Ideas Are Easy

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Keepers of the Troll Brigade.

Nothing fights quite like a monster. The PC's are the humans in charge of collecting, training, caring for, and keeping from mischief a military unit composed of brute beasts in the shape of men. It is their job to teach them how to march, how to obey orders, how to keep ranks, and how to target soldiers wearing the correct uniforms.

They're big, they're dumb, and they're all yours... but they're also the key to victory in the coming war.

So it's like herding cats... that can knock down trees?
Sounds like great fun for the right gaming group.

[SolemnGolem]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

[Regarding the SQUIRPS campaign idea]

That's pure SCP territory, both squirrel and intelligent fungus. The fungus could easily be a form of SCP 610.

Thank you - a main thematic inspiration was the 1998 video game Thief: The Dark Project (also Thief Gold, the extended version). It features a similar tonal shift from "outer rim smuggler" subsistence thievery, to full-on Lovecraftian existential-level threat.

(I did a brief prequel adventure with my spouse for a cutesy forest critter SQUIRPS adventure featuring Biri the Squirrel. In that adventure, she saved the forest from the flatulent threat of a decomposing hill giant's half-submerged corpse. It was awesome.)

Originally Posted by ericthered

Keepers of the Troll Brigade.

Nothing fights quite like a monster. The PC's are the humans in charge of collecting, training, caring for, and keeping from mischief a military unit composed of brute beasts in the shape of men.

This idea could lead to plenty of fun with "mismatched couple" style character interactions. The Witcher 3 videogame has a few instances of rock trolls serving in human armies, including one who's apparently left behind in the camp because it's not able to understand tactics, but is able to protect a designated site with extreme ferocity just fine.

[Apollonian]

A standard D&D style dragon terrorizing a small town in the 20th century - American Midwest by default, but could be anywhere. Treat it like a monster movie and you've got something properly scary. It'd be a neat changeup got a Monster Hunters team, I think. They don't usually deal with bus-sized, flying, fire-breathing predators with human-level intelligence.

[exalted]

Recently finished a book and it gave me a probably untenable idea for my gaming group, well maybe not but not exactly what they usually like.

Fairly real early medieval times slightly larger then life but not much say at Arthurs or Charlemanges courts or something similiar. Magic/Gods/Myths are real but fairly weak in the real world but saints/wizards/shaman/spirits/gods can enter and take with them people to a parallel world where the reverse is true the physical less real than the mystical. To defeat malific influences in the real world you occationally need to get to the source in the parallel world or to acquire holy relics, spiritual guids and such possibly the same. Probably not revolutionary but there could be some nice mechanics with characters working somewhat differently in each realm and a brutal realism in the normal world, besides a very strange alternative world possibly in the lovecraftian way as in the book that inspired the idea.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by exalted

Fairly real early medieval times slightly larger then life but not much say at Arthurs or Charlemanges courts or something similiar. Magic/Gods/Myths are real but fairly weak in the real world but saints/wizards/shaman/spirits/gods can enter and take with them people to a parallel world where the reverse is true the physical less real than the mystical. To defeat malific influences in the real world you occationally need to get to the source in the parallel world or to acquire holy relics, spiritual guids and such possibly the same. Probably not revolutionary but there could be some nice mechanics with characters working somewhat differently in each realm and a brutal realism in the normal world, besides a very strange alternative world possibly in the lovecraftian way as in the book that inspired the idea.

That's a fun setting conceit, at least. I'd probably build it so that rather than magic being "weak" its just not very portable. Effects in the mundane realm are usually the result of big structures/efforts in the mystic realm. So you can do things like curse a castle in the mundane realm, you just have to build a substantial structure in the mundane realm.

This makes wizard's towers nasty fortresses, but wizards not an immediate threat outside of their lairs. It also encourages going to the mystic realm to solve problems.

[exalted]

Originally Posted by ericthered

That's a fun setting conceit, at least. I'd probably build it so that rather than magic being "weak" its just not very portable. Effects in the mundane realm are usually the result of big structures/efforts in the mystic realm. So you can do things like curse a castle in the mundane realm, you just have to build a substantial structure in the mundane realm.

This makes wizard's towers nasty fortresses, but wizards not an immediate threat outside of their lairs. It also encourages going to the mystic realm to solve problems.

Probably going somewhat in this direction, magic is not really weak more like subtle and possible to rationalize at least somewhat. Not that there are many sceptics around but it ain't fireballs and flying through the air magic in the real world (but might very well be in the mystic realm) but those besieging the wizards fortress may well find that catapult stones bounce of the fortress without leaving a mark, plague striking them just as it might have anyhow but worse or be faced with fearless fanatics who fight on just a few moments after death has taken them. Facing down the wizard in the mystic realm is not really the only solution, doing so is generally not necessarily easier but it is heroic and it saves a lot of lives when it works.

Currently pinning down some ideas and striking a balance between mundane/mystic prowess of characters is going to be a cornerstone if it tilts too much in one direction all problems that can be solved by one side of the whole is going to be solved that way. Probably easiest to go with more mundane early and then have the mystic elements take more space along the way.

Anyone having a good RPG source for the early days of the Carolingian Empire?

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by ericthered

That's a fun setting conceit, at least.

I once worked out something related -- the fantasy realm being the implemented consensus interface for netrunning, as in Vernor Vinge's "True Names".

(Build a fantasy character with (3e) CP somewhere around 10x Computer Programming skill... scale up or down to suit. Realm Magic might be good in 4e, since the core notion is magic-as-reality-editing, much like M:tA.)

[seaweedbrain]

So,after reading the sample for a book,it gave me an idea that I might develop more.

Far future, due to something making life on the surface unsuitable humanity is stuck in the skies on enormous sky ships for the past 1000 years, but every once in a while,a team has to make their way down to the surface,while avoiding dangerous lightening storms via parachuting to gather supplies,and on the surface there's many more dangers.

[Daigoro]

You're familiar with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I presume.

Consider then, Tim Burton's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, comprised of characters from across the myriad of Tim Burton's fine films.

Or, worse yet, The League of Extraordinary Depps.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

The League of Extraordinary Depps.

Officer Tom Hanson
Captain Jack Sparrow
Ichabod Crane
Edward Scissorhands
Donald J. Trump
Tonto
John Dillinger