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Month: December 2024

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The Nuclear Option

As you maybe have noticed (or maybe not), I was recently thinking about Aliens. It remains one of my favourite movies, and another recent viewing has done nothing to shake my admiration and adoration. So one might expect that a one-pager based on Aliens would be a bug hunt—tragic or otherwise—similar to the situation on LV-426. The thing, is, I’ve already kind of done that in the Ideas and Hooks section in Starship Commandos. But I do like the idea of space marines (I mean . . . Starship Commandos), so I definitely want to do a seed based on that concept.

Instead of xenomorphs, this story is about the marines taking control of a vessel possibly smuggling nuclear weapons. The Marines can be part of any geopolitical structure that will fit in your campaign. For my campaign, I made them part of the United Systems Interstellar Command (USIC), leaving the exact nature of the United Systems undefined so that it could be expanded later if necessary with input from the players

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New Cyber Wave

While I’ve already done a one-pager inspired by Cyberpunk 2077, given it’s return as an Edge of Inspiration, I figured I’d go back to the well—especially since a band/musician is so integral to the story. Following one plot thread, the player can end up in a bunch of music industry flavoured nonsense.

Story

The PCs are all linked to an up-and-coming band called ‘HandMark.’ What started as a bunch of teens goofing off looks like it might break wide open. The band has a growing social media presence. They’re making money both with real live gigs and virtual ones. And now they have a collection of songs they think will put them over the top. One magical night they put it all together. Working through the night, they record the perfect session. They are ecstatic. They collapse in the studio, exhausted. But in the morning, all the recordings are gone. The studio staff had left just before the band had flaked out and claim to know nothing. There’s no hope of recreating that magic. The band needs those recordings.

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Memories of War

This one-pager is inspired by the key event in Cyberpunk 2077—the theft of a super-rare technology from a scion of a corporate empire. It’s a heist with major stakes and major repercussions.

Story

The PCs in this adventure have all been burned by the same corporation. Palantine Security Solutions is a private security company that had also once had a private military corporation. After the Central Asian War of 2033, Palantine closed down its PMC and focused on security and law enforcement. Something happened, something so heinous that even a powerful corporation would feel the repercussions. Stock prices, contracts, and even corporate alliances would be shaken.

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Who Doesn’t Love A Library?

This one is more of a one-page component of an adventure than the adventure itself. This is an answer to the issue of PCs finding information. Sometimes, it’s just as easy to hand it over—have one of the PCs with the proper build know the information. Sometimes, it can be fun to breakdown how and where they get that information. For me, when it comes to ancient or otherwise forgotten knowledge, I force them to do what I did for so much of my time in university: do a little research!

Story

In search of forgotten or obscure knowledge, the PCs seek out an archive that they know to have ancient sources—tomes and scrolls and maybe cuneiform tablets. The knowledge of which archive to visit and where that archive can be found might be it’s own little adventure following a similar path.

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