Campaign ideas

[Glimmerman]

Our universe, but with something original, which is secret and won't affect the population at large, added:

not so original themes from movies
Face/off: Any Ultra-Tech inventions for covert espionage.
Inception: Invading other people's dreams through technology or psychic powers.
Next: Who can see into the future?

more "original"
Survivor: Illegal pay-per-view reality-tv on some island or gladiatorial death matches.
The Stargate Project: CIA-military program for remote viewers going on psychic spying missions around the world.
Time Trek: Time traveling by psychic/astral projection.

[Dammann]

Which inspires me with another idea (that probably has been done, but isn't quite cliche yet):
Play Dungeon Fantasy from the POV of the monsters. The players have orcs, Liches, and Trolls for characters. They are engaged in a desperate struggle to defend their homes from marauding adventurers, trying to stretch limited resources, battling against other underground beasts, and occasionally raiding villages on the surface for much needed supplies. Sure, gold is nice, but aside from paying protection money to the dragon from the top of the mountain next door, it can't buy much. More important is food, slave labor, and building traps and other defenses.

You could run two groups, and eventually have them engage in a battle royale.

[Dangerious P. Cats]

The sorts of monsters that children make up and are afraid of are real. The party is an elite team that recruit and train teddy bears to battle said monsters.

[vicky_molokh]

Not absolutely original, but not overdone as much as vampire masquerades and alien abductions:

Some very small percentage of people have a weird relation with probability and causality. They have Luck, Serendipity, perhaps Destiny etc. Some even have Wishing versions of their trait. Many of them have Weirdness Magnet. And many of them try to use those powers for personal gain or other causes. There are factions with different goals etc.

This is basically the usual conspiracy set up with no blatant (Vulgar in MtA slang) abilities, but with a big subtle backing that makes it possible. The closest film character would be Chance Harper, and some cues can be taken from the Adjustment Bureau.

[Curmudgeon]

An idea I've been toying around with was a comparatively small kingdom or kingdoms of "wizards and witches" that existed in secret in the real world. The "witches and wizards" are really psis, but they prefer to claim magic whenever they get caught interacting with the real world.

The kingdom is fairly dispersed most of the time, a coven (nine Pow 10, three Pow 15 and a Pow 20 leader) and its guards (two martial artists per member) would be a typical size to meet. A kingdom would be composed of twelve princes and princesses who each commanded a principality of a dozen covens. If I had more than one such small kingdom, I was planning on each kingdom occupying a triangle on the GURPS planetary grid, i.e. an eastern and western kingdom for North America above 30° N and another kingdom covering Mexico, Central America, the West Indies and South America down to 30° S.

The kicker is that there is a Grand Coven of 33 that together with the Queen/King can do real ritual magic, i.e. Ritual aptitude 5.

By itself, it sounds like it would be a fairly formidable group but they gained their psi powers as a result of a secret government project that was meant to develop a bio-weapon. The powers are a by-product but the bio-weapon was also a reasonable success. First, since the weapon does boost latent psi powers, anyone who has both latent psi and latent anti-psi power develops a lethal mutation. Second, survivors of the mutation are really dumbed down [-3 to IQ]. Third, while they can and do form gesalts, there is a marked tendency for them to try to strip out each other's personality to claim the increased power for themself alone.

The current ruler of the kingdom (a former IQ 16 genius reduced to IQ 13 very bright) knows what government was responsible and is seriously hacked off about it. The good news is that it seems he's having each coven develop its own project for vengeance. On the other hand, maybe each coven is developing its own plan because he's not giving any direction at all; instead he's planning vengeance through ritual magic with a really big Banestorm-level ritual.

The players could be agents of the government assigned to clean up "the bio-weapon debris."

All this was planned for 3e GURPS, so you may want to adjust any figures given accordingly.

[gruundehn]

Idea number three (again from a comic book series, this one a friend gave me a few of): A mad scientist releases a virus which turns a certain percentage of the world's population into furries (animal-like humans). The players can be a team out to save the changed from those who are out to kill all of them, or they may be a team out to kill them. Whichever suits your players. Or maybe they are trying to find the mad scientist in order to discover how to reverse the changes.

[ClickMeNot]

Raymond E Feist's Faerie Tale
faeries interacting with humans and a Secret cabal of Magi enforcing an age old compact of non-interference from the faeries toward humans

[Dwarf99]

The SCP foundation wikidot is a great place to go for this sort of inspiration, but those are more artifacts and a few creatures thrown in.

[mehrkat]

Three ideas two that have been done occasionally but not constantly the other I don't think I've seen except once in a book.

Dragons. The world is controlled my powerful immortal dragons able to shapeshift into humans. They control great corporations unfortunately (for the dragons) for various reasons there are many Dragon Blooded. Human Hybrids who have a small piece of their dragon heritage. Quite a few of the dragonblooded work for the dragons and are powerful both physically and with many resources.
However, there is a small cabal of Dragon-Blooded perhaps several families who want to wrest control from the Dragons and their minions.

Godlings. I know there is one RPG and at least one series of books converted to movies but prior to the movies I had almost never seen. The godlings are long lived and powerful and have various abilities. Sprinkle secret societies to taste.

Sentient Viruses that take control of hosts but are trapped in the host until some cataliyzing event helps them travel. They move through the world moving from body to body all for some secret purpose. They cannot live in any host beyond a specific time frame. Breeding is relatively difficult for some reason but as they are essentially immortal there are still quite a few of them. It would be easy to imagine factions more friendly towards their hosts maybe that don't completely control them but share the body.

Silly idea
Squirrels are secretly agents of the balance while trees are the holy place they live to hold the balance. Dogs are their ancient enemy and they live among the humans under their noses constantly trying to subvert the humans to destroy more trees and therefore upset the balance. For when the balance falls enough they will be masters of the universe and they will be able to change the world to conform to their needs.

[PTTG]

If you can't think of anything, I highly recomend low-power superheroes. Give your players 100 or 150 points each and they can get any advantage they want.