Ridiculous (Bad) Game/Campaign Ideas

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Alright, take a gander at this: You play moonshine-brewing hillbillies in the 1920s using the Call of Cthulhu rules, but the mythos ain't real, not even a little bit. However, what is real is the stupefying potency of your hooch. Those who imbibe a little too much of it describe visions of heaven or, more problematically for you, non-Euclidian hellscapes populated by octopus Satans.

Whispered tales of your brew have spread far and wide, getting more outlandish from telling to telling. Now, as if the feds weren't enough, there's a team of outsiders violently snooping around the nearby towns, looking for you, convinced you're the ringleaders of some doomsday cult devoted to old heathen deities or something. These strangers mean business: your friends who've survived encounters with them describe a strangely diverse crew of eccentrics from all over the world, armed to the teeth, packing explosives, and suicidally willing to violate any law of man or God to secure even the flimsiest clues about you.

Through strange twists of fate and stubborn delusion, the 'evidence' these strangers find only ever makes them more convinced that you are in league with ancient evil. Looks like you're going to be playing cat and mouse with them all across the mountains to protect your kin and livelihood. There is some good news though: they can't turn to the cops either, their team is comically dysfunctional, the 'spells' they think they're casting from their dusty old books don't actually work, and you've got someone on your side more powerful than this 'Nyarathulusothoth' or whatever they keep jabbering about - Jesus.

[If you're the GM, make sure the actual HP Lovecraft improbably ends up visiting the PCs and drinking some of their life-altering moonshine before wandering off, talking about "new inspiration".]
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Pretty sure I need to play this game as well! :grin:
 
I didn't stick around long enough to find out the actual campaign premise, but one time I sat in for a game of a later edition of D&D (I'm not sure which, maybe 3rd? 3.5?) where we spent far too long creating PCs (I just outlined my preference and took a pregen) and buying equipment only to learn that the referee thought it would be immensely clever to start the game with all the PCs naked and chained to dungeon walls. Fortunately so much time was wasted in preparation, the actual game was only maybe 30 minutes. I know I'm not the only one who didn't show up for Session 2. This was before I even knew there were RPG fora on the Internet, but now it appears this is apparently a common "clever idea to start your game."
 
I didn't stick around long enough to find out the actual campaign premise, but one time I sat in for a game of a later edition of D&D (I'm not sure which, maybe 3rd? 3.5?) where we spent far too long creating PCs (I just outlined my preference and took a pregen) and buying equipment only to learn that the referee thought it would be immensely clever to start the game with all the PCs naked and chained to dungeon walls. Fortunately so much time was wasted in preparation, the actual game was only maybe 30 minutes. I know I'm not the only one who didn't show up for Session 2. This was before I even knew there were RPG fora on the Internet, but now it appears this is apparently a common "clever idea to start your game."

Are you telling the truth or are you just borrowing my description of nearly every pickup game of AD&D1e I played with randos in the 80s?
 
Are you telling the truth or are you just borrowing my description of nearly every pickup game of AD&D1e I played with randos in the 80s?
This would have been sometime between 2000 and 2005, so if you want to claim you invented that godawful premise, be my guest! :hurry:
 
Alright, the last one was probably a little too playable, so scope this: You use the Mechamorphosis d20 book to run a combination of Transformers and Land of the Giants, with a dash of Small Soldiers sprinkled on top.

Cv0Docv.jpg


Just use the same story as Transformers, but with one significant change: the alien robots are all tiny, smaller than a breadbox, and can only assume tiny alternate forms like watches, phones, cameras, microscopes, laptops, toasters, radios, 3D printers, drones, dildos, etc. Oh, and no flying unless the alternate form allows it.

ztJd23j.jpg


Now the alien robots wage war secret war on a planet where the dominant species is a tech-primitive flesh being somewhat stronger than them and way more numerous. It's also 2020, so human agencies are better at detecting hidden robots and may even be able to hack into their brains! The big bad guy has a gun alternate form and cuts deals with evil humans to serve as a murder weapon no one can trace.

Players can choose to be either robots or their human allies, each having their own strengths, weaknesses, and neuroses.
 
This would have been sometime between 2000 and 2005, so if you want to claim you invented that godawful premise, be my guest! :hurry:

It's very similar to what I experienced in the mid 80s with D&D pickup groups.

Someone would know a friend of a friend of a friend who ran a D&D game. I (and maybe a friend) would get invited to game. Of course the guy lived out in the boonies, so we'd have to get transportation.

Once there, the game would nearly always be in the guy's bedroom. The room would be adorned with multiple metal band and swimsuit posters. There was always the smell of smoke and model glue and other odors. There were also always piles of dirty clothes and junk around the room as if it hadn't been picked up in years.

The GM would almost always have two friends who were regular players in his games. These guys would have 18s all the way down which they had totally rolled fair.

Then we'd start character creation. It was always long and arduous. The GM would always be hyper concerned we were rolling fair. Rolls had to be in the open, one die at a time, and the GM had to watch the roll and read the die. The GM was also working on the "adventure" at the time, so that meant it often took a minute or more for each individual die in a roll of 3d6 in order straight down.

After rolling stats and hit points, there were always optional charts. These were d100, d1,000, or d10,000 charts of homebrew shit. The GM often had binders full of this stuff. This is why FATAL didn't even cause me to blink when I first saw it (long before RPGnet brought it to prominence). The charts were full of the same kind of shit FATAL had as well. Yes, every character had to roll for the length of their sword if you know what I mean. The GM's cronies had mighty blades of great heft, but oddly all new players could roll were small daggers.

After all those ordeals came buying equipment. The GM and his cronies always stressed the importance of keeping track of your exact equipment list. This required meticulous record keeping. Once everything was purchased you had to write down exactly where everything was.

So after about 4 hours, the "adventure" would start.

The "adventure" would always start with everyone naked in a 10x10x10 escape-proof cell. All that equipment you just spent the past couple of hours recording? Gone.

There was never any way out of the cell. There was no escape route which a player character could find and take advantage of Sometimes this section of the adventure was the part where the GM's cronies would beat up the newbie characters or other unsavory things. The only thing to do would be sit there and endure it until the GM PC would come along.

When the GM PC would show up, the GM would go into great description of how awesome the guy was. The GM PC would then either give the GM cronies their equipment or lead everyone to where the equipment of the GM cronies was. Oh, that equipment that I spent two hours having to select? That had been worthless so all that had been burned. Just roam around naked until you can find something.

And then, invariably, the GM cronies would go on a campaign of murder and arson. We'd get out of the jail, the GM cronies would start running around easily slaughtering guards (leading one to wonder how they had been caught) and torching everything flammable.

Any NPCs would wisely see that any naked guys trying to escape were obviously the real threat, and not the two armored maniacs with torches running around burning everything. So my character and the character of whoever came along with me would get chased down to be killed and mutilated.

And that's it. Transportation would usually rescue us by that point, or we would have had enough and decided to leave. To me, THAT is old school.
 
It's very similar to what I experienced in the mid 80s with D&D pickup groups.

Someone would know a friend of a friend of a friend who ran a D&D game. I (and maybe a friend) would get invited to game. Of course the guy lived out in the boonies, so we'd have to get transportation.

Once there, the game would nearly always be in the guy's bedroom. The room would be adorned with multiple metal band and swimsuit posters. There was always the smell of smoke and model glue and other odors. There were also always piles of dirty clothes and junk around the room as if it hadn't been picked up in years.

The GM would almost always have two friends who were regular players in his games. These guys would have 18s all the way down which they had totally rolled fair.

Then we'd start character creation. It was always long and arduous. The GM would always be hyper concerned we were rolling fair. Rolls had to be in the open, one die at a time, and the GM had to watch the roll and read the die. The GM was also working on the "adventure" at the time, so that meant it often took a minute or more for each individual die in a roll of 3d6 in order straight down.

After rolling stats and hit points, there were always optional charts. These were d100, d1,000, or d10,000 charts of homebrew shit. The GM often had binders full of this stuff. This is why FATAL didn't even cause me to blink when I first saw it (long before RPGnet brought it to prominence). The charts were full of the same kind of shit FATAL had as well. Yes, every character had to roll for the length of their sword if you know what I mean. The GM's cronies had mighty blades of great heft, but oddly all new players could roll were small daggers.

After all those ordeals came buying equipment. The GM and his cronies always stressed the importance of keeping track of your exact equipment list. This required meticulous record keeping. Once everything was purchased you had to write down exactly where everything was.

So after about 4 hours, the "adventure" would start.

The "adventure" would always start with everyone naked in a 10x10x10 escape-proof cell. All that equipment you just spent the past couple of hours recording? Gone.

There was never any way out of the cell. There was no escape route which a player character could find and take advantage of Sometimes this section of the adventure was the part where the GM's cronies would beat up the newbie characters or other unsavory things. The only thing to do would be sit there and endure it until the GM PC would come along.

When the GM PC would show up, the GM would go into great description of how awesome the guy was. The GM PC would then either give the GM cronies their equipment or lead everyone to where the equipment of the GM cronies was. Oh, that equipment that I spent two hours having to select? That had been worthless so all that had been burned. Just roam around naked until you can find something.

And then, invariably, the GM cronies would go on a campaign of murder and arson. We'd get out of the jail, the GM cronies would start running around easily slaughtering guards (leading one to wonder how they had been caught) and torching everything flammable.

Any NPCs would wisely see that any naked guys trying to escape were obviously the real threat, and not the two armored maniacs with torches running around burning everything. So my character and the character of whoever came along with me would get chased down to be killed and mutilated.

And that's it. Transportation would usually rescue us by that point, or we would have had enough and decided to leave. To me, THAT is old school.

Sure sounds like structural problems with the game to me...
 
After rolling stats and hit points, there were always optional charts. These were d100, d1,000, or d10,000 charts of homebrew shit. The GM often had binders full of this stuff. This is why FATAL didn't even cause me to blink when I first saw it (long before RPGnet brought it to prominence). The charts were full of the same kind of shit FATAL had as well. Yes, every character had to roll for the length of their sword if you know what I mean. The GM's cronies had mighty blades of great heft, but oddly all new players could roll were small daggers.
1580836512032.png
 
Here's a quick terrible one for any setting or system: All the players are just alternate personalities inhabiting a single body. They will probably bicker constantly inside 'their' head and will have to roll off on any conflict over who gets to control 'their' body at critical moments. Make this even screwier by having each personality manifest different skills. If you're in a fantasy setting, the body can even have different physical capabilities and appearances depending on who's the pilot at that moment.

1yDqXm6.gif
 
Here's a quick terrible one for any setting or system: All the players are just alternate personalities inhabiting a single body. They will probably bicker constantly inside 'their' head and will have to roll off on any conflict over who gets to control 'their' body at critical moments.
Er... you mean Everyone Is John?
 
Alright, take a gander at this: You play moonshine-brewing hillbillies in the 1920s using the Call of Cthulhu rules, but the mythos ain't real, not even a little bit. However, what is real is the stupefying potency of your hooch. Those who imbibe a little too much of it describe visions of heaven or, more problematically for you, non-Euclidian hellscapes populated by octopus Satans.

Whispered tales of your brew have spread far and wide, getting more outlandish from telling to telling. Now, as if the feds weren't enough, there's a team of outsiders violently snooping around the nearby towns, looking for you, convinced you're the ringleaders of some doomsday cult devoted to old heathen deities or something. These strangers mean business: your friends who've survived encounters with them describe a strangely diverse crew of eccentrics from all over the world, armed to the teeth, packing explosives, and suicidally willing to violate any law of man or God to secure even the flimsiest clues about you.

Through strange twists of fate and stubborn delusion, the 'evidence' these strangers find only ever makes them more convinced that you are in league with ancient evil. Looks like you're going to be playing cat and mouse with them all across the mountains to protect your kin and livelihood. There is some good news though: they can't turn to the cops either, their team is comically dysfunctional, the 'spells' they think they're casting from their dusty old books don't actually work, and you've got someone on your side more powerful than this 'Nyarathulusothoth' or whatever they keep jabbering about - Jesus.

[If you're the GM, make sure the actual HP Lovecraft improbably ends up visiting the PCs and drinking some of their life-altering moonshine before wandering off, talking about "new inspiration".]
b4AN0W5.jpg
Can we please not threadcrap here?

OP was asking for bad campaign ideas.
 
I once briefly entertained the idea of a "Sims" Roleplaying game. I.E. you are John Doe, a 35 insurance salesman that lives in Milwaukee. You'd have to play out your everyday and there would be no Dragons, Aliens or Demiurge's. At that point I realized that most people play RPG's to escape from their real lives.
 
Pirate Parley. Each PC is a pirate captain who has come to divide up territories and trade loot. All action must simultaneously use pirate slang and Robert's Rules of Order.
Can I steal this and turn it into a one shot LARP? (I'm serious; this sounds amazing).
 
2KcPWeO.jpg


Look upon the following if you dare dear readers!

Vincent: The Price

jbdebDP.jpg


Use the World of Darkness rules to run a campaign where all the players are different horror movie characters performed by Vincent Price. They have been drawn together across dimensions so that they can team up against their ultimate nemesis: The actor Vincent Price!

bUX2dqA.jpg


It appears that Vincent sold his soul for talent, fame and fortune. However, through arcane trickery he concealed a small piece of his soul in each of the roles he played, making him immortal and confounding the demon sent to claim it.

541vDfT.jpg


An unforeseen consequence of this has been that each of Vincent's roles gained an independent life of its own in a parallel dimension. Eventually the demon figured it all out and went looking for them instead. The weaker characters were easily harvested, but the horror movie roles had the sinister will necessary to stay one step ahead.

9It2eIb.jpg


Eventually they realized the only way to escape damnation was to travel to the soul-void Vincent Price's home dimension (ours), capture him, and somehow find a loophole in the dark contract to make him pay for all their sins, ending the demon's pursuit. It's a slim hope, possibly just a delusion, but most of these characters have a screw loose already anyway, and they certainly don't know when to quit.

McUd1JO.jpg
 
Vincent: The Price

Use the World of Darkness rules to run a campaign where all the players are different horror movie characters performed by Vincent Price. They have been drawn together across dimensions so that they can team up against their ultimate nemesis: The actor Vincent Price!

Nah. I'm going to wait for the Cannon Films Cinematic Universe RPG.

Just the different versions of Charles Bronson characters make it worth it for me. (My personal headcanon is that Charles Bronson plays Paul Kersey from Death Wish in all the Cannon films, just at different points of his career as a self taught master of death. So Kersey under different identities is a vigilante, a cop, a secret service agent, and a professional assassin. The Evil That Men Do is the end of the timeline.)
 
Earth is invaded by aliens. Humanity is unable to defeat them, so we genetically re-engineer dinosaurs a la Jurassic Park, give them heightened intelligence, power armor, and lasers, and send them out to fight the aliens for us. The PCs are those dinosaurs, fighting a deadly war while struggling to assimilate with a human society that both needs and fears them.



(This is the plot of the power metal album "Legend of the Powersaurus" by Victorious)
 
You work in the Cursed Objects division of MegaMall's Lost and Found department. Your division was started because of an increasing number of paranormal events surrounding normal-seeming objects found around the mall. You must contend with murderous stuffed animals, backpacks that open onto hellscapes, makeup compacts that turn people Lovecraftian monsters when opened, and other ludicrous magical abuses of everyday objects.
 
You work in the Cursed Objects division of MegaMall's Lost and Found department. Your division was started because of an increasing number of paranormal events surrounding normal-seeming objects found around the mall. You must contend with murderous stuffed animals, backpacks that open onto hellscapes, makeup compacts that turn people Lovecraftian monsters when opened, and other ludicrous magical abuses of everyday objects.

Bah, that's just a slow Tuesday in the Ghostbusters RPG.
 
I'm currently writing a one page game where the PCs have only one stat: punching. And that stat is at maximum for every player character. The game involves being put in a situation where punching cannot help.

I know I'm a genius, but I haven't yet decided whether to use my powers to help or to harm mankind.
 
Don't know if it counts as a bad campaign idea but once I ran an ewok hunt game in Traveller. Off the cuff PC's vs. ewoks per ROTJ, hunting them for the pelts. Everybody hated ewoks so it had universal support from the players.

That was a 24hr marathon session and I was quite sleep deprived at the time.
 
The Goonies R Good Enough.

Cyndi Lauper says so. And if it gets Susanna Hoffs to dress up as a pirate, it's good enough for me.


Edit: forgot the video is in 2 parts and my "Mirror, Mirror"-universe wife Susanna is in part 2:


Now you're talking Dumarest !!! Sign me up :grin:
 
The last few posters have confused "bad" with "fucking awesome."
Ok, how about...

You are all alcoholics and drug addicts confined to an addiction center. Game involves frequent sanity/willpower checks to deal with withdrawal, or alternately attempts to sneak contraband in and steal each other's hidden stashes, or to break out of the rehab center entirely. Enemies include staff, other patients, family members, and government officials/inspectors.
 
Lights on: all characters are normal humans in a randomly created room. They must fumble about to find a way to make light. The game ends once someone finds the lightswitch/flashlight/torch/other lightsource.
 
2KcPWeO.jpg


Look upon the following if you dare dear readers!

Vincent: The Price

jbdebDP.jpg


Use the World of Darkness rules to run a campaign where all the players are different horror movie characters performed by Vincent Price. They have been drawn together across dimensions so that they can team up against their ultimate nemesis: The actor Vincent Price!

bUX2dqA.jpg


It appears that Vincent sold his soul for talent, fame and fortune. However, through arcane trickery he concealed a small piece of his soul in each of the roles he played, making him immortal and confounding the demon sent to claim it.

541vDfT.jpg


An unforeseen consequence of this has been that each of Vincent's roles gained an independent life of its own in a parallel dimension. Eventually the demon figured it all out and went looking for them instead. The weaker characters were easily harvested, but the horror movie roles had the sinister will necessary to stay one step ahead.

9It2eIb.jpg


Eventually they realized the only way to escape damnation was to travel to the soul-void Vincent Price's home dimension (ours), capture him, and somehow find a loophole in the dark contract to make him pay for all their sins, ending the demon's pursuit. It's a slim hope, possibly just a delusion, but most of these characters have a screw loose already anyway, and they certainly don't know when to quit.

McUd1JO.jpg
I want to be Dr. Goldfoot!
 
The last few posters have confused "bad" with "fucking awesome."
I don't know, the campaign idea I posted was one of three campaigns I ran for a session or two only for the players to ask me to stop because they thought it was just too weird. They could handle bugbears and kobolds but a teddy bear with a knife was too far off in the deep end.
 
I don't know, the campaign idea I posted was one of three campaigns I ran for a session or two only for the players to ask me to stop because they thought it was just too weird. They could handle bugbears and kobolds but a teddy bear with a knife was too far off in the deep end.
I love mismatch between goofy and dangerous. The teddy bear is cute and weird but could still kill you.

The mall items sound very similar to Friday the 13th, the Series. Was it inspired by that. That was a good show, though poorly named as it had nothing to do with the movies.
 
A WWII espionage game where you have to crack real Nazi cyphers, in real time, with a pencil, notepad and bottomless cup of tea. Just like Alan Turing did it.
If you'd come up with this about 15 years ago I'd have been working just one stop of the train up from Bletchley.
 
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