Probably Fun RPG Ideas

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

[deepwaterfiction]

Deep Water Prompt #3488

I work in the coffee shop under the private eye’s office upstairs. When he’s the next victim in the case he’s investigating, his ghost possesses me, determined and now with a personal vendetta.

[probablyfunrpgideas]

Character Idea: play a Medium who channels the spirits of a bunch of detectives! Each of them faced a final case that brought them to destruction, and when you’ve solved all six they will finally be able to rest in peace.

The Archmage (Moira MacNeill) was a renowned witch and guardian of her mountain community. After finding many lost familiars and banishing evil fey, she was found turned into solid gold in the Case of the Midas Murders.

The Champion (Sword’s Child) was a gladiator who uncovered a conspiracy of fixed fights, corrupt politicians, and a blood cult in their arena. Rather than turning in the guilty parties, Sword’s Child embarked on a vigilante rampage. Years later, the one surviving conspirator somehow killed them in the Case of the Closed Colosseum.

The Guardian (Nur Zajal) was an agent of the Empire. She prevented plots to break peace treaties, assassinate envoys, and sabotage military operations. In the end, it wasn’t a Taldane spy who poisoned her in the Case of the Deadly Dishes. It must have been a rival within the imperial intelligence network…

The Hierophant (Rorik Glimmerhelm) was a servant of Abadar, tasked with investigating the crime that disrupts society the most: tax evasion. This dutiful dwarf made enemies among all the wealthy nobles and merchants of Absalom, leaving far too many suspects in the Case of the Reddened Revenue.

The Marshal (Hera Pierrot) was a fixture of high society, recovering stolen jewels or blackmail material and charming every party with wit and daring. When she exploded in the Case of the Anonymous Alchemist, all of Kintargo was in mourning for weeks.

The Trickster (Serendipity) was a consulting detective, sought by people with nowhere else to turn. He would conceal his tiefling spines in a myriad of disguises, and lead murderers into labyrinthine schemes to reveal their guilt. Sadly, the Case of the Vivisected Viceroy saw him (probably falsely) accused and executed.

[probablyfunrpgideas]

Blades in the Dark advanced life hack: the score isn’t over until it’s over! If you ever feel like you’ve failed, you just need to pivot.

What started out as a heist turns out to be an insurance scheme, which is a cover for an assassination, which is a side benefit of an exorcism! When one of these finally turns out right, just claim that was the plan all along.

This is a bit sarcastic, but in moderation it can be a good trick to escape from a score that’s going terribly wrong. Just make sure it meshes with the world (you can’t frame Bazso Baz for murdering the Chief Inspector if the Chief Inspector is alive and well) and give your GM enough material and time to work out the rest of the adventure.

[probablyfunrpgideas]

A Treasure Island Campaign

Could be actually super fun and intense. You don’t have to recreate the whole story beat for beat, just establish some MacGuffins for finding the treasure (you need the map, the key, and the compass to claim it) and give everyone reasons to distrust each other. I would make sure that there are both pirates and law-abiding folk among the Player Characters, and pressure them to compete for control of the ship (the only way home) and the crew (a dangerous faction with their own desires for gold).

My ideal party: Jim, or the Good Hearted Adventure Seeking Youth. Could become a pirate but is uneasy about violence. Silver, or the Charming Buccaneer. Well connected and ruthless. The Captain, here to keep order and ensure a profitable voyage. The Castaway, expert in the island and desperate to escape it, but with mysterious ties to the pirates. If characters are wounded or killed, I’d replace them with the Pirate Lieutenant, an uneasy underling; the Doctor, an indispensable person in this dangerous world; and the Stowaway, who has been hiding from both pirates and loyalists for reasons of their own.

[cutecipher]

basketball players fight over the basketball because they are hypnotized before each game to believe it is their egg

[enthusispastic]

I don't think this is true, but I will wait for a ruling by the sacred boar that lives in the center of the earth

[probablyfunrpgideas]

Minor Artifact: Football Crystal

Each American football team has one of these relics, which they guard with determination and high tech security. It is fueled by team spirit and willpower - sufficient physical force can break it, but it will regrow quickly when shards are invested with energy of the sport’s zeitgeist.

Football players have many different rituals or celebrations involving their football crystals, but the magical power is always present. It’s able to collect 1 power point per every 10 fans present at the game, glowing with an increasingly bright light. Then, as part of the football team’s preparations, each player chooses a psionic power to prepare in the crystal. It must be from the discipline of Psychometabolism and have a target of “you” and a level that could be manifested by a psion of the team’s average level.

Throughout the game, as an action (usually during a huddle) players can have the crystal spend power points to manifest the prepared powers, affecting the player who takes the action.

A football crystal is only permanently destroyed if the team that owns it is disbanded.

[probablyfunrpgideas]

Blades in the Dark Idea: your character’s vice is an obsession with some kind of ongoing media. Penny dreadfuls? A radio drama? Maybe a book series that’s close to its final volume? You spend hours re-reading and theorizing about what happened and where the story is going, trying to track down apocryphal editions that support your ideas. Overindulge in your vice, and you might get metaphorically trapped in a fantasy world, literally trapped in your conspiracy stringboard, or arrested while confronting the author in a tea shop.

I think there’s some good plot hooks and NPC connections here! Who can you meet among the literary fandom of Doskvol? Who’s your vice purveyor, who doesn’t just get you the latest issue of Sharkman vs Dr. Phantasm but convinces you to research the actual bite strength of a shark to see which of them would win?

[probablyfunrpgideas]

Encounter Idea: This room of the dungeon has a mysterious fountain with an angel statue that speaks when you encounter it. “This water can restore the dead to life, but centuries of neglect have allowed its power to fade. There remains enough for only one body, but a priest of the Harborwing can restore its energy.”

Around the cavern are the remains of a dozen or more adventurers and a few pieces of chitinous limbs, clearly the result of many battles. One of the fallen may be a cleric of Ylimancha, able to turn this place into a powerful holy shrine. Can you choose correctly? Can you repair the critical damage to make sure the resurrection spell works? Will you survive the ankhegs that seem to treat the cavern as their hunting ground?

Imagine if you had to play Operation during your combat encounter, to represent the stress of extracting a claw from the body you need to revive!

[haron-stoneham]

I feel bad for the restricted section of Miskatonic university. Everytime it shows up in a story someone or something breaks in and an average of one professor ends up dead.

[probablyfunrpgideas]

Campaign Idea:

All the characters are substitute teachers, called in to cover a wide assortment of classes for Miskatonic faculty who have been possessed by fractals or crushed by Eihort or something. They get pulled into ongoing investigations by students, and need to survive the eldritch horrors while also figuring out how to grade papers in Ancient Greek (I can’t believe I said “fluent” on my resume, I thought I’d only be here for a week!)

[probablyfunrpgideas]

Vampire the Masquerade NPC idea: a Malkavian who can’t lie, due to their clan bane. However, through many prophetic visions they’ve become adept at metaphors and similes, using cryptic statements to conceal or even misdirect the things they say.

This vampire makes a living as a paralegal in the human world, crafting interpretations of rules that cut through all opposition. They also offer their services to Kindred who find themselves accused by the Prince - in exchange for a favor, they’ll defend you in court and explain why you shouldn’t be staked out in the sun.

[probablyfunrpgideas]

Familiar Idea

The Fris-bee is a fuzzy yellow insect, roughly spherical and about a foot in diameter. It comes from the extraplanar realm of Ysgard, where small flocks of them compete in cross-country flying races and obstacle courses. Mages with an alignment of Chaotic Good or Chaotic Neutral can acquire a Fris-bee familiar! They like to work with people who share their love of speed and athleticism.

As an action, a Fris-bee can convert itself into a flying disc and move double its speed in a straight line without provoking attacks of opportunity. If there is wind, however, the creature's actual ending point is 5 ft away from its desired ending point for each 5 mph of wind speed. Fris-bees can use Entropic Shield and Remove Fear as spell-like abilities, each thrice per day with a caster level of 6.

Planar apiarists believe there is an advanced form of this insect, known as the Ultimate Fris-bee. It may be the queen that gives life to all the others, or it may be an amalgamation of linked minds. Ultimate Fris-bees cast spells as a level 9 sorcerer, with access to spells from the Strength and Good domains.

[probablyfunrpgideas]

Vampire the Masquerade idea:

You know when your player is going down that road, psyching themself up to commit diablerie.

Prepare for the session by making a big batch of tomato soup (you can include some grilled cheese sandwiches for non-game purposes, but we need a big soup bowl as a prop).

As the vampire PC drinks the blood of another, the player must finish the bowl between the first and last dice roll that determines their character’s success. Every time they stop drinking soup, they lose one die from their Blood Potency roll and thus risk being corrupted by the soul of the vampire they’ve consumed!

[deepwaterfiction]

Text: He lifts up his tongue to show me the pearl trapped in a thin layer of skin underneath. 'A gift from the sea' he says. But I know exactly what it is, and what kind of trouble it will bring.

[probablyfunrpgideas]

These are pearls that were his eyes, the poem says. But the daelkyr lord Belashyrra performs this mysterious sea-change in reverse. In areas tainted by her influence, people might get a splinter or swallow a grain of sand, only to find their body converting it into a shiny pearl. Imagine their horror when the pearl cracks and blinks, forming a new eye!

These pale silver and blue eyes are the evidence of Belashyrra's corrupting power. Sometimes, if they appear among members of her cult, they're seen as a mark of favor and a sign that their goddess is watching over them, watching through their eyes. She may even send her favored children, the Eyes of the Deep, to assist in missions that will weaken the daelkyr's prison.

Sea-Changed Sight: you have one or more pearly eyes, granted by Belashyrra as a curse or blessing (or, more likely, part of a plan beyond mortal ken). You can see through these extra eyes, and they have darkvision. For every three levels or Challenge Rating you have, you get one use per day of Beholding Blast! Beholding Blast: Make a ranged spell attack (using Charisma) against a living target within 60 feet. On a hit, they take 1d8 force damage and must make a Strength save or become restrained by a magical grasp until the end of your next turn.

[duckbunny]

stinging nettles sound like a low level dnd monster but in fact they are hiding in the grass of your local park and they want very badly to sting you

[tarragonthedragon]

a botany book i read recently was by an author from some part of north america where they dont have stinging nettles and so many pages were dedicated to how uniquely, marvellously, ontologically evil they are

[probablyfunrpgideas]

Creature Idea: Stinging Nettle

This tiny plant has just enough sentience and mobility to get you. With tendril leaves that allow it to catch insects and rodents, the nettle makes its home in overgrown alleys and forbidding thickets. Some druids are known to cultivate them as guardians of their sacred stelae.

Stinging nettles move at 10 feet per round toward the greatest source of movement (they have tremorsense out to 60 feet). Any creature starting its turn in a space with any stinging nettles must make a Fortitude save at DC 10 plus 1 per nettle in their space. On a failure, they are dazed by the pain and take 1 point of damage per nettle.

[probablyfunrpgideas]

Nobilis puts you in the role of someone with a supernatural attachment to an ideal or thing. You play as the god of potatoes, or secondhand smoke, or schadenfreude.

What if you power scale it? Play as the temporal ruler of your domain, with unlimited power to create laws that apply to potatoes (easy) or secondhand smoke (difficult) or schadenfreude (almost impossible). You can’t do miracles with the things you control, but everyone recognizes you as an authority on it.

[probablyfunrpgideas]

Item Idea:

Boots of Protection From Parasites

While wearing these thigh-high boots, you are immune to diseases carried by ticks, mosquitoes, tapeworms etc, and have a +5 bonus on saves and Armor Class against attacks or effects that would cause a creature to attach to or infest you.

This set of footwear was invented by a bard who wished to look good while avoiding bloodborne illness.

[probablyfunrpgideas]

Idea: make your villain a Man in the Iron Mask!

They’re doomed because an accident of fate left them with a terrible choice - just by existing, they’re a threat to peace and stability. Do they accept the status quo and languish in exile or prison? Or do they become the figurehead of a conspiracy, and prove the warnings right? Obviously, the second option makes more of an exciting plot, but there’s room for sympathy when this leader of renegades and desperados comes face to face with the PCs.

Now, why was our villain such a threat? Perhaps a prophecy or an innate magical power - “whoever can wear the Skull Gauntlet will open the doors of death to our land”. You could use the book’s reasoning, and give them a legitimate claim to the throne and identical appearance to the ruler. Or maybe they’re the last member of a fallen order of knights, and everyone assumes they want revenge.

[vixensdungeon]

Aww, crud. I tried casting one of the real spells we all know are in every Player’s Handbook, and it summoned a demon that sent me across dimensions.

So yeah long story short, I’m stuck in the world of Dungeons & Dragons. I’m still getting a signal through a tiny portal, Magic Tavern style, so I guess I’m doing an AMABSITWOD&D (ask me about being stuck in the world of Dungeons & Dragons).

[invisible-goats]

has a little bald man in red showed up and demanded you save the world yet?

[probablyfunrpgideas]

What spell or combination will you use to keep your phone charged?

[probablyfunrpgideas]

Idea: Curse of Inevitable Demise

Ever since you were bitten by that bookworm, you’ve been haunted by visions of people who watch you like they’re praying for your downfall. Not ghostly ancestors, but equally unreal. These people don’t exist yet. They can’t exist, until you are out of the way.

You take a penalty on death saving throws and recover 1 less hit point from healing, for each backup character idea your player has.