RPG Campaign Ideas that Keep Me Up at Night

Every GM has those games they want to run desperately but just won't get to for one reason or another. Maybe their group isn't receptive to the style or idea, maybe they don't have the time or bandwidth to run it, but it keeps them up at night. I have so many of them so I thought I'd write about them here.

The BIG Forbidden Lands game: I picked up Forbidden Lands last year cause it really appealed to me and unfortunately it was mostly only me. The giant hex map, the focus on wilderness survival, prepping for the next journey, living a hardscrabble life, and chasing down legends and mysteries. It's such an evocative and interesting world and I went all in. I got all the expansions on top of the base game and I was enraptured by the idea of my group at one point hopping on a boat and sailing north to the Bitter Reach to experience that or break through Shadowgate Pass to the west and go explore the Bloodmarch. I wanted my group to interface with the seasons and maybe spend a winter in a single small town that we play out in weeks rather than days. Sadly, my expectations were never realized for either group I ran it for. One group got very obsessed with setting up a stronghold (which is fine but it really locked them out of lots of movement and is more of a late game mechanic) and the other group just fizzled out as they do. I still have a yearning to make this game work, but it really needs the right buy in and investment from the right group to see it all the way through.

Proper Dolmenwood: It seems I am cursed when it comes to hexcrawls. After Forbidden Lands I tried to run Dolmenwood for my regular 3 player group. The idea of a hyperpopulated hexcrawl with so much to see and explore in an OSR style was extremely exciting for me since it felt like one of the main problems from Forbidden Lands for my players was the lack of direction they felt they had (despite them having a cavalcade of legends to look into). Despite this, and despite my players giving the game the ol' college try, it never clicked for them I think. We played about 7 sessions, they explored large two dungeons, neither of them made for the Dolmenwood setting, and only did a single section of hexcrawling from the starting town to the nearby big city. They elected to shelve it since they were all more interested in the new Heart: The City Beneath campaign which we have now started up. I am jonesing to really give Dolmenwood a fair shake with proper adherence to the hexcrawl procedures, explore the really lush world Gavin has made, actually interface with some of the handmade content released for the setting, ACTUALLY do player map tracking (I feel like I'm the only one that thinks this sounds awesome).

Side Bar: I cannot understand players who have no inherent sense of exploration. I'm the kind of gamer (both tabletop and video games) who sees something in the distance or on a map and my mind goes crazy about what could be there. I just want to check it out but both of my hexcrawl outings have shown me that the default (at least with the players I've sat with) is to be fed places to go (sometimes that doesn't even work). I'll find that hexcrawl golden goose one day.

Alright, now some game ideas I haven't given a shot yet but am still REALLY craving.

The Open Table Game: The Forbidden Lands game was sort of a first attempt at an open table since the group was 7 players but it was a failure and never really lived up to the ideals of a proper open table game. I would love to get a group of 16 friends together and have full buy in on some shared setting that we all run games in, Megadungeon or Hexcrawl; either works. I've always been obsessed with the idea of these games, they tickle the part of my brain that yearns for discovery and adventure as my day to day life. At the risk of getting sappy, I remember being a little kid and being fascinated with the idea of explorers and finding a new land and seeing new things. Obviously that's not possible in the modern day outside of discovering stuff for yourself through nature hikes (which I fucking love) or through, in my opinion, an open table TTRPG game. I recognize that the overhead of running one of these games would be insane and probably too much for me but I want to inhabit a new world fully, get players sharing knowledge and discoveries over discord, drawing up maps and theorizing about what is out there. It all just sounds incredible to me. Maybe I'll finally learn how to stop craving control and join an open table as a player.

The MEGAdungeon: Going off of my only other two blog posts here, it's clear I like megadungeons. I've never ran or played in one (outside of the single Gradient Descent session I've ran so far), but I love the idea of them. I want to run something big and actually stick with it for a while. An Arden Vul, a Stonehell, something. I'm hoping His Majesty the Worm will be that though I'm a bit worried my usual group doesn't have the attention span or interest to spend over a year in the same dungeon. Regardless, I fantasize about running a proper ass megadungeon.

Psychedelic Oregon Trail: Ultraviolet Grasslands is FASCINATING to me. It is a lush as hell setting that is fucking strange. I've yet to be able to sell my players on it but the doing a roadtrip campaign from the Violet City to the Black City and all the little adventures we have along the way just fucking GETS me. I love Coins and Scrolls GM Facing Maps they made and I'd probably jack those whenever I finally can run this since it does the hard part of populating the grasslands with a bunch of neat OSR dungeons. I've got Our Golden Age on order as well so I'm excited to see how that changes how I'd run UVG.

The Least Tolkien One Ring Game: I love Lord of the Rings, I don't know shit about Lord of the Rings. My lore knowledge is locked to the extended movie cuts and some lore videos here and there so running The One Ring would probably be a bit challenging and not very accurate to the books. Regardless, the travelling rules have really captured my brain and I've got the Moria book sitting on my desk just ASKING to be explored. Sadly, backburner.

The Merry Mushmen Trilogy: I snagged copies of Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow, The Horrendous Hounds Of Hendenburgh, and Raiding the Obsidian Keep recently and I'd love to do a longer campaign running these in succession (Hollow -> Hounds -> Obsidian Keep). Persistent characters across all the adventures and just sink into the old schoolness of it all.

A Return to the Pacific Northwest: Lets veer away from fantasy and fantasy adjacent gaming. I LOVE the PNW as a setting for mystery/horror games. Years ago I ran a Monster of the Week campaign set in the Pacific Northwest, I also happen to live there so it's in my bones to have games set there. X-Files, Alan Wake 2, Twin Peaks, it's such a peak setting so I'd love to run another small town monster hunting campaign. I always thought this would manifest as a Delta Green game but I've recently found a game called Liminal Horror that I think might fit even better.

Another Bug Hunt: Lets end on a sci-fi note. I think Another Bug Hunt is neat. That's really it. It's not a long campaign, maybe 4 to 6 sessions, but I haven't had any takers yet. Who doesn't wanna play an Alien horror TV show. Mothership is a great game (seeing as how I'm using it to run Gradient Descent right now) so any excuse to run it more makes me happy.

The grasslands call to me

That's all from me, I got that all off my chest. I'm still working on the Making A Megadungeon posts. Instead of releasing them as I was making the dungeon, I actually completed it already and was going to write the last few parts as a post-mortem. The floor is released on the His Majesty The Worm discord since it's still being formatted for full release on Itch, I'm sure I'll post about that once it's out. 

I'd love to hear about everyone else's dream campaigns! Leave them below!

Making a Megadungeon 2: Generating What Lies Below

Last time on Making a Megadungeon I went over the lore and setting which will inform my design choices thematically.

This time: I'll be using the tarot generation system built into Worm to figure out how the different larger dungeons will fit together, where connections lead, and maybe even be inspired for dungeon themes by the major arcana. If you'd like to follow along, you can download the Underworld chapter for free here!

Making a Megadungeon 1: Lore and Stage Dressing

DISCLAIMER: I will be mentioning Dungeon Meshi spoilers within, please go read the manga if you haven't yet. It's REALLY fucking good and you will not be disappointed especially if you love megadungeons.

Prep: Gathering (Brain) Supplies

Hey there! My name is Reid and I like to talk about things that excite me.

The entire reason for this blog is that statement right there, I want to talk about things that excite me. I've always been a pretty excitable person, usually my brain will get fascinated by something or caught on an idea or story and I won't let go, generally to the displeasure of my friends (sorry boys). For years I'd get really into something and the only real outlet I'd have for sharing my excitement about it was to my friends and usually whatever had captured my imagination was niche and very specific to vibes I like which meant a lot of listening to ramblings, reading 60+ message discord text walls (or more likely ignoring them), and just smiling and waiting for me to burn out on it and move onto the next thing. That's worked for 10+ years but I'm reaching the point where I'm pretty aware that getting knowledge dumped about a topic you don't care about at 2 AM is not exactly the most fun thing. It's probably the human equivalent of a cat bringing in a big dead squirrel at 2 AM (a real thing my cat did for me once); yeah it shows they love you and just want to share something they did with you but it's 2 AM and now you have a dead squirrel at the foot of your bed you have to deal with and you'd much rather be sleeping.

For a time I made a twitter account to act as my mental dumping ground as well as an art repository since I happen to do game art for a living, and for a good 10 or 11 years that worked. I'd post about a new song I really liked, I'd mass retweet an artist I just found, I'd rant about a game I finished, or how art was hard and I was bad at it (probably too much when I was younger) but with the site really taking "this place is a hellhole" to the literal logical end and my thoughts and opinions wanting a longer format space to live. this seemed like a good idea.

This is all to say, I will strive to knowledge dump my lovely friends less and instead construct a digital spire to my absolutely rotted brain that pretty much anyone can peer into cause that seems like a healthy way of dealing with the situation. The bonus is that if you come here to read my thoughts then that is entirely on you. I've never done the whole blogging thing (outside of early 2010s tumblr) so I'm sure it'll be less polished than other places on the internet or people that have been doing this for years or grew up with blogs being the primary way of reading thoughts (the halcyon days before social media) but at the end of the day it doesn't need to look pretty, I just need to be able to post words.

it's called Trek Over Lands cause I like hiking

Now it might be hard to imagine this from the content of the post so far, but this will primarily be a TTRPG blog as that is by and large the stuff I'm most excited to talk about. This won't always be true, I'm sure I'll make a post about a video game I adored, a podcast I finished, or a song that means a lot to me but by and large, my mental energy sits in TTRPG realm. Unlike most other TTRPG blogs, I doubt I'll be making community shaking mechanics posts about this new system you can hack into your game for X cool reason, most likely just sharing thoughts on my campaigns I've run, cool games I've read or found, or ideas I'm excited about.

Here's a list about my current TTRPG efforts that you might be seeing:

• I'm playing in my first ever Play By Post game over on the RPGnet Forums. It's Heart: The City Beneath and a VERY different delivery method than I'm used to. Definitely will have more thoughts on this as it progresses.
• Was running a large group Forbidden Lands game but I'm going to be shelving it for a bit since I'm getting a bit burnt out on the system.
• Will be replacing said Forbidden Lands game with Mausritter and Mothership one shots for the time being (genre whiplash go brrrrr).
• I'm also trying to fire up a Dolmenwood campaign with a few players from the larger group cause that book has my brain by the horns... almost like a Breggle.
• Ultraviolet Grasslands is staring at me........... It calls.
  

And some of my other nerd efforts that might make an appearance here:

• Been playing Skald: Against the Black Priory most nights.
• Still making my way through Animal Well and Crow Country.
• Trying very hard to break out of the Platinum 1 bottle neck in Street Fighter 6
• Very very VERY slowly working through BG3 coop with two buds of mine.
• Porter Robinson has a new album out like next month and I doubt this place will avoid my fabled porter posting. 
• Game design thoughts haunt me at all times, they will make an appearance.
  

I'm not sure how often I'll post here or how much effort I'll put into advertising this space, but it just existing is enough for me. If anyone is out there and you feel compelled to reply to anything I post, I'd love to hear from you. Half the reason I share the stuff I'm excited about is because I like to talk to other people about it.

Alright that's all from me. Bye.