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With puzzlement, as the supernatural giants from under the sea face quite a long hike in appalling dry conditions before they get to Tombstone, Arizona. At least it wasn't Dodge City, Kansas.

Sometimes Fomor are said to come from under the earth, rather than under the sea. That version would probably be better.

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Set it in California rather than Arizona or New Mexico. The gold rush is probably a good time frame to pick, even if that is a little earlier than most old west stories.

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... and leprechauns do have those pots of gold.

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If you haven't read the Bedlam's Bard series (starting with A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows by Mercedes Lackey and Ellen Guon), which is pretty much this idea in the modern day, you might find it helpful.

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Keys of Creation

Long ago, the powers of creation were given to men, in the form of a glorious scepter of divine materials, pulsing with the power to craft the landscape of planets and planes with a mere thought. Mountain ranges, moons, nations, and species were but its play things. A stray thought could alter history, slay nations, doom millions to generations of hunger, or create a plague.

It was too much for one man to bear, and too much for one man to protect, and so it was given to a being of perfect judgement, free of stray thoughts and emotions, placed in stasis, who can only be called forth once every ten years at a handful of locations when the stars are right. The ritual requires three Divine Golden Keys, granted to three powerful mortal kings, who must all present their key before summoning the being of perfect judgement.

For the first 200 years, the keys were the object of grand wars, crusades, conspiracies, wizards, thieves and megalomaniacs. And yet the destruction was less than that wrecked by the septer when it was in the hands of a mere mortal. Every 10 years, the three holders of the keys negotiated changes to the world, wiping out their foes, making a grander and grander world, more shaped to their wills. But the reshaped world was not grateful, but covetous, always rebelling against the kings and grasping for the keys themselves.

And then one key was lost. Its keeper had made many fakes, and in the end, mistook a fake for the true key. The two remaining keys remained symbols of power and authority, and even grant their keepers strength, longevity, and force of will, but without the third key, the wars, bloodshed, and constant upheaval stopped.

But now, someone has found the third key. They need the other two keys stolen at the same time, before anyone else figures out the keys hold the power of creation again. And they're going to need help...

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Land of Behemoths

The greatest military weapon of age is behemoths. Enormous creatures possessing incredible strength. Some fly, some swim, some burrow, some breathe fire or ice or stones, most are armored, and all are dangerous. Every nation stands on the strength of its behemoths.

And of the specialists who catch, train, and kill them. Climbers are trained to scale the moving beasts and strike them deep in their weak points. Sorcerers are necessary to control the minds of the beasts. Handlers are needed to use a behemoth to its full ability and to direct it in combat. Trackers help find them for capture, and engineers direct the might of industry to build siege engines that can slay one, or fortifications and traps that might slow them down.

You are among those specialists. The fate of a nation rests in your hands...

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I'm unsure of the best way to run this one: as Behemoth hunters competing with other hunters to bring home the best and most behemoths, or in a war-centered game that looks sort of like a mech/kaiju battle (but has few enough pieces that you can actually play it out)

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My first thought is "Shadow of the Colossus meets Monster Hunter meets Pokemon." Possibly with a dose of Knights and Magic and/or Pacific Rim in the mix. One issue is that the Climbers and the Handlers arguably don't belong in the same party - a Handler without a Behemoth is dead weight, while a Climber is unnecessary if you already have a Behemoth who can do battle with the one you're trying to kill/capture (and trying to climb one while it's fighting your Behemoth is probably a great way to get squished or otherwise slain). And, sure, you could merge the two roles into one, but then the character doesn't have any use for their Climber abilities once you've captured your first Behemoth, unless it gets killed.

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That's fair. If quite scattered.



The climbers have to be pretty cinematic to work at all... I'd think climbing up the behemoth while your ally fights it with yours would be risky but not unheard of.

Paradoxically, each specialist should be capable of handling a behemoth by themselves. At some point, the game is about the specialists, with the behemoths being the prize. I've got a mental image of two climbers trying to reach the handlers to assassinate them off the behemoths while protecting their own allies while the behemoths fight each other. For completeness, you can have the sorcerers up there too, wrestling for control.

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Zombies and Ninjas


The immortal Lich-Lords rule over the land, masters over both the living and the dead. They constantly squabble for power, seeking mastery over one another as well.

But what can threaten these ancient undead masters of magic?

Ninjas. In castles staffed largely by sub-sapient zombies, Ninjas can penetrate deep into the halls, and they have the expertise, the stealth, and the ancient arts necessary to dodge magic and find the soul-boxes of the Liches and capture or break them.

And so the living retain at least one advantage over the dead.

Potential campaigns include:

• The resistance, where the ninjas try to break away from their undead masters by making a giant horde of soul-boxes and end the rule of the dead once and for all
• Sneak and Slash, where the focus is on the elaborate protections in the Lich's castles
• Ninja training, where young ninjas learn their secret arts, leading up to a raid most of them are not expected to return alive from
• The War, where the action takes place amidst active hostilities.

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A Time Of Magic


Every 500 years, the dragons are born. All at once. They start small, and are bonded, slain, captured, or shunned by the humans around them. They grow up quickly, becoming great beasts of flame and magic within just a few years. And then they mate, and hide their eggs deep in the earth, and die, leaving the human world forever changed, and their eggs slumbering for five long centuries, while the world of men convinces forgets them.



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This was inspired by a documentary on a speicies of chameleon that breeds and dies every single year, leaving nothing but eggs alive for something like 5 months of the year. I've heard of invertebrates that did that, but seeing it on a lizard made me want to do it with dragons.



Or wizards, but dragons seems more natural.

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Mouse Noir'd

The city was a maze of shadows, and this maze never seems to have any cheese at the end. I was just another pawn in this game of deceit, a lone mouse prowling the concrete jungle with a cigarette hanging from my lips and a fedora pulled low over my eyes. The name's Mickey Whiskers. They call me a detective, but in reality, I was a hunter of truths in a world drowning in lies.

A new case had just come across my desk. Real sob story. Waitress at a local nightclub, sings when there isn't some other act. Not got the makings to be a star, but the regulars love her. Thirty seven kids. Husband's a bum. But she'd gone missing. Nobody'd heard a squeak from her in over a week.

I was reading the Mouse Guard RPG book, looked up, saw my fedora sitting on the dresser, and this nonsensed popped into my head.

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Familiars

The first rule of war between wizards is secrecy. If your enemy knows what your defensive enchantments are, you're in their power. If your enemy knows where you are, you're in their power. If you know where they are and what their enchantments are, their in your power. If two wizards are in the same room, they both know where each other are and they can analyze each other's magic.
And that's where I come in. I might look like rat, but I'm actually a familiar. I'm an expendable extension of my master's might, able walk where he doesn't dare, and to see what he can't. When he defeats his enemies, its because I found their lairs. Its because I heard their minions. Its because I penetrated their defenses.

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Rats, Cats, Ravens, Giant Bugs, Toads, and who knows what else. The players are the familiars of a wizards engaged in combat with one of his peers. The familiars must spy out the plans of the rival, find their lair, and determine exactly what enchantments protect their foe. The wizard can cast spells through you, but those can be as dangerous as the obstacle they remove. Oh, and be sure to keep the other familiars from reaching your own wizard.

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I've got an idea floating around in my head where the players are essentially robin-hood type characters freeing children from fae who have purchased them in exchange for various deals. "Your First-Born Child" and all that. It should land somewhere between Monster Hunters and a Heist Game.

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Leverage: Tír na nÓg.

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The War Room

Five days ago, portals to some sort of unknown Dimension opened up all over the Kingdom. Strange alien warriors streamed through them, slaughtering your people and taking them captive. Your knights and soldiers have been thrown back, but your only down and not out.

You are the advisors of the king who will rescue the kingdom from this mennace. You fight the invaders. You fill figure out who they are, what they are, what they want, and what they fear. And just maybe you save the nation from this scourge.
Nice name. I was thinking less modern, but that could be a blast as well.

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Ye Olde XCom

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Monster Hunters: Camelot


Shapeshifters. Invisible Monsters. Mind Control. Cursed Fortifications. Glamour. There's a lot more to fighting the supernatural than simply wearing armor and swinging a sword. You need to understand the supernatural, and be good at investigation as well as combat... and also subterfuge. And there is a lot of work to do in this land, lest it fall to the forces of darkness...

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Here's an idea to be used either with monster hunters camalot or alone:


Magic is gained by bonding with a mystic creature, like an ogre, dragon, giant, or phoenix. The creature can't use the magic, and is usually the more physical of the pairing.


This makes for an interesting paradigm in a Authurian setting, but it can work in a lot of different contexts.

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All the normal 'races' of fantasy are present, but they don't procreate sexually. Rather, they construct an effigy and 'breathe life' into it. And they are horrified by humans procreating "like animals".

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"Ya mean, yer children be born by accident?! that would majorly mess up your society!"


This seems particularly suitable for dwarves, but elementals and spirits are a good fit too. Orcs work as well. Elves you've got to get right, but our elves are different, right?

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It's been used for Dwarves since 1978... RuneQuest... Gloranthan Dwarves (Mostali) are all animated by a master craftsman striking the rune of life in their heel.

I love that Gloranthan Elves are highly motile shrubberies...

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Probably been done but I don't recall seeing it on this list:

An age of hope

At last after five generations it looks like the prophesied hero who will reunite the fallen kingdom is about to arise and the forces of destiny are gathering to aid him.

Unfortunately at this point reality sets in. The prophet was basically just a random nobleman with severe head injuries and a taste for poetry. There are at least a dozen potential candidates most of them are flawed in one way or another, and even if one was less awful their appearance seems to have set the successor states on the path to war.

The PC's are a bunch of criminals and eccentrics blackmailed into aiding the least promising of the lot, the deposed ruler of one of the successor states; a vindictive, aging, and frankly delusional man child. Can the PC's succeed? Can they fail without facing death or humiliation?

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I hate it when people steal my ideas before I've had them.

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Body Hunters

Resurrection has some made people rash. Quite a lot of them, really. They go down into dungeons looking for treasure knowing that even if they die, their relatives, followers, or attorneys will pay to have them resurrected. Never mind that resurrection requires a body...

So that's where you come in. Rich Adventurers are getting themselves killed in Dungeons and someone needs to go get their bodies and bring them back so they can be resurrected. Or so that you can confirm they won't be resurrected and their money can go to their heirs. Or sometimes because they're undead and their relatives want their souls to move on.

At any rate, there's good money in the job, and this approach has some advantages. If the soul is still around, it makes a really good scout for the dungeon. Your clients usually pay. The church smiles on your work. And monsters respond a lot better to "We just want that body" than "We're hear to clear the dungeon!"

On the other hand, adventurers usually don't die in the easy spots of a dungeon...

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Nice. Makes a good adventure seed even if a GM didn't want to turn it into a entire campaign.

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WWII American Troops (GURPS WWII: Dogfaces) are transported to an old school fantasy setting (GURPS Dungeon Fantasy) and given special powers by deities (GURPS Powers: Divine Favor).

GURPS DF-DF-DF

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Not only is it punny, it's a good adventure/campaign premise. 10/10.

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It's akin to King Arthur and the Knights of Justice, but an infantry squad rather than a football team.

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Voyage of the Zarby

Half-Diplomat, Half-Trader, Half-Warship and with a touch of explorer, the Zarby has access to the best hyperdrives in the galaxy, giving her unmatched reach to trade between powerful and advanced polities who lack Torine Hyperdrives and must rely on foreign ships to exchange their latest marvels with one another. The Zarby has done well this trip, traveling to the edge of the outposts the Torine empire maintains.

But as they return from their latest trip, they are met with shocking news: The Renli have risen up in rebellion against Emperor Manifax of Tora. They claim Manifax has been favoring his home culture of Tora over Renli, has been channeling imperial funds towards senseless projects, is thwarting key efforts to reform and curb the abuses of the genomic service, and even of trying to destroy the Renli culture and replace it with the Torine.

And the Renli are no minor subject people. They are rich, powerful, and skilled spacers. The Torine fleet has more Renli in its ranks than actual Torine. Out in the vast trading network, the civil war rages, with captains and crew declaring for one side or the other, and word travels slowly: the war has been going on for weeks by the time the Zarby finds out about it.

The Zarby has a mixed crew: some are Torine, some are Zarby, and a few are drawn from the rest of the galaxy. Somehow, the Zarby must find ports to find safe harbor in, avoid being sucked into a deadly civil war, and find its way home... where-ever home may now be.

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Napoleon and the ICops

Napoleon has been defeated, and lies languishing in the middle of the south Atlantic, off the coast of Africa only in the sense that its closer than South America. He will soon be poisoned to death*.

Infinity wants Napoleon. A body double of Napoleon can be useful. The real deal, loyal to you? that's a treasure. But first you have to get napoleon.

This is on an Echo, so precautions must be taken to avoid changing the timeline. The exact manner of death of Napolean is the sort of thing that can change timelines. St. Helena is a tiny island. You need to come up with a body, fake his death, convince him to play along, and do so in a high security situation with the eyes of the world watching.

Hopefully a little technology will go a long ways.


If the GM thinks this is too easy, run this as swagmen or a rouge special ops team instead. Or throw that sort of group into the scramble for the exiled emperor.



*It is undetermined if he was historically deliberately poisoned, accidentally poisoned by the wallpaper, or if stomach cancer killed him. A clever GM can use this fact to make the mission harder.

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The Chileans thought about this on Homeline. They were getting well-organised by 1820, with a decent quality small navy and the British guard force had been reduced. They were pretty sure they could extract him by force.

They wanted him so that they could conquer and rule South America. There were a couple of problems:

• This was going to annoy the British quite a lot. Was it worth war with them?
• Can we control him, or will we end up with him in charge? He's better at empires than us.

As it happened, he died while they were still thinking about it. Infinity doesn't have to worry about the first problem, but the second is definitely an issue.

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Is he? He was notably bad at strategy as opposed to tactics and one reason was that he was just one man and his opponents were committees of men. Infinity knows his weaknesses ahead of time.

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He managed to construct armies which were the envy of the world, despite the guillotine having destroyed the existing officer corps and identity of what had previously served as the military of France and forge a French national identity out of multiple nations who spoke related, but not identical languages, while administering such minor trifles as reforming the entire legal code (so well it still forms the basis for not only French law, but a lot of European legal codes, as well as Lousiana's), re-creating a functioning executive and legislative arms of the state from the mess after the Revolution, and fight most of the world to a standstill at worst, but more often his opponents were left abjectly defeated. These are several lifetimes worth of glorious success in disparate fields, and he did them all at the same time, over a couple of decades.

Only the fact that the Royal Navy managed to win at sea and thus let the vast wealth of the British Empire continue to flow allowed the British to continually prop up new coalitions against him. His problem wasn't strategy, it was that he neglected to be a great Admiral in addition to all his other gifts.

And that France didn't happen to have even as much as one decent Admiral at hand, largely, of course, because the guillotine had destroyed them or they'd fled to avoid it, and while Napoleon could identify and train Marshals and Generals from wharf rats and rogues, he didn't have the same preternatural capability with sea-going officers. And even if he could identify the right men, war at sea was more technical and complicated.

There are many boy generals in history, as talent genuinely seems to be able to trump experience, especially in warfare at close range and personal, but few boy admirals. It takes a couple of decades to learn everything you need to know to organize and control a blockade like the Royal Navy enforced on all the ports Napoleon controlled and neither France nor Spain turned up an Admiral who could break it.

Edit: To be clear, everything Naoleon did, he did for the glory of France and himself. That's not really a good enough reason to kill, to most modern people, and while he did defend his country from attacks which legally and morally he could justify using force against, after he repelled attacks, he went right on to attack back and take everything he could.

He was a conqueror, with the morals of an Emperor of old, a Greek hero, or Roman general who seizes the laurel wreath. Popular history often neglects to point out his total ruthlessness, which modern people shy away from, but which Alexander the Great, Pompeius Magnus, C. Iulius Caesar, or Achilles, if he had existed, would have accounted a virtue.

If he had lived and fought for Chile, there would have been a Chilean Empire. And it would have been ruled by Emperor Napoleon I, with everyone who objected, even those who freed him, killed without a trace of guilt. And he would say, as he said of France, "I have dethroned no one. I found the crown in the gutter. I picked it up and the people put it on my head." And it would be true, because he would make it true. One of the ways he was good at Empires was his skilful use of propaganda.

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Have you got a cite for that? Because, I want to read it. It sounds fascinating.

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Actually the armies were constructed by the younger generation of the Bourbon army after the Seven Years War. They were just not allowed to put their ideas into practice because the kings were reasonably aware of the need to make sure which direction their men's muskets were going to be pointed. Be that as it may if building an army was the definition of a great strategist then McClellan would be a great strategist and not Grant. The point was that Bonaparte could win battles but could not make all his battlefield victories add up to winning a war. That is the definition of being a good tactician but a bad strategist.