Summer 2021 Pitches: In the Shadow of Giants

 

In the Shadow of Giants

Protect your people in a post apocalyptic lost world.

Using their mastery of rune magic, the Giants built wonders across the jungles, mountains and swamps of this land. They raised up the ageless elves and put the tunnelfolk (dwarves, gnomes and halflings) to work. They forged towers taller than mountains, travel machines as fast of lightning, lava forges and cloud cities. Then something went wrong.

The disaster laid their civilization low, killing giant and small folk alike. Now the giants live in savagery like the rest of us. Nature and the dinosaurs have reclaimed mastery of the world. But within the towering ruins lay wonders of an earlier age: steel, rune forged tools, crystal codices and more. Those who dare the dangers within can secure their tribe's survival in this dangerous land.

Setting: A jungle clad land of fierce dinosaurs, giants and savage tribes. Metal working and other advanced technologies are uncommon. People worship the elements and the divine dinosaurs. Warlocks and Sorcerers greatly outnumber Wizards who must hunt for spells in the Giant ruins. 

System: D&D 5th edition with some house rules into available race and class options as well as restricted starting gear.

Story Possibilities:

• Stealing Fire: The giants left wonders in their spire cities and sky castles. The brave and resourceful can find food, tools and knowledge to make their people masters of this world. Beware however of the old inhabitants and the traps they left behind.
• The Great Migration: The tribe has lived for generations in the shadow of Red Mountain growing food in its rich volcanic soils. But the ashfalls grow heavier day by day. Soonit will bruy everything. The tribe must move on and they need you to find the way through this savage land.
• A New Order: As the cataclysm continues to ripple through the land, new creatures seek to fill the gap left by the Giants. Tribe against tribe, apex predator against apex predator. Will the dinosaurs drive the mammals to extinction or will they too pass on? Or will the giants yet reclaim their lost throne?

Summer 2021 Pitches: Geist Noir

 In the city that never sleeps, the dead don't rest easy. Ever since your "accident", the one that should have killed you, you can see them. As you lay there bleeding out, you made a deal with something older and stranger than a ghost. Now it haunts you. You work as a private detective for the dead, tied up in a strange world of ghosts, vampires, and others like yourself.

Setting: New York in the 1930s. Things are bad all over. Gangsters and corrupt politicians run things. The odds are stacked against good guys like you.

Mood: Noir. In a world of shadows and pessimism, hardboiled detectives and femme fatales, your investigator is trying to do the right thing. Or at least make the rent.

Action: The game would be mainly investigative punctuated with two fisted combat and bloody betrayal.

System: Geist: the Sineaters

Theme Possibilities:

• Old Secrets: The vampires have their fangs in this city. They also pay well if you don't ask questions. As someone who has secrets of your own, you respect that. You do odd jobs for the Giovanni's, a clan of gangsters, mystics and politicians. But lately their dirty laundry appears to floating to the surface. Or waking up. Why does the moon look red to you these days? What are the Giovanni smuggling into the city? And why are there bodies turning up that seemed gnawed on by human teeth?
• Rise of the Psychopomps: Some ghosts see you as a sort of ferryman for the dead. Someone to help them complete tasks they couldn't in life. Their payment is odd but honest. But there are older stranger things than you. Shadowy ravens and owls who nest in the low places, gateways to the Underworld. Why are those gateways opening so easily these days? Why are some people not staying dead? And why are there so many ravens around?
• Transitions: Death is a doorway everyone goes through eventually. It is supposed to swing one way. But sometimes rules get broken: a wealthy man staves off death by sacrificing others, a mad ghost decides to possess a human being forever, a corpse crawls out of the grave to inflict vengeance. Then you need to get involved. Somewhere someone is gaming the system. Why is it happening more often? Who is behind it? The Giovanni necromancers? The Orpheus Company? Or one of your own?

Summer 2021 Pitches: A Fracture In Time

You find yourselves unstuck in time, pulled through the decades by forces unleashed one summer night in 1984 as kids. Now you are pulled back to that era and thrust into new ones. Perhaps if you can unravel the mystery of what happened that night you can stop it - or gain control over this power. Do you rewrite your childhood? Undo regrets and avert personal tragedies? Or use your abilities to improve your "present"?

Meanwhile you need to deal with paradoxes, men in black and black helicopters, and stranger stuff. Was that an alien back there? What is up with all of the roaches?

Setting: The story begins in a suburban town in NY in the 1980s but quickly expands into other times from the 1940s and the Victorian Era to WWIII and the Jurassic.

Themes: What If? at both a personal and global level, starting with the Cold War.

Mood: Pulp. Mixing two fisted action with mystery, the PCs are experts and a match for any government agent or time travelling monster.

System: TimeWatch with some modifications to account for a lack of Time Agent training (so you can play a super spy or even a scientist working on time travel but you don't have a full understanding of time travel starting off)

Variations:

• No (or Not Just) Kids: If playing kids (for a bit) doesn't appeal we can open up the possibilities to older folk.
• Don't Worry We Are From The Government: We can instead play the other side of things as FTB agents (work out that acronym for yourself) trying to figure out why everything went wrong, dealing with pesky temporal anomalies and making do with only half of a time machine.