Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Old World of Darkness - Easy way to create a plot + Few ready made plots for you to use

You might have planned a campaign you are running, but you would like to run some side quest. Or you might have sandbox styled game but for the next session you are out of ideas. What ever the case is, here is simple way to get inspiration in creating a plot.

Take character sheet of the game you and your group are playing. You see, that skills are in three categories and in each category there are 10 skills. And V:tM uses ten sided dice.

Roll D10 for each skill category, and see what skill the die result points at. Write those skills down. They are moods, settings, ideas, actions etc. for your adventure, quest, plot or even campaign.
You just have to fill out the rest, how to tie together those skill based ideas.

You don't necessarily have to be 100% literal about the results. They are just for inspiration. If you get result "linquistics" but are inspired about political plot, do so.

I give few examples next based on Vampire: the Masquerade. It took only few minutes to come along with these plots after rolling the skills for moods.

Leadership - Firearms - Occult

Band of renegade Brujah in Camarilla city have found an old tome about city's Ventrue history what can be harmful for Ventrue leadership. Ventrue want that old tome away from Brujah renegades. Brujah renegades are heavily armed and won't give it up easily and are ready to protect that old tome to harm Ventrue leadership.

Leadership = Ventrue
Firearms = Heavily guarded Brujah renegades
Occult = Old tome containing harmful information about city's Ventrue past

Expression - Animal Ken - Politics

Gangrel are not happy with city's status. They don't like how their clan's ideas have little support in city hierarchy and Gangrel's close relations to Brujah could be dangerous. If Gangrel are not pleased, it would be easy for them to turn clan Brujah head also. Negotiations and politics are needed to keep Gangrel satisfied and loyal to Prince.

Expression - Negotiation
Animal Ken - Clan Gangrel
Politics - Gangrel who don't feel that city has anything common with their interests

Brawl - Survival - Linquistics

Characters' coterie is attacked in remote alley by unknown vampire coterie. Their clan, sect or motives remained unknown. Characters don't yet know was that only a random attack from angry caitiff, vagabond Camarilla members or even Sabbat brutes. It's character coteries responsibility to take action to find out themselves who attackers were or even tell some of the primogens or Prince what happened.

Brawl - Attack in alley
Survival - What is going on?
Linquistics - To find out who the attackers were

Athletics - Firearms - Occult

Atmosphere in the city has been dark for few nights. Everyone knows that something is about to happen. Character(s) while minding their own business in streets see in distance a strange person, who flees after notices characters seeing him. Character's might try to pursuit him. If character's capture this person, they find out he is a caitiff with strange symbol on his forehead. Caitiff refuses to talk and seems to be insane. Behind the curtains of Camarilla, there is Lasombra brainwashing city's unfortunate caitiffs to make his small shock troop army to keep Camarilly busy while Sabbat grows its roots into the city.

Athletics - Pursuit
Firearms - Brainwashed caitiff shock troop
Occult - Lasombra, who brainwashes caitiff to mindless Sabbat drones.

Final Words

Have fun with experimenting. If some result doesn't fit your idea, re-roll. If you suddenly get idea outside your rolls, use it.
This is just for inspiration, if you are out of your own ideas for plot, quest, adventure or even whole campaign.

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