Mike Mearls' Genius: Type your own core story

[Frostmarrow]

A party of adventurers assemble to seek fame and fortune. They leave civilization for a location of extreme danger. They fight monsters and overcome obstacles and acquire new abilities and items of power. Afterwards they return to civilization and sell the phat loot. Next week, they do it all over again.

According to Mike Mearls (and Ryan Dancey) D&D is built upon a core story summarized above. Pretty neat. This is the stuff of legends. We go through it every week and it seems it's still fun after 20 or so years. This thread is for making your own core story. Can you rival Gary Gygax*?

For inspiration: Mike Mearls' Live Journal

* Or Dave Arneson or whomever is responsible for creating the D&D core story in the first place.

 

[Gez]

"A party of adventurers assemble to seek fame and fortune. They leave civilization for a location of extreme danger. They find out it's more than they can chew, and find themselves on the run, trying to avoid a disaster while getting hunted by monsters. Next week, they do it all over again, with a supplementary disaster looming on the horizon, and even more monsters wanting to feast on their guts."

 

[VirgilCaine]

"A group of everyday people encounter horrible monsters in the process of accomplishing another assignment and must thwart the monster's plans (if any)."

 

[Evilhalfling]

The last campaigns story:

Mentor assembles group of people who owe him favors to recover one of a dead archmages treasures. A rival organization compleates for each item. Group discovers more about items/mentor/rivals.
Repeat
(lasted bout six months, left a nice cinematic crater where the rivals base was, mentor killed by party, 1 PC insane)

 

[Yair]

A party of adventurers assemble to seek fame and fortune. They find trouble instead, get everyone that is anyone in the vicinity after their head, and flee the area. Next week, they do it all over again, or get caught.

Oh, wait, that's my players story.

 

[A'koss]

A party of adventurers seek fame and fortune in a verdent new world emerging from destruction of the End Times. The leave the safety of the City-States to explore the teeming boundaries of their new world and plunder the riches of lost cities, new civilizations and weapons of power from the very battlegrounds of the gods. Powerful bands of adventurers may become Trade Lords in their own right, even carve out their own City-States from the wilderness if they don't want to just spend their phat loot on... ale and whores.

A'koss!

 

[scourger]

Kill a monster. Take its treasure. Rinse. Repeat.

 

[Snowy]

A world where dragons exist only in the most obscure and ancient lore.

A disparate group of individuals hired by the merchants council in a peaceful city state to protect trade caravans.

A sky rent by meteor showers and fallign stars.

All sorts of ill omens.

Mysterious but helpful stranger who seems interested in them.

A sighting of a massive fire lizard

A night of mayhem, the sky falls, meteors strike the earth, waves destroy seaports earth quakes destroy mountains, a cloud of smoke covers the sky. Despite all odds the party survives.

The sun doesn't rise.

They do their best to help the town, kill some dragons, get called to higher things.

Meet mysterious stranger, get confused, break in to an impregnable dwarven stronghold that is occupied by githzerai.

Disrupt the ritual happening on the astral plane coterminus with the top of the mountain at a powerful magical node.

survive.

next who knows, we haven't had another session!!!!

 

[Celebrim]

Mines pretty much the same as the D&D core story, only I think - like the boy in Sixth Sense - that a good story must have a twist, so the core story is actually something more like...

"A party of adventurers is called together by a person in a position of power, to save the person in a position of power from a horrible fate, and incidently while doing so protect themselves and thier loved ones from the same looming disaster. By assembling various clues, they discover a location of extreme danger, which may or may not be hidden in plain sight. There, they learn that the person in a position of power may or may not be worse than what they've been sent to fight, that the 'monsters' may or may not actually be the real problem, and that they job that they have undertaken turns out to be completely different than what they anticipated, that they are in fact over thier heads, that they may or may not have been lied to, and that what they thought was the final enemy turns out to merely be an underling of some mysterious other force. They kill someone (hopefully the right someone), overcome obstacles and acquire new abilities and items of power. After saving the universe - or at least thier small corner of it - they return home and discover that along the way they have acquired unexpected fame and fortune. But almost immediately a new looming disaster presents itself, and they must do it all over again."

 

[Crothian]

a group meets to explore ancient secrets, fight ancient enimies, and do lots of good things that no one will ever know about or really understand., And they will get pounished for it but never stop.