[GUM] Just brainstorming, don't mind me... but feel free to come take a look :)

[thatdarncat]

This game isn't d20. It's a stolen & modified WoD Mage & Changling with BESM Tristat rules.

The game takes place on a pair of islands in the sea of Japan. The island has been generally sheltered from the rest of the world for most of it's history. They haven't had to deal with many of the troubles the rest of the world has had. It's also sort of neutral ground - no one causes much trouble. For most of it's settled history, the island has been kind of backwards, nothing that anyone wanted, but in the last 20-30 years there has been a major boom, a lot of high tech business. Software, hardware design, tech support, networking, chemical and biological research. As a result, the island is a mix of high tech and ancient culture; pretty, tree lined streets, wooden houses etc, with a lot of high tech cutting edge gadgets. There is a high standard of education, with two competing universities.

All the PCs are 13-14 year old Japanese jr high students who've just found out that they can use magic or have other talents. They have a teacher who's a mage herself and is teaching them about magic and magical organizations in the world. She's introduced them to a few other people in the community who have their own powers and abilities to act as mentors.

I'm using the World of Darkness, slightly modified, so there are a few very powerful mage organizations that basically control most of the world. There are also "talented" people who have magical or magic like gifts that they can use. There are Fey, who migrated to the islands from other parts of the world centuries ago and are a blend of medieval European and Japanese culture. There are dreaming creatures or bygones, mythological creatures, demons, beasts, animals and spirits. Oni, Japanese demons.

Now that a lot of high tech is moving in, some of the magical organizations have started to pay attention to the island. They've been moving in slowly, haven't really done much; a few companies are fronts for the technocracy, the virtual adepts of the traditions etc.

That's basically where we're starting. I've got a class of 25 or so mages, 7 or 8 of whom are player characters. I've got back story for most of them.

Seri for example:
Her character's mother is decended from Fey, not directly but a few generations back. Her mother disappeared when she was very little. She had a dream after her first "magic class":

You dream.
A large room with a grey, rough stone floor and a table set in the middle of it. One end of the room is all in shadow. Sitting at the table is a tall, sickly thin man in a grey twill suit. He has golden hair going grey and sunken eyes. His features are thin and unnaturally pointed, especially his ears.
Your mother is serving tea. She wears a beautiful gown and a heavy metal collar. She pours tea for the man, bowing to him and then turning to bow to the shadows. As she steps away from the table, you see movement in the shadows.
Something large. You see two eyes, light light blue, slitted like a reptiles' in the darkness. Then your dream moves on.

Her mother is actually enslaved by a dragon, a powerful dreaming creature
it's sort of a family curse and she's just starting to figure this out. Right now she's now apprenticed to a Troll (type of Fey) Samauri.

I've got a few in the class and probably out of the class who are going to be targeted by Nephandi, basically evil corrupting mages who worship things that were not ment to be

Fey causing trouble, someone releasing Oni...

Maybe stiring up trouble with the magma spirits that slumber in the (mostly) dormant volcano.

What I really want to lead up to is them finding out that their teacher is part of a loose alliance of mages who've been trying to upset the balance between the two biggest magical organizations. I am hoping that I can find a way for them to be the difference between open war between the organizations and the organizations breaking up into smaller groups who start claiming stuff for themselves.... like the New World Order of the Technocrocy, a bunch of them going out and taking over the UN. I can do lots more with many smaller groups than I can with a couple of big organizations

Then they also have to deal with the fact that their teacher and mentors basically used them, might even have been planning on training them for use as troops. High school next year is going to be interesting
I just have to figure out how I'm going to move the plot forward.

Edit: and since everyone asks, GUM stands for Growing Up Magical. Everyone always has to ask

 

[thatdarncat]

Just waiting for inspiration to strike here at work, and I thought I'd add a little more to this:

One of the themes I'd wanted to use in this campaign was finding your way in the world. These are all young characters, they have a fair amount of power, and they need to be figurng out what they want to do with that power. The campaign isn't built to have a "party" - it'd be perfectly fine with me if all the players scattered to different factions and had little interaction. I can always bring them together if need be, and only two players are local (Seri and our roommate.)

That said, we've got two friends coming from Toronto for new years, and both of them have characters so we'll probably be playing at least once. I do have some thoughts, but I need to build on them.

They each received an e-mail in character from a classmate, basically "Hey, I found this cool all ages club, why don't you come hang out on Friday!"

The club is actually Cyberia, from the anime series Serial Experiments Lain. All ages, kinda trendy club, with a bit of a mystical/cyberpunk bent. I want it to be a hangout for Mages, Fey, Talents and maybe even the occasional dreaming creature in human form.

The threads starting from the club that have occured to me so far:

• a Technocrocy/Progenitor raid. The Progenitors are looking to recapture one of the class, an escaped test subject. This would be our roommate's character.
• some younger Fey ravaging dancers at the club. This would likely tie in well with Seri, her character's involved with the Fey already, and she'd sort of be honour bound to deal with this
• Nephandi looking for converts. Nephandi are the corruptors, the mages who worship things that should not be named (Cthulhu Cultists). I've already got a couple of prospects for them in class, I could start building on this.

That's it for now, I'll add some more later Feel free to ask any questions or anything, I know some of that hasn't been explained very well, ie Progenitors - Technocrocy mages who specialize in biological science, genetic engineering etc.