A large biker gang of Native Americans (from all sorts of tribes) have banded together and decided they will retake what was once properly theirs. They plan on reclaiming the entirety of North America. Their plans are broad and sweeping, but not all that well thought out. Unfortunately, the PCs are smack in the middle of the initial uprising and must either decide to join the biker gang or fight them. Unfortunately, the biker gang will only take someone with at least 1/8th Native American blood in them. They have a small lab setup and some scientists doing tests on DNA samples from volunteers to ensure this is the case. Anyone that volunteers to join, but does not pass the DNA test, is given a pass for 24 hours to leave the immediate area because of their good will toward the biker gang.

What will the PCs do against a relatively large and very well armed gang? Run? Fight? Join? Hide? Lots of fun options there.

It’s up to the PC and his or her friends to keep the NPC’s actions in check while they try to find a way to reverse the situation and return things back to normal.

Each group is paid half the funds up front and will receive the other half when the daughter is found…

The noble with the “missing” daughter has agents setup all over town and reads/watches reports/videos from the agents at regular intervals and laughs at the hilarity of it all. Eventually, he’ll become bored again and will start dropping hints to some of the groups that other groups has his daughter. This will pit the groups (and the PCs) against each other until someone finally figures out what is going on and the survivors turn against the crazed, yet still bored, man.

As a twist on things, I would make the PCs as full-blown adults with military training cut off from their unit(s) and they encounter the Wolverines (the teenagers) as NPCs. I can see it being lots of fun with the “grizzled war vet” having to learn the local hidey holes and mountain routes from the “snot nosed kids” of the area. The role playing possibilities are endless from this point of view.

What do you guys think? Would Twilight 2000 (or its recent incarnation Twilight 2013) work well in the Red Dawn setting?

There were a plethora of skills and backgrounds used in the movie. Most of the skill checks seemed to be combat related, which fit wonderfully with a role playing session. While we all enjoy making a group, interacting with NPCs (go Bill Murray!) and having those simple conversations while on long trips, most role playing sessions seem to revolve around the next fight. In the movie’s case, the fights were wonderfully done, and I wonder if there’s going to be a sequel to the movie. It was just done so perfectly that I could see a second one coming about in the near future.

Now, the quandary I have is this one: What system to use? I really don’t like d20. I never have. Not enough skills to pick from. D&D 4e is obviously out without massive modifications and at that point, you may as well make your own system. This leaves some modern and/or generic systems to use. I could see Top Secret S/I as a possible game system. GURPS and Hero are in the mix as well. I could even see MechWarrior being used, but retrofitted to make it work in a modern world. Twilight 2000 anyone? That would most certainly fit, I think.

What about the folks out there? Gaming system recommendations for Zombieland?

PS: I know this isn’t a true adventure hook, but I was so, well, hooked by the movie that it seemed to fit for a post along these lines. If you’re curious about the plot, scenes and world of the movie, I highly recommend going to see it. Just keep the children away from it. It’s way to gory, gritty, realistic and adult for the wee ones.

One of the PCs enters a contest to win a “Magic Kingdom” and has won the grand prize! The entrant decided there was no way to win an actual kingdom of magic, and just wrote it off as an advertising gimmick until a representative of the prize staff arrived with keys to the castle, a deed to the lands and directions on how to get there. The PC then calls up his favorite friends (presumably the other PCs in the game) and takes them on a grand adventure from the mundane world to a world filled with faeries, unicorns, magicians and more!

How will the modern-day men and women of the world handle being exposed to the magical creations of this other land? Do they have magical abilities of their own that are dormant in the mundane world? How will the people of the magical kingdom accept their new king and ruler?

What game system would work best for this hook? GURPS/Hero are the obvious answers. Any others? I may actually take this hook and develop a campaign based on it, but I don’t know if I could talk my players in playing themselves.

An unmanned cargo ship from the asteroid belt arrives at Earth’s moon to be offloaded for processing. However, it arrives completely empty. The ship’s logs show that it left with a full load of iron ore and no one docked with the ship between its departure and arrival. Any calls made to the mining operations will result in little information beyond the bewilderment of the shipping company’s employees. The PCs are hired to investigate the mysterious disappearance of millions of dollars of iron ore.

What happened to the cargo? Are the ship’s logs accurate? How did the cargo magically disappear? What will the PCs find in the shipping lanes between the moon and the asteroid belt? If the PCs make it all the way to the belt, what will they find there?

A new neighbor has moved in next door to the PCs (or one of the PCs if they live separately) and he’s a strange old man. He seems harmless, but strange noises and lights emanate from his house at all hours of the day and night. The sounds are not loud enough, nor are the lights bright enough to interrupt sleep, but they are still strange. A week or two after he moves in, the PCs encounter another neighbor who claims that the old man is Merlin from the Arthurian legends and has setup shop in this quiet area. The neighbor wants the man out of the area before knights questing for the Holy Grail, round tables or damsels in distress begin marauding through the streets. The friendly neighbor implores the PCs to do something about Merlin before bad things start to happen.

What really is going on in the old man’s house? Is he really Merlin? Is he casting magic, or just practicing his pyrotechnics and light shows? What will the PCs do about the goings-on in the house?

Electricity has gone out for the past week in the area the PCs live in. All of their portable devices (cell phones, PDAs, laptops, computers, etc.) are running low on battery juice, and their fully electrical cars are out of charge. Chaos is rapidly descending on the area as everyone else is in the same predicament. The PCs are hired by the local officials to investigate the cause of the blackout and to bring it to an end. They have to do so without much of their technology in hand, or they have to scrounge up enough battery power to keep their devices running. If their cybernetic implants run off of batteries that recharge from the local power grid, they’re also in for a world of hurt as their implants begin to fail.