11 Incredible D&D Campaign Ideas

I had a fresh homebrew world that I made sometime ago and the name I gave it was "The Krakening". The idea being that a group of explorers was plumbing the depths of an ocean and came across the long forgotten prison of the Kraken and unwittingly released it. The world was flooded and the result was a survival based game with the ever looming threat of sea creatures and doom! Tritons were prevalent and druid enclaves were some of things I liked and leaned on.

I'm glad you included at least a couple "low stakes" campaign ideas, because frankly I'm sick of 'end of the world' campaigns. Stakes for the party can be incredibly high just by kidnapping a party member's sister, or looking for the cure to a friend's illness. A personal quest is more meaningful than the apocalypse.

A buddy of mine did Campaign 10 years ago. Back in the day, druids were all true neutral. So the idea was neutrality via oblivion.

Campaign 7 sounds like the other half of the world in the setting Pointy Hat was making on stream for a bit. He had the world stop turning and was creating the setting of the side forever stuck in nightime

I love campaign 6 essentially being Pokemon Emerald

im doing never ending dusk because the catlord from brux is trying to create "catlands" on our planet by making lycanthopes and its always dusk in brux

Campaign 4 "The Project" is basicly Paranoia.

One I've had on my mind for a long time:
A high level campaign, spanning from levels 15-20. All PCs are established heroes of a certain god. Every PC must have a religious background. Divine Soul Sorcerer, Paladin, Cleric, Fighter with Acolyte background, Celestial warlock, etc. The party's god has had someone near and dear to them locked away in the depths of hell by Asmodeus. The party are sent with full divine backing to fight through the layers of hell to rescue this person. A literal crusade through the hells empowered by a pantheon of gods.

Take something away? Yeah, I had the land taken away from my campaign. Welcome to the flooded world-

These are probably the best group of campaign plots I have seen. Nice how real world plots translated over too. 😁

Campaign 4 sounds very Eberron, especially with the potential for touching on eldritch horror Cthulhu-style (which is still on brand for Eberron as a pulp fiction-heavy setting, to which Lovecraft's works used to be part of)

Nice work on the video!

Tiny descriptions:
1. Where'd they go?
2. Re-Posession.
3. Feed the Machine.
4. Gov. Ops.
5. Special Land.
6. Titan Tales.
7. Praise the Sun.
8. Little Shop of Potential.
9. Post- apocalyptic story of the week.
10. Return to monkey or else.
11. Who dun it? Variation.

About a year ago my family wanted to run a casual DnD campaign but couldn't come up with a plot, so I thought of something akine to your 10th idea and expanded on it when I got to boot camp

The party starts off dead, their spirits taking in by a new up and coming goddes, she's claimed your souls in varies ways, grabbed them apone your death, toke them from the afterlife, made a death with another god who had claimed your soul. She has done this to make you her vassals, to walk the earth and spread her name so that she can gain renown and because a full deity.

Here's a neat little twist, the party doesn't remember how they died and must either learn and gain memories from working with the goddess who sends the party in multiple missions around the world. Another neat thing to keep the campaign light hearted is the PCs are immortal, when ever they die they'll be sent back to the goddess's realm, which also works like a hub for them, and they'll basically have to wait to respawn which they'll return to their body and it will fully heal

I ran about 3 sessions in boot camp to test this idea and, they seemed to enjoy it just had very different veiwa

Not sure if this has been asked yet, but what movie is the "Kaiju" clip from in Campaign 6? The creature has really google eyes! That is a movie I wanna watch so if anyone can advise where its from it would be very much appreciated!!! I also really love all of the campaign ideas in this video. Very creative concepts!

And NOW YOU WANT TO TAKE MY BLOOD MOTHRA IDEA TOO?!?!?!? I literally had an idea for a far realms MOTHRA/last of us zombie plague where re-skinned rot grubs had to hatch out of fungus trees grown from the infected in order to mature in a sick symbiotic relationship. What if you weren't infected and a worm got you? Here, have a warlock level and remember to make a increasingly difficult int save before bed each week or secretly get taken over and become part of the Queens Army...very erks of animorphs esk.

I had a frost punk/ far harbor and drakenhiem idea. A town called Almiers Crossing. Need a way across the mist which kills or mutates EVERYTHING? Here, travel underground through the under dark/webway of plains of oblivion. Why are there thousand feet giants walking overhead right after you almost tripped over a tiny town? Very Alice in wonderland and the only way to keep it out is to restore the energy to a machine previously using the body of an aborted God as a battery..it's gonna get weird.

Good stuff, thank you!

The Monarch's forest sound super epic, I would love to see more about it

I really LOVE the Druid's Wrath. Brings to mind the Deathworld Trilogy by Harry Harrison!

These are genius!!!

Excellent stuff! Current campaign has 3 intertwined questlines leading to Dante's Inferno as capstone adventure but some of these starting points are perfect add-ins! Love the shopkeeper ideas

Eye of the beholder

Entire party is dreamt up by a beholder who dreamt of a party who would slay them and there red dragon alli who is secretly the king of the country the party is in

In my last campaign, we had what can only be described as THE INVASION!
The fabric of reality is shattered as an invasions of eldritch neverborn gods and the mortals that pledged their allegiance to these dark gods tear itself a hole into this multiverse from somewhere ... outside the known reality.
AKA ... the Dm had the Forces of Chaos from Age of Sigmar and had them invade the world of Pathfinder................ it was rough.

You saved my campaign. Been uninspired for a couple weeks.

Campaign 4, imma use that as a side campaign in my steampunk game

Here's mine - it's middle earth themed. You are brought together at the inn of the prancing pony by none other that Gandalf himself. He's putting together a dream team to take down a dragon.. a dragon named Smaug. The backdrop of the story revolves around Thorin's company failing to kill Smaug and the fallout around that. The PCs are effectively plan B and must adventure across middle earth to slay the dragon. The catch is.. the PCs will eventually realize they aren't actually the plan B team but the back up team to the main team.. a C team perhaps. Can add another layer if you want to make it extra nutty (D team) but either way should create hijinks around the party competing with other fellowships on this quest and interacting with Gandalf and other well known figures from the lore. Tolkien is probably rolling over in his grave as I write this but what can you do.

This may be kind of a hot take, but if you’re stealing an idea for your campaign instead of sitting down and imagining it yourself, you have already missed the point of d&d.

A stroke of Genius is afoot

Cats and people are sentient.
Humans are sapient.

What are these video clips from?

That 2nd idea is really cool. Love that it has a gameplay hook too

i like the monarchs forest idea. should be great for a insect themed campaign.

Campaign 7: for more information about how you could adapt a similar world, look at Lorwyn/Shadowmoor. My suggestion is Lorwyn until lvl 6-7 then flip to Shadowmoor for the second half. This will allow time for the players to have fun in a generally idyllic world with the plethora of weaker monsters (ogres, goblinoids, etc) then you can flip into the more grim monsters at perfect time where the lower CR monsters can reasonably be thrown at a party in mass (a party of 4 lvl 7-8 would be easily pressed by two waves of 10-14 (send a second wave when half of the first wave has been killed / turned)) or you can send higher CR creatures w/out fear of overpowering the party (A Vampire is a solid threat to a CR 9 party, especially if they have been playing the characters since lvl 3.)

The government is trying to revive George Washington as a litch so the party has to get help from vampire Lincoln

No wonder you think it's difficult to design one's own campaign: your thinking shows you're Creatively Bankrupt. I'll try to watch for these type of campaigns looking for desperate 5E players...

campaign 4 is what we do.
It is star wars and my chars work for criminals, staling death star plans, kidnap scientists, blackmail agents and make it look like nothing happened for the imperium. but they dont know, what exactly they do or why. it looks like random jobs, but in the background, the crimson dawn is building a little deathstar. all fitting into canon ^^
id love to see theyr faces, revealing they made it possible for a former sith to manufacture a weapon of mass destruction.

campaign 9 is just spicy real life. no thank you :D

As soon as I heard idea 2, I subscribed. These were all heat

I was listening to this minding my own business when suddenly there's a Magnus Archives mention?! I've always thought the fears would make amazing additions to a DnD setting as background forces

I love the name “The food chain” for what it is :D

There be some really creative ideas here

the place where i played D&D has a team that played a campaign similar to No.2. Five of them appointed the sixth guy as the main character and the rest are going to be items and support him. Main guy played Kobold, the other's played different classes, but they are the kobold's armor, weapon etc etc, and since they're on the kobold's body, they can speak through the mind. the ending was they created a kobold god that season who no one in the right mind will try to offend or take him down.

Whats that barely hearable music beeping on the background? Turned me off from the video in 15 seconds

the magnus archives reference???????? in a dnd video??????? i think my brain just imploded

A friend of mine got a really interesting campaign idea: the players were normal people in a village or small town that was hit by a murder hobo party. Now, the players all rise up as revenants, bound to undeath until they kill the entire party.
Not only are they up against a much stronger enemy, they have to deal with people immediately distrusting them because undead. However, they aren't blocked from making allies as the enemy is murder hoboing around. The players have to be smart and fighting in a guerilla style is a good idea, making hit and run attacks, slowing the enemy down and forging connections with people to sabotage them. Because the campaign is on an island and if the hobos manage to leave it, that would be rather bad and make things harder.

And of course the nature of being a revenant. Sure, the players have resistance against poison and necrotic and exhaustion, and while long rests still are needed (or the body falls apart), there is no need for sleep, eat or drink or air. However they count as undead, which bars them from many sources of healing. We also had the idea that you only get one death save, either you die or immediately get back up at 1 hp.
If a revenant dies, the spirit will find a new body, meaning your race will change every time. We also have a table to roll on to see what body you inhabit, meaning a bunch of different scenarios to awake into.

The whole idea is that, while the revenant nature makes things more tricky, you will not fully die. The enemy can. So again, be smart. Ambushing becomes a great tool, sacrificing most if not all of the group to permanently take down one enemy, doing things to drain their ressources so that your fight will be as easy as can be.
And RP wise, the characters are still having to deal with the trauma of their deaths and the nature of what they are.

These are all great ideas! I wanna run them all!

My next campaign is what if instead of dinosaurs, a rich philanthropist decided to revive old monsters from previous editions of dnd that never got translated to 5e

The fotage is a bit all over the place. (I understand not wwaning to show face, but having something non- static to look at though.)

I love the story focused presentation of the ideas, with a few ideas of directions strewn in. Much more than what you usually get with plot idea. I enjoyed that.