A user under the handle of Ryan Pendergast recently posted this to the Juhlin forum. It’s too good not to preserve and repost. This is a briefing map for the summer 2000 NATO offensive in the first edition Twilight: 2000 timeline. It really illustrates how far out on a limb 5th Infantry Division was even before they ran into the Soviet counterattack.
A number of years ago – musta been while I was in college, to judge by the publication date – I happened to read Eve Forward’s Villains by Necessity. Someday, I’ll track down a copy that isn’t going for $40+ for a mass-market paperback… but today does not seem to be that day.
I’ve always wanted to run a fantasy campaign with the novel’s basic premise. Good won the war against Evil – a little too completely. The world is now tilting toward a pole of absolute Goodness. If not stopped, the entire morally-imbalanced universe will implode in a flash of floral-scented bunny sunshine. The PCs are the last unredeemed villains. They must save the world by releasing Evil from its prison.
It would probably degenerate into degeneracy within a half-dozen sessions, but there you are.
Saving this classic blog post from Walter Jon Williams because it needs to be preserved. Fantasy GMs and designers, take note.
I’ve had it with Chosen Ones. You know, the people we are told by the wise old wizard or some other Explicator of Plot who “are Chosen to save the world/kill the Dark Lord/become king/bring balance to the Force/whatever.”
Who the hell is it who does the Choosing, here? Lazy writers, that’s who.
Listen up, writers. Two things happen when I’m told that a person is Destined to accomplish something.
First, it removes all suspense. Because the character is Destined, you know the character’s going to succeed. Big yawn.
Second, it just makes me want to yell at the character, “Get on with it, won’t you? Don’t futz around for thirteen episodes, go kill the evil usurper and make yourself king. After all, you’re Chosen. It’s your damned job.”
Writers, if you’re going to give your characters a Destiny, at least give them one that isn’t so straightforward. Something like these:
Your character is Destined to fight a long rear-guard action against evil, until she makes a mistake or gets unlucky, and then she dies. (That would be Buffy the Vampire Slayer.)
Your character is Destined to defeat the enemy, but will then be despised forever because of the means necessary to achieve that victory. (Ender’s Game)
Your character is Chosen to defeat the evil monster, but will die in the attempt; and without his leadership, his kingdom will fall. (Beowulf. Heard of the Geats lately?)
Your character is Chosen to wield the most powerful magic in the universe, but is also Destined to use it to destroy the world. PS, no exceptions. (The Wheel of Time)
Writers, what these examples do is add irony, which is a vital component of successful literature. They also open the story to at least the possibility of tragedy, which you really want. If a tragic ending isn’t possible, and demonstrated to be possible (kill Boromir!), the eucatastrophe or happy ending will have no power.
Give me Destiny if you must, but also give me Doom.
Plot hook: the PCs are hired by a wizard to capture and deliver an ever-weirder list of wildlife and magical constructs. Over time, they learn what he’s using all of these critters for. They’re parts sources. The wizard is a fleshcrafter, taking contracts from other wizards or eccentric wealthy nobles to create the hybrid pets and guardians of their dreams.
He calls his business Build-an-Owlbear.
(Alternate title for extra horror if the PCs are being asked to abduct goblinoids: Build-a-Bugbear.)
Campaign pitch for… something. Spycraft, probably.
It is the late 1960s. Oleg Kalugin, KGB chief of station for Washington, D.C., has somehow managed to convince the State Department and the KGB to allow him to take a vacation in the United States. He and his wife and daughter will be driving to Florida, discreetly tailed escorted by FBI counter-intelligence agents.
Unfortunately, J. Edgar Hoover has decided this is the perfect opportunity to abduct and interrogate a senior KGB officer.
You are CIA operatives. Your superiors are aware of Hoover’s intentions and are terrified of the covert war that such an act would assuredly ignite. Your mission is to protect Kalugin without his knowledge, ensuring that his vacation is uninterrupted and he returns safely to Washington. Good luck!
I originally posted this to the CGL Battletech forum in November 2024.
The year was 2991 and Hauptmann Reinhard Yamazaki was incandescent with long-suppressed rage. Despite continuing a family history of unflinchingly loyal service to the Lyran Commonwealth, and demonstrating superior tactical acumen in the cockpit of his family’s salvaged Panther, the New Kyoto native had been subject to the full spectrum of prejudice during his time in the LCAF. Upon being posted to the 3rd Lyran Regulars, Yamazaki was informed that the unit had no company command slots – but the regiment would graciously allow him to prove himself at the head of a recon lance.
Continue reading →Originally posted to the CGL Battletech forums in 2018.
SOLARIS CITY, Solaris VII, April 10, 3062 – Even though I know the attack is imminent, it’s a shock when it comes. I have no warning. One moment, I’m anonymous in a crowd of revelers on Montenegro’s Amethyst Strip; the next, the crowd is scattering as a wiry man in red leather lunges for me with a knife. I’m paralyzed by shock, seeing only the glow of neon on the blade as it plunges toward my heart.
Continue reading →I was recently reminded of this snippet of material that was cut from the revised edition of Clanbook: Assamite for lack of space. While not canonical World of Darkness setting material, it has a special spot in the cold, shriveled place where my heart should be.
Return-Path: localuser@sb50-a7.black-veil.il
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 1998 01:11:34 +0200
From: Anonymous anonymous@black-veil.il
Reply-To: anonymous@black-veil.il
Organization: none
X-Accept-Language: en
To:
Subject: [BROKEN STONE] 308A
I had the right authentication and your PGP keys. Here is where I establish my bona fides as a daughter of Haqim, not as a piece of technology. My name is Sarah Schneier and I hold the Seat of Copper and Lightning in the Council of Scrolls, and yes, this is important enough to require me to expose myself.
Alpha passed the order down for me to get the word out to all cells. You have to know what’s on the Throne.
On 08 November, we opened the Vault of the Pillars. The records there confirmed our suspicions as to the identity and nature of the new Eldest.
You already know about the Baali Wars, and about the Second City, and the parables of how the Ancestor made the warriors to serve as the world’s first police, and how the sorcerers were made as demon hunters because the Ancestor did not trust Saulot.
The problem, at least before the sorcerers came along, was that the Baali and all their cultist followers were too disorganized for the warriors and the first sorcerers to strike at. It was like trying to fight a swarm of wasps. So the Ancestor gave them something to unify them. He found someone who was born with a soul already destined for corruption — a ten-year-old shepherd — and Embraced that child. Then Haqim took his childe to the pit that Saulot said had spawned the Baali and he threw that shepherd into it. And the blood of the Ancestor and the power of that soul turned that child into the leader that the Baali needed.
When the Baali assaulted the Second City en masse, the Ancestor was off on one of his mysterious disappearances. He made it back just in time to stop his childe and tear the demon out of the body that it rode, and when the battle was over he claimed that he had found the child dying on the battlefield and the Embrace was the only way to save that innocent victim. Then he watched the child to make sure that it was safe to have around.
I guess he did not watch long enough. Some sort of spiritual seed stayed in the child, and that soul was never truly clean anyway, no matter what the Ancestor did. And it woke up last year, and now it is the Eldest. It is not Baali, and it is not possessed, and we do not think it is not working with or for anything infernal, but it is a case where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and it is not one of Haqim’s Children any more, not really. It is something more, and it is something less.
Every scroll and tablet we found in the Vault of the Pillars, every test we can perform without arousing its suspicion, everything we have points to ur-Shulgi as that child. It is close enough to 100% certainty that Alpha ord
Power out, generators are up. It knows already, and it’s moving. File attachments have all data that is in our hands as of tonight, and the mirror sites will contain it for download as long as they stay up. You have all that we have. Use it.
Go with God, and may He be mer^S^Csend^Cquit
One of the joys of starting an episodic dungeon-crawling campaign is the complete absence of need to invest a lot of time in complex setting design. This is what I gave my players.
Continue reading →This one’s for MechWarrior:
It’s December 2766. All of the PCs, for whatever reason and whatever their origins, are on Terra over the traditional holiday season. On the morning of the 27th, they’re all at a diplomatic function (or on duty, or waking up hung over…) in Unity City. That’s when the shooting starts… and they find themselves the only protagonists standing between Stefan Amaris’ coup and Helena Cameron.
This campaign would be heavy on action-espionage and outright military action as the PCs try to get a Cameron heir off world, out of the Sol system, and to something resembling safety. Depending on the mix of PCs, both character-scale and wargame-scale conflict could be feasible.