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Old 10-10-2014, 02:24 AM   #1
David Johnston2
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Default Ideas Are Easy

Hogwarts Year One: The players are part of the initial class at the just founded Hogwarts Academy, making their archenemy Slytherin himself...or is he?

Steampunk Orientale: The year is 1851, the queen is Victoria and the Steampunk empire on which the Sun never sets...is China. Expect a total role reversal as Britain sullenly endures subjugation at the hands of the most powerful nation in the world and the players try to survive and thrive in a city set aside as a trading port for the Chinese as the spectre of a new war looms...

Golden Age: Actions Have Consequences: The year is 1938, the players are superheros, and every action they take, or don't take has real historical consequences. Britain may be invaded. Hawaii may be invaded. New York may be wiped off the map. Greenland's ice may be melted by an insane scheme involving an orbital mirror. It's all up for grabs and you probably really can't stop it all. Thrill as the characters try to avert a world war by saving Adolph Hitler's life. Or you know...don't. Marvel as the characters rescue Shirley Temple from a villain's sinister scheme. Or not.

Halloween: In a fantasy world where nations of vampires, werewolves, witches and spiritualists live alongside mortal men, something new and strange is stirring. The mortals are becoming increasingly hostile, tempted to attack by the promises of sorcerers with strange powers who call themselves...scientists. The player characters find themselves captured experimental subjects who despite the hostility between their disparate kinds must unite to escape the the scientists, their mortal allies, and the abominations their weird "science" are creating to serve as weapons and warn their people to unite against the growing threat.

Last edited by David Johnston2; 10-10-2014 at 02:29 AM.
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Old 10-10-2014, 03:59 AM   #2
Not another shrubbery
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Default Re: Ideas Are Easy

Are they just ideas, or campaign proposals? I'd happily give any of 'em a try.
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Old 10-10-2014, 06:59 AM   #3
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Default Re: Ideas Are Easy

Meet the Neighbors! Magic, once thought to be a thing of the primordial mists and of mythology is proved real! Brain Mapping and Interstellar Transport Warps bring the truth to the fore! Many romantic idealists see this as the time to build technology free utopias! Romantics are silly that way.

The world of Xothique (supposedly named for works of fiction, if you believe that sort of junk) is one such disaster. Demon Kings and Wizard Tyrants rule over the oppressed populace is a world that resembles the fictions of Lovecraft, Ashton Smith, and especially Howard.

However, the expanding Alliences of humanity have build a starport on the planet. Could the strange blasphemies of Technology arm the people against their Demonic Overlords?

Basically Star Trek meets Connan with total incomprehension and lots of fireball spells!

I assume this is a toss your ideas in thread. Am I right?
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Old 10-10-2014, 11:41 AM   #4
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: Ideas Are Easy

Quote:
Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
Steampunk Orientale: The year is 1851, the queen is Victoria and the Steampunk empire on which the Sun never sets...is China. Expect a total role reversal as Britain sullenly endures subjugation at the hands of the most powerful nation in the world and the players try to survive and thrive in a city set aside as a trading port for the Chinese as the spectre of a new war looms...
I actually used almost exactly that in my recently finished campaign Water Margin, based on the Chinese Empire of Alternate Earths 2. But I made Europe more or less the equivalent of India, with Great Britain as a "princely state." Now France and Spain had been conquered outright. . . .

Bill Stoddard
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Old 10-10-2014, 12:05 PM   #5
David Johnston2
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery View Post
Are they just ideas, or campaign proposals? I'd happily give any of 'em a try.
They would be campaign proposals except I don't really have the opportunity to run. I've tried the PBEM thing, but I'm too easily thrown by the inevitable unannounced dropouts.
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Old 10-11-2014, 03:06 PM   #6
David Johnston2
 
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Perfectly Normal: The small town of Normal does its best to live up to its name. Its best isn't very good. People disappear in Normal or have strange accidents. Odd fads sweep the town. Pets are actually as smart as their owners like to think. And in the Grade 10 class of the local high school class, there's a little riddle. Why are so many of them adopted? Why do they frequently get rashes after touching iron objects? And why are they starting to get supernatural powers?

A Light In the Darkness: Characters are SS personnel attached to a special Ahnerbe unit dedicated to seeking out mystic, alien and antediluvian artifacts and entities for the glory of the Reich, and racing against swashbuckling American archaeologists and British secret agents as well as Lovecraftian cultists, and scheming dabblers in the occult.

But what their Nazi superiors don't know is that their real allegiance is to the Bavarian Illuminati and their real mission is to keep the genuine articles out of the hands of the ignorant, reckless and downright evil people searching for them, for fear that they will doom all humanity by unleashing powers they don't understand in the middle of the largest war in recorded history.

The Stuff Heroes Are Maid Of: In a dark city a rich man works out his childhood traumas by wearing a costume to go out and thump bad guys. You are his faithful household staff, who apart from cleaning and maintaining the house, operate behind the scenes to smuggle equipment into caves, do the actual investigative work, and make sure he doesn't get too far over his head all without ever embarrassing him by letting him know you know his hobby.
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Old 10-11-2014, 04:10 PM   #7
Not another shrubbery
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
Perfectly Normal: The small town of Normal does its best to live up to its name. Its best isn't very good. People disappear in Normal or have strange accidents. Odd fads sweep the town. Pets are actually as smart as their owners like to think. And in the Grade 10 class of the local high school class, there's a little riddle. Why are so many of them adopted? Why do they frequently get rashes after touching iron objects? And why are they starting to get supernatural powers?

A Light In the Darkness: Characters are SS personnel attached to a special Ahnerbe unit dedicated to seeking out mystic, alien and antediluvian artifacts and entities for the glory of the Reich, and racing against swashbuckling American archaeologists and British secret agents as well as Lovecraftian cultists, and scheming dabblers in the occult.

But what their Nazi superiors don't know is that their real allegiance is to the Bavarian Illuminati and their real mission is to keep the genuine articles out of the hands of the ignorant, reckless and downright evil people searching for them, for fear that they will doom all humanity by unleashing powers they don't understand in the middle of the largest war in recorded history.

The Stuff Heroes Are Maid Of: In a dark city a rich man works out his childhood traumas by wearing a costume to go out and thump bad guys. You are his faithful household staff, who apart from cleaning and maintaining the house, operate behind the scenes to smuggle equipment into caves, do the actual investigative work, and make sure he doesn't get too far over his head all without ever embarrassing him by letting him know you know his hobby.
Is Normal a spoof or satire of something?

LitD... sort of a BPRD on the other side of the fence, but with less allegiance to their patrons?

The last one is kinda funny... it makes me think of a riff on that Maid RPG.
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Old 10-11-2014, 04:14 PM   #8
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Default Re: Ideas Are Easy

One that I've thought of but never actually put together was "The Voyages of the USS Enterprise." Think Sliders, but with the USS Enterprise. That is, the 12-gun sloop commanded by Stephen Decatur during the Barbary Wars.
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Old 10-11-2014, 06:57 PM   #9
David Johnston2
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery View Post
Is Normal a spoof or satire of something?
It's actually a pretty standard example of a quite a large television show genre. Smallville, Eureka, Eerie Indiana, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Haven, Vampire Diaries and so forth. It's just that this particular weird little town's lead characters would be a group of changelings and their friends. Me, I always figured that "Eerie" was a little on the nose and preferred the name "Normal" for such a place (and there is in fact a city named "Normal")

Quote:
LitD... sort of a BPRD on the other side of the fence, but with less allegiance to their patrons?
Well their official patrons.

Quote:
The last one is kinda funny... it makes me think of a riff on that Maid RPG.
Yes.
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Old 10-11-2014, 09:09 PM   #10
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Default Re: Ideas Are Easy

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Originally Posted by RyanW View Post
One that I've thought of but never actually put together was "The Voyages of the USS Enterprise." Think Sliders, but with the USS Enterprise. That is, the 12-gun sloop commanded by Stephen Decatur during the Barbary Wars.
Which is the inverse of my Star Trek/Sliders (or maybe more Quantum Leap) idea.

The PCs are all from alternate versions of the Star Trek universe, recruited by a godlike alien (who takes the form of a gigantic Abraham Lincoln) to fix disruptions in the time streams. Basically, they must go to various alternate versions of Star Trek (in both TOS and TNG eras) and make sure certain things do or don't happen to nudge all the multiverse down the right path. Missions were going to include things like what happens after the Borg assimilate Mudd's Women, assassinating the teenage Wesley Crusher of an evil Mirror Universe before he becomes an intergalactic conquerer, a mission in the reality where complex life never evolved on Earth, a mission to a Federation devastated and sent reeling by the destruction of Earth because there were no humpback whales to satisfy the alien space probe...
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