Better Angels

[Cthuluzord]

I'm going to be running a Better Angels campaign once the group gets back together on a single night and a few more of the rules get solidified. The basic structure of the plot came to me tonight, and I'd like to be able to start picking away at it in spare moments.

Without giving too much away, the campaign will start as an origin story (e.g. how you got possessed by a demon and got superpowers). Everyone is going to be in a charter school for At Risk inner city youth in St. Louis. You certainly can be a teacher if you wish, but no one is limited to that character concept. PC's could be administrators, students, counselors, janitors, lunch ladies, IT professionals, maintenance staff, contractors, resource officers, visiting parents, politicians on walkthrough inspections, or anybody else that might be on the premises.

It would help if I had some ideas as to what players are leaning towards. Nothing that you write down is final, but it will certainly help me come up with initial ideas if there are a few character concepts flying around. It's too early for demon ideas yet; we'll design those in-game. Besides, you have little say in how your character's demon manifests and a lot of creative control over someone else's.

So, any help? The first session or two is going to be that "A Dirty World" scenario Ross is always telling me to write about schools; who do you want to play?

[Capitalocracy]

A lunch lady being bribed by Frito-Lays to make the food as bad as possible to increase vending machine sales.

[Tadanori Oyama]

I assume this is mostly directly at RPPR players but I wanted to pitch a few ideas for what I find to be compelling concepts:

A security officer who recently moved up in rank due to the retirement of a more senior officer (I'm assuming the school has a security staff of about four or five, perhaps more). The senior officer had previously used his position to take advantage of students. In what way is effected by the mood of the campaign: possibly extorting drugs (weed, ecstasy, etc.), taking invasive "security ID photos", or outright physical and/or sexual abuse. Whatever was going on, that guard is now gone but some of the other guards are beginning to show signs of similar violations. The PC is now in charge of these officers and if he comes down hard he might end up with all the security quitting but if he does nothing the entire security force is going to be involved in criminal activity.

One of the administrators cheated on their spouse while away from home a few months back. The individual with whom they cheated has now been hired for a high level position at the facility. Not only does this tempt the individual, but if the affair was discovered than the administrator could be accused of abuse of their authority. For maximum discomfort I recommend the PC be a bi-sexual man in a legal civil union with another man. The individual the PC slept with is a woman.

A construction contractor doing a survey tour on the facility. They keep discovering shortcuts that were taken during construction that are going to result in a greatly reduced lifetime for many vital elements of the school. They are also aware that their company did the construction and their name is attached to many of the authorization forms related to the construction of these features. They told the workers it was ok to cut some corners (got to come in under budget) but they didn't know they'd been cut this much.

[Dawnsteel]

A Navy recruiter, in denial of (and therefore suffering from) untreated PTSD.

A guidance counselor, two or three days from retirement. (You know, milking that retiring cop trope.)

An art teacher who has flat-out stolen a bunch of students' work and shown/sold it as her own.

[clockworkjoe]

Well, I am thinking of playing a parent volunteer. I'd be a widowed single parent who lives off a settlement from his wife's and younger daughter's death. His living son goes to the school. Partially disabled from same incident, probably walks with a limp or missing a hand or something. I don't know yet.

[Teapot]

Bitter English teacher with a Ph.D in classical Russian literature and a focus on women authors unable to find a job connected to his/her specialty.

Suicidal gym coach hiding his cancer diagnosis from everyone else, crusades for more anti-smoking messages in the school.

Old widow teacher, pushing against retirement but has nothing else to do and loves children, if forced to retire she will just volunteer at the school again more or less doing the same job.

Hateful market research intern. Their company has bribed the school to let her and several other unpaid chumps to conduct research there. She has a journalism background and now is lucky to be doing this unpaid.

Blind motivational speaker, a nice middle aged author who likes offering hope to children, disabled children especially, he's there on a speaking tour (and maybe to sell/autograph his book for some parents.)