Campaign Ideas

Campaign Ideas

(א) >Humanity gets to space
>finds aliens
>Learn that the galaxies golden age is long gone
>Milky way is full of nothing but rotting husks of empires ruled by despots and disparate savages who have lost their homes
>Humanity reaches it's pinnacle only to learn they got thrust into shit

>Humanity discovers FTL travel
>Healthy diet of Star Trek and other sci-fi makes them expect space utopia
>Reality is 40k meets Mad Max

(0.75) Capitalist American soldiers have to clear those damn Commies off the moon
(0.9) The players are legionnaires a Roman century who have been station in Albion, towards the end of the Roman empire (4th or 5th century AD).  They're present to fend off the Celtic and Scottish barbarians and the like, but instead, find themselves drawn into mystic Celtic druidism.  Would draw heavily from English folklore.
(1) Wall Quest
(2) Lichputer Complex
(3) Bag World
(4) I'd like to play a game about fleeing a dying earth, exploring the cosmos, dealing with life on the ship and managing supplies, eventually finding a planet and setting a planet and starting over from scratch to build a civilization. But I don't want it to be me playing an individual, but like the whole ship at once and everyone on it.
Dwarf Fortress:  Space Edition
(5) Unhinged Soviet Space Romp
(8) Collects artifacts, race against BBEG collecting artifacts.  Race brings you through the Industrial era and up to a space race to get the final one on the moon.
(10) CoC set on the Titanic. Cultist are trying to hit the iceberg, which is actually a sleeping Old One or a seal on an Old One's prison or something.
(11) Shadowrun (4) campaign where the characters are created with 300pts. I'm tired of characters with shitload stuff/skills and want to run stories of Wall-Mart employees robbing banks, angry old timers dealing with gang members and hobo shamans protecting their neighborhood from paranormal activity.
But my players like having all their guns and drones and things.
(13)     >D&D or something.
    >Players roll up two characters apiece.
    >Game kicks off right before the party fails to prevent a magical time warping catastrophe.
    >We then jump into the past, where a DIFFERENT party has to try and alter time to give the future party an advantage.
    >Constantly jump back and forth between two time streams.
    >And fuck it, throw in some extradimensional time beasts.

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(15) DIESELPUNK
The thing with dieselpunk is that it has a broader type of story you can run.

Want to run a game about desperate soldiers in a trench caught between monstrosities stitched together from the corpses of their former comrades and automaton killing machines that no neither mercy nor remorse? Dieselpunk.

Want to play as bootleggers on the run from the voodoo mafia of New Orleans? Dieselpunk.

Want to have a motley crew of ragtag adventurers stop the Iron Kaiser and Mechano von Bismark from unleashing their Blitzzeppelin fleet upon an unsuspecting Europe? Dieselpunk.

Chinese communists unleashing undead sorcerers to destroy Shanghai? Dieselpunk.

Save Professor Futurium's robot from the sledgehammers of the Luddite Brigade? Dieselpunk.

Vampires preying on Okies migrating during the Dustbowl? Dieselpunk.

A crack team of Marine Raiders infiltrating a Japanese floating fortress in an attempt to sink it before it's raygun artillery spells doom for the Pacific Fleet? Dieselpunk.

Most anything from WWI to the fifties fits in Dieselpunk, even space travel.

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(15) ANATOMY QUEST
>All the sperm cells have to rush though a barren wasteland out to kill them for the chance to break into the egg.
I SMELL A CAMPAIGN IDEA
SPERM QUEST
Nah, you're a spermatozoa.
In fact, you're all spermatozoa, each looking like the father-to-be, but with slight variations. One's a bit shorter, another's got shaggier hair, one's got green eyes instead of blue.
You also each have a laser-rifle that is used for both self-defense and breaking into the "eggshell".
>Nah, you're a spermatozoa.

That's the first campaign.

The follow-up has you playing the woman's cells as they try to supply the developing child with food and protection. The placenta would obviously be an eternal conflict between the mother's toxins/diseases and the placental defenses.

In the grim darkness of the 2nd Trimester, there is only war.
Every day of combat, the Ob-Gyn rolls 1d100 and consults a table. If he rolls a 100, the mother consumes something toxic, and they must roll again and consult another table to determine what toxin, and how much of it.
If the mother does consume a toxin, all players take a penalty, and a new enemy-type is added.
>Not making that into a quest where the players must race against time from the familiar sights of the placenta, through the crowded and increasingly poisonous wastes of the cardiovascular system, until they eventually reach the Eldritch Abominations of the nervous system to shut off the serotonin pumps that are urging her to continue drinking.
The cells will worship the OBGYN god and pray for a divine intervention in the form of a) telling the woman to stop drinking b) early delivery
>Eldritch nerve cells
>They look like multi-limbed, hooded angels that crackle and pulse with energy.
>Their minds are indecipherable, their methods of communication unknown.
>Their massive forms are constantly tended to by vast swarms of cherubic glial cells.

>Getting chased by a swarm of bacteria
>Player takes out a Wondrous Item
>It's an Antibody Gun
>The lumbering form of a Neutrophil comes into view and engages in battle.

>Party encounters a parasite
>It's as big as a mountain
>We're gonna need a bigger gun
>Calls in an Eosinophil
>It's a Kaiju/Jaeger grade battle as you try to get out of the way

>Makes a wrong turn in the artery highway.
>"We're going to enter the spleen."
>Obgyn preserve us.

>Lymph system is a military highway. Very fast, very dangerous and completely restricted to your kind.
So I'm watching this documentary, and a couple things jumped out at me.
>Y-sperm are physically stronger
>X-sperm live longer
Just like regular humans.
>Egg cells are special, and live in a special space made just for their special selves so they can be safe
>sperm cells are meat for the meat grinder, no one really cares that all but one suffers a gruesome fate
Just like regular humans.
>>27482508
>military lymph highway
ALL NODES LEAD TO HOME
>>27482526
Oh, I wish.
No, you're doing this thing >>27482295 except one of you has been corrupted by a virus.
Though I can't figure out what would be better: cancer zombie apocalpyse, or auto-immune-virus-induced civil war.
>You consumed civilians?!
>T-they were foreign cells, sir! We were on lockdown, nobody in or out!
Oh my god.

The BBEG is a cell that couldn't let go, and in the depths of his/her madness seeks to build something he/she never could alone, culminating in a crude mockery of the original that festers and spreads to other parts of the body.

Cancer is raw corruption in the flesh.
I've been thinking about that. You could go at least three ways with this
>no name changes
Move along, Sperm.
>thinly-veiled name changes
Move along, White-clad.
>overt name changes
Move along, fodder.

I'm not sure I'd want to trick my players like that. I'd rather just let them know what's what so they can have fun with it.
Radiation would be orbital bombardment (or nukes, but the whole "shaft of raw light from the heavens" seems a bit more relevant.)
Yep. Once you get into his sanctum, there are no more defensive forces around. Just occasional radiation from the sky that harms you. It happens everyday at the same time, except on Saturday and Sundays. Then comes the big death squads killing everything on its way. The chemo is here.


(17)
But holy shit. How about a D&D campaign where all the characters are like Don Quixote?

>The "sorceress" who throws clods of black pepper and homemade stink bombs at people, and sacrifices chickens to spirits she's made up herself
>The "barbarian" manchild who can't keep his shirt on, and is convinced he is the strongest man in the realm
>The "thief" who can't pick an apple off a cart without being dragged into the stockade

They hear about the BBEG messing things up, and just decide that they are the heroes the world needs.

Or the BBEG is just an unpleasant city magistrate who wants to shut down their favorite tavern?

There could be laughs, feels--even tragedy.
>tfw suddenly someone actually dies from their hijinks
>tfw the BBEG no longer thinks of them as cute and harmless, and decides to torture one of them as a warning


(18)
I guess what I'm getting at is that you should imagine the antithesis of a standard RPG, With advancement and plot points and villains, and replace it with an entire universe at the tipping point of succumbing to entropy. Give the players blatantly overpowered characters, and fill the worlds with pitiful mooks. But instead of killing a million minions and leveling up, every wound, every spell cast, every bout of exhaustion or night without rest, they all carry the risk of permanently decreasing the character's abilities just a little bit, and each time they fail to overcome, it brings the characters a little bit closer to death.

Suddenly, rather than figuring out how to become more powerful and dangerous, the players have to think their way carefully through every encounter, putting themselves as far from harm's way as possible. When a world is dying, what change for the better can they hope to make? To what end are their grand schemes, when soon, all will perish?

(19)
>use nwod as it has easier mortal,rules. books like second sight and the hunter book witchfinders are what you want to make the magic
>I always say "use CofD", but there's literally a nWoD 1e SAS module about being a bunch of people living in the same building that then goes tits up with occultism zombies or something like that.
Wish I knew the name of it.
>Go oWoD and use the Sorcerer's Revised book for ideas (you'll still need a copy of Mage Revised corebook on hand)

"You come from all--or, rather, most--walks of life.  Different reasons brought you hear today.  You have different jobs, different interests, different daily troubles.  But there's one thing you have in common: you're all neighbors in the same shitty apartment complex.  And you've been given a 6-month eviction notice because the complex is going to be leveled to make room for a high-class hotel in the slow but inexorable process of gentrification of your neighborhood.  Then, one day, you wake up and something's different."

Different starter maluses (in exchange for benefits)
-Dead End Job:  lower money, depression, but nets you more skills?
-Single Parent:  lower money, higher stress, but nets your resistance to insanity?
-Pet: lower money, lower stress
-Obese: lower physical, some other bonuses
-various neuroses and psychoses

One of them knows a secret way to the roof.
One of them knows a secret garden in the city.

Player 1:
Pick someone you *are friends with.*
Pick someone you *chat with in the halls occasionally.*
Pick someone you *think is up to no good.*

Player 2:
Pick someone you *have a secret crush on.*
Pick someone you *drinks beers with occasionally.*
Pick someone you *want nothing to do with.*

Player 3:
Pick someone you *desperately want to be friends with.*
Pick someone you *think is a bit standoffish.*
Pick someone you *had a fun time with recently.*

Player 4:
Pick someone you *are friends with.*
Pick someone you *think is up to no good.*
Pick someone you *think is stunningly attractive.*

Player 5:
Pick someone who *is a family member.*
Pick someone you *think is a good person.*
Pick someone you *have a secret crush on.*