Amazing D&D campaign ideas #1

some ideas for campaigns i’ve had:
- horror style campaign set in a spooky old city with catholic and aztec inspired evil gods (the one I’m currently running)
- a company pays a bunch of adventurers to travel down to the center of the Earth (which is full of magic) and rescue their lead scientist
- A one shot where the party members are all bratty orphans trying to sneak into a candy shop. the enemies are all in the kid’s imaginations, so they get to fight origami dragons and stuff at level one
- a spelljammer/treasure planet inspired adventure. i’m also thinking of creating a mechanic for ship battles

i telyported my players and me in to waterdeep as lvl zero dont fret they fought of rats for a few coppa and broke in a save then i wanted to let them fight of tree goons from the candy champaing then i asked the tree players as myself lets find some place to rest also thegoons have 1d4 weapons they have more hp the players i mean and then they get a list of classes seen in there dreams hombrew and oficial first they had to roll a wisdom save to not feel the urge to jump in right away on a 10 to 19 you have the time to take 5 itemswithin 5 minutes 1player jumped in by faling a save the other rolled a 20 +1 soo she got 10 items in ten minutes already named or not she took a horse a block of cheese then they choose a class and go furter but it was thems last day at the farm thus it will end prolly in a stasis also if you would like a game i play only live cuse im a tecnobeet i going to rage if tecnology cramps up i live in the netherlands give me a heads up if you there and want to playhay.

What about a campaign where every character is a pop culture reference, for instance, a halfling named Bilbo Baggins with a ring the makes him invisible.

Here's the one I'm currently working on!

The plot involves the BBEG (the head of a royal family of sorcerers), creating and unleashing a 'wild magic' virus that, throughout the campaign, spreads throughout more and more of the world. The kingdom that the PC's live in take notice of the virus and sens out the PC's to investigate, which eventually leads them right to the BBEG.

As for the virus itself, I developed a system as to how it works:

The most common methods of infection, as with real world viruses, are contact with food, water, or other people that happen to be infected. Infection via magical contact is also possible, but significantly less likely to happen.

Should a player become infected, at my discretion, they have to roll a D20 throughout random times of the day (no modifiers added just a flat roll). If they roll a 1 or a 2, I then roll a D100 and then select a random symptom for them to develop based off of a custom-made chart.

i literally had this idea this day: it is a massive multicampaign plot that is about a dracolich and its assosciates. but that is not the intrestin part, the intresting part are the 9 pepole who helped in the creation of the dracolich. All of them are powerful spellcasters with a theme of undeath. This would be a great time to put Pointy hat's Lich creatures to good use. Each campaign would end with the party killing one of the 9, ever weakening the dragon's power till hey have a chance of victory. and then the war will begin

I genuinely have a hard time saying the first one is good cause while it seems like a cool ass twist it kinda
Seems stupid and very unlikely that through this entire mission and everything they've done the party full of good guys never once got a hint or told by a previous npc what they were doing was wrong untill the VERY end? Also I get the point of the last bit but man I'm sorry that sucks really hard. "If you want to maintain your good alignment and do what your character would do you have to basically fight the final boss with none of your class abilities and no help from the other NPCs" you might as well tell the group to kill themselves dog, that's complete horseshit. Like if there were like
Multiple hints varying in obviousness to investigate the deity I wouldn't be so hung up about it but he never mentions there being any so I'm left to assume he basically is forcing cleric and paladin to turn evil or become literally worst than a level 3 fighter and that's, in my opinion, completely unacceptable and borderline idiotic to make that kind of final boss for a creature they had no reason to doubt that was literally the quest giver for the main goddamn story i would genuinely leave that table if i were that cleric or paladin, feels like im being heavily punished for not getting your stupid twist. Some of y'all be forgetting dnd is a GAME first and foremost and not just a funny little story for you to act out like you're performing at Broadway. You have to measure story stuff with gameplay, stop putting one over the other.

i have one.
the world is falling apart. chunks of the land are now in the sky, animals a changing into monsters and odd creatures made of common items start appearing (like a dragon made of swords or a human made of sticks) and the whole campaign is the party chasing down a creature that can fix this... but that creature can take any form it wants

One campaign idea I had earlier today was that the players are on the Titanic just before it hits the iceberg. Simple solution is to survive the disaster.

Angels vs demons was his best idea? That's Timmy's first novel levels of storytelling.

I only made it as far as "The cleric and paladin had picked their own god, but I didn't care about their agency. So, I said their god never existed and it was always a demon lord granting them holy powers.."

The last one just the plot of mario? xD

i don't know if you guys still read these comments, but id like to share my idea. it is not exactly a campaign; i don't really have a group, so i decided to start writing something only for myself and to channel my creativity.

so, basically!

there a two main continents, united by a very small path of islands. one is arxantia, the other one is hyperia (silly names, i know...) the first one is rather small, but the most fragmented, with more reigns, while the second one is united through one council and royalty. the princess of hyperia, denna, got sent to marry the next in line prince of galloux, a reign in arxantia, because of her rebellious nature (and the fact that she had brothers to take the throne for her). she has no choice but to go, leaving with the the pristess and other people from hyperian court. her pristess name is Lisette.

she then marries Leonidas (galloux's king), has a child - the 'main character' -, Jeanne, a girl. she dies during labor, leaving him with only a girl to take the throne. she's basically raid by the courtisans, servants and Lisette, who, even though dislikes the royalty with her whole heart, promised denna (who was a dear friend) to help taking care of her child.

fast forward to many many years later. jeanne is an adult, lisette is way older. she then is set off to marry a prince from a reign in south, Feroma; they've met, but they're not really close, but she takes this as a mission, since she sees this as the only way she could ever make her dad proud (who, by the way, was very sick with an unknown disease). this marriage, however, wouldnt send her to another court, but rather bring him to galloux so he could become king (to compensate the lack of a male heir, since the king failed many many many times to have a child). the marrige arrangements start.

let's go back to Lisette: she's a pristess, connected to the gods, although not really a mage or anything. still, she's sensitive, and since jeanne's birth, is been having visions that feel very disconnected; she sees a red dress, sweets, water and a ship, just like the one she took with denna many years ago. she has no idea what they mean: till she suddenly has a new one after findind out about the marriage.

jeanne's been getting sick with anxiety (at least they think its because of the anxiety), but is not going to try to prevent the marriage in anyway, even if her fianceé is definetly NOT into her (and being an idealistic young princess, she really wanted him to be).

basically lisette would find out that jeanne's being poisoned; not only that, but the kings council (which basically gave full power to one of his 'hands', Hugo, a close ally do feromian royalty) is starting to realize lisette as an obstacle, setting to send far away as a mean to silence her. she's fast tho: she puts the pieces together, and realize the huge conspiracy thats been happening right above their noses. jeanne was being poisoned because hugo's daughter was already having an affair with jeanne's fianceé; basically everyone there was a liar and willing to kill to give Feroma even more power, given their extremely militarist and imperialist politics.

there is no escape and little to no time; lisette gets together with a servant (who, of course, is helping them so she can too get something in return); she remebers her visions and, seeing its the only way it would work, sends her the same way her mother did to get to arxantia in the first place: a ship, crossing the ocean to get to hyperia.

in hyperia, she would be sent to the guard of Talyssa, a paladin follower of a goddess of the woman and her group of adventurers; talyssa is also an ex lover of Lisette. her group would be made of different classes and races, and it would mean a fresh new start for Jeanne, trying to find love and acceptance after finding out the very people she trusted her heart with were the ones trying to take her down (except Lisette, who's future is uncertain).

THEN, this group would follow to make a lot of missions in Hyperia, finding out more about the place, its gods, magic, demons, etc. still figuring which missions i'm gonna send them out, but.. yeah!

Bro that first one is literally the story of Kirby return to dream land

I'm building a campaign formiga tienen my family to play I'm only 12 so it really helps that you can use videos so I can actually make a campaign

The first story is terrible DMing. Forcing players to lose their class is never acceptable.

One I had, was that Vecna before becoming a lich, he was joined a group of adventurers of many different classes and races, all together to defeat Tiamat (who is way more powerful here and immortal), they succeded and upon her death, each of her head created tye first chromatics dragons, who strated to reproduce, Vecna seeing this, and after some experiments, he discovered that if they joined forces, Tiamat would be reborn, so he seals them, it constantly needs living souls to keep them sealed, which he keeps killing innocents to keep it up. After many years, the players confront and kill Vecna, to which they discover that now, the first chromatic dragons (which are the only ancient chromatic dragons of the campaing) are going to be set free, they need to fight Tiamat, whose has infinite hp and to be killed needs to have, each individual head to be cut off and seal the soul of that chromatic, doing so to all 5 heads will end her for good. To not make it impossible, Vecna has a lot of items used by first adventurers who defeat her and Bahamut helps in the final battle

That frist idea was good
But it does feel that things are pretty raw for the players at the end if they weren't able to discover the ruse
The Angels refuse to help them even if they hand over the World Tree artifact
Despite the fact that the Demon Lord would likely come after them to retrieve it after he kills the Players
Kinda feels the angels are too hostile for their own good

My "Hollow World" campaign is pretty weird, even for me. The hollow world formed from roiling primordial chaos which quickly boiled off. For a fraction of a second spirits were created (the amount of chaos has to be at about the right level for them to form but not instantly be destroyed. Then the rest of the world's history is spirits creating things and monsters (not necessarily "evil" it just means formed by chaos) crystallizing out of chaos. The world is also big, like 1,000,000 earth's big. With several layers of the crust floating on a sea of chaos. The creatures I try and keep incoherently designed like the world is a result of 100 different people mashing their ideas into the same world (because it is)

It's pretty high politics as well (loooots of factions and factions within factions doing their own thing)

That first one was great

Not the Mario campaign 💀

The only real unique idea I've had for a campaign, from scratch was a Level 10-20 campaign set in a ravaged Forgotten Realms, where the forces of the Celestial Planes and the 9 Hells finally clashed on the Material Plane, and with the calamity of it all, the Shadowfell and Feywild both merged into the Prime Material Plane, allowing Shadow Dragons and Archfey to fight alongside or against their mortal counterparts. The characters took on demonic or celestial origins (aside from two players, one chose the path of a Seraphim, the product of an angel and demon having a child, and one who just chose to play a regular human who pushed himself beyond all physical and spiritual limitations to protect his house. Not his family, as he had none, nor his village, as he was a hermit, nah just his house). The plot revolved around the players amassing an army to finally destroy either the Platinum Dragon God, Bahamut, or the ruler of the 9 Hells, Asmodeus, in a live-or-die final conflict. I think the party was evenly split, 2 playing devils, 2 playing angels. It ended with the Seraphim and Human sacrificing themselves in a ritual to summon forth Ao, the D&D overdeity, to reset the world, the Hells, Celestial Realm, all of it, and allow the players to return as mortal races, whilst the Human and Seraphim became his new envoys to this universe's deities. Basically, I made D&D Ragnarok with a giant Reset Button ending

Lol. I got one. I was DMing a crew 3-deep, & they'd found a religious altar resembling no gods they've ever heard of. That would've been fine, except I was so goddamn stoned I forgot to curtail my descriptive process right there. Before I knew it, I had them finding a lever that dislodged the altar, revealing a stairway into some catacombs. Trouble is, I hadn't planned for any kind of that, & now I had to improvise something within twenty or so seconds (& I refuse to ever settle for lame). I made a Eureka-shouting hailmary of an idea; there was a hallway (in a medieval mid-magic homebrewed setting) with big tubes leading along the walls & ceiling (a circuit-tube pumping green psionic energy, one pumping Golden Divine Energy, another with Azure raw arcane Spellfire, a Red energy-tube blasting raw Infernal Pact Magic, & a dark purple energizer-tube of raw Fey Pact Magic energy into the one & only Warforged with an exclusively singular Android were housed within by ancient steamcyberpunk Leshay, who coincidentally invented spelljammer technology). Not bad for a stoner think-rage, eh?

Not the best idea but I think funny; my first campaign was supposed to be an acquisitions incorporated style campaign with a castle and some resources we could clear out. Well our single veteran player stopped the entire campaign by taking over the castle and not letting anyone in. It was my first time playing dnd and I didn’t realize his homebrew class was broken as fuck. So he ruined the entire campaign. Years later we revisited the same world except now he’s an evil wizard locked in the basement we have to defeat! Not the most original idea ever but I find it funny that we made a campaign based on ripping on a ‘that guy’

My current game is:
The party starts as people picked off the street by the Mayor’s guard which tell them to go get the rivalry town’s mayor they do that come back and their town is burning down they rush in the Dragonborne falls asleep in the fire the rest of the party followed him and they saw a black and red demon-like figure (The Big Bad) that they fight they shot him with an arrow to the eye and he fled they go through the forest back to the rivalry town and the see a giant stage at the back of the town and a whole slew of flags that say ‘Praise the Lord Drake’ they see thousands maybe millions of hooded figures and a black and red Kenku on stage that looked exactly like the blue white and orange Kenku Bard and they shoved their way to the stage and they start a fight with the 2nd boss and we started off with 1 of the 3 sorcerers casting a water spell but the water phased right through it the bard rolls to make a shockwave of sound they roll a 17 a sonic boom hits the Kenku and it fades away and the Bard learns a homemade move I made called sonic boom which launches a sonic boom and hit everyone in a 7 foot radius after that they have a option the Sea or the Swamp they go to the broken ship in the sea
I’m gonna edit this later bye

This might just be a bit cliche or boring ti some people, but the campaign I’m brewing up is supposed to be a rebellion builder, wheee the party will build up the rebellion against an evil empire who took power many years ago, and then discover that the tyranny of the empire goes much further than they thought, not just subjugation, poor conditions, and general capitalistic abuse of the populace, but large scale magical experiments, with sentient subjects. Dark experiments with science and magic to create horrible monsters meant only for killing and strangely, the collection of souls. If the party has a warlock, I would take them aside, and ask if their patron would be the actual bbeg, an extra planar entity that hungers for souls in order to kill the gods and demons and take ABSOULTE power over the universe, and that the warlock would potentially be pulled over to the other side or influence them, and when the reveal of the entity would happen, they would try and take control of the warlock as the party tries to kill this entity that seeks only power and souls

Does the first plot sound a bit like Star Blazers to anyone else, or is it just me?

I think my current campaign is sort of interesting. I'll maybe post it but I can't imagine you'd be interested.

Had a feeling by putting the description of the old man and the large hammer together. Only confirmed when they met the mushroom man

"Relatively obscure SCP"
literally mentions one of the most popular, well known SCP's ever.

Minecraft it's a normal dnd thing but hosted in minecraft and a minecraft dnd session

Story is inspired by GodHunter, a song by Aviators. The party is a group of young godlings being led by the new OverGod, as the old gods (and overgod) have all been killed but managed to pick a new overgod before they all died. This overgod exudes big dad energy. And is mt DMPC, literally wearing socks with sandals. Cargo shorts, a Hawaiian shirt. And a fisherman's hat. Guy has to shepard the godlings (player PC's) as they face their various challenges and rise to full godhood, while also not taking part in combat or RP too much so that the PCs can learn and grow into their powers. The entire time, though, the party is being hunted by a redhead woman in a cloak who carries a weapon designed to kill gods., Which it does quite effectively. She is the daughter of the Reaper, and killed the old gods because they were mortals who ascended on their own, and the new godlings have to somehow learn that they were chosen by those who had usurped the True Gods, and take one of three paths:
1: take up their mantles as chosen for them, and continue the cycle
2: return the True Gods (classic D&D gods) to power and give up their mantles. Thereby earning godhood anyway by demonstrating that along with their power they have the purity of heart and soul to not be corrupted like those who chose them.
3: keep defeating the GodHunter despite the fact that she keeps coming back, and eventually die since she gets more powerful each time she is defeated.

I have a mostly homebrew campaign where the main premise is that there is a race of devils who have given up there demonic nature to live a more civilized life but for some reason they've all of a sudden become more violent and evil as if somethings controlling them. The race had then gone out of there way to kill of all other races in the material plain and basically the goal of the players is to go to the strongest nations a recruit them for a great battle that happens at the end of the campaign and a lot of the races have run into several problems. Some are have trouble with a monster, some are lacking resources, and some have even joined the enemy in hopes of surviving the war. This is by far my favorite campaign.

My dnd group is mostly casual and we like to have a good time. We routinely rotate who dms our games just so we can all have fun and it’s my turn. I’m designing a campaign surrounding the Goblin King, Klurg. To summon him, you must locate five pieces of a golden goblin goblet, fill said goblet with the blood of a goblin, and take it to a special shrine and perform a ritual. Once the ritual has been performed, Klurg will shake the earth and rip the top of the room off, starting the battle. Once killed, Klurg drops some prettt sweet loot, and the island of Goblinport is saved!

I had an idea for a mini campaign recently where the players would be sent by a little town to hunt bandits, but the mayor wants as many as possible captured alive. Then when they confront the bandits most of them would rather commit suicide than go back to that town, and eventually the players find out that the reason why is because the mayor is actually a mind flayer who had been separated from its hive mind, and while he had done some genuine good, bringing wealth and prosperity to the town, he still needed to eat, and had been feeding on the bandits who were actually former residents of the town who didn't like the towns New leader. So the players would have to choose between killing the mind flayer and ending the towns prosperity, or leave the mind flayer alive.

here's an idea for a campaign that I "borrowed" from my friends dad. its like a dungeon crawl, BUT you are the monsters and or things defending the dungeon. long story short the lore will be you defend from an Npc party for your employer (a dragon in a room Stashed with gold) you get an item or gold every time you defend against parties ranging from 3 - 12 NPCs each time with varying levels, party somehow realizes what the dragon is doing is wrong but can either fight him themselves or wait till a large party appears to have them help fight the dragon boss.players start at lvl 5

I'm a DM since 1983. Doing research for my magnus opus campaign. Currently playing Pathfinder and intend to use the Primeval Thule with modifications . The campaign is based off the AD&D version of the Dragon Orbs. Input welcome please

Carl the hamburgler. Would be kinda funny to have PCs have to chase him down cause he stole a towns supply of hamburgers or something.

So I just started in a game where two falling gods teleported the party to a new realm. The party has a paladin and Cleric that are apparently worshipers of tiamat.
We find that the gods in this realm are different than the gods where we came from.
I'm seasoned in rp so I messaged the dm and suggested the two fallen gods brought us here to get back at the other gods. He might want to send visions to the Cleric and paladin of strengthening tiamat's foot in the door. And depending on the players it could result in an epic battle between the gods and good and evil.
It virtually wrote itself in my eyes, kinda funny when I think about it. Wonder if the dm will use it

I'm planning a campaign rn where a fae king sets up a throne so that whoever sits on it becomes his warlock. He did this because he wants to take over the world and so the more the warlock uses their powers the more the power of of fae is known and the more powerful the king becomes. They won't know who gave them their new powers come from until later.For spice I'm adding lots of references and getting a lot of inspiration from Fairy tales. they fight the tooth faith, the pied piper, snow white and the 7 dwarves etc. I can't wait to do this with my friends.

You lost me when an Angel approached a level 1 party and told Them they were destined to save the World. If I had been a player and level 1 I would have stood up and Said “listen Angel. This is way over my head. If the fate of the World are in my end then I feel bad for the World. I barely know how to swing a sword. There has to be some High level party that Can take Care of this”. Then I had emptied my mug and left.

This may not be as amazing, but i found them cool, im gonna use my first dnd game, and an ongoing game to tell this:

The first game i played was a oneshot that takes place in a dwarf kingdom, well not always, but its mostly a dwarf story, the dwarf king is basically racist against goblins and bugbears and sent us out to find an artifact that can kill goblins and turn them into dwarfs, we found a bunch secrets and a phase spider that tried to kill us, we then found out the dwarf king was the villain, he manipulated us to find that artifact, and now innocent goblins would soon be killed, it was interesting and it may not sound so amazing to you, but i found it amazing as my first game

The latest and the one im still playing is a modern campaign where it takes place in nyc, we became a part of a gang with the leader being a russian vampire(this campaign was made before the ukranie vs russia situation) we also fought a manticore in an arena, i thought i wanted to tell since a modern worl in dnd is normally overlooked

Dude...never trust angels bro

Tat last one. >XD

this is the pathfinder game story

Man, I thought the last one was going to be revealed to be “The Dark Crystal” or a whole collection of works by Jim Henson. The dark underground shifting to the sunny meadow, and the encounter with the bird creatures sounded an awful lot like the plot of that film. Still a great reveal though.

I had an idea that played out poorly, though i like to use it for something.

Coffins rain down from the night sky surrounding a lone tavern out in the wilderness, suddenly opening up and revealing a portal. If you enter the portal you enter a pitch-black landscape, recommend you have someone with darkvision, with floating islands and horrifying creatures. There are hums of life everywhere around you but a main city being in the center of this realm.

Entering the city you meet up with a new race, The Croaxian: a soul trapped within acidic residue, and plenty of other bizzare races that have opened shops, taverns, and inns, for travelers. You can stay, but the longer you stay the more you are likely to become an unstable entity.

The campaign I’m currently writing involves a king who sought to become a lich and when he achieved that he would murder his own heir to the throne and impersonate them in an endless cycle of familial murder. This whole disguise was to hide the fact that he would start wars to supply him with near endless souls to both consume and recruit into an unstoppable undead army to maintain total control over the world.