Hi, folks! I’m going to be running a one-shot game next Saturday, and while I have a general idea, I thought I’d throw the idea open to Dopers to see if y’all have thoughts on how to make the pulpy goodness even pulpier.
Here’s the basic idea:
The PCs are all involved in a movie shoot in Norway in 1947. Their wrap party consists of a trip to an exclusive ski resort. The game begins on the slopes as they watch mysterious figures abduct a woman. Ski-chase hijinks follow, and either the woman is abducted, or she’s slashed, and someone escapes with a bloody scarf of hers. A grenade thrown by one of the kidnappers starts an avalanche on a nearby mountain.
A rescue crew goes to help a village near that mountain, or a captured kidnapper reveals that there’s a base of operations at that village before he mysteriously and suddenly freezes solid, or some other clue leads the PCs to that village. When they get there, they find an outer perimeter manned by terrified mercenaries, while the village is ransacked by skeletal Viking warriors.
There’s an old wounded woman in the village who knows a bit about what’s happening: when the avalanche covered up an entrance to a nearby haunted mine, the Evil Nazi Professor came to her to steal all her records of local mythology and magic and to threaten her for information. He now knows the back entrance into the mines and has a map that’ll lead him to the tomb of a cursed ancient king. She may show them a rune they can write on themselves to protect themselves from the Evil Nazi Professor’s magic. Keep ENP from getting into the tomb, she says, because who knows what evil he’ll uncover?
When they get to the mine they’re attacked by wolves inside, eventually winning through to find a stunted little man in a huge cavern. An old-school giant is lying in repose, frozen, in the cavern. The man commands the wolves and gloats at them telling them about the Troll King and his horn that twists the race of man into hideous troll shapes who will do his bidding. Really he’s just delaying, giving his master the ENP time to escape. When the PCs hear a train whistle blow, followed by an eerie horn-blast, the stunted man cackles in delight and tells them they’re too late.
The PCs will finally find their way to the train, where the ENP has blown the horn and turned the passengers into mini-trolls. They’ll need to fight the passengers (hopefully nonlethally) until they get to the ENP and have a climactic train-top battle; afterwards, they’ll need to figure out how to revert the passengers to human form (any reasonably intelligent idea will work–e.g., paint the passengers with the run the old woman taught them).
The PCs are all movie icons: the arrogant swashbuckling star, the femme fatale actress (with a past in the Norwegian resistance), the nerdy props genius with a penchant for pyrotechnics, the bodyguard, the Okie cowboy-turned-stuntman (awesome with the lasso), and then the grizzled local guide.
The system is Savage Worlds.
Any ideas are welcome!