Story/Adventure Seeds are short bits of ideas that can be used to develop stories/adventures/campaigns. So I thought a page of 'Seeds and related ideas for stories might be helpful.
This page is just a place to put ideas that aren't long enough to need a page in their own right. There's little point in making an article for a single paragraph, and it's easier to read it all if it's on one page. Stuff might start off being written here until it's large enough to merit an article, if you want to write stuff that way go ahead, if not feel free to create an article.
It's suggested that each seed should have three different pieces:
- Setting
- Hook
- Suggestions for the GM
Fantasy seeds[]
Adventure seeds based in a D&D-like fantasy setting; swords, sorceries and monsters.
| Blue boxes like this can be used to provide additional information, such as references, sources, etc. |
- Low Tech to High Tech
- The party goes on a quest in a low tech planet during the quest the party finds a transporter and is teleported to a far off planet then the adventure focuses on the party trying to get home.
- The Dark Lord is rising in the West!
- And you must stop him!
- The Princess has been captured by a Monster!
- It was seen running off into the forest with her, quick, go after it!
- Fairy Trouble
- Fairies have always been a problem in our town, they come out of their forest and play their devilish tricks, mixing their alchemical brainwash into people's drinking water! But now they've been shooting our sheep with their little bows, killing off our flocks little by little, this can't be stood for! We need to do something about them! Or perhaps someone can go in and convince them to stop, why have they grown so bothersome lately!?
- High Tech to Low Tech
- A spacecraft from a high-tech society invades your low-tech planet and its inhabitants begin kidnapping your women / livestock / walking trees. You must overcome the disadvantage of being primitives to fight these invaders!
- The Princess wants a Monster!
- She's tired of the cute and cuddly beasts in her private menagerie and wants you to fetch her a really impressive fanged and dangerous beast to impress her friends.
- What happened?
- The PCs wake up in a strange inn, many leagues from home, with no memory of the last month and probably want to find out what they've been doing. The trail will probably lead back to that wizard with a reputation for Forget spells...
The End of the World[]
The end of the world features prominently in a lot of fiction. So, this list focuses on that kind of scenario.
Besides devoting an entire campaign to this, it could be fun to have a long running GURPS Mysteries campaign suddenly change pace and become a Post-Apocalyptic, or just throw in an apocalypse for awhile so that you get the feeling of the setting, and then have the world start to recover from the problem, which would return the campaign back to what it was before, or change into something else.
GURPS Y2K™ deals with end of the world scenarios, and this list should attempt not to replicate it's work, but rather bring to focus alternative scenarios not discussed in that book.
Causes[]
- Godzilla
- After weeks of strange weather anomalies, a massive creature has appeared near New York! It is believed to have been the cause of the weather anomalies and capable of breathing fire!
| Films and fiction often deal with apocalyptic scenarios. For example:
also see the Wikipedia article on Disaster Films. |
- The PCs could be military ordered to kill it, average citizens living within the city who happen to have the kind of experience that makes them think they might be able to kill the monster, or mercenaries working for the Illuminati, sent to destroy this creature for reasons unknown.
- Robots
- Before robots can go crazy and start destroying the world, they have to be built. And building robots that are strong enough to kill people in large enough numbers to be a significant threat would be very expensive, it does however certainly sound like something the Illuminati might do; especially if the robots weren't crazy, but were in fact following orders. This seems more like in a futuristic setting when robots could be less expensive.
- Martians
- Flying saucers are spotted near major cities. Soon after things start exploding. After that there are landed vehicles moving around. Who knows what these aliens want?
- Inexplicable Disappearance
- You go to work, find the building deserted, start wandering around. The whole city's deserted, no trace or explanation. The only evidence you find is the word CROATOAN, written on one of the walls.
Conquered![]
Your homeland is conquered, and the choice of most heroes is to resist the invaders. (Of course, you could choose to play a 'collaborators' game, but we'll gloss over that as not-heroic so most people won't do it.)
Most important feature is that the balance of power is definitely on the occupiers' side. Whether you choose to play out the conquest or not is up to you as GM, but doing so does have the disadvantage of putting the PCs in a position where they are already in danger of being killed by the overwhelming forces right at the start of the campaign, and they are identified as supporters of the old regime which puts them at a disadvantage right from the start.
On the sub-page Conquered!, there are some suggested situations where this campaign could be set, and some hints on what GMs need to consider when planning the campaign.
Tactical Situations[]
This set of seeds refer mostly to military situations in the loosest sense - they could be incorporated into any situation where the PCs are going to approach the problem with the intention of resolving it by violence.
Into the Darkness: Put the enemy on ground they know, and make it dark. Unless the players have night-vision gear or parachute flares they are going to have a lot more trouble than the enemy would give them in a 'fair' fight. Have a look at The Fishmen in the Sphere for an example from an 1874-set Steampunk-with-magic game.