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Any D&D/D20

Shadowrun

World of Darkness

Palladium

Other (feel free to post about it)

[Iduno]

I'm late, but it's the new year.

GMs (and, to a lesser extent players): share your weird ideas for games you've spent more time than reasonable thinking about.

I've mentioned the Shadowrun downtime-based game where characters solve basic living issues between missions.

I may have talked about the (probably 3.x-based) mid-high level D&D game where everyone is from a different setting (including base class/first prestige, and races), and needs to join up with others for revenge and exploring those worlds through violence (look, it's D&D, you don't have that many options). Faerun character who wants revenge on Elminster and the Harpers? Athas-based character who wants to topple the Dragon Princes? Krynn-ish character who realized everyone running a country is a jerk? Etc. The players travel between worlds to get revenge/set things right/take over. Each player would probably have to provide the information to the GM/other players on how the world works to save the GM time learning multiple worlds, but how else do you come up with a backstory?

Also, and Earthdawn campaign featuring players and characters who haven't experienced the world before. Starting inside a kaer (400-year fallout shelter/city), then moving out to see what has changed since people last walked the planet freely (~demons known as horrors took over when the magic level increased enough, then were supposed to be pushed out when the magic level fell back to nothing. It stopped falling, so monsters still exist).

[delphonso]

DnD Fogcourts:
These were popular two years ago or so with Dimension20's Fantasy High and Adventure Zone's ...school thing? Strixhaven just came out as well and all of these made me think about using a school as a meta-narrative of actually teaching the game to players. The idea would be to take 4 or so completely new players (I ran several games for total newbies in this city pre-covid) and to have them learn the game in a school setting. For instance: the scene opens at the end of a lecture explaining how the Help action works and advantage/disadvantage, then the players encounter an enemy who is invisible, thus giving them constant disadvantage, and suggesting they use the help action to defeat it.

Fish out of water:
I've wanted to run this campaign for years, and it is something I often mull over and update/completely change. Our players slip from our world into a DnD world. Fully equipped with the knowledge they have here, they are quickly imbued with magical energy and gain a class. I even had a Hamlet-esque "No man from woman born" kind of thing in the background to tie them into the events of the world.

And many more that I've scrapped. Nothing particularly wild, but ideas I keep coming back to.

In my campaign: my players managed to lie their way out of a betrayal by the man who hired them (pinning a previous assassination on someone else and pushing the innocent, but vengeful line on their employer) They also then kept talking about revolution. When presented with a prime situation for revolution (guards kicking down doors and a propagandist willing to help), they murdered the propagandist, rolled all above 17s on EVERY stealth check for the next half hour and murdered their way through the castle. 3-shots are fun, but they certainly trend toward murder hobo. We discussed a longer campaign, and have decided upon Waterworld.

Pirate ships and sunken dungeons - this will be my first attempt at an aquatic campaign and it will come with 0 landmass. The only solid footing will be the ocean's floor (and the dungeons that litter it) Still figuring out details and waiting on the party creation session this weekend.

[MrRoboto75]

GMs (and, to a lesser extent players): share your weird ideas for games you've spent more time than reasonable thinking about.

many many years ago when 4th ed DND was the bee's knees, the DM and I were early to the game and he had bought some sort of DM supplement for Pathfinder.  One of those ones full of ideas and random generation charts.  We were flipping through it and chuckling at certain stuff in it.

One part had to do with ghost ships (I think), and one of the ideas was an abandoned ship covered in crows.  We joked that literally every surface of the ship, even vertical ones, had birds on them.  Total bird saturation.  IIRC when he actually ran the ship in game, all of the birds were ghosts, being literally anywhere a bird could sit.  They'd dissipate and reform as you walked through them.  I don't recall what was actually on the ship though.

Another thing was a table for random tavern/inn names.  We rolled "The Fat Dryad," which we thought was the funniest shit.  In-game it was a tavern built around the base of a large tree.  The tree trunk was in the center of the building, and the trunk was artfully carved into a jolly fat lady.

[Robsoie]

random generation charts.

Made me remember this rather amazing thing :
http://autorolltables.github.io/

[Iduno]

Pirate ships and sunken dungeons - this will be my first attempt at an aquatic campaign and it will come with 0 landmass. The only solid footing will be the ocean's floor (and the dungeons that litter it) Still figuring out details and waiting on the party creation session this weekend.

This one sounds like fun. Depending on the edition, there are a lot of environmental rules (plus spells and abilities) that don't ever get much use, but could make a big difference in how the game is played. Plus, swimming makes the whole gameboard 3-dimensional.

[delphonso]

It's 5e, which has a few class benefits that are 'can breathe underwater' which are never used otherwise. Yeah, the 3D nature of it is what I'm looking forward to - I offered this among a few options which were all basically 'let delphonso practice designing and describing dungeons' and underwater won by a landslide.

Character creation this weekend.

[Horizon]

Gib me proper necromancer archetype WotC.

[Kagus]

For some time I've wanted to run a small-race fathomlock who sleeps in a barrel of water, which I figured was a great way of actually bringing that little byline into play

A fully oceanic campaign sounds like it could have some very interesting peculiarities to it!

[Iduno]

A fully oceanic campaign sounds like it could have some very interesting peculiarities to it!

Everyone is dirty all of the time for no raisin.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I also forgot the stupid game idea (that I have much less interest in running, so feel free to use the idea) where the players are hired to protect the chosen one during part of a quest to save the world, which only the chosen one can do. The chosen one dies during the first encounter, so the players have the responsibility to doing all of the work, dragging the chosen one around, using spells to make the chosen one speak the incantations, hiring someone to cast anti-decay spells on the corpse, etc.

[Frumple]

Weekend at Bernies, the tabletop campaign, in other words. Rather than a stupid idea, it's one that netted something like twenty million in profit at the box office between it and a sequel

[Cthulhu]

I'm starting a godbound campaign.  It's a very sandbox type of game, partly because that's what the creator likes to do, and also because the characters are demigods and it's kind of impossible to constrain them without flagrant railroading.  Gotta be more creative and make the challenges interesting and complex without just noping their hilariously direct and overpowered solutions, the classic "i want to do a plague story but we have guys who can just cure diseases instantly" except it's for everything.  Orc army led by a dragon-riding epic warlord isn't a campaign, it's like half a session before they nuke his army and the might/sword/alacrity godbound grabs his dragon by the tail and beats him to death with it.

I have a couple vague ideas for a starting point, considering starting them off with a directed mission but then again maybe building a small-scale sandbox area would be better for getting them into the spirit of the game.  The trouble is giving them some grit for their wheels to grip onto but also not getting them into a linear situation they'll have trouble breaking out of.

The current mission idea is a merchant prince in the lawless archipelago region lost a convoy to pirates and has to make an example of them or other groups will get ideas, so he asks them to stow away on a bait ship and deal with them in flashy demigod fashion.  In the process they learn the pirates worship a giant sea monster (envisioning like a giant lobster with humanoid claws instead of pincers and an octopus head), giving them something longer term to deal with if they want.


Actually, I know what I'll do now.  Start in Raktia, which is like Transylvania/the witcher, with scholomance style dark academies and monsters everywhere.  A sage recruited his nephew to help him break into an old tomb for magical treasures, and the kid took a cursed helmet.  It's a modification of the artifact armor in the book, while he wears it he can redirect any damage he takes to willing targets within 100 feet.  The curse is that he becomes increasingly arrogant and reckless and at the same time it demoralizes the people around him into accepting his crazy bullshit and letting him give them his damage, feeling like it's hopeless to resist him.  The helmet can't be removed while he lives, if they want to save him they'll have to find a way to break its enchantment.  Potentially a decent-sized quest if they want to save him, potentially very short if they just drag him somewhere far away and chop his head off.  The sage will reward them if they save his life.  Other than that I'll add some various other small interesting things in the area.

[Iduno]

I'm starting a godbound campaign.  It's a very sandbox type of game, partly because that's what the creator likes to do, and also because the characters are demigods and it's kind of impossible to constrain them without flagrant railroading.  Gotta be more creative and make the challenges interesting and complex without just noping their hilariously direct and overpowered solutions, the classic "i want to do a plague story but we have guys who can just cure diseases instantly" except it's for everything.  Orc army led by a dragon-riding epic warlord isn't a campaign, it's like half a session before they nuke his army and the might/sword/alacrity godbound grabs his dragon by the tail and beats him to death with it.

I have a couple vague ideas for a starting point, considering starting them off with a directed mission but then again maybe building a small-scale sandbox area would be better for getting them into the spirit of the game.  The trouble is giving them some grit for their wheels to grip onto but also not getting them into a linear situation they'll have trouble breaking out of.

The current mission idea is a merchant prince in the lawless archipelago region lost a convoy to pirates and has to make an example of them or other groups will get ideas, so he asks them to stow away on a bait ship and deal with them in flashy demigod fashion.  In the process they learn the pirates worship a giant sea monster (envisioning like a giant lobster with humanoid claws instead of pincers and an octopus head), giving them something longer term to deal with if they want.


Actually, I know what I'll do now.  Start in Raktia, which is like Transylvania/the witcher, with scholomance style dark academies and monsters everywhere.  A sage recruited his nephew to help him break into an old tomb for magical treasures, and the kid took a cursed helmet.  It's a modification of the artifact armor in the book, while he wears it he can redirect any damage he takes to willing targets within 100 feet.  The curse is that he becomes increasingly arrogant and reckless and at the same time it demoralizes the people around him into accepting his crazy bullshit and letting him give them his damage, feeling like it's hopeless to resist him.  The helmet can't be removed while he lives, if they want to save him they'll have to find a way to break its enchantment.  Potentially a decent-sized quest if they want to save him, potentially very short if they just drag him somewhere far away and chop his head off.  The sage will reward them if they save his life.  Other than that I'll add some various other small interesting things in the area.

Sounds a bit like mid-late game for the D&D game I'd like to either run or play in that I mentioned the other day.

Let them come up with their own challenges, put in full-blown gods and other demigods as reasonable (?) opposition, or require discretion for some reason (keep people from getting hurt, avoid full gods hunting and destroying them until they're strong enough, or avoid having everyone see they're powerful and want the players to solve all of their problems). Having the characters know they have a weakness (like the list of weaknesses vampires have, or just they're only human+ and can get stabbed enough to die) means they'll still have to be clever about their problem-solving, but also they have the tools to actually do so.

[Grim Portent]

I find my mind wandering back to Bloodborne, and thinking about how bits of it would work as RPG plots.

In particular the idea of adapting the atrocities of the Old Hunters.

Basic primer for those not familiar with Bloodborne and the Lovecraftian stuff in it; The scholars of the College of Byrgenwerth sought to ascend to a higher state of being through enlightenment, study and self discovery. To this end they trained a group of warrior scholars called hunters to delve into the places in their world that had been touched by eldritch powers, in order to to find knowledge that could further their goal of enlightenment. At some point a group of these hunters were sent to a fishing hamlet that was suspected to be influenced by an eldritch god called a Great One. As part of their investigation they vivsected, butchered and experimented the people of the village, to search for physical changes caused by the presence of the Great One, and ultimately found and murdered the Great One who was pregnant at the time. These acts lead to the hunters and their successors being cursed, and trapped in a nightmarish recreation of these events maintained by the unborn child of the Great One when they died.

So, taking the elements that could work in an RPG format, the college seeking to find eldritch knowledge at any cost, the fishing hamlet, the influence of eldritch beings, potentially the nightmare where reality warps.

The players being murderous scholars is probably a step most would be unwilling to take, so they should probably be present for other reasons, relegating the scholar to an NPC. Probably better as just one or two rather than a larger group, because I feel like having too many would detract from the eldritch aspects of things. So let's say one scholar, there on false pretenses in order to observe the locals with the ultimate intention of abducting and vivisecting them to check if they really are under the influence of something unnatural.

The hamlet itself is a good setting, small, contained, potentially remote, inherently evokes the ocean and the mystery and wonder it involves. So let's say the hamlet is partly corrupted into worshipping the eldritch being involved, and there are physical changes taking place. Not super obvious ones, but more subtle things like skin becoming paler and thinner, eyes more watery and a few strange growths here and there inside the body. They're not bad by any means, the eldritch forces aren't evil, just weird and unnatural.

Eldritch beings, the real meat and potatoes of Bloodborne, and other Lovecraftian material. I think an eldritch entity of some sort basically has to be kept in translating the idea to an RPG, but I'm not sure how much agency it should have. To an extent I lean towards less is more, the entity is present for reasons mortals don't really get and that it can't change or explain to others, and it's not deliberately doing anything to the hamlet. The mere presence of this being is affecting the locals in various ways, making them mutate and go slightly insane. Not sure if I would keep it being pregnant like Kos from Bloodborne was, but it's certainly a good way to emphasise the real horror of the scholars when one tries to cut a pregnant god open to study the foetus they can pull from it in search of a way to become a god themselves.


As for the nightmare, sadly I think it only really fits in the context of being around after the events have taken place, but the core idea of reality being twisted and warped would work as a phenomena that happens when you get close to the eldritch god. Earth, sea and sky warp and weave into strange and unnatural arrangements as higher dimensions intrude upon the mortal world in the presence of the divine.

[Loud Whispers]

Warhammer Fantasy rules or Dark Heresy rules would be neat fits for a bloodborne RPG where mortality, insanity and mutation is high. It wouldn't take very much tweaking at all to just switch all references of Chaos to the Old Blood

Not sure if I would keep it being pregnant like Kos from Bloodborne was, but it's certainly a good way to emphasise the real horror of the scholars when one tries to cut a pregnant god open to study the foetus they can pull from it in search of a way to become a god themselves.

...Some say kosm

[Grim Portent]

Warhammer Fantasy rules or Dark Heresy rules would be neat fits for a bloodborne RPG where mortality, insanity and mutation is high. It wouldn't take very much tweaking at all to just switch all references of Chaos to the Old Blood

Not sure if I would keep it being pregnant like Kos from Bloodborne was, but it's certainly a good way to emphasise the real horror of the scholars when one tries to cut a pregnant god open to study the foetus they can pull from it in search of a way to become a god themselves.

...Some say kosm

Aye, that would be an easy enough conversion, but I'm not sure it would even be necessary. Assuming the PCs are not interested in pursuing enlightenment then they wouldn't necessarily be at risk of going insane or mutating.

A modified Warhammer RPG or World of Darkness would be my go to's for trying to get the authentic Bloodborne experience, but I think a lot of the material would work in most RPGs as long as the players aren't super powerful in a 'rewrite reality to save everyone,' kind of way. The primary vibe is horror, and while some RPGs don't do horror well a very large part of it comes down to presentation more than it does mechanics.

Like, the intersecting lines of horror I see here come from the fact there is no good choice.

The Great One is innocent, acting without malice and maybe even without control, but her mere presence has ramifications for others. Terrible ramifications.

The fishing hamlet haven't done anything wrong, they were just keeping to themselves, but now they are twisting and warping. Some of them are in great pain and could be in need of euthanasia, some of them have become dangerous to others through no fault of their own.

The scholar has done a lot wrong, but for arguably good, albeit selfish, reasons. The eldritch and mystical unrestrained does terrible things to people, but only through understanding can it be controlled and harnessed. Enlightenment at any cost is arguably preferable to expectant mothers being consumed from within when their foetus turns into a hive of carnivorous eels because the Stars are Right.

No matter how hard you swing a sword or how much fire you can conjure in your hands this situation remains horrible, because there are only horrible ways to fix it.