The Campaign Builder's Guild

Got any works bubbling in the old brainbox, but know they'll stay there forever, never committed to paper save in some half-hearted scrawl soon to be forgotten as the next pet project seizes your mind and leads you on another jaunty ride through realms of whimsy and fruitless fantasy?

I know I do!  Share your ideas here, you listless dreamer, and let us commiserate

Wizards in space
Billions of years ago the wizards forged the known universe, crafting its laws through a coalescence and configuration of sorcerous energies.  It's now the future: humanity has spread across the vastness of space, and the wizards have returned.  You're the wizards.  You can walk in the chill vacuum of space.  You can converse with comets.  You can blow up stars.

Cthul-who?
We are the Elder Gods!  Beyond time and space, with little to no social grace and a hearty disrespect for the laws of physics and the fragile intellects of men!  Spread the crazy, corrupt the gracious, curse wildly as some nebbish dilettante summons you in the middle of your cosmic poker game (and you had a Full friggin' House!).

Dentists
I dunno... I just want to write an RPG about dentists.  Go figure.

Quote from: Salacious AngelDentists
I dunno... I just want to write an RPG about dentists.  Go figure.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=OMHHWfSe4TE

Failed Idea 1: Floaty Islands. For some reason, there are floating islands all over the place. People rock and roll through the skies with bicycle-pedaled gyrocopters and steam-powered jetpacks. There are lots of low-tech aerial dogfights for some reason or another (smuggling?) On second thought, I think this used to be some kind of cartoon.

Failed Idea 2: Making Me Nervous. Game takes place inside a single human being. Players assume the roles of various brain/nervous system components, jointly steering their human through various daily hardships.

Failed Idea 3: Generic Fantasy Leadership Thingy. It's another generic fantasy setting, but the players are the generals, rather than the front-line grunts. They raise armies, build fortresses, and lay siege to stuff. Treacherous alliances and backstabbing a must.

Failed Idea 4: Hell, Even I Think This Is Pretty Stupid. Apply standard tropes of fantasy gaming to mundane, boring real-world jobs. I'm a level 6 Accountant, and I've got my +2 Briefcase, and I'm going to do this CR 8 paperwork!

Failed Idea 5: A Freeform Dual-Worlds Thing? The idea with this one was that players could be normal people you might meet on the subway on the way to work, but also they would be disguised/misperceived mythological whatsits. So your neighborhood mechanic might be a servant of Hephaestus, or your history teacher might be related to Odin, or whatever. Then I realized that this was basically World of Darkness with more of a lame gimmick.

QuoteThen I realized that this was basically World of Darkness with more of a lame gimmick.

No, I think it's got a better gimmick than world of darkness.  The idea is actually pretty cool; there could be basically-detailed pantheons that interact with one another, and the characters could slot themselves into the mythos as major or minor players in the game of powers.  It has a few things over WoD: a more variable tone; different power levels; and a range of crazy plot elements.  And you can take it as seriously as you like, so it could be deadly serious and dramatic, flippantly absurd, or anywhere in between.

Quote from: Salacious AngelCthul-who?
We are the Elder Gods!  Beyond time and space, with little to no social grace and a hearty disrespect for the laws of physics and the fragile intellects of men!  Spread the crazy, corrupt the gracious, curse wildly as some nebbish dilettante summons you in the middle of your cosmic poker game (and you had a Full friggin' House!).

Dude, you so deserve an award for that.  How about a !turtle because it makes as much sense.

So is this thread for any ideas that'll never see print, or just the ones you figure you have to be crazy for?

Any idea at all, really.  Shoot away.

Life, Interrupted
You're not dead.  It's not desperation or stubborn refusal; you just know, somehow, that even though your body is lying next to you, splayed out on the floor with a nasty hole in the head, you're not dead.

The characters are normal people, who, after a near death experience, discover that they can return to the point of death and in so doing become poltergeists.  They fight demons, ghosts, and degenerate members of their own kind.

It's like that one movie, or that anime where the schoolkids shoot themselves in the head at 3 O'Clock am to gain kewl powerz.

Bacchanalia: You and your drinking buddies are having the party of your lives! To bad those goblins/orcs/trolls/dragons feel like harshing your buzz.

 Carnival: Your traveling band of circus "freaks" solve mysteries and combat evil while maintaining an interesting evening show.

Sentience, v1.9
Humans have created "Strong AI," truly sentient artificial "lifeforms."  These AI are quickly advancing and evolving, with or without human intervention, respectively.  Their forms range from robots to androids, personal AIs, child-like AIs which replace computers, to the Interplanetary Network, an artificial Collective Unconscious, after a fashion, and everything in between... and soon beyond.

Humans must deal with not only cyberethics, but also the newly emerging transhumans, ranging from Augments, who have upgraded their mental or sensory faculties, to Cyborgs, who have upgraded their physical capabilities, to Fractals, who have replicated their own minds within their bodies, to Uploads, who have shed the Mortal Coil, so to speak.

This is to say nothing of genetic engineering, which, while under strict limits when applied things like humans or their diet, has helped to terraform Venus into this, despite the fact that it lies outside the Solar System's habitable zone.  Venus is still relatively hot compared to Earth, and the gravity is slightly lower than Earth.  However, the problem of the Sun rising every 115 Earth days has been fixed with a series of solar mirrors, controlled by the Venusian Solar Array AI (who calls herself "Vasa").  Of course, Venus now only has one timezone, but it is a small price to pay.

Damn... I should totally do this...

To start off with I have a metaconcept that keeps coming up:

The Creators and the Transporters
There's an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where we find out that the reason everyone in the galaxy looks human is because millions or billions of years ago the only sentient species existing in the Milky-Way seeded planets with their genetic information.  Neat concept, but there are a couple of nitpicky issues I have with it: 1) How does this simple genetic "whatever" ensure that everyone keeps coming out looking so much alike?, 2) This does nothing to address how a Trekkian galaxy (with so many habitable planets) comes about if we assume that habitable planets are rare.

But if we take the idea further we can take highly advanced aliens and give them the ability to set planets up to support life.  This proposes an interesting alternative to the Drake Equation: if the number of sentient alien species that reach a level of technological or biological ability to manipulate or control system and life'"including sentient life'"formation so that there are habitable planets is 1 then (assuming they make use of their abilities) all we need to know to figure out how many other species are out there is how long said aliens last in that state.

That takes care of the basics of the Creators.  The Transporters are an even easier concept to understand: they exist to transport different species to a unified setting.  Rather than having a bunch of spacefaring cultures bandy about in something Star [insert other word here]-y you give them one planet on which they have a not-quite-space-age culture or less, or perhaps a couple of nearby planets and they have limited stardrive.  The Transporters general hang around as caretakers, either known or unknown.  Most of the time they are not the same as the Creators, but not always.

Someday I'll get my 'basic carnal' skills and subskills into their own game, for an X rated system that allows someone with 'Kamasutra level 6' and 'Basic Gymnast, level 2' going up against/with someone with 'I-ching, level 5' and 'tying and knotting, level 2'
(might sell poorly as a table-top, but on an x-box, I'll make a mint.)

We are the Empties
There's nothing to be done, now.  We've got everything we could ever want, and noone to stop us doing exactly as we please.  Everyone loves us, because everyone else is dead.  And you know what?  We're absolutely worthless.

Rich, sexy, powerful.  Callous, degenerate, despairing.  Somewhere along the way the PCs lost themselves amid the money and the pleasure and their own moral squalor.  They've covered their empty souls with a mask of pride and persuasion, but it won't last, and every day they drive themselves closer to a self-made oblivion.  How do they liberate themselves?  Are they strong enough?

EDIT: Another one, which I may have seen as someone else's idea on these boards.

And so it Was
The PCs are the creator gods at the beginning of the world.  They have stats determining their various powers and spheres of influence, and compete for the power to define and redefine their nascent planet.  There is no GM, just friends engaging in cooperative world-building.

[blockquote=SA]And so it Was
The PCs are the creator gods at the beginning of the world. They have stats determining their various powers and spheres of influence, and compete for the power to define and redefine their nascent planet. There is no GM, just friends engaging in cooperative world-building[/blockquote]
Or the players play their god roles and the gM tells them how the world and bands of PC's react.  Compete and see who can get the best group of worshippers!

These following ideas make use of my Creators and Transporters metaconcept from above:

Weird Time at Sentry High
You were a normal kid.  Well, as normal as one can be on a world populated by different species brought here by highly advanced aliens when your home planet was dying, and all way too similar.  But that was it, until the day you arrived at Sentry High.
Your parents were thrilled that you had been accepted into such a prestigious high school (likely despite any signs that you were competent enough), but it was way out in this town in the country.  You didn't think there could be anything interesting out there.  Your opinion changed that first day when you had to battle that first giant rock-crab shaped like a hand.  And you found out you had special powers.  The school administration tells you that these monsters come from the "Spirit World", which is trying to invade your dimension.  You've been chosen to fight them and keep them in the Spirit Wrold.  And you have to keep all this a secret from the kids at the school who aren't in on it.  Sounds like the plot of a Saturday-morning cartoon'¦'¦'¦'¦'¦'¦

[Okay, so this is a derivative of every "group of kids must battle monsters" cartoon out there.  There's a reason it's used so often: it's so easy to understand the basic premise that you can throw in all the character development and various tribulations with a monster battle for variety or emphasis and your audience can easily switch between the two.  I'd also like to think this setting has another possibility: since it's not modern Earth you can spend some time building the world collaberatively, along with the various aliens and the cultures they brought with them.  And these "Spirit World" monsters aren't really generic enemies they're tied into the metaconcept of the Creators'"who're responsible for why everyone looks so much alike (which the planet's inhabitants know nothing about).  Depending on how you want the personalities of the monster to go there are three suggestions:
Criminals: Some of the worst offenders the Creators had, locked away in another dimension and now itching to break free.  Good if you want the monsters to be really vicious and willing to do anything (plus you can insert come bad boy/girl romance.)
Testers: Just because you were rescued from your dying planet doesn't mean you're worthy yet, and these guys are your judges.  Good if you want the monsters to do a variety or odd things, and/or because it makes them willing to put people in danger without really trying to hurt anyone.
Distraction: The Creators don't trust you to be friendly with each other, so they left some insurance.  So long as the world has to worry about the monsters they won't be fighting each other (that's the plan, anyway).  This could allow for some interesting ideas: The monsters' tactics are getting more and more desperate because they need the world to know they exist and pose a threat.  You've found out the true purpose of the monsters, and now you have to decide whether the world is bad enough to warrant letting them be discovered.  You found out their purpose, you decided the world is okay, and now you want to peacefully negotiate for them to stop attacking.]

Shaman Division
Ever since your kind was transported to this world people have had to fight off "monsters" from some other place most people call the "Spirit World".  These things are too tough for just anyone to deal with, but you've got the training and/or (hopefully "and") the gadgets/powers to beat them.  Oh, you have to wear a mask while working.
Why?  Because in the beginning it was shamans who wore masks to channel the power of gods or something, and it's tradition.  Because (supposedly) it scares the monsters.  Because just in case those things come after you they're too stupid to realize that the mask isn't you.
Bad news?  These things are weird and completely messed up.  And dangerous.
Good news?  State funding, great benefits, people really really like you even though they aren't allowed to know who you are.  And your friends and family accept that you can't talk about your job.

[Like the one above, only bigger and louder.  It uses the same setting assumption, though this one makes as much sense ported to normal (with a few changes to work in the whole "shaman" angle) Earth.
The real benefit?  Logical justification in-world for why superheroes have to wear masks while still being cops!]

Quote from: Salacious Angel

QuoteThen I realized that this was basically World of Darkness with more of a lame gimmick.

Have you been reading American Gods lately?


Mindwipe

Everybody in the entire world, for some (understandably) mysterious reason, has simultaneously lost all their previous memory (save for various memories necessary for basic function, such as speech). What cause this? Who am I? Why does the ground get black right here, but then return to green? Does that large thing tumbling towards me pose any threat to my--