Need Plot help for Urban Fantasy game!

[Talon65]

I want to start up a Urban Fantasy game using 5th Ed. Hero and could use your ideas, help and/or opinions. I've always been able to come up with one shot adventures but I'm really bad at coming up with on going or overreaching plots.

 

I have an idea for the intro adventure (which I'm calling Murderer's Row) to introduce the season or series plot if you will, in which each character rudely awakens from sleep, having just murdered a complete stranger and not knowing why or how they got there.

 

Ex:

 

GM: "Player A, you hear a loud "BOOM" and awaken standing over a dyeing transient in an alley. He's just taken a shotgun blast to the chest and he gurgles something as you watch him die. You're hold your gun. Your shotgun. Your smoking shotgun... strange, you don't recall ever owning a gun. What do you do now?"

 

GM: "Player B, you awaken at the sound of a car crash and you're in the driver seat. A man in a business suit with a gun and a badge on his belt is pinned between your car and a brick wall. As you watch his life ebb away you realize... you don't remember going anywhere and this isn't your car. What do you do now?"

 

GM: "Player C, a splash of warm liquid on your face awakens you from slumber. You stand in an abandoned warehouse, over a young women tied to a large table with arcane runes painted upon it. Tears roll from her eyes as the life leaves her body. A large ornate knife has been plunged into her heart. Your hand is on the knife, her blood is on you and you smell sulfur and inscense in the air...but you have no idea what's happening as you know nothing about magic. What do you do now?"

 

GM: "Player D, You jolt awake at the sound of shattering glass as the stranger, you just pushed, plunges out of the window of his hi-rise office. He screams something as he plunges to his death but you can't make out his words. What do you do now?"

 

 

There will be other adventures not realated to this but the overall plot will be to figure out who did this to them, how and why. What I have in mind so far is someone calling himself or herself "CROW" has possessed or dominated them to kill these people. Though the players won't know this yet, there will be no witnesses to these murders and the players are not connected to the victims in any way that they know of, so as long as they escape, they won't be immediate suspects but it will be hanging over their head. I plan on having all the players know someone else in the group in some form or fashion (which could be why they were chosen) so they may go to another for help and discover the others involvement.

 

I want CROW to appear to be an individual at first but eventually be revealed to be a group. So my big question to you is, who are these people? Why would CROW want them dead? What should CROW's overall objective be? And why did CROW chose our heroes to commit these murders?

[Manic Typist]

Re: Need Plot help for Urban Fantasy game!

 

Ideas for the why of what CROW is doing:

1- They need to sacrifice a certain number of people, perhaps even certain types of people or specific individuals, in order to power/fulfill a ritual/prophecy. However, the ritual/prophecy excludes anyone who commits the sacrifice from benefiting from the ceremony, and perhaps even marks those individuals for doom. So CROW finds a way around that part of the ritual (which is intended to discourage anyone from ever performing the ceremony since it wouldn't do those people any good) by making the PCs do it. Compare the poor SOBs who opened the mummy's tomb in "The Mummy" and the game Indigo Prophecy (which starts out even worse off, but otherwise exactly the same, as you describe).

 

2- The PCs don't know it, but they are marked by Destiny. CROW is trying to hijack that Destiny, or even prevent it.

 

That's all I've got for now.

[gojira]

Re: Need Plot help for Urban Fantasy game!

 

there will be no witnesses to these murders and the players are not connected to the victims in any way that they know of' date=' so as long as they escape, they won't be immediate suspects[/quote']

 

A possible complication: in urban fantasy most characters will be law abiding citizens who will stop to help or turn themselves in. You'll need to deal with the possibility that a player will go to jail at the start of the adventure.

 

I think it would be better to have the people killed in some mysterious way, not a shotgun or knife with the player's finger prints all over it. Mystic energy or something like that. Just have the player in a trance or something when it happens. The players were carrying some sort of planted charm or had an (unknown) connection to the victim that made the player a perfect conduit for the spell.

 

Other complications: Some players CROW should probably not be able to dominate/mind control or otherwise fool into assisting with these acts. If CROW can mind control absolutely anyone, how will the PCs be able to combat them? Ditto with the mystic energy idea, some players should be able to spot the charm or connection and be able to thwart it. Doesn't mean they should have no reason to pursue CROW however.

[Ranxerox]

Re: Need Plot help for Urban Fantasy game!

 

Well, let's see. We know or at least have strong reason to suspect that the victims are people that CROW can't control directly, otherwise he simply would have had them cause their own deaths. So maybe the victims are all part of some mystical society that opposes CROW in his or her long range goals. Maybe CROW is seeking to become King of Queen of the Faerie Court (or such) and the victims are all Guardians of the Court.

 

As for who the players are, I like the idea of them all being people who were destined to die but were rescued by CROW because there should be dead status makes them blank spots in attempts to scry. CROW knew that the Guardians of the Court had a number of talented seers that might might sense his or her plot if blank destinies were not used in the assassinations.