Skip to main content

TTRPG Tuesday: Scenario Premise Brainstorming

Had a wretched Monday and didn’t get the Out of Mana written in advance.  Have now remedied that so that I for sure have one for next Monday, but since it’s Tuesday how’s about a TTRPG Tuesday? I really enjoyed writing a scenario for The Company RPG, so today I’m just going to brainstorm the concept seeds for a few more possible scenarios.

  • The DOLLIE Reprisal: The ARC team is tasked with securing a Company weapon that has hit the black market; weaponized clones of themselves, a byproduct of their Hall of Mirrors raid.
  • What Music They Make: A Company scientist has reported sabotage at a sonic research and testing site in the far North.  The ARC team arrives to find 23 hours of night, with a rapidly dwindling supply of hostages to save, and an ever-increasing and screaming blood-sucker problem.
  • The Othersun Town: In remote Huang Bai, the border between here and somewhere else has been rubbed thin by government meddling.  The heat hits different, the plants are growing strange, and absolutely everything the light touches is starting to wriggle beneath the surface.
  • Hot Payload: The ARC team is sent to a surveillance state city stronghold where the only way to smuggle out a defector’s new bio-enhancement is to inject it.  But what all was in that shot?
  • Red Red Ink: The ARC Team has orders to bring in a fugitive Employee, with distinctive tattoos and scarring - features that somehow disappear from one person, and move onto another.

Ok, that’s a respectable number of premises.  That’s it for today, back next week with an all new Out of Mana.  Til next time!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

TTRPG Tuesday: Three Means Of Resolving

Hi it’s another TTRPG Tuesday! First of the year.  Let’s get right into it. Saw a challenge on Twitter to make some resolution mechanics.  I can do those! Here we go: Hand to Hand The player performing the action and the person running the game or otherwise opposing the action both put their dominant fists toward one another, bounce them three times to get a rhythm, and reveal a number with their fingers, 0-5.  Sum the two numbers, and if the number is greater than 5, subtract six, so that the final number is always between 0 and 5.  On a 0, the action fails catastrophically, on a 1-2 it fails, 3-4 it succeeds, on a 5 it succeeds spectacularly.  The player taking the action starts the game with all five fingers up on their non-dominant hand; after an attempt, they may lower fingers on that hand to add to the sum of the attempt. Ex. Alice attempts to seduce Cat’s character over to the coup conspirators.  They put their dominant hands together (right for ...

TTRPG Tuesday: Campaigning

  Hey it's TTRPG Tuesday, let's see if I get something written before sleep overtakes me. I'm still on that Channelers kick, but today I want to talk about a possible campaign path: The Magpie Offensive.  I see this as a military campaign where the PCs are conscripted, volunteers, or mercenaries for an army that is marching to quell Spirit threats and unite the region under a protectorate. There should be free RP sections as interludes between missions, and missions should be chosen by the party.  The army ensures loyalty with intangible rewards as well as artifact items. NOTE: This whole thing is being designed with the Rascal article on militarization in ttrpgs in mind. What is the thrust of the campaign? It's fundamentally one of conquest.  How do I encourage characters to question their presence and their complicity? How much interpersonal violence is an acceptable price to pay for environmental justice? How can party composition affect all this from jump? H...

TTRPG Tuesday: Channeling Curses

  Hey it's TTRPG Tuesday.  Well I’m gonna start writing one on a Tuesday.  We’ll see how it goes. Been doing a lot of writing on Channelers lately.  And this time is no exception! In particular, I’ve been wondering if there's room for a sixth Calling: the Haunted. The Haunted There are those who live with a Spiritual affliction: a family curse, intermittent possession, psychic wounds from exposure to a manifestation - whatever the cause, the Haunted lives with a power they can try to manage but never fully control.  The act of Channeling itself is risky, with twisted and unpredictable Techniques and Incarnations, and a tendency for the Haunted’s power to run away from them. The hidden truth of every Haunted is that they bear their burden because they believe they deserve it.  They may despise their state or try to suppress it, but they will remain cursed only as long as they believe, consciously or otherwise, that they should be.  If a Haunted eve...