Mike Mearls' Genius: Type your own core story

A small group of individuals comes together, generally for disparate reasons, to accomplish a common short-term end, though each may be seeking different long-term goals. These individuals are called Adventureres. Some adventure for fame, some for glory or power. (Me, I just like to kill things.) They continue to adventure together and likely soon share more common goals as well as changing what it is they were adventuring for in the first place.
 

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Since reading Mike's LJ, I've been struggling to come up with a core story for my d20 Starcraft campaign. Based on what we have from the current Starcraft games, and the upcoming Starcraft: Ghost. here's what I have so far:

"A small group of characters armed to the teeth with the latest and greatest high-tech equipment are dropped into a volatile location (battle-torn planet, zerg infestation, etc.) as spec ops in order to infiltrate and disable/destroy a critical system. In doing so they discover more information than their superior/employer/primary power intended and become their new target, forcing the characters to seek shelter with some kind of outcast or secondary power. They must use the knowledge they have acquired to defend themselves and, if necessary, cripple or remove their original superior/employer/primary power, allowing the outcasts the chance to wrestle for control. Unfortunately, the new power may be no better, and ultimately they will always be on the run."
 

A group of violent, habitual alcoholics (or "adventuring party") meet in a bar and become friends during one of the hourly bar fights. An old man sells them a map. The map leads to a massive subterranean maze-like complex just outside of town, apparently designed by the editors of Games Magazine. Despite having no food source, fresh water source or slammin' nightlife, this dungeon will be the chosen homestead of various creatures inexplicably co-existing despite what must be horrible racial and ecological tensions, including some creatures with IQs that make Einstein and Hawking look like village idiots (yet who spend most of their day standing around waiting for adventurers to show up). They will camp in the middle of this Labyrinth of Death and somehow get 8 hours of rest, which is more than I can manage in my own non-monster-filled evenings. There will be a 10x10 room with a 20' dragon in it, sitting on a pile of gold which is worth more than the GDP of the entire kingdom surrounding it. The party will best it with only a minor expenditure of resources because, like every encounter they've suffered through so far, this dragon is somehow exactly as powerful as the party (almost as if a divine hand has ensured that everything in the dungeon could be killable by this party alone). They will somehow transport the several metric tons of gold and precious gems back to the small village where they started, which just happens to sell magic items capable of vaporizing a small moon.

In the morning they will return to the bar, as their DTs are now quite unmanageable.
 

A group of individuals try to make their way in the world by battling an ancient evil awakening manifested through an unknown disease. They are thrown back and forth between the various houses, groups and factions of the world but discover the archetypal forces pouring through them. They must then choose sides and deal with their choice.

This is the campaign I presently run in a nutshell.
 
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A group of individuals placed in a series of extraordinary situations discovers the truth of their world.

Perhaps I'm wrong, ender, but when I read this that makes me think of the DM-writer-wanna-be. There should be something else to do besides discovering the background of the world. The PCs have to be able to do something once they know it! :D
 

Naturally, the truth will force them to pick a side in a global conflict (most predictably the one that saves the world rather than destroy it, but you can never know for sure), but don't tell them that.
 

In the year of the Black Fever, a crack adventuring group was sentenced to death by an evil King for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from the kingdom's most impregnable dungeon to the hidden byways of the Forest of Shadows. Today, still hunted by the king's men, they survive as wandering outlaws. If you have a problem, if no one else can help and if you can find them, maybe you can hire....the AD&D Team! :p
 
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My last SF game:

A group of competent individuals is hired to do dangerous work for their own personal power/safety, but in the process of doing that work discovers that it is driving the world toward a critical juncture. They intervene at that juncture and create a significant change in the world.
 

A small group of heroes discover by change an Ancient Evil. Each week they fight or discover some plot or imrtant detail of the Ancient Evil, gaining some phat loot and more insight into the Eeevil´s hidden plot (wich leads to another week of fighting, discovering, and phat loot).

And sometimes they run an unrelated adventure and are cursed with a fiendish chicken.
 

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