PLOT IN A CAN POST

[wildestmods]

PLOT IN A CAN POST

This post is for generic player plot ideas that are open for anyone to grab for their player plotting. This is a good place to list player plot ideas that you either don't have the time to run or are unfinished and you want to give them up so someone else can figure out how to flesh them out.

This list won't be updated. You can just volunteer player plot ideas in the comments and people can scroll through the comments for ideas if they're interested in picking up something to potentially run.

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EXAMPLES
❧ An evil witch has been kidnapping children from nearby towns to her gingerbread house, fattening them up, and eating them. The fellowship must defeat her despite the fact that the magic around her home turns them into powerless children.

❧ The fellowship must escape a barrow-wight, and from the horrifying tomb they're trapped in, after falling asleep in the hills at nightfall.

❧ At the nearby village, many of the children are sick with a mysterious disease that only affects children. They barter for food and the villagers agree to give them room and board and supplies if they catch a couple unicorns from the nearby forest so that they can use the horn as a cure.

Comments

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1. A nearby village has an issue with giant animals raiding their food stores! It seems that an alchemist lost a magical beaker in a nearby river that keeps producing the last thing stored in it: an enlarging potion! The local wildlife is randomly affected, but it's dangerous enough that the Fellowship is the only group capable of braving the wilds.


2. Rich people who refuse to grow old are buying bodies from bodysnatchers, replacing the minds of innocent people with their own utilizing the foulest necromancies in order to stay young. They will all their possessions and wealth to their new identities and pick up where they left off. The family of one of the victims reaches out to the Fellowship for aid.


3. Scouts discover a lush jungle paradise, uninhabited by man or beast but perfect for habitation. Unfortunately, the 'paradise' is anything but, as it's secretly a living organism that feeds off of... Something. Magic, emotions, whatever works best. Either way, the Fellowship now has to flee an unusually active landscape that sees them only as food.


4. Years ago, a group of alchemists made their fortunes making chemical weapons for a petty warlord. After months of work, they came up with their ultimate success: a self-replicating gas that force-bonded the elements in the air to make an all new contact poison. With this, cities and fortresses could be purged of life in a matter of hours, with country-wide implications if it got out of control.
   
   Horrified at the potential of this weapon, they fled, taking fragments of the formula with them, having the fragments tattooed to themselves as a constant memory of what they unleashed. Unfortunately, said warlord managed to discover the incomplete formula after piecing together the scraps of their burned notes, and has managed to track down all but one or two remaining alchemists, retrieving their formula fragments. The final survivor has come to the Fellowship for protection. Can they protect him from the warlord's sinister forces? Or, failing that, can they piece together the missing parts of the formula and create a counter to the weapon?


5. A classic plot: One of the greatest huntsmen in the world has gotten bored/has contracted a fatal disease. Desperate to have the ultimate hunt before he retires/expires, he captures members of the Fellowship and lets them loose in his hunting ground, pre-supplied with his own traps and a deadly menagerie!


6. If you remove someone's emotions, you sever their attachment to a moral code. By hypnotizing, or drugging, innocent victims into feeling nothing, a mental mastermind has discovered that they make the perfect soldier. They don't feel any remorse or sorrow for harming innocents or stealing. They don't feel the fear that would make them back down from a fight. And they feel no loyalty to any man, nation, or flag.
   
   With their army of mind-wiped dummies, this emotional engine of evil sweeps across the land with their innocent pawns, undetectable without an empath or a telepath capable of sensing who among a crowd is the next criminal.


7. Stick the Fellowship into a situation with an aphasia spell in place, preventing verbal communication. Best for small groups.


8. Plot where they're forced to slow down while carrying someone or something that cannot be dropped and abandoned. Problem: They're in the rainforest. And the army ants are on the march, devouring everything in their path. Leiningen Versus the Ants, basically.


9. The quest for Camelot! Characters find themselves entangled in the legendary court of King Arthur... Except that one of his trusted knights, or perhaps even Merlin, Guinevere, or Arthur himself, is secretly a shadowy doppelganger! While they pretend well, they're shaped more on darker, more modern and subversive takes, and who knows what will happen if they manage to warp the golden myths?


10. The Fellowship runs into a batch of Black Mercies that have developed hive tactics, meaning that they can ensnare entire groups in their unbreakable fantasies! Can they rescue their allies from their own perfect realities?


11. TALENT SHOW!


12. In this world, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. But there's a way to get a leg up. If someone agrees to allow themselves to be hunted, and they survive, they'll get enough to set themselves up for life. But they're being chased by a load of hunters, and the Hunt Master has no intention of letting them get a single penny.


13. Out to barter for exotic supplies, the castle runs into an odd township where everyone has a wrestling gimmick and Kayfabe is heavily enforced. Forced by township law to battle for their goods and their freedom, will the Fellowship show their faces and earn what they need or turn heel?


14. While searching for a missing child in the Western Mountains, the characters locate the mountaintop lair of a treasure-hungry dragon.


15. The castle atop Falcon's Peak is rumored to be haunted. It's a dare for children to stay the night sometimes, only now some have gone missing and the Fellowship is asked to investigate! Instead of old ghosts, the Fellowship encounters a band of brigands and hobgoblins led by an evil magic-user!


16. When a sorcerer is cornered by a group of bandits, he accidentally summons members of the Fellowship to his aid!


17. A crime wave has struck a nearby town and all fingers point to the new guy, a friendly half-ogre named Grog! Can the Fellowship prove his innocence or will old prejudices ruin Grog's life?


18. There's a monster under a nearby bridge! Can the Fellowship drive it away and make the pass safe for farmers again? Well, yeah.


19. A wizard loses control of his summoned elemental and begs the Fellowship to help send it back to whence it came!


20. They say that there's sunken treasure undersea at Bluenose Cove, but a violent wereshark has staked a claim and is ruining the livelihoods of the local fishers in order to protect it! Can the Fellowship handle this pescatorial pest? Or will this mer-menace's greed drive a village to ruin?


21. The circus is in town! However, this bustling center of fun and fancy has a darker secret: one of the big attractions is actually a hypnotic spell that coerces people to hand over more and more of their money!


22. An evil dragon holds the local township hostage! Its demands? A unicorn to cure its illness! Of course, it plans to devour said unicorn, but...


23. The lands around this village are blighted, and for good reason! The local nature spirits are fighting amongst each other and causing a drought! Can the Fellowship settle their dispute, or will some spirits need... removing?


24. To free the spirit of a deceased artisan, the Fellowship must destroy the vase which holds his earthly remains. Unfortunately, the vase is the prized possession of a local cyclops!


25. A mad slayer is on the loose! The Fellowship is begged for their assistance in the matter, but no one can tell them the true cause of this slaughter: The murderer is possessed by an evil sword spirit!