What's your most bonkers adventure idea?

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E-Rocker

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Like it says in the title, what is your most bonkers adventure idea? I'm looking for some inspiration to kick off Season 5 of my game with a bang!

System is Savage Worlds Adventure Edition, but that's incidental; I'm looking for ideas, not rules, and I'd really like something that, conceptually, will make my players lean back and say "Whoa," in their best Keanu Reeves voices.

Some background on the campaign, if it helps: the PCs are secret agents who work for an organization that sends them on missions in seven different, for lack of a better term, universes: a cyberpunk universe, a Western universe, a space-pulp universe, a WWII-era pulp universe, a gothic horror universe, a sword-and-sorcery universe, and an as-yet-unknown universe that will be some kind of mash-up of far-future tech and supernatural threats Man Was Not Meant to Know, possibly inspired by Savage RIFTS and/or CthulhuTech.

Thus far, they've spent significant amounts of time in the space-pulp universe, gothic horror universe, and Western universe, plus a single session, of questionable canonicity, in the cyberpunk universe. They've yet to visit the other three universes at all.

PCs are Baron, a semi-pacifist vampire; N0-5R, a not-quite-passing-for-human android healer; Ayu, a totally-passing-for-human android fighter who oscillates between wanting to be more human and thinking humans totally suck; Zera, an incredibly-strong winged humanoid who is pretty friendly and positive but also extremely good at killing; Pierre, a human psionic with strong interests in small businesses and local governments; and Sargoth, a human thief.
 
The party meets up in a tavern for the first time. As they get settled in to talk about their upcoming adventure, the lights in the tavern mysteriously go out. After a few seconds of rustling and instructions from the barkeep, the lights are restored. Moments later, a shriek and sound of broken glass pierces through the air. One of barmaids points down to a patron sprawled on the floor. He appears to have been strangled in gruesome fashion. A constable who had been patrolling nearby barges through the entrance moments later as questioning, accusations and finger pointing break out amongst the tavern. The group of adventurers must now prove their own innocence and help try to piece together whodunnit.

I just came up with this like five minutes ago.
 
I've mentioned this one before, but still have not done it.

Using Deathwatch, one person plays a Carcharodon space marine who's geneseed actually belonged to a World Eater. Using psychers and warp fueled tech he is sent back in time into the body of an ancient space marine (like Quantum Leap) to warn the primarch Angron about the Horus Heresy. The other players are World Eater battle brothers of the character the time traveler manifests inside. He has to convince them and then Angry Ron about the treachery in a time where Angron would rather just kill his legions than look at them. Most of the campaign will be trying to gather other allies.
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The most bonkers adventure I tried to run was for the Amber roleplaying game and featured the "Seasame Street Shadow". I said "tried" because once the player figured out what was going it was a full blown mutiny.

Perhaps what might be more of use in the sample setting of Cyberblues City Deluxe. It features a partially flooden and balkanised London rules by the cyborg queen Victoria Perpetua. You can grab it here https://ukrpdc.wordpress.com/2018/01/15/cyberblues-city-deluxe/ It's free. It's got pictures.

balcony.jpg
 
Standard adventure intro, the big bad evil guy reveals himself for dramatic effect and is gloating over the PC's when BAM! A flash of light and suddenly the BBEG is now a harmless baby. The PC's now have to either protect the baby from it's former minions who want him back to lead them, or kill the baby and face the consequences.
 
Aliens, who pass for humans, are stricken by a plague that wipes out most of their men. They are on short leave on -world- unfortunately, their interactions with the populace are mostly ahem overly positive except the plague-virus and their psychic abilities trigger sudden random mutations--i.e superpowers in the local populace with who they've ahem interacted with. Now they're struggling to calm the population and deal with the new supers, empowered by sexual contact, and TRACE down their other partners, who may ALSO change. To stop a superhuman (but not hero) plague. Since the morals of the person remain intact. (This was a supers game I tried to run once and went awry due to unprepared players..so, it be silly to see it used to bring in outside help.)
 
Standard adventure intro, the big bad evil guy reveals himself for dramatic effect and is gloating over the PC's when BAM! A flash of light and suddenly the BBEG is now a harmless baby. The PC's now have to either protect the baby from it's former minions who want him back to lead them, or kill the baby and face the consequences.

Sounds like the plot of a '90s X-Men comic!
 
Oh, there's a system requirement. I was thinking about an adventure I started writing many years ago when I was high as fuck. It was a very, um, pungent take on a Micronauts/Inner Space kinda thing.

I wouldn't say there's a system requirement... I'll be running it in SWADE, but I'm fairly adept at adapting stuff to that system.
 
Aliens, who pass for humans, are stricken by a plague that wipes out most of their men. They are on short leave on -world- unfortunately, their interactions with the populace are mostly ahem overly positive except the plague-virus and their psychic abilities trigger sudden random mutations--i.e superpowers in the local populace with who they've ahem interacted with. Now they're struggling to calm the population and deal with the new supers, empowered by sexual contact, and TRACE down their other partners, who may ALSO change. To stop a superhuman (but not hero) plague. Since the morals of the person remain intact. (This was a supers game I tried to run once and went awry due to unprepared players..so, it be silly to see it used to bring in outside help.)
Sounds like fun. And basically guarantees that most people so empowered wouldn't fit the mold of "superhero material":shade:!

Sounds like the plot of a '90s X-Men comic!
Well, except in a 90ies comic there would be much less of a dilemma, I'm afraid. Maybe if it's an earlier or later comic:grin:?


My own contribution: a world where steamtech is empowered by binding not one, but two elementals - a water one and a fire one - in close proximity...suddenly starts experiencing more and more floods. And the gods seem upset, to the point where the Moon is nowhere to be seen. The Moon Goddess has probably got to the Earth for her own reasons...but she's throwing into havoc planned religious ceremonies!
PCs must investigate.

What's going on? Well, the water the elementals are using is coming from elsewhere. And they're basically raising their water vapours in the atmosphere all the time, by simply using cars. And probably desertificating some other world.
The whole thing was actually engineered by a doomsday cult.
 
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Out of nowhere a wizard or other powerful being appears and teleports the PC's to his magnificent mansion. He then forces them to work as maids (Irrelevent of gender) in his mansion, cooking, cleaning and walking his "pet" (some kind of monstrous being). PC's have to figure out how to get out of this situation and escape.
 
So the PCs arrive in a small village. Edge of civilization kind of place, with a dark mysterious forest nearby. The village has been having trouble recently. It started when some cattle were found mutilated, and now some farmers on the outskirts have gone missing. If the adventurers look into these goings on, they'll find that a woodsman recently disturbed some old standing stones, uncovering a cave system of some kind. Turns out there are goblins and the like in there. Maybe some giant spiders too.


I don't really go for bonkers.
 
In my Pulp HERO game I had a scenario where Walt Disney's plane was taken down and he was held hostage just south of the Bermuda Triangle.
So PCs had to rescue Walt Disney from pirates of the Caribbean.

JG
 
Oodles, but I share one.

:ooh: A shopping excursion in a dungeon! The dungeon is a violent pastiche of sword & planet and late 1980s shopping malls. :crossed: Can you survive the bargains?
 
PCs arrive in a town they've never been to before and stop at an inn/hotel/motel/cantina etc.

They notice they're getting the side eye from the locals and one of them mutters something like "shameful, them daring to show their face here after what they did".

Later one of the PCs hears a pssst from a side room and investigates. He finds himself standing there with a glowing cube. The other him hands him the cube and says "take this you're going to need it. Whatever you do don't...and disappears mid sentence".

Investigation of the cube reveals that it is basically a rubix cube that manipulates time and space.
 
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Have two of the universes slam into each other. Try to figure out why it is happening and stop it before it is irreversible, and/or deal with the governments/power structures of the two universes slamming into each other and vying for power in the new bizarro universe. You could have it happen in a more isolated part of the world that your characters happen to be in at the start, and then having it spreading as the two universes overlap and different parts of each one overwrite the other.
 
Oodles, but I share one.

:ooh: A shopping excursion in a dungeon! The dungeon is a violent pastiche of sword & planet and late 1980s shopping malls. :crossed: Can you survive the bargains?


Well, there is a judges Guild module for Tunnels & Trolls in which the players can either play it "straight", or open up, run and maintain a fast food franchise (or even a chain of them) in a ten level dungeon.

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I'd like to run Masks of Nyarlathotep but with chinese characters inspired by HK movies like gunmen. Basically, John Woo meets Cthulhu. (I already did a Takashi Miike Meets Cthulhu session, Katana Tentacle Party, and it was quite fun). I was thinking of using Feng Shui for this but Pulp Cthulhu will do that nicely.
 
I'd like to run Masks of Nyarlathotep but with chinese characters inspired by HK movies like gunmen. Basically, John Woo meets Cthulhu. (I already did a Takashi Miike Meets Cthulhu session, Katana Tentacle Party, and it was quite fun). I was thinking of using Feng Shui for this but Pulp Cthulhu will do that nicely.
I rather like this concept - 19th century Chinese kung fu masters tracking the nefarious plots of cultists across the globe.

Off and on I consider doing Splatter-Thulhu - the game of eldritch cosmic horror and heavily armed rednecks. This would channel stuff like early Peter Jackson (Bad Taste etc.), Evil Dead, Tremors, They Live and suchlike.

This is an idea that I've had kicking about for a little while now - a game of gore, eldritch horror and rednecks with big guns. It borrows from films like Bad Taste, Evil Dead 2, Brain Dead, Tremors, They Live and '80s B-movies in general. Sometimes when I've mentioned this on forums I've had a few 'I'd really like to play that' type replies, and I suspect it might make a good beer-and-pretzels game.

Splatter-Thulhu - the game of eldritch cosmic horror vs. heavily armed rednecks.

In this game you play characters with names like Hank, Chuck or Joelene as they tangle with eldritch horrors while armed with nothing but their wits and a small arsenal of large guns. It sits in the tradition of films such as various efforts of John Carpenter, Sam Raimi or early Peter Jackson.

Of course it has stats for a chainsaw.

Sample adventure concepts:

The Midwich Cuckolds:
In which the inhabitants of a small town discover they are raising alien children with mind control powers that can only be defeated with mind shields made of tinfoil, and conspire to destroy all the alien spawn before they are discovered and have their own families turned against them. The conclusion to this may or may not involve a school shooting orchestrated by said rednecks while wearing their tinfoil hats.

From My Cold, Dead Fingers: In which our intrepid heroes defeat an apocalypse of mindless zombies using nothing but their wits and an arsenal of large guns. Plot twist: the Zombies are well aware of their second amendment rights and also armed to the teeth.

Aliens Ate My Pickup: In which our intrepid heroes investigate a series of strange occurrences that may be the acts of a mysterious, deep-state conspiracy backed by alien lizard men. The heroes must defeat the alien conspiracy using nothing but their wits and an arsenal of large guns.

The Ex-Files: In which a rash of missing divorcees lead our heroes into the depths of the local Red Pill society. Whatever nefarious plots are being hatched here must be uncovered and thwarted by our intrepid heroes using nothing but their wits and an arsenal of large guns.

The Doom that came to Chipping Sodbury: Moving across the Atlantic, our intrepid heroes must investigate unsettling events in the sleepy hamlet of Chipping Sodbury with nothing but their wits and ... Oh! shit! We're not allowed guns here ... Is that a chainsaw? An old sword? A narwhal tusk? Think: Shaun of the Dead meets Tremors.

Make R'Lyeh Great Again: In which the characters find themselves unwitting pawns in a plot to raise Great Cthulhu from his slumber and must stop the insidious memetics turning cultists into mindless slaves to their TVs. Our intrepid heroes must defeat the conspiracy using nothing but their wits and an arsenal of large guns.

The Green Gables Chainsaw Massacre: I like the title, still thinking about the substance.

In the Best Possible Taste: Cthulhoid aliens eating hitch hikers and mutilating cows.

This thread is for some musings on the design.
 
I also ran a Deadlands game in which the Dr Moreau kidnapped Charles Darwin. The players character went to the rescue only to find that to discovery that, having got passed the whole kidnapping incident, Darwin was quite interested in Moreau's work and didn't really want to be rescued.

Of course the most shocking aspect of this adventure was that I ran it using Deadlands D20.
 
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