The Miscellanium |
As well as documenting the random variety of life, this blog is a public note pad for jotting down the random RPG premises that pop into my head. These entries are numbered and include a seed of a potential game as well as which systems I might use to run it. Please give me feedback and tell me if any sound like something you might want to play. |
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 south to (somewhat) more civilized lands, and must find a way to defeat the hated usurper and restore order to the Kingdoms. Will it be by raising an army? By acquiring great riches? Mastering ancient magics and martial arts? Discovering the Infinity Plus One Sword? Or perhaps they will seek not to return to their homeland but to carve out a name for themselves in a different way. Who knows what challenges will await our band of heroes?
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
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 “Hell.” Working together, they must explore their surroundings to discover where they are and what is going on.
System: Something light
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 of some sort
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.
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 tools or respect needed to turn that directly into results) and – barring the presence of a superior or a member of the Imperial Household – the absolute last word on matters of morality. Their actions, however, are constrained by a logic of efficiency and minimum disorder, and PCs who use unnecessary force or produce unnecessary disorder will quickly find the judgements of their superiors strict and harsh.
The campaign will be episodic, with PCs riding into a new town, city, or village every episode, detecting the presence of injustice and/or conspiracy and resolving it (experienced Jinyi Wei claim to be able to smell social disorder in the air). This injustice could range from the performance of unregistered marriages, to village family problems, to a group of governors plotting treason, to black sorcery and demon conjuring (in this strict Confucian worldview, the first two lead surprisingly quickly to the latter two).
System: Those of you who are deeply steeped in RPG-world will recognize that this is a resetting of Dogs in the Vineyard, which is quite a well written system, if a little too religious for me (I suppose it reveals something about me that I remove the moral authority of religion and replace it with the moral authority of an authoritarian state…). This game would use much of the system from Dogs, but with a few changes for setting.
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. Popular suspicion quickly falls on a visiting caravan of Ra’Shari (the Burning Sands’s Romani), but the PCs suspect that something more sinister may be going on. Their investigation will quickly involve them in Medinaat al-Salaam’s underworld, and they may find that the very fate of the city (or perhaps the rest of the world, but Medinaat al-Salaam being the most important part, why would they care about that?) rests on their shoulders.
System: LBS
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 dungeon-diving, playing D&D the way it at one point (Chainmail-era or B/X or so) was designed to play. That’s why “Dungeons” is in the name and comes first. The world is less like Westeros or Prydain than Talisman or Magic Realm: mostly unsettled, full of weird wandering monsters and ancient crypts.
Suggested system: low-level handwave-filled/ignore half the rules D&D 3.x, d20 Microlite, Mini Six, or a rules-light fantasy system
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, gruff dwarves, scheming advisers, nobility to be rescued, rampaging monsters, dragons, long-lost cities, epiphanies about the PCs’ forbears and long-lost relatives (you are the heir to the throne! etc.). Magical terrain everywhere. Saving the entire world, if not all of creation. Heroic and cinematic. The plot (such as it is eventually made up to be) should not be too complicated. I’ve never had such a campaign before with world-saving scope which is why it’s so appealing to me.
Suggested system: low-level handwave-filled/ignore half the rules D&D 3.x, d20 Microlite, Mini Six, or a rules-light fantasy system
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 imagine.
It’s the turn of the 20th century, and the PCs are seniors at a wealthy southern California high school. They do not have magical powers, and nobody is a vampire. They must undermine the authority of the strict, manipulative principal (who is hiding a terrible dark secret), knock the cruel queen bee of of her perch (and in so doing redeem her), and set up two teachers (parents?) with a combination of wits, charm, and stealthy subterfuge. All in time to graduate.
Suggested system: RISUS, PDQ.
