Post all those wierd story ideas or story elements that you've thought of but never ran with because you are convinced that they are too weird or too dumb to really build around.
I'll present one of mine to start with:
Starts off being presented with kingdom is under the rule of a tyrant king, real sadistic and bloodthirsty bastard. Except everyone will also tell that he wasn't always like this, that he used to be a kind and wise king but a few years ago just had a complete personality flip just out of the blue. If the PC's talk to former house servants of the king they will tell that before the personality shift there were a few months where he was quite irritable.
It would be during a violent confrontation with the king that the truth is revealed he apparently had gotten a tooth infection so severe that the tooth became cursed and took possession of him, a good blow to the head would dislodge the rotten tooth restoring the king to his original personality, and the evil tooth would escape and the PC's would be tasked with destroying it before it could do any more harm I've never ran it because the whole premise still sounds utterly ridiculous and break suspension of disbelief
Dude I ran a Disgaea game where this kind of plot would be perfectly valid and treated seriously
Angel Reed
Bump.
Bentley Garcia
Elves and humans having jointly created a portal to the afterlife and are now arguing over who gets what portion. All the while they put up the illusion of being an alliance to keep the other races out of their conquests.
Thomas Anderson
GHOSTWALK It's already been done. And the biggest threat isn't humans or elves, but the undead who want to control the portal and make sure nobody ever dies again.
Jaxson Foster
And yes, this counts as a D&D 3.5 "setting."
Alexander Morales
bump
Elijah Peterson
I've always wanted to have a moment in a fantasy game where the players discover a crashed UFO in some farmer's field
Jeremiah Sullivan
Military aerial combat in Shadowrun. Not the usual couple of T-birds and choppers that show up in a lot of SR games, but specifically combat between groups of milspec fighter aircraft. I figure it would weirdly echo a shadowrunner team in that in addition to the muscle (fighter riggers in this case) you'd need both electronic warfare specialists and magicians in-situ too. I'd imagine a lot of fighter aircraft are two-seaters for this reason, and employ swarms of drones as well.
I could see basing a campaign around a mercenary corp air squadron fighting in some ugly little war in Africa or South America, but I don't like giving highly specific campaign ideas like that to my players.
Parker Martin
>I've never ran it because the whole premise still sounds utterly ridiculous and break suspension of disbelief
Stick to this plan
Jackson Rogers
There was a "Veeky Forums, help me win a campaign-building contest" post about a dungeon that was built to be the set piece for a reality show like American Gladiators and Beastmaster. Basically adventurers were lured in to search the dungeon and were "filmed" via scrying sensors, and the show was sold throughout the Underdark.
There was a whole second "backstage" dungeon that ran parallel for the show-runners to reset traps, restock monsters and treasure, make repairs, and otherwise maintain the facility. Not to mention clean up the dead adventurers.
I think Kobolds were decided to be the best maintenance crew, especially because of their size rules. They are small, but can move through spaces as if tiny. Also they are decent builders. And if the entire thing is run by a dragon, that makes even more sense.
The heroes would be given clue after clue that things were not as they seemed. Or a superfan could break on to the show and try to get an autograph or save their favorite star.
There were all kinds of options like the adventures accidentally being much more powerful than intended, or there being terrible security because no one had ever found backstage. Or the characters found it in the off season, so it's mostly abandoned. Maybe they are stealthy enough to evade the guards and move through the facility, picking off targets a few at a time. It depends on how you want to run it.
I wish I had archived the thread. I've thought about rebuilding it, but it would be a massive amount of work to built two fully fleshed out, parallel dungeons, plus make it so the characters don't just immediately die.
I've done something like that twice. One was a tower like construct swallowed by a swamp. The other was a sphere in a land of rock. The first group loved it (and luke-yoda references soon followed) the other group absolutely hated it and said it took them out of the setting.
Easton Carter
See personally I love things like that. I like it when an otherwise serious and straightforward setting is hiding something really weird. But I know.ost people hate that sort of thing.
Like I'm the kind of guy who would unironically love it if a Roswell saucer suddenly strafed the Wall in GoT.
Gabriel Russell
Sadly it's kinda hard to gauge what your players reaction will be without spoiling the surprise.
Ethan Harris
Why do they care about the surface world?
Thomas Jenkins
There's many dwarven colonies elsewhere. It's unlikely for the monster to burrow through hundreds of miles of stone and dirt to get to the nearest fortress. Less so than it making it to the vast surface world and stumbling across another fortress. Another fear is that the only reason the monster lives in solitude and hasn't spawned more children is due to the lack of space in its natural habitat, the undergorund caverns.
Brayden Roberts
bump
Gabriel Baker
I've been wanting to run a game for a where the group are scientists/contractors tracking migration patterns for a herd of alien wildlife that now inhabit the american midwest after the ark arrived five-hundred years ago. The scientists would have little mech-runners that'd they use to run across the plains, stopping at Texaco gas stations and little route 66 diners along the way.
Samuel Parker
That sounds rad as fuck.
Ayden Kelly
A stealthy exploration game on a derelict space station that encircles a dead planet like a magic ring, the PCs trying to figure out what happened to the ancient race that created it while avoiding the lethal defense system that is still intact. It would later be revealed that the space station is a giant mall, the dead planet is Earth, and the players are a race of uplifted dogs
James Butler
The PC's all work for a megacorp, they are in charge of the security of a new mining venture in the depths of war-torn africa. They have to content with warlords and a corrupt UN equivalent but can use the security and employment opportunities they bring to the region to earn some loyalty. They must submit requests for gear, infrastructure and missions to the main office, what their employers approve depends on their justification and past accomplishments, so it's a bit like XP.
Matthew Garcia
Been doing a d&d campaign on a planet rather than a plane and was going to figure out a way to get the characters interested in building some kind of magical space boat and turn the campaign into a fantasy space fairing adventure. Not sure how to but was planning on doing it when they start getting high level an bored with the current setting. Any suggestions that aren't too railroady?
Luis Cooper
>>Delta Green
I read this article not too long ago about how the DEA is planning to test the sewage systems of major metropolitan areas for drug consumption information. The idea is that if mass data can be compiled about a region's drug usage, better policing policies can be enacted to ""catch the Bad Guys"".
The idea so far is that some of the DEA people find a sample of radioactive material with a half-life similar to the atomic material used in the bombings of Hiroshima/Nagasaki. From here, the PC's are called in to figure out who the hell is dumping this crap into the water system. It's a good hook in my mind, but I can't figure out where the story should go from here. I've also tossed around the idea of the DEA people finding smallpox, protomatter, or some other concerning sample. But still - no idea how to go any further.
Justin Jackson
eco-terrorists aliens this one kid who made a nuclear reactor in his shed Emperor Norton
Parker Jones
...
Andrew Watson
>One of the worst ways to die is falling off the edge because it takes forever and friction starts to eat away at you long before you hit the water.
