Underdark Hexcrawl:
A surface city gets cast underground. Some buildings topple, some catch fire. Anarchy erupts. (Could be a survival funnel). Once the dust settles and order re-appears, there is an urgent need for explorers to find sources of food and resources. Exploration means encountering other races, and those races may wish to invade the city itself.
Adventures:
Megadungeons:
FRC1 - Ruins of Adventure - The Council of Ten of the city of Phlan is looking to hire trusted adventurers to help them take back their town from the humanoid menace that has oppressed them for 40+ years.
Night Below - A wizard needs some trustworthy deliverymen to make a delivery to Haranshire. He's had problems before and needs someone with a reliable reputation.
FRQ3 - Doom of Daggerdale - Get PCs to Daggerdale - wife of someone murdered lives here. PCs discover belongings of her husband and wish to return them to her.
Undermountain - ???
FRA3 conversion:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?87127-FRA3-Blood-Charge&highlight=storm+riders
Dragon #349 + Web Supplement (Gazetteer and history!) - http://paizo.com/dragonissues/349/DR349_Supplement.pdf Checkout Dragon #315, 351
But the story had promise. So, I spent a couple months and rewrote the NPC parts as the character parts. It became one of my more memorable FR campaigns that still gets war stories told of its glory to this day.
And here are a few more character background tips for you:
Rescued from Being Lost • Deva rescues the party, brings them to upper planes, tries to guilt trip them into doing a job for them
Becoming Lost / Magical Explosion / Portal to ? / Teleportation Gone Awry • Lost in the Astral Plane • See Ythoth Longship entry
Targeted by Another Being
Unique Character Afflictions (be more specific): • Carries symbiotic organism (aids but also has own desire) • Bonded to some magical item (but has a drawback) • Possessed by a spirit • Reincarnation; previous version blending through • Bears supernatural blood (has trouble controlling it) • Their body is not actually their own (mind swapped without realising) • They are a clone • They were genetically bred for a specific purpose • They are bound to another being - when that being is injured they are too, but comes with aid • They have visions, but are hampered after having them • Have been implanted with false memories, maybe to cover up some other memories
A series of adventures set in Lankhmar, the City of the Black Toga. A populous and labyrinthine maritime city, equally squalid and decadent, where powerful thieves guilds hold as much power as the nobility. Based on the novels by Fritz Leiber, featuring characters who regularly win fortune and lose it just as quickly.
System: DCC Lankhmar (modified DCC: no clerics, different healing rules, tougher characters, more luck, different patron system, no 0-level funnels)
Publisher's blurb: A whispered voice calls from a coffin bound in chains, urging you into the depths of the Shudder Mountains, a place rife with superstition and forlorn secrets. In the shadowy, pine-grown valleys of the Deep Hollows lurk mysteries of a bygone age and a new evil emerging from the ruins of the past. You must plumb the mountains' secluded reaches to root out this rising terror before its power comes to fruition. Standing in your way are cackling witches, subtle devils, lingering spirits, and a foul thing that movies in the night.
Based on Appalachian folklore, and the Silver John stories written by Manly Wade Wellman (which I've not read)
If you've played Sour Spring Hollow (the funnel with the cabins and the corn-field), it's part of this adventure.
System: DCC
A series of adventures set in a decaying, decadent future, where the sun is dying and magic has become the dominant force. Civilation has collapsed into either decadence or religious fanatcism, bringing an overwhelmingly fatalistic outlook. Wizards horde knowledge and expend energy out of jealousy and for show.
System: DCC Dying Earth (modified DCC: New classes, magic systems, not sure what else)
In the early 21st century a rogue object from deep space struck the moon, causing catastrophic destruction around the globe, ripping the very fabric of time and space itself. Centuries later the planet is reborn: A strange new place of alien wonder and death: A world ruled by savagery, cruel sorcery, and twisted science.
Set in post apocalyptic America, a mixture of Fallout, Mad Max, and 80s cartoons.
System: DCC Umerica / Crawling under a Broken Moon (tons of new classes, new armour rules, mutations, not sure what else)
Publishers blurb: Olden Wood: verdant and dense with thicket and tree. Dangers lurk under shaded boughs, nurtured by wilderness and bloody history. Long ago, it was the domain of faeries and pagan tribes, but civilization arrived at its fringes generations back. Prosperous trade passed easily on roads guarded by holy knights. But in the last generation, the wilderness has slowly reclaimed Olden Wood and traffic has become ever more perilous. Will brave adventurers reestablish their domain, or will it be swallowed by dark shadows?
System: Basic D&D or maybe DCC
Publishers blurb: The baker's son has come home a hero! New charter in hand, he has vowed to rebuild the old Baron's Keep. But trouble is brewing. Caravans with much needed supplies and trade goods have been attacked, travelers have seen goblins in the wood, and something or someone has been harassing the locals. The Baron has put a bounty on goblins and bandits alike, a lucrative offer for those willing to risk their lives to chase fame and fortune.
System: Swords & Wizardry (original D&D), Basic D&D, or maybe DCC
Sig is the nexus of the multiverse, where eternal planes and infinite primes meet. It's a city of gods, demons, and stranger things that lurk. The city is a rough home for cutters and bashers, hungry for coin and glory. The Silent Regent once ruled over the city with a bladed fist. Now her throne sits empty, and the criminal factions battle for control. They dispatch crews of Freebooters, clever and bold, to further their schemes. You will play such Freebooters in service to one of the mighty city factions. Your faction depends on you to perform vital missions to seize territory and coin from their rivals. This is a game about clever spies, renegate sorcerers, and reckless smugglers. You are the best of the best and the worst of the worst.
A "heist" roleplaying game, set in a world inspired by Planescape. If you've played Planescape: Torment or Tides of Numenera, it's a similar setting.
It even recommends playing no more than 12 sessions per campaign (w/ 2-4 hour sessions).
System: Blades in the Dark - a system I know almost nothing about but doesn't look that complicated.
Publisher's blurb: Condemned to wander the desert wilderness, the ghost of Pharaoh Amun-re pleads with you to free his cursed soul - but no one has ever returned from his ancient pyramid. Will you?
A series of three Egyptian themed adventures.
System: AD&D (could use DCC though), characters of mid-level
Publiser's blurb: Desolate and abandoned, the evil alchemist's mansion stands alone on the cliff, looking out towards the sea. Mysterious lights and ghostly hauntings have kept away the people of Saltmarsh, despite rumours of a fabulous forgotten treasure. What's its sinister secret?
A series of three adventures set at a sea-side town. They are classics, but to be honest I don't know much about them.
System: AD&D (could use DCC though), low-level characters
Publisher's blurb: The world is broken. In a collapsing universe, your crew is your only family. Death In Space takes you to a grimy blue-collar future in a universe filled with risk, but also opportunity.
Death In Space is a game about adventure and uncertain journeys out into the darkness of space, where the void whispers to the unlucky and imbues travelers’ bodies with strange powers. It is about you and your crew making a home of your spacecraft or station, your only sanctuary in a dangerous universe. Most of all, it is about surviving in an abandoned frontier system where resources are scarce, and competition is fierce.
Engage in power struggles and build your crew’s reputation. Salvage and steal to endure a ruthless universe. And above all, do anything you can to get that next job. Your life will depend on it.
System: Death In Space (know almost nothing about it, but doesn't look complicated)
Publisher's Blurb: The sun is dying and the wreckage of countless eons litters the parched wastes of Vaarn, the desolate country that common folk call the blue ruin. It is said that these sky-coloured sands hide the graves of the Autarchs; have swallowed the buried arcologies in which the true seed of humankind was preserved through the Great Collapse; conceal forgotten crypts of memory, decaying crystalline lattices of ancient ego-engines upon which the dusk-blue dunes encroach without pity. From the New Hegemony to the south come drifters and dreamers, desecraters of the tech-tombs that lie sunken beneath the azure wastes. Light-years overhead, aurum-hulled craft ply their tender routes between the spheres, and miles below a pilgrim’s feet, strange wombs are kindled once more with life undreamed of.
These are the hinterlands, where humanity’s great works have fallen to everlasting decay, where machine and animal and fungus think to crown themselves our equal. The phthalo-sands, where newbeasts hunt proudly with boots upon their hind paws and chromepriests chant unending binary devotions to their nameless synthetic god. Only the desperate or the mad would seek to make a life here, to roam the blue desert in search of the secret Vaults of Vaarn.
System: Vaults of Vaarn, a very minimal D&D-like RPG, published as a series of zines