The Fling

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there's those campaigns where everyone is fired up to try a new system or setting or someone wants to be the DUNGEON MASTER

but for whatever reason , 2-4 sessions later it just sorta ends.

But What If when we did such undertakings we framed it as limited run, to have something to finish with rather than just moving on?  Both an ending to aim for and an ending to happen if you just stop playing

Please consider the following and note I've included a possible angle to turn each into an ongoing campaign:
(fuck knows why I've listed them in a table)

1. A elritch alien warship, pride of a degenerate alien empire, has been struck by a vast void beast mid void-warp, and crashed back into real space, now warped and crippled, the alien crew dying and maddened from the ruptured void shields, and is now in a decaying orbit towards a blackhole.
You and your fellow players have broken free of your containment  and search desperately for escape among the cruel amusements , maddened guards, and fiendish security systems
You are: captives used as the payload on psychic cannons, genetically engineered geisha, P.O.W, malfunctioning robots, pragmatic alien serfs
The Aim: Get to an escape pod with enough supplies to make the characters future lives comfortable
The Default: You all are crushed beyond all understandings of the term crushed
The Over-achiever: You get the ship going and start your own LEXX-life

2.
Murder Mystery Mansion Time Machine::
 A smug despot of a time-lord has thrown a dinner party for his peers , and further more as a delightful touch , he plucked "guests" from out time and space to join their esteemed ranks.
But he turns out MURDERED and now his mansion/time mansion is freaking out. BUT THE MURDER IS NOT YET DONE. The Mansion itself it not without its dangers, escaped terrors, bizarre traps et cetera  et cetera

You Are: Elites of an advanced and apathetic society, fellows plucked from time for their wit or lack of it
The Aim: To not get murdered, to get back to their own time, to discover Murderer
The Default: forced to live in wrong time line and wonder WHO WAS THE MAKER OF MURDER?
The Over-achiever: The murder is solved , the mansion mastered and now the fabric of space and time is yours to saunter forth upon

3.
A HAMLET, A DOOM, AN OCEANIC CONTEMPT WOKE!
A mysterious mist has surrounded a village, everyone but you is got a fish plague and increasing waves of fishy monsters are coming for you
You Are: Simple practical folk , travelers, tourists, fly-by-night grifters
The Aim: To get out
The Default: you got dead or barely got out and are crazed beggar with 'Oribble tale
The Over-achiever: the secret of the Curse is uncovered plus riches too. But is it but one pebble fore-towing a occult landslide?

4.
DEATH RACE:
you are all convicts given a car and some weapons and sent across the Cursed Earth to try and win years off your sentence , battle other HARDENED KILL CRAZED CRIMINALS and the MUTANT HORRORS and CANNIBAL YUPPIE GANGS of the Cursed Earth, all before the drone eyes of a jaded and cruel LIVE AUDIENCE
You Are: Convicted criminals from a variety of backgrounds with a range of skillsets
The Aim: To make it to the finish or remove your bomb collars and commit to life in the cursed earth
The Default: assumed MIA and eaten or back in the slammer
The Over-Achiever: rebel and build a bandit kingdom and lay siege to a mega-city

5.Babes in the woods:
Lost in the faery woods! Will you make it home? Will you find what you seekth here?
You Are: Lost children, questing knights, talking animals
The Aim: make it out
The Default: Lost forever, as animals, fey servants , or living wood
The Over-Achiever : Riches! An Elf Bride! The Favour of the Seelie Court! Human Form! Further intrigues and quests? Maybe!

6.
Post-Adventurer Fun-House Dungeon:
They've come , solved or brutalized puzzle and trap, slain many, found the cackling undead wizard and took from him his undead continence and his tome of big man spells. But what now for those of rooms not visited as his spells twist and die and the less bold crawl in for the scraps left behind?
Factions are unbalanced and guardians amok!
You Are:  Monsters, Undead, Abandoned Henchmen, Former Servants, Escaped Captives, representatives of underworld tribes or dungeon factions
The Aim: To get out without being immediately hunted down due to the dungeons nearest to civilization.  To have a means of survival.
The Default: you get adventured or are still there preying on treasure seekers
The Over-Achiever : you are now the lord of this sinister peak, you have ravaged the nearby out-crop of civilization forcing it back away from the free wilderness, you have got out with a means of power and agency . OR SUCH LIKE



IN ADDITION:

A fling-campaign like any of these could have a table and/or conditions to determine the fates of characters if the campaign just ends.
So for Deathrace if the character has a bomb collar at the end of the session sequence , they are assumed back in slammer, if they are sans-collar there's a table to determine their fate, if they have earned the respect of cannibal gang then they assumed a member .
You could get involved as you like here with tables and sub-tables. I'm sure the above example is already suggestive of more elaboration.


THANK YOU FOR YUR TIME

Laughter In The Woods

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Kiel wanted this:
A list of weird and decadent (but gameable) fey/fairy pass-times and ritual

in exchange he going to never use a reaction gif again   he is going to make a big list of all the sweet sentai monsters



Needle Dancing :

the folk have really long needle shoes (5-6 metre) and circle or folk dance in a glade.

Trespassers or rule breakers are sometimes sentenced to survive a dance in middle of the glad, risking constant impalement. The more they can predict the dance movements the less they get stabbed. "Attending" the dance in full anuls whatever grudge is held against.

Use: players need to atone for something, or they need to risk someone or rig it so they survive it.

Moon Cloaks:
a moon cloak makes the wearer look like whatever the viewer is expecting to see while also making the viewer very suggestible at the same time. 

They are made by collecting moonlight reflected in particular water sources; everything from a hoof print to a lake. Special scissors are needed and the craft is only known to a few. 

It has to be done in one night and moon cloaks vanish if exposed to daylight. If this happens then the next night everything one within a cat stroll range will have nightmares and physically experience them.

Use: as a nightmare bomb, or as escorting mission helping a folk around to the particular sequence of reflecting sources needed. An encounter; the fey in question might be forbidden to practise the craft because of traditions and offers someone bribe to the players if the keep shuttum. The bribe will prob get them in more trouble however. 

Or an apprentice nightstitcher offers to make the players a mooncloak but it goes kinda wrong the whole time and all the reflecting surfaces are acting as portals to random weird semi-planes after the moon has been cut from them.

Arnold Böcklin - Der Krieg from wiki commons

WILD HUNTS

the classic. Everyone gets a horrible animal mask everyone gets a horrible horse with human features and some horrible dogs with the faces of everyone you betrayed . Then they ride around on a moonless night or the solstice or for justice and hunt down the criminal , maybe just find someone and  make up the laws afterwards?

Use: can the players get to the hunted before the hunters?

Or being hunted. Or being doing the knock out a couple of dudes in the back and take their clothes and then try and blend in.

BESTEST!

the beaver or the ant? who the better builder? better have a competition. Better just fuck up the place with the beavers making more and more dams and the ants make more mounds and all the folk strutting around making notes. 

Or any other animal trait that can be compared to another animal. Best weaver, singer , swimmer etc. 

Use: generally gets way out of hand and will need judges or some one to step in and just stop it because the spider is trying to trap the moon and the fox death to prove who is craftest.

BOUNTYS
do you animals have laws? Well they don't but that doesn't mean the fey can't post bountys for whoever stole honey from the bees or ruined the rabbits dance.

JOUSTING:
atop beetles along a single strand of human hair
on human back along a frozen lake
on flocks of crows atop the trees
Or each knight in a different persons eye leaping from eye to eye


SHAPE WAR

like the classic sword in the stone Merlin vs Morgana each battler takes a form to defeat the other.
Someone starts as a wolf , their opponent turns in a lion , so the other a thorn , to that a locust.

Often with a unspoken subrule like each form must be prettier than the last or abstract concepts always lose to specific obscure animal taxidermy


FORTUNES FOOL 
someone is chosen, someone prob having a blameless life or maybe a pompous ass ? Anyway their life is about to get a lot more interesting , as they are now the basis for a wager!
The 2 contestants work together to make them  win and lose a fortune 3 times within the time limit (a day, a week, a month , a candle).
Their temperament at the end of the game is the thing actually bet upon. So one will be aiming to have them sad and other happy. Or possibly less binary and more obscure emotions.
Depending on what kind of sport this person is they might be allowed to keep the fortune and/or be with an additional blessing or curse.