Author Topic: Your Adventure Idea Wish List  (Read 3488 times)

Offline Libertad

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Your Adventure Idea Wish List
« on: August 27, 2015, 10:47:27 PM »


Torch of the Burning Sky by Claudio Pozas

Maybe it's a published adventure.  Maybe it's a pitched campaign concept, but your regular gaming group's not biting.  Maybe you're one of those idea guys, who has all sorts of neat creations yet little time to play them all.  This is such a post, a wish list of adventures and campaigns I'd like to try out one of these days.  It's unlikely that I'll try any of them soon, especially the more long-term ones, but a guy can dream.

Below are the major campaign ideas, both original and published, I want to try out one day.  What adventures are on your wish list?  Feel free to share!

1. X-Crawl Road Trip: The PCs are an internationally famous crew of gladiators in the Roman Empire's most popular reality television contest. Their next destination is a dungeon-crawl in Lawrence, Kansas, and they travel in a luxury entourage of limousines and summoned mounts. Unfortunately their magically-powered transportation runs out of gas smack-dab on a highway somewhere in Middle America. Celebrity status can only get them so far, and they need to get to Lawrence within 72 hours or else their position is forfeit! Do they go monster-hunting to raise gas money, hitch-hike with a bus full of demon-worshiping metalheads, or steal their rival crawlers' truck golem when they stop at the local bar and grill?

Yes, I'm partially inspired by Final Fantasy XV for this.

2. Red Dragon Inn: I actually played 2 sessions of this before, but I'd like to run it again someday. Basically I utilize the rules from Red Dragon Inn: Guide to Inns & Taverns. The PCs inherit an inn which has a statue dedicating to a goddess of hearth and home in the basement. Satisfied customers generate energy of positive feeling, which the statue can then convert into magical items and other things PCs enjoy. Meanwhile the surrounding lands contain room for adventure, such as a fabled magical icebox which can preserve perishable food for weeks. There are also potentially interesting encounters, such as a 1st-level destined hero who stops at the inn...while the demon lord's agents tasked with her destruction are also staying there!

3. Slay la Slay: A Tome of Battle/Path of War-centric game where the PCs are students at a fabled Battle Academy, disciples of a monk's monastery, or some other environment heavily inspired by shounen/seinen fighting anime. And yes, it's expected that people will shout out the names of their maneuvers in combat.

Will include a cloud/storm giant with a size-changing ring in charge of student discipline.

4. Sword of Levity: Published Adventure.  A campaign utilizing the Sword of Air sandbox adventure by Frog God Games, only this plays up some of the more whimsical and sillier elements.

5. Way of the Wicked: Published Adventure.  The PCs are a fifth columnist cell of devil-worshipers plotting to overthrow the holy and virtuous nation of Talingarde.  They will engage in all manner of dastardly plots such as outfitting a dungeon to guard against pesky adventurers, sabotage a border fortress so that a monstrous horde can break through into the heartland, and even form their own evil organization!

6. Zeitgeist: the Gears of Revolution: Published Adventure.  Set in a pseudo-Victorian nation of Risur experiencing an industrial revolution of technomagic, the PCs are royal agents tasked with stopping threats to king and country.  Urban investigation and conspiracies amid a steampunk backdrop.

7. Rappan Athuk Charity Crawl: Published Adventure.  The name of the game is to see how far the players can get in this megadungeon without dying horribly.  Dead PCs are replaced with new ones, so even a TPK is not the end of the campaign.

Inspired by Final Fantasy's Four Job Fiesta charity, turning it into a charity even via livestream can be a cool idea.  Pledging to donate $1 for every dead PC, $10 for every dungeon level cleared, or something to that effect.

8. War of the Burning Sky: Published Adventure.  A mighty empire's ruler is killed, and civil war sweeps over this fantasy world of high magic as twelve would-be conquerors bring chaos and bloodshed to the realms. The PCs join a resistance movement to bring freedom and vanquish Evil from the oppressed realms!

9. The Dragonlance Chronicles: Published Adventure.  Naturally I'll alter the adventure in many ways to update it to modern standards, but its prominent status, as well as being the ur-adventure path, have an appeal to me.
« Last Edit: August 27, 2015, 10:53:44 PM by Libertad »

Offline linklord231

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Re: Your Adventure Idea Wish List
« Reply #1 on: August 28, 2015, 02:11:16 AM »
I would love to play or run a Witcher-inspired campaign, in which the PCs are a band of monster hunters.  It would focus heavily on investigation and preparation.  The PCs need to figure out what exactly it is that's causing the problem and how to deal with it before they stand a chance.  It might work well in E6, but I feel like a non-D&D system might work best for this. 

I'd also really like to play a couple of published modules/adventure paths - Kingmaker, Rise of the Runelords, Wrath of the Righteous, and Red Hand of Doom.

Games where the players pit their skill against a pre-written dungeon are really appealing to me.  Tomb of Horrors, Rappan Athuk, World's Largest Dungeon, that king of thing.  I'd like to give a Dungeon Crawl Classic game a shot at some point. 

I've been itching to play in a game where the PCs are affiliated with a powerful merchant house, and they have to go around and make deals with other houses, explore new trade routes, discover new sources of natural resources, and generally make a boatload of money.  Like Rogue Trader, but on a smaller scale and in a fantasy world. 

If I can find a willing group, I'd like to experiment with some non-D&D systems.  Poison'd, Dogs in the Vineyard, Dungeon World, Shadowrun, Monster Hearts, Burning Wheel, Fate, Marvel Heroic RPG (and other Cortex Plus games like Leverage or Firefly), Savage Worlds, OSR stuff like Lamentations of the Flame Princess or Fantasy Craft, Ars Magicka, Warhammer 40k games like Rogue Trader, Numenara, Fantasy Age, 13th Age, Legend...  Basically, I want to try everything. 
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Offline Libertad

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Re: Your Adventure Idea Wish List
« Reply #2 on: August 28, 2015, 01:06:56 PM »

If I can find a willing group, I'd like to experiment with some non-D&D systems.  Poison'd, Dogs in the Vineyard, Dungeon World, Shadowrun, Monster Hearts, Burning Wheel, Fate, Marvel Heroic RPG (and other Cortex Plus games like Leverage or Firefly), Savage Worlds, OSR stuff like Lamentations of the Flame Princess or Fantasy Craft, Ars Magicka, Warhammer 40k games like Rogue Trader, Numenara, Fantasy Age, 13th Age, Legend...  Basically, I want to try everything.

These five bolded things are also RPGs I have on my bucket list of games to try.  Right now I'm rather busy GMing one weekly game, and another soon, as well as participating in a 3rd one, but in the future I'll keep you in mind.

Offline Nanshork

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Re: Your Adventure Idea Wish List
« Reply #3 on: August 28, 2015, 04:35:25 PM »
I have a Savage Worlds game that I really want to run: War of the Dead.

There's also a game called Abandon All Hope with a published adventure path.  It's about prisoners on a space prison ship in a hell dimension.

Offline Pity Crit

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Re: Your Adventure Idea Wish List
« Reply #4 on: August 30, 2015, 07:25:43 PM »
I'd like somebody to rewrite Dreams Of Ruin into a coherent, more fantasy-oriented product. Then I'd like to run that. It's about a magical, self-sustaining cursed forest will cover and destroy the campaign world that it appears on. The players need to embark on some crazy Manhattan Project style stuff to fight it. Grand ideas, but the product is difficult to use, even bordering on incoherent.
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Offline Yirrare

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Re: Your Adventure Idea Wish List
« Reply #5 on: September 01, 2015, 03:00:05 AM »
I would absolutely love to play in a city based campaign as part of a group of dedicated sneaks. The group would then be given missions highly focused on stealth such as steal that super-secured diamond without being seen, sneak in to this guys bedroom and plant a horse head in his bed while he sleeps etc.

It would be so fun to build a group of sneaky bastards, making sure you have all the necessary tools to get in and out unseen.
Ways to take out guards (preferable non lethal, so literally no evidence of someone having been there exist), modify memory to wipe any sight of you etc.

That is definitely on my wishlist.

Best Regards
Yirrare

Offline stanprollyright

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Re: Your Adventure Idea Wish List
« Reply #6 on: September 02, 2015, 01:40:49 AM »
In no particular order:

Viva La Revolution! - The PCs must overthrow an oppressive regime via infiltration, assassination, recruiting powerful allies, and building an army out of regular citizens, and then set up their own government before the nation is consumed by chaos.

Modern Apocalypse - Angels, demons, and monsters from other dimensions suddenly appeared in the 21st Century and wreaked havoc, leaving traces of their magical energy in everything they touched. In the generations after, the world has become a steampunky mix of magic and preserved technology.

The Alamo - The PCs are soldiers tasked with holding a fortress in a strategic location, with no hope of reinforcements. They must defeat wave after wave of enemies, tower defense style.

Paizo's Kingmaker Adventure Path (or similar) - The PCs build a civilization from the ground up.

Strike Team Alpha - The PCs are an elite infiltration strike force during wartime.

No Honor Among Thieves - The PCs are scoundrels who must unite the local criminals and establish a Thieves Guild and an Assassin's Guild.

Yarr Matey! - The PCs are swashbuckling pirates who capture merchant ships and dodge the Imperial Navy.

Time Lords - The PCs get the power of time travel. 'Nuff said.

The Historical Campaign - Take your favorite historical period and plop your heroes into it, giving them a chance to change the events.

EDIT: So a lot of these could go together really well. Time Travelers from the future going through history trying to prevent the Apocalypse by toppling regimes, organizing criminals, and winning lost wars... I think I just came up with my next campaign.
« Last Edit: September 02, 2015, 01:43:08 AM by stanprollyright »
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Offline linklord231

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Re: Your Adventure Idea Wish List
« Reply #7 on: September 02, 2015, 02:46:24 AM »
A couple years ago, I toyed with the idea of combining several of the campaigns and modules I wanted to play/run in to one big mega-campaign.  Start out at a low level, tasked to explore a huge sandbox area like the first part of Kingmaker.  Inside the sandbox would be at least one of the "killer dungeon" style modules - maybe the PCs would find the Tomb of Acererak, or perhaps the Temple of Elemental Evil would be found near one of the larger towns.  When the PCs reached an appropriate level, they would be granted titles to the land they had explored, like the 2nd and onward Kingmaker adventures.  Once they started to get settled in to life as rulers of a small nation, their fledgling kingdom would be attacked by the Red Hand of Doom. 

I briefly considered the possibility of using a different system for the "rulership" aspect of this campaign, to make it more "political intrigue-y".  3.5 doesn't support that kind of high-level kingdom management thing very well mechanics-wise, so I thought maybe having the players convert their characters to something that does this better might be worthwhile.  Then, when we zoom in to the more personal scale, switch back to 3.5.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find a system I liked enough to spend the effort on hacking it together. 
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Offline stanprollyright

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Re: Your Adventure Idea Wish List
« Reply #8 on: September 02, 2015, 05:40:18 AM »
We did something similar in the Living Greyhawk. It was one of the best campaigns I've ever played, in fact. My DM stitched together a bunch of Greyhawk adventures and premade one-offs, changed a few names, and wherever we went he would have a published adventure for that area. We were all either neutral or evil, so we approached every situation like mob bosses. "Cooperate, and we treat you like family. Don't, and we'll kill you." Most of the local monsters that were intelligent enough to make a deal with ended up joining forces, or at least agreed to leave whoever sent us on the quest alone (so the locals were happy). We ended up driving out the "theocracy" part of the Theocracy of the Pale, and my LE Wizard made some backroom deals and a political marriage to make myself the Dictator of Pale, joined with the Duchy of Urnst. Our Half-Orc Barb went to all the local orc tribes and challenged the tribe leaders to single combat, netting him an army of orcs. Our elf Druid, who was true neutral, made friends with all the local druids and the elves of whatever nearby forest, and the dwarven fighter found a clan of dwarves from the mountains. From these factions we established a five-nation conglomerate and set up a congress where we appointed all our favorite NPCs. Of course, all of this was made possible by the BBEG of the area marching a giant army through the continent, and we all came together just in time to prepare for and repel the invasion at my capital city where I telepathically controlled the whole battle (I had a Mindbender dip, and the DM let me build a chair that extended the range, like Dr. Xavier's in X Men).

Yeah...that was a great campaign. We went from level 1 to 10 or 11 before real life got in the way of being able to meet.
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Offline TenaciousJ

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Re: Your Adventure Idea Wish List
« Reply #9 on: September 02, 2015, 10:19:00 AM »
All my stuff is Eberron.  I try to give room for every major NPC to be an ally or an enemy.

1.  What appears to be a new silver flame is going to appear in the hobgoblin nation Darguun and choose the high warlord as its speaker.  At the same time, all three races of goblinoids in the nation are developing aberrant dragonmarks.  Rumors will spread around about the original silver flame in Thrane being corrupted.  The PCs will be diplomats/investigators/spies to figure out what's going on.  They can build an alliance, undermine the leadership of the nation in several different ways, or try to usurp the power the high warlord has been granted.  At least 2 other nations will be involved and several of the dragonmarked houses.

2.  A 13th dragonmark appears, sparking the formation of a 14th dragonmarked house.  Dragons following the part of the draconic prophecy which seems to mandate 13 houses decide to try to eliminate House Phiarlan or House Thuranni (they have the same mark for those who don't know the setting) to reduce the number of houses to 13.  I'll let the players choose which house they work for and present plot threads that lead to choices such as destroying the rival house, reuniting the 2 houses of shadow instead of destroying 1, destroying a different house altogether, or directly opposing the dragons who try to meddle in mortal affairs from detached positions.

3.  House Orien has figured out a way to build underground and undersea lightning rail-equivalents.  The PCs, as members of the house, will have be the negotiators to start the construction projects and have to deal with interference from local governments, protecting the construction through wilder areas including tunneling under the Mournland, dealing with saboteurs from House Lyrandar, and potentially dealing with the discovery of a massive Sahuagin city under the sea between two of the continents they're trying to link.

I would absolutely love to play in a city based campaign as part of a group of dedicated sneaks. The group would then be given missions highly focused on stealth such as steal that super-secured diamond without being seen, sneak in to this guys bedroom and plant a horse head in his bed while he sleeps etc.

It would be so fun to build a group of sneaky bastards, making sure you have all the necessary tools to get in and out unseen.
Ways to take out guards (preferable non lethal, so literally no evidence of someone having been there exist), modify memory to wipe any sight of you etc.

That is definitely on my wishlist.

Best Regards
Yirrare

I have run exclusively urban campaigns for the last 3 years and I have yet to collect a group of people who wants to play like that.  They can't resist the urge to get into big brawls.  I want to see how a campaign would play out if they would try to sneak around and BS their way through everything.
« Last Edit: September 02, 2015, 10:41:01 AM by TenaciousJ »
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