Pitches for plots and characters

[Arkandel]

I thought it'd be fun to have a thread about concepts of both characters and plots that others could use.

What this thread is not for is tooting our own horn; no humblebragging about our amazing success with a character please, or posting plots which are so niche they could have only been used at that one game by ourselves.

The idea here is to give ideas for other people to use. Feel free to include others' ideas as long as you credit them (which is what I'm about to do).

So, to kick things off! This is a list of plots Eric Kripke - the creator of the TV show [i]Supernatural[/i] - tweeted about not getting a chance to use. Maybe it can be your next PrP!

Let's see your own!

[deadculture]

@arkandel said in Pitches for plots and characters:

I thought it'd be fun to have a thread about concepts of both characters and plots that others could use.

SUICIDE SQUAD: A mysterious coterie of vampires rolls up into town, unannounced, unrecognized. Behind, and after their wake, a string of brutal and seemingly suicidal incidents. Will the protagonists investigate the underpinnings of this intentional breach of the Masquerade in the Praxis?

Conspiracy: Task Force: Valkyrie receives a strange order: to assassinate a normal, regular mother-of-two who works at a drugstore. Who wants her dead? Why?

[surreality]

I will just leave this here: http://www.springhole.net/writing_roleplaying_randomators/plotgens.htm

It has some amusing stuff that has, at least, helped me flesh out test templates here and there.

http://www.springhole.net/writing_roleplaying_randomators/creepypastaplot.htm has some weirdly viable WoD options here and there.

I built the (mostly a joke) old 'Plot Device' in Reno1's OOC Nexus. Randomizers are, oddly enough, helpful.

[deadculture]

@surreality What I do is write plots based on the songs I'm listening at the time. It's great inspiration. Like if I want to write something that's more oriented towards investigation I'm going to listen to sad music.

I don't know why, it just works.

If it's action, it depends. Hard rock/mainstream rock for modern/WoD, power metal/folk for fantasy/space fantasy.

[Lithium]

I don't tend to write 'plots' out, I don't trust myself to be able to think up /everything/ that people might do to plan for it ahead of time.

So I start with an idea, I give the players one start point and then I cut them loose and fly by the seat of my pants.

Most of my plot characters are developed as characters, so they respond to the actions of the characters and do their thing while the PC's do their thing.

It hardly ever goes the direction I thought it might go to begin with, but it's a lot of fun for me and my players.

[Seraphim73]

Note to self... Supernatural Plots are great for The Eighth Sea. I'm yoinking like a third of the ones on that list that we didn't already have planned.

To stick with the theme, how about some high stakes plotlines, courtesy of The Internet (Bryn Donovan in this case, who I just discovered through some other links):

http://www.bryndonovan.com/2015/08/03/50-ideas-for-high-stakes-plots/

Some of them are from movies, some of them are really generic, but many of them could be good RP hooks for characters.

[deadculture]

@lithium said in Pitches for plots and characters:

I don't tend to write 'plots' out, I don't trust myself to be able to think up /everything/ that people might do to plan for it ahead of time.

So I start with an idea, I give the players one start point and then I cut them loose and fly by the seat of my pants.

Most of my plot characters are developed as characters, so they respond to the actions of the characters and do their thing while the PC's do their thing.

It hardly ever goes the direction I thought it might go to begin with, but it's a lot of fun for me and my players.

I just write a theme, the conflict, the possible common interest the participants have and maybe rewards. I like to do rewards if the person has consistently been put through the grinder in a plot.

I plan basic structure, but then there's episodes where @Livia's character turns on a devotion and walks through a firebomb trap and comes out unscathed; I knew she had the devotion and that it was a possibility, and even so it was a moment of sheer awesome. I think everyone had fun that scene, despite something that happened on the OOC/administrative side of things that weighed against it -- and made me eject the plotline before it was actually supposed to end.

@Auspice's character nearly got torpored twice in a series I ran. She got a nice relic sword out of it.

[Arkandel]

Guys, please let's at least try to keep this relevant to the thread If your personal style doesn't use ideas that's great! Feel free to drop in some here for others who might need them though if you can spare them.

[deadculture]

@arkandel I was the first to post idea pitches for plots. Characters, it gets harder. Depends on theme.

[Cobalt]

Granny Favors: Protagonists happen upon a nice old lady while she was “gardening”. She was actually doing something nefarious and needs to get rid of the protagonists in a way that doesn’t lead back to her. So she sends them on a series of increasingly tasks, hoping they’ll die by misadventure.

Originally mage-y these could be edited for other splats:

Jennassa's Worm: This strange parasite is named for the first victim. An Arrow mage by the name of Jennassa. She was an Obrimos and a sentinel of the Consilium of Zurich. She was sent on assignment to investigate an anomaly in Bern. There were reports of people acting strangely and seeing strange creatures when they went into the Aare. There she found a strange create that had floated down the Aare. She found in the crate a bunch of robin's egg sized green rocks. She took them back to the Arrow's headquarters in Bern to try and run some tests on them. While she was experimenting one of them hatched into a medium-sized snake like creature. The creature then bite her and crawled inside of her body. From there it drove her paranoid and insane. She eventually killed herself, but not before killing a sleepwalker that was assisting her. The entire compound was sanitized by the Guardians after an outbreak of the worms caused three more deaths. You can't find anymore recorded incidents of Jennassa's Worms.

Black Motes: You also find a report of an incident where some spirits called the "black motes" were encountered. These motes had the ability to attach themselves to the Amygdala of a person, and force them into a constant state of panic and fear. Once attached to the victims the only way to cure it was said to be death. However, a Master of Mind found that she could alleviate the fear response. The motes were eventually killed via subjecting them to bright lights, and the affects faded with their death.

Azkhahics: Abyssal creatures that live in the dark places. These creatures are said to have dominion over fear. With one touch they can cause someone to die of fear alone. Their powers range from causing hallucinations, mass paranoia, and lifelong mental scaring. They can be banished by facing them with by exemplifying everything they are not. Courage, healthy mind, light, etc.

The Lurking Terrors: Lastly. There is a creature referred to as 'The Lurking Terror'. You can't find if it is Abyssal or Spiritual, but it seems likely to be Abyssal. The creature seems bound to the laws of terror (whatever those are). It has the ability to spread fear like a disease and cause people to hallucinate.

The Laws of Terror: As previously mentioned. The laws of terror are a modern-day notion- according to the Libertines. And a primordial things according to the Mystagoguges. However, you come across a bit of research that is tangentially connected to them. About how the Abyss is spawning new monsters off of what Humanity is bringing into the world. And that the Laws of Terror are connected to several new creatures.

Fear As A Disease: As I mentioned previously. You come across notes and studies. A libertine has published a small essay on fear as a disease. Detailing his experience with a group of sleepers. How one of them gets afraid of something, tells about that fear, and then the fear spreads among them. Becoming stronger and harder to combat. something that could cure Durandal's child in Deus Solum.

Anguish's Tear: This is a legendary artifact said to be able to breathe life into even dust, so long as the dust once held the spark of a soul. It dates back to bcc. It was said to have been kept in an area of the world that is now somewhere part of Africa. It was said to have been formed from the anguished cries of a Life Archmaster whose child was killed by an abyssal intruder. Unfortunately this legend has never been confirmed, and the only images you can find of Anguish's Tears are sketches that are at least a hundred years old. The last mysterium expedition that went looking for it never returned. The one before that about two hundred years ago only one party member came back- a Mastigos master of space, who teleported back to his home base -and he came back wrong. He had signs of abyssal taint and was raving about living shadows.

Dunvegan's Jewel: This legend appears starting about six hundred years ago. Rumors are that deep in the bowels of Castle Dunvegan in Scotland there is a necklace made of perfected gold and perfected diamonds, that while it is worn the wearer cannot die and is afflicted by no disease. You do manage to find what is supposedly a photograph of it, but it is blurry and the glare obnoxious. The quality is so poor you're not certain you would even be able to properly describe it for sympathetic connections.

Janessa's Herb: The last lead you find is an herb created by life/matter Archmage that is said to cure any disease, even those that cannot normally be cured by life magic. The herb only grows in the ruins of her workshop, deep underground in the antarctic. There is a map of the antarctic listed and a couple of places where the mysterium /thinks/ her lab is... but they are not certain. No one has ever gone and come back from Janessa's lab. People tend to disappear when they go to the suspected areas in the antarctic.