Plot Seed - Ladies Night

[Guest Confusinator]

This is a plot seed that I used for my last Pulp game. It could also easily be used for a Dark Champions game. It is based on a cheesy thriller movie I stumbled across on the USA Network (Pulp and DC resource central!).

 

In the movie, the villians are a father and son grafters. These guys set up a delivery service. In the course of making their deliveries to businesses, the son scouts for women in financial positions (like accounts payable) who also seem to be vulnerable or lonely. He picks up some clues from their work area, and then flags the mark for his father.

 

The father (played by the actor who was also Starsky) then finds the mark and seduces them. During the building of the relationship, the father makes up some crisis that requires a large amount of money for a very short period of time. The crisis is usually related to an area of interest for the victim. Once he gets the money, he kills the woman, has the son hide the body, and moves on to the next mark. Everyone else thinks the woman ran off with the money.

 

For example, on their last victim, he portrayed himself as working for a humanitarian organization that helps feed the starving children of third world countries. The son had already identified that the victim was a contributor to one of those feed the children programs. During a romantic moment, the father gets a call saying that one of his finacial backers just dropped out and now he did not have enough money to pay for some vaccine that was crucial. If only he had another day, he could get the money himself. Well, the mark volunteers to divert some of her company's money to the cause, and then he can pay her back before its missed.

 

The main characters in the movie are P.I.'s hired to track down what is believed to be an embezzelier and recover the company's money. In the course of investigating that crime, they stumble onto the bigger crime, and then there is a race to stop the bad guy, and save the last victim. In the movie, the father always kills his victim on Friday (he has some serious issues).

 

My game is set in the 1920's, so I changed a few things. The accountant was a man, and the villian was a seductress, with a big goon bodyguard. In my campaign, people have amazing powers, so I gave her an area affect mind control only against men. Luckily, the only man in our party of two has a strong ego, so he was not easily suckered in by her sexy ways, although the NPC's were pretty easily controlled, and I think if we had had our third player this time, he would have been under her sway.