Okay, guys, let's come up with some interesting, uncommon plot hooks / adventure ideas for fantasy. Please, keep it rather serious.
>in a sudden burst of light a man from another world appears before the party. He asks them for help in a barely recognizable language. He has odd weapons and magic doesn't work around him. Sometimes odd things happen around him, like shadows appearing mid-air or small items starting to hover
Bumping with content
>all over the world portals appear. They lead to eerie pocket worlds - if you walk in them around thousand paces you are back to where you started. Each one of them has some unnerving quality
>party meets a silent knight. After a while it turns out he is a slime that evolved due to the armour's magical aura.
>A ship carrying a royal messenger has sunk off of the coast. The King needs a group of adventurers to collect the signet ring lost in the wreckage, it has been enchanted with a tracking spell to make sure it would never be lost and it appears to have been moving against the currents.
>the PCs are just a group of military advisors to an inferior ally to help them out in a war
>"Now we can begin" you hear a familiar yet alien voice say as your eyes focus. You think you can detect some excitedness in her(?) voice but you can't be sure.
>You immediately notice your surroundings. You're in an inn that you do not recognise. You can't remember where you are or how you got here.
>"I have a serious matter to discuss with you all"
>You look to your left and right, noticing the other people around you as adventurers, you seem to all have different specialties, but none of them are people you've ever met.
>"I'm sorry, I know this is confusing, but I am in desperate need, and all my churches and agents have been compromised!"
>Your attention finally rests on the woman(?) in front you you. She(?) is wearing long flowing robes, and what appears to be a necklace of a holy symbol. In fact, it's on her robes as well
>Now you're looking her(?) in the eyes, you can see a face covered in tattoos similar to the symbols, an clearly elven face but yet...
>"I do not have much (chuckles nervously) time with you before you must begin so I will be brief..."
>The symbols, the tattoos, the face. Your mind screams imcomprehensibly, having apparently figured out who this is before you did.
>Suddenly, you catch it
>no, it couldn't be
>this is...
>"I am Chronaselia, the Lady of Time"
>"I have gathered you from all corners of the realm because I need your help. A half-elf named Crasius Norai has taken the Staff of Time and has been interfering my with the natural order."
>"I have managed to seal him within a time loop, but he will inevitably work out how to use the staff to escape."
>"This is your task: You must retrieve the staff from him before he escapes the loop."
>"the loop is a week long, beginning at dawn on the first day and ending at dusk on the last. When this time is reached, the loop resets"
>"If you fall, I can reset the loop, and you will all remember every previous loop, but none of the locals will."
>"You are my final hope. Good luck."
>local merchant republic is going to have an election for a doge. One of the candidates is an adult red dragon. He seems to gather more followers each day.
>A society of assassins has recently been attacked by a rival group and been decimated though eventually throwing them back. They need to hit back to maintain face and reassert their position in the criminal underground but lack the bodies necessary to pull off the assault. They do have large coffers still though and would like to hire your party to perform the assault.
>the chosen hero of legend sir bernard stops by a common tavern on his way to some big something or other for some big important quest
>that night he becomes immensely inebriated from constant offers of free booze and amorous attention from women for the famous hero
>through the night of debauchery he manages to drunkenly mention details of the key significance him delivering his magic ancient sword reaching a certain place by certain deadline to stop certain Bad Stuff from happening
>as morning draws and the party of village locals try to help the hero get sobered up to continue his quest the hero manages to, through comical clumsiness, cause his own accidental death
>the village is one of the last frontier stops of civilization and it would take days for a message to reach anyone of real authority
>the village elder, also present, appoints the party to keep the secret from the village and deliver the knight and his sword to the necessary place by the appointed time at weeks end
>local merchant republic is going to have an election for a doge
Such intrigue
Very election
So civics
Wow
>PCs want to join an established adventurer's guild
>halfway through their tryout, a powerful enemy of the guild's leaders attacks the keep
>the guild leaders are killed along with everyone else
>now the party has to fight its way back from the nations of death and get revenge against an enemy many times stronger than they, while also searching across the afterlife for the dead guild leaders and other allies
This might not be appropriate for your campaign (I've used it to death because I run games where this sort of thing is normal, and it makes a great first adventure)
> The Winter King is a spirit who lives in a palace on Mount Snow. He oversees the spirit world as far as that mountain can be seen. Every spring, the Winter King's son assassinates him and takes the crown. Every summer, the king rules the spirits kindly and justly. Every fall, the king has a son, and slowly becomes paranoid about his destiny to be assassinated by his son. Every winter, the king, now cruel and paranoid, throws the young prince out, ultimately causing the prince's actions.
> It's late May and it's still winter everywhere you can see Mount Snow.
>
> If the players go to investigate this, they usually find the cowardly prince hiding in a tree as wolves bark at him. I usually have some other spirit mess up the cycle for their own gains, but you could also have a mundane lord be responsible for this shit. The sensible solution is to rescue the guy and help him regain his confidence as you fight your way up the mountain and deal with whatever extra shit has been thrown into this cycle. Later, you go figure out why the hell someone wanted to do this.
> A crazed mage has discovered a flawed version of the spell dimension door that combines any two things together when sent through, uses this to create many magical and deadly beasts
>people in the village your party wandered to seems to completely ignore one of your members as if he just wasn't there. Sometimes someone will bump into him, totally confused.
>contact players individually for interest in campaign
>send everybody slightly different setting information
>run this
>the PCs realize shortly after meeting each other that they're not just from different places but also different eras
>you sent each player information for a different time period
that would be a fucking trip. I want to run this now.
I run a barbarians of Lemuria game packed full of stuff like this:
>desert kingdom has a sphinx-king who is an actual sphinx.
(no player has ever seen this coming somehow)
The ruse would be up instantly when more than one player asked you about a location they wanted to travel to.
I don't follow. Do you mean if they asked out of game/character?
Ish. Like if they asked what their character would know about the city. Any reasonable detail you've left out of the lore dump that would be different between characters. You're basically the Knave in a KKN problem. Players will catch on to your inconsistencies quickly.
The orc ambassador was assassinated in the human court during the great peace signing. Fullblown war has once again broken out between orcs and humans, and it is bloodier and more vengeful than ever. Meanwhile the PCs, working for the local detective beurau, receive an interesting lead pointing to a deep plot by the elves...
I take issue with the idea that the plot could be all that deep. If elves have even one interest that doesn't align with either party then they have basic motive.
Yeah but the fun is in what comes next. How do they deal?
>all PCs are clones of the same person, with slightly differing stats - the original couldn't decide what his new body template would be good at so he just had them all made
>have then roll for stats
>hand them numbered enevelopes
>"these are your character portraits"
Motive does not prove guilt, simple user. And plots can be deep regardless of motive.
So, what makes a plot "deep" then?
It occurs to me that I honestly don't know. Does it just mean it's been floating around for a long time?
I like this hook.
>PCs are advising/training local forces in a buffer state.
>Enemies are also inferior, but superior in number and better morale.
>War starts falling apart despite PCs best effort.
>Campaign ends with the PCs being dismissed for "incompetence," their home nation marching in to intervene.
nice, very terry pratchetty
Reposting my version of a hook I saw on here a long time ago I've always wanted to run.
>You all meet on a tavern
>Literally, on top of it. The PCs were all traveling in the area, a valley near the ocean, for one reason or another, when a massive flash flood swept the area and you all managed to find shelter on the top of the same alehouse.
>The mermen of the coast have discovered that this area used to be underwater during the reign of the legendary King Quarius. They've come to reclaim his palace.
Doge, as in mayor, not Doge as in dog, you disgusting illiterate plebian
A demon challenges the party to game of texas hold um, the stakes are ANYTHING you care to bet, including skills, memories, years off your life, etc.
>Calling 'Plebians' out.