Joe's GM Wish List

Hello.

This is a collection of write-ups on a handful of the sorts of games I'd love to run, given the opportunity. I have probably pointed you toward this page, in hopes of figuring out what it is that I'd like to run next. So, without further ado:

The Marchwarden's Vassals

The heroes all belong to a single House, who dwell in close proximity to a handful of other Houses. They owe their allegiance not to the Great House of their realm directly, but to another ancient House who serve as Marchwarden of the area where they dwell (a river or other valley in the Vale, Riverlands, Westerlands or Dorne, a wood in the Reach or Stormlands). These other Houses of course have history with one another, some good and some bad. The tale begins at a wedding tourney, intended to celebrate the marriage of the Marchwarden to his third wife.

• Stormlands (9): Rainwood; Marchwarden House Morrigen
• The Reach (7): The Prince's Pass (The Princemarch); Marchwarden House Tarly
• The Vale (5): Northern Mountains (The Wintersmarch); Marchwarden House Tollett
• Dorne (5): The Prince's Pass (The Princemarch); Marchwarden House Blackmont
• Westerlands (4): Pendric Hills (The Goldmarch); Marchwarden House Foote

End of Days

A Scion Chronicle
These are the end times, the End of Days.

It began with a small rumble, a disturbance that no one noticed in the frantic information glut of the early 2010s. In the middle of political outrages, class conflict between the haves and the have-nots, fears over misogyny, racism and homophobia, concerns over First World freedoms, the latest memes to crawl across the information networks of the world and the thousand-thousand shrieking voices vying for attention at the end of 2012, it happened. The prison shattered.

At first the reports were dismissed as attention-seeking pranks. No serious journalist credited them, and even if they did, the shareholders in the media conglomerates weren't about to risk their credibility and good name reporting nonsense. Giants in the Alps, fiery serpents in the hearts of newly-active volcanoes in the Ring of Fire, great thunderbirds swooping through the hearts of storms that rumbled across the Midwest.

By the time the reports garnered any kind of actual attention on a world-wide scale, it was too late. The governments of the world were the first to take them seriously, of course. As it turned out, the world's governments had known of the strange men and women throughout history who occasionally came to their attention. Indeed, they were complicit in helping these occasional heroes with the blood of gods to hide their existence from the rest of mankind.

For at least three mortal generations, the warnings had been there. Since World War II, possibly since the igniting of the first atom bomb. The gods were paying attention once more, sending their herald to awaken the divine blood in their children, to take up celestial arms and fight the minions of the Titans while the gods themselves engaged the Titans themselves in the realms beyond the ken of mortals. Such battles were waged in secret, covert wars between godkin and titanspawn, with mortal intelligence agencies and corporations doing their best to keep everything hidden, so as not to shatter the very understanding the world had of itself.

Perhaps they should have bent more of their efforts at winning that war than hiding it.

No one knows which Titan broke loose first. With the strange deathknell of the year, marked in the Mayan calendar so many centuries before, the prisons were at their weakest. The world descended into terrible madness. A sun erupted over the sands of Egypt, turning the sand for miles around an ancient necropolis to glass. Ships all throughout the Caribbean were lost in a strange mist that rose up, spewing the dead from the waters. The smouldering ground of Centralia, Pennsylvania cracked and split in an inferno that birthed tall terrible towers of black basalt, which rose high into the air, a deadly cathedral to that which burned.

Tunnels and mines the world over spewed darkness itself into the world around them, clutching at all that was living and pulling it into the suffocating darkness below. A great hurricane blew into the Gulf of Mexico, and grew, and grew, and grew, until it encompassed the whole of that body of water, throwing smaller hurricanes onto the lands around it like a child scattering flower petals around it.

Across the world, horrors awoke, and mankind died by the cityful.

It has been five years since the End of Days, and mankind is a hunted, harried thing. Most humans dwell in tucked-away places, having learned that fighting the spawn of the Titans brings only escalating deaths. Thus, men flee and hide. Occasionally, the heralds still appear, to give men hope. These demigods are not the aloof, hidden secret masters that once fought the secret god-wars before the End. Now they are bright and shining champions, and humans rally around them in desperation.

You are one such hero, gifted with the blood of the gods. People rally around you, seeking your help, begging for your protection, for you are one of the few in the world who can defend them from the death that awaits them in this Titan-haunted wasteland that was once man’s world.

The Fiercest Lords

A Song of Ice & Fire Roleplaying Chronicle
Of all the tyrants the world affords, our own affections are the fiercest lords.
The lords of the Houses of Westeros live enviable lives. With great castles as their seats, ancient alliances to call upon, armies of killing men to obey them, knights to protect them and maesters to serve them, who has it so fine? At least, that's what the smallfolk think. In truth, the lives of Westeros' lords are often brutal and short, lived in sacrifice balanced between doing what one wants and what is best for one's House. Alliances between lords - whether recent or generations-old - can be the only means by which lords survive. And, as some have noted before: In the game of thrones, you win or you die.

This chronicle will be played in the "Game of Thrones" style of SIFRP gameplay. That is, each player will generate a minor House, which will determine how many player characters they will create (one per 10 points of Influence in their House). The players in the troupe will all be neighbors and allies, their characters spouses, wards, sworn knights or others associated with one anothers' Houses. This will explicitly be a troupe-style game, in which players will shift between their characters, based on the logic of the scenes presented; it is also explicitly a game that will require out-of-game communication to handle secrets, plots and other such things.

Players should be familiar with the Westeros setting. The group will choose which of the following Realms the game will be based out of: The North, the Riverlands, the Iron Islands, the Vale of Arryn, the Westerlands, the Stormlands & Crownlands, the Reach, Dorne.

Vajra

A Story of Exoscientific Archaeology, using the Storytelling System
You were sure that your life was over. Maybe it was imprisonment in the judicial system or mental heath care facility for urges you couldn't control. Perhaps it was isolation imposed by baffled medical practitioners or containment at the order of government-funded researchers who couldn't figure out what was wrong with you. You might have stayed one step ahead of them, just barely.

No matter what the details were, something changed in you dramatically and suddenly, and the results were nothing anyone could have anticipated. People died - maybe people you loved. It took its toll on sanity and health, until you were nearly ready to lay down and accept death.

Then...they found you. They are Vajra, a privately funded think tank that specializes in what they refer to as "exoscience" - science that lies outside the normal range of what is known. They are made up of some of the greatest minds of their generations, and backed by impressive holdings. No one really knows everything to know about them, of course, and that's just the way they like it.

All you know is that they fixed you. They cured you somehow. Well, not cured. Your treatments are ongoing, and for a little while they made you worse before you got better. They told you that you were trapped in the state you were in, like a cocoon ready to open, but too tough to do so alone, so they helped you. Now, you have talents you never in your wildest dreams imagined, and sometimes, even more than that. You're an agent of Vajra now, assisting them with your unique talents in ways that no one else can. They're searching for answers of some kind, though they're not even sure what the full questions are.

Nonetheless, you're with them. For now.

Savants Unlimited: Thaumaphoroi

A Mutants & Masterminds, Third Edition Campaign
They have given you more than you ever imagined possible. They found you when your "talent" had just begun to manifest, and provided sense and order to what was going on. They took you in, taught you how to use your power safely and with skill. They gave you context for your new life, and showed you that you weren't alone.

They are called The Thaumaphoros Academy. A unique learning facility for those who are referred to as "savants" - humans born with an uncanny inborn power - the Institute offers the highest level of adaptive learning, with individual courses of study custom-crafted for its few attendees. You are a student at this facility, learning not only how to utilize your posthuman talents, but also receiving one of the finest academic educations in the world.

Overseen by the dean Theogenes and a board of directors called the Logioi, the school's deal is simple and hard to refuse: you attend free of charge. At graduation, you listen to the offers made by the Logioi, or "Speakers." Each represents a different part of the Thaumaphoros Trust, a body of inter-related corporations, research think-tanks, philanthropic foundations and other organizations. You are under no obligation to accept, but the Trust wants to help you discover a way to uphold the central principle of the Trust, the so-called Thaumaphoros Creed:

You Are Here To Bring Wonder to the World.

The Trust's stated goals are nothing less than the improvement of the world, making it into a better place. The Trust feeds back on itself, self-sustaining and recursive in its prosperity. In return, this then funds projects that help to improve the world and transform it into something better. The Trust prefers to operate from behind the scenes, aloof from government interference and answerable to themselves and their own morals and ethics. They have already begun doing so, subtly and behind the scenes, but with your talents, they hope to make massive changes that will benefit the world as a whole.

Are you up to the task?