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Some Campaign Dreams
Here are some campaign ideas that I've long thought about but have never got round to writing.

BLOOD, GLORY AND RICHES!

The players play a group of warriors who want to make themselves rich and cover themselves in glory. They might be a band of tribal nomads, a group of bandits or a lord and his remaining following that have lost their land in a local war. Whatever their origin, they are landless and left to wander in the world, seeking a living. But they are proud warriors - they would rather die than become common labourers, farming or mining or hefting crates on the docks. And bare subsistence would not satisfy them - they want to live well and gloriously!

This may sound like the archetypal fantasy cliche of wandering fantasy adventurers but that is really not what I have in mind. There are no pre-written scenarios hanging on scenario hooks here, and there are no 'dungeons' or random monsters with random treasure for the player characters to plunder and enrich themselves. This is a world without hidden treasure: if you want wealth, you must make it for yourself or take it from someone else. Only common labourers make wealth; the player characters are men of a higher calibre, the wolves rather than the sheep.

So to live in the lifestyle which they deem appropriate to themselves, the player characters must take wealth from other people. As I said, there are no pre-writen scenarios: the PCs can go anywhere to look for opportunities.

They might go to a lawless region where they can live as bandits, plundering farming villages. This would keep them alive, but it would not be a rich life, and they would be competing with rival bandit gangs. They might choose to carve out a petty realm for themselves, making themselves overlords of a few such villages, but then they would have to defend them against all comers.

They could try raiding in a wealthier area, but such a region will probably have a higher level of law and order, and they will need to deal with that.

Or, they might go to a big city and look for work as mercenaries or guards. This could lead them into all sorts of things.

The point is that the players decide what they're going to do - where they'll go and what source of income they'll look for, and then the GM decides what they find when they get there, rather than being pushed into some preconceived situation which the GM has come up with in advance.

Of course, this requires a lot of improvisational ability from the GM. The best way I can see to run it is that the players end a session by saying 'Next week we're going to place x and doing y,' and then the GM can prepare what happens before the next session. To take the backache out of it I'd probably want to write a random terrain generator program to draw me a map and place settlements on it, with population sizes and so forth for each one.

This game has no moral preconceptions: the player characters can be as ruthless as they like. Their characters can have a moral code if they want, but it's not required. If they want to play viscious cutthroats, that's within the parameters of the game.

LAWLESS WORLDS

Human-occupied space has several large interstellar governments. One region lies close to several major powers. They fought here in the past, then when no clear victor emerged they all signed a treaty to leave this area neutral, and they all withdrew. The resulting Neutral Space descended into anarchy. There was no government above the planetary level, and most planets had no stable government and descended into chaos, civil war and lawlessness. It would be a violation of the treaty for any of the major powers to send military or law enforcement personnel into Neutral Space. As a result, criminals fleeing the law of the major powers flock to Neutral Space.

The player characters are bounty hunters. Their aim is to enter Neutral Space, capture fugitives from one government or another, and bring them back for a reward. Inside Neutral Space there will be little law to restrain them from doing what they want, but equally they will be at the mercy of the ruthless pirates and ganglords who rule petty kingdoms in Neutral Space. To survive they must keep their heads down and not pose an obvious threat or challenge to anyone powerful, and equally not appear rich enough to attract too many predators.

UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY

The player characters are the leaders of an expeditionary force looking for wealth in a newly-found continent, rather like the Spanish looking for cities of gold in 15th-century South America. They would be looking for wealth to carry away, or maybe for realms to permanently conquer.

The special thing about this is that the players would command a large force of men (tens to hundreds). The game system would have to include rules for battles on a larger scale than normal in roleplaying, and would have to have rules for man management, particularly in taking a large body of men through difficult terrain, carrying of foraging for supplies.

The players would roleplay diplomacy with the tribes they encounter, and then the results of any disputes they had would be played out in tabletop battles.

KNIGHTS OF THE REALM

Like Undiscovered Country above, Knights of the Realm is a game where player characters command forces. It's set in a feudal kingdom where the King appoints people to positions of responsibility and expects them to serve him in return. The players start out as minor nobles who have a small amount of land, and the King will send them on minor missions to begin with, such as clearing out the bandits ravaging some of his lands. Success will be rewarded with more lands and more responsible commands.

The feudal system works like this: lords have land to give them income, and they use this income to maintain their own armies to serve the King's will. So the game would contain land- and army-management elements. The land management rules would be fairly simple, something like this:

A character has one or more Estates. An Estate has an area of land or a certain Quality. Each acre of land contributes points of Productivity based on its Quality plus a dice roll (this value is fixed - it does not change each year, though it could drop if the land is neglected, suffers floods, etc.). Each point of Productivity yields a certain amount of Wealth per season: the greatest yield will come in autumn with the main harvest and the land will yield least profit in the winter. Climatic factors like temperature, rainfall and flooding could also have a big impact.

However, each acre of land only yields its result if tended, which requires a certain number of man-hours per season from the peasants. Peasants consume food, so each individual takes a certain amount of Wealth out of the land's yield. Now here's the fun part: landowners can choose how many man-hours they demand from their peasants, and how much food they let them eat. If the conditions of peasant life are too hard, there is a roll to see if they revolt.

A nobleman also has soldiers, and he has to feed and equip them. Like peasants, they take a certain amount of Wealth per man to maintain, plus there is a big cash investment when equipping new men from scratch. They also have to make loyalty tests based on their conditions of life. If called on to suppress a peasant revolt, disgruntled troops may refuse to fight, desert or even join the revolt.

Of course, you can hire mercenaries at need rather than maintaining a standing army, but they cost like the Devil if they're any good. Cheaper mercenaries are available, but of less use.

An Estate is run by Reeves (land managers) who expect high pay. The more you pay your Reeves, the more skilled ones you will attract. Every season, your Reeves make a roll to see how they manage the land - if they do well or badly, its Productivity per acre will increase or decrease, affected of course by the land's Quality.

Subjects whose families have served yours for generations will have a Traditional Loyalty bonus, which modifies their loyalty tests. But bad results on these tests will lead to a loss of Traditional Loyalty. Once lost, this can never be regained. Thus a greedy grasping player character might inherit a thousand subjects from his father with Traditional Loyalty +3, and after three seasons of working them to the bone he may have lost one point of Traditional Loyalty each season, leaving them no more loyal than slaves bought at the market. This would be a stupid thing to do, but it is behaviour typical of certain gamers.

Each nobleman has several reputation stats. These include:
Bloodline - This depends solely on the character's birth, and cannot be changed unless the known or supposed facts of a character's ancestry changes - for instance, a revelation that an ancestor was not the son of his mother's noble husband but of her lover the stable boy, or the discovery (real or invented) of documents in an archive proving a higher status for a family.

Splendour - This is based on your perceived wealth. The most important part of it is based on your land. Beyond that, it's about display: more magnificent your clothes, your retinue and your castle, the more splendid the parties you throw, then the more your Splendour increases. Borrowing money will decrease your Splendour (if anyone finds out) and failing to pay it back will decrease it still more.

Conquest - This is based on your performance in commanding troops. Typically you gain points for winning battles and lose points for losing, but the perceived difficulty of the task plays a part. A defence of a pass where you lose 90% of your men and then withdraw could still be a great victory if you managed to hold off the enemy for three weeks and kill ten times your own number of their troops.

Devotion - This stats your reputation for devoted service to the Crown. It increases when you win the King's battles or give the King gifts. Failure to do these things when asked will result in a drop in Devotion. The King asks for taxes every year, but a player may choose to make additional gifts to curry favour.

Manners - This is based on your performance in the social niceties. When fencing at court, performing the proper ritual, executing the approved moves with the proper flourish, and showing gentlemanly conduct throughout would increase your Manners whether you won or not. Winning a fencing bout by a dirty trick would hurt your Manners stat, while enhancing your reputation as a fighter (your Conquest stat). Dancing, witty conversation, table manners, gallantry to ladies and dress will also affect your Manners. You lose points for ungentlemanly behaviour, such as being caught forging documents or failing to pay a debt.

Charity - This represents how virtuous you are seen to be. A lord who treats his peasants well and sets up an orphanage will gain Charity; one who works his subjects to death and brutally supresses their revolts will lose Charity.

In some cases, a high reputation stat might not be desirable. A hardened battle-lord may want to be seen as a hard man to deal with, not some mincing fop, so he will deliberately avoid gaining Manners or Charity. Greater Splendour means that the King is likely to ask you for higher taxes.

Knights of the Realm is a game of self-advancement, but it's not about increasing your physical stats. The gains come in the form of more lands and more responsibilites. Early scenarios would be small, with the players taking their own small retinues to do fairly minor jobs. These jobs may bring rewards in themselves: if the PCs defeat some bandits, they may be able to seize their hoard of plunder and their equipment for themselves, and sell the survivors as slaves. (The dispensing of justice will be in the PCs' hands - slavery rather than hanging may well seem a just punishment for captured bandits.) If they capture new lands, they may want to make them into their own Estates.

After the fighting or mission part of the scenario is over, the players then do management, reaping their harvest and paying their taxes to the king. The King will tend to ask for higher taxes from characters with higher Splendour (as he thinks they can afford it) and higher Devotion (because he thinks they'll give it up without objecting). He might also reduce the tax bill to a character with high Charity, as a reward to that character for virtuously helping others out of his own pocket. The PCs might choose to hand over some of the land or booty they've captured to the King to curry favour. At the end of this, the GM will award them points for a job well done, giving giving money to the King, etc.

After all that has been done, the players get to roll on a set of tables for the King's favour. The King will tend to award new lands to character with high Conquest (to give them more soldiers to fight his wars), with high Devotion (because they seem loyal) and with high Bloodline, Manners and Charity (out of traditional or sentimental reasons) but he will avoid giving more land to characters with very high Splendour on the basis that they have enough to serve him well already, and he doesn't want to make any one nobleman too rich or he might create a rival powerful enough to seize the throne.

As long as the characters stay in a lowly position, they will continue to get similar lowly missions. If they advance, they will get more responsibilty. Characters with high Splendour will be asked to take their own troops to the King's wars. Characters with high Conquest will be appointed to commands, not only over their own troops but over other lords and over troops raised from the royal treasury.

A potential problem in play would be justifying having the same five lords always being sent on the same mission together, especially if each has to roll individually to see what duties the King assigns him every season. A way around this is to play one PC lord's own scenario each session. The other players could play officers in his retinue, or 'NPC' roles like political figures in the area where the main PC is being sent, or enemy commanders.

A variant game could have various power-hungry major factions in the kingdom. Each player would have a Devotion stat for each such faction, and could seek favour with a different master if his current overlord wasn't giving him enough reward. Such a campaign could culminate with a civil war between the factions. If different players had character who had sided with different factions, then these different players could control the factions in a map wargame, and then control their own and NPC armies in battles to decide the fate of the Kingdom.