Campaign ideas

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

Originally Posted by Finalsora811

The action does need to HAPPEN on Earth, but things could pop out of other places to GO to Earth. Also, I do not want to consult other medias as I want my idea to be original or as close to original as possible.

That's not going to be very original. The best you can hope for is a fairly original combination of several ideas, and even there I, for one, can't think of anything right now.

You could try making a list of possibilities and then picking two and combing them.

Here's my list to start with:

Supernatural
Magic
Superpowers
Psionics
Conspiracies
Aliens
Parallel worlds
Alternate worlds
Time travel

Mind you, some combinations are pretty well worn already. And most of them have subdivisions that are quite dissimilar. Ghosts, zombies, vampires, demons, and eldritch horrors from the Dawn of Time are all supernatural, but they're quite different from each others too.


Hans

[LemmingLord]

How about this:

Nukes are a complete hoax. The "bombing" of hiroshima and nagisaki were actually natural disasters the americans were able to predict. All testing footage is a hoax to keep the ussr from taking more than its share of territory after world war II. If this gets out it will certainly change the balance of power in the world.. Expect invasions of some kind and a new world war that won't result in a holocaust...

The PCs might be a mission impossible style group, but after their first few missions when they realize the secret, the secret has already been shared with terrorists... and worse, South Korea actually succeeds in creating a REAL bomb and threaten the US to unleash it unless they relent in certain world affairs...

[Jerander]

Originally Posted by Finalsora811

The action does need to HAPPEN on Earth, but things could pop out of other places to GO to Earth. Also, I do not want to consult other medias as I want my idea to be original or as close to original as possible.

If I had a truly original idea, I wouldn't share it. I'd written the book for profit.

[martin_rook]

Here's one I used, stripped of the "kitchen sink" approach I utilized. It's from the comic book "Planetary" which essentially incorporated everything awesome, from Sherlock Holmes to Godzilla movies as secret history, X-files kind of stuff. But here's the central conspiracy slimmed down for you:

It's our world plus a secret space program (well, 2, if you count the Soviet one) during the Cold War. The public one was for show -- not fake, just public and separate from the real work of the Cold War. The Apollo Program reached the moon in 1969 but the Artemis Program had already made it there in 1961.

Now, you can work backwards and go to secret Nazi tech (like the Dora flying saucer) the US captured at the end of WWII. Or maybe it was alien tech from the Foo Fighters and crashed Roswell saucer that let Artemis reach the moon. (Or both. Aliens could be the X-factor from the beginning.) Either way, you mix the X-factor with the Cold War.

You can also extrapolate forwards. Something was waiting for Project Artemis, either in space or on the moon. In the source material, the crew of the Artemis capsule make a deal with powerful extra-dimensional beings. They are transformed into immortal superhumans in exchange for our planet, which the crew has to turn over to them in 50 or 60 years. The Artemis crewmen return to earth and take over the secret organization the black ops space program was part of, using it as the kernel of their conspiracy to bring the world under their thumb (and to develop interstellar or inter dimensional travel for themselves). Here, the X-factor is these few super beings (well, the inter dimensional beings who they dealt with) and their Conspiracy. And if you want to heat things up, you can always have the payment come due. Maybe our alien overlords are already starting to take over -- discrete incursions from another dimension are just the thing to get the attention of PCs and draw them into the plot.

[cybermancer2k1]

Perhaps a setup similar to Fringe: a parallel Earth that only interacts with ours at specific locations and/or at specific times. The PCs are part of an organization dedicated to preventing incursions from the other side while preserving the secret of the other world. Or maybe they're ordinary people who have stumbled onto this Big Secret only to find that others are after them as a result.

[Winged]

There are people, who are for all intents and purposes immortal (unkillable 2 or maybe 3, with no more aging, lots of regen, I'm sure you'll figure something out). No one knows how this is possible biologically, or why these people become this way. What is known is that given enough time these guys go crazy. Give anybody long enough and reality breaks them, and you would be surprised what kinds of horrors a guy with countless days to plan and prepare can commit.

There are few people who know of these "immortals" most of them are agents, recruited to monitor known "safe" immortals, to investigate potential ones, and to bring in the dangerous ones.

[Stripe]

Many school janitors are really space aliens with mind control powers that are brainwashing children and teens into "sleeper agents."

Many others are government agents on seek and destroy missions.

Of course, this must be hush-hush.

[Dammann]

Originally Posted by Finalsora811

Also, I do not want to consult other medias as I want my idea to be original or as close to original as possible.

I intend this kindly: that is not how you do it.

Coming up with something original usually doesn't mean shutting off outside information. Most of the time, originality comes from looking at the existing from a fresh perspective.

For example:
You could start with a premise of, "secret magic schools operate in England, educating kids for their futures as magicians, oh and this all exists in secret."

It's Harry Potter, right? So you change your perspective (easy, in this case, because HP is a pretty crazy idea that works better as a children's book than a serious premise for fiction or gaming).

How does this magical society stay secret? Perhaps people become capable of magic if they have any contact with magic. Contact might literally mean touching something that is magical, or it might mean perceiving that a magic phenomenon has occurred. So the secret might grow, but it might also consume and co opt those who know it. Magic using people send their kids to school to learn how to use magic safely. Hogwarts is more like driver ed in this scenario.

So why isn't everyone on the planet in on it by now? Maybe there is a finite amount of magic that can be tapped, and so there is an incentive for those who can use magic to be careful and discrete, so that their own powers do not become spread among too many initiates. This also make magic users potentially inimical to one another.

So how can they trust anyone to educate their children, instead of frying the kid with lightning to reduce the number of magic users? Maybe there is a fear of retribution. Maybe untrained young wizards are more troubling than diluting magic among another generation. Maybe killing someone with magic creates a ghost, who will then haunt you forever. Maybe too much magic among too few users is as undesirable as too little among too many.

Anyway, applying a little speculation and critical thinking produces a very paranoid version of secret magic. Exposing myself to the Harry Potter books doesn't make it harder to do, it makes it easier, by exploring and revealing so many absurd justifications.*

You can do this sort of thing with any tired premise, and breath it to life. Familiarity simply means that your players don't have to ask you what everything is. If they get attacked by a slambrinitz, are they more scared or puzzled? I prefer to hit them with a big, toadlike thing with long legs and distressingly human teeth. It makes a sound like someone giggling nervously. The PCs are running away, now, unless they have flamethowers.

*No offense to Rowling, here- the books are fun, and the gravity she manages in a setting full of pun-derived names and silly concepts is an achievement, while the tongue in cheek magic world is fun and charming and whatever.

[Figleaf23]

Try this for a seed:

The mysteries of human evolution (e.g. unexplained population bottlenecks, the apparent excess capability of humans beyond the obvious requirements of ecological survival, humans' ability to function in different environments particularly water, the disappearance of other hominids, the emergence of intelligence and language...) are all explained by an entity or group which secretely intervened in human development for some important purpose. However, the entity or group has vanished and now a small group of humankind are the only ones aware of the secret history and trying to figure out what the important purpose was -- before it's too late.

[gruundehn]

Another idea: Misunderstood monsters.
A webcomic I enjoy is built around the theme that werewolves and all the other weres are real and have been hiding amongst us for centuries in their normal human guise. It is a funny webcomic but it does have graphic sex so visit it if you wish to see what I'm talking about but be warned. The comic is Peter is the Wolf and the storyline is that Peter accidently creates a new werewolf when he has sex with his girlfriend and the troubles she causes for the pack.
Something similar can be done with the idea of hidden "monsters" trying to keep the secret. The "monsters" are really just normal folks trying to get along.