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Probably Fun RPG Ideas

@probablyfunrpgideas

Good or bad, these should help everyone have a good time playing RPGs. Please feel free to submit your own ideas!
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Item Idea

The Rain Staff While this hollow wooden stick is perpendicular to the ground, it emits a constant sound like light rain, as tiny beads tumble through it. Any beads that reach the bottom are teleported back to the top of the staff! The outside is plain, but has a few blue geometric designs in bands that could be used to measure the depth of water.

It is impossible to move quietly with the Rain Staff unless you hold it parallel to the ground so the beads stop falling. It takes an action to restore their motion and reactivate the magical properties. The Rain Staff grants a +3 bonus to Diplomacy checks that take over a minute, as well as checks to negotiate a bargain. The soothing sounds tend to keep all parties calm. Also, while you are outside you can call down a sudden deluge to soak an area you can see with a radius of 60 feet or less. The rain extinguishes any natural fire, as well as fires caused by spells lower than 5th level. This effect is available 3 times per day. Once per week, you can cast Control Weather with the staff, only to create rain. Finally, once per year you can use the staff to create a rainbow bridge, which can carry any number of creatures to another plane of existence.

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Idea:

In the mists of Ravenloft, the party meets a fellow traveler and they walk along together for the safety of numbers. He is a darkly handsome man who introduces himself as, uh, “Dharts von Varozich”.

He keeps almost slipping up. Pretending he doesn’t notice the party whispering about him. How long until they can’t take the stress?

Idea: the true horror of this scenario is when he says “Wow, this random encounter with 2d4 wolves was pretty scary for me, normal traveler Dharts von Varozich. Hopefully you don’t mind me taking a share of the experience points.” What a jerk! Are you really going to stand for that? Then again, he did break a wolf into pieces with his bare hands.

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D&D background idea:

You are an undercover agent who has been assigned to investigate the rampant crime of “adventuring” that has been disrupting business, causing property damage, and killing innocent citizens in the crossfire. You don’t believe in the so-called heroes and villains. At the end of the day, they all think they’re better than the rest of us.

Will your new “party” prove you right? Or will you discover the magic of friendship and the golden glory of treasure?

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Idea: a sandy earth elemental made of sand from the beach that makes you old.

When struck by this creature, you must make a Constitution (Fortitude) save against a DC of 10 plus its Constitution modifier. On a failed save, you age 10% of your species’ lifespan. This may push you into a new age category.

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Monster Manual Meals 2

The Digester is a swift and imposing beast, loping through woodlands or underground caves on two powerful legs. It tends to disable its prey by spraying it with acid, then rips off pieces with its claws.

If you can catch one, the best way to eat it is smoked. Digester meat has a bit of a sour taste, and you need to remove the acid glands as soon as the monster is killed or they'll soak into the good bits. Digester ribs or brisket are suspended over oak chips to improve the flavor and make the tough meat more tender. Then you cook them with a good sweet and spicy sauce, and you've got yourself a meal!

For 24 hours after finishing some Digester barbecue, you gain a portion of the monster's protection from acid, gaining resistance 10 to acid damage. Good side dishes include Shambling Mound coleslaw and a light bread roll.

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memorycycle

hired a galapagos finch at my burger joint and after 2 generations it evolved to take peoples orders

Blogger who only writes ideas for rpgs: hmm maybe I can make an rpg idea out of this!

What about a group of people who have domesticated and utilized a species that adapts magically quickly? To use the finches as an example, maybe they train some of these birds to pick fruits that are hard to reach, causing them to develop sharp scissor-like beaks and wings that can hover between branches. Another set of birds are chosen for volume, developing large lungs and sharp eyesight. If they see danger approaching the village, they sound an alarm.

At the silly end of this idea, the bird-tamers might carry around a "toolbelt" which is a mobile perch for the retriever bird, the pliers bird, the drill bird and the umbrella bird.

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see-arcane

Jonathan, between meals probably: “Are you sure I’m meant to eat an entire garlic bulb as a palate cleanser?”

The locals, sweating, trying their best to low-key vampire-proof this boy: “Yes. Absolutely. Very traditional.”

There's a Powered By The Apocalypse game called Soth, where PCs are small-town cultists competing for the favor of their dark god and trying to conceal the awful crimes they commit.

...what if you played the opposite? A game where you live with your friends and family under the shadow of unbeatable, unknowable evil. All you have to keep yourself and any visitors safe is your courage, your wits, and your traditions. Welcome to the vampire's doorstep.

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Skeletor has forever destroyed our ability to come up with voices for skeleton characters.

Idea: Play a skeleton bard who is on a quest to restore the voice of their living days. They are being hunted, however, by agents of the Pattern - the original undead loremaster whose voice echoes through all skeletonkind.

It is strange that skeletons and zombies in D&D are both mindless by default, but sentient skeletons outnumber sentient zombies tenfold. What's the zombie voice sound like, when it's not demanding brains?

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bryceypants

the shortcut to making me love your fantasy world is to put whales in the sky

like if i see a flying whale, I immediately feel like a kid with a lollipop and a propeller hat, just full of awe and excitement

Lots of sky whales are baleen whales, filter feeders that must eat sky plankton or swarms of passenger pigeons to survive. We don’t often see toothed whales overhead.

When the humans landed on Hadrian’s Eye, they lost several crops of grain and other transplanted vegetables to sky fish. Schools of tangs and surgeonfish swarmed in the fields, enjoying the bounty of food and hiding places outside their usual floating rock homes. But by the end of that season, the sky dolphins arrived, drawn to the area by the large amounts of their prey. Humans learned to cooperate with the flying predators, scaring fish out of the fields to be caught. A sky dolphin is intelligent enough to know a good partnership, and they’ve stuck around for a few decades now. But the deep clouds of Hadrian’s Eye are still unexplored. Perhaps the sky dolphins are not the top of the food chain. And perhaps whatever cut off our communication with Outpost Six is going to reshape our place in this new world.

Hadrian’s Eye: Call of the Storm Orcas

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Idea

Turn a cosmic horror villain into an intrigue villain! In a typical campaign, Xhamen-Dor the Star Seed is trying to turn the whole world into fungal zombies by spreading the disease of knowledge. But in an intrigue campaign, perhaps this Great Old One is manipulating the Gold Veil assassins' guild and the military noble house of Mac Darvish to crash the stock market and take over the city! All attempts by the players to move openly against this monstrous rotting beast are opposed, unless they can gather proper evidence first.

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eastgaysian

probably shitty worldbuilding idea: fantasy world that keeps going

This world not only has different languages and technologies, but if you go far enough the laws of reality begin to change. On the continent where you grew up, humans and orcs and elves interact with each other, and each have their own mages. But if you sail a few thousand miles, you'll meet different kinds of mages who use runes instead of spell slots, and the communication spell you know doesn't work because it has to target "a humanoid creature" and the people here are using a game that doesn't distinguish creature types.

Essentially, rpg systems are spread across this world, with similar ones in proximity to each other. The vast mountains of d20s border on the scattered islands of the Apocalyptic Archipelago, and when you travel beyond the known frontier, you'll reach the fabled Diceless Realm...

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Two important publications to have in your setting: The Ubiquitous Gazette. This carries the news stories from everywhere, to everywhere. The delivery and printing is incredible in scale, possibly involving quantum-linked teleportation or messenger dragons. Use this to let your players know the big picture. The Village Advertiser. This has only the most local and specific news from someone's hometown or another very small community that's become important to the players. It carries juicy gossip and shopping opportunities, both adventuring gear and magical items. And yet, it still gets delivered wherever the heroes happen to be...

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Text: The Thieves Library is almost impossible to track down, every volume stolen, the knowledge inside dangerous. It is the only place I can think to look for a book on Bone Shifting.

Idea: Within the various Thieves' Guilds are several sub-factions who maintain the Thieves' Library - despite their best efforts.

The Fraternal Order of Mendicant Curators, the Lightning Scribes, the Book Eaters (nobody really trusts them), the Six Blueprint Bandits and others are always trying to get ahead of each other and heist portions of the library to grow their own collection. Whenever they get a new chest of folios and maps, they rearrange it and mix it in using their own organizational system, so some items have four centuries of different labels on the cover.

While this makes finding information very difficult (most questions take at least a half dozen favors and secretive exchanges) it's vastly preferable to being under the thumb of a single library order.

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Idea

The assassin walked calmly from the council chambers, leaving panic in her wake. Three dozen scribes, notaries, lobbyists and associated nobles who all couldn't decide whether they should run to the throne and help, or run away and save themselves. Sitting on the throne, where King Jasper Moliath had been a minute ago, was a small leather bag. It had been plain and unassuming, but was now... the scariest thing in the room.

If you have a Bag of Devouring and a good Sleight of Hand bonus, take something from your target and drop it in the bag! You can make it look like they caught you trying to steal, and when they go "aha!" and reach for their favorite ring, the bag Gets Them.

Send in your own weaponized use of a cursed item!

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Turn the tables on the basic eldritch horror formula where some American brings back a curse from his voyages in foreign countries! I can't believe how many haunted house mysteries I've read where the house was haunted by careless colonialism.

Idea: Make a Call of Cthulhu scenario where Javier Ortiz goes to visit his cousin in Bristol, and buys a neat little fish statue from the local souvenir shop. However, upon his return home to Muisne, Ecuador strange things start to happen. Cloaked strangers walk the streets after dark, looking for something. A thick fog from the sea rises, completely unheard of for the tropical climate. Can your investigators save their friend Mr. Ortiz before it's too late?