My players asked me to run a monster hunting campaign, with the twist that their goal is to capture the monsters, research them, and maybe even put them on display in a zoo or release them back into the wild. It's turned into three phase types: exploring the abandoned island, maintaining the ecosystem, and then spending downtime in a facility management simulator. I'll explain more in-depth below. Phase 1: Exploring the Island. Their financer set sail for an abandoned island so that civilization wouldn't interfere. The island hosts a variety of biomes for them to explore. Each biome has a number of odd sites to discover, creatures to research, and quirks to navigate. Once their explorations are complete, scouts are assigned to observe the area for any anomalies. Phase 2: Maintaining the Ecosystem. If the scouts detect an anomaly, or deviation, in a biome's ecosystem, they report it to the party. An example of a deviation would be the slaughter of a herd of rams, which had not been eaten. That would indicate that a monster is on a rampage, so the party would most likely investigate. The investigations almost always involve combat, and the party votes on the degree of lethality depending on the monster. Once the investigation is complete, the party heads back to the camp with the monster(s). Phase 3: Managing the Facility. The party has a roster of various employees, from artisans and laborers to researchers and logistics. The laborers help build enclosures or amenities. The artisans craft complex mechanisms for enclosures, if need be, but they also maintain and upgrade the party's gear. The researchers pretty much assist everyone, but mostly ensure that each enclosure can provide comfort to its creatures. The logistics brings things from the mainland, which the party requests. The party may also interact with creatures and staff during these phases. It may sound in-depth, but it's not that complex. Money isn't entirely an issue. The logistics gets cycled every other session. The other members of staff each have their own reasons for being on the island, as well as character sheets in case the party wants to reassign. Overall, it's been a new experience. I usually run campaigns involving politics and war, so it's been interesting learning techniques to make exploration more fun, while maintaining the lighter tone that my players requested.
@@helldino182 I can explain it a little more in-depth. Phase 1: Exploring the Island. They sailed to an abandoned island so civilization wouldn't interfere with their work. I filled the island with biomes to explore. Each biome has odd sites to discover, and quirks to solve. I've been slowly introducing them to new areas so they don't get overwhelmed with choice. Phase 2: Maintaining the Ecosystem. After the party has made their initial discoveries in a biome, their network of scouts reports any deviations in the ecology. An example would be an entire herd of rams being slaughtered, but not eaten, showing that something is going on a rampage. If the party deems the deviation to be a potential threat, they investigate it. The investigation usually involves combat, so the party votes on lethal or nonlethal methods on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes, their investigation requires protecting a monster from an invader. Regardless, once the party defeats (or rescues) their targets, they're taken back to camp. Phase 3: Facility Management Simulation. The party decides how to deal with the monster(s). Their staff includes various kinds of laborers, artisans, researchers, and warriors. They direct their staff to produce the things necessary to running the place. Some examples are farms and enclosures, but the artisans also make sure their gear is maintained and upgraded. The warriors are usually told to help the laborers, or help secure pathways to new biomes. The party keeps a shopping list for the ship that brings materials and personnel from the mainland. The characters can also interact with their employees and specimens. Despite the long explanation, this part isn't very complex. Money isn't entirely an issue. It's assumed that there's a steady supply of mundane things like food and building materials. The staff all have various excuses to be there, as well as character sheets for the players to view in case they want to reassign anybody. Overall, it's been an interesting experience. I usually run more politics and war campaigns, so I've been learning what makes for good exploration and keeping the lighter tone that the players requested.
Ooh, this is a good one! I'm currently working on an "ancient civilization treasure hunt" mystery where players are attempting to find an ancient terra-forming tool before bad guys can. Along the way they find out more about the ancient civilization and find both unique weapons and mysterious artifacts. The main plot revolves around a star map that, when fully attached, reveals the night sky which can be compared against a world map to find the location of the tool. The twist? There are 3. Twist 1 is the typical "working for the enemy" trope where the players find out they're working for a guy who wants to get uber-rich using the tool to hold countries at ransom. Twist 2 is that he dies trying to activate what he thinks is the terra-former, only to activate a portal that tears him apart. The players are then implied that something else lies beyond the portal. Twist 3? The terra-former is an ancient space station run by its own AI that genocided the ancient civilization leaving only scraps of their advanced civilization. The final battle is a timed fight that takes place on the space station as it falls into the planet's atmosphere.
I have been running a randomly generated dungeon for the last year, for 2 parties in the same world. its been a blast. The dungeon itself is constantly changing, both in layout and enemies, but has certain parts that dont change to provide places they can rest or plot points, etc. One of these is a large hall that other people lost in the dungeon have built up into a small town of sorts. One of the really fun parts of this campaign has been the dual party aspect. As one party completes a major task or triggers certain events, both parties feel the repercussions. When a powerful magical artifact was recovered and given to an artificer in trade for weapon designs that artificer created a massive destructive robot boss that both parties had to deal with. When the beastmaster of the dungeon was killed a flood of orcs entered the dungeon as he was no longer able to keep them away with his animals. This changed the average enemy from goblins to orcs for both groups as the orcs take over the upper levels. The final boss fight is going to be interesting, ive stacked it with moral dilemmas and emotional damage. XD
I've always wanted to do a campaign loosely based on "Freeport." A former pirate port turned trader hub. Essentially, they'd be stuck doing odd jobs to make it thru the day, while uncovering an Aboleth Invasion that is targeting a scientist studying a piece of a cipactli (Spinosaurus like monster covered in mouths from pathfinder made ro destroy civilization) that they plan to resurrect.
First a little preface. I had a basic plot idea for a book I wanted to write, but only really had an idea for the main "reveal" and what the villain would look like. I ended up having a lightbulb moment where I realized "this is totally a campaign". So I looked to make it a short campaign for a few sessions and decided to see if I could make more. One of my players keeps asking lore questions though and figuring out the answers kept making my world bigger and bigger. And now I have this; It's a post-magic, cyberpunk setting where the citizens of a world called OE were forced underground after an event called "The Severing" at the end of a large-scale war called "The Toxin War". The Severing occurred 75 years prior to current events when magic was lost and "the sky darkened" from the OXN contaminant. As a result, a new synthetic magic was developed called "Plasma" (think how elemental bending is applied in The Legend of Korra's world, but with BioShock's plasmids). And now the citizens are ruled by 3 distinct bosses in very different environments; a city enveloped by news media, a city of neon light, and a city that worships an inanimate object (being intentionally vague in case my players follow this channel. Each area deals with a certain kind of fear or anxiety and the way people cope with them. Just as a message to all new DM/GMs; I have only run one one-shot so far and played 5e for 4 sessions. I feel somewhat overwhelmed, but I am getting a lot of input from my players to help shape my story and it's been super inspiring. All that to say, if you've got a good table and you've got a cool story idea, you can make something pretty awesome. Let it not be perfect, but have the framework to let yourself and your players play. I got all my info from videos analyzing guys like Mercer and Mulligan and the unique stories heard thanks to Ripper. You can make something awesome; you just have to be willing to try.
I've come up with a few, some of them I even posted over on one of the D&D subreddits, in more than one post, a while back. But the one that is coming to me now is a campaign concept I'm calling "Shadowed Time," the idea behind it is that there's some sort of funky and bizarre stuff going on with time but only the people with access to the Time-themed and Shadow-themed subclasses seem to be unaffected and basically go on a quest to fix things before the timeline breaks too hard. This would also allow characters from different points in the timeline, past and future, to make appearances in campaign itself as both cameos and whatever narrative thread the DM needs them to be at that moment; and when it's all said and done, only the PCs that were part of the campaign recall the events, even though after they resolved everything they snapped back to the point in time they were when the whole thing went down.
A fantastical Trench warfare campaign. Everyone is a soldier or mercenary of some form, fighting for a major coalition of kingdoms against a great goblin horde led by a Saruman-esque sorcerer overlord attempting to conquer the world, but whose great goblin army has been bogged down into medieval trench warfare by said Coalition.
Oneshot idea: The party is trapped in a cave by large stones that suddenly close the entrance/exit. They fight through the cave, wade through acidic swamps, horrible mud, fight worms... etc, only for the campaign to end with them falling out of a rock giant's butt.
Think Dark Soul + Dead Cells essentially each player is infected with a plague that also makes them immortal but with a catch each time they come back to life they become a little bit more monstrous mentally or physically basically the DM way before the first session even starts has secretly assigned a random monster from the monster manual to them so by the end after X amount of deaths each player is essentially a possible future mini boss and here’s why the stats stack with what they are + what monster they’ll eventually become and the best part all the lore will be cryptic as all hell so they won’t have any idea of what to do or where to go which just adds to the fun
My idea is a pirate themed game, the party would be tasked with defeating a notorious band of pirates led by a man named “Yellow Beard”. First clue something is wrong is that the captain doesn’t even have a beard. After killing all the pirates, the players will be left with the captain’s yellow parrot. The parrot speaks and tells them he’s a bit annoyed they killed his crew and tells them THEY are the replacement crew now. After they inevitably talk shit, the parrot reveals itself to be an adult yellow dragon and tells them, “it wasn’t a question”. So the players now sail the world looking for the dragon’s (the TRUE yellow beard) lost treasure.
I've had 3 ideas Idea 1 The group starts as city guards and immediately they get attacked, since they are the only guards that survived the attack, they have been tasked with finding out who's behind the attack, leading to numerous city gangs/ underworld groups or possibly even corruption in the cities Royal family/ leadership. Idea 2 The group wakes up on a ship chained in cages to be sacrificed to a sea god by a cult. They fight their way out and take over the ship, adventure time for the group until the sea god summons them to become the new prison wardens of a hell god that is kept chained in a cage under the oceans by blood magic that requires sacrifice of life, the group then decides how the campaign ends. Idea 3 It's more of a concept than an idea, but the world doesn't have magic (diving healing in holy temples sure but no other magic) A ruler of some kingdom hears rumours of a new power and sends a group of mercenaries to investigate and, if possible, harnesses said power, the group slowly learns this power is magic and suddenly everyone has some kind magic, some weak some powerful, then again the group decides how the campaign ends.
I have an idea centered around the stages of grief. The players are dead, but they find themselves locked in a dimly lit land filled with other wandering spirits, demons, and souls. All of this would be hidden knowledge at the start. Now, instead of it being like a dark souls game where everything is out to kill you, many of the encounters can only be solved through finding ways to solve the troubles of the dead in relation to what stage of grief they're in. For example, they can meet a depressed clown in the ruins of a burnt down carnival trying to piece everything back together. The only way a character truly dies is if they find their own gravesite that manifests into the world. However, failing death saves can lead to characters turning into things more like ghouls, zombies, skeletons, ghosts, and other undead. Ultimately if they solve enough problems (3 encounters for each stage of grief) they'll unlock the boss area. She reigns over acceptance so the party will have to take care of denial, depression, anger, and bargaining first.
I love how when you described the clown I was like "Oh no, Chuckles is telling ANOTHER one of his back stories" (ever heard of Legends of Avantaris, Once upon a Witchlight ? That podcast is unhinged)
A Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DND/Pokemon Tabletop United campaign set in the post apocalypse. The setting would have all humans either transformed into Pokemon via scientific or natural means (like Yamask or other ghost types) or extinct all together. The Pokemon left after The Fall still remember humans and some are even former humans themselves either as ghost types or had their consciousness transferred to cloned Pokemon bodies. The catch is that the BBEG wants to make sure humans remain extinct with his organized group of traumatized anti-human mons while a post fall scientific research firm wants to revive humanity. The main theme would revolve around the question "does humanity deserve a second chance?" with some of these former humans being persecuted by parties, teams, guilds, towns, and Pokemon aligned with the extinctionists. Meanwhile the wasteland is crawling with "Feral Pokemon" who are cannibalistic in nature (as I also intend to have normal animals to not detract from the main conflict or get too bogged down with Pokemon having to eat other sapient Pokemon) as well as mutated mons that run the gambit of functional societies to feral themselves. The Mystery Dungeons themselves have turned into basically like the Vaults from Fallout, housing some of most the genetically pure Pokemon and having similar vibes to that of their Fallout counterparts with more varied structures like underground factories, sewer systems, or metro tunnel turned into living spaces for mons who decided to go underground to avoid The Fall. This would largely be an open world campaign with the party free to choose their Pokemon characters from a wide background with a mostly non linear story
I have one Back in days of 1e & 2e, there was a mechanic that was focused on reaction adjustments, and Reputation was one, it was based on your starting Charisma and Initial Alignment By doing good deeds and completing quests, you increase the reputation bonus and people will favor your character better Granted the opposite is true Recent editions have removed reaction adjustments due to players "feeling restricted" when really they just want to play an Anime styled character and overpower everything Anyway My idea was to bring that back, and on order to get the higher quality quests, the more dangerous missions, the most challenging bounties, they have to build their reputation. Starting out, they're not going to be invited to see the royal family, and not everyone is going to know everything about you. You'll have to work for it, you're going to have to prove you have the chops, not bluff yourself in You'll need to take lower level shit jobs no-one would be caught dead doing
I also like this, and that's what I'm planning on doing. My players (well, our former DMs and my best friend's players, that included me btw until we agreed I'll be the new DM now that he can't participate anymore cuz busy student) were always random people, but heck his world has pretty strong magic users. So me and other 2 guys did some random but still more or less useful things while our 2 wizards (necromancer and a fire/earth spells specialized wizard) basically did everything (tanking waves, killing waves, doing crazy shit etc.). So my campaign (heavily Minecraft inspired sorta dark fantasy world) will have them be randoms, but *completely* new to the progression of adventurers (they can choose to be adventurers as part of their backstory but they cannot be experienced at all, basically just travelers)
I’ve got a bunch (somewhere around here I have a little flip notebook nearly full with the seeds of them, and two fully fleshed out settings in Composition Notebooks), but here are some: 1) A thousand years ago, a great disaster came to the world. Strange energies and creatures from worlds and planes unknown flooded the world. However, a powerful Archmage became aware of the disaster before it fell, and gathered those he could of all the Known Races (Humans; Elves; Halflings; Gnomes; the Plane-touched races of Assimar, Tiefling, and the Genasi; even some tribes of Goblins, Kobolds, Orcs, and Lizard-folk), leading them to the one place he knew he could create a protection from this, the Ring-Wilds. The Ring-Wilds are a large (roughly the size of Europe) land surrounded by a ring of mountains, save for a Straight out of the inland sea sized (roughly the size of the Mediterranean) bay, which has a perpetual storm raging within it. The centuries have been kind, and innovation great (magical steampunk level technologies exist and are pretty common, flintlock weapons are available). Now the Great Barrier has faded, and the (mostly) peaceful Empire formed by these peoples can see that the disaster has passed, but know nothing of what the outside world holds, and what changes have been wrought by it. A call to explore the old world has gone out, great adventure, riches, and danger awaits. 2) The heroes failed. The sun has vanished. The darkness itself has teeth and claws, and will attack all but beings of it. The party is part of a group of survivors who have made their way to the World Tree, it’s perpetual light their only assured safety and means of producing food. Will they survive the darkness and its creatures attacks? Will they be able to aid in bringing back the sun? Will a means of finding a new world be found?
Three: A campaign based on a book series I read once wherein within a US Western style area, the Devil runs an entire section of a massive continent, and one coast an Imperialistic, religiously motivated monarchy is trying to make in-roads, and on the other, a hyper-Capitalistic democracy run by robber-barons is trying to cross the rugged mountain chain in larger numbers and influence. Both are kept from outright invasion by distance, terrain, and magic, but they're relentlessly trying to take over. The players work for the Devil, and the various anarchistic tribes, isolated towns, and roving powers within. The second is basically a world where the largest and most powerful monsters possible are rampaging across the world in great numbers and the resultant civilizations that have grown from this exist underground, in the sky on floating islands, or in areas that are protected by magical barriers. All of these have great cost in resources and manpower, so the players would basically be acting as mercenaries wandering from place to place, gathering things that are needed by each location, and eventually growing in enough power to be able to fight off or defeat the monsters. The third is a horror campaign where the players are forced to wander a small community that circles around a megalithic building that turns out to be a hospital that seems to go on forever. The players would uncover the various mysteries within the hospital as well as surviving encounters with the staff, odd monsters, and paranoia. The party would also never be safe, no matter where they are. A lot of body horror. Every morning, they all had to roll, and whatever they rolled would have consequences. Most of the time, nothing happened, but sometimes, things that they could not stop would happen, such as one player having two fingers amputated, only to be replaced with substitutes that worked just as well, but which were definitely from two other races.
Today, I will be running an adventure I have called Curse of the Githyanki Zephyr. The players have a crippled airship that can also sail. Along the way, they will need to eliminate other treasure seekers, with bigger and faster ships than theirs. And bigger crews. Inside the treasure ship is said to be the raided wealth of five kingdoms. The party has a member who can essentially find the ship at will. She has a compass similar to Jack Sparrows. So they need to find their way just the same. The journey is fraught with action and adventure, and even if they manage to get airborne again, so can at least one other fellow seeker, and he's the worst of the pirates. In the end, the ship won't be where everyone thinks it should, and no one knows it was once a flying ship itself. They start out lost in a strange land that doesn't exist, on a crippled ship no one can fix without parts, and they don't speak the language. If they win, according to legend, they will be rich beyond the dreams of avarice, and better yet, be able to scavenge from the old wreck parts to fix their ship and at long last, head for home.
I've had a few campaign ideas I'd like to try. 1. Secret Wars: Two unfathomably powerful eternal beings are locked in a struggle that takes the form of a game in which the players are pawns. One being is good the other evil. The evil one managed to destroy the universe but the good one was able to save just enough of it to patchwork them together like in the Secret Wars comic. The players then have to visit the reaches of this patchwork world defeating the evil beings pawns. Meanwhile there are other struggles in and between the different zones. One area is a WWII style battlefield, another is a utopic high fantasy city, another a noire detective setting but of course the world these areas are based around is missing so people are going without food in a huge metropolis or the fascists bad guys from the WWII area are now pillaging an immense jungle for resources. 2. The Great Hunt: Players are invited by the gods to participate in a grand interdimensional hunt where you can kill any animal or monster and get points based on its difficulty comparative to you. SO you could kill 100 squirrels and get 100 points or you could kill something incredibly difficult for much more. Here's the twist, ANYTHING is game including sentient beings and by participating in the hunt. And the gods didn't invite you to hunt......they invited you to be prey. The players wouldn't know those details but it would slowly become apparent as they visit worlds where people have heard of the Great Hunt because their ancestors survived by hiding on those worlds and then settling down. You mention it and they will panic and leave to hide elsewhere. Players shelter in a cave with old writing on the walls (possibly a language they don't understand) that says "Are you the prey, or are you the hunter?" things like that. 3. Land of the Lost: Players must survive on an island continent that is inescapable fill with ancient Lizard people, mind reading aliens, and cave halflings. Shameless stolen from Land of the Lost. I actually ran it for a while before a player had to move. We called the game to an end at level 3 so not very far. But for our next one I'm basically ripping off Star Trek. XD
One of my favorites is actually a tiny part of a much, much bigger story. It's a four horseman + two warring super power nations type scenario where throughout a roughly Eurasia sized continent, largely disconnected from each other, as well as from the party at first, a bunch of things are happening. A "Golden Horde" style Khanate tearing across lands, conquering every nation and tribe they come across while destroying every conduit to every god they find along the way. A coalition of free nations led by a "Kingdom of Light" Fighting back the tides of the neigh immortal Khan while dealing with politics, crime, and corruption along with odd things beginning to happen throughout their lands. Four Ultra powerful magic wielders of different classes, motivations, and degrees of madness and/or ambitions secretly plan to either save, fix, control, or destroy all civilization across the land. The payers are just a bunch of low level dorks that have no idea what is going on. The story would basically be them doing chores and shenanigans while the actual plot spirals out in an asymmetric loop around them. Interest and intrigue, meetings with the ultra-mages, cults and kings, monsters and mysteries, the usual stuff. The real kicker is the really dumb endgame spoiler that is guaranteed to disappoint!
Had a recent campaign end due to burnout. It was a high sci-fi 5e setting where we had several interesting characters. The original trio (minotaur paladin/warlock, kitsune cleric/monk, leonin bard/fighter) escaped after being imprisoned for various things. Well, they took down a group of gangers charging people for water in a desert; had to leave after being tracked down by the minotaur's old boss. The goal was built around the "old boss" finding old superweapons from a war just recently over (like, 300 years. Space is big and travel still takes time even with FTL). The party already fought an oblex that was one of them, an iron golem infected with the Tyrant Virus and managed to pull a homebrewed empyrean from cryosleep. I had some wild plans, but burnt myself out waayyy too often. I hope to run that one again someday...
I have started to plan a campaign based on roleplay and heists with a mix of crime syndicate intrigue. The players would come from multiple corners of my world, a France-sized island. The idea of backstories suggested to the players would be they did some sort of crime and are in trouble, I would let them create somekind of story around that so they would eventually met a man named Markus. He would offer individually the characters to join his little crew of misfits and become a Robin Hood gang, steal the rich and help the poor. The players would meet in the tavern of a little town, were Markus is kind of an unofficial leader and hero. He would tell the players he’s a bit too old and rusty to do the Hero of the people (58year old human), so he would organise heists and send the players on multiple jobs. For multiple sessions, the players will do those missions and I hope they will get attached to Markus, an inspiring and charismatic leader who cares about his people and the characters. But eventually, trouble will arrive in the little town they made their home. One day, a blue dragon will come and rip the village into pieces, the players will realize the dragon isn’t alone and members of a criminal organization were here to take everything, mostly the last “harvest” of the players that unknowingly was stolen from this syndicate. And person leading this attack wasn’t the dragon but a high-ranked advisor from the organization that had before a deep connection to Markus’ backstory. When Markus and the person (named Daniel) meet in the ashes of the village…it ends up Daniel orders the dragon to kill Markus and he dies in front of the players, advice I took from one of your vilain videos about “watching all the players turn into John Wick”. Then the rest of the campaign will be the players trying to get into the syndicate in various means in order to avenge Markus by capturing Daniel…or killing him. I still have a lot of plot twist in reserve for this future campaign and I hope I could Dm it someday.
I have this idea in my mind for a while now, although i havent dm'd yet, im working on writing my campaign Its about 2 gods, One god of Positive feelings and Emotions, And the other god is the god of Negativity and chaos. Lets call these gods 'Dream' and 'Nightmare' Both grow stronger depending which emotion is felt the most at the time. They have their own plane of existence. Dream's side of this plane is filled with beautifull colours, resembeling some sort of a city. While Nightmare's side is a huge castle with an ominous look emanting from it after the world has lived in peace and no conflict to worry about, Nightmare decides That he is sick of this positive stuff, And plans to summon him in the world and rule it in negative glory. He is unable to do so, so he hires, make a deal or enslave other races. A deal might Give a sorcerer untold power, While he has to induce as much negative feelings as possible while trying to kill the least he can. Or Nightmare orders a cult to worship him and be a thorn in the PC's side. here is what i have planned for now (pls let me know some stuff that could be better or some ideas) The king has recieved notices and distress calls/letters from a nearby village. After recieving their mission in a tavern, the PC's are send to the village. While travelling there, everyone can already smell the foul stench of decay, of death. The village authority tells them about the situation. A powerfull necromancer has raised the dead. Now the villagers live in constant FEAR, STRESS AND ANXIETY of the necromancer attacking at any minute. PC's are send to deal with the necromancer, while fighting different undead's in their path Necromancer upon defeat reveals nightmare's plan. Upon returning to the city. PC's are send to another mission. A nearby temple of the god of (insert a god name here) that usually is very peacefull and harmonious, has turned ominous, dark and Evil. The construct guardians are haunting the place. PC's find somewhere a hidden hallway, Filled with traps, With on the end a dark blue negativity filled orb. After 2nd or 3rd trap, An avatar of Dream appears. And deactivate the traps, possibly healing PC's. He picks up the orb and dispels the negativity. Dream explains the situation to PC's in detail. And explains that Neither he or Nightmare can truly die. As long as their respective emotions are present somewhere, They cant die. Only way to defeat Nightmare is to imprisoning him. Dream gives PC's a box which is able to do that. PC's can decide to help rebuild the temple. On their way returning the city, they encounter an Elemental in what PC's can just make out that the Elemental looks distressed. Those who understand Primordial, or speak the elemental's native language will know whats going on. The Elemental lives in a nearby tribe, their leader made a deal with Nightmare, Giving it immense power. But is tasked by corrupting all their fellow Elementals. The leader feels nothing, just laughing at the negativity they are spreading. After helping the elementals (ofc depends on choice). They see a small force of Nightmare's cult invade a dragons cave. Cult members are making the dragon suffer PC's can decide to help out dragon or not. If they do and succeed, they will get the dragon's favor. Make smth beneficial up for the PC's. Or use magic items found in DM guidebook. after returning to the city, They find it in complete chaos. turns out, the Queen was a succubus that worked for Nightmare, And has summoned different Devils/Demons to terrorize the city. (PC's are way higher lvl at this point, so just buff that fiend up). PC's make their way into the castle, where they find the succbus is trying to summon Nightmare, after a heavy battle, The succubus failed, and the fiends in the city also dissapear along with their leader. Although the demon failed to summon Nightmare, a portal has opened up. A portal which the PC's can go through and have the final battle with the God of Negativity. After depleting Nightmare's first phase, HE reveals his true Nightmarish form. PC's then use the box. Nightmare slowly gets sucked in this Prison. PC's hand the box the Dream who secures it in a safe place
I’m running a campaign right now in my homebrew worlds dubbed Havenscape. It’s a set of multiversal worlds that were once one but the timeline was split in order to keep certain forces from obtaining a particular object of power that’s hidden in one of them. Even though it’s a multiverse each world is completely different as a calamity struck the multiverse and souls cannot be copied so people were just scattered to each world during the event in question. No two worlds are alike anymore. My current setting for the campaign takes place in the first Haven on the continent of Arthera. The party has really just gotten started on a quest meant to bring them together and establish the world around them. But little do they know the remnants of the cult who worshipped the dark god are rising in the shadows once again. The first quest is a tie into the fact that there is a network of people throughout the continent that are secretly searching for…. Something. A long lost item known as “The Essence of Creation”, a shard of power originally given to the dark god from one of the three Fundaments to attempt to usurp the other two. (The Three Fundaments are concepts of reality that gained sentience at the beginning of all things). The party are all closely tied into the plot via family connections or being champion to dead gods who want to stop the coming destruction of the Havens and reascend to divinity. This campaign will take them across the continent to find hints to the past, over the seas to eleven nations who want their homeland back, and to the depths of the underworld to gnomish citadels to find out what was lost thousands years ago.
I don’t want to share the one I’m currently working on, but a fun “monster of the week” style thing I did was Dungeon Dash. A Door Dash for adventures. Only catch is all the PCs that are part of the delivery team are specked against their class. A bard that can’t sing, a fighter with bad strength and so on.
I made this one campaign based on my own personal childhood world (ofcause rewritten to the age but keeping many of the concepts). Mix in a legend of zelda twilight princess and it dident take long before i had quite a monster of a setting. The story it self was based around discovering the setting and all its wiered wackyness while at the same time trying to save it from a spreading chaos.
I run campaigns all the time. Lots of good ones, but you are asking about ones I haven’t got to run yet. The game starts with the PCs execution. They then wake up to find the leader of the large city they are in wants them to route out unauthorized criminal elements (those not paying the black tax). Because they are no officially working for the patrician, they are expected to make money how they can, including potentially making their own organized crime outfit. As for the one I recently ran, the Kingdom of Sindarin, run by a good and noble king. The players were simple adventurers looking to make their fortune and be heroes besides. They met the two princesses, a Paladin and mage, respectively, but were mainly working for the wizard Mondain, who was using his position as vizier to send unwitting pawns to help him make an item that makes him unkillable and all powerful. The campaign ended with them being unable to stop him as he rose to power, and it was all their fault. But the story isn’t over. They escaped into a pocket dimension. And now, twenty years later, they return to see the world their actions have created and have to figure out a way to stop it from happening. Along the way, they have to solve the problem that is keeping them from going back in time: the rule of “You cannot change the past because you didn’t.”
I pictured a steampunk d&d setting that would involve Stingray and especially the Thunderbirds set in a future where they colonised a world in the future, but fell foul of magic and other races!
I'm actually running my second consecutive campaign based on adapting old fantasy computer games from the late '90s and early 2000s. My first one took the darkstone setting and tried to tell the actual story of darkstone that the game failed to achieve through its gameplay. My current one is adapting the computer game Majesty. It has proven very well suited to it as anyone majesty scenario really is its own multi-session d&d adventure. Session 6 has them in the climactic finale fight against an evil Oculus to complete the introductory scenario the bell the book and the candlestick
I never went through with it since our group all went our separate ways, but I was planning a prequel era campaign where the players could make busted multiclasses with more magical twists since the era was one where magic had far less rules. The players would also meet and interact with npcs who were immortalized as statues and legends without names forgotten in time, and could help make them who and what they were. Sadly it never got off the ground bc our main campaign never actually ended, but I still like the idea
I got 'inspired' by listening to netnarrator and agrosquirrel. So I made a campaign, set in the story of The survivor becomes a dungeon, and Dungeon life. Where dungeons are a sorta living being, and every one has affinities (fire, water, air, earth, spatial, life, death etc)
I would love to run a game setting like Storm Hawks. The surface of the world is an inhospitable wasteland of volcanic surface, open lava pits and terrifying wildlife. The people live on flattened mountaintops that exist above the clouds. Using crystal technology to harness the elemental energy within to power not just great airships and personal airplane/motorcycles, but also their weapons.
Be Warnt its a long Story I'm still planning a story but the look of the base and the first dungeon are finished, the monsters are from Pathfinder. The city that serves as the base is inspired by Limsa Lominsa from Final Fantasy 14 A Realm Reborn. The group will then explore a dungeon with many rooms. The rooms have a lot of variety, normal fights with bandits and monsters and then some with monsters such as the ghost golem. A golem that changes between two shapes and, depending on the shape, can only be injured by players with the right counter buff. But the dungeon still has something very cool up its sleeve, reveal the eventual BBEG. NOSFERATU! Nosferatu can turn these evil ones into his fight with the PCs and turn our heroes into villains, But players can also become evil in a room in a dungeon with the prospect of even more power. Nosferatu is locked in this dungeon and a guardian dragon protects him, I took away all his attacks and gave him new ones so as not to overkill the PCs, but he will have insta kills that can be survived by the PCs without damage (death) if they reach certain rally points Find them, the boss announces the attack, then the players have 2 rounds to get to safety Yes, the boss is developed like an FF14 boss (I'm enjoying playing it too much at the moment XD). That's why the PCs also have a Limit Break for every player who successfully avoids the Instakill attacks, they get progress plus for every certain amount of damage. The PCs can either cause massive damage with the Limit Break or fend off an Instakill or revive all PCs and heal them fully , the dragon tests the players, so if they fail, he revives them up to 2 times, so they have 3 attempts to defeat them and get the right to kill the BBEG. However, if they provoke a 4 fight, well let's say I hope they do make it this time or we have a BAD END
Still a work in progress, but I'm planning a Kingdom Hearts based campaign. The realm of light being the Material Plane and the realm of darkness being the Shadowfell. Shadowfell creatures are the "pure blood heartless" while aberrations are the emblem heartless. I'm not sure how to recreate nobodies, but I'm leaning towards making them undead. Other races still exist, like orcs and dwarves, so it's not just humans. The material plane is made up of hundreds of islands where people have to use ships to travel. Some parts are more dangerous than others because the "heartless" can appear in water as well as on land, but since people can't exterminate them as easily miles away from land, they've been allowed to grow to monstrous sizes, feeding on the hearts of people from sunken ships. The "keyblade" exists as well and come with 3 innate spells (guiding bolt, arcane lock, and knock) but a PC has to be level 3 to get one, but only certain solo classes and/or combinations of multi-classes give a character an opportunity to get one. Also, as characters levels up, new spells are unlocked for the keyblade, but all keyblade spells can only be cast once per long rest each. The main plot is someone is trying to break down the barrier between the material plan and the Shadowfell, causing destabilization and these creatures to pop up more frequently. It's usually local clerics and paladins that take care of the small fry, but less and less are coming back as they're getting overworked, spread thinner, and towns are now hiring adventurers to keep people safe during evacuations or assist in subjugation against large packs. That's where the party comes in, not knowing that they're gonna play a much bigger role in getting to the heart of the problem.
I have two campaigns: 1st one I have been toying with a detective campaign idea for a little bit now. In the capital of a elven kingdom there is a serial killer on the loose. The town criers have taken to calling them the Dyll Maker because they like to gut children and working class girls out at night then sew up like a rag doll. ... In the most recent attack a tavern wench last seen heading home at night when she changed her route to escort a little girl alone in the streets. The lady didn't show up to her shift for a week and it wasn't until the guards questioned the little girl that they found the body. ...The thing that got everyone in a panic is that the most recent attack happened outside of Estel in a sleepy town called Glainglor (glain glor). Since no witnesses have come up yet with identifiable features of the killer, the only suspects are toymakers and seamstresses in the local area because of the stitching used. The recent attack threw things off because now there are either multiple killers, sicko copycats, or the killer is on the run. Basically due to the attacks and the public's pressure, the party has been hired by the Royal guard to catch the killer(s) before they escape across the border or strike again. The 2nd one is a more morally questionable campaign where the party has been hired by a member of the dwarven royal court to kill the dwarven queen. The kingdom is in a succession crisis in that mainly in that succession is not happening and Queen Greyward is well past the life expectancy of any dwarf. What really worries the advisor that hires the party is that the queen is growing more and more senile. To make things interesting the city is in a cavern in a mountain and the queen is actually a lich. The biggest issue is that her phylactery is the keystone to the massive and only entrance into the city, and thousands of people might starve to death if it caves in.
I gave my party a potion that allowed you to walk into the “ghost plane” and interact with people as they were right before they died, and then bring stuff out of the ghost plane into the material plane. They visited an ancient battlefield to find info on an ancient key to open a portal to the abyss and asked legendary characters about it. They were then gonna go retrieve its ghost (because it’d been destroyed, but someone died while wielding it, which made it accessible via the potion). They were gonna have a dungeon where they’d have to pass in and out of the ghost plane to solve a puzzle. It was gonna be sick… but tbh I didn’t have the time to prep everything so it only lasted three or four sessions.
I had this idea for a campaign setting where one very strong-willed and future-thinking warlord united all of the common monsters (Goblins, kobolds, etc), organized them and sent them to overrun the known civilized world. The players were living in survivors' camps, always on the run from the organized hordes. The warlord was looking to tear apart the barriers between worlds and then pick up the pieces of a shattered universe to become the unquestioned overlord of everything. Having civilization overrun with swarms of "easy" monstrous creatures was merely the first step in the grand plan. Over time his plan would be revealed while the players would travel from place to place, opposing his forces and eliminating key figures in his strategy. Feel free to use if it seems cool enough.
I'm planning to run a... different, campaign. it's a wip, but i do have something, and i'd love help with some random suggestions. (Temporary name) Grimhaven is a realm often called "The in-between". A collection of floating islands amidst an endless void. Very little grows here, and creatures constantly appear through portals or "The Hold" - the place where creatures and items go when thrown through a bag of holding*. As you walk among this odd, purple-skied realm, you'd find that certain animals have evolved - in bizarre ways. As time went on, creatures of all kinds began to hunt - and discovered a curse on the realm. "You are what you eat" becomes a literal thing as you suddenly find crab claws, dragon wings, and a cat's tail appear on your body. I'm still working on the lore, details, and mutation mechanics, but if you could do so, mind commenting ideas for creatures that would appear here, or ones that player's have thrown into the unknown? (By banishment, spell, or Bag of Holding)
I ran a game that was set in a world where the moon and the sun manifested real bodies and came down to earth and they hated each other. One side of the earth was always night, the other side always day. Never got to finish it due to real life stuff.
Couple of ideas. First one: The Kingdom of Beggars. In Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, instead of classes characters have professions which determine the skills they learn, proficiencies they have, their professional progressiom etc. One day I sat down and thought: what would be the most efficient route from poverty to nobility or high status in general. (Spoilers: every route involves crime of sorts) Why not make a whole campaign around it? Second: "Mother" (or "Totally not Attack on Titan/Shadow of the Colossus"). Giants are on the loose, they ravage nearby cities, players need to stop them. Desperate struggle for survival like AoT, gigantic foes like Shadow of the Colossus, quite normal stuff... ...UNTIL players reach the endgame. Eventually they'll realize that the giants want to get in contact with their "Mother", a legendary colossus who could squash entire towns with a single stomp. Her whereabouts can be found in this stinky, labyrinthine final dungeon right under this worlds capital city. Finally, players will realize that this "dungeon" is in fact The Mother's belly. Then she wakes up. Also, not really a separate campaign idea but in general: if I ever run D&D, I'll remove character resurrection altogether. Heroes can be revivified if done quickly (think of it as a defibrillator of sorts), they can be stabilized but once they're dead, that's it. They could TRY hiring a necromancer/con artist to "resurrect" someone but - it's VERY illegal - it's VERY expensive - it requires some VERY unethical actions (think about making the girl-dog-hybrid from Full Metal Alchemist) - it either won't work without some serious divine intervention (which players probably won't have access to) or the final result is an abomination which makes everyone wish they never tried it in a first place But nah, I'm way too lazy and/or unorganized to run any of these.
One game that I am running is set in the Stone Age of the world I call Alera. The players are the first of their classes. The cleric is the first to make contact with the Goddess of life, Lilu. The sorcerer is a child of a red dragon's slave and is the first to actually have magic. Meanwhile, their Wizard friend has been trying to figure out how that magic works and turn what they learn into spells. And the fighter is the firstborn of a tribal chieftain who wants to hone his skills and develop new techniques. The red dragon is the current BBEG, as the dragon wants to rule the mortal tribes and lands.
I once ran a brief adventure I called "Silverstone's Sorrows". The workers in the mining town of Silverstone broke through into a natural cavern, and 'something' in that cavern has spent every night since then slowly demolishing the town, killing residents and dragging them and the 'salvaged' materials from their homes back through the mine for some unknown purpose. All attempts to seal that hole have failed, and the town can't survive without the silver from the mine, so the mayor has set part of his own fortune aside to get folks out on the next trade caravan; he offers to give the PCs that money if they can find out who or what is doing this and stop it from getting worse.
My ideal started to form during 3rd edition. My response to O.P.P.C.s hunting gods was to make it rain nilbogs and now the world is dealing with the fallout.
The first DnD campaign I DMed was based on Valkyrie Profile. For those of you who know this niche gem, you understand right away that the campaign started with a TPK. The villain is introduced, marching an army of demons in the city. Everyone gets slaughtered. Then, as the PCs corpses are dragged away for zombie reanimation by lesser minions, a Valkyrie swoops in and takes the souls of the fallen with her. Since they died bravely defending the city, they are already worthy of Folkvangr, Freya's counterpart to Odin's Valhalla. But each player has an unfulfilled last wish. They want vengeance. They want to free their loved ones. They want to uncover the intricacies of the plot and bring about the fall of the BBEG. So, the goal is to liberate occupied places, reconsecrate temples and thwart evil wherever it lurks. Tied to the plot are several artifacts, two per dungeon. Once retrieved, the party has to choose which one to send to Odin to get a blessing (level up), and which one to keep for use at a crucial moments. The campaign petered out during covid. It's not the same when we're not in front of each other around a physical table.
I've got two campaign worlds I want to run that are related. One world was taken and hidden from the gods of the multiverse, and the other was damaged in the attempt as the gods tried to stop the former from happening almost destroying it. The first world is hidden in the hands of a massive titan now running through the astral sea and growing it's own extraplanar dimensions around itself. The latter is a shattered world being barely held together by the combined forces of arcane and divine magic. I plan to run very old school campaigns in the first and more episodic short adventures in the second all related to a guild trying to hold the world together.
It's not mine but my best friend's. He ran a campaign based on King Arthur going through all three books as though they were an adventure path. What you have to realize is that King Arthur was essentially the world's first open source story with authors ranging from England to Russia to Arabia, so there are A LOT of options on where to go with that. The campaign ended with a final battle against Mordred fresh off of killing Arthur, so he had Excalibur's sheath which granted immunity to damage. Essentially the battle became a question of how to either get the scabbard away from him, or how to DESTROY it. There're a lot of whacky magic items and powers in the Knights of the Round Table, highly recommend someone else trying it. Fair warning though...you're probably gonna be watching a lot of Monty Python.
okay, I have roughly 4, all stemming from the choice made in a level 1 one-shot I have planned out. Suffice to say, the one-shot is a fetch quest of a game-ending item from low-level and injured enemy groups. The item is semi-sentient and wants people to open it. if they aren't wearing gloves when touching it, they have to roll a 10 or higher in Wis to not want to open it badly (5 or higher with gloves, and you are warned to wear gloves by the quest giver). Nat1, go crazy wanting to open it. if you roll a 20, you can roll to know what it is in arcana, religion, or history DC15 to get all the details of the item, 10 for a general idea but details get sketchy. Item also has a curse on it forbidding people who know what it is to tell people who don't know what it is about the item once they've touched it. Also, it will take 4nat20s to open/break the item. So players are now to make a decision: complete the quest as asked, run away with the item to keep it safe, or open it. - Option 1: If they complete the quest, anyone who knows what the item is will witness the requesters burying the item under spells and cement, clearly to be hidden and kept safe forevermore. That choice lets the players participate in multiple random questlines and characters, get a feel for DnD in general (it's supposed to be a light and beginner game). After they have higher-level characters and a group they like, we will pursue the other part of that item (it's in a hoard of an insane prismatic dragon I'm working on terrorizing 1/5 of the world) and have it buried in a similar manner on the other side of the world. Then they can then participate in a constant looming threat of the War King who was after the same items for reasons I will explain shortly. - Option 2: If they run away with the item, they will be chased after by EVERYONE for the item. Plus they will have to succeed a wisdom save each day holding the item. Mooks of the War King and those from the guild you abandoned by running away with your first job (instead of 'meet at a tavern', you're all put together by a guild with great benefits) will alternately attack you or try to turn you to their side, plus there's the people who first employed you who are from a strange newer church. I have no idea how that'd go, this depends entirely on the players. BUT at any point they can have option 3. - Option 3: If they open the item, the entire group dies unleashing all the plagues, the 7 deadly sins (I picked monsters that fit) and the 4 horsemen (same, except death). DEATH (Pratchett's) talks to their ghosts, telling them what happened and telling them all about the item before sending them on their way. So before I even start the one-shot, I would have the players make 2 lv1 characters (with the intent of milestoning them both to lv2 before switching to xp for the rest of the game so they can switch up characters at will or do this campaign). They would then, as their other character, each gain a vision in their hometowns of an angel marking and telling them about what happened. Quickly the world would turn into a hellscape, the sins and other three horsemen would make their territories around the world, the War King would be living large getting what he wanted, and that prismatic dragon being the only stable area compared to the rest of the world. The group is selected to work together, meeting at a particular tavern where a copy of Lucifer (from the show) is there and will tell them exactly what they need to do. Luci is there because he wants to save a particular kind of liquor only available on this world, so he agrees to help the group defeat those 10 things and return the world to normal by making a new item and putting the things back into it once they've defeated them. Even willing to throw the War King in if they manage to do so. there is a time limit of 3.5 in-game years, but 10-12 BBEGs shouldn't be too difficult for the players to beat in that time. Also, if they have a permadeath, they can make another character of the same level and their tie-in is the angel telling them the same thing. They can even go back to ground zero from the one-shot and check out their first characters' corpses. - Now I said there were 4 different campaigns, right? Remember when I said I'd have them make 2 characters? So if they decide to run away with the item, I will allow them to make another choice after the first session. Option 4: Chasing down their first characters with their second character because they know about option 3 possibly happening at any time. I'd take control of their first characters, obviously, but I'd have them give me a detailed background and characterization so I can figure out their movements and they would choose what their leveling up bonuses would be. So NPCs they can kinda control. If/when they catch their old characters, they can figure out if they want to go into either of the two original plots (option 1 or 3). That is my campaign idea and I really want to run it. Anyone interested who can teach me all about how to do it online? First time DM, but storyteller since birth. Also aiming for an 80's PG rating. =D
I have a nautical campaign planned set in a homebrew setting that is a low-magic world similar to the Bronze age collapse Mediterranean. While the party is building up their new home away from the few remaining nation-states, mysterious forces are trying to resurrect the long lost magic empire and reconquer the world... I'm very excited for it.
The party starts out with pre created high level characters hired/questing to stop a cult from performing an evil deity summoning. The party starts their adventure together in combat with the cult in the ritual chamber. Give the characters an Epic combat, an opportunity to get the jive of working together, and in the end they will Disrupt the ritual causing the spell to miscast killing everything in the area, TPK. The party regains awareness on (old school mythos) one of the infinite levels of the Abyss, with blank characters, they build their characters as they fight their way to eventually overthrow the current big bad of that Abyssal level, upon taking control of the Abyssal level it will be granted demi plane status adjacent to the Abyss and the party gets to re-roll their 3rd characters for the adventure. These characters are the living avatars of the demigods they became in conquering their new demi plane, and will be granted After their players complete them stat bonuses taking their class stats if needed, and allowing them access to the skills/abilities/and spells of either of the two characters they played before at 1/2 level (example Level 6 Paladin, who prays to themselves for power, with access to level 3 Necromancer skills/spells). At this point my meddling in the parties goals ends and The DM allows them to go spread their fame to bring glory to their names and power to the gods they really are. Save an orphanage on Monday, unseat an evil baron on Wednesday, Start construction on a church to worship them on Thursday, save a puppy, they get to look for and do whatever I think I can describe for them. If they survive.
I have a campaign idea where a lot of its themes and worldbuilding takes inspiration from rhythm games. It's my favourite video game genre, and I'm also a big fan of stories like Guilty Gear and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, which also make a lot of music references. I wanted to kind of do the same.
So Pointy Hat has a series where he creates Liches out of every class. I think it'd be super fun to run a high level campaign where all of these Liches are in the same region and the party is apart of an organization tasked with wiping them out. All the Liches would have some relation to another, either as a friend or foe, and some Liches might even help the party fight off the others. I think it'd be super fun but I've barely got dnd experience and have never dm'd before. Also I take it starting off with a high level campaign is a bad idea. Other than that I've been thinking about another campaign this time taking place in the world of Pokemon with everyone playing a Pokemon. Kinda like the one shot that Failboat played in and Lost Pause's campaign. This one would feature practically every mechanic from the games, mega evolution, dynamax, terastallization, z moves, ultra space, etc. all into one story where the players have to traverse the world and stop the various evil pokemon attempting to abuse these mechanics. If anything that will be the first campaign I try running (when I actually have a story)
a future campaign: look up Anthem, the video game. the party are various versions of Ironman, kind of, but they're also influencers, with camera drones following them around, promoting sponsors while fighting an alien invasion.
Something that kinda flopped because I couldn't find a good way to balance it in some of the deeper route things relating to the system I was using, but still want to try it one day: Pokemon Survival. Okay here me out... I was going to try and get 3 to 6 players to take a Pokemon of their choice, add whatever extra personalities to their character, at first it would seem like they were just doing a perspective shift, them following a trainer around with them being the Pokemon. There's a build up to the inciting incident where the players realize their trainer, even for a 12 year old, isn't the brightest on the block. The trainer vanishes and the players are stuck trying to find them, having to go towns and through the wilderness using their abilities in unique ways to survive. And to add to the stakes, thought of adding my own bit of lore involving "Since your trainer still has your pokeballs, you can DIE, like DIE die." meaning there's no just healing at a pokecenter, they're at risk at all times. Another idea I abandoned but this one because of the logistical nightmare is a two separate groups playing two different campaigns in the same game/world, one good one evil. Inspired a bit by "Orcs Must Die!" both would have an objective to protect something in their base and would need to build traps, hire/recruit/"Force volunteer"/summon/or build security, get staff to maintain it, so the party could go out on adventures to both make them stronger, figure out where the enemy base is located, and to prepare assaults by mustering forces in whatever ways they can find. And both parties would be effecting the world, so one group decided to kill the potion maker because of his bad prices? the other party might come back to see his corpse stuffed in a closet. Grandma Pastry is now missing from town? Well the evil overlords recruited her and is now making super cookies for the orc army. And essentially both are competing to see who can destroy (insert whatever it'd be here), by sabotaging the other group's efforts in the world, leveling up faster, ect. and if they so wish, after a team wins they can have one final climatic battle, just to see who was truly the strongest.
Well, my upcoming one shot at a convention has this description: You just woke up. You don't know who you are. Good luck. It's a Mutants & Masterminds game. Pregenerated characters. There are twists that I'll come back and post after September.
my next campaign: 20 years ago, an order of paladins defeated a titan, who exploded, killing all of the paladins and cracking the fabric of reality. the shadow realm has been slowly creeping in. the days are dim, the nights are dangerous, and the only thing keeping away the shadows are the city lights. about 1/8 post apocalypse survival, 1/8 city-state intrigue, 1/4 rediscovering lost civilizations, and 1/2 standard D&D with guns campaign.
An anime campaign, as in Isekai is an occasional thing. The Demon King's army is advancing towards world domination, with or without the knowledge of the Demon King. The Heroes from Another World are summoned when the Eight Great Kingdoms are in dire straits. They can only summon the Heroes every 100 years, because the magic involved is resource intensive. Saving the world, regardless of the Demon King's involvement, is treated as a friendly competition. Whichever Heroes Party saves the world gets bragging rights. Also I want to make it so that murderhoboes get their comupances.
The Shadow War - The conflict between the Material Plane and the Shadowfell stems from an ancient betrayal by a mortal who sought to harness the power of the Shadowfell's darkness for their own ends. - The clandestine organization that recruits the players, known as the Twilight Vanguard, operates from hidden strongholds scattered throughout the Material Plane. Their ranks include elite warriors, skilled infiltrators, and powerful spellcasters dedicated to protecting their world from the encroaching darkness. - As the players delve deeper into the Shadowfell, they uncover the machinations of powerful undead lords known as the Shadow Princes, who seek to spread their influence into the Material Plane and plunge both realms into eternal night. - Alongside battling undead horrors and thwarting necromantic rituals, the players must navigate the treacherous politics of the Shadowfell, forging alliances with enigmatic entities such as the Raven Queen's emissaries and the spectral court of the Nightshade Conclave.
The first druid is starting to wake up, and it's throwing all the land into chaos. Weather is becoming more unpredictable, animals more aggressive, forests are growing wilder and more dangerous, volcanoes rumbling. I've no idea if my party is going to stop them from waking, but they currently have no idea what's going on
The campaign is about an ancient Beast that will bring about the end of all things. It is broken up in two parts! Part one: The party sails to an unknown island to save a lost exploration group. The island is the prison that keeps the Beast asleep. For not even the Gods & Goddess could kill it! The party either rescues the exploration group and leaves. Or they stay and keep the Beast asleep. The second part, part 1: If the party leaves without putting the creature asleep, the Beast raises, and all planes of reality shacks! The sky turns a deep red for all are doom. The party sets out to find the Tools used to put the Beast asleep the first time. All while the Cult of the End, tries to stop them! For all things must end and vanish. Second part, part 2: The old party stayed trap on the island to keep the Beast asleep. But whispers of the shadows stirring on the mainland has people on edge. A new group of adventures set out, to stop a cult that wants to awaken something called the Beast? Can the new party stop the cult from gathering all artifacts that are needed. To help them in achieving thier goal?
I want to make a dual party campaign. It’s a fantasy setting with modern elements. The setting is a continent overrun with paranormal creatures. One party would be a group of these creatures trying to advance in the society while the other is a team of paranormal investigators. The parties accidentally run into each other and it becomes a cat and mouse chase
I have a concept for a story that I'm having the hardest time figuring out how to actually implement. Mainly the BBEG would be residing in the very collective unconscious that ties all beings together and is some eldritch abomination that is actively making EVERYONE in the multiverse more vile and cruel, while ever so slightly warping reality itself to suit its eldritch nature. This would be done by having it slip darker intrusive thoughts over several decades, slowly tipping people to become just pure evil incarnate. The best twist would be that it's eventually revealed that the creature is currently residing in the very center of the planet, and is **IN FACT** the planet's core killing it would doom the planet but not dealing with it would cause it to escape and destroy the planet itself a'la MCU Celestials. Thus the entire conundrum ... what do you do?
One character comes home after several months away, to discover the whole town thought he'd been murdered while away... A stranger comes into town, and wakes to find an intricate medallion laying across his armor. When showing it to the inn's hosts, the not dead stable master, and the orphaned monk woman manager, she's had a dream of a similar scene to the one etched on the medallion (two trees, three men and a dragon), in her dream, one of the men was her brother. A hobbit that came to town seeking learning, but finding the teacher he sought not there, but remained anyway...his magical powers struggle, and sometimes are over-powered..... The medallion gets taken to the Monestary Library, into secret, deep passages into massive rooms of secret knowledge to find a map of not that world, another medallion placed, and room for two more after this one. Placing it causes several hours of world wide quakes....... The next morning, the quakes are forgotten by everyone on the world.......almost....... Who is the failed assassin? Why were they after this stable master, and why was it important enough to kill someone else in his place? What did the medallion do on this map of an unknown world? Why did the world forget this event? And what other little adventures will take place along the way? poisoned water? ritual sacrifices? imprisonment? airships? Academy graduation gone wrong? Will they find the assassin? How will they escape delivering him to prison??? And why did a skyisland explode? Last time, is not what happened last time....on AUAK Chronicals...
I have an idea that I would love to run someday, inspired by an amazing Bluff check made by one of the players in a Curse of the Crimson Throne game I was running years ago. The game would largely involve dungeon crawls... But not because the players are _adventurers._ No, they are Official Dungeon Inspectors, there to ensure that everything is up to code and being operated in accordance with the guidelines and regulations put into place by D.O.S.H.A. ("Dungeon O.S.H.A." - I want to give the organization a more unique name and acronym at some point but I've yet to come up with one). They would come in and interview the dungeon's denizens, inspect traps and important parts of the architecture, verify that any necessary permits and licenses are valid and up-to-date... and confront the dungeon's boss over any issues that they come across, even if it means beating the guy's ass to make him comply. After all, workplace safety is important, even for evil lairs!
My party started out at an inn to watch an extremely rare Faerie dragon migration A couple of hatchling silver dragons decided to come out and watch, and promptly got kidnapped by a necromancer employed by a dragon lich The hatchlings' grandfather employed tge party of adventurers to get his grandkids back In the process, they cleaned out some merrows in the Brum Sea (in my original map) released a Sphynx from her time prison in a silver tower, made friends with a herd of belligerent centaurs, and discovered the necromancer had actually resurrected the Silver dragon's brother, trapping him in a soul gem, and planning to use the hatchlings' life forces to make his enslavement permanent They got the dragon's soul out along with the hatchlings, but they weren't sure if the necromancer, who turned out to be a were bear, actually died
Idea I have been playing around with in my head: In the ancient past the gods made the world and everything in it, the mountains, the seas, the gnomes and the giants. The gods took favor of the Giants who would build great and giant monuments to honor them. So to reward them, they weaved creation to make beast of burden to ease their more trivial labors, so that they could focus more passion to honoring the gods. Over the centuries the giants came to realize these "Hoomans" were not mere beast of burden, but fully sentient beings like them. Outraged by such an act of evil on the part of the gods, they destroyed their monuments, made a staircase to heaven, and cast down the gods; not to replace them, but to humble them. In the millennia since he gods have learned from their mistakes, and with their reduced power have come to care for all their creations equally... Well most of them. There are those in the shadows that still plot their return, and revenge on everything they thought wronged them.
My original campaign idea: my players are just going about their lives as adventurers, (the party consisted of a paladin, a rogue, and Jesus Christ. Look it was my first campaign and it wasn't serious anyway, ok?) when they are suddenly assaulted by a man they have never seen, who holds a massive grudge. Turns out, in an alternate universe, the party accidentally destroyed the world, and so the BBEG, who goes by the name of... SCHLONG OF HOUSE WANG FROM THE CITY OF DONG, WITHIN THE GREAT NATION OF PHALLUS, LOCATED BETWEEN THE TESTE MOUNTAINS ON THE CONTINENT OF COCKLAND, has been hunting down every version of the party throughout the multiverse. They were being assisted by the brother of the BBEG, who was a cleric trying to stop his brother's murderous rampage. Oh also they had a pet Dragon. And the dragon breathed hot sauce. This came from a joke that Draconic was just Spanish, and it escalated to be that dragons in the setting were all Mexican.
I'm in the middle of running a musical campaign full of a bunch of music references and the party trying to reverse a contract with Satan himself to return music to the land.
Tried DMing, sucked at it, but I am very capable in help make worlds and plothooks. I may have started with 5e, but I just love the lore and have read a lot of it. My most independantly made was having players being involved in some planar accident and transferred to a Plane of Dread ruled by Mind Flayers. Intelligent humanoids are extinct there and local Mind Flayers have resulted to eating and infecting brains of non intelligent beings, with some success. There is a cast of Nobility Mind Flayer Bards, for they learn and pass down Awaken for turning dumb animals into intelligent beings, that can be fed to larva. The world is dark and cold and the players are seen as delicacies. Also Neothelids run rampant. The goal is to survive and go home. This would be accomplished either by freeing the trapped evil gods, or by seeking out old Mind Flayer corpses and raiding ruins. There are also a few tyrannical rulers of the plane, those being Lich Flayers and 1 Lich-MindFlayer-Dragon, the most horrific homebrew creature I could think off. In a Plane of Dread, souls are not reneved, so soul eating is an extremely big problem for both the Liches and normal Mind Flayers. In this campaign. Players can team up with the Liches, a reasonable faction of Mind Flayers or act independantly.
My idea probably isn't original, but I was planning on having my party find a fallen angel and help them stop a potential holy war between demons and angles by closing portals to bothr the holy and demonic realms
My players asked me to run a monster hunting campaign, with the twist that their goal is to capture the monsters, research them, and maybe even put them on display in a zoo or release them back into the wild. It's turned into three phase types: exploring the abandoned island, maintaining the ecosystem, and then spending downtime in a facility management simulator. I'll explain more in-depth below.
Phase 1: Exploring the Island. Their financer set sail for an abandoned island so that civilization wouldn't interfere. The island hosts a variety of biomes for them to explore. Each biome has a number of odd sites to discover, creatures to research, and quirks to navigate. Once their explorations are complete, scouts are assigned to observe the area for any anomalies.
Phase 2: Maintaining the Ecosystem. If the scouts detect an anomaly, or deviation, in a biome's ecosystem, they report it to the party. An example of a deviation would be the slaughter of a herd of rams, which had not been eaten. That would indicate that a monster is on a rampage, so the party would most likely investigate. The investigations almost always involve combat, and the party votes on the degree of lethality depending on the monster. Once the investigation is complete, the party heads back to the camp with the monster(s).
Phase 3: Managing the Facility. The party has a roster of various employees, from artisans and laborers to researchers and logistics. The laborers help build enclosures or amenities. The artisans craft complex mechanisms for enclosures, if need be, but they also maintain and upgrade the party's gear. The researchers pretty much assist everyone, but mostly ensure that each enclosure can provide comfort to its creatures. The logistics brings things from the mainland, which the party requests. The party may also interact with creatures and staff during these phases. It may sound in-depth, but it's not that complex. Money isn't entirely an issue. The logistics gets cycled every other session. The other members of staff each have their own reasons for being on the island, as well as character sheets in case the party wants to reassign.
Overall, it's been a new experience. I usually run campaigns involving politics and war, so it's been interesting learning techniques to make exploration more fun, while maintaining the lighter tone that my players requested.
I am really interested now
@@helldino182 I can explain it a little more in-depth.
Phase 1: Exploring the Island. They sailed to an abandoned island so civilization wouldn't interfere with their work. I filled the island with biomes to explore. Each biome has odd sites to discover, and quirks to solve. I've been slowly introducing them to new areas so they don't get overwhelmed with choice.
Phase 2: Maintaining the Ecosystem. After the party has made their initial discoveries in a biome, their network of scouts reports any deviations in the ecology. An example would be an entire herd of rams being slaughtered, but not eaten, showing that something is going on a rampage. If the party deems the deviation to be a potential threat, they investigate it. The investigation usually involves combat, so the party votes on lethal or nonlethal methods on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes, their investigation requires protecting a monster from an invader. Regardless, once the party defeats (or rescues) their targets, they're taken back to camp.
Phase 3: Facility Management Simulation. The party decides how to deal with the monster(s). Their staff includes various kinds of laborers, artisans, researchers, and warriors. They direct their staff to produce the things necessary to running the place. Some examples are farms and enclosures, but the artisans also make sure their gear is maintained and upgraded. The warriors are usually told to help the laborers, or help secure pathways to new biomes. The party keeps a shopping list for the ship that brings materials and personnel from the mainland. The characters can also interact with their employees and specimens.
Despite the long explanation, this part isn't very complex. Money isn't entirely an issue. It's assumed that there's a steady supply of mundane things like food and building materials. The staff all have various excuses to be there, as well as character sheets for the players to view in case they want to reassign anybody.
Overall, it's been an interesting experience. I usually run more politics and war campaigns, so I've been learning what makes for good exploration and keeping the lighter tone that the players requested.
Ooh, this is a good one!
I'm currently working on an "ancient civilization treasure hunt" mystery where players are attempting to find an ancient terra-forming tool before bad guys can. Along the way they find out more about the ancient civilization and find both unique weapons and mysterious artifacts.
The main plot revolves around a star map that, when fully attached, reveals the night sky which can be compared against a world map to find the location of the tool.
The twist? There are 3.
Twist 1 is the typical "working for the enemy" trope where the players find out they're working for a guy who wants to get uber-rich using the tool to hold countries at ransom.
Twist 2 is that he dies trying to activate what he thinks is the terra-former, only to activate a portal that tears him apart. The players are then implied that something else lies beyond the portal.
Twist 3? The terra-former is an ancient space station run by its own AI that genocided the ancient civilization leaving only scraps of their advanced civilization. The final battle is a timed fight that takes place on the space station as it falls into the planet's atmosphere.
I have been running a randomly generated dungeon for the last year, for 2 parties in the same world. its been a blast. The dungeon itself is constantly changing, both in layout and enemies, but has certain parts that dont change to provide places they can rest or plot points, etc. One of these is a large hall that other people lost in the dungeon have built up into a small town of sorts. One of the really fun parts of this campaign has been the dual party aspect. As one party completes a major task or triggers certain events, both parties feel the repercussions. When a powerful magical artifact was recovered and given to an artificer in trade for weapon designs that artificer created a massive destructive robot boss that both parties had to deal with. When the beastmaster of the dungeon was killed a flood of orcs entered the dungeon as he was no longer able to keep them away with his animals. This changed the average enemy from goblins to orcs for both groups as the orcs take over the upper levels. The final boss fight is going to be interesting, ive stacked it with moral dilemmas and emotional damage. XD
The final boss is just my cup of tea for stories that I make
I've always wanted to do a campaign loosely based on "Freeport." A former pirate port turned trader hub.
Essentially, they'd be stuck doing odd jobs to make it thru the day, while uncovering an Aboleth Invasion that is targeting a scientist studying a piece of a cipactli (Spinosaurus like monster covered in mouths from pathfinder made ro destroy civilization) that they plan to resurrect.
First a little preface. I had a basic plot idea for a book I wanted to write, but only really had an idea for the main "reveal" and what the villain would look like. I ended up having a lightbulb moment where I realized "this is totally a campaign". So I looked to make it a short campaign for a few sessions and decided to see if I could make more. One of my players keeps asking lore questions though and figuring out the answers kept making my world bigger and bigger. And now I have this;
It's a post-magic, cyberpunk setting where the citizens of a world called OE were forced underground after an event called "The Severing" at the end of a large-scale war called "The Toxin War". The Severing occurred 75 years prior to current events when magic was lost and "the sky darkened" from the OXN contaminant. As a result, a new synthetic magic was developed called "Plasma" (think how elemental bending is applied in The Legend of Korra's world, but with BioShock's plasmids).
And now the citizens are ruled by 3 distinct bosses in very different environments; a city enveloped by news media, a city of neon light, and a city that worships an inanimate object (being intentionally vague in case my players follow this channel. Each area deals with a certain kind of fear or anxiety and the way people cope with them.
Just as a message to all new DM/GMs; I have only run one one-shot so far and played 5e for 4 sessions. I feel somewhat overwhelmed, but I am getting a lot of input from my players to help shape my story and it's been super inspiring. All that to say, if you've got a good table and you've got a cool story idea, you can make something pretty awesome. Let it not be perfect, but have the framework to let yourself and your players play. I got all my info from videos analyzing guys like Mercer and Mulligan and the unique stories heard thanks to Ripper. You can make something awesome; you just have to be willing to try.
I've come up with a few, some of them I even posted over on one of the D&D subreddits, in more than one post, a while back. But the one that is coming to me now is a campaign concept I'm calling "Shadowed Time," the idea behind it is that there's some sort of funky and bizarre stuff going on with time but only the people with access to the Time-themed and Shadow-themed subclasses seem to be unaffected and basically go on a quest to fix things before the timeline breaks too hard. This would also allow characters from different points in the timeline, past and future, to make appearances in campaign itself as both cameos and whatever narrative thread the DM needs them to be at that moment; and when it's all said and done, only the PCs that were part of the campaign recall the events, even though after they resolved everything they snapped back to the point in time they were when the whole thing went down.
A fantastical Trench warfare campaign. Everyone is a soldier or mercenary of some form, fighting for a major coalition of kingdoms against a great goblin horde led by a Saruman-esque sorcerer overlord attempting to conquer the world, but whose great goblin army has been bogged down into medieval trench warfare by said Coalition.
Oneshot idea: The party is trapped in a cave by large stones that suddenly close the entrance/exit. They fight through the cave, wade through acidic swamps, horrible mud, fight worms... etc, only for the campaign to end with them falling out of a rock giant's butt.
Ew... Cool but ew
Think Dark Soul + Dead Cells essentially each player is infected with a plague that also makes them immortal but with a catch each time they come back to life they become a little bit more monstrous mentally or physically basically the DM way before the first session even starts has secretly assigned a random monster from the monster manual to them so by the end after X amount of deaths each player is essentially a possible future mini boss and here’s why the stats stack with what they are + what monster they’ll eventually become and the best part all the lore will be cryptic as all hell so they won’t have any idea of what to do or where to go which just adds to the fun
My idea is a pirate themed game, the party would be tasked with defeating a notorious band of pirates led by a man named “Yellow Beard”. First clue something is wrong is that the captain doesn’t even have a beard. After killing all the pirates, the players will be left with the captain’s yellow parrot. The parrot speaks and tells them he’s a bit annoyed they killed his crew and tells them THEY are the replacement crew now. After they inevitably talk shit, the parrot reveals itself to be an adult yellow dragon and tells them, “it wasn’t a question”. So the players now sail the world looking for the dragon’s (the TRUE yellow beard) lost treasure.
I've had 3 ideas
Idea 1
The group starts as city guards and immediately they get attacked, since they are the only guards that survived the attack, they have been tasked with finding out who's behind the attack, leading to numerous city gangs/ underworld groups or possibly even corruption in the cities Royal family/ leadership.
Idea 2
The group wakes up on a ship chained in cages to be sacrificed to a sea god by a cult. They fight their way out and take over the ship, adventure time for the group until the sea god summons them to become the new prison wardens of a hell god that is kept chained in a cage under the oceans by blood magic that requires sacrifice of life, the group then decides how the campaign ends.
Idea 3
It's more of a concept than an idea, but the world doesn't have magic (diving healing in holy temples sure but no other magic)
A ruler of some kingdom hears rumours of a new power and sends a group of mercenaries to investigate and, if possible, harnesses said power, the group slowly learns this power is magic and suddenly everyone has some kind magic, some weak some powerful, then again the group decides how the campaign ends.
I have an idea centered around the stages of grief. The players are dead, but they find themselves locked in a dimly lit land filled with other wandering spirits, demons, and souls. All of this would be hidden knowledge at the start. Now, instead of it being like a dark souls game where everything is out to kill you, many of the encounters can only be solved through finding ways to solve the troubles of the dead in relation to what stage of grief they're in. For example, they can meet a depressed clown in the ruins of a burnt down carnival trying to piece everything back together. The only way a character truly dies is if they find their own gravesite that manifests into the world. However, failing death saves can lead to characters turning into things more like ghouls, zombies, skeletons, ghosts, and other undead. Ultimately if they solve enough problems (3 encounters for each stage of grief) they'll unlock the boss area. She reigns over acceptance so the party will have to take care of denial, depression, anger, and bargaining first.
I love how when you described the clown I was like "Oh no, Chuckles is telling ANOTHER one of his back stories" (ever heard of Legends of Avantaris, Once upon a Witchlight ? That podcast is unhinged)
A Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DND/Pokemon Tabletop United campaign set in the post apocalypse. The setting would have all humans either transformed into Pokemon via scientific or natural means (like Yamask or other ghost types) or extinct all together. The Pokemon left after The Fall still remember humans and some are even former humans themselves either as ghost types or had their consciousness transferred to cloned Pokemon bodies. The catch is that the BBEG wants to make sure humans remain extinct with his organized group of traumatized anti-human mons while a post fall scientific research firm wants to revive humanity. The main theme would revolve around the question "does humanity deserve a second chance?" with some of these former humans being persecuted by parties, teams, guilds, towns, and Pokemon aligned with the extinctionists. Meanwhile the wasteland is crawling with "Feral Pokemon" who are cannibalistic in nature (as I also intend to have normal animals to not detract from the main conflict or get too bogged down with Pokemon having to eat other sapient Pokemon) as well as mutated mons that run the gambit of functional societies to feral themselves. The Mystery Dungeons themselves have turned into basically like the Vaults from Fallout, housing some of most the genetically pure Pokemon and having similar vibes to that of their Fallout counterparts with more varied structures like underground factories, sewer systems, or metro tunnel turned into living spaces for mons who decided to go underground to avoid The Fall. This would largely be an open world campaign with the party free to choose their Pokemon characters from a wide background with a mostly non linear story
I have one
Back in days of 1e & 2e, there was a mechanic that was focused on reaction adjustments, and Reputation was one, it was based on your starting Charisma and Initial Alignment
By doing good deeds and completing quests, you increase the reputation bonus and people will favor your character better
Granted the opposite is true
Recent editions have removed reaction adjustments due to players "feeling restricted" when really they just want to play an Anime styled character and overpower everything
Anyway
My idea was to bring that back, and on order to get the higher quality quests, the more dangerous missions, the most challenging bounties, they have to build their reputation. Starting out, they're not going to be invited to see the royal family, and not everyone is going to know everything about you. You'll have to work for it, you're going to have to prove you have the chops, not bluff yourself in
You'll need to take lower level shit jobs no-one would be caught dead doing
I also like this, and that's what I'm planning on doing. My players (well, our former DMs and my best friend's players, that included me btw until we agreed I'll be the new DM now that he can't participate anymore cuz busy student) were always random people, but heck his world has pretty strong magic users. So me and other 2 guys did some random but still more or less useful things while our 2 wizards (necromancer and a fire/earth spells specialized wizard) basically did everything (tanking waves, killing waves, doing crazy shit etc.). So my campaign (heavily Minecraft inspired sorta dark fantasy world) will have them be randoms, but *completely* new to the progression of adventurers (they can choose to be adventurers as part of their backstory but they cannot be experienced at all, basically just travelers)
I’ve got a bunch (somewhere around here I have a little flip notebook nearly full with the seeds of them, and two fully fleshed out settings in Composition Notebooks), but here are some:
1) A thousand years ago, a great disaster came to the world. Strange energies and creatures from worlds and planes unknown flooded the world. However, a powerful Archmage became aware of the disaster before it fell, and gathered those he could of all the Known Races (Humans; Elves; Halflings; Gnomes; the Plane-touched races of Assimar, Tiefling, and the Genasi; even some tribes of Goblins, Kobolds, Orcs, and Lizard-folk), leading them to the one place he knew he could create a protection from this, the Ring-Wilds. The Ring-Wilds are a large (roughly the size of Europe) land surrounded by a ring of mountains, save for a Straight out of the inland sea sized (roughly the size of the Mediterranean) bay, which has a perpetual storm raging within it. The centuries have been kind, and innovation great (magical steampunk level technologies exist and are pretty common, flintlock weapons are available).
Now the Great Barrier has faded, and the (mostly) peaceful Empire formed by these peoples can see that the disaster has passed, but know nothing of what the outside world holds, and what changes have been wrought by it. A call to explore the old world has gone out, great adventure, riches, and danger awaits.
2) The heroes failed. The sun has vanished. The darkness itself has teeth and claws, and will attack all but beings of it. The party is part of a group of survivors who have made their way to the World Tree, it’s perpetual light their only assured safety and means of producing food. Will they survive the darkness and its creatures attacks? Will they be able to aid in bringing back the sun? Will a means of finding a new world be found?
Three:
A campaign based on a book series I read once wherein within a US Western style area, the Devil runs an entire section of a massive continent, and one coast an Imperialistic, religiously motivated monarchy is trying to make in-roads, and on the other, a hyper-Capitalistic democracy run by robber-barons is trying to cross the rugged mountain chain in larger numbers and influence. Both are kept from outright invasion by distance, terrain, and magic, but they're relentlessly trying to take over.
The players work for the Devil, and the various anarchistic tribes, isolated towns, and roving powers within.
The second is basically a world where the largest and most powerful monsters possible are rampaging across the world in great numbers and the resultant civilizations that have grown from this exist underground, in the sky on floating islands, or in areas that are protected by magical barriers.
All of these have great cost in resources and manpower, so the players would basically be acting as mercenaries wandering from place to place, gathering things that are needed by each location, and eventually growing in enough power to be able to fight off or defeat the monsters.
The third is a horror campaign where the players are forced to wander a small community that circles around a megalithic building that turns out to be a hospital that seems to go on forever.
The players would uncover the various mysteries within the hospital as well as surviving encounters with the staff, odd monsters, and paranoia.
The party would also never be safe, no matter where they are. A lot of body horror.
Every morning, they all had to roll, and whatever they rolled would have consequences.
Most of the time, nothing happened, but sometimes, things that they could not stop would happen, such as one player having two fingers amputated, only to be replaced with substitutes that worked just as well, but which were definitely from two other races.
Today, I will be running an adventure I have called Curse of the Githyanki Zephyr. The players have a crippled airship that can also sail. Along the way, they will need to eliminate other treasure seekers, with bigger and faster ships than theirs. And bigger crews. Inside the treasure ship is said to be the raided wealth of five kingdoms.
The party has a member who can essentially find the ship at will. She has a compass similar to Jack Sparrows. So they need to find their way just the same. The journey is fraught with action and adventure, and even if they manage to get airborne again, so can at least one other fellow seeker, and he's the worst of the pirates.
In the end, the ship won't be where everyone thinks it should, and no one knows it was once a flying ship itself.
They start out lost in a strange land that doesn't exist, on a crippled ship no one can fix without parts, and they don't speak the language.
If they win, according to legend, they will be rich beyond the dreams of avarice, and better yet, be able to scavenge from the old wreck parts to fix their ship and at long last, head for home.
I've had a few campaign ideas I'd like to try.
1. Secret Wars: Two unfathomably powerful eternal beings are locked in a struggle that takes the form of a game in which the players are pawns. One being is good the other evil. The evil one managed to destroy the universe but the good one was able to save just enough of it to patchwork them together like in the Secret Wars comic. The players then have to visit the reaches of this patchwork world defeating the evil beings pawns. Meanwhile there are other struggles in and between the different zones. One area is a WWII style battlefield, another is a utopic high fantasy city, another a noire detective setting but of course the world these areas are based around is missing so people are going without food in a huge metropolis or the fascists bad guys from the WWII area are now pillaging an immense jungle for resources.
2. The Great Hunt: Players are invited by the gods to participate in a grand interdimensional hunt where you can kill any animal or monster and get points based on its difficulty comparative to you. SO you could kill 100 squirrels and get 100 points or you could kill something incredibly difficult for much more. Here's the twist, ANYTHING is game including sentient beings and by participating in the hunt. And the gods didn't invite you to hunt......they invited you to be prey. The players wouldn't know those details but it would slowly become apparent as they visit worlds where people have heard of the Great Hunt because their ancestors survived by hiding on those worlds and then settling down. You mention it and they will panic and leave to hide elsewhere. Players shelter in a cave with old writing on the walls (possibly a language they don't understand) that says "Are you the prey, or are you the hunter?" things like that.
3. Land of the Lost: Players must survive on an island continent that is inescapable fill with ancient Lizard people, mind reading aliens, and cave halflings. Shameless stolen from Land of the Lost. I actually ran it for a while before a player had to move. We called the game to an end at level 3 so not very far. But for our next one I'm basically ripping off Star Trek. XD
One of my favorites is actually a tiny part of a much, much bigger story. It's a four horseman + two warring super power nations type scenario where throughout a roughly Eurasia sized continent, largely disconnected from each other, as well as from the party at first, a bunch of things are happening.
A "Golden Horde" style Khanate tearing across lands, conquering every nation and tribe they come across while destroying every conduit to every god they find along the way.
A coalition of free nations led by a "Kingdom of Light" Fighting back the tides of the neigh immortal Khan while dealing with politics, crime, and corruption along with odd things beginning to happen throughout their lands.
Four Ultra powerful magic wielders of different classes, motivations, and degrees of madness and/or ambitions secretly plan to either save, fix, control, or destroy all civilization across the land.
The payers are just a bunch of low level dorks that have no idea what is going on. The story would basically be them doing chores and shenanigans while the actual plot spirals out in an asymmetric loop around them. Interest and intrigue, meetings with the ultra-mages, cults and kings, monsters and mysteries, the usual stuff.
The real kicker is the really dumb endgame spoiler that is guaranteed to disappoint!
Had a recent campaign end due to burnout. It was a high sci-fi 5e setting where we had several interesting characters. The original trio (minotaur paladin/warlock, kitsune cleric/monk, leonin bard/fighter) escaped after being imprisoned for various things. Well, they took down a group of gangers charging people for water in a desert; had to leave after being tracked down by the minotaur's old boss. The goal was built around the "old boss" finding old superweapons from a war just recently over (like, 300 years. Space is big and travel still takes time even with FTL). The party already fought an oblex that was one of them, an iron golem infected with the Tyrant Virus and managed to pull a homebrewed empyrean from cryosleep.
I had some wild plans, but burnt myself out waayyy too often. I hope to run that one again someday...
I have started to plan a campaign based on roleplay and heists with a mix of crime syndicate intrigue. The players would come from multiple corners of my world, a France-sized island. The idea of backstories suggested to the players would be they did some sort of crime and are in trouble, I would let them create somekind of story around that so they would eventually met a man named Markus. He would offer individually the characters to join his little crew of misfits and become a Robin Hood gang, steal the rich and help the poor. The players would meet in the tavern of a little town, were Markus is kind of an unofficial leader and hero. He would tell the players he’s a bit too old and rusty to do the Hero of the people (58year old human), so he would organise heists and send the players on multiple jobs. For multiple sessions, the players will do those missions and I hope they will get attached to Markus, an inspiring and charismatic leader who cares about his people and the characters. But eventually, trouble will arrive in the little town they made their home. One day, a blue dragon will come and rip the village into pieces, the players will realize the dragon isn’t alone and members of a criminal organization were here to take everything, mostly the last “harvest” of the players that unknowingly was stolen from this syndicate. And person leading this attack wasn’t the dragon but a high-ranked advisor from the organization that had before a deep connection to Markus’ backstory. When Markus and the person (named Daniel) meet in the ashes of the village…it ends up Daniel orders the dragon to kill Markus and he dies in front of the players, advice I took from one of your vilain videos about “watching all the players turn into John Wick”. Then the rest of the campaign will be the players trying to get into the syndicate in various means in order to avenge Markus by capturing Daniel…or killing him. I still have a lot of plot twist in reserve for this future campaign and I hope I could Dm it someday.
I have this idea in my mind for a while now, although i havent dm'd yet, im working on writing my campaign
Its about 2 gods, One god of Positive feelings and Emotions, And the other god is the god of Negativity and chaos. Lets call these gods 'Dream' and 'Nightmare' Both grow stronger depending which emotion is felt the most at the time. They have their own plane of existence. Dream's side of this plane is filled with beautifull colours, resembeling some sort of a city. While Nightmare's side is a huge castle with an ominous look emanting from it
after the world has lived in peace and no conflict to worry about, Nightmare decides That he is sick of this positive stuff, And plans to summon him in the world and rule it in negative glory. He is unable to do so, so he hires, make a deal or enslave other races. A deal might Give a sorcerer untold power, While he has to induce as much negative feelings as possible while trying to kill the least he can. Or Nightmare orders a cult to worship him and be a thorn in the PC's side. here is what i have planned for now (pls let me know some stuff that could be better or some ideas)
The king has recieved notices and distress calls/letters from a nearby village. After recieving their mission in a tavern, the PC's are send to the village. While travelling there, everyone can already smell the foul stench of decay, of death. The village authority tells them about the situation. A powerfull necromancer has raised the dead. Now the villagers live in constant FEAR, STRESS AND ANXIETY of the necromancer attacking at any minute. PC's are send to deal with the necromancer, while fighting different undead's in their path Necromancer upon defeat reveals nightmare's plan. Upon returning to the city. PC's are send to another mission. A nearby temple of the god of (insert a god name here) that usually is very peacefull and harmonious, has turned ominous, dark and Evil. The construct guardians are haunting the place. PC's find somewhere a hidden hallway, Filled with traps, With on the end a dark blue negativity filled orb. After 2nd or 3rd trap, An avatar of Dream appears. And deactivate the traps, possibly healing PC's. He picks up the orb and dispels the negativity. Dream explains the situation to PC's in detail. And explains that Neither he or Nightmare can truly die. As long as their respective emotions are present somewhere, They cant die. Only way to defeat Nightmare is to imprisoning him. Dream gives PC's a box which is able to do that. PC's can decide to help rebuild the temple. On their way returning the city, they encounter an Elemental in what PC's can just make out that the Elemental looks distressed. Those who understand Primordial, or speak the elemental's native language will know whats going on. The Elemental lives in a nearby tribe, their leader made a deal with Nightmare, Giving it immense power. But is tasked by corrupting all their fellow Elementals. The leader feels nothing, just laughing at the negativity they are spreading. After helping the elementals (ofc depends on choice). They see a small force of Nightmare's cult invade a dragons cave. Cult members are making the dragon suffer PC's can decide to help out dragon or not. If they do and succeed, they will get the dragon's favor. Make smth beneficial up for the PC's. Or use magic items found in DM guidebook. after returning to the city, They find it in complete chaos. turns out, the Queen was a succubus that worked for Nightmare, And has summoned different Devils/Demons to terrorize the city. (PC's are way higher lvl at this point, so just buff that fiend up). PC's make their way into the castle, where they find the succbus is trying to summon Nightmare, after a heavy battle, The succubus failed, and the fiends in the city also dissapear along with their leader. Although the demon failed to summon Nightmare, a portal has opened up. A portal which the PC's can go through and have the final battle with the God of Negativity. After depleting Nightmare's first phase, HE reveals his true Nightmarish form. PC's then use the box. Nightmare slowly gets sucked in this Prison. PC's hand the box the Dream who secures it in a safe place
I’m running a campaign right now in my homebrew worlds dubbed Havenscape. It’s a set of multiversal worlds that were once one but the timeline was split in order to keep certain forces from obtaining a particular object of power that’s hidden in one of them. Even though it’s a multiverse each world is completely different as a calamity struck the multiverse and souls cannot be copied so people were just scattered to each world during the event in question. No two worlds are alike anymore.
My current setting for the campaign takes place in the first Haven on the continent of Arthera. The party has really just gotten started on a quest meant to bring them together and establish the world around them. But little do they know the remnants of the cult who worshipped the dark god are rising in the shadows once again. The first quest is a tie into the fact that there is a network of people throughout the continent that are secretly searching for…. Something. A long lost item known as “The Essence of Creation”, a shard of power originally given to the dark god from one of the three Fundaments to attempt to usurp the other two. (The Three Fundaments are concepts of reality that gained sentience at the beginning of all things). The party are all closely tied into the plot via family connections or being champion to dead gods who want to stop the coming destruction of the Havens and reascend to divinity. This campaign will take them across the continent to find hints to the past, over the seas to eleven nations who want their homeland back, and to the depths of the underworld to gnomish citadels to find out what was lost thousands years ago.
I don’t want to share the one I’m currently working on, but a fun “monster of the week” style thing I did was Dungeon Dash. A Door Dash for adventures. Only catch is all the PCs that are part of the delivery team are specked against their class. A bard that can’t sing, a fighter with bad strength and so on.
I made this one campaign based on my own personal childhood world (ofcause rewritten to the age but keeping many of the concepts). Mix in a legend of zelda twilight princess and it dident take long before i had quite a monster of a setting.
The story it self was based around discovering the setting and all its wiered wackyness while at the same time trying to save it from a spreading chaos.
I run campaigns all the time. Lots of good ones, but you are asking about ones I haven’t got to run yet. The game starts with the PCs execution. They then wake up to find the leader of the large city they are in wants them to route out unauthorized criminal elements (those not paying the black tax). Because they are no officially working for the patrician, they are expected to make money how they can, including potentially making their own organized crime outfit.
As for the one I recently ran, the Kingdom of Sindarin, run by a good and noble king. The players were simple adventurers looking to make their fortune and be heroes besides. They met the two princesses, a Paladin and mage, respectively, but were mainly working for the wizard Mondain, who was using his position as vizier to send unwitting pawns to help him make an item that makes him unkillable and all powerful. The campaign ended with them being unable to stop him as he rose to power, and it was all their fault. But the story isn’t over.
They escaped into a pocket dimension. And now, twenty years later, they return to see the world their actions have created and have to figure out a way to stop it from happening. Along the way, they have to solve the problem that is keeping them from going back in time: the rule of “You cannot change the past because you didn’t.”
I pictured a steampunk d&d setting that would involve Stingray and especially the Thunderbirds set in a future where they colonised a world in the future, but fell foul of magic and other races!
I'm actually running my second consecutive campaign based on adapting old fantasy computer games from the late '90s and early 2000s.
My first one took the darkstone setting and tried to tell the actual story of darkstone that the game failed to achieve through its gameplay.
My current one is adapting the computer game Majesty. It has proven very well suited to it as anyone majesty scenario really is its own multi-session d&d adventure.
Session 6 has them in the climactic finale fight against an evil Oculus to complete the introductory scenario the bell the book and the candlestick
I never went through with it since our group all went our separate ways, but I was planning a prequel era campaign where the players could make busted multiclasses with more magical twists since the era was one where magic had far less rules. The players would also meet and interact with npcs who were immortalized as statues and legends without names forgotten in time, and could help make them who and what they were. Sadly it never got off the ground bc our main campaign never actually ended, but I still like the idea
I got 'inspired' by listening to netnarrator and agrosquirrel.
So I made a campaign, set in the story of The survivor becomes a dungeon, and Dungeon life.
Where dungeons are a sorta living being, and every one has affinities (fire, water, air, earth, spatial, life, death etc)
I would love to run a game setting like Storm Hawks. The surface of the world is an inhospitable wasteland of volcanic surface, open lava pits and terrifying wildlife. The people live on flattened mountaintops that exist above the clouds. Using crystal technology to harness the elemental energy within to power not just great airships and personal airplane/motorcycles, but also their weapons.
Be Warnt its a long Story
I'm still planning a story but the look of the base and the first dungeon are finished, the monsters are from Pathfinder. The city that serves as the base is inspired by Limsa Lominsa from Final Fantasy 14 A Realm Reborn.
The group will then explore a dungeon with many rooms. The rooms have a lot of variety, normal fights with bandits and monsters and then some with monsters such as the ghost golem.
A golem that changes between two shapes and, depending on the shape, can only be injured by players with the right counter buff.
But the dungeon still has something very cool up its sleeve, reveal the eventual BBEG. NOSFERATU!
Nosferatu can turn these evil ones into his fight with the PCs and turn our heroes into villains,
But players can also become evil in a room in a dungeon with the prospect of even more power.
Nosferatu is locked in this dungeon and a guardian dragon protects him, I took away all his attacks and gave him new ones so as not to overkill the PCs, but he will have insta kills that can be survived by the PCs without damage (death) if they reach certain rally points Find them, the boss announces the attack, then the players have 2 rounds to get to safety
Yes, the boss is developed like an FF14 boss (I'm enjoying playing it too much at the moment XD).
That's why the PCs also have a Limit Break for every player who successfully avoids the Instakill attacks, they get progress plus for every certain amount of damage. The PCs can either cause massive damage with the Limit Break or fend off an Instakill or revive all PCs and heal them fully , the dragon tests the players, so if they fail, he revives them up to 2 times, so they have 3 attempts to defeat them and get the right to kill the BBEG. However, if they provoke a 4 fight, well let's say I hope they do make it this time or we have a BAD END
Still a work in progress, but I'm planning a Kingdom Hearts based campaign. The realm of light being the Material Plane and the realm of darkness being the Shadowfell. Shadowfell creatures are the "pure blood heartless" while aberrations are the emblem heartless. I'm not sure how to recreate nobodies, but I'm leaning towards making them undead. Other races still exist, like orcs and dwarves, so it's not just humans. The material plane is made up of hundreds of islands where people have to use ships to travel. Some parts are more dangerous than others because the "heartless" can appear in water as well as on land, but since people can't exterminate them as easily miles away from land, they've been allowed to grow to monstrous sizes, feeding on the hearts of people from sunken ships. The "keyblade" exists as well and come with 3 innate spells (guiding bolt, arcane lock, and knock) but a PC has to be level 3 to get one, but only certain solo classes and/or combinations of multi-classes give a character an opportunity to get one. Also, as characters levels up, new spells are unlocked for the keyblade, but all keyblade spells can only be cast once per long rest each. The main plot is someone is trying to break down the barrier between the material plan and the Shadowfell, causing destabilization and these creatures to pop up more frequently. It's usually local clerics and paladins that take care of the small fry, but less and less are coming back as they're getting overworked, spread thinner, and towns are now hiring adventurers to keep people safe during evacuations or assist in subjugation against large packs. That's where the party comes in, not knowing that they're gonna play a much bigger role in getting to the heart of the problem.
I have two campaigns:
1st one I have been toying with a detective campaign idea for a little bit now.
In the capital of a elven kingdom there is a serial killer on the loose. The town criers have taken to calling them the Dyll Maker because they like to gut children and working class girls out at night then sew up like a rag doll. ... In the most recent attack a tavern wench last seen heading home at night when she changed her route to escort a little girl alone in the streets. The lady didn't show up to her shift for a week and it wasn't until the guards questioned the little girl that they found the body. ...The thing that got everyone in a panic is that the most recent attack happened outside of Estel in a sleepy town called Glainglor (glain glor). Since no witnesses have come up yet with identifiable features of the killer, the only suspects are toymakers and seamstresses in the local area because of the stitching used. The recent attack threw things off because now there are either multiple killers, sicko copycats, or the killer is on the run. Basically due to the attacks and the public's pressure, the party has been hired by the Royal guard to catch the killer(s) before they escape across the border or strike again.
The 2nd one is a more morally questionable campaign where the party has been hired by a member of the dwarven royal court to kill the dwarven queen. The kingdom is in a succession crisis in that mainly in that succession is not happening and Queen Greyward is well past the life expectancy of any dwarf. What really worries the advisor that hires the party is that the queen is growing more and more senile. To make things interesting the city is in a cavern in a mountain and the queen is actually a lich. The biggest issue is that her phylactery is the keystone to the massive and only entrance into the city, and thousands of people might starve to death if it caves in.
I gave my party a potion that allowed you to walk into the “ghost plane” and interact with people as they were right before they died, and then bring stuff out of the ghost plane into the material plane. They visited an ancient battlefield to find info on an ancient key to open a portal to the abyss and asked legendary characters about it. They were then gonna go retrieve its ghost (because it’d been destroyed, but someone died while wielding it, which made it accessible via the potion). They were gonna have a dungeon where they’d have to pass in and out of the ghost plane to solve a puzzle. It was gonna be sick… but tbh I didn’t have the time to prep everything so it only lasted three or four sessions.
I had this idea for a campaign setting where one very strong-willed and future-thinking warlord united all of the common monsters (Goblins, kobolds, etc), organized them and sent them to overrun the known civilized world. The players were living in survivors' camps, always on the run from the organized hordes. The warlord was looking to tear apart the barriers between worlds and then pick up the pieces of a shattered universe to become the unquestioned overlord of everything. Having civilization overrun with swarms of "easy" monstrous creatures was merely the first step in the grand plan. Over time his plan would be revealed while the players would travel from place to place, opposing his forces and eliminating key figures in his strategy.
Feel free to use if it seems cool enough.
I'm planning to run a... different, campaign. it's a wip, but i do have something, and i'd love help with some random suggestions.
(Temporary name) Grimhaven is a realm often called "The in-between". A collection of floating islands amidst an endless void. Very little grows here, and creatures constantly appear through portals or "The Hold" - the place where creatures and items go when thrown through a bag of holding*.
As you walk among this odd, purple-skied realm, you'd find that certain animals have evolved - in bizarre ways. As time went on, creatures of all kinds began to hunt - and discovered a curse on the realm. "You are what you eat" becomes a literal thing as you suddenly find crab claws, dragon wings, and a cat's tail appear on your body.
I'm still working on the lore, details, and mutation mechanics, but if you could do so, mind commenting ideas for creatures that would appear here, or ones that player's have thrown into the unknown? (By banishment, spell, or Bag of Holding)
I ran a game that was set in a world where the moon and the sun manifested real bodies and came down to earth and they hated each other. One side of the earth was always night, the other side always day. Never got to finish it due to real life stuff.
Couple of ideas.
First one: The Kingdom of Beggars. In Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, instead of classes characters have professions which determine the skills they learn, proficiencies they have, their professional progressiom etc. One day I sat down and thought: what would be the most efficient route from poverty to nobility or high status in general. (Spoilers: every route involves crime of sorts)
Why not make a whole campaign around it?
Second: "Mother" (or "Totally not Attack on Titan/Shadow of the Colossus"). Giants are on the loose, they ravage nearby cities, players need to stop them. Desperate struggle for survival like AoT, gigantic foes like Shadow of the Colossus, quite normal stuff...
...UNTIL players reach the endgame. Eventually they'll realize that the giants want to get in contact with their "Mother", a legendary colossus who could squash entire towns with a single stomp. Her whereabouts can be found in this stinky, labyrinthine final dungeon right under this worlds capital city.
Finally, players will realize that this "dungeon" is in fact The Mother's belly.
Then she wakes up.
Also, not really a separate campaign idea but in general: if I ever run D&D, I'll remove character resurrection altogether. Heroes can be revivified if done quickly (think of it as a defibrillator of sorts), they can be stabilized but once they're dead, that's it.
They could TRY hiring a necromancer/con artist to "resurrect" someone but
- it's VERY illegal
- it's VERY expensive
- it requires some VERY unethical actions (think about making the girl-dog-hybrid from Full Metal Alchemist)
- it either won't work without some serious divine intervention (which players probably won't have access to) or the final result is an abomination which makes everyone wish they never tried it in a first place
But nah, I'm way too lazy and/or unorganized to run any of these.
One game that I am running is set in the Stone Age of the world I call Alera. The players are the first of their classes. The cleric is the first to make contact with the Goddess of life, Lilu. The sorcerer is a child of a red dragon's slave and is the first to actually have magic. Meanwhile, their Wizard friend has been trying to figure out how that magic works and turn what they learn into spells. And the fighter is the firstborn of a tribal chieftain who wants to hone his skills and develop new techniques. The red dragon is the current BBEG, as the dragon wants to rule the mortal tribes and lands.
I once ran a brief adventure I called "Silverstone's Sorrows".
The workers in the mining town of Silverstone broke through into a natural cavern, and 'something' in that cavern has spent every night since then slowly demolishing the town, killing residents and dragging them and the 'salvaged' materials from their homes back through the mine for some unknown purpose. All attempts to seal that hole have failed, and the town can't survive without the silver from the mine, so the mayor has set part of his own fortune aside to get folks out on the next trade caravan; he offers to give the PCs that money if they can find out who or what is doing this and stop it from getting worse.
My ideal started to form during 3rd edition. My response to O.P.P.C.s hunting gods was to make it rain nilbogs and now the world is dealing with the fallout.
The first DnD campaign I DMed was based on Valkyrie Profile.
For those of you who know this niche gem, you understand right away that the campaign started with a TPK.
The villain is introduced, marching an army of demons in the city. Everyone gets slaughtered. Then, as the PCs corpses are dragged away for zombie reanimation by lesser minions, a Valkyrie swoops in and takes the souls of the fallen with her. Since they died bravely defending the city, they are already worthy of Folkvangr, Freya's counterpart to Odin's Valhalla. But each player has an unfulfilled last wish. They want vengeance. They want to free their loved ones. They want to uncover the intricacies of the plot and bring about the fall of the BBEG.
So, the goal is to liberate occupied places, reconsecrate temples and thwart evil wherever it lurks. Tied to the plot are several artifacts, two per dungeon. Once retrieved, the party has to choose which one to send to Odin to get a blessing (level up), and which one to keep for use at a crucial moments.
The campaign petered out during covid. It's not the same when we're not in front of each other around a physical table.
I've got two campaign worlds I want to run that are related. One world was taken and hidden from the gods of the multiverse, and the other was damaged in the attempt as the gods tried to stop the former from happening almost destroying it. The first world is hidden in the hands of a massive titan now running through the astral sea and growing it's own extraplanar dimensions around itself. The latter is a shattered world being barely held together by the combined forces of arcane and divine magic. I plan to run very old school campaigns in the first and more episodic short adventures in the second all related to a guild trying to hold the world together.
It's not mine but my best friend's. He ran a campaign based on King Arthur going through all three books as though they were an adventure path. What you have to realize is that King Arthur was essentially the world's first open source story with authors ranging from England to Russia to Arabia, so there are A LOT of options on where to go with that. The campaign ended with a final battle against Mordred fresh off of killing Arthur, so he had Excalibur's sheath which granted immunity to damage. Essentially the battle became a question of how to either get the scabbard away from him, or how to DESTROY it.
There're a lot of whacky magic items and powers in the Knights of the Round Table, highly recommend someone else trying it. Fair warning though...you're probably gonna be watching a lot of Monty Python.
okay, I have roughly 4, all stemming from the choice made in a level 1 one-shot I have planned out. Suffice to say, the one-shot is a fetch quest of a game-ending item from low-level and injured enemy groups. The item is semi-sentient and wants people to open it. if they aren't wearing gloves when touching it, they have to roll a 10 or higher in Wis to not want to open it badly (5 or higher with gloves, and you are warned to wear gloves by the quest giver). Nat1, go crazy wanting to open it. if you roll a 20, you can roll to know what it is in arcana, religion, or history DC15 to get all the details of the item, 10 for a general idea but details get sketchy. Item also has a curse on it forbidding people who know what it is to tell people who don't know what it is about the item once they've touched it. Also, it will take 4nat20s to open/break the item.
So players are now to make a decision: complete the quest as asked, run away with the item to keep it safe, or open it.
- Option 1: If they complete the quest, anyone who knows what the item is will witness the requesters burying the item under spells and cement, clearly to be hidden and kept safe forevermore. That choice lets the players participate in multiple random questlines and characters, get a feel for DnD in general (it's supposed to be a light and beginner game). After they have higher-level characters and a group they like, we will pursue the other part of that item (it's in a hoard of an insane prismatic dragon I'm working on terrorizing 1/5 of the world) and have it buried in a similar manner on the other side of the world. Then they can then participate in a constant looming threat of the War King who was after the same items for reasons I will explain shortly.
- Option 2: If they run away with the item, they will be chased after by EVERYONE for the item. Plus they will have to succeed a wisdom save each day holding the item. Mooks of the War King and those from the guild you abandoned by running away with your first job (instead of 'meet at a tavern', you're all put together by a guild with great benefits) will alternately attack you or try to turn you to their side, plus there's the people who first employed you who are from a strange newer church. I have no idea how that'd go, this depends entirely on the players. BUT at any point they can have option 3.
- Option 3: If they open the item, the entire group dies unleashing all the plagues, the 7 deadly sins (I picked monsters that fit) and the 4 horsemen (same, except death). DEATH (Pratchett's) talks to their ghosts, telling them what happened and telling them all about the item before sending them on their way. So before I even start the one-shot, I would have the players make 2 lv1 characters (with the intent of milestoning them both to lv2 before switching to xp for the rest of the game so they can switch up characters at will or do this campaign). They would then, as their other character, each gain a vision in their hometowns of an angel marking and telling them about what happened. Quickly the world would turn into a hellscape, the sins and other three horsemen would make their territories around the world, the War King would be living large getting what he wanted, and that prismatic dragon being the only stable area compared to the rest of the world. The group is selected to work together, meeting at a particular tavern where a copy of Lucifer (from the show) is there and will tell them exactly what they need to do. Luci is there because he wants to save a particular kind of liquor only available on this world, so he agrees to help the group defeat those 10 things and return the world to normal by making a new item and putting the things back into it once they've defeated them. Even willing to throw the War King in if they manage to do so. there is a time limit of 3.5 in-game years, but 10-12 BBEGs shouldn't be too difficult for the players to beat in that time. Also, if they have a permadeath, they can make another character of the same level and their tie-in is the angel telling them the same thing. They can even go back to ground zero from the one-shot and check out their first characters' corpses.
- Now I said there were 4 different campaigns, right? Remember when I said I'd have them make 2 characters? So if they decide to run away with the item, I will allow them to make another choice after the first session. Option 4: Chasing down their first characters with their second character because they know about option 3 possibly happening at any time. I'd take control of their first characters, obviously, but I'd have them give me a detailed background and characterization so I can figure out their movements and they would choose what their leveling up bonuses would be. So NPCs they can kinda control. If/when they catch their old characters, they can figure out if they want to go into either of the two original plots (option 1 or 3).
That is my campaign idea and I really want to run it. Anyone interested who can teach me all about how to do it online? First time DM, but storyteller since birth. Also aiming for an 80's PG rating. =D
I have a nautical campaign planned set in a homebrew setting that is a low-magic world similar to the Bronze age collapse Mediterranean. While the party is building up their new home away from the few remaining nation-states, mysterious forces are trying to resurrect the long lost magic empire and reconquer the world...
I'm very excited for it.
The party starts out with pre created high level characters hired/questing to stop a cult from performing an evil deity summoning. The party starts their adventure together in combat with the cult in the ritual chamber. Give the characters an Epic combat, an opportunity to get the jive of working together, and in the end they will Disrupt the ritual causing the spell to miscast killing everything in the area, TPK. The party regains awareness on (old school mythos) one of the infinite levels of the Abyss, with blank characters, they build their characters as they fight their way to eventually overthrow the current big bad of that Abyssal level, upon taking control of the Abyssal level it will be granted demi plane status adjacent to the Abyss and the party gets to re-roll their 3rd characters for the adventure. These characters are the living avatars of the demigods they became in conquering their new demi plane, and will be granted After their players complete them stat bonuses taking their class stats if needed, and allowing them access to the skills/abilities/and spells of either of the two characters they played before at 1/2 level (example Level 6 Paladin, who prays to themselves for power, with access to level 3 Necromancer skills/spells). At this point my meddling in the parties goals ends and The DM allows them to go spread their fame to bring glory to their names and power to the gods they really are.
Save an orphanage on Monday, unseat an evil baron on Wednesday, Start construction on a church to worship them on Thursday, save a puppy, they get to look for and do whatever I think I can describe for them. If they survive.
I have a campaign idea where a lot of its themes and worldbuilding takes inspiration from rhythm games. It's my favourite video game genre, and I'm also a big fan of stories like Guilty Gear and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, which also make a lot of music references. I wanted to kind of do the same.
So Pointy Hat has a series where he creates Liches out of every class. I think it'd be super fun to run a high level campaign where all of these Liches are in the same region and the party is apart of an organization tasked with wiping them out. All the Liches would have some relation to another, either as a friend or foe, and some Liches might even help the party fight off the others. I think it'd be super fun but I've barely got dnd experience and have never dm'd before. Also I take it starting off with a high level campaign is a bad idea.
Other than that I've been thinking about another campaign this time taking place in the world of Pokemon with everyone playing a Pokemon. Kinda like the one shot that Failboat played in and Lost Pause's campaign. This one would feature practically every mechanic from the games, mega evolution, dynamax, terastallization, z moves, ultra space, etc. all into one story where the players have to traverse the world and stop the various evil pokemon attempting to abuse these mechanics. If anything that will be the first campaign I try running (when I actually have a story)
a future campaign: look up Anthem, the video game. the party are various versions of Ironman, kind of, but they're also influencers, with camera drones following them around, promoting sponsors while fighting an alien invasion.
Something that kinda flopped because I couldn't find a good way to balance it in some of the deeper route things relating to the system I was using, but still want to try it one day:
Pokemon Survival.
Okay here me out... I was going to try and get 3 to 6 players to take a Pokemon of their choice, add whatever extra personalities to their character, at first it would seem like they were just doing a perspective shift, them following a trainer around with them being the Pokemon. There's a build up to the inciting incident where the players realize their trainer, even for a 12 year old, isn't the brightest on the block. The trainer vanishes and the players are stuck trying to find them, having to go towns and through the wilderness using their abilities in unique ways to survive. And to add to the stakes, thought of adding my own bit of lore involving "Since your trainer still has your pokeballs, you can DIE, like DIE die." meaning there's no just healing at a pokecenter, they're at risk at all times.
Another idea I abandoned but this one because of the logistical nightmare is a two separate groups playing two different campaigns in the same game/world, one good one evil. Inspired a bit by "Orcs Must Die!" both would have an objective to protect something in their base and would need to build traps, hire/recruit/"Force volunteer"/summon/or build security, get staff to maintain it, so the party could go out on adventures to both make them stronger, figure out where the enemy base is located, and to prepare assaults by mustering forces in whatever ways they can find. And both parties would be effecting the world, so one group decided to kill the potion maker because of his bad prices? the other party might come back to see his corpse stuffed in a closet. Grandma Pastry is now missing from town? Well the evil overlords recruited her and is now making super cookies for the orc army.
And essentially both are competing to see who can destroy (insert whatever it'd be here), by sabotaging the other group's efforts in the world, leveling up faster, ect. and if they so wish, after a team wins they can have one final climatic battle, just to see who was truly the strongest.
Well, my upcoming one shot at a convention has this description: You just woke up. You don't know who you are. Good luck.
It's a Mutants & Masterminds game. Pregenerated characters.
There are twists that I'll come back and post after September.
my next campaign: 20 years ago, an order of paladins defeated a titan, who exploded, killing all of the paladins and cracking the fabric of reality. the shadow realm has been slowly creeping in. the days are dim, the nights are dangerous, and the only thing keeping away the shadows are the city lights. about 1/8 post apocalypse survival, 1/8 city-state intrigue, 1/4 rediscovering lost civilizations, and 1/2 standard D&D with guns campaign.
An anime campaign, as in Isekai is an occasional thing. The Demon King's army is advancing towards world domination, with or without the knowledge of the Demon King. The Heroes from Another World are summoned when the Eight Great Kingdoms are in dire straits. They can only summon the Heroes every 100 years, because the magic involved is resource intensive. Saving the world, regardless of the Demon King's involvement, is treated as a friendly competition. Whichever Heroes Party saves the world gets bragging rights. Also I want to make it so that murderhoboes get their comupances.
The Shadow War
- The conflict between the Material Plane and the Shadowfell stems from an ancient betrayal by a mortal who sought to harness the power of the Shadowfell's darkness for their own ends.
- The clandestine organization that recruits the players, known as the Twilight Vanguard, operates from hidden strongholds scattered throughout the Material Plane. Their ranks include elite warriors, skilled infiltrators, and powerful spellcasters dedicated to protecting their world from the encroaching darkness.
- As the players delve deeper into the Shadowfell, they uncover the machinations of powerful undead lords known as the Shadow Princes, who seek to spread their influence into the Material Plane and plunge both realms into eternal night.
- Alongside battling undead horrors and thwarting necromantic rituals, the players must navigate the treacherous politics of the Shadowfell, forging alliances with enigmatic entities such as the Raven Queen's emissaries and the spectral court of the Nightshade Conclave.
The first druid is starting to wake up, and it's throwing all the land into chaos. Weather is becoming more unpredictable, animals more aggressive, forests are growing wilder and more dangerous, volcanoes rumbling.
I've no idea if my party is going to stop them from waking, but they currently have no idea what's going on
The campaign is about an ancient Beast that will bring about the end of all things. It is broken up in two parts! Part one: The party sails to an unknown island to save a lost exploration group. The island is the prison that keeps the Beast asleep. For not even the Gods & Goddess could kill it! The party either rescues the exploration group and leaves. Or they stay and keep the Beast asleep.
The second part, part 1: If the party leaves without putting the creature asleep, the Beast raises, and all planes of reality shacks! The sky turns a deep red for all are doom. The party sets out to find the Tools used to put the Beast asleep the first time. All while the Cult of the End, tries to stop them! For all things must end and vanish.
Second part, part 2: The old party stayed trap on the island to keep the Beast asleep. But whispers of the shadows stirring on the mainland has people on edge. A new group of adventures set out, to stop a cult that wants to awaken something called the Beast? Can the new party stop the cult from gathering all artifacts that are needed. To help them in achieving thier goal?
I want to make a dual party campaign.
It’s a fantasy setting with modern elements. The setting is a continent overrun with paranormal creatures. One party would be a group of these creatures trying to advance in the society while the other is a team of paranormal investigators. The parties accidentally run into each other and it becomes a cat and mouse chase
I have a concept for a story that I'm having the hardest time figuring out how to actually implement.
Mainly the BBEG would be residing in the very collective unconscious that ties all beings together and is some eldritch abomination that is actively making EVERYONE in the multiverse more vile and cruel, while ever so slightly warping reality itself to suit its eldritch nature. This would be done by having it slip darker intrusive thoughts over several decades, slowly tipping people to become just pure evil incarnate.
The best twist would be that it's eventually revealed that the creature is currently residing in the very center of the planet, and is **IN FACT** the planet's core killing it would doom the planet but not dealing with it would cause it to escape and destroy the planet itself a'la MCU Celestials.
Thus the entire conundrum ... what do you do?
One character comes home after several months away, to discover the whole town thought he'd been murdered while away...
A stranger comes into town, and wakes to find an intricate medallion laying across his armor. When showing it to the inn's hosts, the not dead stable master, and the orphaned monk woman manager, she's had a dream of a similar scene to the one etched on the medallion (two trees, three men and a dragon), in her dream, one of the men was her brother.
A hobbit that came to town seeking learning, but finding the teacher he sought not there, but remained anyway...his magical powers struggle, and sometimes are over-powered.....
The medallion gets taken to the Monestary Library, into secret, deep passages into massive rooms of secret knowledge to find a map of not that world, another medallion placed, and room for two more after this one. Placing it causes several hours of world wide quakes....... The next morning, the quakes are forgotten by everyone on the world.......almost.......
Who is the failed assassin? Why were they after this stable master, and why was it important enough to kill someone else in his place? What did the medallion do on this map of an unknown world? Why did the world forget this event?
And what other little adventures will take place along the way? poisoned water? ritual sacrifices? imprisonment? airships? Academy graduation gone wrong? Will they find the assassin? How will they escape delivering him to prison??? And why did a skyisland explode?
Last time, is not what happened last time....on AUAK Chronicals...
I have an idea that I would love to run someday, inspired by an amazing Bluff check made by one of the players in a Curse of the Crimson Throne game I was running years ago.
The game would largely involve dungeon crawls...
But not because the players are _adventurers._ No, they are Official Dungeon Inspectors, there to ensure that everything is up to code and being operated in accordance with the guidelines and regulations put into place by D.O.S.H.A. ("Dungeon O.S.H.A." - I want to give the organization a more unique name and acronym at some point but I've yet to come up with one). They would come in and interview the dungeon's denizens, inspect traps and important parts of the architecture, verify that any necessary permits and licenses are valid and up-to-date... and confront the dungeon's boss over any issues that they come across, even if it means beating the guy's ass to make him comply.
After all, workplace safety is important, even for evil lairs!
My party started out at an inn to watch an extremely rare Faerie dragon migration
A couple of hatchling silver dragons decided to come out and watch, and promptly got kidnapped by a necromancer employed by a dragon lich
The hatchlings' grandfather employed tge party of adventurers to get his grandkids back
In the process, they cleaned out some merrows in the Brum Sea (in my original map) released a Sphynx from her time prison in a silver tower, made friends with a herd of belligerent centaurs, and discovered the necromancer had actually resurrected the Silver dragon's brother, trapping him in a soul gem, and planning to use the hatchlings' life forces to make his enslavement permanent
They got the dragon's soul out along with the hatchlings, but they weren't sure if the necromancer, who turned out to be a were bear, actually died
PANR has tuned in.
Idea I have been playing around with in my head:
In the ancient past the gods made the world and everything in it, the mountains, the seas, the gnomes and the giants. The gods took favor of the Giants who would build great and giant monuments to honor them. So to reward them, they weaved creation to make beast of burden to ease their more trivial labors, so that they could focus more passion to honoring the gods.
Over the centuries the giants came to realize these "Hoomans" were not mere beast of burden, but fully sentient beings like them. Outraged by such an act of evil on the part of the gods, they destroyed their monuments, made a staircase to heaven, and cast down the gods; not to replace them, but to humble them.
In the millennia since he gods have learned from their mistakes, and with their reduced power have come to care for all their creations equally... Well most of them. There are those in the shadows that still plot their return, and revenge on everything they thought wronged them.
My original campaign idea: my players are just going about their lives as adventurers, (the party consisted of a paladin, a rogue, and Jesus Christ. Look it was my first campaign and it wasn't serious anyway, ok?) when they are suddenly assaulted by a man they have never seen, who holds a massive grudge.
Turns out, in an alternate universe, the party accidentally destroyed the world, and so the BBEG, who goes by the name of... SCHLONG OF HOUSE WANG FROM THE CITY OF DONG, WITHIN THE GREAT NATION OF PHALLUS, LOCATED BETWEEN THE TESTE MOUNTAINS ON THE CONTINENT OF COCKLAND, has been hunting down every version of the party throughout the multiverse.
They were being assisted by the brother of the BBEG, who was a cleric trying to stop his brother's murderous rampage.
Oh also they had a pet Dragon. And the dragon breathed hot sauce. This came from a joke that Draconic was just Spanish, and it escalated to be that dragons in the setting were all Mexican.
I'm in the middle of running a musical campaign full of a bunch of music references and the party trying to reverse a contract with Satan himself to return music to the land.
Tried DMing, sucked at it, but I am very capable in help make worlds and plothooks. I may have started with 5e, but I just love the lore and have read a lot of it.
My most independantly made was having players being involved in some planar accident and transferred to a Plane of Dread ruled by Mind Flayers. Intelligent humanoids are extinct there and local Mind Flayers have resulted to eating and infecting brains of non intelligent beings, with some success. There is a cast of Nobility Mind Flayer Bards, for they learn and pass down Awaken for turning dumb animals into intelligent beings, that can be fed to larva. The world is dark and cold and the players are seen as delicacies. Also Neothelids run rampant. The goal is to survive and go home. This would be accomplished either by freeing the trapped evil gods, or by seeking out old Mind Flayer corpses and raiding ruins.
There are also a few tyrannical rulers of the plane, those being Lich Flayers and 1 Lich-MindFlayer-Dragon, the most horrific homebrew creature I could think off. In a Plane of Dread, souls are not reneved, so soul eating is an extremely big problem for both the Liches and normal Mind Flayers. In this campaign. Players can team up with the Liches, a reasonable faction of Mind Flayers or act independantly.
My idea probably isn't original, but I was planning on having my party find a fallen angel and help them stop a potential holy war between demons and angles by closing portals to bothr the holy and demonic realms
Shin megami tensei V. Use your Imagination.
2 min after vid posted, bam
Early