A pile of old campaign ideas
This is a set of TTRPG campaign ideas that I put together around 2008 for my Chicago-based roleplay crew. It was all written with that audience in mind, so it's not all relevant to other readers (or even to those same folks, after all these years!). I'm speaking directly to those five or six people in these writeups, referencing stuff we played previously. And my system suggestions are very 2008. The format sorta shifts around because these actually came from multiple places. Some of them might have been heavily inspired by something I read on RPG.net or EN World. But, hey, I still like a lot of these ideas and the logos I made for them, so I figured I'd put 'em on the site.
Which one do you think we actually ended up playing?
- Agents of Utopia
- Anomalous Phenomena
- At the War's End
- Children of the Knight
- Death and Taxes
- Down the Tree of Worlds
- Dreamscape
- Edge City
- The Haul
- In the Belly of the Beast
- Iron Dawn
- Lost Worlds and Secret Histories
- The Million Favored Ones
- Motley
- The New Kingdom
- Night Tribes
- The Office for the Suppression of Dangerous Technologies
- On the Caravan Road
- Porgremoth
- The Professionals
- Professor Bennick's Class
- Rifts Redux
- Rolargo Maps and Guidebooks
- Sarken
- Saturday Morning
- Tandagor
- Thrones, Powers, and Dominions
- Truth and Dirt
- World Building
When superheroes decide saving the world isn't enough and start trying to improve it
Setting: Modern Earth, plus all of the standard assumptions of mainstream superhero comics: Magic, super-science, aliens, and very unlikely biological powers are all at least theoretically possible, as required by the story. I'd like to avoid the kind of Silver Age silliness that superhero bits fall into so easily, though. This would be more serious and harder-edged in tone, but without going into the "grim and gritty" mode that so many late '80s and '90s comics did so badly.
Player Characters: Superheroes (and possibly even a few mildly villainous types), who have been gathered together by a powerful visionary (who might also be a PC, if someone wants to take that role) to found a new nation in Antarctica, which aims to be both technologically and socially advanced, and to influence the rest of the world for the better, both by serving as an example and intervening directly (if mostly covertly). The PCs wouldn't just be the new country's soldiers and spies, but policy makers (or at least influencers), serving as a sort of informal cabinet for the leader.
System: Definitely Mutants & Masterminds at the standard, superheroic power level.
Paranormal investigators who are slightly paranormal themselves
Setting: Modern Earth, but one where the barriers between dimensions are gradually weakening. Strange objects, creatures, materials, and energies occasionally slip into the world from any number of other universes, and—by the same token—things from Earth sometimes disappear into the beyond. Some people have been lost. Some have come back changed. So far, however, these things are happening only occasionally, and on a small scale, so the general population remains unaware. But a few government and private organizations have taken notice, and are beginning to respond in their own ways.
Player Characters: Superhumans but not superheroes, they're normal folks changed by otherworldly influences, wielders of alien artifacts, or beings from another dimension trying to find a place in this world they've fallen into. They've been found and employed by a powerful, secretive, but apparently benevolent (or at least non-malevolent) company which hopes to study and profit from whatever is happening to the world. The PCs will investigate reports of strange phenomena for the company, picking up artifacts and evidence for study whenever possible, and will be given the freedom to act as they see fit, but expected to keep things very quiet. Along the way, they'll run into extradimensional hazards, moral dilemmas, and operatives sent by other organizations. In the long run, they might actually discover exactly what's happening to the world, and hopefully find a way to do something about it before it starts to have more serious consequences for humanity.
System: Almost definitely Mutants & Masterminds (low-to-mid power level), although some other supers RPG or maybe even d20 Modern (with the appropriate extra materials) might do the job.
Conquered tribes enslaved in a powerful city-state, striving towards freedom
Setting: The same semi-standard fantasy setting as our Cliffpass game: Magic is reasonably common (although certainly not within everyone's reach), humans are probably the only intelligent species in the mortal realm, the gods are small and numerous and known to empower chosen servants, and things are a little bit more advanced in terms of society and quality-of-life (if not in terms of technology) than in a truly medieval civilization. This campaign would take place in a somewhat Rome-inspired expansionist imperial city-state. It's at the height of its power, conquering and assimilating other peoples wherever its armies can reach, and telling itself the subjugated are better off for being part of the empire.
Player Characters: The losers of the empire's expansionist wars. While the bulk of the conquered populations are allowed to go on living almost as before, the PCs are among the military captives, political prisoners, debtors, or criminals who have been taken as slaves, and have been sent to the gladiatorial arenas to find either death or glory for the amusement of the citizens. But from here, they might spark a slave revolt, aid a popular revolution of lower-class citizens, find a place in the city's criminal underworld, or simply fight their way to freedom. Starting from the absolute bottom, they could end up anywhere.
System: Probably some flavor of Dungeons & Dragons. I'd like to use the upcoming fourth edition of the game, but that's not coming out until June. True20 is always a possibility, too.
The world's greatest vigilante is dead, and his protégés must find out why.
Setting: A pretty standard contemporary comic book superhero setting: modern Earth plus all kinds of mutants, aliens, mystics, robots, and such, with a long tradition of people (ordinary and otherwise) dressing up in costumes to fight or perpetrate crime. Despite the fact that the campaign centers around an obvious Batman analog, I'd otherwise avoid doing the whole "thinly veiled references to well-known characters" bit.
Player Characters: The various sidekicks, ex-sidekicks, close allies, and possibly even friendly semi-antagonists of an extremely well-known, respected, and feared costumed hero called the Knight. Their mentor, friend, and (at least in some cases) father figure has recently been murdered, and they must work together both to solve the crime and to fill the hole the great man left in the city he protected. The PCs would all have loads of history with each other, both good and bad. They might have had romantic relationships with each other, bitter falling-outs with the Knight himself, all manner of sibling-ish rivalries, etc. They would probably all be non-superpowered vigilante types, maybe with each one emphasizing a different aspect of their mentor's skills: investigation, stealth, martial arts, gadgetry, etc. Maybe one lone low-powered superhuman would be okay, or one non-costumed type, like a contact on the police force.
System: Definitely Mutants & Masterminds at a low or low-medium power level.
Tax collection in a dangerous world
Setting: The same world as our Cliffpass game, but this campaign would take place in a different region, centering on a growing city-state that claims ownership of the surrounding lands. The trouble is, some of the rural warlords on the borderlands don't see it that way.
Player Characters: Tax collectors. Specifically, a division of the revenue department tasked with collecting the city's due from the most difficult of debtors: the backwards feudal lords and bitter nobles from the old regime who refuse to recognize the new state. You'll be a tough bunch from varied backgrounds, but you'll all be civil servants tasked with both enforcing and obeying the law. You aren't being sent out to kill or depose these petty tyrants, but to collect—by diplomacy, guile, stealth, or force—enough cash and goods to equal their debt. Better take a few ranks in Appraise and a big wagon.
System: Almost definitely Dungeons & Dragons (either third or fourth edition, depending on what's available and preferred), but True20 could work if people want more flexibility in character-building, and don't mind learning something semi-new.
Stargate + Doctor Who + Sliders + Star Wars
Setting: The remnants of a multidimensional empire, founded by a tremendously advanced, generally benevolent civilization who disappeared about a thousand years ago. The dozens of diverse worlds they once controlled have had varied luck in the aftermath of the collapse, with many falling into barbarism, while a few retained the power to travel the old dimensional connections. Many worlds also retain some variation on the subtle, post-technological science of the empire's founders, however cloaked in myth and mysticism. The dimensions are linked in a branching structure, with each world connecting to three others.
Player Characters: Explorers from one of the fringe worlds—that is, those most recently connected to the empire, and therefore the least affected by it—who discover a key that opens gates between adjacent dimensions . . . as long as it's used in the right place. The PCs would probably be modern Earth types (either literally from Earth, or just from something close enough), and professional archaeologists, soldiers, doctors, physicists, etc. However, they'd have the chance to learn new skills as they travel, including the kind of powers the empire's founders wielded.
System: Probably True20, but some flavor of Dungeons & Dragons, d20 Modern, or other d20 system could probably work.
Fighting in dreams to protect the real world . . . and fighting in the real world to protect your dreams
Setting: Modern Earth . . . and the Dreamscape. The latter being a sort of psychic Internet that some people find their way into while dreaming, a great big shared hallucination that's maintained at all times by billions of sleeping human minds. Mostly, it's a great, big, malleable playground for those who find it. But there are some things—and people, too—who can use the Dreamscape to do real harm. And there's also the threat of the whole phenomenon being discovered by the wrong people, and thus possibly ruined, abused, or (somehow) banned.
Player Characters: Ordinary people who've found their way into the Dreamscape. They'll explore and try to understand the place, encounter threats from the deeper levels of unconsciousness, deal with the factionalism and politics of the anarchic dreamer community, and struggle either to keep the Dreamscape a secret or to share it with the real world. In their waking lives, dreamers have no special abilities beyond simply knowing how to find the Dreamscape . . . but once there, they can manipulate their imaginary environment and their representations within it, or even take advantage of back-door access to the minds of sleeping humanity.
System: This is a tough one. Nothing that already exists fits perfectly, so I'm thinking of using World of Darkness (new or old) and just adding a few dream-based powers. I might also eliminate dice rolls for actions within the Dreamscape and just arbitrate them Amber-style, just to make sure that dreams and waking life feel different.
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
Setting: Edge City, of course. I'm stealing the name from Repo Man, and the vibe of the place from that movie, the Illuminatus! trilogy, the works of William S. Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson, and even TV series like Twin Peaks, Picket Fences, and (no, seriously) Parker Lewis Can't Lose. The basic idea is that it's essentially our world, but with all the knobs turned up to 11. Kind of psychotronic, if you know what I mean: weird, loud, fast, and trashy. Ostensibly-normal character traits are amped up to levels that would be regarded as psychotic or superhuman in a more reasonable world. It's probably also got some of that Grindhouse thing going on, where it's apparently the present day, but people seem to be two or three decades behind. The whole bit would definitely be somewhat humorous, but inevitably on the darker end of that spectrum.
Player Characters: A bunch of weird bastards who all know each other already. Probably all kinda shady, if not outright, actively criminal. Mental illness, vice industry connections, strange religious beliefs, unusual physical traits, and other social burdens are all totally appropriate. They don't have to all be friends, exactly, but they've gotta have enough past association in common that they might work together (at least at first) when some mutual threat or opportunity manifests itself.
System: I'd definitely want to use Spirit of the Century for this (although, ironically, I just found out that Over the Edge actually has extremely similar intentions and inspirations, and even a slightly SotC-like system).
More money, more problems.
Setting: This could either be the Cliffpass setting (I really need a legit name for that world) or an even more generic, D&D-style fantasy world. The important thing is that you just had your big, climactic battle against a dragon or evil overlord or something, and you won . . . but now you're stuck in the middle of nowhere with a great, big pile of loot—both monetary and magical—and you've got to find a way to get it back to civilization if you want to actually enjoy it.
Player Characters: Adventurers! Yep, a straight-up, old school, Gary Gygax bunch of badasses who roam the land taking commissions to kill monsters and explore ruins. If we're playing in a totally generic setting, they can even be elves and halflings and crap like that. But it might be especially cool to take the usual stereotypes, play them halfway, and subvert them. Also, you probably wouldn't be first level for this bit.
System: Almost certainly some kind of Dungeons & Dragons, whether it's third or fourth edition. I guess True20 is a possibility, too.
Scattered communities living inside a machine they neither control nor understand
Setting: The inside of some unspeakably titanic machine. Or spaceship. Or industrial complex. Or arcology. No one alive knows exactly what this place is, or has seen the outside of it. Even the idea of "outside" is an esoteric philosophical concept. Whatever it is, it's thousands of cubic miles of thrumming, sparking, leaking, rusting machinery, forever falling apart, but constantly repaired by hordes of robots. Very little of it seems intended for human occupation, but people have managed to find footholds all over, stealing water, warmth, electricity, and even food from the processing plants and conduits of the machine. Some communities even have the knowhow to scavenge and repurpose the technology around them. Unfortunately, the robots who maintain the whole place don't take kindly to squatters and vandals. It's all very Blame!, if you've seen that comic.
- The World is a seemingly limitless expanse of machinery and industrial architecture. No one you've heard of has ever seen the outside of it, or could even imagine the concept of "outside".
- The World is inhabited by human societies of various degrees of sophistication. Most are basically tribal, but they generally have some degree of understanding of the machinery around them. At the very least, they can generally tap water from the ducts, steal food from nutrient vats, and scavenge anything else they need.
- "Human" is a broadly-defined term in the World. Many individuals or whole tribes carry genetic, cybernetic, and nanotechnological alterations. While some tribes possess the sophistication to make such changes themselves, they're more frequently the result of tampering by mysterious machine entities.
- The World is inhabited by countless artificial intelligences which command robot drones, nanites, and the integral machinery of the World itself. They all have their own goals (which are often either insane or incomprehensible by human standards) and wildly-different policies regarding humans, with some exterminating them as vermin and some giving aid to any human they encounter. Worse, you can never really be sure which one you're dealing with. Most tribes make a point of cutting data cables all through their territory.
- In addition to the bodiless AIs, there are legions of "wild" robots which possess individual wills or pack-level group minds. Some of these conform to known types, some seem to be unique creations. Their purposes and behavior vary wildly: Some hunt humans and/or other machines, some repair or make changes to the World, some gather materials (for automated salvage centers, and many seem to have no discernable purpose. Some are intelligent enough to be bargained with.
Player Characters: The most capable members of a small human community with a lot of problems. They'll be leaders, warriors, engineers, diplomats, doctors, scouts, and whatever else is necessary. They'll be tasked with defending their people both from the machines and from hostile human communities, and with preserving and improving their supply of food, water, and usable technology. They won't necessarily be purely human: genetically and cybernetically-engineered beings liberated from the robots' control could also be a possibility.
You could play as...
- ...a kid who's made friends with a powerful—and very protective—free-willed robot.
- ...a shaman whose ritual nanotech injections allow communication with machines and grant intuitive engineering skills.
- ...the tribal chieftain's heir; hunt leader and scavenging expert; armed with a powered weapon and armored in the shells of dead robots.
- ...a machine-bred cyborg, rescued from a factory-womb and (hopefully) deprogrammed.
System: Uncertain. A wide variety of systems could work here. I'm not very conversant in generic sci-fi RPGs, though, so I'd probably just go with low-powered Mutants & Masterminds. True20 and d20 Modern could probably do the job just as well, though. Or, if I felt like doing some hacking, I bet I could use World of Darkness.
Martial arts and feral technology after the apocalypse
Setting: A post-apocalyptic society—possibly on Earth, possibly on some distant colony world—reduced to an approximately Iron Age level of technology by a nanotech-driven cataclysm. Now, hundreds of years after the fall of the old civilization, a new one has emerged, retaining just enough understanding of the past to pine for what it has lost. A handful of major human settlements have formed in the ruins of great cities, both repurposing the materials of the older culture and forging new tools and weapons from raw materials. In the absence of high technology, martial arts—new and ancient—have risen as the primary military implements of the emerging political entities. Complicating everything are the old technologies that still exist, but outside of man's control: self-reproducing robots that have lost their original purposes and evolved to fill the niches of wildlife, nanotechnological infections both lethal and symbiotic, and godlike artificial intelligences that might protect or destroy communities of humans for their own mysterious—and possibly insane—ends.
Player Characters: The defenders of a struggling community, who must aid their people in finding food and resources, and keep them safe from rival cities and rootless bandits, as well as the cybernetic and biotechnological terrors of the wilderness. Furthermore, they'll do it all while navigating the internal politics of the martial arts clans that run their city and the fickle—but undeniably useful—AI that rules it. PCs would be armed and unarmed martial artists of varied specialties, and might bear mutations—beneficial, detrimental, or merely cosmetic—caused by the nanotech, chemicals, and radiation that are common in the world, or cybernetics grown as a result of symbiotic nano-infections. Sapient robot PCs would be possible, too.
System: I'd almost certainly use Mutants & Masterminds (low power) for this, but True20 or even some variant of Dungeons & Dragons could work (Iron Heroes, perhaps).
Globe-trotting pulp adventure in a world full of paranormal secrets
Setting: 1930s Earth, plus a little bit more. Lots of weird and fantastic places and people. I'd be going for that elusive "sense of wonder" thing in addition to the expected two-fisted action and extraordinary characters. There'd be a big focus on travel to weird places, almost in an oldschool Fantastic Four kind of way. The other major theme would be shadowy organizations and secret plots, but in a pulpy, relatively simplistic fashion, more The Shadow than The X-Files.
Player Characters: Full-fledged pulp heroes, every one. From the very beginning, they'll be veterans of a few dramatic adventures, and hyper-competent in their respective fields. Quirky, over-the-top personalities and backgrounds are extremely appropriate. Basically, these are the sort of people who might all have starred in their own separate novels or serials. Imagine a team-up between the Shadow, Doc Savage, Tarzan, Sgt. Rock, and Fu Manchu, and you'll get the idea. They'll probably all be members of some kind of organization, in order to give them a reason to work together.
Example organizations
- The Van Helsing Society
- Founded by Quincey Abraham Harker (son of Jonathan and Mina) in honor of the late Abraham Van Helsing
- Studies and hunts monsters both supernatural and human
- Agents may themselves be touched by the paranormal
- Secretive, believe the supernatural should be hidden from the public
- The Challengers' Club
- London-based "adventurers' club"-style organization (with club houses around the world, particularly in the British Empire) which focuses on exploring remote and strange locations
- Members include (otherwise) idle rich types, experts in various fields they bring on expeditions, and occasionally native servants
- Focused more on adventure and travel than any scientific interest, but scholars are often included in expeditions
- Members often bring back trophies and artifacts, but aren't usually interested in large-scale plunder
- Armstrong Security Enterprises
- American-based private security company (kind of like the Pinkertons, but with scruples) who provide security guards, private investigators, and counter-espionage agents
- Frequently take on charity cases when they feel someone truly needs and deserves their services and cannot pay their fees
- Well-respected internationally; serve in an advisory capacity to both police forces and governments
- Strongly concerned with the ideal of justice; very nearly a plainclothes superhero team
- "The Gardeners"
- Extremely mysterious, Illuminati-style secret society who manipulate the world behind the scenes to promote peace and progress
- Known by many names to various agents; no true name for whole organization
- Leaders and ultimate goals unknown even to members
- Have access to amazing super-technology of unclear origins
System: Straight Spirit of the Century with no modifications. This is an extremely cool system. Very fast-and-loose, flexible, and math-light, with a general ethic of player empowerment that really enables and rewards creative play.
Lovecraftian superheroes
Setting: The world of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, but modern day. Horrible alien god-monsters loom and seethe just beyond the barriers of reality, in the depths of the ocean, and in the blackness of space. They press and scratch against the flickering candle of human civilization, threatening to overwhelm it at the first opportunity. And the only ones with any real hope of stopping them are those already tainted by their influence.
Player Characters: Human beings (or human-ish beings) touched—and given some measure of power—by monstrous, mind-breaking alien entities. The characters might be sorcerers, ghouls, reanimated corpses (à la Herbert West), Dunwich Horror-style hybrids, human bodies possessed by the Great Race of Yith, human brains in machines built by the Fungi from Yuggoth, and any other way you can picture some force or entity from the Cthulhu Mythos giving someone preternatural abilities or knowledge. They'd be working together in some organization similar to Hellboy's B.P.R.D. (although possibly private, rather than governmental, just to make things more complicated).
System: Mid-low-powered Mutants & Masterminds.
Quasi-Victorian fantasy with Frankenstein monsters
Setting: A place that looks something like a fantastic, war-torn reflection of 1800s Eastern Europe, where scientists and alchemists forge strange and grotesque creations, and the wilderness teems with vampires, werewolves, fairies, and demons. The shattered remains of two countries are recovering from a short but shockingly-destructive war in which both sides employed—among other terrible weapons—a great many Frankenstein-esque reanimated patchwork men. Now, although the war is over, peace and order are far from restored, and hundreds of patchworks—deserters, malfunctioning lunatics, and lost soldiers—roam the countryside, more often confused than malevolent . . . although still potentially dangerous. For their part, the public is still deciding whether to see the creatures who fought for their country as monsters or heroes.
- The country of Zerfaule is a quasi-Eastern-European society in a world that looks something like late-1800s or early-1900s Earth. Radio telegraphy, combustion engines, and electric lights are cutting edge technologies, while rural areas are more or less pre-industrial.
- Supernatural creatures of countless types exist, and are not friendly to mortals. Vampires and goblins are a very real threat in the wild places of the world.
- Religion in Zerfaule is a polytheism of saints with no presiding God, just a vague Heaven governed by enigmatic angels. The saints are the real focus of people's prayers, myths, and religious schisms.
- Modern re-investigation of the ancient science of alchemy has recently changed the world . . . and destabilized much of it. Dr. Staum Morgolak has effectively conquered death, and his re-animated patchwork creations nearly made his home country, Eisen, the unchallenged dominant power in the region. Then Morgolak's protégé, Dr. Lupor Harko, defected to neighboring Zerfaule, and the War of Monsters began.
- After six years of brutal warfare and rapid military advancement, Zerfaule stands as the nominal victor, but both nations were devastated by the conflict. Zerfaule is essentially ruled by the victorious General Orku Gorskovoi after a quiet, unofficial military coup, but even he has little true control. Public order is threatened by unrest, a shattered infrastructure, and threats both mortal and supernatural who seek to take advantage of the situation.
Player Characters: The PCs will be an under-manned and under-supplied military outfit tasked with re-establishing law and order in a large rural town, while protecting it from both the human parasites who arise with the end of the war, and the much older things that lurk in the woods. They'll naturally be a rag-tag group thrown together from whoever was available: shell-shocked veterans, frighteningly-young new recruits, inhuman soldiers such as patchworks and homunculi, and the doctors and alchemists who maintain them. Their authority with the townspeople and even their support from the shaky post-war government will be uncertain, and fighting bandits and werewolves will be the simplest of their problems.
You could play as...
- ...a cynical, hardened combat veteran who's already sent too many soldiers to their deaths, and no longer trusts the top brass.
- ...a huge patchwork soldier who sustained serious injuries in the war and is missing some very major chunks of memory.
- ...a homunculus fresh from the alchemists' vats—missed out on the war completely—who looks human and even beautiful, but breathes fire, eats coal, and looks at the world with childlike innocence.
- ...a combat surgeon who maintained patchworks in the war, and has been accused of using undonated human corpses for test subjects and spare parts.
System: Probably mid-low-powered Mutants & Masterminds. However, we could probably get way with Spirit of the Century, True20, World of Darkness, or some combination of d20 components, depending on what kind of crazy powers people want to play with.
Tibetan Jedi fighting in gladiatorial games after the Bolshevik Revolution in ancient Egypt
Setting: A desert kingdom based around a fertile river valley, where martial arts and psionics are widely practiced, and technology is based on psionically-charged materials. A popular rebellion, backed by an alliance of disparate factions, has just recently deposed the immortal god-king, and the assorted heroes, idealists, opportunists, and maniacs who've ended up running the new society are struggling to hold onto their power, reconcile their different goals, and make good on all those promises they made on the way to victory. The people's revolutionary enthusiasm is starting to crest, and cracks are already starting to show in both the ruling committee and their interim system. What better way to distract the masses than with a little bit of good, old-fashioned blood sport?
Player Characters: Practitioners of varied and individualistic martial arts—both armed and unarmed—which incorporate the use of spiritual power. Every family lineage has their own characteristic fighting style and psionic techniques, so the PCs should represent a varied and distinctive array of over-the-top, cinematic or comic-book martial artists. (If you've ever read or watched Naruto, that's a great example to look at. As Dirk once said to me, those characters aren't ninjas at all: They're combat mages.) In terms of background, they can be revolutionaries, pardoned soldiers of the old king, mercenaries, hermits, scholars, etc. They'll start the game as participants in the new government's fighting exhibition, and from there they can find their way into the political intrigues and dirty post-revolution surprises of the new ruling powers.
System: Mutants & Masterminds (low-to-mid power level), or possibly Dungeons & Dragons (with a focus on psionic and martial adept classes).
Clive Barker's Nightbreed given the World of Darkness treatment
Setting: The modern world with a few paranormal elements added, particularly the Night Tribes: a loosely-associated collection of human families who all apparently have the blood of something else running in their veins. They inherit inhuman powers and appearances which manifest with great variety and unpredictability among family members. Their inhuman features can range from the incredibly bizarre or simply grotesque to the weirdly beautiful. Most can pass for human when fully clothed, but many must change their forms to use the full extent of their powers. Some can't pass at all, and are forced to live their lives in hiding, associating only with other members of the Night Tribes. Their abilities tend to be of a biological nature, often including enhanced physical capabilities and shifting or malleable anatomies. They are mysterious even among themselves, knowing no concrete explanation for their origins or definitive list of families, and each Tribe is united with the others only in the interest of maintaining their common secrets.
- Your family is one of the Night Tribes, which means that most of you have strange powers, and many of you are somewhat or extremely strange-looking. No one knows you're this way. A popular theory in the past was that an ancestor or ancestors made some kind of deal (or had some kind of carnal relationship) with the Devil. These days, genetic mutation and alien breeding experiments are more often suggested.
- The existence of the Night Tribes is a big secret, and you'll be in huge trouble with your family if you tell any normal folks about it without first getting very specific permission from your older relatives.
- There are other Night Tribes out there, but there isn't a lot of contact between them all. No one knows how many there are, and they don't regularly work together.
- The kinds of powers Night Tribe members wield tend to be physical, biological things: great strength or speed, sharp senses, regenerative abilities, etc. Many of you can change your shape, and might even do so unwillingly. Another class of Night Tribe abilities—rarer, but not really unusual—are things that seem to shift them outside of the normal world, causing them to become invisible, intangible, or weightless. Some can even teleport.
- Almost all of you prefer darkness to light. Some are blinded or actually burned by bright light; some find that their powers are weaker—or even non-functional—by day. Almost all of you can see quite well in the dark. A remarkable number of you can breathe water, or otherwise function better underwater than ordinary humans. Some even dislike being exposed to dry air for long.
- A lot of you are pretty sure the Night Tribes are responsible for all the stories of vampires and werewolves and such that have popped up in various cultures throughout history.
- It's possible to marry into a Night Tribe. Many of your relatives came from other families, and some are even fully human.
Player Characters: A group of Night Tribe folks—probably all from the same family, but not necessarily—who get caught up in inter-Tribe politics, the constant struggle to maintain the big secret, and the whole mystery of where their people came from in the first place. Normal humans could be included, too, since it's possible to marry into the Tribes.
You could play as...
- ...a human-passing Night Person whose palm-mounted third eye has the power to recognize others of the Night Tribes and see through their illusions.
- ...a hulking abomination who can't possibly pass as human, but fortunately can turn invisible and intangible . . . except in bright light.
- ...a fully-human investigative reporter who accidentally discovered the Night Tribes, and ended up marrying into one.
- ...a Night Person whose powers manifest as horrible bodily transformations which both threaten to happen involuntarily at all the wrong times, and take both time and effort to reverse.
System: Even though this is a very World of Darkness premise, I'd much prefer to use Mutants & Masterminds (low-to-mid power level), as that would allow for much more varied, customized characters. Still, there might be some combination of World of Darkness books that could get the job done.
Protecting the American people from that for which they are not prepared
Setting: Our own world, plus a little bit of weird super-technology. There are hidden sciences that, when discovered, place unspeakable power and mind-bending secrets into mortal hands. Worse, they can be shared and disseminated through the populace, terrible genies escaping fragile bottles into the keeping of people who cannot understand them. The Office for the Suppression of Dangerous Technologies strives to keep a lid of potentially-destructive advancements . . . even as they themselves make use of them, and try not to succumb to catastrophic corruption.
Player Characters: O.S.D.T. agents, and possibly even a sentient product of mad science or two (robots, cyborgs, genetically-engineered creatures, or weirder things) who the Office employs, protects, and keeps secret. Regular agents are normal humans with a wide range of training and specialties. Most come from law enforcement, military, espionage, and scientific backgrounds (in fact, some are former "mad" scientists). Unsurprisingly, while they hope to stop dangerous devices before they are built, they often find themselves cleaning up the results of misused or malfunctioning super-science.
System: Could be almost anything. True20, d20 Modern, Mutants & Masterminds, maybe even World of Darkness. Depends on what folks are comfortable with, and what kinds of characters they want to play.
Travel, trade, trouble, and treachery on a fantastic version of the Silk Road
Setting: The same as our Cliffpass game, but a different part of the world. Probably many parts of that world, in fact, since the idea will be to travel along a huge and branching trade route which connects many different cultures.
Player Characters: You'll play all of the important figures in a trading expedition: merchants, guards, native guides, scouts, hired magicians, laborer bosses, shady hangers-on, and anyone else who might be interesting to play and would logically have a reason to work together for the success of the whole enterprise. You and your contingent won't make up the whole of the caravan—in fact, your group won't even necessarily stay with the same caravan the whole time—so you'll have to deal with other merchant groups who might be allies or competitors or deadly rivals. Then, of course, there are all the beasts and bandits and mysteries of the wilderness to deal with. And that's all before you get to your destination, and the real action starts.
System: Probably Dungeons & Dragons. Fourth edition if it's available and turns out to be good, third edition if it's not. Also, I could certainly do True20, if you want more flexibility in making your characters. It's definitely got some great support for social and merchant-type characters.
Yes, it's Pokémon with horrible demon-things instead of cute monsters.
Setting: Earth, after some kind of interdimensional cataclysm has marred nearly half the world with a kind of metaphysical stain: a region of endless darkness, bizarre mutations, and—most notably—a plague of nightmarish entities which most people would describe as demons. The planet is now divided into the uninhabitable Dark Zone and the refugee-choked Safe Side. But in between, in the twilight region where life is possible but far from safe, strange new technologies are emerging. The "demons"—called Porgremoth by those in the know—are being captured, harnessed, and controlled by men and women brave or desperate enough to tame them.
Player Characters: Porgremoth hunters, capture equipment technicians, scientists studying the Dark Zone, and anyone else who would dare to live on the edge of darkness and challenge things from its depths. You'd be able to come up with your own captive demon-things if you want to start out with them, but not everyone would necessarily have to be a Porgremoth master. Depending on what people want to play, you could participate in Porgremoth fighting tournaments, mount scientific or rescue expeditions into the Dark Zone, protect settlements from wild Porgremoth, mutant beasts, and human bandits, etc. As weird as this whole idea is, I think it's actually really workable. We could play it totally straight and gritty, but I think we might as well embrace the totally silly origins of the idea and get a little goofy.
System: While I first started thinking of this campaign as Pokémon meets Sorcerer, I'd definitely want to use Mutants & Masterminds (at a low or medium power level) for its flexibility and familiarity.
Less-than heroic superheroes out to make a profit
Setting: Your basic mainstream-comics-style superhero setting: modern Earth with all the mutations, magic, and superscience necessary to provide origin stories for all the superheroes and supervillains the story could need. However, society's response to superhumans and costumed vigilantes would be somewhat realistic (or as close to that as is convenient for our purposes), treating them with all the idolization, dehumanization, and commercialization that any celebrity is subject to.
Player Characters: The hand-picked members of a for-profit superhero team. They'd fight crime for free, but shamelessly sell their images for merchandising and hire themselves out for appearances. Moral gray areas, questionable motivations, and intra-party conflicts are extremely appropriate. The whole bit here would really be about fame, image, capitalism, and what happens when these things become part of a supposedly-altruistic activity. You could wallow in sordidness, or try to remain untainted. There'd be superhero battles and all that, but the campaign would be much more about ethical dilemmas, interpersonal soap operas, and trying to negotiate a better deal with the company making your action figures.
System: Mutants & Masterminds, standard power level.
A magic school field trip gone wrong
Setting: The same world from our Cliffpass game. However, the game would be starting out far from the economically-depressed semi-backwater of Cliffpass itself, at a magicians' academy in a large and cosmopolitan city, so a good deal more magic and a little more advancement could be expected.
- The Tholton-Chake Academy of the Magical Arts is a very prestigious mages' college in the small but prosperous nation of Shas. It's located in the same Southern Archipelago as Cliffpass, although further north, and much closer to the warmer, more cosmopolitan equatorial region Cliffpass residents would call the Northern Islands.
- Tholton-Chake attracts an international student body from all over the region. The pleasant climate and relaxed culture of Shas is as much a draw as the school's curriculum, but Tholton-Chake itself is as extremely old-fashioned as it is old. The students' native languages are generally either the Northern or Southern trade tongue, but classes are conducted in the High Ikoskan of the long-dead Ikoskan Empire (the traditional language of magical learning in the Southern Archipelago).
- Tuition at Tholton-Chake is expensive, and the majority of its students come from wealthy families. However, really impressive magical aptitude is a rare enough talent that some communities will work together to fund the education of particularly promising students.
Player Characters: Students at a fairly prestigious college of magic, each with their own specialized course of study and side interests. All, however, would be members of Archmage-Professor Salizah Bennick's Advanced Planar Theory class. And Professor Bennick's planar theories are, in fact, so advanced that they're becoming practice: She built a trans-dimensional vessel, and she has selected the PCs to help her test it. They will, of course, receive extra credit. (If anybody would prefer to play a non-magical character, it would also be possible to include one of the college's security guards on the outing.)
You could play as...
- ...a student wizard with one of eight possible majors (abjuration, conjuration, divination, enchantment, evocation, illusion, necromancy, or transmutation).
- ...a student artificer, an expert in creating magical devices.
- ...a student combat mage, kind of the magical equivalent of an ROTC student.
- ...a non-magical guardian either assigned by the school or hired by a student's family.
System: Probably some flavor of Dungeons & Dragons. I'd like to use the upcoming fourth edition of the game (currently due for release in June), but third edition will almost certainly offer more options for diversifying an all-Wizard party. So we'll see. Another possibility would be True20, which is quite nicely flexible.
Post-apocalyptic, multi-genre kitchen sink fest
Setting: The same multi-genre setting as Palldium's Rifts RPG: a post-apocalyptic Earth where the mass death caused by a nuclear war during a planetary conjunction tears open dimensional rifts all over the world, infusing the planet with arcane energy . . . which, of course, results in more chaos and devastation. Three centuries later, an Earth populated by humans, supernatural creatures, and beings from other dimensions is still trying to find its way back from savagery, a process both assisted and complicated by the magic, super-science, and psychic powers that fill the world.
Player Characters: One of the most notable features of Rifts is the varied (and often extremely high-powered) array of PC types available. Cyborgs, mages, drug-enhanced supersoldiers, psychics, mecha pilots, and even dragons are fair game . . . but then so are scientists, reporters, and spies. Exactly what the players in this campaign would be, of course, would depend on what the characters are going to be doing. I think the archetypical Rifts campaign structure is a Seven-Samurai-style mercenaries-gathered-together-to-defend-a-community bit, but other things are certainly possible.
System: That's the hook: Instead of the clunky and outdated system Rifts normally runs on, I'd use Mutants & Masterminds. As a superhero/cross-genre system that's fully intended to scale up and down a vast range of power levels, M&M could handle everything the Rifts setting contains, and do so in a way that's both more flexible and more streamlined than the original system. I also believe it would smooth out Rifts' weirdly mismatched PC power levels.
Exploration and cartography in a fantasy setting
Setting: The same world as our Cliffpass game, but centered on a newly-discovered continent called Bariath. The place is a vast wilderness full of untapped natural resources, dotted with mysterious ruins, but now apparently devoid of human habitation. Until now, of course. Now, every nation with the resources to mount an expedition to Bariath is exploring, staking claims, and securing territory.
Player Characters: A team of explorers, cartographers, naturalists, and guards employed by Rolargo Maps and Guidebooks, a private company hired to map and document an established—but completely unexplored—claim. Outside of the interim town established at the Bariath landfall, they'll be entirely on their own, making their way across the mysterious landscape, mapping and finding food and water as they go. They'll be in danger not only from the local wildlife—which runs towards the large and strange—but from rival exploration teams and claim-jumpers.
System: Probably Dungeons & Dragons, but True20 would definitely work, too.
Diplomacy and daggers in the biggest, oldest, meanest city in the known world
Setting: A fantasy setting without magic. Instead, they've got alchemy and mechanics, and the things they can do with these two technologies are impressive enough: Running water, explosives, clockwork computers, combustion engines, dangerous drugs and miraculous medicines, alchemically-altered living creatures, and a thousand other products of human artifice are relatively common . . . among those who can afford them. The city-state of Sarken is large, rich, and decadent (very much influenced by Ankh-Morpork from Discworld, Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar, and Camorr from The Lies of Locke Lamora), a center of intercontinental trade, vice industries, and—of course—the aforementioned alchemy and mechanics. Steam, smoke, and the fumes of a thousand noxious chemical reactions shroud the city. Part of the place is founded on the dwindling remains of a Great Beast (a Godzilla-size monster of possibly divine origins) which they've been strip-mining for alchemical components for decades, and they're actively looking to find and take down another one for the same purpose. The city's walls are defended by cannons, and they're working on the hand-held guns. Crude, combustion-powered trains and lighter-than-air craft ferry people into and out of the city. A thoroughly-corrupt alliance of guilds—merchants, craftsmen, and laborers alike—rule the city, but struggle mercilessly amongst themselves for power and profit.
Player Characters: Either a troubleshooting team employed by a larger guild, or powerful figures within a smaller one. Possibly—to sort of compromise between those extremes—they could be a guild's representatives (and the representatives' bodyguards and entourage) in the city's senate, which would give them the chance to function as both leaders and spies. In terms of training and abilities, they can be diplomats, assassins, soldiers, craftsmen, alchemists, or even the products of weird alchemical experiments. They'll have a few specific problems to work on for their guild, and a lot of freedom and resources with which to do their job . . . and then, of course, new obstacles and opportunities will pop up along the way.
System: I think my preference would be either for True20 or Spirit of the Century, but Dungeons & Dragons or even Mutants & Masterminds could definitely do the job. The last would definitely be handy if you want to do a lot of messing around with alchemy.
Cartoon action, 1980s-style
Setting: This would kind of be up to you. Or, rather, up to all of us together. The idea here is to try and emulate the style of 1980s (and, hey, maybe early 1990s) half-hour-toy-commercial action cartoons. You know, the whole Transformers / G.I. Joe / Ghostbusters / Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles / He-Man / Voltron / Thundercats stratum of animation history. And instead of just handing you guys a premise, I'd like us to collaborate on one.
Player Characters: This would depend strongly on what kind of premise we come up with, of course, but given the slant of the system we'd be using, it'd work best if you all played normal humans with incredible and specialized skills, but little to no crazy powers. Awesome technology or magical artifacts are okay, though (and, of course, very '80s-toon-appropriate).
System: Spirit of the Century, possibly with minor changes to make characters even simpler (because 1980s action cartoon characters are very simple). Also, it might be cool to try and add in some kind of "moral of the episode" mechanic, where character advancement is dependent upon having learned some kind of lesson in the course of the adventure.
Epic adventure in a fantastic alien world
Setting: A world developed around some of the same ideas as the Dark Crystal movie. It'd be a fantasy setting, with all of the high-magic-low-tech assumptions that implies (maybe even a little bit more so), but the fauna and cultures that inhabit it would be more alien than not. There would be a large number of different intelligent species, none of which would be human (although many might be somewhat human-like). It would be a very large, very old world, where individual settlements are mostly isolated from each other by dangerous wilderness, but the ruins of larger civilizations are still scattered across the land.
Player Characters: Here's the really fun part: Since this is such a varied, magical, almost-anything-goes setting, you could all come up with completely original races and cultures for your characters. Go as Dark Crystal, Neverending Story, or Star Wars as you want. Crazy powers are fine, too, whether they're just natural to the PC's species, or the result of some magical ability. Four-armed stone giants? Quadrupedal cat-beasts with no opposable thumbs? Tiny, airborne bug-like things? As long as it doesn't get blatantly silly, it's all cool. Anyway, the deal is that you'd all be chosen as champions and representatives by your different communities and sent (all Fellowship-of-the-Ring style) to deal with some problem that threatens the whole region. Hell, the whole world, maybe. The storyline would have a pretty epic scope, and the PCs would be fairly unique and important in the setting.
System: Mutants & Masterminds, low-to-mid power level. It's about the only thing I really know could handle such widely-varied characters and keep them reasonably balanced.
Dune with superpowers
Setting: An interstellar human empire in the distant future, ruled by families of superhuman nobility. They inherit powers artificially created in their ancestors millennia ago, but have long since forgotten the technologies necessary to duplicate or modify them. Without the ability to properly manage their complicated genetics, their bloodlines produce monsters, lunatics, stillbirths, and unfortunates doomed to be burned out by their own powers. It's commonly believed that these failed heirs are on the increase, and that even the noble bloodlines' greatest representatives are far weaker than their ancestors of centuries past. Since interstellar travel relies on superhumans of a certain type and power level to drive starships' tesseract engines, the decline of the noble houses could easily lead to the disintegration of the empire. And, even at the best of times, the nobles are prone to rivalry, corruption, infighting, and dirty little wars that can destroy planets...
Player Characters: The heirs and favored servants of a small and embattled noble house. They could be ideal specimens of superhumanity, cursed with monstrous bodies or flawed powers, or they could be (whether noble or servant) entirely human and mortal, relying instead on skills and technology to make their mark. They will be the most capable members of the house available, and—despite their probable youth and inexperience—will be called upon to deal with problems that threaten the house and its worlds.
System: Mutants & Masterminds, medium power level (which is pretty high, by the standards of most games).
Indiana Jones plus magic and monsters
Setting: The same world as our Cliffpass game, but a different specific location. Things would start out at an archaeological dig somewhere far from civilization.
Player Characters: The scholars, laborers, and guards of an archaeological expedition. They've been sent to excavate and study the buried ruins of an ancient city, a place which promises to be full of mysteries and strange artifacts . . . an possibly powerful, primitive magic that's just decayed enough to be dangerous. Worse, the site is near the border of two less-than-friendly countries, and the archaeological team will have to cope with the oversight and maneuverings of both governments.
System: As with all Cliffpass-setting games, the logical choice is some kind of Dungeons & Dragons, with a secondary possibility of True20.
This suggestion isn't so much for a campaign as a possible approach to deciding on one. I'd really love to try creating a setting and a campaign concept as a multi-session collaborative project. There's actually a system out there that supposedly works well for this kind of thing—Universalis—but I expect we could do the job either without a system, or with a very simple system of our own devising, if that would be preferred. Then, once we've created a world we're all personally invested in, and the beginnings of a story that interests us, we can pick a game system and play it as normal.
