Ravenous Role Playing

An important contact to the PCs has come up missing. A quick investigation of the contact’s hideout/office/home show signs of violence and hasty theft. Where is the contact? Search the mess of the ransacked location for clues and follow them!

All of the infants in the town suddenly gain the ability to speak clearly and coherently, but the parents of the babies can only babble and gurgle. Anyone without a child is unaffected by this strange phenomenon. What are the PCs going to do about it?

This could apply to a fantasy realm or a modern one. One of the PCs receives a message from a dead relative. If it’s a fantasy setting, the message comes in the form of a ghostly manifestation of the dead one. If it is a modern/future genre, the message is the deceased’s voice left on a voicemail or answering machine message.

The message from the dead person is simply this, “See you soon.”

What does this mean for the PCs? Imminent death? A foretelling of doom? A soon-t0-come visit to a fortune teller?

Here’s a cyberpunk hook for you guys.

Pizza delivery men (and a few women) have turned up shot dead on their runs. This is nothing unusual in a dystopic future, but there are rumors that all of the deliveries were to different houses and the pizzas were all topped with anchovies and mushrooms. There have been sightings of a four-armed man (all four being cybernetic implants) in the areas of the killings, but no one has yet to witness the killings. Each of the houses the deliveries were destined for deny ordering the pizzas. The police seem to care about these crimes for some unknown reason (they normally don’t care much at all) and have hired the PCs to help them investigate the killings.

Three strange portals opened up in town. Two are blue and seem to link to one another. The third is purple. Where does it lead? The PCs are hired to find out where it goes and return with information. Oh. By the way, people that go through the blue portals seem to come through with less wits about them for a few minutes before returning to normal.

A man turns up dead with his throat cut. Among his belongings is an extraordinary amount of money (large gold pouch, credit stick with high dollar value, wad of cash bills, etc.) and a slip of paper with the names of the PCs on them. If the group has lost a group member recently, that name is included in the list with a line through it.

Are the PCs being hunted for something, or is this a plant of information to implicate the PCs in another crime. Serious questions from the authorities ensue, and the group better have good answers.

People around town have gone missing. At the scene of each abduction links of chain can be found. The chains are magical in nature and seem to writhe when touched.

What can it mean?

This can be applied to all genres.

The group is traveling down a small road near a large city. Suddenly a bloody women bursts from the underbrush in front of the group’s vehicle (wagon, chariot, hovercraft, car, etc.) screaming for help and that three people (men, cyborgs, goblins, aliens, etc.) are trying to capture/kill her.

If the PCs save the woman, she thanks them heavily and asks for transportation into the nearest town. On the way there, there is another ambush obviously targeting the woman. She stays tight lipped about why she is being attacked, but promises to reveal everything once she is safely in the city.

Once in the city, she guides the PCs to a slum district and a run-down warehouse. Inside, she reveals a cache of weapons she plans on using to overthrow a nearby government with. She explains how vile and cruel the governing body is and asks the PCs for help in her quest.

Do the PCs help the woman? Do they turn her in to the local authorities? Do they try to capture her and turn her in to the neighboring authorities? Do they just walk away and shrug?

This one’s for you sci-fi folks out there.

One of the PCs receives a text message (or instant message or email or packet transmission or some other form of instant communication) that states they will die in 15 minutes. That’s it. Just a 15 minute warning of their death. The source of the transmission is not readily available.

Fifteen minutes later, an “accident” happens that almost claims the PC. It could be a car crash, an errant light rail train, a crane collapse or something that could be written off as coincidence. Immediately after the “accident” the PC receives another transmission, “We missed. You won’t be so lucky in an hour.”

The PC (or group) now has an hour to track down the source of the transmission. Each hour this repeats itself. Each “accident” will become more and more perilous as the day drags on.

Once the PC (or group) tracks down the source of the transmissions and puts a stop to them, the “accidents” come to a sudden stop.

The party witnesses the kidnapping of a small child by a group of men (and maybe women) that swoop in on a flying carpet to scoop up the child. The shocking part is not the kidnapping, but the fact that the entire group on the carpet looks just like the party!

Framed!

Now the party has to find the child and the group responsible in order to clear their good name.