Give me some roleplaying scenario inspiration

The Game Room
1

I have a new roleplaying group, few of which have played together before, and we’re about to embark on a big campaign, so I thought we’d hang out an evening and play a short scenario to get to know each other. Not all of them have even met each other before. I’m going to use a very simple homebrewed system, meant to be easy to play and low in detail.

Trouble is, my well of inspiration is entirely dry. So I turn to you. I need a basic idea for a scenario that can be played through in a single evening (say five hours), that provides some character interaction and some combat or other hazardous skill use. Any setting, any era, any style, anything. Just a skeleton of an idea would be great.

2

What genre? Fantasy (High? Low?)? Sic-fi? Space Opera? Cyberpunk-ish?

Data! Need input!

3

A bank job. Objective is a metal briefcase—silver, about 15 pounds, with a lock, but it’s been welded shut—kept in a safe deposit box in the vault.

You decide who put it there (hero, villain, or other), why it needs to be taken, and the exact nature and defenses of the “bank.”

Your players, depending on the setting, scenario, allignment, and whatnot, decide the means they need to take to get it—whether it involves sneaking in in the dead of night through the mail slot; faking a gas leak that forces the neighborhood to be evacuated; scamming your way inside with nothing more than charm and a raised voice; or blowing open the building with a truck bomb, hauling away the vault with a SkyCrane, and using any survivors as hostages/human shields until you get across the border. Or whatever else they might think of doing.

Eh?

4

A diplomatic reception gone awry

Freeing a prisoner

Escorting a VIP through a dangerous area

A scouting mission along a heavily-guarded frontier

Helping a VIP defect from his or her homeland

5

[QUOTE=ExTank]
What genre? Fantasy (High? Low?)? Sic-fi? Space Opera? Cyberpunk-ish?
[/QUOTE]
“Any setting, any era, any style, anything.”

Ranchoth: Good idea. Good excuse for having different characters involved (one securitybreaker, one thug, one getaway driver, one con artist, whatever) and lots of scope.

6

Good ideas already. :slight_smile:

My School roleplaying club is all set in Tolkien’s World, and I introduce the new groups by running the Village of Hommlet for them.
It’s a great module, book and computer RPG.
The village has plenty of people to talk to, but there are sinister forces at work.

Even if you don’t have access to this village, it’s reasonably straightforward to write one.
You can have all the medieval professions, plus concealed monsters (the tailor is a werewolf!), village authorities (Temple, Druid, MU in his Tower) and some monsters lurking in the nearby forest.

7

In the vein of Ranchoth’s suggestion, as far as shakedown cruises go I absolutely love hostage rescues: the party gets paid (or ordered, if they’re military/police/govt) to “Investigate Hostile Compound X,” which requires some planning, either for an assault, for an infiltration, or whatever, and once the party gets inside they discover a captive agent who asks for help getting out.

As with Ranchoth’s bank job it gives you a quick look at the party’s preferences, and the need to protect a sensitive and vulnerable asset (assuming they agree to help the hostage) gives you a look at their teamwork and causes most potential problems to light up like a Christmas tree. (If somebody or multiple somebodies screw up royally, you could always turn it into a comedic escapade: it takes the sting out of getting the hostage killed, and lets everyone have fun while failing spectacularly.)

8

[QUOTE=glee]
…My School roleplaying club is all set in Tolkien’s World…
[/QUOTE]

Hey, we’ve got a Doper Tolkien RPG going right now! Middle Earth FA63 D&D Game, the Second Adventure, Scouting Ered Lithui - Thread Games - Straight Dope Message Board

9

[QUOTE=Priceguy]
“Any setting, any era, any style, anything.”

Ranchoth: Good idea. Good excuse for having different characters involved (one securitybreaker, one thug, one getaway driver, one con artist, whatever) and lots of scope.
[/QUOTE]

Where’s the “I’m a retard” smiley when ya need it? :smack:

Trials, or “tryouts” if you will, for the “unit” they’re supposedly being recruited into.

For instance, we did a “Black Company” campaign a few years back, based upon Glen Cook’s mercenary company, using D&D 3.0 but with a homebrew magic system (based roughly on Ars Magica, but I forget which version :rolleyes: ).

Before we could join, we had to go through some tests to see if we were “Black Company Material.”

First came a sword duel, with a nasty SOB who would actually try to hurt you if you weren’t careful.

Then it was nose-to-nose with pike and shield; the objective was simply to hold the line from breaking, and the testers put every 6’4", 300 lb linebacker-type against us they could scrounge.

After that was a team endurance/obstacle course (in full gear, of course!), having to use the climb and jump skills, with many a Dex and Con check. Some of the obstacles you had to take poles and rope and fashion a way across them as a team.

Finally, there was a night time orienteering course/elimination tag kinda thingy, testing all those spot, listen, move silent, and track type of skills.

All the characters (player and NPC) were some of the most well-rounded, non-munchkin characters we’d ever created.

10

Be the naughty paperboy who seduces various desperate housewives.

Oh, wait, it’s not that kind of roleplay…

11

Any scenario can be improved by a train robbery and a car/horse chase.

There must be at least 1 double-cross. And a misunderstanding must pit the cops against the players.

12

[QUOTE=Elendil’s Heir]
Hey, we’ve got a Doper Tolkien RPG going right now! Middle Earth FA63 D&D Game, the Second Adventure, Scouting Ered Lithui - Thread Games - Straight Dope Message Board
[/QUOTE]

And a village adventure too…

13

Instead of making the job interesting, make the job standard, & make the setting interesting.

I once ran a “raid the goblin village” campaign, set in the Arctic. Very challenging for the players, even though it was “the same old thing” in the way of monsters.

Here is an idea–send them into a foreign country to do something. A bank job, a treasure hunt, whatever. Everything is going smoothly. Then, there is a major earthquake, 8.0 on the Richter Scale. And now, they just have to survive. A sudden outbreak of war would work well for this, too. In a woodland environment, a major forest fire could do nicely.

14

[QUOTE=Mosier]
Any scenario can be improved by a train robbery and a car/horse chase.

There must be at least 1 double-cross. And a misunderstanding must pit the cops against the players.
[/QUOTE]
So, basically any random episode of Firefly.

No, seriously. Pull the plot from any standard multi-character action/adventure show or movie more complex than The A-Team, change the McGuffin and details to fit your specific milieu, and go to town. You can do this with pretty much any RPG setting with minimal work; heck, I once even used Casablanca as the basis for a Call of Cthulhu mini-campaign and The Guns of Navarone for a Paranoia game. It doesn’t really matter what genre you are in; except for highly story-based narrative games like Ars Magica, the basic (successful) plots are all pretty universal three act conflict-and-resolution style architectures.

Stranger

15

Have your characters be on a lifeboat or large raft after the ship they were on sank or was destroyed. This allows you to tailor who gets thrown together, the resources available, the possible hazards and the choices to be made.
Here’s one scenerio for example: The chances are good that you can make it to land, but you have to choose between a safe destination thats further away, or a closer but much less ideal spot. The local sea life is not friendly (sharks, pirates, or worse), bad weather could be closing in the next few days, and your supply situation forces you to make a “bad or worse” choice.

16

Feedback?

17

I was going to go with Ranchoth’s suggestion (changing it so it isn’t a bank but a private vault belonging to a bad guy, and they’d find Omi no Kami’s prisoner in there too, who’d turn out to be necessary to open the briefcase somehow), but I like Lumpy’s quite a bit too.

18

The Faberge Chicken has been stolen, and the players have to recover it.

They are locked inside the local haunted wax museum after midnight! Paraffin ensues.

A small child urgently needs an organ transplant! A healthy donor must be kidnapped from a poor urban neighborhood or Third World country.

One of the players’ relatives must be rescued after being drawn into an apocalyptic cult based on the principles of Origami, the Japanese art of paper folding.

19

Borrrrrrrrrrrrrrring. I already played all of those scenarios. :wink:

20

[QUOTE=Terrifel]

One of the players’ relatives must be rescued after being drawn into an apocalyptic cult based on the principles of Origami, the Japanese art of paper folding.
[/QUOTE]

I once played that module. The steam-powered origami animals were deadly!