Campaigns/settings my players rejected this month :

Campaigns/settings my players rejected this month :

>A squad of infantry tasked with waging a counter insurgency campaign in a Valkyria type setting
>A group of merchants purchasing a ship together in a cartel to go tramp trading/exploring for new markets in a high fantasy setting (This would have been good, I was prepared to have price lists of goods and rumours and islands to explore etc.)
>A squadron of spacefighter pilots (the plan was to merge tabletop wargaming and RPGing)
>The players would have been the station for the town watch in a particularly rough area, with a series of grisly occult murders to investigate (the only player who voted for this only voted for it so he could shout WHOOP WHOOP DATS DA SOUND OF DA POLICE at annoyingly loud volums)

What they voted to play instead
>Generic AD&D campaign that's we've been playing for the past 5 years

Every few months I try to get them to play something else. We don't even have to abandon the long term campaign, we could just put it on ice ofr a few months.

Well, if that's what they like, that's what they like. I don't think they'd be well-suited to the other campaigns anyway.

Try a couple short one-shots incorporating these new ideas, give them something to chew on before they eat the whole turkey

I legitimately feel bad for you, OP, if only because I know from experience that 90% of GM's only ever offer a generic D&D setting.

>counter insurgency & cartel merchants & csi borderland
These sound badass and I'd love to try them out.

Be the change you want to see in the world.
Find players who want to play what you want to run.

>been playing for the past 5 years
Well that might be the issue. It's hard enough getting people to try new things without ALSO asking them to stop doing something they're already familiar with.

Why were you asking them to start new campaigns in the middle of an existing one first? End the AD&D game, give them some satisfying closure, and maybe you'll have better luck? Maybe? I mean, you probably won't, because people hate mew things, but it's worth a shot.

>A squad of infantry tasked with waging a counter insurgency campaign in a Valkyria type setting

that sounds awesome user. youre players a shit

I've found the best way to get around this is to do stuff like take the 'classic' generic AD&D campaign and then twist it slightly. I eventually got my players into new things by basically doing what seemed like a generic AD&D campaign, but actually have it be more sandbox than plot train. Eventually the players came around and started introducing their own motives and ideas rather than just 'where go for plot next?' and after that they're ripe for something like:

>A group of merchants purchasing a ship together in a cartel to go tramp trading/exploring for new markets in a high fantasy setting (This would have been good, I was prepared to have price lists of goods and rumours and islands to explore etc.)

Once you've hit them with something like that, they'll be ready for more ''''unusual'''' (to your average D&D babby) settings and systems. Admittedly there are some players who are just too retarded to make anything but the cut and done generic fantasy plot train game work.

Run the campaign you want to run. You're putting a lot more work into it than the players are, you have a right to say "this is how it's gonna be" and they can just deal with it.

They're really invested in their PCs now I think. A couple of them are onto their second generation in an adventuring dynasty (I advanced time a few times during the campaign). It's cool they're having fun and enjoying it, but I really want to do other things. The other issue is I'm feeling quite burned out on this campaign setting. I'm really struggling to think up new plots, and I think that's because I just don't really want to do it, so my brain is blocking it.


That one made me quite sad because the rationale they gave for voting it down was it "sounds depressing". It made me feel quite bad because it was like they were saying "You're a good storyteller and all, but don't try to grow or try new things. You'd be shit at that."

can they even be considered human? I don't think so

Jeez. I feel you OP. Reminds me of my highschool playgroup, except they didn't even have the balls to bow out. They acted interested up until time to actually play, then half the group would mysteriously come down with other engagements until I gave up and said we were going back to 3.pf. Happened when we tried to play Exalted, happened when we tried doing a modern horror/mystery, happened when we just tried to switch to a non-D&D fantasy game. They just hated the idea of doing something new

Maybe they just want heroic adventuring.

Still, feels kinda bad, try talking them into one-shot, i guess?

This, keeping the GM happy is the players' only responsibility.

Find another group user.

>A squadron of spacefighter pilots (the plan was to merge tabletop wargaming and RPGing)
I've always wanted to do something like this, but more with the players being the bridge crew/command staff on a major warship than just fighter pilots.

Those all sound boring desu

...

old bait, nothing new here, move on now

I've had a few ideas that have been shot down at various points:

>Party is spies in an alt Cold War where Axis powers still exist, making the world torn between NATO, Communism, and Fascism in a much more precarious peace, like every day is the Cuban Missile Crisis
>Party consists of Washington state-based insurgents against a future Chinese invasion. On the flip side, the party ALSO plays a group of chinese soldiers who are doing COIN work, so they see both sides of a conflict and have different approaches.
>Party consists of investigative journalism crew + mercenary escorts who are doing war coverage in an African civil war, with US/China funding proxy groups, mining megacorps, and a despotic government in an attempt to posture for rare resources
>In a post-Batman Gotham (after he gets Bane'd), a group of Gotham PD members decides to go rogue and clean up the streets, Punisher-style.
>in the period between Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, the party is a team of bounty hunters trying to track down a murderous space pirate who, unbeknownst to most, actually managed to steal information pertaining to the embryonic CIS movement (including the fact that Count Dooku is now Darth Tyrannus).
>A straight-up Ancient Greek campaign, where the party are the heroes of the day (since the others are away at Troy, so the monster population hasn't been kept down).
>a very brief campaign where the party would part of a space ship crew on a manned mission to Titan. On the way, they would intercept a message, which would turn out to be a distress signal on a secret Chinese asteroid military base, which upon docking locks them in via power failure. The party would then have to try to repair the station so they can get the hangar doors back open, evade the base auto-defenses, get back in contact with Earth, and avoid the parasitic alien threat the Chinese dug up on Europa, which now desperately wants to get back to Earth and spread.

Another:
>Players are "themselves" during a school shooting on our college campus by several gunmen, and their friends have been taken hostage. Edgy, I admit, but they were actually pretty interested in it at first
>Players have to escape a small city during a Kaiju attack a la Cloverfield or Godzilla
>players are a shipping company that, after a shipwreck, have to navigate/diplomacy their way through a militia territorial dispute.
>Players are lower-mid level characters who are given a Lich's phylactery, and they have to figure out how to destroy it... but it can only be destroyed a certain way. So every once in a while, they have to deal with a growing "lesser" Lich that just pops up and starts wrecking shit, lest it regrow into its Final Form.
>Players didn't want to play a hunter-gatherer campaign where they find themselves on the recieving end of Colonialism, when an early 15th century-tier power shows up and starts wrecking their people
>players didn't want to play a campaign where they are a trade/merc company on a new continent in a fantasy world, turning in monster hides, plundering new ruins, etc. for money and glory.

Idk, they are finnicky as hell. They LOVE eberron though...

>Party consists of Washington state-based insurgents against a future Chinese invasion. On the flip side, the party ALSO plays a group of chinese soldiers who are doing COIN work, so they see both sides of a conflict and have different approaches.
All of my yes! I want to beat down protesters that become PC's who firebomb Town halls and see it spiral downwards into a bottomless pit of atrocities and war crimes filling everyone involved with that sweet, sweet sadness that makes you call your parents to apologize for not being a better Son/Daughter.

>investigative journalism crew + mercenary escorts who are doing war coverage in an African civil war
>Gotham PD members [...] clean up the streets, Punisher-style.
>That last one
These 3 are great too.

>>Players are lower-mid level characters who are given a Lich's phylactery, and they have to figure out how to destroy it... but it can only be destroyed a certain way. So every once in a while, they have to deal with a growing "lesser" Lich that just pops up and starts wrecking shit, lest it regrow into its Final Form.
This sounds fun. I'd imagine the phylactery already got 'cracked' a bit due to an action the players did, and the Lich didn't reform instantly or fully - instead, imagine a skull with little skeletal arms and legs that slowly grows more bones until it's a full skeleton. The PCs can destroy it again in its weakened state, but the skele-imp will just reform again after a day or so, trying to hinder the PCs from destroying the phylactery. I'd imagine the first time the PCs and the Lich meet the Lich blurted out that they must've damaged the phylactery, just so the PCs have motivation to destroy the phylactery.

Instead of locking in their character ideas you could present them with the problems in play. >you're investigating a series of grisly occult muders
Instead of forcing them into being just the town watch. Puts a stereotype/stigma on the character's they'd have to make in order to fit your story.
I don't think there's an issue writing a story or having a plan in place before characters are made, but I don't think you should - potentially - limit the player options.

If they're so stuck on old characters, kill or age them off in your setting. Shitty, but they can't play them if the characters can't adventure anymore.

Yeah it was something like that. Early lich would have basically been mid-level sorcerer-tier, something they could feasibly handle, but with time it would go full-on "9th level spell caster" with all the bullshit that could imply. The Lich would actually be a key component of their tactics too, seeing as they would grow to "predict" the lich, and could use it to their advantage.

Ie., Bandit Camp? Why not toss them the phylactery as part of the "booty", and watch a raging pseudo-lich start tossing fireballs around with reckless abandon. Dragon? temporarily team-up with the lich, which detects the dragon as a threat to the phylactery.

I actually was really far into the basic groundwork for the COIN/Wolverines one, but they thought playing as the Chinese would get dumb. "we shouldn't be fighting ourselves user GM :(". I was really excited to see how they would consistently out-do themselves, with the Chinese having a more "heavy tech-bruiser" style due to their fire-support options and equipment and the insurgents having a more... well, guerilla stealthy style as they blend in with the populace. I thought it would be fun.. At least it isn't another edition of Elder Scrolls: Sky-Pirate Blimps they love..

>Investigative crew + Journalism
I actually started that with a secondary group, with a team of:
>Investigative journalist
>former INTERPOL agent
>Local guide who was a child soldier for one of the local militias in the past
>Former South African wildlife manager/anti-poacher
>Doctor's without Borders/former French Foreign Legion combat medic who decided to hang around after the MSF pulled out due to violence

The Interpol dude managed to, in a very short period:
>Sneak a makarov into the Chinese embassy on a very basic fact-finding mission, then proceed to try to intimidate a guard in the bathroom, resulting in him critically wounding a Chinese soldier and fleeing through the window
1/2

2/2
The Interpol dude managed to, in a very short period:
>Sneak a makarov into the Chinese embassy on a very basic fact-finding mission, then proceed to try to intimidate a guard in the bathroom, resulting in him critically wounding a Chinese soldier and fleeing through the window
>set a savannah on fire in an attempt to keep poachers from poaching, only to instead literally destroy a delicate ecosystem
>pick a fight with some militia for no reason other than "I thought they were like bandits in skyrim who would just die quickly and have shitty weapons", even though I explicitly detailed the militia armament as consisting of DShK heavy machine guns, AKMs, a few M16s, and an RPG-7
>flatout threatened a USAF Brigadier General with violence in the middle of a US drone-base, surrounded by spec ops "advisors to the local government".
That campaign didn't last too long.

Sounds like you're some kind of tryhard faggot who doesn't realize how to stay friends with his friends, chimpo.

>2017
>"I set the environment on fire"
Players never change.

What system did you use, if any?

>Look mom I'm being a contrarian on the internet again!

eh this was 2015.

A modified version of D20 modern, but using some of Star Wars SAGA (ie., armor is damage reduction). To compensate for it being relatively low level (it was more "i'll tell you when you level" than XP crunching) there was basic feat "talent trees" they could go down for the classes that were accelerated versions of what they could normally get. It probably sounds kinda janky, and probably was, but that group was "3.X or nothin" and it was an uphill battle just to get them to 5e, let alone get them to something more suited to modern combat. I had run a straight D20 modern post-apocalypse campaign though, so chopping what i wanted and splicing other things in was pretty straightforward.

My group does this too...
>Yah user, I think it would totally be cool to run a Road Warriors-setting
>Aw... ok yah we'll learn Savage Worlds...
>Yah, you know, it's just not a good time cuz _____ (x4 people, x5 weeks in a row)

I feel you, I didn't even try new settings ideas, just wanted to play new systems but not, let's play D&D because it's what we know. Are people just too lazy or stupid to learn new things?

Its lazy. Creativity is a DM skill apparently

>play a infantryman
>play a merchant
>play a spacefighter pilot
>play a member of the town watch

If all your players don't want to play an infantryman, a merchant, a spacefighter pilot or a member of the town watch, then it doesn't matter how good the campaigns you've got planned out are for these things. A campaign description that begins with "you're X" will immediately turn off players who aren't interested in X, even if the setting details of A, B and C might otherwise appeal to them.

Set the campaign world up, decide on a theme and a tone, and give the players a bit of freedom in terms of the characters they'll use to explore it.

But sometimes you want to run something that really only works with a certain set of character types. I don't think it's unreasonable to say "Your character has to have trait X,Y,or Z. You're free to design the rest of them how you please but they must be one of those things in order for the campaign to work". There's only so many times you can work with a ragtag group of misfits from unlikely backgrounds working together for no real reason

this, sometimes you just have to say "you can't just be wandering orphans this time"

Neither side is being particularly unreasonable. You can, as a GM, suggest a campaign with a fairly narrow focus in terms of what players will play because it's what interests you. They can, as players, choose not to play because it's not what interests them.

If you want there to be a shared trait, ask them to come up with a shared trait to design around. If you're trying to get them to have a shared trait to avoid yet-another-party-of-misfits-who-have-no-connection-to-one-another, ask them come up with the shared trait. Perhaps they all want to be sailors, or spies, or.. something. But chances are good that each of the players know what it is they like to play. It's less frustrating to let them come up with a trait that they can all agree on than come up with campaign ideas based around a party all sharing a trait that none of the players are interested in.

>>A squad of infantry tasked with waging a counter insurgency campaign in a Valkyria type setting
>>A squadron of spacefighter pilots (the plan was to merge tabletop wargaming and RPGing)


Military campaigns are miserable linear railroads most of the time. They are right not to want them.