InsaneJournal

Some Gamewide Plot Ideas
Every once in a while, as a mod, it's a good idea to do something out-there to get your game buzzing. This tutorial is about how to run a few game-wide plots that virtually everyone in your game can participate in. The world of Harry Potter makes it pretty easy to do crazy things. There are also some general High School ideas and some Marvel ideas too. These plots help shake things up and give people an excuse to act out of character once in a great while. Don't put these plots right on top of each other, but every couple of months it might be a good idea.

The first thing you need to make sure you do is make an OOC announcement making it clear what is going on and that participation is optional. Nearly every game has that one player who thinks that everyone is out to get them, so make it clear that nobody is being forced into anything, but this is an opportunity for plot and fun!


Harry Potter

Mass Potion Dosage: The Cupcake Plot

You can use cupcakes or anything you'd like. When I have run this plot I have chosen cauldron cakes because A. They're packaged and mass distributed. B. Everyone likes cupcakes! C. The poetic justice of being drugged from a potion hidden inside a Cauldron Cake is beautiful.

The Scenario: Someone at a food/potion manufacturer was bitter and decided to tip a concentrated dose of a potion into the mix. For a week everyone who eats said food/potion will be dosed.

Possible potions include: truth serum, love potion, aphrodisiac (this one is so fun), a potion that makes you act on your desire, a potion that makes you act like a child, poison (for the really dramatic, though this would probably not go on for a week before they found the source).

Example: In irreparable someone put aphrodisiac into the mix. Characters were able to resist, but the urge was so strong that most didn't have the self control. At first people weren't sure if it was alcohol (it launched at a birthday party) or their own hormones but by the end of the week they were warning each other and the ministry was trying to pull the batch off the shelves. It caused a lot of chaos, including the start of a Audrey/George/Angelina love triangle and the conception of James Sirius Potter.

Hex the Journals: The Mother Journal

Most Harry Potter games play with the journals being a Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes thing. Some make it a Flourish and Blotts thing. Either way, the way I have decided it works makes it very vulnerable to attack. We know that a protean charm was used for the galleons the DA communicated with and so it makes an easy fix for the journals. If that's the case, the master journal is under lock and key somewhere and if you hexed one, you would hex them all.

The scenario: Someone breaks in and hexes the master journal. Here are two possibilities I have run.

In my old Quidditch League game, the journals had a body swap charm. It was experimental magic and it took a while to sort out. Basically I took volunteers a week ahead and mixed them up for maximum chaos. Ron would be in Hermione's body, Hermione in Ginny's body, Ginny in Neville's body, etc. This lead to hilarity but also some drama. While Ron was stuck as a short girl, a fan was using Brynja Dunstan's body to seduce her boyfriend, Oliver Wood. This plot is actually better if only 1/2-2/3 of the characters participate. It's funnier when there's a straight man to play off of.

In irreparable we had the journals hexed with a truth compulsion. When you wrote in them you were compelled to spill the truth. If you tried to erase it or make it private, like a muggle repelling charm, you would think "No, no this needs to be said" and leave it. It had some pretty amazing results.




Marvel


Identity Issues: The Disney Plot

I like to use Scarlet Witch because her powers are infinite possibilities. If she's a player character you'll have to hope your Scarlet Witch player is open to anything. We ran two plots in team_up (Now closed) where Scarlet Witch's powers got the best of everyone. You can use any canon you'd like, but Disney worked because it is so well-known and diverse.

The Scenario: After a Disney movie marathon Scarlet Witch accidentally wishes that life could be like a Disney movie. As a result every character wakes up thinking they are a specific assigned character (Gambit=Aladdin, Husk=Toy Story's Jessie, and Magneto=Shere Khan). This wackiness continues until someone kisses Wanda and breaks the spell. It was amazing. Husk lasso'ed a bunch of people and Wolverine, who thought he was Sully from Monster's Inc, kept cutting holes in the back of kids' closets and jumping out to scare them and collect their screams.

If someone wants to be left out they can leave the school the night of the big change and come back wondering what everyone else is on.

The Love Scenario: "Soul Mates"

This requires an even number of characters. If you're finding an odd number of participants you may have to play the good mod and opt one of your kids out. I have one of mine go away for the weekend and come back to the madness so that there would be an even number.

The Scenario: Scarlet Witch once again makes a wish or an exasperated thought, "Why can't everyone just love one another?" and bam, everyone is "in love" with someone else. Pair them up ahead of time. Cause confusion. Make two straight dudes temporarily in love so they can spend a week fighting it, etc. This one, when I've run it, just wears off with seven days time.

Power Outage: How Wolverine Almost Dies

A week without powers (or four days, or however long you need).

The Scenario: Reed Richards (or any scientist available) in trying to make a small scale power inhibitor for Rogue, accidentally forgets to move a decimal on the calculation for the radiation dosage and BOOM. It's like an EMP bomb that shuts off everyone's powers within a certain radius for a roughly estimated period of time. Daredevil is seriously blind, Rogue is free to touch gambit all she wants, and Wolverine is suffering heavy metal poisoning that his powers usually present. Now, I have a really complicated theory of mutation that explains how one device could suppress X-Gene and accidental mutations alike, but this is not the place for it. Let's just say the radiation suppresses the mutated trait, not the X-Gene.




High School

~Rent a Senior Day
~Date Auction
~Dance/Party
~Gossip Blog
~School Play (NOT for Harry Potter games, as explained in Beetle the Bard)


That's all I've got for now. Maybe I'll do a 2.0 of this if people find it useful. These are some great ways to energize a game and give plot to people who think they are settling into a rut.