If only...

SA · December 23, 2007, 07:05:01 PM

The bodies of men
on his wings he bears,
The serpent bright...

All came to pass as was foretold. The serpent freed, the world aflame, the giants loosed on the waters. In the afermath of RagnarÃ¶k the new world is born from the blood and ash; the last man and woman, Lif and Lifthrasir, come forth from the Forest to reforge humanity's kingdoms.

But the promise of Paradise is no easy thing, even with the price paid by the Ã†sir. The Tree has bled bitter sap, and those who supped upon it have grown mad. They trouble the lands of man's children who, but scant generations after the thricefold chill of Fimbulwinter, are still few. The insidious dragon Nithhogg keeps watch in the chambers of the Honourless Dead, but grudgingly so, and he would gleefully see the tree afire again.

The PCs are the Shamed, the inglorious remnants of Odin's Einherjar who did not achieve honourable death at Ragnarok. They are charged with the protection of the fledgling human Clans: each player selects a bloodline to champion, and their fates are thenceforth intertwined.

SDragon · December 25, 2007, 08:55:31 AM

Quote from: Salacious AngelWell, your ideas 1, 3 and 4 could be combined into a pretty interesting adventure. Heck, slap all four of them together and you get: a group of recently capured slaves on a sky-pirate galley are killed along with their captors when the ship crashes into a strange island. They're all ghosts now, and they discover that this eerie island is in fact the mooring for Charon's (the afterlife ferryman) own flying ship, and an ancient astrolabe that charts the courses of the unearthly wind, Styx, which whirls through the skies toward Hades.

Oh, and that has got to be the awesomest avatar I've ever seen...

Wow, I absolutely love that campaign idea. I've got to try it sometime...

Slapzilla · December 25, 2007, 10:45:59 AM

Thanks. The avatar is just a bit of fluff on Windows Paint.

Hmm, mashing up all the ideas.... The themes (as intended) for each aren't tremendously compatible (savage survival for the shipwrecked, their own murder mystery for the ghosts, The Journey Is The Goal for Styx, and, well, Sky pirates are self explanatory) but improvisation is the soul of DMing. No plan survives contact with the players!

I was in a writing class once and one of the things that stuck with me is, "Come up with a great story, full of all the things that make stories great. Finish it with a nice little plot twist at the end, and when you're all done, make it chapter one."

Game adventures are different as they are all plot, and little story so its much harder to do.

Love the astrolabe idea, by the way. I had figured on an old pirate king's hideout, now haunted. Charon's mooring is so much more... cooler. Nice one!

SA · January 04, 2008, 08:12:24 AM

Cold Turkey Villains
There was a time when you had this pitiful city siezed between your fingertips like a bug, and you'd squeeze and it would squeal its invertebrate squeal, and you'd laugh. You were a lord then, with your death rays and your pain-gas. If not for those meddling heroes you still would be.

But now you're on medication, and there's a court order. Twice a week some pissant with a shit-kisser smile called Gary comes for your check-up, and Sally your bitch manager keeps lording over you how you used to be an "evil genius" and now she's making you mop the aisles.

You do try to be good. The medication helps calm your nerves and quiet a bit of that "God Complex" they say you've got going on. You've met a good woman, Ellie, and the two of you went bowling on Sunday. If you stay on good behaviour then soon they'll let you move out of the shelter and get an apartment of your own.

It's hard, though. Really hard. You passed a thrift shop the other day, and in the window you saw a nice little satellite dish. It's just the right size and shape, and it was only going for 15 dollars. And old friends have rolled into town, with their blueprints and their blood money and their grandiose schemes. You didn't want to, but they're so persuasive.

The radar's hooked up to the ionic discombobulator, and the family next door have already started screaming.

Just one fix.

SilvercatMoonpaw · January 04, 2008, 08:32:08 PM

A one-liner:

Join team Super-Special-Awesome and defend Generic City from the evil agents of D.O.W.N.!

Wensleydale · January 04, 2008, 09:54:22 PM

Quote from: I Found 'is Head, an' it Wern't PurdyCold Turkey Villains
There was a time when you had this pitiful city siezed between your fingertips like a bug, and you'd squeeze and it would squeal its invertebrate squeal, and you'd laugh. You were a lord then, with your death rays and your pain-gas. If not for those meddling heroes you still would be.

But now you're on medication, and there's a court order. Twice a week some pissant with a shit-kisser smile called Gary comes for your check-up, and Sally your bitch manager keeps lording over you how you used to be an "evil genius" and now she's making you mop the aisles.

You do try to be good. The medication helps calm your nerves and quiet a bit of that "God Complex" they say you've got going on. You've met a good woman, Ellie, and the two of you went bowling on Sunday. If you stay on good behaviour then soon they'll let you move out of the shelter and get an apartment of your own.

It's hard, though. Really hard. You passed a thrift shop the other day, and in the window you saw a nice little satellite dish. It's just the right size and shape, and it was only going for 15 dollars. And old friends have rolled into town, with their blueprints and their blood money and their grandiose schemes. You didn't want to, but they're so persuasive.

The radar's hooked up to the ionic discombobulator, and the family next door have already started screaming.

Just one fix.

I want to play that so much.

SA · January 05, 2008, 08:58:19 AM

[size=35]FAERIE[/size]
a game of pure chaos

There are two kinds of Faerie.

The first is tall and grand, mesmerising and enigmatic. His eyes are filled with stars and his words recall the distant thundering of a storm. His past is filled with broken hearts and exalted nations. He is grace. He is power. He is beauty.

You're not that kind of Faerie.

You are the UN-Seelie, the screaming, cussing Faerie counterculture and stain on the good name of all Fair Folk. Creatures of natural order but with an unsettlingly comrehensive knowledge of the powers of Chaos, the Faerie have stupefied and coddled themselves in layers of bureacracy and Hegemonic Corprate Mysticism. They've lost themselves in their own fear and pretension; they've stagnated.

But you and your posse aim to change that. You're sick of the Elfin See-Eee-Ohs, and the middle-management trolls. You've got a fingerfull of CHAOS - just a single finger, but that's more than enough.

It's time you reminded the big-wigs what it means to be a goddamn Faerie.

Mechanics
Character attributes are totally rigid. If you've got a lower Grace score than a rival, then he will constantly outstep you. If you've got a lower Wit, he'll invariably out-think you. That's where Magic comes in. Magic is Chaos. It's not helpful at all - in fact it has a habit of ruining everybody's day. The good news is: it ruins EVERYBODY'S day. He trips up, you trip up, the whole ballroom falls flat on their arses - or alternatively, the curtains catch on fire. Or you summon a hungry dragon.

Like I said. Chaos.

SA · January 05, 2008, 09:03:08 AM

'Nuther one, much shorter.

Make a Wish with Monkey Fist
The PCs' job is to fulfill the wishes of dying children, but the wishes are mind-numbingly absurd! Thank goodness for this company provided magical monkeyfist and it's totally consequence-free wish-granting powers.

sparkletwist · January 05, 2008, 04:34:15 PM

Magicpunk
Thanks to astral projection or the like, the information age has arrived. "Cyberspace" as it were is another plane of existence, somewhere that people's spirits can actually go and communicate at the speed of thought-- and, of course, since one's actual life essence is making this journey, the "you die in cyberspace you die for real" model can hold quite well, too. The old ways of doing things collapsed almost overnight; the rapid communication leading to the rise of powerful merchant houses and trading companies. Magic has ceased to be an arcane secret and has become a commodity. Anyone who has the money and the connections can buy ridiculously powerful "magic-ware" produced by back-alley artisans, including strange weapons, artificial limbs, and things best left undescribed...

Cannon Fodder
All of the religious texts taught us that we were significant, and that somehow in the grand scheme of things we were going to have a special place. All that turned out to be a gigantic lie. The Gods have gone to war, and though our world may be the battleground, we're hardly involved in it. Our interest is more to ensure that we have a world left when it's all over.
This would also work well as a strange hybrid between a fantasy and sci-fi campaign, where an interstellar war somehow spills over onto a primitive world-- say it has large quantities of a "dilithium" or some other supply coveted by both sides.

Xathan · January 06, 2008, 02:17:57 AM

I actually had a magicpunk setting awhile back - called it Magepunk. Don't think I ever posted any of it here. The idea of cyberspace as a plane of existence always fascinated me...there's a lot of fun potential.

To add my own little madness:

(Elder) Gods Save the Queen
During the Dark Ages, entities far older than humanity emerged from the seas, from the stars, and from the depths of the Earth. Calling themselves the Great Old Ones, they sought nothing more than dominion over humanity - and, faced with minimal resistance, they gained it. Now, in a Victorian Earth ruled by Lovecraftian horrors, the heroes are part of a resistance group that wants to put humanity's destiny back in the hands of humanity.

SA · January 07, 2008, 08:24:19 AM

The Death of King Obihaj
The good king is dying, and around him gather his children, eager to glean from him the last wisdom of a fading mind. They all have different agendas, some manipulative and others spurred by their filial devotion. But the king, though not long for this world, has a scheme of his own.

In the hours before sunset, the children will inquire and connive, and the king will reveal and obscure. When the life fades from his aged eyes, who will walk away betrayed, and who content?

SilvercatMoonpaw · January 07, 2008, 03:06:55 PM

Daydream Believer
On the outside it looks like your a normal, everyday kid who has to go to school, has parents who insist you eat your veggies and take a bath, and is just being silly when you won't go past the spooky old abandoned McKinning place.

But you know better: School is the monster-infested dungeon of Red Rigghit the Rithmaniac. Your parents are really man-eating aliens who want to stuff with their terrible food then cook you slowly in a kid-sized pot. And the old McKinning place is really a portal to the terrifying Ghost World.

Fortunately you have friends who'll believe you. And when you need it most you can call upon your wise old friend Mr. Whoottles the stuffed owl.

beejazz · January 07, 2008, 04:20:21 PM

Punk 'Raq
It's happened. Gulf War III is on, after Iran nukes the puppet regime in Iraq and all hell breaks loose. This war is different, though. Soldiers that step on landmines and lose legs aren't sent home anymore; they're given new legs and sent back. The tanks have been swapped out with quadrupedal mecha. Half our helis are totally unmanned. The enemy has taken to electronic warfare, and we've developed our own countermeasures to ensure our technological edge isn't neutralized. And for all our new developments, the old-school horrors of biochem weapons are still out there.

Cyberpunk/mecha tropes, meet geurilla warfare.

sparkletwist · January 07, 2008, 06:14:36 PM

The Lost Colony
Post-apocalyptic meets space opera. It's not so much that they really meant to leave us to fend for ourselves on the fringes, with barely the ability to smelt our own iron, while bloodthirsty alien conquerers try to kick down the door. But, you know how it goes, the Terran Senate orders a budget cut, and what's a sacrifice of one or two measly colony world on the fringes anyway? So, here we are, fighting off hordes of-- well, what ARE they-- with weapons that would make a King Arthur proud. How do us puny humans do it? Turns out evolving from something that had to kill its own food had its advantages against what is basically a race of sentient plants...

SilvercatMoonpaw · January 07, 2008, 06:44:15 PM

Wow. Just, wow. Combining late bronze-age with sentient plants, you could throw in some sort of "technology as magic" and have yourself a great alternative-fantasy setting.

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