By now I have a considerable library of Roleplaying manuals of all descriptions, but I try to start as close to home as I can. In this case, page 342 of A Time of War, Gamemastering Tips and Suggestions. The general statements aren't terribly helpful in my circumstance, but on pages 347 and 348, Catalyst was kind enough to provide Adventure Seeds, basically write-ups on general plot concepts you might want to run. These are extremely generic, and there are only four, but I like to use them as something of a "Stupid Check" when I'm stuck -- are any of the base, standard, generic plots going to fly here. Personally, I would love a supplement that contained more of these blocks, either from Catalyst or from a fan who wants to put one together. I have other sources if this fails, but perhaps we'll get to that later. One immediate problem is that the seeds all relate to Military, Mercenary, Police, or Special Forces elements, no dedicated Civilian or Resistance seeds. For my purposes, though, I'll consider my group Special Forces. That keeps two on the table. Let's evaluate these two:
The Chase ("A Killer is on the Loose!") -- This adventure seed is pretty standard fare -- a friend gets whacked, now the party must track down the killer. The RPG application of Chandler's Law, a murder might be a bit over the top -- especially as I haven't established any NPC's yet, except for Alex, the Word of Blake teller, Barbra, his obnoxious boss, and Farmer MacDonald, whom Clark delivered a foal for last session. Oh, and, I suppose, Roger, the guard who had no lines and just stood there the entire last session.
Hmm. Thinking about that, the party did come back the night after their little raid to find the locked room had been cleared out. They presumed that the room had been emptied for the same reason that the HPG network had been shut down, but there was no evidence of that other than the lack of a cloud of investigators. The presumption that those files were removed by the owners might well be wrong, and I could leverage that to an arrest. Possibly not the PC's, but they have developed some sympathy toward Alex. Perhaps if he was threatened they would feel compelled to act.
That's a kernel of an idea, but let's look at the other adventure seed.
The Package ("The... Objective... is quite valuable to me...") -- The Package adventure seed is pretty standard as well -- go get the MacGuffin. The prototypical fetch quest. The issue here is that there's no greater authority to tell the ground crew to go out there and get the thing. I may, however, want to adjust that. I've already established Pleatus as Clark's line to ComStar ROM (or at least, what he thinks is ComStar ROM,) so I can form that connection into a better defined handling officer for his group. Indeed, I could build the entire session out of finding a new way for Clark to communicate with his handler now that the HPG is closed to civilian traffic. I have no idea how that would work, though. Perhaps a local ROM agent embedded on Terra, leaving dead-drops. That's an element I would want to integrate at some point -- unidirectional information flow, to prevent the party from simply getting information, then handing it up the ladder to be acted on by others.
That's an idea, but one I might want to implement during or after the landings.
I could move on to other ideas from here, but I'm starting to like the earlier idea of Alex being arrested for breaking and entering the compound at night and stealing the documents from the the locked room. It allows me to apply some pressure to the PC's to take some action, especially if they think he's being tried for their crime, and allow me to build Alex into an ally and a means of delivering the plot hooks I need to get in their hands.
Now I only need to flesh out the exact details of what happens -- Simon is on duty when the Word of Blake storms in and arrests Alex, who of course denies it. Hmm... having a PC and a major NPC with the same name is bad planning on my part. I could have Alex be a cover identity for a ComStar sleeper, but that's a bit too much for this early in the campaign. Perhaps I'll give him a nickname ("My business name is Alex, but my friends call me Ted -- it's my middle name.") Or let Alex stand -- such confusions happen in real life, and provides and opportunity for a case of mistaken identity later in the campaign.
Perhaps the PC's spring Alex from lock-up, or bail him out, or whatnot, but when he gets out, he immediately goes to a self-storage unit in town, and begins loading crates of papers to be taken off-site. It doesn't matter where, they just have to go. They are of key use to the Resistance network. Until now the PC's have no idea that Alex is resistance, but they may be inclined to help him. The real trick is Alex needs to provide some act of good will, one that will materially benefit the PC's, but not guarantee he's not a double-agent -- I want to leave that avenue open in case I decide to use it later. He could send the PC's back into the HPG compound yet again in order to retrieve the plot hooks. He has to disappear and can't go back for them, but they were left in a place to incriminate Simon -- it the Word of Blake finds them before the PC's do, Simon could be going to jail as well.
Exactly how Alex manages to accomplish this is still something of a question mark -- perhaps he dropped the plot hooks into an envelope and mailed them to Simon's house -- they're still sitting in the Outbox at the HPG station, but since the mail has been suspended while they're investigating, it hasn't gone out yet. The party needs to break back in, find the letter, and take it.
OK, now I have a plan.
I just want to take a moment to draw attention to how, despite not using any of the idea presented in the book wholesale, reading through them gave me the inspiration to come up with an adventure for my PC's. I don't pretend I'm anything other than a hack game writer, but often times the most obvious adventures are fun, and the larger your adventure grows, the more hooks you'll have to reach back to. I'm sure this isn't the last time I'll be stuck for an idea, and in the future, I'll go through how I go through my GM Notes to provide inspiration.
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