atypical campaigns for typical settings

[MatthewVilter]

Originally Posted by lachimba

High School DF

<snip>

Reminds me of Persona 4 (in a good way).

I think the metaphysics of how the kids' personalities, skills, and relation-ships carry over to the dream world (and vice versa) would be pretty important.

Ultimately, I think, it is more or less obligatory for the dream world to start bleeding over into the real one...

[Randyman]

Setting: High School
Books in Use: GURPS Basic, GURPS Social Engineering
House rules: GM-generated variable point totals for PCs

There's your realism, right there. :)

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by William

Pirates! ...chasing romance on the high seas!

The players are fugitives from the law -- mostly women, a few men, running from arranged marriages on land, the Captain of the Leaping Hart being an iron-jawed matron who did so in her own youth.

The occasional actual piracy in the plot is perpetrated under a letter of marque in a long-standing low-grade naval struggle between the Captain's home country (and that of most of her crew) and a couple of other major powers (who are, for dramatic tension, also the home of some of the crew). The Hart is low-violence, tending to disable a promising-looking foreign ship at the masts and take any wealthy or politically connected prisoners.

The first GURPS campaign I played in (as opposed to "ran") was a lot like this! The pirate ship went on the account when its cargo, a bunch of women being shipped out to the West Indies as indentured servants (involuntarily!), managed to rebel and capture the ship, with the aid of a few of the crew. Once the officers and most of the crew were put ashore, the <i>Termagant</i> was run mostly by women. My character, the ship's gunner, Fornication Jones ("Me Da named me 'Fly-Fornication,' him being a Puritan, but the 'Fly' dropped off while I was in the army"), was one of the few men—and not a romantic figure: He was middle-aged, hard of hearing, and had a skin like leather. One of his memorable moments was timing the gunnery against a French prize by chanting,

"The French—they are—a fun—ny race.
Port! Guns! Fire!"

Bill Stoddard

[lachimba]

I like the idea of pirates and romance.

I imagine it like Pirates! With the dancing and everything


Setting #2 from me.

The Dicatorship as a setting with the campaign around courtly manners and social engineering.

The Dictator meets Yes Minister.

The PCs are the family and friends of a mutally chosen dictator. Close enough that they wont kill each other out of hand, but still plot against each other.

The PCs each have a secret objective that may or may not be incompatible with each other.

I imagine it using the drama point system as a filler while other players turn up for the real campaign. A lot of it is about one on one conversations trying to get the other PCs to help out.

The GM ofcourse plays the Dictator, but even if they are late the players can start gaming.

[johndallman]

I'm running a police campaign in a high-magic D&D city. In the latest case, it wasn't suspicious when a workman at a retired adventurer's castle fell off his ladder and broke his neck. But when the lord sent him off to be raised and the body was stolen ... that was suspicious.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Setting: Vanilla Western Fantasy

Atypical Campaign: I ran an organized crime campaign in somebody else's run-of-the-mill pet fantasy setting's main city, with all the classic mob movie tropes like racketeering, set-ups, double-crosses, a rival mob, manipulating the cops, a rigged prize fight, shady political contacts, etc. I broke my promise not to burn the city down, a little, in places, but it's generally-regarded as my best campaign ever with this group.

[ak_aramis]

Setting: Reichstar (SciFi in 2300 where the Nazis won WWII)

Typical Campaign: PC's are resistance group members attempting to take down the Reich.

My campagin: PC's were (by player choice) resistance-sympathetic SS officers, attempting to reshape the Reich from within...

[martin_rook]

I had two campaigns that fit this that, unfortunately, I never got to run. Both were inspired by reading through the Forgotten Realms book for 3.0 and finding that there was a kingdom that had been overrun by an army of goblinoids who'd effectively overthrown things and taken control instead of just pillaging and moving on (someplace called Amn, maybe, or somewhere near that).

My first idea was a campaign focused on the wars of that "Monster Empire" (as I'd dubbed it) from the point of view of the basic grunts (who might live long enough to level up to higher positions, or just get replaced as they die off). It was to start out with an invasion of a sparsely-populated area nearby and turn into a Vietnam-style quagmire as some Elves start sending the villages military advisors to teach them guerrilla tactics and how to use the forrest. The PCs were to be orcs, goblinoids, and similar low-level monsters having to face ambushes while patrolling the wilderness or snaking down a halfling-hole with a torch in one hand a dagger in the other -- and, of course, an incompetent officer to frag. I think I spent too much time putting together a soundtrack for it and missed the chance to actually run the game (stuff like "Welcome to the Jungle," "Paint it Black," "Rooster" -- good stuff for it, but talk about putting the cart before the horse).

The overall success of the goblinoid empire was going to be loosely based on how the PCs faired. If they poorly, it would eventually become a "Downfall"/last-days-of-the-Third-Reich kind of thing. If they were successful and (as my players were likely to do) tried to implement some real order and discipline, the tone of the empire would have shifted as the junta of ruling monsters started seeing themselves as legitimate stewards of a real kingdom that needed laws, order, and social stability (while remaining aggressively expansionist).

That thought lead me to the second campaign idea as I imagined what would happen if the above "Monster Empire" came across a typical "the world as we know it will end if some heroes don't go on a quest" sort of situation. It evolved into a world-wide disaster/survival/apocalypse story set in the Forgotten Realms.

In this other campaign, the PCs would be typical dungeon-delvers exploring the ruins of a classical city that had been subsumed into the Underdark, somewhere in middle or eastern end of the continent (was there a "Sea of Fallen Stars" in the Forgotten Realms? Somewhere near there). They run into a party of goblinoids who are also searching the ruins -- and who don't want to fight the PCs (I figure I'd probably need to throw in a Drow attack against both parties and maybe even an earthquake collapsing the city to get them to team up -- but if not, all could be revealed by finding a journal or packet of orders on the goblinoids). Someone in the monster kingdom in the west had come across a text discussing an ancient prophecy of world-wide destruction that was due to happen Real Soon Now, and an expedition was dispatched to uncover the original prophecies and get more details.

They're too late, and the series of natural and supernatural disasters begins as the PCs emerge from the Underdark. If spared, the goblinoids would have told them their empire was readying a fleet of ships to evacuate as many people as possible to the far western continent, which might fare better. The campaign would be a tour of the lands of the Forgotten Realms as everything falls apart, with the PCs either trying to survive somehow or making unlikely allies and trying to shepherd as many refugees as they can gather to the evacuation fleet on the west coast.

[Irish Wolf]

Ran a play-by-post for a short time in the late '80s, on a BBS.

Basic setting was bog-standard AD&D 2nd ed fantasy.

Each player-character got three rolls on the Powers tables from Villains & Vigilantes, along with one Weakness roll (or, as per the V&V rules, lose the Weakness roll and one Power). They were a force organized by a sage who went by the single rune "X" (to keep people from learning his true name, of course), to investigate the fates of other parties that had gone missing.

One of the players dubbed it "VD&D".

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by ak_aramis

Setting: Reichstar (SciFi in 2300 where the Nazis won WWII)

Typical Campaign: PC's are resistance group members attempting to take down the Reich.

My campagin: PC's were (by player choice) resistance-sympathetic SS officers, attempting to reshape the Reich from within...

So SW storm troopers bringing down the empire without magic Jedis at all?