February 2012
2 posts
3 tags
#60
The Jagged Alliance Game: The PCs are an elite team of mercenaries dropped in to a small South American country to help a local insurgency overthrow a tyrannical dictator. They will need to coordinate with the local freedom fighters, field interviews from foreign reporters, and seize control of natural resources to purchase better equipment.
This could either be played seriously, or done with a...
2 tags
#59
It’s a guest post! From the One and Only E!
The Barbarian Prince Game:
The PCs are sons and daughters of the most influential tribe in all the Kingdoms of the Northern Wilderness. They all are in the position to succeed their parents as the leaders. Everything is wonderful until one day, a rival pulls off a coup, and the party must flee the only home they’ve ever known. They venture...
January 2012
2 posts
3 tags
#58
The Mir Game: The PCs are cosmonauts on an aging spacecraft put together on a shoestring budget with production overseen by corrupt officials. As well as completing their mission and dealing with alien horrors, they must struggle to keep their equipment functioning through the judicious use of duct tape (although even duct tape is not immune to poor quality control…).
System: Unisystem,...
3 tags
#57
The PCs are the last surviving members of an ancient order of warrior monks. They have lived their entire lives in seclusion, mastering combat techniques that allow them to preform superhuman feats of strength and agility. One day they find their master murdered. They must venture out into a strange and unfamiliar world in search of his killer.
System: Feng Shui might not be a bad choice
December 2011
7 posts
3 tags
#56
The Rocking Son of Genghis Khan (Inspired by the song).
The PCs are the late-teenage children of the Mongol nobility at the court of Genghis Khan. They experience oddly modern teenage problems; trying to escape the disapproval of their strict Chinese tutor, living up to their parents’ expectations, and trying to look cool in front of that cute guy/girl. Think a classic high school story in...
3 tags
#55
The PCs board the Orient Express in Istanbul in July 1914, the last train before the outbreak of the Great War, a train packed with patriots, spies, and at least one murderer. The PCs must navigate a maze of sealed envelopes and coded missives to survive the trip and carry out the secret instructions of their respective spymasters. Perhaps, just perhaps, there is a letter on the train that could...
4 tags
#54
The world-spanning, grand conspiracy CoC game.
1921. An eminent scholar of archeology vanishes in China, having entrusted a coded manuscript to the PCs. Strange ruins are uncovered in Sweden and people from local villages disappear in the night.
1922. The CEO of a prominent banking firm is torn apart by invisible forces on a New York sidewalk. An acquaintance of the PCs is driven mad by...
3 tags
#53
The Kaoboy Game.
1975, Paris, after midnight:
Two men sit in a dimly lit room, late at night, smoking and drinking whisky. The older one finishes his glass and puts it down. The younger man picks up the bottle to pour another but finds that the bottle is empty.
“It is OK, Raman. I have an early flight.” The older man sighs. “You know, I do not like it. I will tell her that...
3 tags
#52
The Coup Game. The PCs are cabinet ministers of a developing world authoritarian regime (Maoism optional). During a cabinet meeting in a secluded mountain dacha a radio broadcast announces that the PCs have been overthrown and a conspiracy of Army generals has seized control of the government. The PCs must evaluate the loyalties of those surrounding them, evade capture, and find a way to regain...
Busy...
I know I haven’t posted anything in a while, but it’s finals season here so my brain power for thinking on things that aren’t related to the systemic problems of the Indian intelligence services is limited.
I get done with finals on the 14th, so expect posts to resume shortly thereafter.
Legend
Legend is cool. Go check it out.
It’s a d20, OGL-based fantasy RPG. It takes the D&D 3.5 rules, slims them down a little and injects an extra dose of awesome. All of the classes seem to be better balanced and are given cool tools to play with at most levels, fixing the boring nature of fighter progression. Customization is easy and encouraged, both in classes and races.
Plus it’s...
November 2011
16 posts
3 tags
#51
The PCs are normal people living in Small Town, USA. Passing through a city park during a solar eclipse, they are surprised, to say the least, when the ground splits open and animate tendrils of inky black smoke emerge and pull them down into darkness. They awake in a barren desolate landscape that goes on as far as the eye can see and seems to fit most classical descriptions of...
2 tags
#50
The Black Lagoon Game. The PCs are “independent operators” on the seas of Southeast Asia, by which we mean pirates. They transport goods and perform various illegal tasks for the highest bidder, many of them violent. They must navigate a web of criminal intrigue while hiding from or bribing the various national navies that patrol those waters.
System: I’m unsure on this one.
2 tags
#49
The PCs are cadets in the Grand Army of the Coalition when it is defeated by the forces of the undead at the Battle of Stone River Valley. As the forces of Good scatter to the four winds and undead horrors sweep across the land, the PCs must locate and assemble the Seven Shards of the Crimson Tear so they can make the Lich King mortal once again and stop the final victory of evil.
System: D&D...
5 tags
#48
Another SD game.
The PCs are sent to join an archeological expedition in Jordan with their only instructions being to infiltrate the expedition and keep their eyes open. No strange disappearances, no ritual murders, so hideous monsters, but Merkulov seems to have a feeling that that won’t last. The old man also cautions the PCs, very specifically, to under no circumstances reveal who they...
4 tags
#47
The Steampunk Desert Mecha Game: The PCs are freelance pilots of steam powered mecha in which water is life, money, and the fuel of war. A job gone wrong leaves them fighting for survival deep in the desert with a dwindling supply of water and the enemy all around them.
System: I’ll need to think on this one.
4 tags
#46
Another Second Directorate game. The plot is a little unoriginal, but then again, so it is most of the setting.
A strange series of murders has occurred in Chicago. The victims have all been killed in public places and had a strange symbol carved into their chest. Who did it, however, is not a mystery. Almost all of the perpetrators were caught shortly after the crime took place and their guilt...
3 tags
#45
The PCs are Assassins, members of the secret order whose blades have haunted the shadows of Medinaat al Salaam, the City of One Thousand Stories. Trained from a young age in a remote desert oasis, they are brought to the Jewel of the Desert for the first time to being their work. Upon arriving in the city, they quickly learn that their clan is only one of multiple factions of Assassins (they, of...
4 tags
#44
I don’t know that I’ve posted any Second Directorate games here yet, so I’ll start with some setting background.
The Second Directorate is a secret office of Interpol charged with keeping innocent humanity safe from supernatural evils. It recruits agents from, well, pretty much anywhere, the only condition being that they have to have had some contact with the supernatural...
3 tags
#43
The Fantasy Ming Dynasty Secret Police Game.
The PCs are members of the Jinyi Wei, the Ming Emperor’s Brocade-Clad Guard, an elite group of agents dispersed throughout the empire to keep watch on the local governors and magistrates, uphold the proper Confucian order, and punish injustice wherever they may find it. They are granted near unlimited legal authority (although not always the...
1 tag
Poker, the RPG Combat System
So, I’ve had this idea tumbling around in my head for a while now. It would be interesting to combine an RPG random result mechanic with some kind of betting mechanic. Doing so would give players more control over the random result. It could look something like this:
So, the players are dealt a poker hand (we’ll use Texas hold’em rules). They ante with tokens representing...
3 tags
#42
The evil government conspiracy game. The PCs are in a small rural Colorado town. Out drinking around a campfire one night, they see a strangely glowing object fall from sky. Going to investigate, they find a massive stone slab completely covered with strange interlocking symbols. Before their eyes, the symbols being to glow and pulse, randomly at first and then more and more in rhythm with the...
4 tags
#41
So, in most monster hunting games, the PCs are given limited resources and forced to operate under the radar. It would be interesting to shake this up a little, so:
The PCs are members of the elite Strike Force Zero, a team of scientific and military experts stationed in a high-tech base deep beneath Tokyo and trained and equipped to hunt the horrible mutated creatures that crawl from the Pacific...
3 tags
#40
#38 + time travel.
3 tags
#39
The PCs are residents of a poor district of Medinaat al-Salaam, the Jewel of the Desert, the greatest city in the world. They notice that some of their neighbors are going missing, mostly those who live near the wall to the decaying, abandoned city section to the north. The city guard seemingly has no interest in getting involved, so the PCs decide they must take matters into their own hands....
2 tags
#38
It’s been a while since my last post, for which I blame school, work, Dr. Who (damn that show is addictive…), and the Russians (why? because they’re Russians).
Anyway.
The Space Opera Game: The PCs are the crew of a starship wandering from planet to planet. Each episode (session) they arrive somewhere new and instantly discern that there are problems that they must...
2 tags
#37
The Singham Game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En_8UgGZXio
I came across this clip online. I need to see the rest of the movie.
Anyway, the PCs are bad-ass honest cops who must use all means necessary to overcome evil crime lords and corrupt politicians so they can restore peace and justice to their city and avenge their murdered brother/sister/father/mother/husband/wife/mentor/melodramatic...
October 2011
38 posts
3 tags
#36
Good things come in threes! It’s another guest post!
The New Old-School Game:
Not old-school “you got critted by the kobold, roll up a new character” or the “track every single piece of equipment,” but the “kill things and take their stuff.” You’re adventuring because you want awesome treasure or want to be the very best, like no one ever was. There’s plenty of...
3 tags
#35
And another guest post!
The Epic European Fantasy Game:
Exactly what it sounds like: a high fantasy campaign that embraces every cliché in the book. Reluctant heroes, redeemable villains (except for the completely evil, who exist), black and white morality, the pursuit of absolute power, awesome magical items (the most awesome of which are MacGuffins or at least plot-important), aloof elves,...
4 tags
#34
A guest post! By the mysterious and magical One and Only E!
The High School Game:
I was pretty well-behaved in high school, and I have a soft spot for the high school movies that I grew up with, perhaps because they depicted a very different experience than the one I had. (Clueless in particular is a guilty pleasure.) Not that I would want to have lived them, of course. But they are fun to...
4 tags
#33
The Castle in the Mist. This is a fairly classic plotline, but I think it could be quite interesting. Yup, it’s also L5R. That seems to be a theme of this blog. Perhaps I should rename it to “Someone Please Let Me Play In/Run An L5R Game: The Blog.”
The PCs are traveling through the rough hills near the old Boar Clan lands (mostly long abandoned after the Boar met their dire...
3 tags
#32
The Romeo and Juliet Game. This game could be set almost anywhere, but I am going to use L5R for reasons that those of you who know me should understand.
So, one of the PCs has a sister who is being married to a man from one of her Clan’s traditional rivals. She is deeply enamored of her intended and he of her, and optimists on both sides see the marriage as having the potential to bring a...
3 tags
On the Burning Sands #2
The more I read through the LBS rulebook, the more I think it’s close to being something really awesome, but it lacks a few polishing touches.
One thing in particular that bothered me was the magic system. Magic in LBS can be very powerful, but it lacks the simple destructive power that it has in most fantasy settings. The only direct damage-dealing spell is in the realm of evil sinister...
2 tags
On the Burning Sands #1
So, I’ve been reading through the Legend of the Burning Sands rulebook in my spare time, and I like it alot. I think, however, that the designers missed some of elements that would make the setting very interesting to play.
Unlike most Sword and Sorcery games, LBS puts the PCs into a very civilized setting. They live in the greatest city in the world, with a population of millions, through...
3 tags
#31
Pirates! And they’re not you this time!
So, one of the largest problems with getting an L5R game rolling is that unless the players all make characters from the same faction it’s hard to justify them all working together towards the same objectives when the characters hardly know each other. Thus, the “you are all Emerald Magistrates” card is used all the time to assemble...
3 tags
#30
So, I’ve been reading the Feng Shui rulebook and, I must say, it is pretty awesome. (I’ve been reading the LBS rulebook too, but a little more slowly, so more on that later).
The Classic Feng Shui Game: The PCs are a group of kung-fu cops, time-traveling sorcerers, cyborgs from the future, and animals transformed into human form who must band together to stop the bad guys from...
5 tags
#29
Another James Bond game: At the height of the Cold War, the PCs are called into M’s office. It seems that the KGB has recently gone to great lengths (multiple agents, poison, explosives, and a sniper, huge sums of money) to murder a waiter at a classy London hotel restaurant and MI6 has no clue why. M, understandably, finds this deeply unsettling and wants the PCs to go figure out...
3 tags
#28
I’ve been busy lately with reading for class. Alas, nuclear targeting doesn’t provide good RPG material…
Anyway.
The Men of Honor Game: The PCs are members of a small but proud Sicilian (or fantasy world take on Sicily) family sometime around the year 1900, just as the mafia is becoming a (or the) major force in Sicilian politics and society. The PCs must defend their...
3 tags
#27
“The Good, The Bad, The Weird” Game: As I paid tribute to Japanese and Hong Kong cinema with #25 and #26, it would be unfair to leave out the South Korean film industry. First of all, if you haven’t seen this movie, go check it out. It’s hardly great cinema, but it’s a good take on the Western formula and quite a bit of fun.
Anyway, the PCs are gunslingers in the...
3 tags
#26
The Hong Kong Triad Game: The PCs are members of a counterfeiting operation in Hong Kong producing almost undetectable fake US $100 bills. A meeting to sell a suitcase full of the bills to an American-based gang goes awry and the PCs quickly find themselves on the run from the police and suspicious that someone in their organization sold them out.
My goal with this game would be to allow for an...
4 tags
#25
A ヤクザ (Yakuza) Game.
So, Boss Yamada is dead, but damned if that’s going to stop him from screwing everything up. He left a will, see, but it only reads “I leave my turf to my son.” Problem is this: which son? The old bastard had three. The oldest hasn’t spoken to his father in years, but he’s a tough son of a bitch and the other bosses respect him. The second son...
4 tags
#24
Note: I am currently eagerly awaiting the delivery of the Legend of the Burning Sands rulebook. Expect a flood of LBS postings when it arrives.
The Ninja Trainee Game: The PCs are ninja cadets (hey, where do you think ninjas come from?) assigned to overcome increasingly difficult challenges with deliberately limited resources, always under the watchful eyes of their sadistic instructor (a...
Comrades!
Please also suggest any RPG ideas that you may have (and are willing to share). I’m always curious to hear what storytelling directions other people want to take their games in and I would love for this blog to end up as something more like a discussion than a glorified notepad.
Feel free to post anything RPG related in response to this post, or any other post that you feel is appropriate....
4 tags
#23
The PCs are professional duelists in a swashbuckling take on 15th-16th century Italy, called in to settle the honorable disputes and trials by combat of nobles unable or unwilling to fight for themselves. Close to the corrupt heart of court life and scandal, they see the darker side of the ruling elite on a daily basis. The situation becomes more complicated as they begin to suspect that one...
3 tags
#22
The 七人の侍 (Seven Samurai) Game: To balance all the L5R I would like to run, it would be interesting to run a more historical samurai game. The PCs would be out of work ronin or budoka (non-samurai warriors), likely hired by some desperate peasants to fight off a band of bandits. This game would require careful planning and preparation of the battlefield to allow the PCs to overcome a superior...
6 tags
#21
The Shadowlands Game: The PCs are loyal retainers of Daigotsu, the Dark Lord of the Shadowlands. They support him in struggles with other rival forces of darkness (those damn Bloodspeakers) as well as confrontations with the “good guys.” This game would be a chance to explore character options banned from normal L5R games. It may produce more powerful PCs (reveling in the twisted...
Dear Gentle Reader
So, my comment system is supposed to shoot me an email when you post a comment on one of my posts. It doesn’t seem to be working, though, so I apologize if it takes me a few days for me to notice your comment.
4 tags
#20
The Walled City Game: The PCs are social outcasts living in desperate poverty inside a larger and darker take on the Kowloon Walled City (for a decent quick sense of the atmosphere, watch this). They are all, for personal reasons, unable (or absolutely unwilling) to leave. To pass the time, they accept a request from a local old woman to find her missing grandson. The search draws them deeper into...
1 tag
#19
The Prison Camp Game: The PCs are prisoners of war assigned to a remote, and reputedly inescapable PoW camp. They must plot and effect an escape, while keeping their preparations secret from the guards. Deciding who among the fellow prisoners to trust and rely upon will play an important role, as will careful planning.
I’ve intentionally left the historical setting ambiguous. I have no love...
4 tags
#18
The Shipwreck Game: The PCs are passengers/crew/stowaways on a trans-Pacific ocean liner in the early 1920s. Caught in a massive storm, the ship breaks up on a reef, leaving the PCs stranded on a South Pacific island as, assumably, the only survivors. As they begin to explore their surroundings in search of food and water, they being to come across strange stone ruins and quickly begin to suspect...