Three One-Shots I'll Never Get Around to Running

[JPL]

Y’know, I’m so busy at work, I never get to post here anymore.

How’s everybody doing?

Three one-shot ideas I’ve been tooling around with:

THE HUNT FOR XAN

“Alias” directed by John Woo, with a little Shang-Chi on the side. A small international task force — all masters of the martial arts — hit Hong Kong on the trail of the legendary Xan, international terrorist and criminal mastermind. It’s a sequel to a Victorian Fu Manchu one-shot I did a couple of years back...Xan may be the descendant of the original Terror of Hanoi, or he may be the man himself, 150 years old and evil incarnate.

THE WRECKING CREW

“The Rundown” meets the Ultimate Fighting. The heroes are a stable of fighters who train together, under the tutelage of a veteran catch wrestler / bareknuckles fighter. But sometimes, to pay the bills, they step out of the ring and onto the streets as bounty hunters. This time, the chase leads all the way to South America, where a whole jungle’s worth of problems await.

THE TROUBLEMAKERS

The Blues Brothers meets the A-Team. The World’s Greatest Bar Band travels from coast to coast, playing roots rock and R&B. But whether they make it or not, there’s always trouble, usually in the form of a redhead. Fortunately, the boys led interesting lives before they got the band together...

 

[malladin]

Here's some of my ideas that are unlikely to see light of day...

Yo may notice some similar themes running between them .

SECRETS OF THE THULE SOCIETY
A dark occult horror supers game set during the second world war. PCs have super powers that are of some form of occult origin. The Nazis are being corrupted by secret demonic forces and their agents, the Thule society. This would be done using D20 Modern, Hell on Earth and 4CtF Modern. This one is ctually reasonably likely to see the light of day as a one off at some point as I keep coming back to it.

STREET RONIN
A more serious version of the above set in the modern day. PCs are low powered supers fighting secret occult evils. I had a nice background worked out with six very different (evil) planar forces that are competeing for influence over the prime plane. The PCs are using their powers to fight these forces, but as the game develops they would discover that the source of their powers is one of these planes. I have a partially written up adv class/talents/skills/feats system or the powers. Its quite restrictively themed super powers, but really captures the flavour. I was going to run this as a long term campaign but my players wanted to do fantasy and then eberron came out and so did I!

HEROES OF THE ETERNAL FORTRESS
This seting came out of thinking that I could use mutants and maserminds to create a very He-Man-like fantasy world. In this setting there are four alignment-based powers that are in eternal conflict. The world develops in through a series of Epochs where a major battle at the end of time results in one of these forces being able to impose their ideas on the world (hence some tech being around), but must then retire from the conflict save for one Guardian. At the moment the Lawful force won the last battle and now chaos, good and evil are fighting it out for cotrol of the next Epoch.

CHILDREN OF ETERNITY
This is a very high fantasy concept. The idea is that there were in fact six different creators of the universe, the eternals. Each had different ideas about what the universe should be like (science based, demonic hell fire dimension, magic realm, etc). The could impose their will on reality by controlling the power in certain Nodes that are dotted around the void. The problem is that where two different universe structures meet a Paradox barrier is formed which the Eternals cannot pass though without aid or great difficulty. After warring for control of these nodes they eternals eventually decided to peacfully create a universe cooperatively, whcih the did successfuly. Once complete and populated with all sorts of different sentient creatures, they became bored with noting left to do. They came up with the idea of living out a mortal's life in their universe. So they put together a single world with all different races of the universe and each chose one and moved their spirit into one of these people. However, the Hell/demon eternal betrayed the others and shattered their essence as they moved towards the mortal realm. their essence was then shared out amongst the entire populace. The betrayer then tried to change the universe into his own hell dimension, but only succeeded in turning one node and trapping himself there. As the millenia pass the essence of each eternal gradually coalesses (sp?) into one indivual, a character of great power. The PCs would play these charaters gradually becoming aware of their power and destiny...

 

[JPL]

For the first idea, you should check out "GURPS Weird War II" by Ken Hite. No relation to the Weird War II RPG --- just a great overview of everything from the Thule Society to the Justice Society.

 

[Chaldfont]

What a cool idea for a thread! Here are a few ideas I've had:

Bram Stoker’s Goodfellas

A mob crew of enforcers enters a goth nightclub behind in it’s protection payments ready to bust heads. They get more than they bargained for when they discover that the freaks in black eye make-up are real nosferatu.

Someone In This Room is the Murderer!

The king assembled his closest advisors to make a big announcement, but before he could, he died of poisoning! The advisors are the PCs and are told that one of them is the culprit. Each is given a rival PC on which to frame the crime. But what they don’t realize is that they ALL put poison in the king’s meal!

Star Wars through the lens of Dungeons and Dragons

I have always wanted to start a D&D campaign that loosely follows the plot of the first three Star Wars movies. I would not tell the players, but let them figure it out as we went along.

 

[malladin]

I have always wanted to start a D&D campaign that loosely follows the plot of the first three Star Wars movies. I would not tell the players, but let them figure it out as we went along.

This type of thing in general can reap some great rewards. Look around for literature that your players are unlikely to have encountered and shift the genre. Some would argue that this is what JMS did with babylon 5 (taking Tolkien as the starting point). I once ran fantasy city-based adventure based around the plot to a quantumn murder by peter f hamilton.

Cheerio,

Ben

 

[JPL]

Another one which shall live only in my heart...

Legacy

Philip Jose Farmer’s Wold Newton meets Planetary meets Unbreakable meets X-Files, all done as a big-budget action movie.

Two hundred years ago, exposure to radiation from a meteorite altered the genes of a dozen men and women in rural England. Their offspring were gifted with the potential to be something greater than human — stronger, smarter, longer lived, more ambitious. For two centuries, this race of giants has waged a secret war — some seeking to advance mankind, other seeking to control mankind.

The heroes are a group of gifted young men and women whose bloodlines have been hidden from them...until now.

 

[barsoomcore]

Is there a way I can get JPL's threads to auto-bookmark themselves for me?

 

[Aeric]

I recently came up with the crazy idea of running a Star Wars/Ravenloft crossover. I figured since Ravenloft is an actual (demi)plane of existence, it would make sense for there to be other suitably dark realms within it. In the SW universe, there are places which are strong with the Dark Side of the Force, some of which could even act as portals into that realm. I thought it would be fun to have an ancient dark Jedi or even a Sith Lord as the ruler of that domain, which for the sake of game balance would be sealed off from the rest of Ravenloft.

But since I can't seem to get a group together to play regular Star Wars, I know that this idea will probably never happen. :\

 

[Robbert Raets]

STREET RONIN
I have a partially written up adv class/talents/skills/feats system or the powers.

I would love to see those.

 

[JPL]

Is there a way I can get JPL's threads to auto-bookmark themselves for me?

Aw, shucks...