I’ve seen GMs look for advice on running RPG storylines on the Dope before, so I thought I’d give it a whirl because I’m just a bit stuck with this one. I know none of my players read the Dope and surely if they managed to find the SDMB somehow they’d have the decency to not read this thread. Ahem.
First, the background: The game is run on a message board and while we do have dice for handling combat, it’s pretty casual for the most part. Play is focused more on setting up situations and making the players actually write their way out of it than on hack-and-slash play. The setting is an alternate history that combines steampunk with elements of magic. The Louisiana purchase never took place, with the area being taken over by the people who had settled there when Napoleon couldn’t hold it. New Orleans is the capitol, which is where the action is taking place.
Currently, there is a war between “Louisiana” and the Spanish Empire, which has become extremely powerful as it uses steampunk technology to fantastic ends. When the plot begins, the Spanish will be occupying the capitol city.
Now, the plot: Two fishermen find the Holy Grail on a small island off the coast, where it was hidden centuries before. A Spanish officer is the only one able to retrieve the Grail and she brings it back to the capitol with her. Excalibur is sealed in a stone that is used as a magical focus for a powerful local family, who had it brought over from the old country. The combination of these two relics in the same region when blood is being spilled and a country overtaken triggers changes in the spirit world, so that certain people will begin to have memories of Camelot and attempt to carry out quests to make things right. It’ll be handled as a sort of mild possession/being influenced by mythological archetypes rather than as reincarnation.
My players don’t know “who” their characters are in this, just as their characters are ignorant. The Arthurian persons that I’ve been able to attach to people’s characters are Arthur, Merlin, Lancelot, Guinevere, Gawain, Percival, Morgause, Mordred, and Morgan le Fay.
My problem is that I need something for each character to do. Percival is the Spanish officer who has the Grail, so this sets up conflict from the start. Most of the characters can also be attempting to retrieve the Grail (which will be used to help fight off the Spanish), on top of Mordred and Arthur beginning to realize that they’re less allies and more rivals.
I want a small quest for each character, though, rather than turning everyone into NPCs in someone else’s adventure. If I could set things up so that there’s some artifact or act for each character, it’d help a lot. Guinevere, especially, is baffling me. A romantic triangle is nothing to hang an RPG plot on, and I can’t think of anything else to do with her, but there was no one else who really “fit” the character I pinned her on.
Anyone else ever run a game with lots of little Arthurian quests like this? Any suggestions? I want this to be fun for all of my players, not just for “Arthur” and “Mordred.”