Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet

[Greatwyrm]

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet

 

Some neat ideas here. I've got a bunch in my "Before the Retirement Home" file, but here's two.

 

1. Alien Invasion Supers. I got this idea from an Alternity book. Little green men come to earth to take over. Someone here has developed a process that gives humans superpowers. Unfortunately, humans aren't really built for that -- no one has survived more than a year or so after having the treatment. Heroes are fighting to save the earth and should be a little more heroic, knowing they're on borrowed time already.

 

2. Alchemy-punk. I'm working on a campaign guide for this now. A lot of the standard cyberpunk stuff, but in a fantasy world. Magic leaves the world. Civilization nearly collapses. Alchemy comes into it's own as a science. Probably an early Renaissance tech level. Black powder weapons, alchemical body modifications, exploration of the lands lost during the crash.

 

I just hope I get to run that one before my job/family situation forces me to move to Michigan and lose my game group. My close group of players has a ball with cyberpunk games.

[Nucleon]

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet

 

So' date=' anyone else got some ideas they don't have the time for but would like to share?[/quote']

 

What a great thread, Nucleons ponders. It is to be expected from the Resplendent Recluse. Nucleon bows down to thee, mortal.

 

Here is a bit that Nucleon sometime integrates into any of His campaigns, with a success that impress Him every time;

 

Alternate Reality 212:

Somehow the players embark on a (accidental?) trip to an alternate dimension where "heroes" rule.

 

Well, they really are; Having taken control since the cold war, the "heroes" have built a "perfect" orderly society, much more advanced than ours, and have replaced the world's goverments with their own, creating an seeming Utopia.

 

Or is it?

 

Well, there is obviously something wrong; Instead of living happily, ordinary people are a broken, dis-spirited lot. Why? Well, super-control is total, and vital to the supers to prevent and eradicate crime and monitor future supers they are going to hire later. There is no such things as folly, ideals, or hope.

 

Some super-individuals, of course, rebelled against this thinly-veiled tyranny; thay are called "vilains" by the overlord heroes, but the masses idolized them, because they are shadows fighting the system; They are, in fact, real Heroes.

 

What about the PCs' "doubles"? Well, the most rebel of them are either brainwashed or in the Resistance, allied with what are known as vilains in the PCs' world. On the other hand, many supposed "vilains" have join the ruling "heroes" and are reigning with them.

 

By all accounts, this is quite fun... and refreshing.

 

[Hisho]

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet

 

there are some ideas I can't use at the moment, one is my Post-Apocalyptic Superhero World, the main theme would be a mixture of mad max, the 7 samurai and other samurai flicks, spaghetty western and superheroes.

 

Instead of motorbike gangs you would have a gang with an evil super threatening a village and maybe in the ongoing campaign there will be an evil corporation who tries to capture supers with big robots designed for combat.

 

the other idea is, well new and inspired by Killer 7, the pc's will be special elite assasins with special powers. Something like Mission Impossible but more with super/mutant powers then gadgets and tech

[Kirby]

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet

 

...the main theme would be a mixture of mad max' date=' the 7 samurai and other samurai flicks, spaghetty western and superheroes.[/Quote']

Heh. When I first read this part, I was thinking of a cross between Seven Samurai and Blazing Saddles.

[Hisho]

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet

 

Heh. When I first read this part' date=' I was thinking of a cross between [i']Seven Samurai[/i] and Blazing Saddles.

 

Blazing Saddles, never seen that one. Movie database said it is a comedy by mel brooks... mhm hope a good one.

[Greatwyrm]

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet

 

Blazing Saddles' date=' never seen that one. Movie database said it is a comedy by mel brooks... mhm hope a good one. [/quote']

 

Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein are the reasons we keep forgiving Mel Brooks for his other movies.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet

 

The PCs are recruited by an international organization sponsoring teams of paranormal heroes. The organization presents itself as something similar to Charles Xavier's groups: training paranormals to use their powers to defend Mankind from similarly-powered villains, only on a larger scale. The PCs start out having standard superhero adventures while being backed up by the resources of this group.

 

As the campaign progresses, though, they begin to see a trend in their patrons' behavior that they hadn't anticipated. The organization's publicity campaign plays up how much more effective their supers have been at dealing with the world's problems than conventional authorities have. Its forces begin deposing third-world dictators and establishing "benevolent dictatorships" which do indeed generally improve the lot of their subjects. Eventually the PCs learn the true motivations of their patrons: the group is dedicated to establishing world rule by the "innately superior," i.e. paranormals. Hero teams like the PCs have been used to eliminate supervillains who might oppose their rule, and create goodwill among the general populace toward such a more overt takeover.

 

The heroes will have to decide whether they want to be part of this program, and eventually engage in open warfare with nations and peoples who oppose it; or whether their true loyalties lie with the "normals" of the world, prompting them to turn against their former sponsors. The campaign could reasonably go in either direction, depending on the players.

[Matt Frisbee]

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet

 

Unused Campiagns from the Frisbeeverse:

 

The Way of Giang Hu -- Super-powered martial artists in a setting much like China, but a fantasy-based world with demons, ghosts and monsters. Kind of a mix of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and InuYasha. All of the superpowers would have needed to be magical or an outgrowth of one of the myriad "secret" schools of martial arts. Ranma 1/2 without all the comedy, perhaps.

 

Fighting Entropy -- A near future scenario where the villains have banded together and control nearly the entire world, while the characters are desperately trying to protect the final part (New Zealand, in this case) and inspiring the few supers not working for the bad guys to organize themselves to resist. Definately a battle-intensive campaign, but I conceived it after watching Band of Brothers on DVD, and thought it might be an interesting change of pace from the traditional mask and cape campaigns.

 

The New Warriors -- A fairly standard superhero campaign, except that supers have only started appearing since the turn of the millennium. Nobody really believes that supers exist, so most of the action is underground with few witnesses. The whole campaign is shades of gray, so someone who was on your side last fight may be at your throat the next. There's no way that supers have any kind of legitimacy anywhere and if the governments have them, they're not telling. It was supposed to be a dark and gritty street-level campaign with low-powered heroes, but it got shot down by my players because they love the four-color stuff. (Yes, I stole the name from the Marvel comic book series, but only because I loved it.)

 

Anyway, there are dozens of others that never got past the conceptual nugget stage, but these three actually had some initial work done to the point where I was ready for my players to make characters when they got shot down. *sigh* One fine day, though, they will get played.

 

Matt "Still-carrying-a-torch-for-the-concepts" Frisbee

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet

 

For quite a while now I've had it in the back of my mind to do a HERO version of the old Tri Tac game Fringeworthy. It'd be a fun way to do a Stargate-esque campaign while allowing for all the amusement of a crossworlds/extra dimensional game.

 

Besides... I've allways loved the Mellor as a badguy race

 

Mushy Mellor,

Funny feller

Hiding 'neath the trees.

"Who's There?", I said,

As it tore off my head

Then gurgled gleefully.

[Kirby]

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet

 

Eliminating Dr. D. and organized crime

I would like to have a campaign where the PCs have:

Hunted - Dr. Destroyer

Hunted - Demon

Hunted - VIPER

 

They start out with KS on each of these, as well maybe KS of their tactics or something. As the PCs gain XP, the players decide which Hunted to buy off. The campaign then goes in the direction of "eliminating" that group/person from the campaign universe. So, if they start with 20 pts of Hunted by Demon, and the group as a whole has bought off the Hunted, the GM would run a final scenario (of course, the PCs would have been eliminating cells while they were buying down the Hunteds).

[Theron]

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet

 

Agents of IMPACT. An idea I toyed with, but never really got to play out. It's set in an alternate version of the CU. The year is 1982. Reagan is President. The Cold War is in full swing. And the majority of the world's superhumans are operatives of one government or another. Those that aren't are either freelance mercenaries or superpowered terrorists. The PCs are members of IMPACT, the Inquiry into Metahuman and Paranormal Activities, Capabilities, and Technologies, the US government agency charged with monitoring metahumans worldwide, assessing threat levels, and acting on those threat levels as appropriate (their unofficial motto is "Shoot it or recruit it.")

 

Some day, I'll make it work.

[Basil]

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet

 

Garret Files World---pulp detective/film noir set in a fantasy world. Excellent books, and a fascinating setting. I think it would make a marvelous campaign.

 

 

 

Too Many Supers World---Set circa 2005. Supers started showing up in the mid-1950s or so. Many supers were not and are not fighters, but inventors. All the important "modern" tech in the setting was invented, designed, modifed, or two or more of the above, by super-geniuses.

 

The number of supers has been increasing, not just in sheer numbers, but as a fraction of the population, ever since they started showing up. And, most important, the increase as a fraction of the population is exponential.

 

It was realised a decade (or more) ago that that whatever supplies the energy that make superpowers work (call it "the juice") is a limited resource. Spreading it to more and more people meant at first, more and more "low-powered supers," and indeed, lower and lower powered supers (for the most part: no-one's powers decreased once established, and there were still occasional new high-powered supers).

 

Not a problem, until the last couple of years; "the juice" is now spread so thin that all supers are finding their powers failing once in a while (Universal -0 Lim: Activation Roll 16-). What's worse, is there are confirmed reports that some of the highest-tech objects are failing as well --- it seems that many of the inventions of super-geniuses are, somehow, dependant on "the juice" to work!! There is speculation that the chance of failure will continue to rise, and affect more and more of the tech invented since the mid-1950s. How far it will go is beyond knowing. (NB: very high tech devices get a -0 Lim: Activation Roll 17-; not quite so high tech fails when the GM thinks it's a good plot element.)

 

One disturbing trend is the growing number of supers who believe the only way they can keep their powers is for the number of supers to decrease. So far, there's been only a few isolated incidents of supers trying to massacre other supers.

 

The PCs are specially-trained normals working for the govt. (or possibly the UN), who have only pre-supers tech devices to work with (but remember, these devices can be depended on, since they don't use "the juice"). They are faced with more and more erratic "main-stream" tech, and the growing problems this is causing (think what would happen in the Real World if all electronic devices had a 1/2% chance of failing each time they were used). Further, there is the very real chance of a group of supers (esp. the more power ones) getting together and going out to kill everyone with even the slightest superpower; since the PCs are law officers (in effect, or by actual appointment), they will find themselves involved in suppressing such a group.

 

Note that the Activation Rolls, esp. the one on all superpowers, should get worse through time. Also note that at the time the campaign starts, something like 10% of all people have some superpower, but that only around .02% of them have anything significant.

 

Rather a peculiar setting, I admit, but it has possibilities. Certainly dealing with the end of superpowers, rather than the heyday or the beginning, would be different.

[Duke Bushido]

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet

 

Basil---

 

wasn't "Too Many Supers World" a comic book some time back? I have two players into comics, and I seem to remember them discussing what actually sounded like a pretty neat story from one of them---

 

seems one of the "Heroes" was killing off all the other Heroes so he could continue to be super or some such thing?

[tkdguy]

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet

 

I haven't run a Highlander campaign with the rules I wrote up for it. I'd also like to try the martial arts/film noir campaign idea I posted in the Dark Champions board.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet

 

I've always wanted to run a wild crossworlds campaign where the PC's are all part of the "cross culture" that includes several pandimensional cities like Cynosure, Tanelorn (and yes, I do remember Grimjack mentioning that sometimes Cynosure IS Tanelorn), perhaps name one Gormengast

Maybe connect a few of these enternal cities with Roads that also span through dimensions and times... kinda a cross between The Road in Roadmarks and Hellriding from Amber.

Probably aim most of the players towards fairly typical cyberpunk mentality characters to get the right sort of grim bitter pan-d vet types, and hopefully run most of the adventures (at least for a while) in a stand alone style.

 

I guess in a way the genre really is kinda Crossworlds Cyberpunk

[Big Willy]

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet

 

Basil---

 

wasn't "Too Many Supers World" a comic book some time back?

 

I haven't seen it in precisely the form described above, but the theme:

seems one of the "Heroes" was killing off all the other Heroes so he could continue to be super or some such thing?

isn't entirely new. It was used in the short-lived STATIC revival a couple of years ago, as well as CAPTAIN BRITAIN way back in the 80s.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet

 

What's worse' date=' is there are confirmed reports that some of the highest-tech objects are failing as well --- it seems that many of the inventions of super-geniuses are, somehow, dependant on "the juice" to work!! There is speculation that the chance of failure will continue to rise, and affect more and more of the tech invented since the mid-1950s. How far it will go is beyond knowing. (NB: very high tech devices get a -0 Lim: Activation Roll 17-; not quite so high tech fails when the GM thinks it's a good plot element.)[/quote']

So...we finally have an explaination for the Windows Blue Screen of Death, eh...?

[Basil]

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet

 

Basil---

 

wasn't "Too Many Supers World" a comic book some time back? I have two players into comics, and I seem to remember them discussing what actually sounded like a pretty neat story from one of them---

 

seems one of the "Heroes" was killing off all the other Heroes so he could continue to be super or some such thing?

I wouldn't be surprised if someone came up with a similar idea, but this one was all my own.

 

As near as I can tell (I can't be sure of all the stuff that was percolating in my subconscious), this was born from a cross between "Hero World" in the old "Champions in 3-D" book (where everyone has 1+ superpower), the San Angelo setting idea of an underlying source of superpowers and their "oomph," and the Sci-Fi short story (I forgot the title) where there's only so many souls to go around, and there are more living people than that number.

 

Combining, and getting the idea that "the juice" is a limited resource is, to me, a simple process. I then fleshed it out a bit, and came up with what I posted.

[Basil]

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet

 

So...we finally have an explaination for the Windows Blue Screen of Death' date=' eh...? [/quote']

I'd rep you, but it seems I have to smear around some more rep before I can.

[Vanguard00]

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet

 

seems one of the "Heroes" was killing off all the other Heroes so he could continue to be super or some such thing?

Most recently in the "Rising Stars" comic by J. Michael Stra--um...something-zinsky (cuz I never spell it right). One of the 'Specials' figured out that there was a finite amount of "super energy" (for lack of better term) and began killing off the other specials. Whenever he did so, all the others gained a touch more power.

 

First time I remember this particular plot was in the old "Chronicles of Prydain" books, wherein Arawn used the Black Cauldron to create undead-like warriors who grew in strength as those near them fell. Start with ten and they're like normal warriors. By the time you get to the last one he's like Conan on Red Bull.

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet

 

"Hey, you look familiar..."

- Set in a 2099-like world. The future is here, and it's not a nice place. Evil megacorps, evil bandit lords, evil this, evil that. Characters all wake up together in big test-tube vats, as armed men are breaking in, trying to kill them. All the PC's look alike, and gradually all discover that they're all defective attempts to clone the world's former Superman-type guy. All have some strength and invulnerability, and each has one area of additional power - one has more strength/invuln, one has superspeed/flight, one has various vision powers, etc. They've been in storage for decades, hidden by party or parties unknown, until someone found out and sent people to kill them. Campaign to see if this group of half-supermen can live up to the legacy of the original and clean up the world.

 

"Agents R Us" - PC's are agents (UNTIL, PRIMUS, whatever) and are the main anti-villain response force in their area. Instead of big encounters being group of supers vs master villain, will be group of agents trying to use their skills and gear to bring down a supervillain like Ogre on the rampage.

[csyphrett]

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet

 

I am hoping to spring Jumanji on some unsuspecting soul sometime

CES

[Kirby]

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet

 

I am hoping to spring Jumanji on some unsuspecting soul sometime

I hear that! I had a game (double entendre) set up in 2E D&D Ravenloft campaign where I was planning to use it on players. They never did adventure long enough for me to ues it, though.

[Dynamo]

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet

 

Generations Campaign

Phase I: Secret Supers

 

The powers that be have sufficient control over the media to keep supers out of the public's awareness, relegating them to the stuff of supermarket tabloids. In reality, supers are considered to be valuable resources to be hoarded and controlled. Shades of Mage: the Awakening and other "shadow war" settings.

 

The PCs are newly erupted supers with just enough knowledge to be wary of authority. Subplots will be driven by current events, with real life major media events reinterpreted as cover-ups for superpowered activities. Over the course of the plotline, the PCs learn enough to finally strike back at their pursuers. I plan for the plotline to conclude with blowing wide the conspiracy and revealing the existence of supers to the public, leading to Phase II (more on the subsequent plot arcs in further posts).

[Matt Frisbee]

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet

 

Having just run my eyes through the Allies supplement again after letting it languish on the game book shelf for a while, and spending some time reviewing the "Team Zen" supers, I was thinking that having the characters being members a team of corporate superheroes would be an interesting twist. It would have a cyberpunk feel where the characters wouldn't necessarily like each other, which always makes for some interesting character dynamics if the the group of players is mature enough to handle it. Plus, the characters could always be heroes on their own time, doing the whole crimefighting thing when their other demands would let them. I think it would require some seriously tight campaign background material just to keep continuity working, but it is a nicely structured framework for characters who really want to go professional.

 

Hmmm...I might have to plumb the depths of that idea tonight...

 

Matt "Contemplating-the-possiblities" Frisbee