One thing I usually do when planning a new campaign is scour my game library for existing story seeds and adventures for ideas. It saves time and I find adapting adventures to the specifics of my game fun. Even if they are not directly helpful, they can serve as inspiration for actual stories.
Death At Midnight
Pitch: A high-class party is held at a hotel rumored to be haunted. Unfortunately this turns out to be true. Worse someone has decided to use the spike in spectral energy to conduct a dangerous ritual atop the high-rise building. While the guests deal with hauntings and possessions, the PCs must battle their way to the top floor and defeat a rogue necromancer. All before the sacrifice at midnight of course.Background: Death at Midnight is inspired by the adventure A Nightmare At Hill Manor which was a free World of Darkness adventure released on Free RPG day in June 2011. I loved the idea of being trapped in a haunted apartment complex and having to navigate the haunted building to escape.
Death at Midnight would borrow heavily from the scenes there but have Hill Manor be repurposed as a stylish hotel. The guests would then become New York City socialites.
The PCs would be guests at the hotel or attendees of the party. Alternatively they may have received advanced warning of the ceremony and crash the party before the doors seal shut and the entire hotel becomes inaccessible. For extra oomph, the necromancer involved could be a potent Sineater enemy of the PCs, a vampiric necromancer or a Strix attempting to become something more than a vampiric shade.
Antagonists: The ghosts have been conjured up from depths of Underworld, summoned by the potent ritual underway atop the hotel. They should be numerous and more potent than the average shade to deal with the powers of Sineaters.
Aftermath: Even if the necromancer is thwarted there may be a lot of fallout. Some guests may be permanently possessed, requiring exorcisms. Others may have died and need help moving on. Perhaps some die but get better, resulting in new Sineaters.
A particularly creepy possibility is that everyone who survives the party becomes mystically marked and are doomed to rise again after death in some fashion.
Then there is the necromancer's goal. Possibilities include summoning and binding an ancient and powerful Geist, merging of a mortal and Strix to creating something greater than a Sineater, or the transformation into a Death God.
Roots and Branches
This is a story from World of Darkness: Ghost Stories and could be used as is. I did have some ideas for customization however.Outline
Basically a tree once used to lynch someone becomes haunted. It then causes others to die in its presence or draws nearby ghosts to it. These spirits then become trapped, haunting the park where the tree now stands. Only by helping the original ghost pass on can the tree be exorcised and the malignancy cleansed.Customization
Clearly the tree while powerful is no match for a group of Sineaters. I would recommend increasing the power level and giving it some Manifestations or Numina to make it more of a threat to those who can see and directly interact with ghosts.Additionally I would restructure the story so to be the slowly building B plot to another story or series of stories, where the hauntings and ghostly messages can be more easily lost in the shuffle. In the original adventure the creepiness of the hauntings drive the story but that would be too heavy-handed and easily solved for a Sineater Krewe.
To escalate the story, perhaps defeating the tree requires a trip to the Underworld to find where its roots dig deep into a Dead Dominion. It might even necessitate convincing the Kerberoi there to aid them.
A Piece of Me
This tale builds off the Unwilling Organ Donor of Urban Legends. While successful organ transplants are far in the future, the research was going on during the 1930s. In the World of Darkness, with the help of the supernatural, it is even working.Focused on an Abmortal, a rich and elderly socialite whose thirst for life overpowers her morals, the Sineaters encounter a series of angry and maimed ghosts. Each is missing a vital organ: a heart, a lung, an eye. Each know nothing about where their missing part went but each desires it back before they move on. Research indicates each victim was found in one of the slums of the city.
Eventually they can trace the crimes to an unethical doctor and a murderous gang of ruffians in the employ of the Abnormal. Complicating matters is that the Abnormal is a pillar of the city, whose passing or murder will have significant repercussions. Can they get revenge for the donors without stirring up more trouble?
And how did the Abnormal learn that she could survive the treatment? What shadowy figure connected her with the doctor and to what end? Why are the doctor's notes stamped with the insignia of a centaur?
Hungry Ghosts
The final story deals with Bhuta or as I like to think of them Ghost Claimed. They come from Night Horrors: the Wicked Dead.Pitch: Two weeks ago bodies began turning up in the local river. The authorities (the real ones, the vampires) tried to cover it up. The bodies were drained of blood and covered in human teeth marks.
The vampires know it wasn't one of their own but the press is screaming about vampire killers. So they hired you to find out who really did it and to make them stop.
Outline
This story would play out as a straight up murder mystery. The twist is that the killer has no connection to the victims and can jump bodies. The thrill is in the hunt as the Bhuta stays one step ahead of them.And what happens when a second and third Bhuta appears? What is their connection? Why do they keep appearing near the MET? Does it have something to do with that new Egyptian exhibit?
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