Human Slaves Of An Insect Nation, Part 15-The Great Big Plot Hook Thread

Why...can't I...look...away?

Human Slaves Of An Insect Nation-The Great Big Plot Hook Thread.

Story hooks. The treasured bounty of GMs and StoryTellers stuck everywhere. That little bit of nonsense that you can built an adventure around. The Philosopher’s stone that transmutes awkwardness into awesome and helps you move that hot potato from your own blistering hands to those of your players’.

In the interest of helping out, here is a smattering of random plot hooks, pooled together for your own interest and enjoyment, in no particular order!

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Human Slaves of An Insect Nation, Part 14-Machinations of the Space Princess

 MotSP-making balls-to-the-wall space opera action sexy again.

Human Slaves of An Insect Nation-Machinations of the Space Princess or Faster than the speed of awesome.

It takes a lot to sell me on a science fiction role-playing game. Sure, I love science fiction as a genre; in fact, I find it to be the most thought-provocative and entertaining medium in all of fiction

Mostly because its best and greatest examples involve predicting the madcap world of tomorrow that’s just around the corner.

But its representatives in tabletop roleplaying have been-in my experience-inadequate at best. This could be because I live in a country where D&D and its clones are mostly the only games in town (with the exception of WoD, for which I do not care for) but also because most of the science fiction rpgs I have come across so far have been huge, convoluted disappointments.

It would take a long for a science fiction rpg to sell me (especially in my current, overworked, grumpy state). It’d have to be easy on the uptake, lighter than a feather rules-wise and above all, fun. Which is why when I first encountered Machinations of the Space Princess, I did so with considerable prejudice. 

About 40 pages into it, I was so glad James Desborough had made me feel like a dick over my (unfounded) preoccupation. I couldn’t put the book down and I was pleasantly surprised to find myself taking down notes, modifying my Stormtroopers On The Lam campaign idea to fit it into the overall universe and philosophy of Machinations.

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Imperium Reginae, Part Two-Races of the Empire

 

Life begets life, begets intelligence.

 

Imperium Reginae, Part Two-Races of the Empire

The Austro-Russian Empire spans four planets, each brimming with life. Its subjects range from plain old, boring humanity to the Elves and Drow of Selene to even the alien Rakasha of Agathodaimon.

But what is the role and function of each of intelligent race of the Empire? How do they fit in the greater scheme of things? What is their position and function? In the interest of avoiding going into too much detail, I will instead provide a rough guide to the class and caste distinction of Imperial Society.

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Imperium Reginae, Part One

Orbs spinning in the void, kept in line by ruthless gravity

Human Slaves of An Insect Nation-Imperium Reginae (a bare-bones attempt at creating a steampunk setting)

I was never really partial to steampunk. Not because I found the genre to be beneath me, but because when you’ve been raised on a steady diet of British trip-your-balls-off science fiction and Japanese psychic supermen, well…

You can’t exactly go back to pretending like you give a damn about Star Trek

But steampunk (for all the unnecessary goggles, dials and cogs that it has added to perfectly functional designs), has also added a great deal of awesome to pop culture, the kind that you can’t exactly shrug off and pretend like it doesn’t exist. It bridges fantasy and science fiction in that very special, bullshit science kind of way that I have come to respect and admire.

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Human Slaves of An Insect Nation, Part 13-Sexy In Spandex (short)

I’m only eating this dude because he’s EVIL! What? Eating people’s wrong now? Oh screw you, society, screw you!

Human Slaves of An Insect Nation, Part 13 (shortie)-Sexy In Spandex

I was always curious as to why almost every attempt of mine to run anything other than a fantasy campaign failed so utterly. It took me about ten years before I made an honest, earnest attempt at setting up an overarching plot, devoting all my brainjuice into this singular act of weaving a long-running supers story and two years before I could properly run it, before I realized what I had been doing wrong.

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Human Slaves of An Insect Nation, Part 12-Chillin wit' Da Villains

I find your lack of phat beats…disturbing.

Human Slaves of An Insect Nation, Part 12-Chillin’ Like Villains

In the previous installment of the series, I detailed a few stepw toward generating a campaign villain: a creature that, despite its complexities and motivations, is wholly and utterly commandeered and controlled by you, the Storyteller, for the duration of the campaign.

Fellow redittor MetaMeh commented on last week’s article, proposing I focus on giving some tips (or more specifically, my own ideas) on handling the dynamics of more than one villains. As this is a subject that requires almost an entire thesis on its presentation and handling, I have instead chosen to take the easier road and try to address something that, again, focuses on a number of evil people, but does not require any in-depth look into campaign dynamics.

In short, evil characters.

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Human Slaves Of An Insect Nation, Part 11-Villainin'

Pitch-black schemes hatched in pitch-black depths, by ArchAngel73

Human Slaves of An Insect Nation, Part 11-Villainin’

A good friend of mine once said, as I was busy explaining to him my outline of Prototype’s plot in a manner that made its story appear, at the very least, competent, that…

‘Villains are important, dude. They like, make up for half the game.’

Needless to say, this was the sort of casual use of ABSOLUTE NARRATIVE WISDOM that occasionally grips my friends mid-conversation that just stuck in my brain and gave me the burning desire to elaborate on.

Of course, my constant attempts to bring back this spark of cosmic epiphany to my friend, failed; the bastard, after dispensing his bit, had left me to do the heavy lifting.

That was two years ago.

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Human Slaves Of An Insect Nation, Part 10-Games I won't Get To Run

 Yes sir, only motherfucking wayto travel by Stupid_Crow

Human Slaves of an Insect Nation, Part 10-Games I won’t get to run

Everybody gets a crazy idea stuck in their heads sometimes. Isaac Newton was absolutely convinced that a mysterious gas/element that burns everything but exists only for microseconds at a time existed, even as he kept the theory of gravity in the backburner. A dude called Kevin Eastman and his BFF, Peter Laird, thought it would be fun to make a story about teenage turtles with ninja skills and Renaissance painter names.

Some Japanese dude thought to himself: Imma make me a game that’s kinda about abortion, but it’s mostly intended as sociopolitical commentary! For kids!

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Human Slaves of An Insect Nation, Part 9-Wing It

Eh, it’ll hold.

Human Slaves of An Insect Nation-Just Wing it.

So you fucked up.

Your players missed the roll, the clues, failed to connect the dots and ignored the pleas of NPCs for help. They stabbed the prophet in the throat and one of them ate the sandwhich depicting the GodHead, wherein their true destiny was foretold. They also burned the tavern where they were supposed to meet their contact 

And you prepared all of two things during the entire week: Jack and shit. Also, Jack left town with your wife.

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Human Slaves of An Insect Nation, Part 8-Bullshit Science and You!

Mad, mad, mad, mad science-man by qione

Human Slaves of An Insect Nation, Part 8-Bullshit Science and you!

Quick, what do the following types of sorcery have in common?

Alloymancy

Thaumaturgy

Clap-hands-twice-and-shit-appears (AKA Fullmetal) Alchemy?

Necromancy

Technomancy

Math 

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Human Slaves of An Insect Nation, Part 7-The Importance Of Knowing When To Shut Up

 If these begin to spontaneously appear during your gaming session, then you’re doing it wrong…

Human Slaves of an Insect Nation, Part 7-The importance of knowing when to shut up.

Previous articles dealt with managing players, the illusion of power and some campaign management details. But this one, this one is special. Because this article deals with YOU, the Storyteller, in a manner that we have not yet approached.

Remember how I told you that you were going to fuck up a lot? Remember how I explained that you may make a ton of mistakes rules-wise and mess up in micromanaging the campaign?

Well there’s also a chance that you’re talking too much. And by talking too much I don’t mean “you do all the funny voices for every NPC” or even “give away too much information” (though this is also a problem that we’re going to cover) but that “you talk so goddamn much that your entire presentation becomes background noise”.

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Human Slaves of An Insect Nation, Part 6-The Illusion of power

“Here too it’s masquerade, I find:
As everywhere, the dance of mind.
I grasped a lovely masked procession,
And caught things from a horror show…
I’d gladly settle for a false impression,
If it would last a little longer, though.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 

Human Slaves of An Insect Nation, Part 6-The Illusion of Power 

In part 5 of this article series, I explained the importance of the appearance of power over actual power. In short, I was segwaying into handling higher levels without the hassle of number-juggling and advanced cock-fencing.

This approach in gaming is certainly unorthodox and seems, at first, downright lazy.

So you’re not willing to memorize 3 pages filled with shoddily written rules and parameters about aborted god-demon fetuses? For shame, sir! For shame!

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Human Slaves of An insect Nation-Part 4

Poor, unkillable, lonely slayer of teenagers…

Human Slaves of An Insect Nation, part 4-The Horrors of Horror

Aaahh, horror. Now that’s a genre that’s been tossed around a lot. Movies try to do it but barely succeed

and games do it, even though sometimes horror was not their original focus or intent:

Make no mistake: Horror is not an easy genre to master or to use. It is, in fact (along with comedy) among the toughest genres to work with, mostly because it is based on manipulating your audience and knowing exactly which buttons to push and a masterful understanding of narrative flow for maximum effect.

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Human Slaves of an Insect Nation Part 3-Your Players and You!

The story you can reach out and touch by Serhat Bayram

Human Slaves of an Insect Nation, part 3-Your players and you!

Part 1 was a rant and part 2 was gaming advice, but part 3 aims to cover the best and most precious aspect of your campaign:

Your players

“I'm the cream of the crop, I rise to the top
I never eat a pig cause a pig is a cop”

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Human Slaves of An Insect Nation part 2-Campaign Setup

The story is everything and everything is a story by MirrorCradle

Human Slaves of An Insect Nation, part 2: Setting up the Campaign Or Yes, Dave. It IS all about the story!

There’s a TON of role playing gaming articles that directly contradict everything I am about to write here. To be perfectly honest, I don’t blame them, since most of them have been written by gamers and are aiming for gamers who want to tread the middle ground and try to achieve an equilibrium between rules and micromanaging a campaign and narrating it.

Let me make one thing clear: rules are important.

Like ‘get gunned down by an attack chopper for breaking them’ important

They’re the objective ingredient holding an entire campaign together and the only thing that stops your game from turning into ‘I shot you, Timmy!’ ‘Nu-uh, cause I like, got a…magic impenetrable shield that covers my entire body!’

I remember having this conversation with my mother like, a hundred times…

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