Author Topic: Game Fodder / Story Fodder  (Read 840787 times)

Adam_Autist

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Re: Game Fodder / Story Fodder
« Reply #885 on: May 30, 2016, 05:48:30 PM »
That sounds like a great one-shot or mini-campaign! I get a sort of junkyard Heart of Darkness vibe for some reason.

RadioactiveBeer

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Re: Game Fodder / Story Fodder
« Reply #886 on: May 30, 2016, 08:51:12 PM »
I think it could also serve as an introduction to the setting for new players. You start off in something that looks more or less like modern America, salvage some iPhones and then pop out to sell them and - oh, zombie wasteland. Enclaves. Crushing poverty.

I think an interesting campaign might be based around these guys getting caught and declared homo sacor and - well, better find an enclave to hook up with, buy our way in with the iPhones and get to grafting as Takers...

RadioactiveBeer

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Re: Game Fodder / Story Fodder
« Reply #887 on: June 03, 2016, 10:33:12 PM »
This recent report on a drug trial paints an elaborate multi-national crime scheme going on.

A British man was sentenced in Manhattan after being arrested in Thailand for buying North Korean meth in Hong Kong, and selling it in the Phillipines with his Zimbabwean boss (who was arrested in Liberia and I've just gone cross-eyed). Apparently what did them in was trying to connect their crime to every continent because a sting operation was carried out whereby law enforcement officers posed as South American cartel members looking to buy, and apparently these guys really wanted to tick that box.

The carbon footprint on this crime in ridiculous.
« Last Edit: June 03, 2016, 10:36:54 PM by RadioactiveBeer »

Twisting H

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Re: Game Fodder / Story Fodder
« Reply #888 on: June 03, 2016, 10:54:45 PM »
This recent report on a drug trial paints an elaborate multi-national crime scheme going on.

A British man was sentenced in Manhattan after being arrested in Thailand for buying North Korean meth in Hong Kong, and selling it in the Phillipines with his Zimbabwean boss (who was arrested in Liberia and I've just gone cross-eyed). Apparently what did them in was trying to connect their crime to every continent because a sting operation was carried out whereby law enforcement officers posed as South American cartel members looking to buy, and apparently these guys really wanted to tick that box.

The carbon footprint on this crime in ridiculous.

 ;D Globalism working as intended.

Adam_Autist

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Re: Game Fodder / Story Fodder
« Reply #889 on: July 22, 2016, 08:07:53 AM »
medium.com/welcome-to-the-scream-room/im-with-the-banned-8d1b6e0b2932#.29astvub0

It might just be a coping mechanism at this point but if playing these as NPCs didn't make me feel like rage vomiting I'd run this as a scenario in Unknown Armies to see how my players'd fuck em' up.

SynapticError

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Re: Game Fodder / Story Fodder
« Reply #890 on: July 26, 2016, 05:45:10 PM »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV0I-iA5lJU

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Redroverone

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Re: Game Fodder / Story Fodder
« Reply #891 on: August 09, 2016, 12:26:14 PM »
On 27 August 1957, an underground nuclear test dubbed Pascal-B caused the 900 pound, four inch thick cap to be blasted off at what was estimated to be slightly more than three times escape velocity. It was never found. At least, until last Thursday, when it was discovered in a parking lot outside of Buena Vista, highly radioactive but completely unmarked, with strange glyphs carved under the safety symbols originally placed on the cap.

(Fun historical PS: 20 days earlier was a balloon test named Stokes.)

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Plumbob.html#PascalA

Twisting H

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Re: Game Fodder / Story Fodder
« Reply #892 on: August 12, 2016, 11:43:46 AM »
Good stuff from the Graveyard shift recently

Skeletons clamped in iron shackles found in mass grave at ancient Greek cemetery

The bodies are thought to be the remains of Cylon supporters, following the failed coup in 632 BC

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/skeletons-clamped-iron-shackles-found-mass-grave-ancient-greek-cemetery-1573620


Mystery magic spells unearthed with ancient skeletons in Serbia

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-serbia-archaeology-magic-idUSKCN10K10L

Quote
Archaeologists are trying to decipher magic spells etched onto tiny rolls of gold and silver that they found alongside skeletons of humans buried almost 2,000 years ago.

"The alphabet is Greek, that much we know. The language is Aramaic – it's a Middle Eastern mystery to us," Miomir Korac, chief archaeologist at the site in eastern Serbia, told Reuters.

The skeletons were found at the foot of a massive coal-fired power station where searches are being carried out before another unit of the electricity plant is built on the site of an ancient Roman city.

Last week, after carefully brushing away soil from the bones, Korac's team found two amulets made of lead that, when opened, were each found to rolls of precious metal - silver and gold - covered in symbols and writing.

They believe the inscriptions are magic spells, taken to the grave to invoke divine powers to perform good or evil.

"We read the names of a few demons, that are connected to the territory of modern-day Syria," archaeologist Ilija Dankovic said at the dig, as more skeletons from the 4th century A.D. were being uncovered.

The fragile, golden and silver scrolls - which once unrolled look like rectangles of foil similar in size to a sweet wrapper - may never be fully understood.

They are the first such items discovered in Serbia but resemble amulets of "binding magic" found in other countries, Dankovic said.

"They were often love charms, ordering someone to fall in love, but there were also dark, malignant curses, to the tune of: ‘may your body turn dead, as cold and heavy as this lead,’" he said.

Magic charms tended to be buried with dead children or adults who had suffered a violent death, Dankovic said, because of a belief that "souls of such people took longer to find rest and had a better chance of finding demons and deities and pass the wishes to them so they could do their magic."

If I remember correctly, lead supposedly wards off angels or demons.


Gorkamorka

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Re: Game Fodder / Story Fodder
« Reply #893 on: August 29, 2016, 09:19:20 AM »
A PC party either tried to summon Thor or there had a ythian lighting gun shoot-out. 

Since this is Norway I'm going with summoning Thor.  Either way it's Delta Green material.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/29/freak-lighting-bolts-kill-300-reindeer-in-norway/
Gorkamorka (Fridrik)

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Re: Game Fodder / Story Fodder
« Reply #894 on: September 12, 2016, 06:44:31 PM »
Some inspirational sci-fi art.  Hypothetical giant spiders that evolved after animals from Earth were transplanted to a planet with much lower gravity:



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Gorkamorka

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Re: Game Fodder / Story Fodder
« Reply #895 on: September 12, 2016, 08:15:13 PM »
Some inspirational sci-fi art.  Hypothetical giant spiders that evolved after animals from Earth were transplanted to a planet with much lower gravity:





Need a Banana for scale.  ;)
Gorkamorka (Fridrik)

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Re: Game Fodder / Story Fodder
« Reply #896 on: September 13, 2016, 05:50:51 PM »
So in Virginia's Great Dismal Swamp, there were apparently secret villages of free black people, mostly escaped slaves, living in almost total isolation from the outside world. For like 150 years.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/deep-swamps-archaeologists-fugitive-slaves-kept-freedom-180960122/?no-ist

SECRET VILLAGES OF FUGITIVE SLAVES DEEP WITHIN THE SWAMP. Do I have my next Civil War Cthulhu scenario? Yes, yes I do.
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trinite

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Re: Game Fodder / Story Fodder
« Reply #897 on: September 13, 2016, 05:56:42 PM »
Also the swamp has a huge circular lake in the middle of it that is not fed by any streams. Scientists -- and Indian legends -- theorize that it might have been created by a huge underground peat fire. Or maybe a meteorite strike.

Seriously, you can't make this stuff up.
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Gorkamorka

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Re: Game Fodder / Story Fodder
« Reply #898 on: September 14, 2016, 04:57:08 AM »
So in Virginia's Great Dismal Swamp, there were apparently secret villages of free black people, mostly escaped slaves, living in almost total isolation from the outside world. For like 150 years.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/deep-swamps-archaeologists-fugitive-slaves-kept-freedom-180960122/?no-ist

SECRET VILLAGES OF FUGITIVE SLAVES DEEP WITHIN THE SWAMP. Do I have my next Civil War Cthulhu scenario? Yes, yes I do.

Classic Lovecraft would be black cultist in the swamp.  Not racist at all...  I wonder how we could run this from the other side. 

Make the black runaway slaves the players.  Make the problem be in the swamp and the ex-slave village can't go anywhere for help, because "ex-slave".  Really turns the desperation and isolation up to 11.   Add some slave hunters as road-blocks/trouble to keep the real problem from being solved and you have a scenario.
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Twisting H

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Re: Game Fodder / Story Fodder
« Reply #899 on: September 14, 2016, 08:06:44 AM »
SECRET VILLAGES OF FUGITIVE SLAVES DEEP WITHIN THE SWAMP. Do I have my next Civil War Cthulhu scenario? Yes, yes I do.

Heck yeah. This is a fantastic setting starter.

Also the swamp has a huge circular lake in the middle of it that is not fed by any streams. Scientists -- and Indian legends -- theorize that it might have been created by a huge underground peat fire. Or maybe a meteorite strike.

Seriously, you can't make this stuff up.

This detail in and of itself is Mythos material.  I recall reading a modern story about a Mythos tale around a lake that was not fed by any streams.  It was fed by some sort of underground fissure/aquifer with something unnatural below that.  Can't recall the title or author unfortunately.  Might have been Barron's “The Redfield Girls”, but I don't think so.

Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" also features a lake with a sinister purpose in the latter quarter of the book.

Make the black runaway slaves the players.  Make the problem be in the swamp and the ex-slave village can't go anywhere for help, because "ex-slave".  Really turns the desperation and isolation up to 11.   Add some slave hunters as road-blocks/trouble to keep the real problem from being solved and you have a scenario.

I like the idea of having the player team be slave runaways coming to the village in expectation of freedom. 

First, this concept gives the players a significant reason to be/work together.   Secondly the GM (I know it's Keeper but I'm going with GM for simplicity) can divide useful skills among the group of escapees/refugees because it's likely that only a group of people with some degree of synergy and competence managed to survive for this long.  In addition to skill interdependence the players have on one another, the GM could also introduce player flaws (physical disadvantages like Ethan's last game) that the entire party has to come together to overcome (because Bob the guy who lost part of a leg in a cannon blast is our only doctor damn it!) which ratchets up the tension.

Quote
Make the problem be in the swamp and the ex-slave village can't go anywhere for help, because "ex-slave".  Really turns the desperation and isolation up to 11. 


I agree with this.  Playing a group of fugitives turns the desperation and isolation.

Quote
Add some slave hunters as road-blocks/trouble to keep the real problem from being solved and you have a scenario.

You could do this but it seems a bit too ... expected to me.  I do like the idea of slave hunters a road-blocks (increasing isolation) preventing the players from escaping the Mythos location, but I don't like the idea of slave hunters as front and center antagonists.  It's been done before.

How about this.  The Rock and a Hard Place situation.   Players are refugees seeking respite and freedom from slavery.  In the back of the mind is the nebulous fear of being re enslaved. 

However the slave village location they are fleeing to is just as unsavory because it has a monster/cultist problem. The players expect rest and a breather, this expectation is ripped from them, horror begins as they realize they are out of the frying pan and into the fire.  Perhaps a fatigue mechanic would be useful here.  First act is a fleeing/escape scene.  Second act arrival at village/ investigation/ rising horror. Third act resolution or desperate flight out of swamp dodging cultists and then trying to dodge slavers waiting for them.

Or the party comes to the slave village and find it abandoned with signs of violence.  And they have to stay the night there with a monster somewhere on the loose because slaving parties are looking for them outside the swamp.  Then it turns into the classical "it's a rainy night and we can't go outside" haunted house.

Alternatively again, perhaps the party are new ex-slaves to the village.  Since they are new (expendable) the "village elder" tasks them with investigating why slaves are disappearing from the village (it's a supernatural threat).   

Lot of options here. Looking forwards to what you come up with!

Edit:

Quote
The Great Dismal Swamp, now reduced by draining and development, is managed as a federal wildlife refuge. The once-notorious panthers are gone, but bears, birds, deer and amphibians are still abundant. So are venomous snakes and biting insects. In the awful heat and humidity of summer, Sayers assures me, the swamp teems with water moccasins and rattlesnakes. The mosquitoes get so thick that they can blur the outlines of a person standing 12 feet away.

Oh damn. You need to come up with a mechanic for obscuring/blinding swarms in the swamp.

Also all those snakes.  Voodoo/Pentecostal snake handlers gone bad? The party's only ally is a crazy one of these in a old isolated shack?
« Last Edit: September 14, 2016, 08:13:05 AM by Twisting H »