As a perma-DM I'm always thinking of neat ideas for campaigns or epic stories, but many that will never see the light of day.
I've had some great ideas that I'll likely never have a chance to actually use for one reason or another, such as lacking a group at the time, the idea being "stolen" by TV or movies, not enough time, or the group not liking that style of play.
How about you?
What stories have you been unable to tell?
What worlds or settings have you been unable to create?
What campaigns have you wanted to run but simply haven't.... yet?
I know that in my current group I coulden't run a oriental japanese based game.
As they have a lot more knowlage of that culture then i do.
And when i sugested such a campaign i imidately got bombarded with all kind of questions ant terminolegy i diden't have awnsers to.
I've always wanted to run an underwater campaign, and by that I don't mean where land-based PCs go exploring underwater. I mean a campaign where the PCs are merfolk and aquatic elves and the like. The whole campaign would take place underwater.
Plaguescarred's idea of a "Dark Sun but with ice and snow" world sounds fun too.
I've been working on my world, Ghartha, for awhile. It's a completely subterranean setting. Mostly taking the thought process behind Lovecraft's The Mound (and other similar stories, like parts of Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath) and throwing in a bunch of Burroughs and Howard elements. Dark gods, temples, and lots and lots of sword and sorcery. (Shameless plug about it here.)
But... I've never been able to utilize it.
CelticPaladin wrote:
An ice age campaign but never had time.
Nicodaudel wrote:
I've been wanting to do a Bronze Age Greek-inspired setting but haven't had the time. I'd love to stay dirty, low-tech, and brutal where brittle swords snap and humanity is just beginning to understand their place in their unforgiving world. Plus, I love the idea of deities being just as prone to error as the heroes.
Wizards would be tough to work in, but I believe it's possible. Maybe they'd be men/women who'd made use of magic knowledge stolen from the gods or learned it from Titan-inspired beings who as a last-ditch effort gave up secrets of the universe so that men may kill the gods.
I always wanted to do an all-halflings party campaign where little people explore in big man's world! Something inspired by things like Willow and Lord of the Rings.
I did an all-dwarf party campaign once and it was quite fun. But didn't get to try this different idea yet.
I've had two recent ideas that haven't made the light of day (yet).
I planned out a mini-campaign where I ran the Desert of Desolation trilogy during the playtest. I did a lot of work for conversions and to add to the map (as I know my players will not limit themselves to the listed areas). After 2 weeks of preparing (~20 hours or so), my schedule changed, and I couldn't run a regular game (I could barely game as a player). I thought about running this when 5E came out, but I decided my return to regular DMing should be Greyhawk, so I scrapped it.
I've also worked (off and on) on a fairly simple campaign idea using the idea of alternate Earths. Basically, the original 13 US colonies would be humans from Europe/Africa (which is a single Empire), while the natives would be the demi-humans, humanoids, and monsters. All communication with the motherland has been cut off, leaving the colonies to break away from each other, forming seperate kingdoms. There is a lot more, but I don't want to go into too much detail (especially since every time I work on it I change some major aspect or other). I figure there is a lot of different opportunities that could be played off this, but I don't know if I'll ever get it completed to my satisfaction.
One campaign idea that I've had for a while and never gotten to run is a mercenary company campaign.
Basically, the PCs start out as a squad in a merc company (all privates and a corporal), and as they advance in level, they move up the ranks until eventually one of them is the Captain; at that point, it would transition into a sandbox politics/wargame. (They might even accept a land grant and settle down as nobles.)
I've also been working on a campaign setting as a pure exploration sandbox, where the entire purpose of the campaign would be for the players to explore a world that they have absolutely no knowledge of (something I can never do with published settings, because people have heard of them and/or read them). But that one is much more likely to get run, and it's not really an abandoned idea since it's currently playable but not entirely complete.
I've wanted to do a campaign tied to "Ages" for a while. Where each 100 or 500 years is an "age". The current era is the Age of Civilization or Prosperity and past ages have been The Age of War or The Age of Dragons or The Age or Darkness. The catch being each age is named at its creation, and the name of the age pushes world affairs, influencing behaviour. Whomever holds the MacGuffin (or sits upon it or stands in the right place) has naming right and can set the course of the next Age for good or ill.
The campaign would be the changing of the eras, with the current time of peace ending, wars starting, and tension rising as multiple factions try and claim the naming rights.
In a simmilar vein, I've also wanted to do a story about the world ending. Where the end of the world occured, but something just held it off in an act of denial. So the world is essentially on life support. And the heroes have to try and find a way of preserving the world. They can't save the world, all they can do is delay the end.
We recently got a tablet, and I downloaded this game called "Reaper". It's about this little "soulless" guy who runs around playing all sides against each other while carrying a big-ass sword. The story's kinda neat, though, and I rather like the setting. It's set in a jungle land inhabited by masked tribesmen who have been fighting off the encroaching magitech-empowered Imperium for some time before your character wakes up in a cave. As the story progresses, demons show up and start attacking everyone. I thought it would be fun to base a D&D game off a similar premise. It also got me thinking about running an Eberron game set in Xen'drik. I love the Indiana Jones-style "exploring lost ruins in a jungle" vibe that part of Eberron has. I even went and bought myself a used copy of Secrets of Xen'drik, although I don't know when or even if I'll ever get to use it.
I had a campaign idea called Classic Tales, where the world was full of classic fairy tales and myths. Really typical stuff like:
- Trolls under a Bridge, demanding gold (or more) for people to pass through
- The Big Bad Wolf is terrorizing people in a Forest Village
- The Abominable Snowmen Yetis, led by Frosty the Abominable Snowman
- Haunted Mansions filled with ghosts and wraiths and spectres and shadows, etc.
- Wicked Witch kidnaps children in the dark forest that's filled with terrible things
- The Town Mayor has been cursed somehow and turned into a talking frog!
- Rescue the princess trapped in the evil wizard's tower
- Snow Wight and the 7 Evil Dwarves
- Slay the Evil Dragon!
The PCs would become Heroes and legends, going around the world fighting monsters and crimes and monster crimes.
Always wanted to run a Planescape and Spelljammer campaign.
But we're going to start a Birthright campaign after the holidays. I'd decided to run it with ADnD 2e, but all the hype about 5e is making me hold on until I read the new rules...
I've always wanted to run a campaign or adventure where the party is wipped out and dragged down to the nine hells. The story would be the parties escape from hell and journey through the different regions.
Recently I've tryed to work on an adventure including every silly or goof idea I could find related to D&D, with the main villian being a small white mouse.
Ramzour wrote:
I always like playing arund with extinct fauna.
still want to do a campaign with anciant horses, where the onlyrace riding horses are halflings, as they aren't big enough to ride for the pother races.
Edwin, I fully intend to include ROUSes in my next campaign. They're only dire rats, after all. 
Part 1: Society breaking down. Part 2: 500 years after part 1, society is starting to rebuild. Good and evil aren't the main forces but Law and Chaos. People are being sent out to try to rediscover the old cities, ruins, dungeons, and such. Part 3: 500 years after part 2 the end game happens. Turns out that the black sand is a planar plague of sorts. Party can find a way to break the curse/plague or they can fail.
Someone over at giantitp.com thought up of a Black Sand Terrasque ... Some sort of undead swarm of a monster... Might have to borrow that for a high level fight.
edwin_su wrote:
I wanted to run a campaign once where all the PCs would be thieves who are all tied to the same thieves' guild. The campaign would have been about them greedily fighting their way to the top of the chain and perhaps one of them becoming the guild leader.
On a similar note, I also once wanted to run a campaign with an all barbarian party, where the PCs play wild barbarians whose tribe has just been wiped out. Left with no other choice, they would need to enter the civilized lands for the first time as they fled the horde of monsters that had overrun their lands. Being barbarians, they would immediatly distrust anyone who used arcane magic. Could have been interesting.
[quote="ProphetSword"]<p>I wanted to run a campaign once where all the PCs would be thieves who are all tied to the same thieves' guild. The campaign would have been about them greedily fighting their way to the top of the chain and perhaps one of them becoming the guild leader.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>On a similar note, I also once wanted to run a campaign with an all barbarian party, where the PCs play wild barbarians whose tribe has just been wiped out. Left with no other choice, they would need to enter the civilized lands for the first time as they fled the horde of monsters that had overrun their lands. Being barbarians, they would immediatly distrust anyone who used arcane magic. Could have been interesting.</p>
[/quote]
Your Barbarian setting assume something that no DM should ever assume... That the PCs will run from a fight :p
Dozens over the years. So many ideas, never enough time or players.
Wizarding School - A campaign based on Harry Potter, with the PCs all being students at either a magical school (if they all agree to play wizards) or an Adventurers' Academy (if they want to have a broader range of classes). For extra funsies, have it set in modern Earth, with the D&Disms all carefully hidden from the, er, muggles.
Dragonstar/Council of Wyrms/Spelljammer - A science fantasy mash-up of the Dragon Empire from Dragonstar with the Council of Wyrms serving as a senate. Basically, for those not familiar with those settings, dragons ruling a vast multi-world empire in space.
Playing Gods - Tried this a few times but it never gets off the ground, mainly due to rules complexity. PCs as young demi-gods working their way up the pantheon.
Babylon 5 - Using the sci-fi show B5 as a model for a fantasy campaign, with all the space action replaced with swashbuckling adventure on the high seas.
And many more that I can't remember at the moment.
CelticPaladin wrote:
KingdomComeAeon wrote:
Some of what I consider to be my best campaign ideas that never got used:
1. Everfrost: Set in an eldritch Ice Age, the whole point was to have a "cold" Dark Sun (pretty uninteresting start, I admit). However, the cultures and mood were strongly influenced by Inuit folklore and mythology; I had even written a simple language for items and the likes (a Mulaqirsk was a warhammer, while a spear was called a Mulep, a sword a Raq'aqirsk and so on). It eventually boiled down to look and sound too complicated for my players, which preferred a pirate fantasy setting to this one.
2. Mists of Kelsia: Heavily influenced by MtG's Innistrad plane, with a touch of Dark Souls, Kelsia is a plane inhabited by humans only, and many monstrous races (all of them smarter than usual; even a troll can use his natural cunning to set a trap for the PCs). Although some might think I should have simply used Ravenloft, I didn't want extra PC races and firearms (Ravenloft has a slight XVI century feel to it). The "Mists" in the name of the setting are a form of intelligent fog that haunts the plane. Horrors and devils inhabit the fog, thus seen as an ill omen.
3. Grief's Hold: The giant fortress that gives its name to the setting is also called "Havenlost" and "Pilgrim's End". It is a vast city protected by giant walls; outside the walls, a twisted realm of wilderness, beasts and darker things awaits those foolish enough to leave the Hold. People can reach Grief's Hold only by losing themselves (each player has to tell the DM how his or her character became "a lost one"; players are encouraged to NOT tell the other members of the party their secret). The campaign focused on the PCs "finding themselves" again and leaving the fortress; as you've probably guessed already, I got this idea from Planescape and Gloomwrought (plus the Middle City from the movie "Franklyn").
4. Starchasers: Mainly derived from Disney's Treasure Planet and Warhammer 40K, this campaign involved solar sails, orbital space stations made of brass, and a lot of latin terms. The PCs were Venatores ("hunters"), a group of warriors, mages and other "specialists" tasked with finding and capturing dying stars. These stars would then be used to fuel the "Lucernarium", an ancient and divine engine that basically provided energy and life to an entire solar system (yes, that system should have died a long time ago; its inhabitants are stealing the possibility of life from other systems to further their own). Things escalate into violence when intelligent monstrous races try to oppose the PCs.
And... that's it, basically. One day I might actually elaborate a bit on these ideas in the blog area of this community. Maybe.
The_Planar_Shepard wrote:
You are all giving me great ideas for campaigns I will never have time to run. THANKS. 
Emanuele_Galletto wrote:
pukunui wrote:
I've also considered a D&D musical, but maybe that's going to far...
Prom wrote:
Prom wrote:
Prom wrote:
ProphetSword wrote:
I've wanted to do a campaign set initially on a bound flat world, low-tech and set apart from everywhere else, that is discovered by the players at a later dater to be a floating island – an earthmote, a lost plane floating in the Astral Sea, or some other such area – that is agreed on by all the "great powers" as a no-go zone, or perhaps an experimental zone to keep things "as they once were." When the PCs escape the island, they have to deal with life in a very very different sort of setting, and it opens up to a much wider, and different world – perhaps a blasted, destroyed world like Dark Sun or a Frozen World like Hellfrost, or perhaps it has some other hook. But the main campaign hook is the fundamental difference between the before and after, and somehow the actions of the PCs endanger the whole of their homeland (perhaps the agreement becomes invalid if anyone leaves, or perhaps the PCs are hunted because they left and could potentially return, or perhaps the PCs are forbidden to return, and if they do, would bring disaster).
Another campaign idea I really want to do is an end of the world story, but with an environmental focus – whether set in Dark Sun just before the end of the Green Era, or in a different setting where magic ISN'T the cause of the end. Perhaps there's a Nausicäa sort of set up where Nature fights back, and the "monsters" of the setting are in fact mutants from the environmental degredation or a triggered response of a primal/psionic world entity, to cleanse the source of the defilement. The PC races, good and bad guys a like, are stranded in a world with environmental terrors like toxic jungles, monsters, hurricanes and blizzards and tsunamis and droughts, are all raging around the world, and what's left of societies are either Mad Max sort of chaos, or else tyrannies barely holding their people together via terror.
Here's a third – Warforged, rather than having been forged for war, are labourers in the fields, factories, and homes and considered less than the flesh-and-blood races. However, some people believe that Warforged (Cropforged?) are people too, and an Underground Railroad has been built, leading them to freedom, while wars is on the horizon in a sort of magitech American Wild West. In fact, most of the cowboy adventurers, carving out lives for themselves and their herds in the high plains, are free Cropforged! This campaign concept has been very difficult to get players on board with, because of the blatantly "close-to-home" elements of it. The idea is not to compare directly to the past, but rather, to play a Wild West campaign that, rather than overlooking the issues of race and slavery, frames it within the interesting questions of robot sentience and free will.
Another campaign I've wanted to do is where the last of humanity exist in the catacombs of an alien space ship, where they're either kept alive as samples of the human species like a sort of zoo, or else because their alien captors are superstitious of the ancient catacombs in the depths of their moon-sized ship. This massive ship would make up the entirety of the game "world," and the people would have splintered into various tribes and philosophies on how to survie in their new environment – for example, some waging guerrilla warfare against the Devas and Shardminds who command the ship and their Warforged creations, while others worship them as Angelic Gods.
Finally, I also have wanted to do a Fairy Tale campaign. One particular adventure I'd love to do is a Beast in his enchanted castle sort of adventure, only making the Beast the only Minotaur in the world, and making the enchanted castle a labyrinthine maze as well. I've wanted Jack in the Beanstalk/Jack the Giant-Killer stories; I've wanted to do Fisher King sort of stories, as well as Reverse-Fisher King stories, where the enchanted spell keeps the people at peace from a terrible monster.
I wrote an adventure based on Carcosa from Robert Chambers's King in Yellow. The adventure would lead the party to eventually find Lost Carcosa somewhere in a bazare underground sea that was covered in a dense crawling fog.
My unrequited campaign is based on the Tarasque awakening from a centuries-long slumber, destroying the PCs village and laying waste to the kingdom, while the PCs try to find a way to stop it.
pukunui wrote:
Pretty much every campaign idea I've ever had has never been run. I've been a DM once, but I tend moreso towards worldbuilding than anything else.
One idea I really wanted to try was in the vein of the Alchemicals from White Wolf's Exalted and the Imperial Cadre from David Webere's In Fury Born: The PCs were the Exalted - heroes of their nation, specially trained and modified to be great. They started out at 3rd level, with bonus feats and skills and such, right after graduation where they get assigned as a roaming squad of troubleshooters. Their task: track down and find threats to the nation and its people, and stop them before even greater forces have to be called in.
Not original ideas by me, but ones I've found throughout the blogosphere (and don't remember rightly where they came from)...
A prison world. A pocket dimension or demi-plane that prisoners are exiled to. All the PC's are criminals of some sort (either violent or for crimes against the state). Not only do they have to deal with all the different factions (i.e. gangs), but they soon learn that the prison is unstable and will collapse/self destruct/cease to exist. Set up for the ultimate prison break.
Variation on the above, but instead the group is lowered down a deep shaft in the earth into the Underdark. They are to mine for some precious material, which they can exchange for basis neccesities with their jailors (at horrible exchange rates). They soon break through from the mine into the Underdark proper, where they can find either horrible foes to battle over resources (lessening their dependence on the surface), or making new allies to find better trade with.
Always wanted to do Dark Sun and Planescape as well. Not to mention pirates.