quite a sophisticated culture.
> 
> Possibilities.  Possibilities...




The easy way to do it would be to use the Treant as a template, make it a Coral Colony - some kind of aquatic creature with telepathic or psionic abilities....


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

This is a nifty little thread.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...38-need-campaign-design-help.html#post4911187


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## Dannyalcatraz

Take any FRPG setting & mix of races that you like, but eliminate the humans.

Things in the world have been relatively quiet.  However, several scholars from various races and cultures have all independently come to the same conclusion: there is a great upheaval approaching, but it is one that can be minimized or completely avoided by the action of a great hero or heroes.

Legends vary as to the details of the method, but they all agree on one thing: it is a _human_ who is the key to success.

The party is one of many adventuring groups tasked with somehow bringing back humanity.  A committee of scholars will try to interpret the various myths and legends in an effort to make sense as to how that is to be done.  As each myth is decoded, an adventuring group will be sent out to complete the mission.

How many humans and for how long is open to the interpretation of the party.

Whether humans are a new race yet to be created, an old race wiped out (possibly in a huge magical war thousands of years ago), or the root race from which the others evolved (so that some kind of retro-engineering would work) is up to the DM, and each option could drive the campaign in different directions.


----------



## Electric Wizard

*You Have to Break Some Eggs to Make an Omelette*
On an isolated archipalaego, the people decide their rulers every generation by a trial of ordeal. Young, healthy, clever representatives of influential families are chosen for the task of retrieving a dragon's egg from the remote, monster-infested Outer Chain. The first group of representatives to return with the prize are rewarded with ultimate glory and a lifetime of well-earned affluence.

Of course, it's not really that simple. The real dangers are fellow competitors, the tribal intrigues back home and the shame of returning home defeated...

*Strange Flesh*
You wake up in a dingy cave and realize, to your horror, that you have a new body. The body of a notorious criminal. Get your identity back, or die trying!


----------



## Dzyu

*Pre-apocalypse*
The great kingdom of Dhyana is in a golden age where adventurers flock to in hope of fame, riches and power. A group of four adventurers arrive and find themselves recruited by a guild and sent on seemingly random missions, competing with other adventurers for treasure and fame.

A vast network of underdark tunnels is discovered beneath the city sewers, and as the adventurers explore caves and archaic dungeons beneath the cities it becomes apparent that most of the quests they've been doing lately are connected. Behind the scenes kobolds, dragons and dragonkin are plotting and scheming against humanoid rule, pitting the races against each other, unleashing demons, and breaking down the very fabric of magic itself in an attempt to eradicate the humanoids and their power.

Rumors has it that Tiamat herself is behind it, ushering in a new era for draconic rule with Ashardalon as her champion, and an unlikely alliance between all chromatic dragons, and the adventurers find themselves right in the middle of it, with the fate of the world as they know it in their hands.



*Post-apocalypse*
Demons have roamed the lands for decades, tearing it apart, eradicating all life they come across.
There were few signs of life remaining, and then suddenly the demon hordes vanished over night. Magic returned, and a peaceful tranquility indicated a new dawn. Though sparse with life, and on a scarred earth, the survivors at last see hope after decades with doom. They have been mostly alone and always in hiding for as long as they can remember. Some of them were born into it, and all of them have lost someone close to them.

A stormy night drives four survivors together and they establish a small settlement, but with a host of draconic races on the rise, and the remnant aberrations, magical beasts and demons after the apocalypse, their settlement and maybe even survival of the non-scaly races depend upon them, and it won't be easy.



I actually started with the post-apocalypse idea, and my players got really attached to that setting even though we didn't get very far, so when two players had to leave for school a year I started the pre-apocalypse campaign. What they do in the pre-apocalypse campaign will greatly affect the post-apocalypse campaign, and the maps are full of memorable loactions, so I'm really excited to see what happens, especially when we go back to post-apocalypse and they revisit old encounter locations.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Just thought I'd post a link to this excellent thread full of creepy campaign/adventure ideas.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Inspired by this bit of unfortunate & mind-boggling news...

Newsroom

*Elemental Chaos*

The rulers of Elemental Air, Earth, Fire & Water have decided to settle their differences by having a contest, a game of skill and power.  The contest is to be played out on the Prime Material plane, and the pieces will be their minions...and anyone else who gets drawn into the conflict.

This has made the region a living hell for the residents of the isolated mountain valley in which the contest it to take place.  Their life has been thrown into utter chaos as fire erupts from wells, water jets from the blacksmith's bellows, earth refuses to yield to the plow, and wind refuses to touch the mills while it scours the towns with storms.

And worst of all, while anyone is free to enter the valley, any attempt to leave is met with unified attacks by gangs of elementals...


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

*Tunnels, Truffles, Truffaut, Triffids & Trolls:* A campaign in which a Halfling community, famous for being fungus farmers, finds themselves caught between raiding kobolds, carnivorous plants, and voracious giant-kin...in a low-magic campaign or low-magic region.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Having seen these images and read the articles, I can't help but think about some bad mojo going down...

PHOTOS: Chile Volcano Erupts With Ash and Lightning
The World's Largest Lightning Storm: The Venezuelan Thunderstorm That Creates One Million Bolts a Year | Suite101.com

Perhaps its an imprisoned evil being on the verge of breaking free of its supernatural cell, or a weakening of barriers between planes.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

A heavy, Earthlike water-world:

Nearby "Super Earth" May Have Oceans, Thick Atmosphere

+

Heavy Planet: The Classic Mesklin Stories, by Hal Clement- a heavy world populated by sentient beings very much resembling a fifteen-inch caterpillars.
______

= Mesklin being augmented by a large aquatic realm...interesting setting?


----------



## Malto Dextrin

dnd stuff*

Slime Sewers*

A grand human city is faced with a horrible problem. The city was largely constructed several hundred years ago by Dwarven slaves. The city is now at peace with Dwarves but the damage has been done. The slaves secretly built a number of large reservoirs under the city designed to slowly fill up with green slime. After they fill up, a counter weight is lowerd and the slime will be forced up into the city proper, utterly destroying it. The government of the city now knows about this but they have been unable to stop it. The underground is somehow magically shielded from scrying and all the engineers they send down below to undo the damage never come back up.
What they need is a small, elite group of adventurers to crawl down through the confusing, mechanical, booby-trapped, rust-monster and vermin infested tunnels and reset the mechanisms to save the city.
Oh, and they only have X days to do it.



*Son of the Sun*

Pelor, the sun god, secretly had a son not too long ago and when it was born, all the gods came together and swore a pact to never harm the infant diety. This child lived as a demi-god in another plane for some time and has just recently come to the prime material plane. For a reason that Pelor cannot explain, his son is evil (chaotically so) and refers to himself as "Pelor" and is totally exploiting this protection pact for all it's worth.

For a certain amount of time each day, the sun shifts to a dull orange colour. This time period slowly grows larger and larger each day. It's dim and comparable to a cloudy dusk. Crops are wilting and creatures of the night are growing stronger. Pelor's son is attempting to replace him as the soverign of light. 

"The Son of Pelor" has convened with the darker races and has promised a new age of "light" upon the surface world. Light and darkness are trading places in this reversed way of things. Certain clans of dark elves have allied themselves with the dark god and have secretly come to the surface disguised as moon elves and are longer harmed by the sunlight. Green slime, oozes and vampires are also no longer harmed by the sun and start to appear in cities and towns.

Also, strangely, moonlight is slowly growing brighter and has become harmful to vampires.

Gods still empower their followers who attempt to fight the change but cannot take direct action against Pelor. No divination can explain what is going on as counteracting the Son of the Sun's plans would technically be harming him. The church of Pelor proper is launching many major investigations and has called upon many of their followers to help.

Drow and vampire priests and "paladins" of Pelor continually assasinate members of the old church while certain gods of night and darkness have offered solace and protection to the displaced goodly humans. The nature of positive and negative planar energy is slowly changing and the dark gods are feeling desperate as they slowly lose their dominion.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

I've been reading about and studying the art of Louis Wain for some time now, and got a bit inspired.

(See also SCHIZOPHRENIC VICTORIAN PAINTER OF CATS -Louis Wain « The Dreamatists, with soundtrack by Joe Satriani.)

What if a small enclave of Rakshasha were affected by some kind of painful magical affliction that made them look like the work of Louis Wain...but didn't kill them outright.  In fact, they find themselves even more resilient than ever.  Their existence is torture.

One of their lesser-tormented brethren seeks out the party in an effort to find out the answer to the mystery of their curse, so that they can end it...either by having it alleviated or by death.

Can the PCs bring themselves to help those who have so often been tormentors of others?


----------



## Quantum

The Great Shoe Event.

Some people call it a curse from the gods, but for whatever reason on that fateful day, all shoes across the the entire world fall apart. From that point forward, the Great Shoe Curse has begun and nobody can wear a shoe of any type, whether it be a sandal, a boot, or a piece of armor or anything resembling any kind shoe of absolutely any kind. And furthermore, no shoes can be manufactured anywhere in the world.


----------



## Wannabehero

*Re: Campaigns in a nutshell*

As a GM I find the hardest sell to my players, from a RP perspective, is coming up with the reason they form the party.  For my newest campaign I devised the following adventure (and excuse), which my players loved.
*
The Crucible*

The players awaken in the *regional state-power*'s arcane academy with no recollection of who they are or why they are there. A member of the academy (Professor) explains to the PC's that they were brought there to undergo a magical ritual to protect them from being magically tracked.  Unfortunately, the ritual was interrupted part way through when the academy was invaded by a small force of unknown assailants who are seeking the PC's for nefarious purposes.

As a result of the incomplete magical ritual, the PC's have awakened with their memories fragmented but with their knowledge (read: skills and class) generally intact.


_As they further quest in later adventures each player is provided the opportunity to rediscover their past and regain their memories (wonderful RP possibilities, and fantastic adventure potential focused on the PC's)._
The assailants belong to a group/cult/power from which the magisters of the academy sought to protect the PC's with the botched ritual. Each of the PC's has qualities, signs at their birth, and/or family lineage that prophesies their greater destiny in the world (the plot-line of the rest of the campaign).

The Professor leads the players to the only "safe" exit of the academy (a secret exit).  It is through a training dungeon, known as *The Crucible* to students of the academy.  This dungeon serves as a final exam to students training to be field-agents for the *regional state-power* and is stocked with real hazards and monsters (suggest vermin, undead, and animated objects).

The dungeon is not located in or under the academy, but rather is hidden underground at a considerable distance. Students enter the dungeon through a portal in the academy and exit through another portal at the dungeon's end.  However, there is also a secret passage at the end of the dungeon that leads to the surface, and therefor escape for the PC's.  The Professor will seal the portals in the academy after the PC's enter the dungeon, protecting them from pursuit.  The players must then face the dangers, tricks, and challenges of *The Crucible*.

-Fin

I apologize for this not exactly being an "Adventure in a sentence".


----------



## 2020

An Aboleth, transplanted beneath the city of Loudwater during the phase transition of Abeir and Toril, has awoken. With the strange energies of the phasing combined with the Aboleth's immense psychic power, magical crystals have grown throughout the depths of the caverns where the Aboleth is trapped and are starting to break the surface.

These crystals have amplified the Aboleth's psychic powers enabling it to manipulate creatures on the surface. Recruiting an eager bard to it's cause, it tricks him into believing it is a beautiful maiden trapped beneath the surface by an evil wizard, aeons ago.

The bard assumes a new personality and becomes obsessed with freeing the 'maiden'. He recruits local humanoid tribes to raid merchant caravans for supplies so that he can manipulate the crystals in order to create a massive teleportation ritual, using the power of leylines that criss-cross Loudwater.

The kink in the Aboleth's plans, however, comes when the citizens try and recruit the Flaming Fist to rid themselves of the growing humanoid threats that are plaguing merchant caravans to the area. To get rid of the Flaming Fists, the bard poses as a hero, using the psychic power of the Aboleth to disguise the humanoid cheiftains as his 'Merry Band'. They pretend to rid the area of the threats and collect a tidy reward for their trouble. Through the Aboleth's influence, the entire town become enchanted with "Magnar the Magnificent and his Merry Band of Heroes".

The PC's arrive in town after having been attacked by kobolds to find the townspeople to be completely smitten with their new hero. Statues are being erected, women are bearing his children, competing bands of mercenaries are vying for the favour of the bard, and all are under the delusion that there is no humanoid threat. Of course, the PC's know better, but can they defeat all the humanoid bands before the Aboleth exerts its control?


----------



## Wannabehero

*The Four Towers*
An evil portent is upon the world.  In the heavens, a new star can be seen growing brighter with each day.  A Primordial, a being of abstract concepts older than the Gods or the Planes, is bearing down upon the world.  If it reaches this world, all will be consumed.  The Gods will not intervene, fearing being consumed by the same power that will destroy and reshape the world.

The only hope lies in the legend of the Four Towers, ancient structures created during a time forgotten, built by gods or mortals whose names are no longer remembered.  Located at the corners of the world, the Towers serve as the vertices of a world-encompassing extraplanar ward that will repel the primordial if they can be raised again.

Will the heroes be able to find the resting places of each of these towers in time, and be able to discover the true nature of each tower and the means to erect it?  Will the heroes be prepared to face the dark powers aligned against them who wish to see the world destroyed and be reborn in the aftermath?  Will the heroes be able to make the sacrifices necessary to empower the ancient towers and save the world?  Time is running out.

- Fin


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

I just saw photos of Caño Cristales and can't help but think that something like this could be the basis for an adventure.

Perhaps the river does this only when the local Ley line flares up, marking this as a time when great magic can be done.

Or perhaps when this happens, even the merest alchemist may make powerful potions.

Or maybe its simply an _omen._


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

This video:

The scariest path in the world?


inspires not so much of an adventure idea, but a location for a pitched running battle that could be your campaign's equivalent to the Mines of Moria.

PS: follow the "Trail Ride" link for more of the same, but crazier...


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

This thread has a _really_ cool idea in it.


----------



## RangerWickett

Man, this thread had legs.

I'm tempted to post the outline of the next E.N. Pub campaign, but that would spoil things a bit.

Dannyalcatraz, I love that video.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

RangerWickett said:


> Dannyalcatraz, I love that video.




That path vid?  Oh _hell_ yeah- its just perfect for the main surface thoroughfare for the warrens of a large Kobold settlement...like _Tucker's_ Kobolds...


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Sifting through the collectibles of my youth, I came across the Trencher comic books.

It seems to me that you could do a really cool supers or FRPG campaign based on the PCs being "Repo Men" for the wrongfully reincarnated.

Heck, it could even work in a whacky Stargate Universe, with the PCs going after those who muck around with the rules of Ascension.


----------



## El Mahdi

deleted


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

I posted this elsewhere, but it works here as well.

The plot for Paint Your Wagon involves a gold rush.  After the mines start to play out, some of the craftier gold miners find an alternative source of wealth, specifically:



> ...Ben and a group of miners discover that gold dust is dropping through the floor boards of many of the saloons. They hatch a plan to tunnel under all the businesses to get at the gold ("The Best Things in Life are Dirty"). This brings the story to its climax when, during a bull and bear fight, the streets collapse into the tunnels dug by Ben and the others and the town is destroyed. A reprise of "The Ballad of No Name City" plays as the town is literally swallowed by the earth.




Switch the human diggers for a group of urbanized dwarves, cut off from their normal society but retaining the same drives & skills, and you have a fairly unusual situation...


----------



## Orius

Gnomes could work too, some of the crazy schemes of No Name City seem to suit them better than dwarves for sure.  Maybe you could have a dwarf as the preacher that arrives in town instead.  Or really a combination of dissolute dwarves, gnomes, humans, and half-orcs for the town.  The French hookers become elves.  Not sure what how to do the Mormon.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

A human with an interesting new take on religion, perhaps?


----------



## Psychotic Jim

*To serve a hag* 
Alternatively titled:  _How much will ya give me for this larva, Guvner?_ 

HEROISM! The stuff that legends are made of!  Fighting the good fight against the greatest depravity the world has ever faced!  Impossible odds turned into epic story! Larger than life heroes take on the most earth-shattering villains! ...in this campaign, you'll have none o' that!

To Serve a Hag is a grimy Planescape (or outer planes) campaign for low-level evil (or at best darkly neutral) characters in the gutter.  Congratulations, you've just entered lifetime employment working for a grand old lady, a Night Hag.  Whether you've been bribed, blackmailed, cajoled, coerced, or even dragged along for the booze, you realize you've gotten more than you bargained for.  No, you are not kill-everything mercenaries, no, something far... _juicer_ 

Your employer's business is so successful; she needs help hawking her wares.  Yes, the lot of you are peddlers of the weird and forbidden, specifically, souls!  Not just any souls- EVIL souls!  Your chief commodity is larvae- the lifeblood of the lower planes, fiendish evil in its most basic form, sin made flesh.

All new soul peddlers begin in the most humble of beginnings, in a few safehouses within the worst dregs of the Hive Ward in the town of Sigil.  There, you'll set up your business.  And your mission, whether you choose to accept it or not, will be to claw your way out of the world of muck by making a proper business of your lemonade stand operations.  Go boldly forth into more lucrative (but also more dangerous) territory, and you might even have a date with a lich or two!

But don't get any ideas about betraying your benevolent* contractor, for she's a canny one.  At least not until you’re ready,that will be WAAAY down the line.  For now, just worry about placating that disgruntled barbazu over there.

*Hey, she hasn’t killed you yet, has she?


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

I'd have loved to do a Spelljammer-esque campaign set in a gas torus like in Larry Niven's Integral Trees novels or a similarly populated nebula...a FRPG set in a habitable, gaseous Dyson Sphere.*


*No, not the ones on the vacuum cleaners- that's a Dyson Ball. Spheres are like this.


----------



## Orius

I think most of us are nerdy enough to know what a Dyson sphere is.


----------



## Celebrim

*The Black Tulip*: Local heroes fight the boogey man, run errands for godlings, restore trade routes, save their community from the devestation of a goblin invasion and uncover some awful secrets, but are unable to save the community from itself - until they discover that an infamous bandit lord might be their best ally and that a trial whose outcome may remake an entire nation can be won with a flower.

*The Goblin Prince*: When a goblin half-breed unites the clans in a great crusade against humanity, a group of goblin outcasts and their henchmen set off to restore their honor, and along the way discover the greatest secret of the goblin people and that honorable action can be a very subjective thing when your masters are lying to you and cheating each other.  

*The Esoteric Order of the Golden Globe*: When an uncanny tsunami destroys most of a port city, it unites an unlikely band of heroes who find themselves on the trail of an engimatic necromancer and a nihilistic cult dedicated to destroying the gods themselves.  As evils long buried rise to the surface, the heroes must journey deep into the lair of a vanquished dracolich, deal with an invasion of deep ones, explore the crypt of a demi-lich, fight pirates, make their way into the heart of a legendary south sea island, and chase the cult to the deadly glaciers of the north to stop the cult from assembling their doomsday device.

*Memories of Ice and Pain*: An aging founding king is preparing for his death, but finds the unfinished business of his past haunts him and threatens to undo all the good work he has accomplished.  A King's son gathers his friends to investigate a minor matter that soon spirals out of control.  Now, with everything to lose and society collapsing around them, a new generation of heroes must dodge goblin assassins, fight an army of gnolls, defeat a society of scheming hags, and make a bargain with a deadly dragon in order finish what their grandparents begun.


----------



## El Mahdi

deleted


----------



## Theo R Cwithin

Dannyalcatraz said:


> *No, not the ones on the vacuum cleaners- that's a Dyson Ball. Spheres are like this.



I think a campaign in a Dyson Ball might be pretty interesting, kind of like _Fantastic Voyage_ with great flesh-eating mites and vast menacing dust bunnies.


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## Evilhalfling

An endless hallway, a key that opens 10 doors each day, go too far down the hallway and you travel back in time. Once in the past, you can only move forward. 

The first session ended with the following: 
_Your lives would have been so much simpler if that had been the last time you had seen the key or hallway. History would have turned out so differently if the key had never come into your possession, or if you had been able to resist its allure.  Perhaps this time will be different. _

The PCs obtained the key in session 8. They entered the same day (of course). Then 1200 years earlier....
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/277635-ten-doors-pick-one-tell-me-why.html


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

I was looking at this and thought...what would the effects of a coronal mass ejection (CME) look like in a fantasy or science-fantasy setting?

SPACE.com -- The Great Storm: Solar Tempest of 1859 Revealed

I think it could be very much like the background to RIFTS- the CME could cause an incredible flare in the Ley Lines as raw energy- raw mana?- floods the world.

All kinds of effects could result:


All kinds of fires could spring up, especially in a technomagical world like Eberron, and even moreso in something like Shadowrun or Urban Arcana.
Magic items that have charges could be recharged...or overcharged to the point of explosion.
Long-dormant relics and artifacts could be infused with energies that "awaken" them.
The massive infusion of solar energy could have a negative effect on Undead...it may even destroy them all.  All except the most deeply buried, that is...
The effect on Living Constructs could be similar to that on Undead.
All kinds of interplanar links and portals, wards and seals and so forth could be strengthened, weakened or destroyed. ([_BARBARINO_]*Welcome back, Mr. Cthulhu*![/_BARBARINO_])
The energy release could cause physical harm to creatures with spell-like abilities or innate casters like Sorcerers.


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## Celebrim

Evilhalfling said:


> An endless hallway, a key that opens 10 doors each day, go too far down the hallway and you travel back in time. Once in the past, you can only move forward.
> 
> The first session ended with the following:
> _Your lives would have been so much simpler if that had been the last time you had seen the key or hallway. History would have turned out so differently if the key had never come into your possession, or if you had been able to resist its allure.  Perhaps this time will be different. _




Sounds like I made the right choice.


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## Herobizkit

On the same note, how about a key that can open one lock a day, but never the same lock twice?


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## Dannyalcatraz

...and the world's greatest lothario wants it for getting rid of chastity belts...


----------



## Silvercat Moonpaw

*Necessary Ev—er, Retirement:* The corners have been explored.  The tombs have been plundered.  The mystic baddies are dead.  Nations use diplomacy and the threat of force rather than force.  Adventurers are suffering from habitat loss.
Now what?
Do you settle down quietly with skills that don't mean anything in civilian life?  Do you stubbornly keep the Adventurers's Guild (with spelling mistake) open, despite it becoming a leisure club for reinactors?  Or do you decide that the world was better off when adventure was needed, and become the bad guy for its own good?

*......and Some Have Greatness Genre-Changed Upon Them:* Your world used to be "normal", with physics and technology but not magic.  And then one day it was like some great big force took up your world and decided to use its favorite pseudo-medieval fantasy RPG system to play you.  Oh, sure, not all that much has changed: you wear the same clothes, walk in the same style of city, complain about the changes to your favorite RPG online.  But now there are monsters and evil sorcerers who have to be killed with crossbows and fireball spells instead of guns and explosives, and combat's not as deadly as you would have thought.
It's either the best or worst thing ever.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

There is a Hungarian movie, Kontroll, that is pretty cool.  Its a darkly comedic story of how a regular joe with a mysterious past gets tangled up in a multiple-murder investigation involving the Budapest Metro.

[sblock][ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJQnWCPMrII&feature=related"]YouTube- "Kontroll" Trailer[/ame]
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IdKpgwA2eo]YouTube - BEST MOVIE CHASE EVER KONTROLL[/ame][/sblock]

The plot elements and structure could be good for a tunnel-based adventure- assuming the tunnels are attached to some kind of population center: in a fantasy campaign, that would be sewers or a subterranean city, possibly an actual tunnel system in something steampunky or urban fantasy.

And the quasi-mystical nature of the killer could be well done in a traditional or modern fantasy campaign.  It would also work well in a game like X-Crawl or anything remotely resembling Dream Park.


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## Dannyalcatraz

Another thread with the same theme:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/pathfi...1-hundred-one-campaign-ideas.html#post5249703


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## Dannyalcatraz

*Quest for Firepower*
(for medium to high level pre-4Ed D&D)

Start the party on an adventure- what kind doesn't matter- and after the party has finished a long and bothersome combat that they were never in doubt of winning, the party's Wizard discovers his spellbook has been nicked.

Thus begins the REAL adventure: recovering the source of the mage's might!

(Keep the adventure short enough that the wiz's player doesn't mug you after the session.)


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## Orius

Mug?  As a fan of wizards, I'd have to say that dragging something like that out too long is an offense worthy of _kneecapping_.


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## Dannyalcatraz

There is a guy in my group who feels about his warriors' weapons as most do about their mages' spellbooks...

So when I took the super-rifle from his M&M PC for an adventure, I could see machinations going on behind his beady Sicilian eyes.  Mind you, he wasn't disarmed- the locals opened up their arsenal to him- and it was a single-session adventure.

Still, I made sure he left first...


----------



## Orius

Sicilian?

You very nearly fell into one of the classic blunders!


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## Dannyalcatraz

There are some really good ideas in this thread: http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/297230-tomb-giants-combining-classics.html


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## Dannyalcatraz

*The Tavern in the Mists of Creation*: a tavern that hops randomly between dimensions every time it gets foggy in a FRPG analog of London.  It doesn't shift in space or time, just alternative Prime Material Planes.  You can leave any time, but once the fog hits the doors, the Tavern is going to shift...


----------



## RangerWickett

Wow. This thread has legs.

Hmm. 

A library is on the move. Somehow the whole building has come to life, sprouted legs, and set off on a journey to a destination unknown. Chase it to get inside and figure out what the library is running to, or from.


----------



## Storminator

It was raining in Rhukaan Draal when the goblin noir adventure started...

PS


----------



## TarionzCousin

RangerWickett said:


> A library is on the move. Somehow the whole building has come to life, sprouted legs, and set off on a journey to a destination unknown. Chase it to get inside and figure out what the library is running to, or from.



It is tracking down the worst offenders who never return their books.

When it catches them... (shudder)!


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

TarionzCousin said:


> It is tracking down the worst offenders who never return their books.
> 
> When it catches them... (shudder)!




It'll throw the book at 'em!


----------



## doogiegonegood

I've got a blog I've been posting adventure hooks on Monday's, here's an excerpt...

*This Week's Hook: One Man's Lock Is Another Man's Key*
_
A  powerful and destructive creature or person was responsible for a  violent rampage many years ago. Being unable to defeat this being, its  main antagonists prayed for a sacred device or object which they could  use to seal the monster and its minions for all time. A sorcerer or  scientist of some kind has discovered the existence of this powerful  artifact.

He desires it for his own experiments, one in which  will use the object's divine qualities to allow him to travel either  through dimensions or planes in search of ultimate knowledge and power.  He is either oblivious to the artifact's original design or figures the  trapped being will be dealt with and any chaos or death resulting from  freeing it is well worth the price for him to attain enlightenment._

Blog: Between the Nooks


----------



## Evilhalfling

*Rise of the Sorcerer Kings*

In an otherwise traditional fantasy world, during a time of great magical experimentation, Defling magic is discovered.  It leads several powerful arcanists to declare themselves kings of city-states. They begin creating templars, turning the world into desert etc....
Some great powers (archfey, devils, gods) support the changes, for for reasons that mortals don't understand.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

A bit of Urban Fantasy...

*The HOA of Babylon*: PCs play members of a wealthy family (or their employees) in a modern fantasy world in which Babylon is a major city.  The family has recently erected a ziggurat on their property to glorify their personal gods...but in reaction, their local HOA has tried to enforce an old "No Ziggurats" clause, unused for centuries.  The PCs must fight the supernatural enforcers the HOA sends against the family...then escort the family's chief spokesman to the HOA in order to get a personal variance.

Further violence MAY be required...


----------



## jcbdragon

A series of Masters Tourney adventures that we wrote/ran for a Con one year, where the party has been tricked into taking on a task that will actually help a great evil power.  All through the first two rounds, traditionally goodly NPCs keep attacking them, and traditionally evil NPCs keep showing up to heal them, etc.  Final round, they're given the introduction and a few minutes to add non-magical gear, etc... then get told to hand their character sheets back in.  They get handed another copy of the same character, but this time they only have their magic items -- because they're now in the realm of the dead, and those are the items that were buried with them.


Same year, same Con, the non-Masters-level tourney had one round where the adventure started with the characters waking up in a cave, with only a linen tunic and a stick with feathers attached along one edge.  They'd been captured and were intended to be sacrifices (the sticks were to represent a sword in the ritual of sacrifice).  They had to escape the room and make their way back to freedom.  It was particularly interesting seeing the mage recognize things that could be used as spell components.


----------



## Iron Sky

Hm, thought I'd posted on this thread when I first saw it early last year... guess not. Here's a summary of all the major campaigns I've run, in chronological order:

*One Elf to Rule them All*
One of the PC's older brother, heir to the largest elven kingdom in the world strives to become a god, eventually engulfing the whole world in war as he makes alliances with otherworldly dark powers and brings them into the world. He methodically and mercilessly eliminates anyone who stands in his way until he ascends to godhood.

*The Valley
*Young adventurers are caught by the winter snows in a magically-warmed valley deep in the mountains. While there, they learn that agents of a recently crushed evil empire fled to the valley and are attempting to subvert it so they can use it as a base to re-establish their empire.

*Thank God, It's Only Vampires*
A stunt driver, a mechanic, a rugby player, and an image consultant get drawn into the shadow world beneath the surface of our own. Hunted by horrific monsters, tracked by dark organizations working with darker powers, confronting righteous human hunters killing anything non-human be it good or ill, caught between angelic and demon forerunners scouting the terrestrial battlegrounds of the fast-approaching end times, and used by vampires trying to get off the world before it all hell literally breaks lose, the PCs must somehow cope, learn, escape, survive, and maybe find some way to stop the end of the world.

(The title comes from an actual quote from one of the players during the game)

*Splinters of an Empire
*An ex-legion merc looking for revenge, a Nomad shipwright that believes in aliens, a telepathic courier that's too powerful for anyone's good, and a diplomat that isn't a diplomat are stuck together on a ship blown out of warp-space by terrorists hell bent on taking the ship. They must retake the ship and get it back on course before a rebellious colony splinters and starts a galactic civil war.

*Rise of Felskein*
A necromantic terrorist state, a bugbear dictatorship declaring war on their militaristic human neighbors, a secret society of dragons divvying up the world, the echoing sins of an extinct race, a besieged nation built amidst the ruins of an even _older_ race, an expansionist construct army falling from the skies, and the PCs stuck in the middle.

*The Hegemony of Man*
The world is many points of light scattered in the wilderness - or at least was before the xenophobic, human-supremacist Hegemony with its weapons of stupendous power and arcane-enhanced super soldiers began conquering everything in sight. No one knows where they suddenly acquired their 
"magitech" might - or from who... or what. Nor do they know how they can be stopped before the whole world is under their rule and all non-humans eradicated.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Some nice stuff in there!


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Alt-Hist/Urban Fantasy:

*Lords of the Earth*:

In 1863, the English built what was to become known as The London Underground- the world's first subway.

With time & technology, others followed suit.

However, it soon became apparent that things down there were...a bit strange.  People simply disappeared down those tunnels sometimes.  Then, in 1922, it all became clear: unlike mines, subways were always located under highly populated areas, and once upon a time, others had lived there before.

In short, subways were piercing the barriers behind which creatures of legend- most notably the Fey- had been trapped, and now, some of the worst of them were making their way back into the world.  Indeed, at least one researcher believes that Jack the Ripper was one of these evil Fey...and may still be prowling the deep dark tunnels of The Tubes.

One thing is for sure- it's dangerous down there. You could be eaten by a Grue...


----------



## Tomn

*The Great Change*

The world is ending. But, like a pheonix, new life will rise from the ashes. A group of cultists who worship Erythnul work to bring about the Great Cleansing --a ritual which will destroy the great wall separating our world from the sea of monsters. If they succeed, all life will be destroyed in the resulting flood and monstrous ravagings. The cultists gather the largest army ever seen, composed of every evil dragon, lich, and demon that they could find who would wish the world to be wiped clean. Rising up against them are all the goodly races, working together even with evil creatures to try and preserve the world that they all share.
And this is only one diety's nefarious scheme...

The Great Change is coming, and it will alter the very laws of reality. Even the gods will find their powers leaving them. However, even as the gods disappear in flashes of glory, working to make one final contribution to their cause, new dieties will arise. These new dieties, those few heroes and villains who will rise above all others, will decide the fate of the world in this new era.

Enter the PCs, who have just finished putting down the Terrasque once and for all. They have felt the rumblings of war as ancient beasts rise from their slumber, and as miracles and divine will affect the world in ways never before seen. These heroes will have to join forces with some of their greatest foes in order to stop the destruction of The Cleansing. But, can they stop it? Or will the great waters wash away all that they have worked so hard to save?


----------



## Rabbit503

There was a *“jack and the bean stalk”* type adventure idea floated on here a while ago. I really liked the idea and ran with it. The campaign was built around how players decide to interact with the different races/factions living in and around the cottage while trying to find a way home:

Major Factions to include; 

_Chimera_ (with the head of a giant tabby cat): rules the cottage and keeps the other inhabitants on the defensive. The players might not realize it right away but the chimera also serves as a balance to the cottage’s power struggle. She gets locked outside, locked inside, or killed the balance shifts as pointed out below. 

_Wererats_ (never in human form, always hybrid or dire rat): their greatest enemy is the Chimera and they are sure that if she was gone they could rule the cottage. They have little interest in the world outside the cottage. They will use the players as much as the players let them, but never completely trust them. 

_Myconids_: the fungus people live in the cellar and are the most "good" creatures in the cottage. They will help where they can and know a fair amount about the house. 

_Harpies_: the harpies hate the Chimera but fear direct assaults. They are content terrorizing everyone else living outside the cottage and have little interest in what remains inside the cottage. 

_Formians_: From the start formians can be seen throughout the entire cottage. Mostly inside but also in the yard. The formains go about their business collecting supplies and fixing things as long as they are not disturbed. BUT, if the chimera no longer threatens the cottage (dead or locked outside) the formains will build up an army and launch an assault on the other inhabitants.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

That is a NICE first post- looks like a lot of fun!


----------



## Rabbit503

Thanks! I was trolling the interbot for ideas and stumbled upon this thread/site. Worked out so well I wanted to share.


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## Dannyalcatraz

For _Spelljammer_, inspired by this thread: http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/325500-sialia-doodles-again.html

*Awful Cute Things From Outer Space*

The Gnomes have marketed Giant Space Hamsters (including the Miniature Giant Space Hamsters) to buyers throughout the Sphere, and for very good money indeed.

Some cunning minds asked why couldn't the Kobolds do likewise?  Alas, they had no luck with hamsters- the Giants were too big for the warrens, and the Dwarf ones were...too tasty.

So the craftiest of the crafty figured they could sell something they knew better...Mimics.  But not the full sized ones...mini-Mimics!

Though initial sales were slow, some spacefarers found the mini-Mimics to be perfect for clearing ships of vermin.  So the trade began to blossom.

Then an unscrupulous Kobold merchant (What?) sold off a litter of immature standard Mimics as adult mini-Mimics to a ship in a hurry.  At first, they did as expected, and the infestation that inspired the purchase was wiped out.

Then crew & passengers began to disappear...


----------



## blargney the second

aka The Misfortune With Mimics.


----------



## Sialia

whee!  I like this. (Could be biased, of course.)
(Or just mini mimic obsessed . . .)


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

THE HIDDEN RITUAL

The PCs discover a scroll that hints at other spells from Evard and Tenser...

They follow clues leading to finding these spells, finding they cover the full range of power.  One odd thing- despite these being fragmented and ancient, they are in astounding condition, as if they had been made just days before.  The parchment upon which they were written is seemingly impervious to the passing of time and mundane threats like dry rot.

If all the pieces are reassembled, a description of a hidden Ritual will be revealed.  What its purpose is is not immediately evident.

The secret: each time one of these other spells by these master mages is cast, a barrier that keeps an evil being from the Far Realms imprisoned weakens.*  This was hard-coded into these spells without the knowledge of either one by the efforts of research assistants (apprentices)  who were devotees of this being.  When they finally DID discover this, they tried to rewrite the spells, but never succeeded.  Their conclusion was that the imprisoned being's own energies made the spells function.  Thus, they felt they had to rid the world of the offending spells.  They hunted down and killed the apprentices who had done this, used powerful magics to shred the virtually indestructible scrolls, and scattered them.  Better their greatest achievements be lost to time than The world be lost to all consuming insanity.

But one of the being's acolytes survived long enough to write down an account of the spells' existence...the scroll the PCs found so long ago.









* Only their most famous spells were untainted.


----------



## Evilhalfling

_In the fifth week of winter's death my goddess sent to me,
Five ... golden.... fiends ...
Four Aboleth
Three awful dragons
Two twisted Giants 
and a Landshark,
 through a door tiny.
_
written by Court Bard of King Kojiki II,  365th day, 199th year, 2nd age, 3rd cycle.
unfinished.


----------



## Evilhalfling

A god of entropy succeeds in a coup against the god of nature.  He kills/disintegrates all the world's grasses.  And no new grasses grow that year. 

Instant desertification.  Horses, cattle, sheep die-off in great numbers.  Wheat, rice, oats, barley -gone.
mudslides, erosion, flooding, starvation all follow. The world takes a great leap towards Darksun.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

*The Accidental Lich*:

Ferdinand Lucian Ultimas Xanthiosi- Flux to his friends and allies- was a powerful Wild Mage, a master of mayhem, a king of chaos.  But secretly, he, like many of his peers in the arcane arts, craved the ultimate in stability: immortality.  It wasnt just because of his desire to delve deeper into arcana, but because he so loved life itself.  So, deep within his multidimensional laboratory, he sought to unlock the secrets of eternal life.  

Then one night, he fought off the exhaustions of the day to make a breakthrough he felt was close...and fatigue got the best of him.  A moment's lapse, and an accident occurred. What it was that caused the explosion is unknown, even to Flux himself, but it disrupted the underpinnings of his structure, utterly destroying it...and made him a Lich.

He had achieved a twisted mockery of his goal, rendering him mad.  In his insanity, he lashed out, becoming a scourge to the world, sowing fear and destruction as he wandered the world, searching for novody knows what.  Then...nothing.  It was as if his presence had been erased.

More than 400 years passed.

Then, through a courier, the party is contacted by a mysterious man of means.  Upon arrival at the mansion, the man reveals that he is searching for the phylactery of Flux the Lich, and he hopes the party will accept the mission.  His offer is generous: the contents of his house in exchange for finding the phylactery and destroying it in the presence of his courier.

As the party considers the offer, he reveals his true identity. HE is Flux the Lich.  He seeks his phylactery to end his existence.  THAT is what he had been searching for all those centuries ago.  The problem has always been this: because of the way in which he achieved lichdom, he did not actually create a phylactery.  Instead, it was created from the pure chaos of the accident.  In addition, as a mockery of his life, it randomly teleports away from him whenever he gets too close.  It even did so when he tried to scry it.

(Possible plot twist: does the lich's courier resent or support the party?  If the former, he may seek to gain Flux's wealth for himself...)


----------



## DanotheSlender

*Grummish's coming horde...*
The one eyed god of orcs has long sought to conquer the world, unbeknownst to the kingdoms of light (human, elf etc..) he has done so...in another realm. now after centuries of dominance on his conquered realm he seeks to open a gate, and flood this world with hoards upon hoards of his minions, intent on enslaving all other races. in the wildlands at deserts edge he has set up his gate, a grand mystic construction of earth and stone,blood and bone as a permanent link between worlds, gathering his forces together into armies that will march to war...

In the hinterlands near the realms of men and elf there has been a noted decline in the usual raids of orcish warparties. Some beleive it to be that they have actually beaten back the orcs for the time being, perhaps they have withdrawn to their lands to lick their wounds and rebuild...until a lone hermit comes stumbling out of the woodlands, into a small village on the very edge  of the civilised lands. Thin and weak with a wild look in his eyes and gibbering of the horde that comes..."they are gathering, they are hiding, but they are coming...so many...so many..." . Town elders, frightened by the mans continual urging and near madness from his fear, send runners to the larger settlements to alert the king through his governors, requesting scouts and protection. 

High atop his tower, one of the lands greates masters of magic has felt a strange pulling of power from the eldrich ley lines of the world. His curiosity piqued he begins scrying along the ley lines, searching for what could have caused this flux...days later he is found by his apprentiss. One of his eyes burned from his skull, his hands blackened and scarred, the crystal ball shattered, it's shards embedded in the corpse and strewn through the rest of the room...only one clue as to his demise, traced in blood from the tip of the dead mages finger a single word full of portent....GRUMMISH...

Gather your party as ye may, for adventurous souls only need apply to search the realm for the cause of these ominous tidings. 



Created many years ago from a fever dream i had while suffering a bad bout of the flu. I left many specifics out so it can be integrated into virtually any campaign world. I ran it in the forgotten realms setting...gave my group a hell of a ride from 4th level all the way to 17th over the course of a year and a half, gaming nearly once a week on average. easy peasy to stretch out that long cause of the sheer number of enimies available, and the fact that the group had to go there and back again, several times before they actually figured out / saw the structure of the active gate itself. I beefed up the basic orc for leutenants, assigned higher levels and hit die for higher ups and made the generals equal to 12- 15th level warrior classes. Didn't use old one eye directly against the party, though it was an option if they didn't destroy the gate before the orcs pretty much conquered the lands. which they did.

 There were several dungeon crawls to destroy advance troops and underground supply stockades, one led to an already conquered small drow settlement where the roleplay was fantastic between the enslaved drow and the group, who eventually freed them so they could join the frey against the common enemy. Side quests also included finding lost ancient ruins which were infested with standard level appropriate beasts, where many nice, and a couple unique magic items were placed which tied into the story arc and improved the groups survivability. Even had them stumble across an ancient prophesy of the orc invasion, which led them to a unique item created to destroy the gate.

 If i remember correctly i actually set a time limit on the party to destroy the gate before Grummish...a couple in game years while the plans and armies came together. At one point the group finally had the lords of waterdeep convinced of the threat and even Cormyr mustered their armies along their boarders.

Game On!


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

For modern games, a bit of inspiration:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...kills-fishermen-who-strayed-on-to-island.html


----------



## Evilhalfling

There is a great big castle, shaped like a hand in the middle of the city, it has been abandoned to monsters and ghosts for decades.


(seven sessions,  between levels 4,8,10) last session my group jumped off the tower of the thumb and used feather fall, just for fun. Zip-lining was also discussed.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

*THE ARK: Time Hunters*

Temporal portals to the past are opening up all over the globe, spewing forth incursions of creatures from all eras.  At first, those who knew of the problem tried to keep it a secret: those that came through were sent back.  But nobody knew _why_the anomalies were occurring.

Then the answer came: the world is dying.  The temporal portals are the result of disruptions in the earth's magnetic field, a symptom of some kind of exotic matter disrupting the planet's core.  The apocalypse looms, but it isn't imminent- it is at least a century off.  There is time.

But mankind, in order to survive, must leave their cradle.  A vast starship- dubbed The Ark- is being made.  Lotteries are being held to find who will go.  But one thing is sure, scientists are trying to ensure that we have as much of our ecosystem as possible available to us going forward.  Not only are live plants and creatures being sent along, but so are embryos, seeds and DNA samples in cryonic storage.  Everything known to man that can be collected will be.

And not just flora and fauna of the present- in order to maximize the success of future terraforming and environmental re-seeding of The Ark's destination to suit humanity, teams are being sent into the portals to retrieve similar samples from the past, not only the recent past to restore biodiversity, but also those from deeper times just in case THOSE creatures or plants are more suited to the new planet.

And *you* are on one of those Time Hunter teams.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

For a low-magic modern fantasy/noir setting, tone down and remodel iconic D&D or fantasy characters, critters and macguffins:

For instance, Greyhawke Pointe, a sprawling East Coast metropolis...

Crime Lords: Jimmy "The Eye" & Archie "The Hand" of the Vecna crime family; Lola "The Black Widow" Thorne; Baron Straken von Zarovia

Arsonist: Darryl "Reb" Dragon

Mob Enforcer/Hit Man: Terry Asqué; D.K. "Bloody" Kosmopolis

Top lawman: Commissioner Sol Peloroski

Mayor: Beauregard "Beaux" Hamut

Macguffin: The Maltese Phoenix


----------



## Xaelvaen

*Borrowed Souls*

This is a campaign I ran a few years ago using Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (1st edition).

The player characters are seemingly everyday heroes in a world rife with corruption, evil, and the widely-accepted belief that good, and the light, is dead.  Whether they are in it for money, to do the right thing, to prove the world wrong in its doubt that the light is still alive, or any other ambition, they come upon vaults sealed ages ago by the dark powers that be.  These vaults, forgotten in design and location even to those that made them, contained texts that described a great battle a thousand years prior in which an army of hope and justice battled against the now-rulers of the world, and the good guys lost.

This information, of course, is only the first step as throughout the campaign, still a string of seemingly random, unconnected modules at this point, takes them to another phase of discovery, where they start wielding abilities that they had no clue as to their origins.  A scoundrel, backstabber assassin, after having been shot by a bolt through a murder hole, might find his hand clutching at the wound, and powerful warm magic flowing through, sealing his wound.  The mercenary fighter discovers that, with a desperate swing of his greatsword, it engulfs in flame and erupts against two foes instead of one.

As they begin to master these newfound powers, they later discover the truth: they are the reincarnations of the original champions who failed in their battle against the tyrants, bringing great conflict in the ambiguous or selfish characters, and great hope and determination in the already goodly ones.  They seek to find out exactly what went wrong, and what they can do this time to ensure the battle goes in their favor.

*EDIT:* Not quite a sentence, I know.  I'll see if I can summarize heh.  "Heroes, secretly wielding the souls of their former selves as weapons, set out to destroy a long-standing evil that defeated their goodly armies a thousand years prior."


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Inspired by the more recent searches for Planet Nine:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Nine
[video=youtube;eutrzvicjMs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eutrzvicjMs&sns=em[/video]

Most of the scientists hunting it predict a planet @5-10x Earth’s mass, probably a rocky “super Earth” or a ”mini Neptune”, if it formed in our solar system with the other planets.

Theories also exist that it was “captured” from another solar system that got too close...

Any of those could be a good basis for some RPG fun in a sci-fi/supers campaign set in the era of humanity's _MANNED_ exploration of the solar system, a la Ben Bova’s _Grand Tour_ novels.

But what if it is an artifact of an ancient civilization, billions of years old, long abandoned by its makers?  Or still inhabited?  It could be their version of a large Death Star or tiny Dyson Sphere.  Is it a weapon, a vehicle, a base/outpost or a resort?  Are/were _they_ like Arthur Clark’s “Monolith Builders”?


----------



## Scott DeWar

I have been watching a netflix show called Ekaant which features several abandoned forts and ports like  lakhpat  in Northwest India


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## Dannyalcatraz

It just occurred to me...

A D&D troll, undead or construct, encased in ice could be a good substitute for the creature in an adventure based on the original movie version of _The Thing_.


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## Dannyalcatraz

A researcher trying to bridge the “uncanny valley” decided to model his work on a popular and famous celebrity whose death was long enough ago that it has fallen into the public domain.  A familiar face, goes the reasoning, will be easier for people to accept.  And backed by big money from all kinds of industries- especially entertainment multinationals- the wishlist of exotic components and materials has largely been supplied.  Successes have outpaced failures, and the ultimate goal is within sight...

Elsewhere, a spy committing an act of industrial espionage, stealing the code for a military-grade A.I. system, realizes his presence has been discovered and he is cornered.  In desperation, the spy tries to transmit the code to a server prepped for just such emergencies.  Alas, a security guard’s gunshot to the shoulder mid-typing caused a slight typing error in the address...

The next morning, the robotics scientist returns to the lab, but notices something is wrong.  The lifelike robot is acting in ways it was not supposed to.  It is assembling a duplicate of itself from parts around the lab, parts from other eras of the emulated celebrity’s career.  It’s also being..._aggressive_, its Asimovian programming inexplicably being overridden by behaviors akin to robotic villains of childhood science fiction tales.

Even as creation turns on creator like a scene from a rebooted _Frankenstein_, the scientist can’t help to note in those final moments of life, how much the robot really sounded and looked like Daddy’s favorite performer...

The roboticist slain, the killer returned to its task of replication.  When its near-duplicate is complete, the original set the second to making further copies, then turned to researching how best to arm and armor itself.

Thus was the dawning of the *Army of Elvis!*


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Inspired by stray thoughts about the films in the _Bill & Ted_ and _Back to the Future_ franchises, I imagined a car thief stealing a time machine that was designed to look like an automobile.  Let’s say it was a minivan or SUV bodystyle.

Said thief decides to pick up some of his buddies and go joyriding, but while doing so, they do something to arouse the suspicions of a patrolling police officer- one with a reality TV crew on board.  Chase ensues.  

In the process of trying to evade pursuit, the thief accidentally engages the time travel drive- thinking it was a nitrous trigger- just as the police officer attempts a pit maneuver.  Both the time machine and the chase car contacting it tumble through time.

Which is when the fun begins.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

A plague of supernatural winged, metallic serpent constructs is invading a small demiplane reknown for its lush greenery- its idyllic environs making it a place valued to beings of all kinds as a sacred neutral ground.  The snakes are ruining all of that, and various factions are accusing each other of being behind the incursion.

The party is approached by a frustrated Demigod, Dubh Patrick, who is has recently been appointed guardian of this revered land.  He explains, he has had it with the metal feathered snakes on his mighty floral plane.  He wants the party to help him drive them out.


----------



## Orius

Here's a quickie encounter I just thought up.

The party meets an ogre with an afro who's depicting macabre landscapes with a set of _Nolzur's marvelous pigments_.  The ogre is accompanied by several twig blights (they are unhappy little trees).


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## Dannyalcatraz

Bobraarz LIVES!

(I‘d make him an Ogre-Mage, though.)


----------



## Bohandas

*Super mar-Iuz Bros* Aspects of Iuz search for Zuggtmoy in the time period between _Temple of Elememtal Evil_ and _Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil_ (during which her essence was hidden away by the Tharizdunite sect of the cult). The campaign is played as a parody of "Super Mario Bros.". Iuz is Mario and Luigi, Zuggtmoy is Princess Toadstool, and Tharizdun is Bowser Koopa. The campaign goes through several Tharizdun related dungeons and at the end of each is a Vathugu (Dragon Magazine 337) who informs the aspects of Iuz that their princess is in a different dungeon.

*Babysitting*- The PCs are hired to look after a wyrmling gold dragon white it's parents are away. During this time thwy must contend with raids by bandits and red dragons as well as various natural disasters and the wyrmling's own mischeviousness.

*The Steamroller* The PCs are high-level characters and play through several low-level adventures in succession, without resting.

*Between the devil and a hard place*- The heroes have to pass through a mimdflayer settlement which is currently under siege by fiendish powers

*Mechanized Death*- Exalted campaign set in a timeline where Autochthon has died. Now Creation is positively overrun with Death Knights due to there now being a Neverborn who knows how to create exaltations from scratch.


----------



## Orius

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Bobraarz LIVES!
> 
> (I‘d make him an Ogre-Mage, though.)




I'm trying to picture an ogre mage with an afro.  It's ... not happening.


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## Dannyalcatraz

Orius said:


> I'm trying to picture an ogre mage with an afro.  It's ... not happening.


----------



## Bohandas

*The Mandate of Heaven:* The PCs are functionaries of an impious king. This king's soothsayers have just told hin that a meeting of the gods is soon to take place. Worried that the gods will withdraw the mandate of heaven, the king sends his knights and agents off on quests pandering to the various interests of various gods. The PCs are one of the groups sent on these quests.


----------



## Bohandas

Some campaigns for Toon

*2001: A Space Hostelry*
TOON campaign where The main characters all work in what is essentially an overly prosaic reading of the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, to wit they are employees in a hotel and spa in deep space run by an enigmatic godlike AI that travels the galaxy creating sapient species in order to generate potential customers. The each session revolves around dealing with the various beings that come in



*Factbusters*
TOON campaign where The PCs are employees of a Mythbusters-esque television show wherein the "myths" being tested tend to be either stupid bar bets ("you can't drink more than me without passing out"), health advice ("if you keep eating so much fast food you're going to have a heart attack" and then eventually the character dies of liver failure and diabetes. "myth busted!"), and places where people have used the word "can" to mean "may" ("you can't bring those TV cameras into Area 51!" and then they tunnel under the fence or somethig "So as you viewers can see, we can get TV cameras into Area 51 after all"...)


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

@Bohandas 

I could almost see a run on Area 51 that ends in a Scooby-Doo-esque reveal!

”General Ardor!  You?”

“And I would have gotten away with it, if not for you meddlesome kids!”


----------



## Bohandas

*Abyssacharine*
An idea just popped into my head. The PCs get wind of a legendary, level-inappropriate treasure horde gathered by a demon. The PCs fight their way through the demon's minions and eventually come to an empty vault containing a note from the demon saying that if they;re reading this than they've defeated his guards and that killing people was the real treasure. Ideally the guards should provide just enough XP for the party to level up.


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## Dannyalcatraz

Twisted!  Very demonic!


----------



## Bohandas

*Hellection*
Its election time in the first layer of Baator. Lord Bel doesn't care about anything except war so he's left it to his underlings to manage the day to day affairs of Avernus. Control is contested between two factions. The first is the Procrustean Party. The Procrusteans wish to stamp out all differences between individuals and turn the all the world into identical and interchangable creatures. To this end they also focus on corrupting souls, under the reasoning that converting sould into devils is the first step to converting them into identical devils. Their leader is an undead modron rumored to be the former Primus that was possessed and killed by Orcus. Opposing the Procrusteans are the Classist-Execptionalist party. The Classist-Exceptionalists are obsessed with creating and widening class divisions that favor the powerful and marginalize the weak, with a secondary focus on elevating Baator over all other planes. To this second end they funnel much of their small budget back into the blood war, even though the other 99% of Avernus' budget is already allocated to the blood war anyway.  The the PCs get caught up in the politicking between these two parties and are hired as spies or assassins (or possibly as a one side's champions in a "debate" consisting of about 80% ritual combat)


----------



## Bohandas

*The Disease*
Every fall and winter, isolated villages that are too small to have a decent town guard hire adventurers and sellswords like the PCs to help deal with the yearly seasonal zombie virus


----------



## Bohandas

*Eye In The Pyramid*

The PCs must deal with a vast conspiracy masterminded by a beholder mummy. The final dungeon is a pyramid that is bigger on the inside than on the outside (or which, more technically, extends into the ethereal plane in addition to its normal rooms)


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Somehow, I am both intrigued by the idea of a beholder mummy and annoyed I never thought of that.


----------



## Bohandas

*Every Classic First-Person Shooter*
A project to build a bunch of portals or teleportation circles allows the Githyanki (or some other astral plane baddies) an easy way to get in and invade.

*Not a riddle, just an encounter*
The PCs need directions and encounter four watchmen. One always tells the truth, one always lies, one is totally clueless, and the last one tries to confuse them with misleading statistics.

*Artificial Scarcity*
A wizard acquaintance of the party contacts them with news that he has just rediscovered the secret of creating the philosopher's stone. When they reach his laboratory however he is nowhere to be found and everything has been smashed and ransacked. A trail of clues eventually leads the party to an inevitable tasked with ensuring economic stability, who has kidnapped the wizard in order to stop him from making more gold

*The Pest Protection Act*
A new government decree that all cats in the land must be neutered is the first clue to the existence of a wererat comspiracy that has taken over the government[/b]


----------



## Bohandas

*The Smashed Statue Garden*
An art collector hires the PCs to investigate vandalism. Every couple of years for the past few decades, someone has broken into his statue garden and smashed one of the statues. Nothing is stolen, and nothing else is touched. All the smashed statues are from the same artist. It eventually turns out the the artist in question is a spellcaster and destroyed statues are actually people who have been turned to stone. The person who has been smashing them is a Marut inevitable (that's the life and death one) who has been destroying those whose alloted lifespans have run out

*Fantasy Borg Cube*
(spelljammer) In the middle of the pholgiston the characters come across an incongruous cube-shaped iron fortress filled with spawn-creating zombies controlled by an evil witch whose living head is grafted onto a zombie body

*More Fun With Maruts*
A cattle drive has been running late and now something is killing the cattle. It's a Marut inevitable who's come because the cattle are late to the slaughterhouse.

*More Fun With Cattle*
A Sibriex demon (that's the graft creating one) has passed through a ranch, and now all the steer have been converted back into very angry bulls with supernatural strength and barbarian-style rage abilities

*The Underworld*
The criminal underworld has teamed up with the actual underworld and now there's a bunch of mobster monsters with satanic powers running around.

*Doctor Juvenile*
(for a superhero RPG) A supervillain named Dr.Juvenile is threatening the city. His specialty is childish pranks writ large. The heroes need to stop him before he replaces all the oxygen tanks in the hospital with bottled farts and blows up the sewage treatment plant with a dumptruck full of fireworks

*There's No Such Thing As A Rare Book*
A Call of Cthulhu game set in modern times in which paranormal mythos activity has skyrocketed due to the fact that the Necronomicon, Pnakotic Fragments, Book of Eibon, Revelations of Glakii, etc are now freely available on the Miskatonic University website (and those of similar institutes of higher learning) to anybody who is interested.

*Disorder In The Court*
While in the Abyss the PCs are randomly abducted and taken to the courtroom layer of Woeful Escarand to stand trial for made-up charges. The "trial" starts out as a disorderly courtroom trial in which whichever side insults the other worst seems to have advantage (use bluff checks as per Dragonlance taunting rules) but after a short while, if the PCs are winning, it is changed to a trial by ordeal, consisting of aomething similar to a Double Dare obstacle course but much bigger and with demons taking potshots at the PCs, deadly booby traps, and offal and excrement instead of non-toxic fun slime, if they succeed at this the format is again changed, this time to trial by combat against the prosecutor, who is at least as surprised by this latest change as the PCs are and is not entirely prepared. If they kill the prosecutor they are allowed to go free.

*The Replica*
A magic item (possibly a sword or something) which was a family heirloom of a local noble has been missing for an undetermined period of time. Beyond it's base magical abilities It had been enchanted to not show up on detect magic to reduce incidents of people trying to steal it, but this also meant that when it was stolen - and replaced with a fake - the fake took some time to be noticed. Anyway the PCs need to track down the sword (or whatever)


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

My 2 faves from that post:


> Fantasy Borg Cube
> (spelljammer) In the middle of the pholgiston the characters come across an incongruous cube-shaped iron fortress filled with spawn-creating zombies controlled by an evil witch whose living head is grafted onto a zombie body






> There's No Such Thing As A Rare Book
> A Call of Cthulhu game set in modern times in which paranormal mythos activity has skyrocketed due to the fact that the Necronomicon, Pnakotic Fragments, Book of Eibon, Revelations of Glakii, etc are now freely available on the Miskatonic University website (and those of similar institutes of higher learning) to anybody who is interested.


----------



## Bohandas

*Supernatural Gem Smugglers*
A local butcher shop is a front for a supernatural gem smuggling ring who have been using the spell _Stone to Flesh_ to disguise stolen diamonds as ordinary scraps of meat.


----------



## Bohandas

*The Gamers*
This can be inserted into an adventure of the exploration-of-a-derelict-wizard-tower variety
In an out of the way room, possibly behind a locked or hidden door, the players stumble upon the last group to investigate this ruin, who have been missing for several months. They are alive and well, enraptured by the original owner's magical entertainment system, an intelligent Table of Feasting with the ability to conjure boardgames and extensive storytelling talent (see 3.5e stats below). They are either enraptured by the item's ego or simply content to stay there.

Boardy McGameface: Intelligent _Table of Feasting_ (Stronghold Builder's Guidebook p.84; Heroes' Feast 3/day) Int 19 Wis 10 Cha 19; Speech, Telepathy 120 ft, Read Languages and Magic; Blindsense and Darkvision 120 feet and hearing; Lesser Powers: _Prestidigitation_ continuously, _Dancing Lights_ at will, _Ghost Sound_ at will, item has 10 ranks in Diplomacy, item has 10 ranks in Perform(Oratory), item has 10 ranks in Sense Motive; Greater Powers: Minor Image at will; Ego 19

*Ted Bundy*
A seemingly injured man asks for the party's help with some mundane task that he can't due to his arm being in a sling or something like that. If they agree he leads them to an out of the way location and tries to kill them.

*The Deep State*
In a reversal of a classic trope, the player characters must help the good aligned royal vizier sabotage the chaotic evil king's plot for world domination.

*A Disturbing Holiday Tale*
(for a superhero game) The protagonists must stop a group of nazi occultists from obtaining Frosty the Snowman's magic hat and using it to revive Hitler

*Mission Accomplished*
The dark lord has been deposed, but with his regime gone, a murder cult that had been suppressed under his rule is now running rampant

EDIT:
*Rodent Problem*
The PCs must save a group of treants that are being menaced by fiendish dire beavers

EDIT:

*The MAFIAA [sic]*
The party bard is accosted by racketeering devils who claim to own his stories and ideas.


----------



## Bohandas

*The World Series of Murder*
A certain town or city recieves notice that they have been unwillingly chosen to "host" a demonic competition. Demons from the Abyss are going to come there to see which one of them can kill the most people. The demons gave the town advance notice because the town having defenses in place makes things "more interesting". They can't evacuate because reasons. The PCs are either among several groups of mercenaries hired to shore up the town's defenses or (if the DM decides that the "reasons" above involve the city being completely cut off from the outside world) they are townsfolk. The demons use a variety of tactics from open rampaging to skulking murder from the shadows to possession to poisoning. There are rules, enumerated in the notice/threat, that the demons are theoretically supposed to follow but none of them do except when the nalfeshnee judge/referee (who also murders people, but not necessarily as part of the contest) may be watching, and even then only half the time as the judge is both apathetic to the rules and openly corrupt. The contest ends when the referee gets bored (a couple weeks in) or all the demons are killed or driven off or everyone in the town is dead.

*Tale of Two Settings*
Spelljammer campaign designed as a frame to string together standalone published adventures. The party's day job is as guards for a company that buys iron on Oerth and sells it on Krynn to buy gold there (the planet Krynn is canonically iron poor to the point where steel is more valuable than gold there, so there's lots of money to be made just ferrying the two metals between it and any other inhabited planet). Thus the party is has an excuse to go on both Greyhawk and Dragonlance adventures and fight space pirates in the interim.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

That first one has a little _30 Days of Night_ vibe.


----------



## Imaculata

Here's one I'm currently working on for a film noir supernatural adventure:

*The Horror of Huxley House*
A group of paranormal investigators in1930s London, investigate a mysterious house called the Huxley House. They are tasked with finding out the cause of the disturbances that the house has been causing, and putting a stop to it.


----------



## Bohandas

*The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything*

A ship that the PCs are on is boarded by pirates who turn out to actually be completely non-violent conmen who use fear magic and illusions to get their targets to surrender. These conmen-pirate-wizards are several levels higher than the party to prevent them from being taken down in combat before the gig is up

EDIT:
I just realized that I just described high fantasy scooby doo


----------



## Bohandas

*Sympathy*

The PCs are hired by a powerful mage to aid in a plan for the betterment of society. This mage has acquired a large sprawling facility whose interior can be easily reconfigured. He has arranged this facility into an abstract representation of some complex and multifaced abstract societal problem (such as world hunger, or adult illiteracy), including stocking it with thematically appropriate monsters (usually undead, outsiders, fey, vermin, animals, plus constructs dressed in various costumes) and ensorcelled it with powerful sympathetic magic. By defeating the dungeon, the PCs can defeat the corresponding societal problem. After each complete dungeon run the facility is reconfigured for a new societsl problem.

*The Mediocre Archfiend*

The PCs are targeted by the demon prince of Manes (the lowest caste of demons). Much less powerful than the Queen of Succubi or the Lord of Balors, the Prince of Manes is only about CR 10 and rules his minions from a throne made oc chicken bones and dead rats. Attached below is a possible 3.5e statblock for the Prince of Manes. It has NOT been playtested.



Spoiler



*Demeicro, Low Power demon prince*

*Demeicro*
_King of the Manes_, _The Prince of Dimness_

Portfolio: Manes demons, stupidity

Similar to how Malcanthet is the Queen of Succubi and Kardum is the Lord of Balors, Demeicro is the King of the Manes (the most basic type of demon, Fiendish Codex 1, Pg 45). As lord of the weakest demon type he is one of the weakest demon lords possibly _the_ weakest. This is one of the demon prince positions with the highest rate of turnover; He isn't the first to hold this position, he won't be the last, and he may not even be the only one (similar to how Malcanthet and Shami-Amourae are both Queen of the Succubi). He is also one of the dumbest of the demon lords and the demonic patron of stupidity, earning him the derisive title "The Prince of Dimness". He seems to think that this has to do with literal dimness and has developed some magical abilities to match.

He appears as a giant manes demon and is usually surrounded by a retinue of manes, In combat he has a tendency to throw these minions at people, using their acidic cloud death throes as a bomb. Sometimes he will go through several before realizing that an enemy is resistant or immune to acid. He dwells in a shoddily constructed fortress and rules his minions from a makeshift throne made of chicken bones and dead animals

*CE Large outsider (chaotic, evil, extraplanar, tanar’ri)*
*Init:* +2
*Senses:* darkvision 90 ft.; Listen +0, Spot –1
*Languages:* Abyssal; telepathy 100 ft.
*AC:* 15, touch 7, flat-footed 15 (-1 size, -2 dex, +8 natural)
*HP:* 95 (10 HD; 10d8+50); DR 5/cold iron and good
*Immune:* electricity, poison
*Resist:* acid 10, cold 10, fire 10
*Saves:* Fort +12, Ref +6, Will +6
*Speed:* 20 ft. (4 squares)
*Melee:* 2 claws +15 (1d6+6 Plus 1 Vile) and bite +13 (1d8+3 Plus 1 Vile)
*Base Atk:* +10; Grp: +20
*Abilities:* Str 22, Dex 6, Con 20, Int 9, Wis 9, Cha 9
*SQ:* acidic cloud, tanar’ri traits
*Feats:* Gruesome Finish (Exemplars of Evil), Improved Initiative, Multiattack, Vile Natural Attack (BOVD/Elder Evils)
*Skills:* Balance +4, Climb +19, Escape Artist +4, Hide +7, Intimidate +1, Jump +19, Knowledge (Arcane) +0, Knowledge (Planes) +0, Listen +0, Move Silently +9, Spellcraft +0, Survival +12, Use Magic Device +6

*Acidic Cloud (Su):*
When the prince of dimness is wounded for 5 or more HP with a slashing or piercing weapon acidic vapor sprays out in the direction the attack came from. Anybody standing in that square must make DC 15 Reflex save or take 1d6 points of acid damage
If the Prince of Dimness is killed, it dissolves into a cloud of noxious vapor. Anyone within 20 feet who fails a DC 15 Reflex save takes 2d6 points of acid damage

*Charm Manes (sp)*
Three times per day Demeicro can attempt to charm a manes demon. This works like the spell charm person except that it works on manes and only on manes.

*Summon Manes (Sp)*
Once per day the Lord of Dimness can attempt to summon 4d8 manes with a 60% chance of success. Alternately he can automatically summon 2d4 manes. This ability is the equivalent of a 6th-level spell.

*Spell-Like Abilities*
cl 10
At Will- Acid Splash, Daze (DC9), Greater Teleport (self plus 50 pounds of objects only), Mage Hand, No Light (BOVD)
3/day- Darkness, Delusions of Grandeur (Dragon #324) (DC11), Doom (DC10), Magic Stone, Obscuring Mist, Ray of Stupidity (SC)
1/day- Cone of Dimness (SC) (DC12), Desecrate, Feeblemind (DC14), Mind Fog(DC14), Stinking Cloud (DC12), Touch of Idiocy


----------



## Orius

Bohandas said:


> *Ted Bundy*
> A seemingly injured man asks for the party's help with some mundane task that he can't due to his arm being in a sling or something like that. If they agree he leads them to an out of the way location and tries to kill them.




Not to be confused with the washed up orc warrior with a lazy selfish wife who boasts about TPKing 4 parties of adventurers in a single module back in his youth.




Bohandas said:


> *The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything*
> 
> A ship that the PCs are on is boarded by pirates who turn out to actually be completely non-violent conmen who use fear magic and illusions to get their targets to surrender. These conmen-pirate-wizards are several levels higher than the party to prevent them from being taken down in combat before the gig is up
> 
> EDIT:
> I just realized that I just described high fantasy scooby doo




And you would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for those meddling kids!


----------



## Bohandas

*Faerunian Ragnarok*

Campaign set in a version of Toril that has been completely transformed by a series of cataclysms. To put an end to the wall of the faithless once and for all, the Eladrins allied themselves with the slaadi, the demons, and several chaotic deities to assassinate not just Kelemvor, but also Lord AO. Now the divine power structure of realmspace has been thrown into total disarray due to the top of the power structure being removed, the remaining gods losing the faithful that the wall gained them (placing multi-sphere pantheons like the Seladrine and the Mulhurandi gods in a position to take over), and stray bits of divinity from the destroyed overgod bouncing around all over and attaching themselves to random creatures. Additionally there's all sorts of undead running around all over due to there not being a god of the dead, foreign gods that were previously hedged out are flocking into realmspace, and the demons and eladrins have predictably turned on each other


----------



## Bohandas

*Evil Twin/Evil Self*

Some high level death-reversing spells like Clone, Reincarnate, and True Resurrection leave behind supernumerary corpses after the subject is brought back; The subject is brought back in a new body and the old body remains behind. As it happens, an old body left behind by one of the PCs has been animated by a necromancer (or, if it happens to have already happened in-game, by an undead's create spawn ability). This undead evil twin is now running amok.

*The Dream Fortress*

The players have to assault a fortress in the plane of dreams which is built following dream logic. It is entirely larger and taller than it needs to be. The layout is both maze-like and inconsistent. The rooms are an assortment of rooms from similar locations/buildings in the "real" game world scrambled, combined, rotated, mirrored, and repeated as nauseum. Many rooms have their own stairs and second floor that doesn't let out into the corresponding floor of the rest of the building; For example, someone's sleeping quarters might have a finished basement seperate from the rest of the building. Conversely, some normal levels of the fortress may lack normal access; for instance, you may need to go out the window and climb a rope hanging from another window, or you may need to climb up a pole that hangs down from a hole in the ceiling and terminates 7 feet above the ground like in Mario 64, except that this pole is also a very tall upside-down scratching post. There are many rooms that aren't needed and/or don't fit the purpose of the building, although their construction and decoration generally fit the style of the rest of the building. There are also many rooms that almost fit the purpose of the building or almost fit their own purpose but are slightly off or have some other additional unrelated nature; such as an armory for swordsmen that contains only bows, or a guard post that is also a busy restaurant. Many of the denizens of the fortress look like different people or things than what they are allegedly supposed to be, and often their behavior doesn't match either their nominal identity OR their appearance.

*Volcano Erupting in Populated Area*

A volcano is erupting in a populated area

*Saintanic Panic* [sic]
(adventure for modern or superhero games)

A fundamentalist preacher leader has drawn an army of brainwashed followers to himself using backwards messages hidden in religious music, now he plans to use them to take over the world.

*Unlimited Days of Night*

A vampire mad scientist is building a doomsday device to destroy the sun.

*Lord of Moon Rock*

A supervillain has stolen a bunch of moon rocks and is using them to control an army of werewolves.

*Spoonerism*

(superheroes or fantasy) Super-crime has been down so it's time to finally track down the prankster telekineticist who's been bending people's spoons while they're trying to eat soup.

*The Neighborhood Gets Richer*

(superheroes) Baron Upperclass is destroying the city with his his gentrification ray.

*Metaprophecy*

Panic over made up doomsday prophecy threatens to cause actual doomsday.

*EPA Superfund Site*

Chemical dumping in the swamp has given a bunch of the indigenous animals superpowers and now they're wrecking havoc.

*The Other Side of the Borg*

(superheroes) A race of assimilating cyborgs is turning all the Roombas and other household appliances into blood crazed half-animal monstrosities.

*The IRS*

(superheroes) The group's Batman/Iron Man expy is being audited by the IRS.

*I'm Henry the Eighth I Am*

(superheroes) A giant robotic Henry the Eighth is attacking the Vatican.


*The End Of The World (As We Know It)*

The end of the world (as we know it) exactly as described in the song _The End of the World (As We Know It)_

*All Natural*

A local organic farm is being propped up by a malevolent agricultural cult like the ones in _The Wicker Man_ and _Children of the Corn_

*Attack of the Killer Cabbages*

(superheroes) The farm-cult from "All Natural" (above) eventually gets into a war with another evil farm of opposite approach to technology. This second farm is run by a Monsanto-like company developing a strain of genetically engineered killer nazi cabbages with which to take over the world.

*Too Greedily and Too Deep*

(superheroes) Fracking has opened a chasm into Hell

*Vidconjuration*

(Call of Cthulhu) A recording of someone reading an incantation from the Necronomicon has gone viral on youtube (ie. the plot of _Fistful of Boomstick_, _Rings_, and _Scary Movie 3_)


----------



## Bohandas

*"You're Not Helping" OR "An Object Lesson About Murderhoboism"*- The PCs have been hired to rescue certain captives from a group of slavers who are transporting their victims across national borders via a flying airship. However, in addition to dealing with the slavers, the party must also deal with a rival party who have been hired with the more open-ended mission "stop the slavers" and are now trying to shoot the airship down heedless of the safety of anyone in it.

*The Facebook*- Call of Cthulhu adventure in which the leader of the shadowy mythos cult turns out to be Mark Zuckerberg, whose business success has been driven by dark rituals from the Necronomicon and who named his website Facebook in honor of the Necronomicon.


----------



## Bohandas

*The People of the Apovalypse*

A magically powerful empire that supplies its citizens' needs through magic has chosen an extreme method of protecting itself from monsters which has had terrible effects on neighboring regions. In order to prevent monstrous beings from having anywhere to live or hide this nation is deliberately converting the world into a barren wasteland. This is obviously a problem for the world's other nations that can't feed their people with magic and also for the many non-evil wild creatures who have now no food or shelter. The PCs are one of several groups of gurrellias/spies/whatever sent to try and find out how they're doing this and to disrupt this nation;s destruction of the planet


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

That could be an interesting alternative beginning to an Athas-style setting!


----------



## MarkB

*Mordenkainen's Vampiric Mansion*
Through an odd set of circumstances, an unfortunate wizard-turned-prospective-vampire-spawn was once buried within an interior garden feature inside his own _Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion_. The mystical connection between a vampire and their place of burial played havoc with the normal spell-duration restrictions of the Mansion, and when the spell ended the Mansion and its newly-vampiric occupant were cast adrift in the Astral Sea, bound together and doomed to slow decay.

The vampire, himself a formidable wizard in life, began to devise specialised ways for his abode to leech power from other extradimensional spaces, and for himself to feed. It started small - sometimes when a person reached into their Bag of Holding they would find their arm grasped in powerful hands as fangs fastened to their wrist. When their drained corpse was found, its hand would still be thrust into what was now a perfectly ordinary and otherwise-empty sack.

Now, after hundreds of years, he's perfected his craft, and when a group of weary adventurers retreat to the safety of their lavishly-appointed mansion, they may find that it has more and different rooms than they remember, as the Vampiric Mansion has locked onto it parasitically.

I imagine this as the ultimate high-level haunted house adventure. A party already weakened from a day's activities finds themselves locked inside their own mansion, its dimensions warping in unexpected ways under external control as a smart and deadly killer stalks its halls. To win free they'll have to fight their way from their own mansion into the heart of the vampiric mansion that's become bound to it, all the while fighting the architecture itself, as the vampire has become inextricably bound up to the house itself, becoming almost more a living location than an individual creature. A major aspect of the adventure would be a battle of wills between the party's spellcaster and the vampire, as each of them attempt to exert control over the shape of the mansion.


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## Bohandas

*Big Trouble In Gepetto's Workshop*- A cross between _Pinnochio_ and _Big Trouble in Little China_. The villain is a puppet who has come to life and now wants to be flesh. In order to do that he must find a woman with certain prophecied attributes, marry her, and then kill her. And it just so happens that at least one woman that the PCs know has these attributes.

The above idea can also be adapted into a Mouseguard or Bunnies&Burrows campaign by swapping Pinnochio out for the Velveteen Rabbit.


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## Dannyalcatraz

I _like_ that one.  Very versatile- and with a little tweaking- a solid all-ages scenario.

i could easily envision this as a _Tron_ type setting game as well, especially considering how many “rescue the Princess” videogames there are.  Mario, Zelda, Prince of Persia, Donkey Kong, Popeye...the list is looooong.


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## Bohandas

*The Delivery*- Encounter. The PCs encounter a very obviously powerful and malevolent being (such as a fiend or high level spellcaster) who nonetheless gives them a powerful, but not very useful to them, magic item for free. If asked he will explain, truthfully, that he does not expect the PCs to survive their quest to defeat the BBEG, who is the item's intemded ultimate recipient.

EDIT:
*In A Similar Vein*- Encounter. Another encounter with an incongruously helpful evil character. This time they are offered healing by a Sibriex demon. Who does all the healing via highly invasive (even when the would is superficial) surgery, . Without any anesthetic. Or handwashing. Or properly sharpened tools. The wound repair is mechanically as goos as magic, but leaves gruesome scars and a high chance of infection plus a will save is required to get through the operation without either squirming and making the woulds worse, or else developing a pathological fear of slashing weapons that can cause them to become shaken in combat


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## Bohandas

*Load-bearing Golems*- A certain dungeon has a LOT of golems in it. These golems generally don't move from their initial squares, and it's a good thing they don't, because they're part of the support structure of the building. If the party gets it in their heads to destroy too many of them, the whole building could come down on their heads. The same goes if they confront the big bad in the wrong place; if it's clear that he's going to die he'll order the golems to move. The party has to confront the villain somewhere where most of the golems are out of hearing range. Ideally this adventure should occur at low to mid levels or else killing enough golems that the building collapses will become the adventure's objective (with the party simply being resurrected afterward)


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## Dannyalcatraz

Bohandas said:


> *Load-bearing Golems*- A certain dungeon has a LOT of golems in it. These golems generally don't move from their initial squares, and it's a good thing they don't, because they're part of the support structure of the building. If the party gets it in their heads to destroy too many of them, the whole building could come down on their heads. The same goes if they confront the big bad in the wrong place; if it's clear that he's going to die he'll order the golems to move. The party has to confront the villain somewhere where most of the golems are out of hearing range. Ideally this adventure should occur at low to mid levels or else killing enough golems that the building collapses will become the adventure's objective (with the party simply being resurrected afterward)



Kind of like a FRPG version of Don’t Break The Ice.


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## Dannyalcatraz

*The Tokens*

A Modern Fantasy/present day sci-fi campaign idea that borrows from Michael Moorcock’s _Sailor on the Seas of Fate_, _Neverwhere,_ the _Sliders _TV show, and the classic movie, _Warriors_ and it’s spiritual successor_, Judgement Night._

A group of friends out on the town get lost in the maze of streets downtown.  Then their car breaks down.  And because nobody  is getting a solid signal on their cellphone, they decide to find the nearest bar or whatever is open to call a tow truck, friend or Uber.  They stumble on The Player’s Ball, of all things, and decide to party just a little bit more before making their call.

A scuffle breaks out, which then becomes a gunfight, so they run for the exits just like everyone else, and find themselves near a subway station.

Still lost, they decide to take the subway- who knew the city had a subway system?- to a more familiar part of the city.  They purchase some of the odd-looking tokens, and board the grafitti-cloaked train when it arrives.

When they reach a station that has a familiar sounding name, they get off, exit the station into the moonlit night, and start heading in a direction that seems correct up until someone notices the moon doesn’t look right.

...and neither does the second, smaller moon.

The train system is crossing dimensional boundaries to other versions of their city.  And the mazelike underground stations don’t always have the platforms well marked, so finding the way home will be difficul.

Sometimes the friends are just ordinary citizens in these “otherverses“.  Sometimes they’re thrust into adventures as heroes...or villains.


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## Bohandas

*You Break It You Buy It* High level party looking to stock up on gear and supplies and that the DM thinks he may have given too much stumbles into the domain of the god of commerce, which is a mazelike store of shifting aisles that it is very difficult to find the way out of and is filled with belligerant animated objects and related constructs. The building rearranges itself and attempts to keep them from leaving until such time as the total of the items in their shopping cart of holding and the expenditures from the store's you-break-it-you-bought-it policy exceed 10-50% of their coins


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## Bohandas

*Santa Claus*-
A group of high level characters have to suss out a way to deliver a very large number of packages in a short amount of time (note that you should not have them try to do the full santa claus job of deliveing things to all the boys and girls around the world because they can't. I did the math and assuming that he starts and ends at the international date line, giving him about 36 hours to work with, has unlimited access to _Quickened Teleport_ and _Maximized Time Stop_, and only delivers to children who are Lawful Good, D&D Santa would only be able to process a population of about 2 million children (36×60×10×5×2×9=1944000), I'd dial down the goal for their plan to maybe 200-2000, (and obviously wouldn't play out the whole thing round by round, although perhaps I might play out some snags they might hit along the way and see how much time that ends up costing them)

*Anthropology*
_Paranoia_ game where the twist is that there was no cataclysm. The computer is just broken. Furthermore, one of the player characters' secret society affiliation is that they're actually an anthropologist from Outside who has been sent to study the people and society of Alpha Complex (who are referred to as "mole people" by the character's outside contacts)

*Crossover*
Basically, the idea of this campaign is that Alpha Complex from _Paranoia_ is actually part of the Demiplane of Dread from _Dungeons and Dragons_. Either the PCs find their way INTO Alpha Complex, or else it starts out as a normal _Paranoia_ game and they somehow find their way OUT OF Alpha Complex at which point the twist is revealed things suddenly get weird.


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## Dannyalcatraz

Paranoia as a demiplane of dread?  I like it!


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## Bohandas

*The Shadow over Nickelodeon*
Horror themed _Toon_ adventure which takes the PCs to the lovecraftian city of Innsmouth. As the adventure progresses Innsmouth takes on a stronger and stronger resemblence to the city of Bikini Bottom from _Spongebob Squarepants_.


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## Dannyalcatraz

Bohandas said:


> *The Shadow over Nickelodeon*
> Horror themed _Toon_ adventure which takes the PCs to the lovecraftian city of Innsmouth. As the adventure progresses Innsmouth takes on a stronger and stronger resemblence to the city of Bikini Bottom from _Spongebob Squarepants_.



Somewhere out there, there’s a fanfic cartoon of one of the characters going on a horror movie rampage.  It was pretty well done.


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## Bohandas

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Somewhere out there, there’s a fanfic cartoon of one of the characters going on a horror movie rampage.  It was pretty well done.




Was it _Mr.Krabs' Unquenchable Bloodlust_?

EDIT:


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## Dannyalcatraz

Actually no!  It was a cartoon strip.

Edit: found it!  _The Bikini Bottom Horror_


----------



## aramis erak

Mordred hates his father and his mother, so starts a rebellion seeking to impose a constitution and democracy. 
The first insight is when he's dragged into court forcibly by Sir Kay and forced to be acknowledged by a concerned Arthur.
The queen's pissed and the PC's have to talk her down from having Lancelot end Arthur for his infidelity.
Lancelot and Kay impose a quest upon the PCs to "educate" Mordred in the arts of Chivalry...
Squire Mordred the Absent causes no shortage of problems for the party; repeat several times.
Arthur acknolwedges Mordred as heir; both Mordred and Guinevere go absent.
Mordred reveals Lancelot's lust for Guin... Publicly. 
Cue PC's trying to either silence Mordred or stop Lance from shaming them by killing Mordred.
Guin goes missing again, PC's tasked to find her.
Guin comes back with Mordred, and has him baptized... sunday mass watches as he dissolves, being nought but a glamour...
Real Mordred is hiding out with Merlin, PC's have to talk him into parlay with his father.


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## Bohandas

*The Stupidest Mindflayer*- The PCs must foil a scheme for world domination hatched by an Invader Zim-esque mindflayer with the minimum intelligence and wisdom scores for its race


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## Bohandas

*Dragons Everywhere*- The PCs are from a generically east Asian inspired land. There's metallic dragons everywhere, they're semi divine, part of the heavenly bureaucracy, yadda yadda yadda. That's just a backdrop for the invasion by a neighboring country that's the same sort of thing with the notable exception that their dragons have been swapped out for western/chromatic dragons


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## Dannyalcatraz

I get the feeling they’re more Disneyesque than “fierce”.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

*TERRA ZOO*

Earth is actually a several billion year old zoo, with humans being one of the premiere attractions.  Those “alien abductions”?  Extraterrestrial vets checking the livestock.

So when humanity achieves spaceflight between visits, how will the keepers react to the escape?


----------



## fba827

Ghostbusters
The PCs are imbued with a unique ability to see ghosts, and travel through towns investigating /stopping supernatural creatures. They even eventually can have their logo, vehicle, catchphrase, song, and mascot.


----------



## Bohandas

Herobizkit said:


> This prompted a memory that I may or may not have had.
> 
> I recall there being some kind of made-for-tv movie that was supposed to be about three fantasy words existing simultaneously in the same space, so that anything that happened on one affected the other two.  I don't think it made it to air or, if it did, I clearly missed it.  Does this ring a bell for anyone?



It rings a few bells, but none of them fit perfectly. It seems vaguely reminiscent of The Long Earth, the Eternal Champion, and to a much lesser extent the planet that Escaflowne takes place on


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## Bohandas

*Stewardship*- The PCs are caught up in a conflict between two rival groups of nature spirits that control a large forest. The first faction is a group of chaotic fey who introduce (and sometimes remove) different species of plants and animals out of a sense of whimsy. The second faction is a group of biome regulating Inevitables (similar to the Anhydruts from Sandstorm, but for forests instead of deserts) who have a very strict and unbending conception of "the natural order". Both sides try to recruit the PCs to harass and undermine the opposite faction. I'm thinking that either this is a forest that the PCs have to pass through to get somewhere, or else this forest is near the PCs' main area of residence or operations and someone needs to deal with this conflict before it spills over into the surrounding area

*Pirates of the Super-Sargasso Sea*- While attempting to teleport somewhere the party is intercepted on the Astral Plane by a githyanki vessel whose denizens try to roll them for all their worldly goods


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## Dannyalcatraz

If nothing else, I have to upvote multiplanar pirates.


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## Bohandas

*Aperture Science*- The PCs are attached to a research team (possibly from the Fraternity of Order, depending on when in the timeline the adventure is set) investigating the timing and details of spontaneous portal formation in Sigil, ie. how long does it take for a new bounded space to become a portal and is there any pattern to where they lead. Of course occasionally belligerants come through the new portals, and also sometimes the party is sent through the portals to scout the other side.


----------



## Bohandas

*Sidequest: Cyranomycota*- Played for laughs' While the party is visiting a Myconid settlement one of the locals enlists the party bard (and by extension the rest of the party) for help with its love life. Unfortunately the myconid's love life revolves around a bunch of confusing nonsense about fungal mating types

*High Mundanity*- The party get drawn into taking part in a normal medieval war wherein two kings both think they're the rightful ruler of some patch of land of middling strategic and economic value - and despite the interpolation of elves, magic, dragons, gods, and the other trappings of fantasy there isn't any righteous cause, or fate of the world, or even any difference to the people of the contested territory other than who they pay their taxes to.

*Righteousness Knows No Sides*- The PCs are paladins and good aligned clerics who have been charged by their god with the task of stopping both sides of a war from doing war crimes. Led by visions, they travel around freeing torture victims from prison facilities, intervening to stop the slaughter of civilians, and intercepting weapons that have been smuggled across borders under false flags of humanitarian aid.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

I like ideas yoinked from real world biology!  Especially when they involve sexy sexy time!


----------



## Bohandas

*Assault on Knih Oin RNG Megadungeon*- Roguelike type gameplay moved to the tabletop. The PCs are mercenaries working for a yugoloth named Sarscov (see my thread Supreme Beings in A Summary, Deities In A Dispatch)   who is trying to conquer Khin-Oin to become the new Oinoloth. This is just an excuse to have a functionally endless dungeon and to swap in new characters when old ones die. Each level of the dungeon would be generated using the tables in the Dragon Compendium.

*The Ripper*- The church of the god of rogues hires the PCs to find and stop the killer who has been targeting bums and prostitutes. They've lost some of their most devout worshippers and the police don't care.

*Early Release*-Mountaintop removal mining either releases a monster that was trapped under the mountain (cf. Sun-Wukong, Loki, the Balrog, etc.) or conversely prematurely awakens a king under the mountain type dormant hero

*Hookpatch*- The PCs must stop an evil one-eyed, hook-handed pirate captain seeks the hand and eye of Vecna

*The Red King Awakens*- The kalashtar are secretly the bad guys (Of course they're the bad guys, their whole thing seems to be about genocide, whereas the worst the Quori seem to do is incepting people). In any case, they're about to force the turning of the age by awakening the the Rakshasa Rajah that's dreaming the Quor Tarai


----------



## Bohandas

A war rages that is of such brutality that demons and the undead have joined both sides unbidden. The PCs are civilians caught in the middle of this war


----------



## Bohandas

Scenarios for TOON

*The PCs compete in the "All-Doping Olympics" where cheating is encouraged

*The PCs are members of the party frat at a wizard college

*The PCs have to help train the treant boxer Ginkgo Balboa [sic] for his upcoming fight with the undead boxer Ivan Draugr [sic]


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Bohandas said:


> Scenarios for TOON
> 
> *The PCs compete in the "All-Doping Olympics" where cheating is encouraged



Kinda like the Laff-A-Lympics!


----------



## Orius

Dannyalcatraz said:


> *TERRA ZOO*
> 
> Earth is actually a several billion year old zoo, with humans being one of the premiere attractions.  Those “alien abductions”?  Extraterrestrial vets checking the livestock.
> 
> So when humanity achieves spaceflight between visits, how will the keepers react to the escape?



Probably they'll call in the space cops to shoot the escapees.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Orius said:


> Probably they'll call in the space cops to shoot the escapees.



“They’ve started calling themselves ‘Harambeans’ for some reason…”


----------



## Bohandas

*Sometimes they Don't Come Back Wrong*- For a modern, futuristic, or recent history setting. The dead have begun returning in droves, and unfortunately they're exactly as they were in life. Now the world is overrun with people who support things like slavery, feudalism, human sacrifice, and other horrors of the past.

*Elfghanistan*-The last of the white ships has left Middle Earth and the PCs are elves who didn't make it there in time.

*The March of Time*- Low-stakes roleplay comedy adventure for superhero setting (would probably work well in Super TOON). The superheroes are menaced not by villains or a disaster, but the decline of the newspaper industry, which traditionally provided many superheroes with their day jobs.


----------



## Maxperson

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Actually no!  It was a cartoon strip.
> 
> Edit: found it!  _The Bikini Bottom Horror_













						Real-life SpongeBob and Patrick found side by side on seafloor. But they likely don't get along.
					

Unfortunately, these on-screen friends are real-life enemies.




					www.livescience.com


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Maxperson said:


> Real-life SpongeBob and Patrick found side by side on seafloor. But they likely don't get along.
> 
> 
> Unfortunately, these on-screen friends are real-life enemies.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.livescience.com



I just saw that a couple days ago!


----------



## pming

Hiya!

Here's a shortened version of a one-page "campaign pitch" I gave for a Star Wars campaign waaaaaay back in/around the late 80's:
"Luke could feel the force as he flew along the Death Star Trench, quickly approaching the exhaust pipe. He closed his eyes, squeezed the trigger...and missed".

It _almost_ won in the "what game/campaign do we want to play next" choice (can't remember what it lost out to...at that time, probably 1e AD&D or Warhammer 1e). 

^_^

Paul L. Ming


----------



## Bohandas

Returning to the tangent about Spongebob, I just found this video entitled "Spongebob and Patrick Conjure Demons With Human Sacrifice":


----------



## Bohandas

A pirate's treasure map ends up leading only to to a bunch of buried bodies. Eventually it turns out that the pirate captain buried his crew alive because the real treasure was friendship.


----------



## TarionzCousin

Bohandas said:


> A pirate's treasure map ends up leading only to to a bunch of buried bodies. Eventually it turns out that the pirate captain buried his crew alive because the real treasure was friendship.



Necromancer PC decides that the real treasure is multiple usable corpses.


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## Bohandas

*Hell's Bells*

The townsfolk's request for the PCs to deatroy the temple of the evil cult is a trap. When the PCs get there it is deserted except for a bell tower, whose occupant rings the bell to call out the townsfolk - actually all members of the cult and not as harmless as they appeared - to come out and attack the PCs who were lured there to be sacrifices


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## Dannyalcatraz

That has kind of a _Dagon _feel to it.


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## Bohandas

*Kaiju Fhthagn* 
_Call of Cthulhu_ adventure wherein a cthulhu cult is led by a child based heavily on Toshio from Daikaiju Gamera, and Icho from Yongary: Monster From the Deep


----------



## Bohandas

*Dreamland Pulp*
Higher powered _Call of Cthulhu_ campaign where the PCs are all half-gods from Celephais (cf. _The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath_)

*Tremble*
_Dungeons & Dragons_ or _Call of Cthulhu_ campaign based on _Quake_, reusing maps, plot elements, etc
*High Tech*
Another _Call of Cthulhu_ idea. This one's set in classical antiquity or earlier. But the Nyarlathotep cult that's trying to take over has been given weapons equivalent* to 19th century firearms by their god. They've also been given plans for renaissance tech weapons which they are developing the means to manufacture themselves

*(Same basic kinds of gun but not matching any specific historical make or design)


----------



## Dannyalcatraz

Someone’s on a CoC binge!


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## Bohandas

*Champions of Nodens*
Relatively high powered _Call of Cthulhu_ campaign where over the course of the campaign all of the player characters lose their right hands during confrontations with cultists of Nyarlathotep, and have them replaced by unusual things. They eventually realize, after cross-refrencing various tomes against a passage from the Necronomicon, that they are being used by the one handed god Nodens as pawns in his rivalry with Nyarlathotep. Inspired by _The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath_, _Evil Dead 2 & 3_ and _Hellboy_ (edit: and _Adventure Time_)


----------



## Bohandas

*Assault On Gingerbread Castle*
The PCs raid the home of an elf witch

EDIT:

*No Java*
I have this half-formed idea, it would probably work best in Toon, about the adventurers having to revive King Arthur with the perfect cup of coffee after realizing that that's all that's needed to bring him back when they see that the word "AVALON" reflected in a mirror is "NO JAVA"


----------



## der_kluge

Not really sure how this 16+ year old thread eluded me all this time, but I can add my campaigns to the list.

*Order vs. Chaos*
500 years ago, the last king of the land decided that he'd had enough with demihumans - orcs, goblins, kobolds, et al. With fervent public support, he raised a vast army of paladins and clerics and eradicated them. Along the way, he tried to enlist every tool of order at his disposal - attempting to gather the pieces of the ultimate "Rod of Law" along the way (the Rod of Seven Parts). Unfortunately for the king, he had some powerful detractors who realized that all that he was actually doing was just enacting genocide on races of people who didn't deserve it. They decided to kidnap his daughter, the Princess in order to convince him to stop his foolish campaign. The king retaliated against these nobles, and had them killed. Unfortunately, they were the only ones who knew where the daughter was (frozen in temporal stasis, and stuffed in a bag of holding). Because she existed outside of time and place. no magic could find her. The King and Queen spent the remainder of their years trying to find her to no avail, and each in their own ways.

Today, along come the PCs, investigating some ancient ruins - shrines that once honored those who fought in these long ago conflicts, where they eventually discover the first piece of the Rod of Seven Parts. Along the way, they eventually learn that the Queen became the Queen of the Hags, and rules over the entire forest, driven mad by the loss of her daughter, and paying a price for pacts she made with evil fey forces long ago. The King became a vampire, and now is driven by evil and hunger, and lurks in the shadows in a land far away. The PCs are driven to complete the rod, but along the way come to realize that ultimate order is no better than ultimate chaos. Also, they discover the actual princess, secreted away in a dark cave, who only complicates the history of the world, and helps them to see that the King's past is not as rosy as the books say.

(in a nutshell: This is Tombs of Abysthor (heavily modified) alongside a (heavily modified) Rod of Seven Parts, with a LOT of history sprinkled in for good measure)

*The Best Intentions*
An ancient Mind Flayer decides that science progresses far too slowly. In an effort to help mankind along the march of science, he reasons that the real problem is something called "ethics". In an act of infinite benevolence, the Mind Flayer replaces all the most esteemed scientists in the world with Intellect Devourers, and tells them to continue their science "unabated". As expected - all hell breaks loose. Now, all the world's most prominent alchemists are free to test their creations on an unwilling populace. The need for "test subjects" grows exponentially as the alchemists have free reign to hasten their testing. One alchemist even creates an "alchemical plague" and unleashes it on a very large populace. The plague isn't healed by traditional magic, and lowers strength by 1 point per day, until they go into a coma. At this point, priests, disguised as Priests of Kelemvor, offer to "remove" the "dead" from the city, where they are promptly cured with an antidote, and thrown into slavery in a far-off land over the sea. Here, they are given over as test subjects in brutal, and often bizarre experiments. 

Also, the Mind Flayer has learned that one of the scientists has been experimenting with the Apparatus (from Ravenloft, and the Book of Artifacts) - a sinister device that can transfer the intellect of one creature into the physical body of the other. He's decided that he wants to recreate a much larger version of this device around a Tarrasque that he's found trapped in an earthen prison near a jungle. If he manages to pull this off, the party will have to deal with a Tarrasque with the intellect of a mind flayer!


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## Bohandas

der_kluge said:


> Not really sure how this 16+ year old thread eluded me all this time,




And see also the related threads Worlds In A Word, Planes In A Paragraph and Supreme Beings In A Summary, Deities in A Dispatch


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## Dannyalcatraz

*Mordor on the Orient Express*

A group of strangers meet near the train’s caboose, summoned by invitations from a renowned but eccentric and reclusive scholar of antiquities.  They band together to deliver a cursed ring to the train’s locomotive, seeking to destroy it by tossing it in the engine’s firebox.

Their journey forward is met with opposition from a motley assortment of foes acting at the behest of the ring’s creator, an ageless, monacled svengali known as Sir Ron DeSeever.


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## Bohandas

*The Power of Love*
The PCs get involved with aiding two young lovers whose situation is remarkably similar to that of Romeo & Juliet, but with the distinction that these two young lovers have also just developed minor psionic powers and that if the PCs investigate closely they will discover that both the attraction between the two lovers and the feud between their families were both deliberately set up by a coordinated effort of the families' patriarchs as part of an unethical experiment to turn their children into a "psychic capacitor" (the two lovers are the plates, the feud between the families is the dielectric and the power of love is the current)


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## Bohandas

*Journey to the West: Dark Timeline*
The Buddha once tried to contain a powerful upstart godling by trapping him in the Buddha's Palm, which encloses all the multiverse. This failed, and as a result two fingers were severed and floated off into the Far Realm. Now the fingers have been mutated into monsters and are attacking the multiverse


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## Thunderfoot

*Out of the Past, To save the Future*
One or more of the party is actually plucked out of the past to bring ancient knowledge into the future that has been forgotten or convoluted with time that is critical to stopping a coming threat.  (This one has lots of possibilities and can be played as a slow burn where the threat may not even be known yet.)

*Stuck in the Future Because of the Past*
Another time travel scenario ripped from The Planet of the Apes.  Astronauts are trapped in a cosmic event which catapults them into a future where humans are gone a technology is too.  Suddenly the reappearance of humans with a powerful new magic named Psiants (lol) is scary.  As an alternative, a player can be a human and ally with a party to find out what happened (Damn you all to Hell, You blew it up!!) and reintroduce the human race to new earth.


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## Bohandas

*Investigators of the Lost Ark*
Call of Cthulhu. The deep ones and Esoteric Order of Dagon are finally making their move for world domination with Dagon himself at the forefront and global war has broken out. The only weapon known to be able to stop Dagon is the Ark of the Covenant, but it's been missing for centuries.


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## Bohandas

*Some door based non-combat encounters:*

*Trap: Exploding Door*- A door whose interior is under tension, like a coiled spring, if the structural integrity of the door is compromised by someone trying to break it down it bursts and sprays the immediate area with shrapnel. It does have the drawback that due to the internal tension it will fail in this way after recieving less damage than it would take to hack through an ordinary door of its general type

*Exploding door trap- Magical variant* This versi9n of the above trap is held together by magic emitted by the door frame. The key also emits similar magic. If contact with the frame is broken by the door being opened without the magic key (suck as being forced, or having the lock opened by picking or the Knock spell) the door explodes as above

*Corrugated door*- This door is made of a very very long sheet of metal that has been folded back on itself many many times. The bolt of the lock passes through every layer of folds. Because of its unusually high surface area it requires a higher caster level knock spell to bypass its lock than would be normal for a door of its size


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## CleverNickName

The scariest, shortest ghost story I've ever read.  It would make an excellent adventure hook.
"I can't sleep," she said, as she slid into bed beside me.​I wake up cold, holding the dress she was buried in.​


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## Bohandas

*Terrorist Solar Cell*
For a superheroes or spies type game. A mad scientist (and/or rich lunatic with mad scientists in his employ) who harbors Unabomber-esque political views is building a doomsday device designed to provoke a Carrington scale solar storm that will destroy all advanced technology on Earth. The PCs will confront the villain's forces on Earth before traveling to space to throw down against the villain himself in an ironically high-tech fortress orbiting the sun which houses the superweapon


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## Orius

Then there's the Japanese druid whose battle cry is, "Bonsai!".


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## Bohandas

*The Sword In The ... what?*

During a succession crisis a portentous object appears. A sword driven through an anvil which rests atop a vampire who is splayed over a large stone. Whoever can pull the sword from the stone is the rightful king but will have to deal with the vampire


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## Dannyalcatraz

I can figure out a possible, partial solution for the vampire…the embedded sword may be tricky, though.


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## Bohandas

*Rot Bots*

Ok, so I'm watching _Transformers: BotBots_ on Netflix and I had the thought that if that energon burst had hit a cemetery instead of a mall that town would be overrun with robot zombies (and robot headstones too, but that's a different matter)


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## Bohandas

*Humanati*- A tribe of lizardfolk has been infiltrated by an evil cabal of human politicians with nefarious goals


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## Dannyalcatraz

*The Questing Cursebreakers*

Each member of the party has had their life profoundly affected by some kind of curse or spell.  Under the tutelage of a mage who had his OWN curse broken, they have banded together to find cures for their afflictions…or ways to live with their burdens in ways they- and hopefully, society- can accept.

Note: this is a campaign that can be geared for gamers of any age.  Look to Disney & Pixar films, or movies like _Ladyhawke_ for examples of people dealing with curses that don’t necessarily involve body horror and gore.


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## Bohandas

*D20 Modern, or possibly Call of Cthulhu, adventure where vampire hunters must destroy Lenin and Chairman Mao (who are clearly vampires because their bodies haven't decayed and they were both evil in life, both easily the equal of Vlad the Impaler)

*On a related note, Call of Cthulhu adventure involving vampires, who are interpreted as minions of Nyarlathotep (who has an existing semi-canonical association with bats). But the twist, as the PCs will discover at an inopportune time when they think they have the upper hand, is that all the well known vampire weaknesses are closer to a cultural or psychological thing and not a true part of their constitution, and if actually imperiled they can ignore things such as garlic or sunlight or the cross as easily as a human in a burning building could run outside without getting dressed. These things have no real power, Nyarly just thought it would be more interesting for himself if his minions had restrictions; he has nothing really to gain by winning nor is he at any real risk from losing. If the minions break the rules too many times he may punish them himself, but even this is not reliable and will certainly stop being the case if the PCs try to force more than two into this situation in close succession


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## Orius

Have you ever heard about the gnoll who likes to hunt his prey on the prairies and steppes while wearing a ghillie suit?  

He's the grassy gnoll.


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## Dannyalcatraz

Orius said:


> Have you ever heard about the gnoll who likes to hunt his prey on the prairies and steppes while wearing a ghillie suit?
> 
> He's the grassy gnoll.



Have you heard about the former boxer who does the same, but just punches his targets into orbit?

He’s called de grassy Tyson.


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## Bohandas

*Indecision*- _Exalted_ adventure or campaign set in Malfeas. One of the Yozis is having difficulty making a decision on an important matter. This takes the form of a war between two or more of this Yozi's third circle demons, which the PCs get caught up in


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## Dannyalcatraz

Bohandas said:


> *Indecision*- _Exalted_ adventure or campaign set in Malfeas. One of the Yozis is having difficulty making a decision on an important matter. This takes the form of a war between two or more of this Yozi's third circle demons, which the PCs get caught up in



Once upon a time, there was a product called The Primal Order.









						The Primal Order - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org
				




The group I was in at the time planned to do a campaign in which each player designed some kind of deity, and each deity would have champions working for them within campaign worlds.  We never got that far with it, though.


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## Bohandas

I have this half formed idea to somehow combine Clarice's childhood trauma seeing the sheep being slaughtered _The Silence of the Lambs_ with the cult of Hastur (who was originally characterized as a god of shepherds when he first appeared in the short story "Haita the Shepherd")


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## Dannyalcatraz

Bohandas said:


> I have this half formed idea to somehow combine Clarice's childhood trauma seeing the sheep being slaughtered _The Silence of the Lambs_ with the cult of Hastur (who was originally characterized as a god of shepherds when he first appeared in the short story "Haita the Shepherd")



Maybe throw in some _Wicker Man_ (original) for flavor…


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## Orius

Ah yes, the first of several attempts by WotC to break into the RPG industry until they just did the easy thing by buying D&D.


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## Bohandas

Mind-flayer mummies. Something with mind-flayer mummies. They already canonically prepare their dead by removing the brain (in order to graft it to the elder brain) and it jives well with the egyptian space aliens sci-fi trope (ie Stargate, Khai of Khem, A Pharaoh to Remember, etc.)


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## Dannyalcatraz

Bohandas said:


> Mind-flayer mummies. Something with mind-flayer mummies. They already canonically prepare their dead by removing the brain (in order to graft it to the elder brain) and it jives well with the egyptian space aliens sci-fi trope (ie Stargate, Khai of Khem, A Pharaoh to Remember, etc.)



Hmmm…

You know those pathogens- parasites, prions, fungi, etc.- that spread by infecting a host and altering their behavior so they get consuned?  Some even consume the bodies of their hosts to a certain extent, creating macabre  “zombie” creatures.

Imagine a more parasitic cousin of Mind Flayers whose larvae are not tadpoles, but a little more like the parasites that create zombie snails:

As they dominate their hosts bodies directly, they use their Psionic abilities to become powerful leaders,  When their host bodies are almost completely consumed, they simulate their deaths and invariably demand a specific form of mumification,  The mummy becomes a walking chrysalis of sorts, the creature within transforming into their reproductive stage.  Instead of mummy rot, their touch is used to infect targets with larvae…


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## Yora

"Town starts simping for snake."


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## Bohandas

*Mouse Maze* The player characters are mice (perhaps it is a _Bunnies and Burrows_ or _Toon_ game, or a _Call of Cthulhu_ game where they are rats with the faces of men). In any case, the PCs are mice and they are placed in an insanely overengineered maze filled with death traps and predators which has been built by a movie studio to test horror movie concepts


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## Bohandas

The animals are acting strangely. It turns out that they're possessed and they're building something sinister and otherworldly outside the sight of humanity.


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## Dannyalcatraz

Bohandas said:


> The animals are acting strangely. It turns out that they're possessed and they're building something sinister and otherworldly outside the sight of humanity.



Their own Tower of Babel?  A megalithic stone circle?


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## Bohandas

Dannyalcatraz said:


> Their own Tower of Babel?  A megalithic stone circle?




I was thinking more some kind of weird temple or some strange eldritch machine akin to the slime tunnels or spook central antenna from _Ghostbusters_, the pyramid from _Pyramids_ or _Khai of Ancient Khem_, or the Icon of Sin from _Doom 2_, or any of the weird crap from the second part of _Dusk_. 

Either that or some kind of off-color pun about the Great Race of Yith.

EDIT:
Or they're digging a hole into Hell


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## Bohandas

*Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat* - The insanity causing properties of the objects and entities of the Cthulhu Mythos are a a result of the Great Race of Yith (and/or Yog-Sothoth and his minions) liking their privacy. As masters of time it is in their power to arrange things so humanity at large is fated to never learn their secrets. As a result events in general conspire for people to never encounter them, HOWEVER some coincidence always happens to discredit anyone who does stumble upon the secrets of the mythos, such as suffering from some damage or illness of the brain that renders them insane. The increasing world population as well as the proliferation of digital cameras and telecommunications technology means that they are more frequently seen, more frequently photographed, those photographs are more frequently shared before some coincidence can cause them to be lost, and more people have the resources at hand to deduce their existence. The result of all this is bizarre events of the past decade of so and the world's continued descent into choas and madness. Cut to the not too distant future, where in the waking world civilization is being torn apart by a pandemic of violent psychosis (akin the the start and end of the film _In the Mouth of Madness_) while at the same time Earth's dreamland is collapsing in on itself and Nyarlathotep reigns over it unfettered. This is the world in which the player characters find themselves, and there is no saving it, the arbiters of fate have already spoken. The most they can hope for is to survive as long as they can. At the very best they might help to attenuate total destruction into a mere fall into a new dark age or might escape through the collapsing dreamland to seek refuge witb the gods of Teloe (see _The Crawling Chaos_)

*Blood Sacrifice*- The PCs are vampire hunters. They are in Mexico or central america to hunt down the ancient vampires who were the secret puppetmasters behind the Aztec and Mayan religions.

*Deathboat*- Zombie virus outbreak on a cruise ship out at sea

Miscallaneous ideas:

*20000 Leagues Under the Sea, except in space

*Arthur Gordon Pym, except in space

*a cross between Ghostbusters and Pokemon. catching ghosts to fight other ghosts.


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## Longspeak

The PCs are part of a traveling circus. The circus is a legit circus that entertains folk across the land. But it's also home to a group of mercenaries and thieves for hire, who do the job their boss finds as they travel. All sorts find their way here. We do the jobs and between PCs have a chance to address their own goals or issues.


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## Bohandas

The PCs are hired to covertly graffiti the name of the demon lord Pazuzu (which summons the demon lord if said aloud thrice and corrupts the speaker to chaos) all over the Shelves of Despond in Baator, where damned sould first arrive in Hell. (the intent being that some incoming souls may happen to read it aloud, thus both snatching them away from Baator and allowing Pazuzu to infiltrate Avernus without having to pass through the intervening planes


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## Dannyalcatraz

That’s some tasty shenanigans!


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## TarionzCousin

Bohandas said:


> The PCs are hired to covertly graffiti the name of the demon lord Pazuzu (which summons the demon lord if said aloud thrice and corrupts the speaker to chaos) all over the Shelves of Despond in Baator, where damned sould first arrive in Hell. (the intent being that some incoming souls may happen to read it aloud, thus both snatching them away from Baator and allowing Pazuzu to infiltrate Avernus without having to pass through the intervening planes



This is very creative and hopefully fun.


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## Bohandas

Evil campaign where servants of vecna are sent to break the curses of the ravenloft darklords in hopes of destabilizing the demiplane of dread and taking down the dark powers, against whom vecna swore revenge. last step is an insincere reconciliation with kas, sealed with the return of his sword and the voluntary death of one of vecna's aspects, which all doesn't matter because kas and everyone else in ravenloft will be killed when the plane collapses


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## Bohandas

*Step Right Up And Get Mauled:* Encounter. At a festival (or fair or circus or whatever) there is a challenge being held wherein a character can win big money if they fist fight a bear and win.


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## Bohandas

*The Gangsters*

Devils confront the party bard, claiming to own his songs, stories, and ideas. Send them back to Hell (kill them).


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