Campaign Ideas and How to Run Them

Much of what I have covered here has been about how to run a homebrew campaign with lots of opportunity for players to be engaged. But your engagement as the GM matters too! You should be working with material you feel strongly about. And sometimes, you just need a seed to start with. For many GMs, the right idea will strike chain reactions that fill in possible stories. But when you're starting from nothing, where do you go? You could always build a campaign based on your players' suggestions. But I'm also offering this list of campaign ideas to get you started. I'll link back to previous resources on how to fill in specific parts of the world. With all of this, you'll be prepared to create your own and run your own campaign. 

Let's start with the campaign ideas. And by ideas, I just mean a big idea. We'll tackle the rest after getting into something that hopefully inspires us: 

1. The gnomish capital is a square composed of 16 smaller square districts. The leader of one plans to take the others by law or by arms. Coalitions of concerned citizens will band together to fight back against the despotic regime that rises. 
2. A vengeful god offers a "Wish" spell to whoever can kill the politician who ordered an attack on the god's chosen people. The god may have openly asked anyone or have chosen the party for fate-based reasons. 
3. Goliaths have appeared in longboats at the coast. They say they come in peace and want somewhere to settle away from their dangerous, unstable homeland. Factions appear regarding positions on goliath immigration. 
4. A plague has struck a kingdom, turning its people into miserable wretches in hours. The Queen is offering a reward to anyone who can cure the plague. The players know someone with information on how to create that cure. 
5. Drug runners have become the scourge of an entire region. The kingpin functionally governs most of the countryside, and he rules without mercy. A rebellion is brewing in the area, mostly from the dwarven sector. 
6. A group of famous musicians claim that a holy being appeared to them, telling of a great treasure buried beneath the house of the wealthiest person in the city. Unable to convince the high roller, they look to a group of adventurers to investigate them and convince them to let the musicians search for treasure. (This one would be stronger for a roleplay party than a combat party, who would make quick work of the bad guy.)
7. The party ends up on a ship which is attacked by pirates. The pirates tie up the party, who must break out and best the pirates to turn the ship around. (This is geared more as a one-shot, but you could make the pirates part of a conspiracy by a nobleperson to control the ocean and have your players have to maintain and operate a pirate ship to extend it into a longer game.)
8. A genealogist traces life back far enough to learn that all the D&D races are from the same ancestor. Investors offer money to adventurers in hopes of finding ancestral art and tools. Gangs appear at the digging sites, denouncing people with racist rhetoric. 
9. The elven capital sends its regent on a diplomatic mission to another capital--the first time the elves have left their city in over a hundred years. The regent is not specific about what he needs. More and more of the elves' soldiers appear at the gates every day. 
10. Wild animals keep appearing and falling out of the sky over a town. Enterprising people in town have taken to butchering these animals and selling them. Demand for this "sky meat" begins to range far and wide, and many citizens are left wondering what became of their town. 
11. The world's first printing press (or the most advanced press if your world already has a printing press like mine does--the advanced press can work with 4 times as many pages at once and cuts book prices by half) needs to be moved hundreds of miles. This could happen with carts and oxen and horses, but you could also use a train if that technology is possible in your world. In either case, the trip will be fraught with bandits, thieves, and haters of the written word. 
12. A fortuneteller tells one of the characters that they will undergo a great transformation. That night, that character has dreams of being a sheep and wakes up covered in wool. The fortuneteller has left town, but a series of clues suggest where she may have headed. 
13. A small faction of young orcs start a cult that demands restarting the centuries-old war with the elves. Other orcs are quick to distance themselves from their warmongering brethren. Each kingdom and town must decide for themselves which side they fall on. 
14. A small town on a trade route is being raided by bandits. The bandits are plundering everything, but the city isn't big enough to defend itself. It pools together its resources to pay the party to assemble an armed force to fight off the bandits. 
15. A caravan hauling common goods is waylaid by mystical forces when they are joined by a tinker. The tinker tells stories of great powers which seem to manifest around them. The caravan enlists the party as additional guards as they make their way to the opposite side of the continent. 
16. A worried traveler approaches the party and asks for their help finding a box they misplaced. They warn that what is contained in the box could cause serious trouble, but won't say what's inside. The party finds that the box was stolen by nearby cultists and must uncover what is in the box. 
17. A surveyor wants to map some of the lands considered to be dragon breeding grounds. They'll pay the party to accompany them and protect him. The surveyor is more focused on getting the information quickly than safely. The party will learn that there is a reason for his rushing. 
18. A halfling community in a big city protests when human businesses pop up in their part of town. The halfling population mobilizes to protect their neighborhood. Local law enforcement will pay the party to assist in keeping the peace between humans and halflings. 
19. A wealthy duke has a taste for exotic birds and insists that the party hunt him down a rare parrot which is said to speak all humanoid languages. He sees to the party's outfitting and sends them off to find this legendary wildlife. This might seem kind of spare, but exploration could be characterized by combat with animals, description of vistas, skill checks to move safely, and stealth to hunt for animals. 
20. A world-renowned chef holds a banquet for the world's greatest leaders and dignitaries. The banquet is attacked by a shadowy organization, which manages to kill a good number of leaders. The party must discover who was behind the attack and avenge the slain leaders. (Perhaps the chef is behind the attack? Perhaps only one leader was the target and the rest is a smokescreen? Who knows?)
21. An inventor develops a device that allows people to speak via earpieces without maintaining the magical charge. People everywhere buy up the devices and communication becomes more commonplace. Suddenly, all of the devices turn their wearers into hostile magical monsters. The party must reverse the effect to save the people transformed or face the guilt of killing the monsters.
22. The party is doing as they please when they suddenly realize that their long-term memory is gone. The effect has the signature of a magic spell, but no one was present to cast it as far as they can remember. To regain their former lives, the party must investigate and discover what happened to them. (Bonus for this one: the party doesn't have to come up with backstories right away.)
23. An eccentric has just emerged from a bunker after 50 years underground. They want to enlist the party to show them around and help them live in this new world. As the party assists the eccentric, it becomes clear that they have some sort of agenda, and details about why they went underground in the first place are difficult to find.
24. A small band of assassins called Clan Born at Night lives in the woods in a fortified compound. They have a tight, familial dynamic and live entirely off the land. They are looking for new muscle who will suit their clan. The contracts they complete are signed by powerful people who deliberately keep the assassins in the dark. 
25. Formerly a purely academic interest, a new form of magic casting has been spread around. Called glyphism, it allows the spellcaster to create a spell by using glyphs to refer to ideas represented in the spell. It is a volatile art, and many spellcasters are accidentally hurting themselves and others trying to perform it. One spellcaster emerges as a new master of the art and threatens to take all of society for themselves. (If that sounds cool, I already invented the glyph system, and you can cast it by adding 2 glyph possibilities to the level of the spell you're casting.)

[You can view eight of these campaign ideas with my Chaos Table integrated here.]

(Didn't like these? Try this list of more campaign ideas.)

You'll notice that these are just beginnings without endings. That's deliberate. You don't want to start a campaign with an end in mind. It's best for one-shots. But campaigns will branch and bend and you want the story to reflect what the players put into it, so we'll leave that for later. For now, we just need the hook, and that will be enough of a foundation to work with. 

These ideas are also pretty low on the magic scale. Only a few of these deal with high fantasy D&D stories. And that's because roleplaying stories are often better when the story is relatively simple. But you can add magic to any of these ideas with just a little twist. Perhaps in #13, the orcs are reigniting war with the elves because they have found a powerful artifact that will allow them in advantage in the conflict. Or #17's surveyor could have a magical item which allow them to interact safely with dragons. Because these are just the beginnings of ideas, you can do pretty much whatever you want with them. What matters is that you have a beginning that excites you. 

Now it's time to develop an idea or two. I'll use one idea oriented towards roleplaying and one oriented towards combat: #6 involves convincing a wealthy person to mine under their estate (roleplaying), and #14 involves protecting a small town from bandits (combat). I'll provide details to show you how to turn a beginning into a foundation for a campaign. 

The first step is in developing the mid-game. Let's start with #6. We know that the party wants to excavate the area under the wealthy person's house, and we know that the wealthy person won't want to initially. So we imagine ways the party might go about it. They might secretly begin digging, which would mean having to stealthily perform the excavation. They might try to talk the wealthy person into it, which would mean having to be convincing. They might try to force the wealthy person to cooperate, which could mean intimidation. Or the party might try to do something for the wealthy person to gain their cooperation. For our purposes, the campaign will take longest if the party wants to do something for the wealthy person, so we'll provide incentives for the party to behave that way. The wealthy person will agree to the excavation if the party agrees to clear their old castle of magical intruders. Now we have a way to engage players with the story in a way that moves the story forward. But of course, we can't guarantee the players won't choose another way forward, so we should be ready to improvise. But if we set up these ingredients, the players will see that the story you're preparing lies at the old castle, and they're likely to play along at least for a while. For this roleplaying scenario, we want something that offers lots of options like this. 

Our combat campaign works in similar ways, but is oriented towards creating interesting encounters. So we can start #14, the campaign with the party in the small town when bandits attack. The town leaders ask the party for help, and send them to confront an outfit of bandits in the nearby woods. From there, the party should learn something about the bandits before their next encounter. Even a combat-focused campaign should have some story to spice up the combat, so the party may discover that the bandits have a new leader, someone who wants to dominate the area and live like royalty. Later encounters could include ambushes, assassinations, and attacks on resources. The party may discover that the bandits are searching for something in particular (perhaps a magic item) or that the bandits have been brainwashed by their leader. What matters is that as the encounters keep coming, there's always something that raises the excitement on a narrative level--keep your players discussing what's going on even after combat is over. 

Now we have ideas about where our campaigns are likely to go and about what we might do to move from beginning to middle. But we still need to plan our first session for each. We can do so using the story beat method, which allows you to plan a few scenes to keep your story on track. I'll use that method now for both examples, using five beats, which is usually appropriate for a single session:

#6. Introduction Beat: The party is at a tavern when they are approached by a strange-looking person who claims to be a treasure hunter. They claim to know the location of a treasure hoard, but they need help convincing the owner of the property to let them dig for it. They promise a portion of the value of the treasure to the party for their help. They note that the hoard contains ancient relics which will make the party more powerful as well. 

Beat 1: The party goes to speak with the wealthy person. They refuse to cooperate and condemn the party for associating with the treasure hunter. They explain that only if their old castle home were cleared of the monsters which took it over were run out of the castle. 

Beat 2: The party journeys away from town toward the old castle. On the way, they encounter a caravan of traders and performers who invite them to make camp with them at night. The caravan is attacked in the night by a werewolf. 

Beat 3: The party arrives at the castle and must solve a riddle to open the front door. Once they have solved the riddle and gone inside, the front door locks behind them. They will have to solve the mystery of the magic house in order to escape. 

Finale Beat: The party encounters a witch living in the castle who appears to have some control over the monsters that reside there. She fights them for a time but disappears before anyone is seriously hurt. As she disappears, she yells that the party will never take the castle from her as it is rightfully hers. (This opens the next session to some storytelling moments about what she means by this.) 

This is a fine little outline for a first session. All you have to do is plug in some details--some character names and a tavern name, for instance--and you've got the framework to run a first session. If combat comes up, you can improvise an encounter (and if it starts to go awry, you can strategically fudge a few rolls). Keep combat fresh and interesting by describing it dramatically, or maybe design a dungeon to drop into a session. All of these tools will allow you to create your own materials while keeping your campaign going strong. But let's not forget about campaign idea #14:

#14. Introduction Beat: The party is in a small town when bandits attack. A massive force of armed soldiers pours into town, ravages the people and their homes and businesses, and disappears before the party can harm more than a few bandits. The mayor of town humbly approaches the party and asks for assistance. They can offer money and community standing if the party will raise a collection of troops to fight back against the bandits--at least 50 soldiers.

Beat 1: The party heads to a nearby major city to raise troops. There, they are able to hire about 15 soldiers, but the leader of the city is angry that the party is drawing soldiers away from the city, as they too are afraid of the bandits targeting them. 

Beat 2: The party makes for another major city but has to camp for the night on the way. Bandits attack in the middle of the night, and they manage to take a few of the hired soldiers as captives. Several other soldiers desert in the face of the attacks by the bandits. 

Beat 3: The party arrives at the next major city to raise troops and discovers that the city's inhabitants are staying inside out of fright. Bandits invaded town the previous night and carried away a few families. About 15 more soldiers enlist with the party in order to right the wrong of the bandits. (The party should have about 22 soldiers gathered at this point.)

Finale Beat: The party encounters a pack of displacer beasts on the road outside the city. The displacer beasts do heavy damage to the soldiers, killing a number of them. (Let's say the party has about 18 soldiers left.) When the displacer beasts are slain, they leave behind the body of a bandit with notes written on a piece of paper--the note indicates that the bandits are massing for an attack on the small town this evening at sundown. The party must race to the town to try to defend them. 

Just as before, we've simply allowed our players to advance in small ways while presenting complications in the story. We don't want our party to just find 50 willing soldiers at the first town--we want complications like smaller numbers of soldiers, and managing the losses of soldiers due to combat and desertion. With this as a model, you could run several sessions before hitting the 50 soldier mark, and then the campaign can take a bound in a different direction. More about that momentarily. 

You might note that the roleplaying campaign I set up actually involves a fair amount of combat via having to clear the castle. This was a decision I made in order to balance the campaigns. We could just as easily have decided that the castle was now inhabited by a tribe of orcs who the party could convince to leave, but in the interest of giving our players a bit of both playstyles, I balanced it. Similarly with the combat campaign, the raising of troops is a very charisma-based skill. It will take careful persuasion to get 50 soldiers to risk their lives against a bandit horde. We do this so that the players have to strategize in multiple ways. Feel free to tweak your campaign in the direction you and your players like, but I recommend that most games have a little bit of everything.  

Now we need to develop some sense of an ending for these campaign ideas so that you can go into your game confident that your campaign idea will pay off. You don't want to have every detail of the ending spelled out. In fact, I advise against formulating an ending until you're a few sessions in. I recommend this because the ending of the campaign should be the result of your players' choices, not something you decided for them. But it can be helpful to have an ending in mind from the beginning so that you're working towards something, even hesitantly, rather than treading water. Let's develop an ending idea for each of these campaign ideas. 

#6: The wealthy person actually made a compact with an evil creature--perhaps the witch we invented earlier--to have eternal health if they gave up their castle. They intend to send the party to their doom and do not expect them to be able to best the witch. The witch can explain this information in a scene late in the campaign, and the party may ultimately choose to dig under the wealthy person's house against their wishes. 

#14: The bandits are run by a crazed leader who believes that the strong should prey on the weak. They have a magic sword which intimidates the other bandits into fighting. Only by defeating the leader of the bandits can the party calm the violent fervor of the bandits and broker a peace. The party may wipe out all the bandits, assimilate the cooperative bandits into town, run the bandits out of the woods, or practically anything else your players can imagine. The key here would be to build something more interesting than a bloodthirsty bandit clan--maybe the bandits are searching for a magical item, or they are in league with a group of beholders, or they are responding to expansion into their territory from the small town. This is something you can develop in response to player theories--whatever your players think is the case, do something only slightly different. They'll be excited to have guessed so close to right, and all you had to do was change a detail or two. 

In either of these examples, you want to shift your intended ending bit by bit as the story progresses. You'll have better, more detailed ideas as you go, and details from the campaign will allow you to craft a stronger ending than you would be able to from the start. This process may still seem difficult to conceptualize. Let's say a player in the bandit campaign had a conversation with a powerful mage in one of the towns they visit. This mage shares a detail that the bandit leader may be suffering from a curse of sorts. Your players assert that he may be cursed to endlessly attack. This is great! This would give the bandit leader a reason for attacking, it's more interesting than the other options we've cooked up, and it's a player suggestion, which means the party will be excited when they discover their theory was right. It's an easy way to tell a story your players will be invested in, and it costs you nothing. 

So now we've gone from basic ideas to foundations for a campaign to the way to shape an ending. This is a basic format you can use to get any idea off the ground. Remember to treat your stories as outlines to be filled in as you play, and you'll be well-suited to establishing an entire campaign that flows naturally and lets you experiment with different styles of playing. Best of all, you can grab one of the ideas above and be ready to play by simply following a few steps to expand them. 

Coming soon: how to improvise encounters, how to describe details in your campaign, and how and when to fudge rolls. Until next time, happy gaming!

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