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5. The Monarch's Forest: What if the thing causing everything is an Archfey who's decided that he likes this particular forest and is going to claim it for his realm in the Feywild.
You ever watch Annihilation? Same kind of concept but instead of protecting the forest, the group is investigating it. Could be fey or even eldritch horrors. Probably going to use this a story arc for homebrew campaign.
Tiny descriptions: 1. Where'd they go? 2. Re-Posession. 3. Feed the Machine. 4. Gov. Ops. 5. Special Land. 6. Titan Tales. 7. Praise the Sun. 8. Little Shop of Potential. 9. Post- apocalyptic story of the week. 10. Return to monkey or else. 11. Who dun it? Variation.
A friend of mine ran a variation of "what if the bad guys won?" as a goofy Halloween One-shot. The PC's all woke up as fully sentient undead. We still had our items and skills from our previous lives, along with character classes, except we had to choose an undead race and had no memories of how or why we died. The land we woke up in was entirely occupied by undead that continued to live as they did in life. People still went to work and continued to have regular lives, they just couldn't die. Like Dark Souls, but more wholesome!
This makes me think of the Ring Wraiths in LOTR. They had no memory of their former lives, but perhaps the characters are able to gain snippets or flashbacks upon leveling their characters? Hmmm 🤔, makes you think!
Reminds me of Awaken online it’s a book series where the main guy is a necromancer and thats one of the first things he does Though if anyone wants to read it I will say it’s not so much fantasy as sci-fi because it’s just a hyperrealistic vr game not real magic
@@discord4039 Precisely! People continued to live their lives in undeath. Towns folk continued to live their lives and practice their trades. Undead parents continued to take care of their undead children that never aged. Similar as the world before, but undeath as simply a part of the natural order.
I like the idea of running that with a poison mist that brings the dead back as zombies. Just perfect for a grimdark fantasy setting. It'd be hard to go wrong. You've got a strong call to action, easy source of encounters, a home base, and all three pillars (exploration, combat, role playing). Never explain the cause of the fog; or at the very least don't give it a permanent solution. The "happy ending" they eventually strive for might be retrieving a powerful artifact that can be burned to keep their pocket of civilization protected for a thousand years.
@@Wolltazar the games called frost punk - that’s the whole concept of the gameplay too. An engine keeping the last vestiges of humans alive and how you struggle with moral decisions as resources necessitate like having to send a child to their death to fit into the small engine to fix it
ooo i like the idea of "the project" leading to the "abyss is gone" scenarios. Maybe the party gets tricked by Asmodeus or one of his right hand men into helping the devils win the blood war and the high level party has to deal with all that which they caused. That'd definitely be the plot of my upcoming campaign
Asmodeus never would want the blood war to end. He probably could end it if he wanted to. But its not in his best interest, he needs the other gods to think hes occupied. I mean, you can do what xou want, who cares. But generally speaking, this is the status quo.
These are all amazing ideas! For idea 10, I have to borrow this from Pointy Hat: a druid who became a lich and wants vengeance against all civilization.
With the Monarch's Forest: I know my group. They would burn it down. Not even as a LAST resort either. Something weird happening in the forest? Fire is an option? FWOOM! Watch it burn!
A rainforest could make that very difficult. Alternatively, I had an idea where the party are all effectively Death Row inmates, they're given a chance to go free if they take the job of Forest Rangers in the Monarch's Forest and willingly succumb to a geas or the like. This would result in a stay of execution so long as they perform their job of PROTECTING the forest. I.E. Burning it down is not an option, and whatever arguments they might make that it should be, fall on deaf ears.
Yup. Totally stealing the idea for the "play AS the magic items". Gonna do a "Altered Carbon" meets "Lord of the Rings" feel. Thanks for the jumping point!
An idea I had re: "The Demons have gone Missing": 1. Disappearance of the Abyss: The Abyss is a chaotic and ever-changing plane, but a powerful entity known as the Voidweaver has emerged. This ancient being has the ability to manipulate the very fabric of the Abyss, causing portions of it to collapse into voids. The demons, realizing the threat, have fled to other planes or hidden in remote corners of the Abyss to escape the Voidweaver's influence. 2. Consequences on the Material Plane: With the Abyss destabilized, the planar barriers weaken, allowing the devils from the Nine Hells to spill into the Material Plane. The sudden influx of devilish forces disrupts the balance, causing widespread chaos, political instability, and increased demonic cult activity. The devils exploit the situation, vying for control and power in the absence of their demonic rivals. 3. Dragons' Dilemma: Chromatic dragons, tempted by the promise of power and freedom for Tiamat, ally with the devils, seeking to break her out of Avernus. Metallic dragons, loyal to Bahamut, join forces with the celestial beings to prevent the spread of devilish influence. This creates a complex conflict where dragonkind is divided, adding to the chaos and turmoil on the Material Plane. 4. Investigation by the Party: The party learns of an ancient prophecy that foretells the rise of the Voidweaver and its ability to manipulate the Abyss. To uncover the truth, they must seek out the scattered remnants of demonkind, surviving in hidden pockets across the multiverse. Along the way, they encounter displaced demons, cults worshipping the Voidweaver, and Celestial beings trying to maintain order. The party must navigate the shifting alliances and power struggles while piecing together the mystery behind the Abyss' disappearance. *The Voidweaver:* - Identity: The Voidweaver is an ancient Lovecraftian entity - a Cryptid, essentially. An Eldritch Horror that predates the current order of the multiverse. Its true form is nebulous and ever-changing, with tendrils of void energy that warp and twist reality around it. It can assume almost any form it deems necessary. - Motive: The Voidweaver emerged from the primal chaos that predates the formation of the planes. Its motives are rooted in the desire to restore that chaos, considering the structured order of the Abyss as an abomination. The Abyss is merely its first target. The Hells are also very heirarchical and structured. Indeed, most of the Archdukes of Hell are obsessed with Order. It's possible that Asmodeus has recognised the threat of the Voidweaver and has ordered the Hells to go forth, find the cause and put a stop to it. Asmodeus might think the Hells are the Voidweaver's next target. The problem is, the Celestials see this as the Hells invading the Material Plane and seek to stop them, creating chaos. The Dragons, too, get wrapped up in all this. Ironically this makes the Material plane so steeped in chaos even without the direct involvement of the Voidweaver that it might well leave the Material Plane for last!
I love the never setting sun idea. I'm going to steal it and put it in my game. My game is a Fallout AU on the west coast, which revolves around a war between the NCR, Enclave, BoS, and Mr House. The PC's go around and are put into the conflict. Once the war for New Vegas is settled, the sun starts moving 1 degree per day. Once the sun hits the horizon, an army of kaiju attack the west coast, and its up to the players to recruit forces to fight the kaiju
My campaign is Blank Slates, inspired by Dark Urge of BG3. All players start out with no memories of who they are, not even their names and level 1, with no background, but get 2 skills, 2 other proficiencies instead. They were found floating in water and saved. Who are they and why do they not remember? In my own game, they were some of the worst souls condemned to the Nine Hells, the Abyss and Pandemonium, and ended up escaping, assisted by an imprisoned god, promising them new and eternal life. They collected what was needed to free the god, but the pursuers became more relentless and in an epic clash above Styx, most ending up falling in the water. And the last conjured a portal when falling, but still ended up as a blank slate.
Another idea is to try and put a twist on classic fairytales everyone is familiar with. Something like the sword in the stone, but King Arthur becomes a tyrant that you must fight can make a very fun campaign.
I had a fresh homebrew world that I made sometime ago and the name I gave it was "The Krakening". The idea being that a group of explorers was plumbing the depths of an ocean and came across the long forgotten prison of the Kraken and unwittingly released it. The world was flooded and the result was a survival based game with the ever looming threat of sea creatures and doom! Tritons were prevalent and druid enclaves were some of things I liked and leaned on.
Love the idea but if you want to take it a step further you could use the concept of Leviathan instead of the Kraken. That would be easier to justify extreme, world-altering consequences
Here is a idea, slightly inspired by Persona 3. The characters live in a low-fantasy world, no/litte magic or monsters, and instead the big threat is a looming war between nations. Lets say for added drama that the land the PCs live in is a small republic between the opposing powers. Now, one night the characters share a dream, and in this dream magic exists, monsters exist, etc. Its the High Fantasy part. Make it a megadungeon if you want to, but in short the dream is a reflection of reality, that influences reality. In their home town there is a greedy butcher or merchant that takes the opportunity of looming war to raise the prices and suck the small community dry, before planning to run away from the conflict area. In the Dream world the butcher is the first boss so to say, a Demon of Greed. The players defeat the demon, and when they wake up, the merchant have changed his/her mind, returns the overpriced money and starts supporting the community to wether the conflict. This is just a illustrative example of course, but the idea remains the same. Changes done in the Dream World affects the Real world. This also brings up interesting questions of Why this is the case, what can be done, and possibly Who is behind it and Why. From Sweden with Love - Kami P.S A follow-up idea on the first one. Set a time limit of how long the characters dream. As in a physical timer. If you play 3h sessions, set aside 1 hour or so as "dreamtime". When the time runs out, the characters wakes up.
@@meijinx9673 mechanicly, yea. Though i was more going for the dark mysterious atmoshere with the refference of 3. My bad for not making that clear. From Sweden with Love - Kami
I'm starting off my first TTRPG in a Crusader themed world where the party is a scouting party that the the Crusader armies General hand selected to crave out paths for them to survive. They have to make smart decisions because if they don't people are going to get hurt. And the main city that they are going to defend and push back against the Horde is right there. So i'm really excited. Wsh I could pay for the coaching right now but hopefully one day.
That second campaign reminds me of something from star trek. There's a race of aliens called the trill, where a select number of their species is selected to essentially fuse with these slug alien creatures that maintain all the memories of their previous hosts. It's a symbiotic thing, making the host more intelligent and giving the slug the oppurtunity to explore the world. So having the characters play an item that combines some base personality with the personality of a new character and make it part of the world somehow would be a cool way to give those indecisive players a way to try everything out, awesome idea!
1. Campaign would be even funnier if it were the devils that went missing and suddenly everyone would feel the burden of carrying the Blood War against demons to save all of existance.
I used campaign 8 setting, its literally the jrgp "Recetear", the mc inherits a magic shop indebted and you have to earn money to pay it off while adventuring, hiring adventurers to scort you, craft items and unlocking their backgrounds and quests. Awesome wholesome game.
I run a D&D club for kids in a juvenile detention center and I was just worrying that I had no idea what new campaign to run for them; you solved my problem and I can't thank you enough!
Campaign 7: for more information about how you could adapt a similar world, look at Lorwyn/Shadowmoor. My suggestion is Lorwyn until lvl 6-7 then flip to Shadowmoor for the second half. This will allow time for the players to have fun in a generally idyllic world with the plethora of weaker monsters (ogres, goblinoids, etc) then you can flip into the more grim monsters at perfect time where the lower CR monsters can reasonably be thrown at a party in mass (a party of 4 lvl 7-8 would be easily pressed by two waves of 10-14 (send a second wave when half of the first wave has been killed / turned)) or you can send higher CR creatures w/out fear of overpowering the party (A Vampire is a solid threat to a CR 9 party, especially if they have been playing the characters since lvl 3.)
Elves also were former antagonists in lorwyn become one of the last rays of hope in Shadowmoor. each race has some sort of contingency to keep a repertoire of memory or ability intact so the fae queen doesn't have full control of the world. giants had their sleep or rosheens scroll, colfener had the sapling, the elemental fire folk had their savior.
One campaign idea I had years back was that the untamed use of magic all but destroyed the world and over ran it with horrible twisted creatures of mad creations. The survivors fled through portals to the planet’s hostile moon. But now, 100’s of years later, the magics that protect the people are starting to fade so the survivors have to use the portals to return to the planet for various missions. What will they discover there? There was a serious that came out not long ago with a modern twist on this called The 100.
My table actually does campaign 8 as cool down one shots for beloved characters that we completed the main campaign ark at lvl 17…. So these characters have become legends but live very quiet lives until something creeps up that needs their attention. It’s RP heavy and they sometimes interact with our current PCs if they travel to the small town in a secluded valley they have made their home.
Here's the sad and kinda ... hilarious thing. That's BASICALLY the setting in Pathfinder. Seriously there exists entire semi-divine monsters called the Spawn of Rovagug, you actually know one...... The Tarrasque. YES in Pathfinder lore the Tarrasque is the son of THE BIGGEST monster in the lore thus far and has siblings............... Then there are the ACTUAL fucking Kaiju monsters ... seriously it's a thing. Then the Tanes which ...... if you ever have to fight one, you SERIOUSLY pissed off the equivalent of an Archfey. The Behemoths were made as divine beasts of burden by the gods when they made the fey world (which in this setting is the rough draft of ACTUAL 'earth') The Elder Mythos - read LOVECRAFT and YES cthulhu has a stat block. ALIENS with future tech... because SERIOUSLY
Yeah, Golarion is basically what happens if the heroes managed to contain the giant Kaijuu monsters onslaught until a very tenuous stalemate is reached
Going to try out #3 with some friends, tomorrow is session 0. A few adjustments I made were that there isn't just one engine but hundreds across the world meaning that there is a lot of competition for resources and magical items. Also external politics are just as important as internal, depending on who my players encounter while scouting and how they deal with them, they can end up making enemies and allies of other settlements. Lastly the engine itself is gonna be upgradable, in the begining it's gonna be just enough to keep people warm but down the line they can make it hot enough to grow basically whatever they want and with an overbundance of food their village's population will boom. This idea was really cool, I have high hopes for this going well.
I am making a vampire campaign for a couple years now, seeing this and I realize I've intentionally made a combination of the monarchs forest and the never setting sun. But you sir did give me ideas for forest encounters 😈
The last one is kinda like the campaign I am running now. I should check out the coaching to see if I could get a slot that fits my schedule, but its a mystery campaign where the players were jojo eyes above heaven style completely reset into a parallel world's past. They have no memories of what they even are, and are trying to find out their past to uncover the truth of the villian, the heros before them, and who they were. Its been a slow start, but slowly picking up speed.
A twist on Campaign 6 based on one of my favorite shows. Yes, there are kaiju, but the player characters are visited by an otherworldly race of Celestial beings who are _just as tall as the Kaiju_ and they need hosts. The characters are given devices to summon the 'Ultras' (you can guess where I got the idea from) and when used not only can they become them, but they can also channel their own capabilities and skills through them. Imagine Yuma as a cleric and he can use _cure wounds_ through Ultraman Arc.
Campaing 1, 3, 4 and 7 seem like the most fun to me. All of them could be more standard but I like them for their potential to be a good hardcore campaign. Well except for 4, that one is probably going to be a more RP heavy one. But I personally love the idea of hunkering down and surviving apocalyptic or dangerous scenarios in games. 1 could be a more standard nomadic adventurer sort of setting where we have to go from city to city to deal with this hellish invasion 3 could be a more survival based setting where being properly prepared and actively HAVING to take survival based decisions sounds awesome. Like I imagine there would be moment where one of the usefull magic items from a PC would need to be used for the forge or maybe even a more meta decisions where players have to take active survival feats instead of a combat based one. 4 is a RP heavy mystery setting where the main point of intrigue is the weird experiment we are helping achive. 7 would be a monster/vampire hunter setting that would probably resemble attack on titan where we would have to leave the safety of sunlight to hunt dangerous beasts or solve why this is happening. You could also make is a time limit similar to 3 where maybe the Sun is slowly dying do too whatever magic is keeping it in place or a vampire is trying to cause it to go out so they can feast on the people on the day side.
I do enjoy idea number 8 and going to try to create a campaign from it as a first-time dungeon master. I am going to tinker with it by having some of the items stolen by the shop used to summon an ancient evil. For example, a jewel, yes a basic item, being a key to summon an undead legion. Also, another idea I can throw in is some of the items stolen the players learn about the negative consequences of the wrong hands and need to get them back. Still need to plan more and if anyone has ideas, let me know.
I actually tried a One-Shot with a similar theme to Campaign 10 a while ago, and it was a lot of fun! It was a low-level adventure, but it turns out that a level 4 moon druid makes a pretty epic aquatic-themed bossfight, especially if they have magic items that can make them fly. 10/10 recommend this sort of adventure to anyone looking for a unique premise and villain for their campaign or one-shot, especially if you like situations where the villain might go unnoticed for a while due to their control over nature/access to wildshape.
I will actually use the idea of the sun that never sets for an arc in my campaign. The reason will be that the loved one of a powerful wizard is deadly ill and is set to pass away when the sun sets in the horizon
This is an excellent video which provides such strong and well-structured foundations for people to grow their campaigns from. You are the life giving acorn to so many oak trees.
an idea that came in my mind during this, a delivery service (magic delivery service) but essentially the party would constantly be traveling through a train system.
I was looking around for some inspiration for a Starfinder campaign I'm booting up for some friends, and some of these really hit the bill. The Monarch's Forest, The Project, The Endless Winter (Engine), The Never Setting Sun, and Druid's Wrath specifically struck a chord with me. When hearing your details about the Monarch's Forest, my mind immediately went to the Outer Gods dilemma of Starfinder (Lovecraft). Specifically Shub-Niggurath and her thousand young. The "Monarch" could be a secret cult leader for the Black Goat or the Woods. The Project campaign idea made me think of an organization wanting to unlock the inner secrets of the universe and seeking a bridge to Yog-Sothoth or possibly even Azathoth. I don't want to make the overarching story of my full campaign to be overrun by Lovecraftian horror, but those would be some incredible "detours" from the typical encounters and stories the players would likely find themselves in.
im currently working on a monster hunter inspired campaign where the group investigates why stronger and more dangerous monsters are appearing and they have to find out why
Excellent stuff! Current campaign has 3 intertwined questlines leading to Dante's Inferno as capstone adventure but some of these starting points are perfect add-ins! Love the shopkeeper ideas
Running the campaign 4 idea. My players are helping a shadowy organization that is trying to suppress evil across the land and decided to employ well known adventurers. They are tasked with collecting items used by cults and monsters, and payed once they relinquish those items at the end of their mission. But what if the organization is actually using those items for something dark. Maybe a former fighter of good, cursed with knowledge of a fallen god, made to battle evil his/her entire life has had enough. Maybe through their travels they managed to collect some forbidden knowledge about the very essence of divinity, and, maybe, a clever way to hijack it. Fun stuff, like your ideas mate
And NOW YOU WANT TO TAKE MY BLOOD MOTHRA IDEA TOO?!?!?!? I literally had an idea for a far realms MOTHRA/last of us zombie plague where re-skinned rot grubs had to hatch out of fungus trees grown from the infected in order to mature in a sick symbiotic relationship. What if you weren't infected and a worm got you? Here, have a warlock level and remember to make a increasingly difficult int save before bed each week or secretly get taken over and become part of the Queens Army...very erks of animorphs esk.
I actually once played a campaign very similar to #7, with even the same motivation for the never-ending day, plus some more sinister stuff, like an ever-regenerating titanrat i temporarily killed by shoving a grenade down its mouth. It's very fun, and I highly suggest it
About a year ago my family wanted to run a casual DnD campaign but couldn't come up with a plot, so I thought of something akine to your 10th idea and expanded on it when I got to boot camp The party starts off dead, their spirits taking in by a new up and coming goddes, she's claimed your souls in varies ways, grabbed them apone your death, toke them from the afterlife, made a death with another god who had claimed your soul. She has done this to make you her vassals, to walk the earth and spread her name so that she can gain renown and because a full deity. Here's a neat little twist, the party doesn't remember how they died and must either learn and gain memories from working with the goddess who sends the party in multiple missions around the world. Another neat thing to keep the campaign light hearted is the PCs are immortal, when ever they die they'll be sent back to the goddess's realm, which also works like a hub for them, and they'll basically have to wait to respawn which they'll return to their body and it will fully heal I ran about 3 sessions in boot camp to test this idea and, they seemed to enjoy it just had very different veiwa
Got two ideas that people are free to use. The first one is called "The Missing" Imagine a small town or city where just one day the children start disappearing right out of their beds at night. By the time your characters make it to said town there aren't a lot of them left and those that are are guarded 24/7. Where are the kids going and how? Who's doing it? How can you stop it? Up to you. This one can go in so many different ways depending on the GM. The second one is called "Underground" Where a dwarven house or people have found what looks like an ancient map to a long lost city of their people. Time to go and reclaim it but the first two expedition went down and were never heard from again. Now hurt for man power they turn to adventurers for help. What happened to the two expeditions? Are there any survivors? Why was the lost city lost? What's waiting there for you? Got this idea loosely from The Hobbit and I feel it can be worked in different ways.
One from me: A millennia ago a great Archmage gathered groups of every humanoid race (including Orcs, Goblins, Kobolds, Lizardfolk, and their allies) and brought them to an isolated land (a mountain ringed land the size of Europe) to flee a great disaster coming to the world. He warded the land just before a chaotic storm of planar energies and creatures (including Far Realm) raged across the world. Now, the storms have finally faded, and the Empire of allied kingdoms within the land are ready to go out and explore/retake the altered continent, and explore beyond the continent as well with the magi-steampunk tech they developed in their isolation.
This is why I buy and read many different game systems. Converting a scenario from one system to another provides many more options, and options players have not read. The key to conversion is concepts over numbers. Ask what effect is happening or what level of difficulty is being represented, and convert these concepts rather than trying to directly convert mechanics.
Some very cool ideas. They're probably better for your more experienced and very creative DM's though. People looking for ideas might want something smaller and simpler so they get into the flow of it before going all apocalyptic. But very cool ideas.
Here's mine - it's middle earth themed. You are brought together at the inn of the prancing pony by none other that Gandalf himself. He's putting together a dream team to take down a dragon.. a dragon named Smaug. The backdrop of the story revolves around Thorin's company failing to kill Smaug and the fallout around that. The PCs are effectively plan B and must adventure across middle earth to slay the dragon. The catch is.. the PCs will eventually realize they aren't actually the plan B team but the back up team to the main team.. a C team perhaps. Can add another layer if you want to make it extra nutty (D team) but either way should create hijinks around the party competing with other fellowships on this quest and interacting with Gandalf and other well known figures from the lore. Tolkien is probably rolling over in his grave as I write this but what can you do.
ACTUALLY, I like this a lot (unironically too, i might add). Hey if Escape from Bloodkeep can be a Tolkien Parody, I don't see why other parts of his canon stories can't. THORIN & Gandalf have probably changed their name to Fhorpin and Pandalf, as they're getting bad reputation amongst adventuring parties that accepting is a one-way ticket to certain death. Maybe some mini-encounters along the way allows the PCs to decipher how teams A B and C failed and therefore can improve on strategies. Maybe Smaug has even retired from hoarding Oakenshield's treasure.
One of my favorite RPGs, that I always have a lot of fun playing, is the Italian game "Anime e Sangue" (souls and blood, basically) and it's entirely based on the idea of players being eternal-ish spirits trapped in a weapon. They possess the body of those who wield their weapon, consuming their souls, and journey through the multiverse, usually looking for a way to free themselves from the chains of the powerful entity that locked them into the item.
Idea for number 8 The murder hobos who potentially rob the shop at the beginning are actually the groups characters from a previous campaign. They don't even have to be murderous they could be drunk, stumbling home one night and causing mischief.
A friend of mine got a really interesting campaign idea: the players were normal people in a village or small town that was hit by a murder hobo party. Now, the players all rise up as revenants, bound to undeath until they kill the entire party. Not only are they up against a much stronger enemy, they have to deal with people immediately distrusting them because undead. However, they aren't blocked from making allies as the enemy is murder hoboing around. The players have to be smart and fighting in a guerilla style is a good idea, making hit and run attacks, slowing the enemy down and forging connections with people to sabotage them. Because the campaign is on an island and if the hobos manage to leave it, that would be rather bad and make things harder. And of course the nature of being a revenant. Sure, the players have resistance against poison and necrotic and exhaustion, and while long rests still are needed (or the body falls apart), there is no need for sleep, eat or drink or air. However they count as undead, which bars them from many sources of healing. We also had the idea that you only get one death save, either you die or immediately get back up at 1 hp. If a revenant dies, the spirit will find a new body, meaning your race will change every time. We also have a table to roll on to see what body you inhabit, meaning a bunch of different scenarios to awake into. The whole idea is that, while the revenant nature makes things more tricky, you will not fully die. The enemy can. So again, be smart. Ambushing becomes a great tool, sacrificing most if not all of the group to permanently take down one enemy, doing things to drain their ressources so that your fight will be as easy as can be. And RP wise, the characters are still having to deal with the trauma of their deaths and the nature of what they are.
We got tons of mileage out of the discovery that the "Kingdom" was actually a client state of an empire, and rebels were attempting to establish the native identity, find the true heirs etc. Political machinations were a bit of a pita. As it turned out, the empire was under a protection racket from a magocracy, itself infiltrated by powerful undead. Fun times.
6. Imagine getting to make a mech suit (artificer/inventor) or channel being a divine avatar (cleric/paladin/champion), amongst other ways to be Kaiju sized later on in the campaign
I am currently prepping a Githyanki focused campaign in the Astral Sea as they adventure and explore the outlands in preparation for an invasion of the prime planes. Little did they know there is an underlying mystery and motive to this campaign that changes more than just a plane. The entire Multiverse is at stake and it is up to the Githyanki to either save the planes through any means necessary or fail and watch it all crumble.
My personal milestone right now is to make a DnD campaign based on Shin Megami Tensei 4's story Basically the players start as knights to a kingdom and each of them comes from either the Casualry (lower class) and Luxors (higher class), with some fellow knights not looking highly of each other... many things happen until it is revealed that beneath the kingdom, exists the "old world" Faerun, more accurately they are on top of Waterdeep, and the world is pretty much in shambles. The whole story is really complicated to summerize but it's really interesting and I think it can be a really fun campaign
A movie that was a great concept but missed the mark would make a great campaign. 30 days of Night. Set in Alaskan winter. Vampires, no sunrise for a month.
I'm glad you included at least a couple "low stakes" campaign ideas, because frankly I'm sick of 'end of the world' campaigns. Stakes for the party can be incredibly high just by kidnapping a party member's sister, or looking for the cure to a friend's illness. A personal quest is more meaningful than the apocalypse.
Yes i want Godzilla! I was in a crazy campaign back in the 82. Was eith a group of gamers when I was in the Air Force. It was based on the '70s Saturday morning show Land of the Lost. 15 players went in. 9 PCs came out the other side. One of our fighters was literally stomped flat. Boom one hit dead! We also learn very real lessons about what constitutes the right number of players versus too many. Combat turn sometimes to nearly an hour to get back around to you. Was a crazy campaign.
I participated in a 36 player death match at a board game pub. We were in groups of 6 and it took place in a mansion. There was a choice of 8 pregenerated characters and you picked one at random. Once you died, you would pick another one. The table with the least deaths won lol There was one person who died 9 times, so he had to reuse a character.
I think it would be very cool if we could combine these campaign ideas. For example, combining campaigns 2&3. The players are these sentient magic items but they're constantly on the run because the world is plunged into eternal winter and the engines keeping warmth are fueled by magic items. combining campaigns 4&6. The world is being attacked by kaiju and the party must help a shady organization with a project to do something about the monsters. combining campaigns 8&9. The party is trying to run a shop in a world that is destroyed by the villain after previous heroes failed to defeat them.
I was listening to this minding my own business when suddenly there's a Magnus Archives mention?! I've always thought the fears would make amazing additions to a DnD setting as background forces
2. Players as weapons. It sounds so cool! I wouldnt have thought about it and it has so much potential. Maybe players feel bad about possesing people and try to make money for them and then leave it while switching to new hosts. Or maybe they use crimnals and monsters bodys and use them as disposable shells. It could become stale if there were no stakes to combat so maybe a mysterous artificer is trying to catch them and use to his purpuse so they cant just lay around on the ground waiting to be picked up.
Campaign 4 sounds very Eberron, especially with the potential for touching on eldritch horror Cthulhu-style (which is still on brand for Eberron as a pulp fiction-heavy setting, to which Lovecraft's works used to be part of)
For idea 2, there's a whole RPG system that's based on that idea. It's called Anime e Sangue, it's Italian, Souls and Blood. I don't know if it has been translated, but give it a look!
Campaign 7 sounds like the other half of the world in the setting Pointy Hat was making on stream for a bit. He had the world stop turning and was creating the setting of the side forever stuck in nightime
Interesting. The game I'm currently running is The Project crossed with The Perished--the PCs all died and their souls "fell through the cracks" in reality before being saved by a god on the verge of falling into oblivion, who has a grand project to stop that fall (and coincidentally prevent any other souls/gods falling into oblivion). It's basically a low-effort framework to justify them being sent into different worlds and times on fetch quests, but in the process (they've gone from level 1 to 17 so far), they've interfered with Vecna--who has his own plans for oblivion--and we're building to a final confrontation.
The Dark Lord has been defeated, his armies broken and scattered. The players are a small band of goblins who must make their way back home to the mountains in the north. Their entire tribe is just a few elders and a cart of wounded goblins they must bring with them. - If a party member dies they can roll a new character from the cart of wounded. - The elders can dispense goods and quests like a shop. Had their armor be home made from things like harden tools, bucket helmets etc. - I gave the players options like you can flee into this forest or make your way up this mountain range. - started them out raiding a farm for food and supplies, ended up being chased by an angry mob from the town.
Ha! Funny, I’m in the middle of my campaign called (not that my players know this) the shattered emerald, it’s a Druid civil war (well, it will be) one side has become fantastical about destroying the civilised world and bringing everything back to nature whilst the other side are wanting balance with the world and everyone should live in harmony with tolerance. Plenty of wildshape battles, and there maybe an event where a number of high level druids surround Waterdeep and combine cast earthquake and send half of the city into the sea cracking open the dungeon of the mad mage and all manner of evil spews out.
#5 I had an idea like this when I heard that a group of Unicorns was called a blessing. So I thought a "curse" would be like a group of evil/defiled Unicorns
One I've had on my mind for a long time: A high level campaign, spanning from levels 15-20. All PCs are established heroes of a certain god. Every PC must have a religious background. Divine Soul Sorcerer, Paladin, Cleric, Fighter with Acolyte background, Celestial warlock, etc. The party's god has had someone near and dear to them locked away in the depths of hell by Asmodeus. The party are sent with full divine backing to fight through the layers of hell to rescue this person. A literal crusade through the hells empowered by a pantheon of gods.
I'm making a campaign centered around an island that starts off simple with a party being hired to stop pirates and slavers raiding ships, then steadily begins to escalate with uncovering the origin of the pirates that leads into the cursed history of the island and a lovecraftian cult attempting to destroy not only the island itself but the world.
campaign 4 is what we do. It is star wars and my chars work for criminals, staling death star plans, kidnap scientists, blackmail agents and make it look like nothing happened for the imperium. but they dont know, what exactly they do or why. it looks like random jobs, but in the background, the crimson dawn is building a little deathstar. all fitting into canon ^^ id love to see theyr faces, revealing they made it possible for a former sith to manufacture a weapon of mass destruction.
7. Instead of defending them, the sun never set because that wasn't the sun. The sun has been eaten and the flaming orb in the sky is an ancient god that consumes celestial bodies, which takes the form of an immense flaming orb
Bro, just yesterday i read the Cairn RPG manual, and campaign 5 of this video is exactly the type of shit i was hoping to run using that system. This video is a godsend omg
On 5., Idk if anyone has seen pointy hat’s Druid lich video but I think it would fit really well as a BBEG because their magic and them using the land for their own preservation could be corrupting the forest creatures
Every day a whole race disappears and reappears the next day, with all consquenses if the space is occupied or not safe any more. First it is some animal, later some sentient being like goblins, maybe beholders, and the panic breaks out once everyone realizes how risky it is if someone knows where you will reappear. This can be limited to a certain region and still be awesome. Imagine this at a city that is besieged.
Idea for a Full Paladin Campaign: The players are level 20 paladins who have died, but instead of finding their gods, they have been summoned by Asmodeus, who for reasons you can agree with each character, are forced to go on a mission to the Abyss to kill Graz'zt, who for some reason has become strong enough to conquer countless layers of the Abyss and even kill some Princes. Thus becoming a danger to the Balance and could be the end of the Blood War, with the victory of the Demons, where the multiverse will succumb to Chaos. . . . - Why Graz'zt? He's my favorite Prince, and there's a theory that he was a Devil General - or even the son of Asmodeus - who disowned him to have his own domain in the Abyss. - Why Paladins? I like the idea of Paladins serving Asmodeus - against his will or not - in a unholy crusade of Order vs. Chaos. You could play around with the concept of what a Paladin is. Sorry if it's incoherent, I used the translator.
10. The Druid's Wrath sounds awesome because the party can also decide that the druid is right and help befall the civilized world and if they success they can help build it back again with the laws of nature.
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5. The Monarch's Forest: What if the thing causing everything is an Archfey who's decided that he likes this particular forest and is going to claim it for his realm in the Feywild.
As long as it’s the Monarch from Venture Bros the rest is just flavor :)
The mortal king is a warlock who made a pact with it maybe?
My first instict is to connect it to the pointy hats adventure. Although, I wish we had some statblocks for this.
My first thought was an archfey that regenerated like a phoenix or a lich after a certain length of time. Defeatable only in a newborn state
You ever watch Annihilation? Same kind of concept but instead of protecting the forest, the group is investigating it. Could be fey or even eldritch horrors.
Probably going to use this a story arc for homebrew campaign.
Tiny descriptions:
1. Where'd they go?
2. Re-Posession.
3. Feed the Machine.
4. Gov. Ops.
5. Special Land.
6. Titan Tales.
7. Praise the Sun.
8. Little Shop of Potential.
9. Post- apocalyptic story of the week.
10. Return to monkey or else.
11. Who dun it? Variation.
A friend of mine ran a variation of "what if the bad guys won?" as a goofy Halloween One-shot. The PC's all woke up as fully sentient undead. We still had our items and skills from our previous lives, along with character classes, except we had to choose an undead race and had no memories of how or why we died. The land we woke up in was entirely occupied by undead that continued to live as they did in life. People still went to work and continued to have regular lives, they just couldn't die. Like Dark Souls, but more wholesome!
This makes me think of the Ring Wraiths in LOTR. They had no memory of their former lives, but perhaps the characters are able to gain snippets or flashbacks upon leveling their characters? Hmmm 🤔, makes you think!
Reminds me of Awaken online it’s a book series where the main guy is a necromancer and thats one of the first things he does
Though if anyone wants to read it I will say it’s not so much fantasy as sci-fi because it’s just a hyperrealistic vr game not real magic
So, sorta Elden Ring Duskborn ending?
@@discord4039 Precisely! People continued to live their lives in undeath. Towns folk continued to live their lives and practice their trades. Undead parents continued to take care of their undead children that never aged. Similar as the world before, but undeath as simply a part of the natural order.
Never ending winter with a forge that heats a city needing magic items for fuel. Thats a good one. The Ring of Winter comes to mind.
Let's call that one "Frostfantasy"
(I don’t know why but for some reason it reminded me of some steampunk project from six years ago)
FF: Crystal Chronicles too
I like the idea of running that with a poison mist that brings the dead back as zombies. Just perfect for a grimdark fantasy setting.
It'd be hard to go wrong. You've got a strong call to action, easy source of encounters, a home base, and all three pillars (exploration, combat, role playing).
Never explain the cause of the fog; or at the very least don't give it a permanent solution. The "happy ending" they eventually strive for might be retrieving a powerful artifact that can be burned to keep their pocket of civilization protected for a thousand years.
@@Wolltazarwhich one
@@Wolltazar the games called frost punk - that’s the whole concept of the gameplay too. An engine keeping the last vestiges of humans alive and how you struggle with moral decisions as resources necessitate like having to send a child to their death to fit into the small engine to fix it
ooo i like the idea of "the project" leading to the "abyss is gone" scenarios. Maybe the party gets tricked by Asmodeus or one of his right hand men into helping the devils win the blood war and the high level party has to deal with all that which they caused. That'd definitely be the plot of my upcoming campaign
Asmodeus never would want the blood war to end. He probably could end it if he wanted to. But its not in his best interest, he needs the other gods to think hes occupied.
I mean, you can do what xou want, who cares. But generally speaking, this is the status quo.
@@gorgit no he can't. why? because it's my homebrew world
@@deanruskov9025 thats why I said you can do what you want. I hust felt like nerding out here, sorry if I bothered you.
These are all amazing ideas!
For idea 10, I have to borrow this from Pointy Hat: a druid who became a lich and wants vengeance against all civilization.
With the Monarch's Forest: I know my group. They would burn it down. Not even as a LAST resort either. Something weird happening in the forest? Fire is an option? FWOOM! Watch it burn!
Pull a Brothers Grimm on them, let the fire build up in power engulfing the forest only to be extinguished within an instant from strange howling wind
It's the only way to be sure.
Or the wind doesn’t quite extinguish the forest as much as mold them into a powerful fire elemental that is now after the party.
Might be a bit much, but imagine that all the trees in the forest *aren’t actually trees* and aren’t flammable
A rainforest could make that very difficult. Alternatively, I had an idea where the party are all effectively Death Row inmates, they're given a chance to go free if they take the job of Forest Rangers in the Monarch's Forest and willingly succumb to a geas or the like. This would result in a stay of execution so long as they perform their job of PROTECTING the forest. I.E. Burning it down is not an option, and whatever arguments they might make that it should be, fall on deaf ears.
Yup. Totally stealing the idea for the "play AS the magic items". Gonna do a "Altered Carbon" meets "Lord of the Rings" feel.
Thanks for the jumping point!
An idea I had re: "The Demons have gone Missing":
1. Disappearance of the Abyss:
The Abyss is a chaotic and ever-changing plane, but a powerful entity known as the Voidweaver has emerged. This ancient being has the ability to manipulate the very fabric of the Abyss, causing portions of it to collapse into voids. The demons, realizing the threat, have fled to other planes or hidden in remote corners of the Abyss to escape the Voidweaver's influence.
2. Consequences on the Material Plane:
With the Abyss destabilized, the planar barriers weaken, allowing the devils from the Nine Hells to spill into the Material Plane. The sudden influx of devilish forces disrupts the balance, causing widespread chaos, political instability, and increased demonic cult activity. The devils exploit the situation, vying for control and power in the absence of their demonic rivals.
3. Dragons' Dilemma:
Chromatic dragons, tempted by the promise of power and freedom for Tiamat, ally with the devils, seeking to break her out of Avernus. Metallic dragons, loyal to Bahamut, join forces with the celestial beings to prevent the spread of devilish influence. This creates a complex conflict where dragonkind is divided, adding to the chaos and turmoil on the Material Plane.
4. Investigation by the Party:
The party learns of an ancient prophecy that foretells the rise of the Voidweaver and its ability to manipulate the Abyss. To uncover the truth, they must seek out the scattered remnants of demonkind, surviving in hidden pockets across the multiverse. Along the way, they encounter displaced demons, cults worshipping the Voidweaver, and Celestial beings trying to maintain order. The party must navigate the shifting alliances and power struggles while piecing together the mystery behind the Abyss' disappearance.
*The Voidweaver:*
- Identity: The Voidweaver is an ancient Lovecraftian entity - a Cryptid, essentially. An Eldritch Horror that predates the current order of the multiverse. Its true form is nebulous and ever-changing, with tendrils of void energy that warp and twist reality around it. It can assume almost any form it deems necessary.
- Motive: The Voidweaver emerged from the primal chaos that predates the formation of the planes. Its motives are rooted in the desire to restore that chaos, considering the structured order of the Abyss as an abomination.
The Abyss is merely its first target.
The Hells are also very heirarchical and structured. Indeed, most of the Archdukes of Hell are obsessed with Order. It's possible that Asmodeus has recognised the threat of the Voidweaver and has ordered the Hells to go forth, find the cause and put a stop to it. Asmodeus might think the Hells are the Voidweaver's next target.
The problem is, the Celestials see this as the Hells invading the Material Plane and seek to stop them, creating chaos. The Dragons, too, get wrapped up in all this. Ironically this makes the Material plane so steeped in chaos even without the direct involvement of the Voidweaver that it might well leave the Material Plane for last!
Holy shit dude. I'm stealing a bunch of this
The voidweaver must HATE mechanus, considering it's the literal plane of order, heirarchy, and everything that isn't chaos
I love the never setting sun idea. I'm going to steal it and put it in my game. My game is a Fallout AU on the west coast, which revolves around a war between the NCR, Enclave, BoS, and Mr House. The PC's go around and are put into the conflict. Once the war for New Vegas is settled, the sun starts moving 1 degree per day. Once the sun hits the horizon, an army of kaiju attack the west coast, and its up to the players to recruit forces to fight the kaiju
My campaign is Blank Slates, inspired by Dark Urge of BG3. All players start out with no memories of who they are, not even their names and level 1, with no background, but get 2 skills, 2 other proficiencies instead. They were found floating in water and saved.
Who are they and why do they not remember?
In my own game, they were some of the worst souls condemned to the Nine Hells, the Abyss and Pandemonium, and ended up escaping, assisted by an imprisoned god, promising them new and eternal life. They collected what was needed to free the god, but the pursuers became more relentless and in an epic clash above Styx, most ending up falling in the water. And the last conjured a portal when falling, but still ended up as a blank slate.
The Monarch's forest sound super epic, I would love to see more about it
Another idea is to try and put a twist on classic fairytales everyone is familiar with. Something like the sword in the stone, but King Arthur becomes a tyrant that you must fight can make a very fun campaign.
I had a fresh homebrew world that I made sometime ago and the name I gave it was "The Krakening". The idea being that a group of explorers was plumbing the depths of an ocean and came across the long forgotten prison of the Kraken and unwittingly released it. The world was flooded and the result was a survival based game with the ever looming threat of sea creatures and doom! Tritons were prevalent and druid enclaves were some of things I liked and leaned on.
Love the idea but if you want to take it a step further you could use the concept of Leviathan instead of the Kraken. That would be easier to justify extreme, world-altering consequences
These are probably the best group of campaign plots I have seen. Nice how real world plots translated over too. 😁
Here is a idea, slightly inspired by Persona 3.
The characters live in a low-fantasy world, no/litte magic or monsters, and instead the big threat is a looming war between nations. Lets say for added drama that the land the PCs live in is a small republic between the opposing powers.
Now, one night the characters share a dream, and in this dream magic exists, monsters exist, etc. Its the High Fantasy part. Make it a megadungeon if you want to, but in short the dream is a reflection of reality, that influences reality.
In their home town there is a greedy butcher or merchant that takes the opportunity of looming war to raise the prices and suck the small community dry, before planning to run away from the conflict area. In the Dream world the butcher is the first boss so to say, a Demon of Greed. The players defeat the demon, and when they wake up, the merchant have changed his/her mind, returns the overpriced money and starts supporting the community to wether the conflict.
This is just a illustrative example of course, but the idea remains the same. Changes done in the Dream World affects the Real world. This also brings up interesting questions of Why this is the case, what can be done, and possibly Who is behind it and Why.
From Sweden with Love
- Kami
P.S
A follow-up idea on the first one. Set a time limit of how long the characters dream. As in a physical timer. If you play 3h sessions, set aside 1 hour or so as "dreamtime".
When the time runs out, the characters wakes up.
This is great 👍
@@bendixt.6072 hope you have fun with the idea ^^
From Sweden with Love
- Kami
Sounds more like Persona 5 Phantom Thief shenanigans than 3, but still a fun idea regardless
@@meijinx9673 mechanicly, yea. Though i was more going for the dark mysterious atmoshere with the refference of 3.
My bad for not making that clear.
From Sweden with Love
- Kami
I love the idea of the Liminal Bodies.
I'm starting off my first TTRPG in a Crusader themed world where the party is a scouting party that the the Crusader armies General hand selected to crave out paths for them to survive. They have to make smart decisions because if they don't people are going to get hurt. And the main city that they are going to defend and push back against the Horde is right there. So i'm really excited. Wsh I could pay for the coaching right now but hopefully one day.
That second campaign reminds me of something from star trek. There's a race of aliens called the trill, where a select number of their species is selected to essentially fuse with these slug alien creatures that maintain all the memories of their previous hosts. It's a symbiotic thing, making the host more intelligent and giving the slug the oppurtunity to explore the world. So having the characters play an item that combines some base personality with the personality of a new character and make it part of the world somehow would be a cool way to give those indecisive players a way to try everything out, awesome idea!
1. Campaign would be even funnier if it were the devils that went missing and suddenly everyone would feel the burden of carrying the Blood War against demons to save all of existance.
I used campaign 8 setting, its literally the jrgp "Recetear", the mc inherits a magic shop indebted and you have to earn money to pay it off while adventuring, hiring adventurers to scort you, craft items and unlocking their backgrounds and quests. Awesome wholesome game.
I run a D&D club for kids in a juvenile detention center and I was just worrying that I had no idea what new campaign to run for them; you solved my problem and I can't thank you enough!
Hey, that's such a cool thing to do. Is it a job or a voluntary thing?
@@davidjennings2179 Volunteer work at the moment, I just go by once a week.
How'd it go?
@@davidjennings2179 Volunteer, I do it on Saturdays
@@N360-c9y Great! We're still running the campaign this video helped me think up!
Campaign 7: for more information about how you could adapt a similar world, look at Lorwyn/Shadowmoor. My suggestion is Lorwyn until lvl 6-7 then flip to Shadowmoor for the second half. This will allow time for the players to have fun in a generally idyllic world with the plethora of weaker monsters (ogres, goblinoids, etc) then you can flip into the more grim monsters at perfect time where the lower CR monsters can reasonably be thrown at a party in mass (a party of 4 lvl 7-8 would be easily pressed by two waves of 10-14 (send a second wave when half of the first wave has been killed / turned)) or you can send higher CR creatures w/out fear of overpowering the party (A Vampire is a solid threat to a CR 9 party, especially if they have been playing the characters since lvl 3.)
Elves also were former antagonists in lorwyn become one of the last rays of hope in Shadowmoor. each race has some sort of contingency to keep a repertoire of memory or ability intact so the fae queen doesn't have full control of the world. giants had their sleep or rosheens scroll, colfener had the sapling, the elemental fire folk had their savior.
One campaign idea I had years back was that the untamed use of magic all but destroyed the world and over ran it with horrible twisted creatures of mad creations. The survivors fled through portals to the planet’s hostile moon. But now, 100’s of years later, the magics that protect the people are starting to fade so the survivors have to use the portals to return to the planet for various missions. What will they discover there?
There was a serious that came out not long ago with a modern twist on this called The 100.
My table actually does campaign 8 as cool down one shots for beloved characters that we completed the main campaign ark at lvl 17…. So these characters have become legends but live very quiet lives until something creeps up that needs their attention. It’s RP heavy and they sometimes interact with our current PCs if they travel to the small town in a secluded valley they have made their home.
Campaign 9 is basically the 3.5 campaign setting: Midnight. Good guy turns bad, takes over world with monsters. Its fun
I love the name “The food chain” for what it is :D
There be some really creative ideas here
Here's the sad and kinda ... hilarious thing.
That's BASICALLY the setting in Pathfinder.
Seriously there exists entire semi-divine monsters called the Spawn of Rovagug, you actually know one...... The Tarrasque. YES in Pathfinder lore the Tarrasque is the son of THE BIGGEST monster in the lore thus far and has siblings...............
Then there are the ACTUAL fucking Kaiju monsters ... seriously it's a thing.
Then the Tanes which ...... if you ever have to fight one, you SERIOUSLY pissed off the equivalent of an Archfey.
The Behemoths were made as divine beasts of burden by the gods when they made the fey world (which in this setting is the rough draft of ACTUAL 'earth')
The Elder Mythos - read LOVECRAFT and YES cthulhu has a stat block.
ALIENS with future tech... because SERIOUSLY
Yeah, Golarion is basically what happens if the heroes managed to contain the giant Kaijuu monsters onslaught until a very tenuous stalemate is reached
Going to try out #3 with some friends, tomorrow is session 0. A few adjustments I made were that there isn't just one engine but hundreds across the world meaning that there is a lot of competition for resources and magical items.
Also external politics are just as important as internal, depending on who my players encounter while scouting and how they deal with them, they can end up making enemies and allies of other settlements.
Lastly the engine itself is gonna be upgradable, in the begining it's gonna be just enough to keep people warm but down the line they can make it hot enough to grow basically whatever they want and with an overbundance of food their village's population will boom.
This idea was really cool, I have high hopes for this going well.
I am making a vampire campaign for a couple years now, seeing this and I realize I've intentionally made a combination of the monarchs forest and the never setting sun. But you sir did give me ideas for forest encounters 😈
Congratulations, I am actually going to steal that Monarch's Forest idea, Mothman bbeg and all xD
The last one is kinda like the campaign I am running now. I should check out the coaching to see if I could get a slot that fits my schedule, but its a mystery campaign where the players were jojo eyes above heaven style completely reset into a parallel world's past. They have no memories of what they even are, and are trying to find out their past to uncover the truth of the villian, the heros before them, and who they were. Its been a slow start, but slowly picking up speed.
The music you used indeed sounded familiar haha. Thanks for the great campaign ideas and for speaking about our new tool Opus!
A twist on Campaign 6 based on one of my favorite shows. Yes, there are kaiju, but the player characters are visited by an otherworldly race of Celestial beings who are _just as tall as the Kaiju_ and they need hosts. The characters are given devices to summon the 'Ultras' (you can guess where I got the idea from) and when used not only can they become them, but they can also channel their own capabilities and skills through them. Imagine Yuma as a cleric and he can use _cure wounds_ through Ultraman Arc.
Campaing 1, 3, 4 and 7 seem like the most fun to me.
All of them could be more standard but I like them for their potential to be a good hardcore campaign.
Well except for 4, that one is probably going to be a more RP heavy one.
But I personally love the idea of hunkering down and surviving apocalyptic or dangerous scenarios in games.
1 could be a more standard nomadic adventurer sort of setting where we have to go from city to city to deal with this hellish invasion
3 could be a more survival based setting where being properly prepared and actively HAVING to take survival based decisions sounds awesome. Like I imagine there would be moment where one of the usefull magic items from a PC would need to be used for the forge or maybe even a more meta decisions where players have to take active survival feats instead of a combat based one.
4 is a RP heavy mystery setting where the main point of intrigue is the weird experiment we are helping achive.
7 would be a monster/vampire hunter setting that would probably resemble attack on titan where we would have to leave the safety of sunlight to hunt dangerous beasts or solve why this is happening. You could also make is a time limit similar to 3 where maybe the Sun is slowly dying do too whatever magic is keeping it in place or a vampire is trying to cause it to go out so they can feast on the people on the day side.
I was looking for ideas for an upcoming campaign set on Ravnica. Boy am I taking the "running a shop" one
I do enjoy idea number 8 and going to try to create a campaign from it as a first-time dungeon master. I am going to tinker with it by having some of the items stolen by the shop used to summon an ancient evil. For example, a jewel, yes a basic item, being a key to summon an undead legion. Also, another idea I can throw in is some of the items stolen the players learn about the negative consequences of the wrong hands and need to get them back. Still need to plan more and if anyone has ideas, let me know.
Campaigns 8 and 9 are ABSOLUTELY AWESOME thank you so much, definitely will use some of these 🎉
I actually tried a One-Shot with a similar theme to Campaign 10 a while ago, and it was a lot of fun! It was a low-level adventure, but it turns out that a level 4 moon druid makes a pretty epic aquatic-themed bossfight, especially if they have magic items that can make them fly. 10/10 recommend this sort of adventure to anyone looking for a unique premise and villain for their campaign or one-shot, especially if you like situations where the villain might go unnoticed for a while due to their control over nature/access to wildshape.
I will actually use the idea of the sun that never sets for an arc in my campaign. The reason will be that the loved one of a powerful wizard is deadly ill and is set to pass away when the sun sets in the horizon
This is an excellent video which provides such strong and well-structured foundations for people to grow their campaigns from. You are the life giving acorn to so many oak trees.
an idea that came in my mind during this, a delivery service (magic delivery service) but essentially the party would constantly be traveling through a train system.
I like watching Enter the Dungeon's videos like this.
I was looking around for some inspiration for a Starfinder campaign I'm booting up for some friends, and some of these really hit the bill. The Monarch's Forest, The Project, The Endless Winter (Engine), The Never Setting Sun, and Druid's Wrath specifically struck a chord with me.
When hearing your details about the Monarch's Forest, my mind immediately went to the Outer Gods dilemma of Starfinder (Lovecraft). Specifically Shub-Niggurath and her thousand young. The "Monarch" could be a secret cult leader for the Black Goat or the Woods. The Project campaign idea made me think of an organization wanting to unlock the inner secrets of the universe and seeking a bridge to Yog-Sothoth or possibly even Azathoth. I don't want to make the overarching story of my full campaign to be overrun by Lovecraftian horror, but those would be some incredible "detours" from the typical encounters and stories the players would likely find themselves in.
I really LOVE the Druid's Wrath. Brings to mind the Deathworld Trilogy by Harry Harrison!
im currently working on a monster hunter inspired campaign where the group investigates why stronger and more dangerous monsters are appearing and they have to find out why
Excellent stuff! Current campaign has 3 intertwined questlines leading to Dante's Inferno as capstone adventure but some of these starting points are perfect add-ins! Love the shopkeeper ideas
Running the campaign 4 idea. My players are helping a shadowy organization that is trying to suppress evil across the land and decided to employ well known adventurers. They are tasked with collecting items used by cults and monsters, and payed once they relinquish those items at the end of their mission. But what if the organization is actually using those items for something dark. Maybe a former fighter of good, cursed with knowledge of a fallen god, made to battle evil his/her entire life has had enough. Maybe through their travels they managed to collect some forbidden knowledge about the very essence of divinity, and, maybe, a clever way to hijack it.
Fun stuff, like your ideas mate
And NOW YOU WANT TO TAKE MY BLOOD MOTHRA IDEA TOO?!?!?!? I literally had an idea for a far realms MOTHRA/last of us zombie plague where re-skinned rot grubs had to hatch out of fungus trees grown from the infected in order to mature in a sick symbiotic relationship. What if you weren't infected and a worm got you? Here, have a warlock level and remember to make a increasingly difficult int save before bed each week or secretly get taken over and become part of the Queens Army...very erks of animorphs esk.
Great stuff here. I’m working on my first home brew campaign now.
I actually once played a campaign very similar to #7, with even the same motivation for the never-ending day, plus some more sinister stuff, like an ever-regenerating titanrat i temporarily killed by shoving a grenade down its mouth. It's very fun, and I highly suggest it
About a year ago my family wanted to run a casual DnD campaign but couldn't come up with a plot, so I thought of something akine to your 10th idea and expanded on it when I got to boot camp
The party starts off dead, their spirits taking in by a new up and coming goddes, she's claimed your souls in varies ways, grabbed them apone your death, toke them from the afterlife, made a death with another god who had claimed your soul. She has done this to make you her vassals, to walk the earth and spread her name so that she can gain renown and because a full deity.
Here's a neat little twist, the party doesn't remember how they died and must either learn and gain memories from working with the goddess who sends the party in multiple missions around the world. Another neat thing to keep the campaign light hearted is the PCs are immortal, when ever they die they'll be sent back to the goddess's realm, which also works like a hub for them, and they'll basically have to wait to respawn which they'll return to their body and it will fully heal
I ran about 3 sessions in boot camp to test this idea and, they seemed to enjoy it just had very different veiwa
You inspired me to start up my dark sun campaign again thank you
That 2nd idea is really cool. Love that it has a gameplay hook too
I like the Liminal Bodies idea, might snag that one for the right playerbase somewhere down the line.
Just wanted to complement your transitions between the different campaigns. They were done very well!
Got two ideas that people are free to use. The first one is called "The Missing" Imagine a small town or city where just one day the children start disappearing right out of their beds at night. By the time your characters make it to said town there aren't a lot of them left and those that are are guarded 24/7. Where are the kids going and how? Who's doing it? How can you stop it? Up to you. This one can go in so many different ways depending on the GM.
The second one is called "Underground" Where a dwarven house or people have found what looks like an ancient map to a long lost city of their people. Time to go and reclaim it but the first two expedition went down and were never heard from again. Now hurt for man power they turn to adventurers for help. What happened to the two expeditions? Are there any survivors? Why was the lost city lost? What's waiting there for you? Got this idea loosely from The Hobbit and I feel it can be worked in different ways.
One from me:
A millennia ago a great Archmage gathered groups of every humanoid race (including Orcs, Goblins, Kobolds, Lizardfolk, and their allies) and brought them to an isolated land (a mountain ringed land the size of Europe) to flee a great disaster coming to the world. He warded the land just before a chaotic storm of planar energies and creatures (including Far Realm) raged across the world. Now, the storms have finally faded, and the Empire of allied kingdoms within the land are ready to go out and explore/retake the altered continent, and explore beyond the continent as well with the magi-steampunk tech they developed in their isolation.
This is why I buy and read many different game systems. Converting a scenario from one system to another provides many more options, and options players have not read. The key to conversion is concepts over numbers. Ask what effect is happening or what level of difficulty is being represented, and convert these concepts rather than trying to directly convert mechanics.
Some very cool ideas. They're probably better for your more experienced and very creative DM's though. People looking for ideas might want something smaller and simpler so they get into the flow of it before going all apocalyptic. But very cool ideas.
Here's mine - it's middle earth themed. You are brought together at the inn of the prancing pony by none other that Gandalf himself. He's putting together a dream team to take down a dragon.. a dragon named Smaug. The backdrop of the story revolves around Thorin's company failing to kill Smaug and the fallout around that. The PCs are effectively plan B and must adventure across middle earth to slay the dragon. The catch is.. the PCs will eventually realize they aren't actually the plan B team but the back up team to the main team.. a C team perhaps. Can add another layer if you want to make it extra nutty (D team) but either way should create hijinks around the party competing with other fellowships on this quest and interacting with Gandalf and other well known figures from the lore. Tolkien is probably rolling over in his grave as I write this but what can you do.
ACTUALLY, I like this a lot (unironically too, i might add). Hey if Escape from Bloodkeep can be a Tolkien Parody, I don't see why other parts of his canon stories can't. THORIN & Gandalf have probably changed their name to Fhorpin and Pandalf, as they're getting bad reputation amongst adventuring parties that accepting is a one-way ticket to certain death. Maybe some mini-encounters along the way allows the PCs to decipher how teams A B and C failed and therefore can improve on strategies. Maybe Smaug has even retired from hoarding Oakenshield's treasure.
One of my favorite RPGs, that I always have a lot of fun playing, is the Italian game "Anime e Sangue" (souls and blood, basically) and it's entirely based on the idea of players being eternal-ish spirits trapped in a weapon. They possess the body of those who wield their weapon, consuming their souls, and journey through the multiverse, usually looking for a way to free themselves from the chains of the powerful entity that locked them into the item.
Idea for number 8
The murder hobos who potentially rob the shop at the beginning are actually the groups characters from a previous campaign. They don't even have to be murderous they could be drunk, stumbling home one night and causing mischief.
A friend of mine got a really interesting campaign idea: the players were normal people in a village or small town that was hit by a murder hobo party. Now, the players all rise up as revenants, bound to undeath until they kill the entire party.
Not only are they up against a much stronger enemy, they have to deal with people immediately distrusting them because undead. However, they aren't blocked from making allies as the enemy is murder hoboing around. The players have to be smart and fighting in a guerilla style is a good idea, making hit and run attacks, slowing the enemy down and forging connections with people to sabotage them. Because the campaign is on an island and if the hobos manage to leave it, that would be rather bad and make things harder.
And of course the nature of being a revenant. Sure, the players have resistance against poison and necrotic and exhaustion, and while long rests still are needed (or the body falls apart), there is no need for sleep, eat or drink or air. However they count as undead, which bars them from many sources of healing. We also had the idea that you only get one death save, either you die or immediately get back up at 1 hp.
If a revenant dies, the spirit will find a new body, meaning your race will change every time. We also have a table to roll on to see what body you inhabit, meaning a bunch of different scenarios to awake into.
The whole idea is that, while the revenant nature makes things more tricky, you will not fully die. The enemy can. So again, be smart. Ambushing becomes a great tool, sacrificing most if not all of the group to permanently take down one enemy, doing things to drain their ressources so that your fight will be as easy as can be.
And RP wise, the characters are still having to deal with the trauma of their deaths and the nature of what they are.
We got tons of mileage out of the discovery that the "Kingdom" was actually a client state of an empire, and rebels were attempting to establish the native identity, find the true heirs etc. Political machinations were a bit of a pita. As it turned out, the empire was under a protection racket from a magocracy, itself infiltrated by powerful undead. Fun times.
6. Imagine getting to make a mech suit (artificer/inventor) or channel being a divine avatar (cleric/paladin/champion), amongst other ways to be Kaiju sized later on in the campaign
I am in love with Running the Shop.
I am currently prepping a Githyanki focused campaign in the Astral Sea as they adventure and explore the outlands in preparation for an invasion of the prime planes. Little did they know there is an underlying mystery and motive to this campaign that changes more than just a plane. The entire Multiverse is at stake and it is up to the Githyanki to either save the planes through any means necessary or fail and watch it all crumble.
My personal milestone right now is to make a DnD campaign based on Shin Megami Tensei 4's story
Basically the players start as knights to a kingdom and each of them comes from either the Casualry (lower class) and Luxors (higher class), with some fellow knights not looking highly of each other... many things happen until it is revealed that beneath the kingdom, exists the "old world" Faerun, more accurately they are on top of Waterdeep, and the world is pretty much in shambles. The whole story is really complicated to summerize but it's really interesting and I think it can be a really fun campaign
A movie that was a great concept but missed the mark would make a great campaign. 30 days of Night. Set in Alaskan winter. Vampires, no sunrise for a month.
I'm glad you included at least a couple "low stakes" campaign ideas, because frankly I'm sick of 'end of the world' campaigns. Stakes for the party can be incredibly high just by kidnapping a party member's sister, or looking for the cure to a friend's illness. A personal quest is more meaningful than the apocalypse.
#9 is pretty much the Midnight campaign setting. Which is awesome and you should check out if you want to run a villain’s world.
Yes i want Godzilla! I was in a crazy campaign back in the 82. Was eith a group of gamers when I was in the Air Force. It was based on the '70s Saturday morning show Land of the Lost. 15 players went in. 9 PCs came out the other side. One of our fighters was literally stomped flat. Boom one hit dead!
We also learn very real lessons about what constitutes the right number of players versus too many. Combat turn sometimes to nearly an hour to get back around to you. Was a crazy campaign.
For those who are interested in the second idea there's an rpg named bloodlust based around that concept
I participated in a 36 player death match at a board game pub. We were in groups of 6 and it took place in a mansion. There was a choice of 8 pregenerated characters and you picked one at random. Once you died, you would pick another one. The table with the least deaths won lol
There was one person who died 9 times, so he had to reuse a character.
Honesty the Lego Heroica board game lore would make a dope campaign. Plus you have magic items and dungeons planned out for you
I think it would be very cool if we could combine these campaign ideas. For example,
combining campaigns 2&3. The players are these sentient magic items but they're constantly on the run because the world is plunged into eternal winter and the engines keeping warmth are fueled by magic items.
combining campaigns 4&6. The world is being attacked by kaiju and the party must help a shady organization with a project to do something about the monsters.
combining campaigns 8&9. The party is trying to run a shop in a world that is destroyed by the villain after previous heroes failed to defeat them.
I was listening to this minding my own business when suddenly there's a Magnus Archives mention?! I've always thought the fears would make amazing additions to a DnD setting as background forces
2. Players as weapons. It sounds so cool! I wouldnt have thought about it and it has so much potential. Maybe players feel bad about possesing people and try to make money for them and then leave it while switching to new hosts. Or maybe they use crimnals and monsters bodys and use them as disposable shells. It could become stale if there were no stakes to combat so maybe a mysterous artificer is trying to catch them and use to his purpuse so they cant just lay around on the ground waiting to be picked up.
Campaign 4 sounds very Eberron, especially with the potential for touching on eldritch horror Cthulhu-style (which is still on brand for Eberron as a pulp fiction-heavy setting, to which Lovecraft's works used to be part of)
For idea 2, there's a whole RPG system that's based on that idea. It's called Anime e Sangue, it's Italian, Souls and Blood. I don't know if it has been translated, but give it a look!
Campaign 7 sounds like the other half of the world in the setting Pointy Hat was making on stream for a bit. He had the world stop turning and was creating the setting of the side forever stuck in nightime
Interesting. The game I'm currently running is The Project crossed with The Perished--the PCs all died and their souls "fell through the cracks" in reality before being saved by a god on the verge of falling into oblivion, who has a grand project to stop that fall (and coincidentally prevent any other souls/gods falling into oblivion). It's basically a low-effort framework to justify them being sent into different worlds and times on fetch quests, but in the process (they've gone from level 1 to 17 so far), they've interfered with Vecna--who has his own plans for oblivion--and we're building to a final confrontation.
The Dark Lord has been defeated, his armies broken and scattered. The players are a small band of goblins who must make their way back home to the mountains in the north. Their entire tribe is just a few elders and a cart of wounded goblins they must bring with them.
- If a party member dies they can roll a new character from the cart of wounded.
- The elders can dispense goods and quests like a shop. Had their armor be home made from things like harden tools, bucket helmets etc.
- I gave the players options like you can flee into this forest or make your way up this mountain range.
- started them out raiding a farm for food and supplies, ended up being chased by an angry mob from the town.
Taking something from the campaign is a good idea. It's what led to Dragonlance!
Campaign 8 is Recettear, and Campaign 9 is Dark Sun. :P
Ha! Funny, I’m in the middle of my campaign called (not that my players know this) the shattered emerald, it’s a Druid civil war (well, it will be) one side has become fantastical about destroying the civilised world and bringing everything back to nature whilst the other side are wanting balance with the world and everyone should live in harmony with tolerance. Plenty of wildshape battles, and there maybe an event where a number of high level druids surround Waterdeep and combine cast earthquake and send half of the city into the sea cracking open the dungeon of the mad mage and all manner of evil spews out.
#5 I had an idea like this when I heard that a group of Unicorns was called a blessing. So I thought a "curse" would be like a group of evil/defiled Unicorns
One I've had on my mind for a long time:
A high level campaign, spanning from levels 15-20. All PCs are established heroes of a certain god. Every PC must have a religious background. Divine Soul Sorcerer, Paladin, Cleric, Fighter with Acolyte background, Celestial warlock, etc. The party's god has had someone near and dear to them locked away in the depths of hell by Asmodeus. The party are sent with full divine backing to fight through the layers of hell to rescue this person. A literal crusade through the hells empowered by a pantheon of gods.
I'm making a campaign centered around an island that starts off simple with a party being hired to stop pirates and slavers raiding ships, then steadily begins to escalate with uncovering the origin of the pirates that leads into the cursed history of the island and a lovecraftian cult attempting to destroy not only the island itself but the world.
campaign 4 is what we do.
It is star wars and my chars work for criminals, staling death star plans, kidnap scientists, blackmail agents and make it look like nothing happened for the imperium. but they dont know, what exactly they do or why. it looks like random jobs, but in the background, the crimson dawn is building a little deathstar. all fitting into canon ^^
id love to see theyr faces, revealing they made it possible for a former sith to manufacture a weapon of mass destruction.
7. Instead of defending them, the sun never set because that wasn't the sun. The sun has been eaten and the flaming orb in the sky is an ancient god that consumes celestial bodies, which takes the form of an immense flaming orb
i like the monarchs forest idea. should be great for a insect themed campaign.
The second campaign is actually a Darking simulatorm. I love it
Bro, just yesterday i read the Cairn RPG manual, and campaign 5 of this video is exactly the type of shit i was hoping to run using that system. This video is a godsend omg
Thank you for bookmarking headings
great ideas and a really lean video, looking forward to checking out more of your videos
On 5., Idk if anyone has seen pointy hat’s Druid lich video but I think it would fit really well as a BBEG because their magic and them using the land for their own preservation could be corrupting the forest creatures
Every day a whole race disappears and reappears the next day, with all consquenses if the space is occupied or not safe any more.
First it is some animal, later some sentient being like goblins, maybe beholders, and the panic breaks out once everyone realizes how risky it is if someone knows where you will reappear.
This can be limited to a certain region and still be awesome. Imagine this at a city that is besieged.
Idea for a Full Paladin Campaign: The players are level 20 paladins who have died, but instead of finding their gods, they have been summoned by Asmodeus, who for reasons you can agree with each character, are forced to go on a mission to the Abyss to kill Graz'zt, who for some reason has become strong enough to conquer countless layers of the Abyss and even kill some Princes. Thus becoming a danger to the Balance and could be the end of the Blood War, with the victory of the Demons, where the multiverse will succumb to Chaos.
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- Why Graz'zt? He's my favorite Prince, and there's a theory that he was a Devil General - or even the son of Asmodeus - who disowned him to have his own domain in the Abyss.
- Why Paladins? I like the idea of Paladins serving Asmodeus - against his will or not - in a unholy crusade of Order vs. Chaos. You could play around with the concept of what a Paladin is.
Sorry if it's incoherent, I used the translator.
10. The Druid's Wrath sounds awesome because the party can also decide that the druid is right and help befall the civilized world and if they success they can help build it back again with the laws of nature.