My favorite experience with 3.5 was a "Dragon Campaign" I ran about two years ago. Now, our group had been together quite a while, and had run a couple of evil campaigns--they never last long, we get all machiavellian, teamworking up a storm of evil to complete a goal (like taking over a city discretely), get bored, and run a more normal campaign.

Well, the Dragon Campaign was basically the same thing, but on a continental scale. Each player rolled randomly for a dragon type, picked a place to live, and started plotting like mad.

What made this campaign a blast, though, were the methods and ideas of the players; and one in particular still gets his plan referenced from time to time.

Anyway, on to the meat of the story:

I was DMing, and IIRC we had five dragons, a Red, a Green, two Blues, and a White. Now, for those of you familiar with 3.5 dragons, the White dragon is pretty meagre compared to the others, both in intellect and ability--but that doesn't matter 'cause the player played to the White's strengths brilliantly.


Begin pseudo-backstory (i.e., what the other PCs were doing with their time)

The only player who didn't accomplish a whole lot was the guy playing the Red dragon. He tried to have his Dragon do everything by itself, didn't keep minions for a long while and, after realizing he did want minions after all, did something a touch creepy and (since this was basically a quick one-shot campaign) his actions got marginalized. Anyways, he conquered a country and led it in an attack on a neighbor. The neighbor committed mass suicide rather then let their religion be tarnished by outsiders (and to avoid becoming half-dragon factories >_> ).


The Green Dragon became a pirate queen, not actually raiding herself, but pretending to be an ancient and powerful nature diety/elf/druid/something (I forget what, exactly) and turned her volcano fort island into a save-haven port for pirates for a share of their booty. Bristling with hidden undersea gnomish torpedo ports and a "tame guard Dragon", none of the pirates dared cross her and none of the nearby nations would risk their fleets to attack the port (not after the first three got Gnomish Torpedoed), anyway. She didn't do a whole lot herself, and had a blast doing it.


On the other side of the continent, one of the Blues was doing something similar. He was a 'treasure hunter' who would infiltrate adventuring parties so they would help him clear dungeons, then kill them when they were at their weakest and take all the loot. He was, IIRC, the richest of the Dragons in the party simply by virtue of knowing which groups to betray and which to split the treasure with, wait until they got old, and then go kill them. He was actually so sucessful I don't think anyone ever saw him in Dragon form (and lived to tell about it).


The continent also had a desert pretty much dead center. Trade had to go around it, due to the tribes of wandering desert raiders and lack of water. Queue Blue Dragon #2, with the spell 'Create Water' he not only united the tribes of desert raiders (paying them in water to raid any caravan not using one of his roads). He created a massive trade network through the desert that stopped at his manufactured Oases, was on the take from pretty much every caravan guild, and used a group of Kobolds to great effect carving a massive mesa in the middle of the desert into a huge luxury casino. And the best part is, he let anyone use his roads without paying--but if they didn't, they'd get sand raider'd and all their goods would be traded to him for water anyway. He was the second richest guy in the campaign (or maybe the richest, I don't remember. IIRC he had the most gold, but the other blue had the most magic items).


Backstory ends, real story begins here:

But, speaking of 'Kobolds', this is where the story gets interesting:

You see, 'Kobolds' are important because of what the White dragon did with them. See, he hated Gnomes and their inventions with a passion; so he began a Kobold eugenics program to breed a superior species of cold-resistant icewalking white Kobolds to be his anti-gnome servants. He also set up his lair in an iceburg in the middle of the norther ocean, which ment he didn't get a whole lot of visitors. At least, not at first.

In any case, his frost Kobolds worked feverishly carving out a mass of hideously complex ice tunnels. There was no single floor in his Iceburg that was not at a 45 degree angle; and 95% of the tunnels lead to deathtraps (spiked walls, slides that would spit attacking adventurers out at such velocity that they'd go skipping across the ocean and drown, and tunnels that simply emptied out into the deep ocean about 100-200 feet below sea level (which is pretty much too deep for anyone to swim to the surface and survive). Lastly, the ice tunnels were filled with Kobold Bobsled Teams, who rode gigantic spiked icecycle bobsleds through the tunnels and, because they knew which ones were safe (and had the white dragon's 'icewalking' ability) could escape any deathtrap pretty much on whim.

This was all made even better by an item from, IIRC, the stronghold builder's guide which made magical ice as hard as metal that would never melt (and if that item doesn't exist, I made it up because this guy's plan was fucking awesome).

Additionally, all the carving done by the Kobolds was with a specific purpose: The entire fortress was designed to capture and reflect light into a single large ice-mirror at the top, allowing the Iceberg to make a devastating heat-based "laser" attack. The heat was so intense it'd melt the mirror after a shot or two, but it's not like a white dragon near the ocean can ever really want for ice.

Eventually, he'd slowly amassed enough wealth from adventurers (typically by parking his iceberg in the middle of some country's main port and then hiring one of the other dragons to spread rumors about the fabulous treasures found within; or by firing his fucking ICE LASER at their city to goad them to attack) that he was finally able to fulfill his true goal: Buying the item from the Stronghold Builder's Guide that would enable his iceburg to fucking FLY.

At this point, the game just sorta paused and looked at him in stunned silence. The white dragon, the weakest, most maligned of all Dragons, had created a fucking iceberg DEATH STAR. He pretty much spent the rest of the campaign puttering around in his self-titled "Mobile Oppression Fortress" and randomly vaporizing cattle with his heat ray.

He wasn't the richest dragon in the campaign, or the most technically successful, and the Red dragon could've kicked his ass in a fight, but dear lord that flying death iceberg was a blast to imagine.

Right up until the day I moved to Pennsylvania, my old group still made references to the Mobile Oppression Fortress from time to time. Dear lord I loved DMing that game, and for that game group.

Anyways, sorry for the wall of text.