So, this thread is all about those funny ideas you wanted to pitch to someone but weren't sure if A) anyone would like it or B) how to present it in the first place. These don't have to be ideas you wanted to use on a forum roleplay. Most of the ideas I'm going to present throughout the course of this thread are things I wanted to run IRL as a tabletop GM.

Feel free to use this thread to post your own things that will never see the table, or things you want to pitch but aren't sure if you're ready to. Who knows: maybe you'll find someone who's interested, or maybe you'll get suggestions from other posters about how to make it work in a tabletop or forum setting.

So, without further ado, let me start by introducing the first one:

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[color=fdc68a][b]Avatars of Dinosaur Gods[/b][/color]

Yeah, you read that correctly. Dinosaur gods. If you haven't played Primal Rage before, you probably need a bit of a primer as to what sort of world I'm talking about: a fantasy setting - or fantastic post-apocolyptic setting - in which there are dinosaurs that are deities. They cast magic, they can grant powers to their worshipers, and most importantly: THEY'RE GIANT DINOSAURS THAT WALK AROUND EATING PEOPLE WHO MAY OR MAY NOT WORSHIP THEM. These dinosaur gods would probably have really primal, instinct or state-of-mind based domains, like madness, hunger, fear, family (protection of), survival, rage, the hunt, destruction...

Yeah, it's a bit crazy sounding, but I love that setting concept.

One thing I've always wanted to do with such a setting is run a Dungeon World or Fantasy Age game in which the players are, well, the avatars of a dinosaur god of their choosing, and probably of their design. Using Dungeon World as an example, the Thief may worship Gargos, the Lord of Rot, a giant, rotting pterodactyl. The Paladin may worship Duragax, the Protector, a stegosaurus that fights to protect humanity. Etc.

Other interesting non-dinosaur gods could be things like giant sloths, yetis, sabertooth tigers, woolly mammoths, devil-like alligators, weird hybrids of different animals (some sort of chimera?)... You get the idea, though. These would all be scary, prehistoric monsters that are pretty much the size of Kaijus, and the world of humanity worships them in hopes of not being eaten.

This will probably never see the light of day, but [i]damn[/i] do I want to run this for a group of unsuspecting dungeon crawlers. One day. One day.

[color=fdc68a][b]A Fantasy Setting That's Actually A Giant Experiment By Aliens[/b][/color]

Ever hear of an awesome game called Endless Legend? Well, now you did. Go look it up. 4X players will love it.

One of the key concepts of Endless Legend is that this fantastic, magical world is actually all explained by the science of the Endless universe (which does not mean OUR science can explain it; it's science fantasy, not hard science fiction). "Magic" is cast through the use of a strange material called Dust which is really common in space. The races of the planet, including the hydras and the minotaurs and EVERYTHING, were all created as experiments by some long-dead creator race. Humans, or at least one faction of them, crashed onto the planet in a goddamned space ship.

While it's a cool pitch, the problem is I'd want to keep it hidden from the players and let them discover all that. It means telling the players "There are secrets about this setting you do not know and may never find out, and you need to be okay with that." It means anticipating that some players would be upset to realize they're in playing in a science fantasy game, not traditional medieval fantasy.

[color=fdc68a][b]"One Of These Things Is A Lie"[/b][/color]

This is a forum roleplay idea I'd love to try, but it could end really badly, and I definitely don't have the time. The idea is simple:

At the start of the roleplay, I'd provide a list of things that are true about the setting, including rules. So, for instance, these truths might read: "Your character will not die," "The GM cannot do <X>," "One of you is a traitor," "There is no such thing as magic," "You are all human."

Then I'd proceed to tell the players that a certain number of those things - let's say three - are lies. I would not tell them which things were lies. I'd let them figure that out through the course of the roleplay.

Again, you can probably see why this would be a hard sell. But you can probably see the appeal to a GM, too.