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Places to steal plots... umm, Inspiration?


chariot

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I'm a big reader... I've taken inspiration from movies before, but novels seem to inspire me more.

 

I'm running a sort of Horror Hero meets Dark Champions over a cup of coffee with John Woo, campaign... the main thematic elements are gothic horror, but the heroes, for the most part, are your typical Woo-ish street-fighters and gunslingers.

 

We're off to a good start, but I need some complications.. and really need to spin some plots to make the gothic horror elements shine, and interweave that with some more mundane criminal elements to give the characters a break.

 

My reading has always tended towards horror, fantasy and some dabbling in Sci-Fi; so the underworld has me a little out of my depth.

 

Suggestions? I thought I had seen a thread about this a while back, but couldn't find it again.

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Re: Places to steal plots... umm, Inspiration?

 

Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files series might help.

 

There is a huge amount of free Call of Cthulyu stuff on the web. I would think that it would take very little modification to bring it up to current times.

 

The old Night Stalker TV series, although I'm not sure if it plays on the air anymore.

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Re: Places to steal plots... umm, Inspiration?

 

I've had sucesses gaffling plots from a variety of places. An old favorite is to take a story/movie/tv plot from a completely different genre, then think if it would make a good game once you've retooled all the elements to your genre. Its a good mental excercise and gets the creative juices flowing. Another trick I've discovered was to pick up a book on crafting plots for writers. The one I have is called 20 Master Plots and how to implement them, or something of the sort (its in storage so I can't check). Very useful.

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Re: Places to steal plots... umm, Inspiration?

 

Wow... John Woo meets H.P. Lovecraft... now *thats* entertainment!

I dunno if this is really what your after, but howzabout something like:

 

Whichever gang it is that released that latest drug/weapon onto the streets is lead by a ruthless gangbanger type that is also secretly a member of an evil doomsday Cult. When the heroes get thru the mundane thugs, they meet the leader with his zealot thugs, then find out that the gang leader was himself just a schlep in the cult, and that the real threat is the Inner Sanctum of said cult.

For some added gravy, why would a cult release drugs/weapons onto the street? Sure, chaos is good, but are they after something more? Like the drug makes people into zombies-like, or whatever being they want to summon needs X amount of victims before he can be called.

 

Hope that helps.

 

j

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Re: Places to steal plots... umm, Inspiration?

 

If you want a ton of Horror plots then look here for some great stuff:

 

http://www.flar.demon.co.uk/terror/welcome.htm

 

These are very simple plot seeds, primarily intended for Call of Cthulhu but useful for inspiration in other games ;)

 

Since you are mixing Dark Champs and Horror might I draw your attention to this modern Tale?

 

http://www.flar.demon.co.uk/terror/tale060.htm

 

 

Might I also suggest that you take a good look at the Delta Green modern-day background for Call of Cthulhu? You will find much goodness in there that could be 'upped' to suit a Dark Champions campaign; the brand new reprint comes in at $28.00 from Amazon instead of the $100(ish) the OOP copies have been fetching on eBay over the last couple of years :thumbup:

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