To add some meat to this post, check out a few scenario ideas  I pitched to Margret Weis Productions – one for Serenity, BSG and Supernatural. I wrote these back in late 2007 and never heard back from them. Enjoy!

Serenity

Working Title: Glory, Glory.

Concept Length: 8 pages

Nutshell: Jacob, a singer of unparalleled talent reawakens old hatreds in the remote colony of Lonesome Pines.   By singing old Independent Faction songs from the Unification War, he has inadvertently stirred up the seeds of a rebellion. Rabble rousers want to turn him into a propaganda machine, the Alliance wants to kill him and only the player characters can help him.

Quick backstory: Jacob is a naïve teenager who simply has incredible singing potential. His mother only taught him Browncoat ditties and upon her death, Jacob left the farm to find work. Once he reached the town of Lonesome Pines, he became an instant sensation. Many of the settlers there are veterans of the Unification War and fell for his beautiful renditions of their favorite songs. A dissident named Marley saw how emotional the veterans became when Jacob sang and seized it as an opportunity. He organized a movement to kick the Alliance off the planet forever. With Jacob’s voice as a draw, the resistance became popular. The few Alliance officials on the planet saw trouble brewing and began to crack down on the resistance. The entire colony is in turmoil when the player characters arrive.

Act One: Jacob meets the player characters as they near Lonesome Pines. He attempts to flee town when an Alliance officer spots him and attempts to arrest him. A mob forms, trapping the party, and demands Jacob’s release. Jacob sings to calm the crowd down, but someone shoots the officer. A riot breaks out.

Act Two: The Alliance locks the colony down. Unfortunately for them, they currently lack the manpower to restore order. Cries of ‘Remember Serenity Valley’ ring through the air. Marley sets up a militia and prepares for a fight. The player characters realize that the Alliance will eventually send in enough soldiers to crush the resistance and probably burn Lonesome Pines to the ground. Jacob attempts to stop the resistance but Marley captures him to shut him up.

Act Three: The player characters have to defuse the situation or get out alive. If they can teach Jacob a new song and get him to sing it to pacify the situation or convince Marley that everyone will die in vain, they can peacefully stop the resistance. Otherwise, they will have to dodge Alliance soldiers and angry Browncoats to escape. The Alliance will shoot or arrest anyone they catch in Lonesome Pines.

Battlestar Galactica

Working Title: Stray Dog

Concept length: 16 pages

Nutshell: the captain of a civilian ship hoards resources and deals with the black market. His latest deal has gone south and needs the player characters to go to the heart of the black market, the ship Prometheus to make things right.

Quick backstory: Captain Blackwelder distrusts Fleet Command and hoards whatever resources he can to benefit his ship or to trade to the black market. However, Blackwelder’s last shipment was intercepted by the government. Someone snitched. Blackwelder needs to know who. The party is given the job because Blackwelder doesn’t trust his crew and outside troubleshooters are disposable. .

Act One: Blackwelder meets with the party and offers them the job. Once accepted, the party will be transferred to his ship as new crewmembers. The party can explore the ship and pick up clues to the identity of the snitch. Meanwhile a mysterious figure tries to assassinate the players one by one.

Act Two: The party realizes that the gangsters are setting up Blackwelder for a fall so they can take over his ship. The snitch has planted evidence of murder on the ship that will put Blackwelder for life. The military arrests him. The party tracks the snitch to the Prometheus and learns of several ways to get on board.

Act Three: Once onboard the Prometheus, the players must find the snitch and either capture him or find evidence of his crimes. Players may shoot their way out, negotiate with the criminals or trick them. The gangsters are ruthless but not suicidal.

Supernatural

working title: American Saga

Concept Length: 32 pages

Nutshell: Hundreds of years ago, the Vikings journeyed deep into the wilds of the New World to bury Skard, the most corrupt warrior ever known among the Nordic. Twenty years ago, Skard awoke in his tomb. Yesterday, he declared war on humanity.

Quick backstory: Skard made a bargain with a nameless demon: the souls of his entire clan in exchange for immortality. After slaughtering his family and friends, Skard became a draugr, an undead being of immense power. He raised an army and committed countless atrocities for years. Eventually, he was caught by relatives of his victims. They could not kill him, so they took him to the New World to get rid of him. Skard remained buried until an amateur treasure hunter found his tomb twenty years ago. Once Skard learned of how the world had changed, he decided to bring about a new Dark Age. He would raise an army to destroy civilization.

Act One: Skard kills a violent biker gang in the county jail and raises them as undead raiders.  While the mundane authorities quell suspicions about the bloodbath, the biker gang menaces the countryside. The player characters stops one of the bikers and discovers Nordic runes carved on his body. Researching the runes uncovers some of Skard’s past. With this information, the players can piece together some of Skard’s actions for the last twenty years, as his M.O. never changes. A family was killed in rural Minnesota twenty years ago and had Nordic runes carved on their bodies.

Act Two: The players investigate the dead family and finds clues leading to Skard’s tomb. There, they encounter more of Skard’s forces, undead hunters and survivalists. After defeating them, they learn that Skard needs innocent souls to transform a violent human into an undead slave. This takes them into a massive cavern that Skard dug out. The Viking has kidnapped dozens of children and either sacrificed them to make undead warriors or brainwashed them into serving him.

Act Three: In order to kick start the Dark Ages, Skard needs many innocent souls and violent humans in order to create a proper horde. He plans to hijack five school buses and drive them to a nearby supermax prison. Once there, he will begin a ritual to create an army of the undead. The party gets wind of the plan from a child rescued from Skard’s Tomb, named Nathan. With his help, the players have a chance to permanently destroy Skard.

• a post apocalytpic utopian community powered by zombies on treadmills
• shrunken alligator’s head grants wishes but only Florida related wishes
• alternate reality game that thousands of nerds play in world wide is in fact, not related to the latest NIN album, but is run by a few bored vampires. They embrace the first five people to solve the last puzzle.
• The resurrection spell is a massive social controversy similar to abortion in America. Anti-life activists assassinate priests who raise adventurers from the dead.
• Cthulhu mythos cultist embeds occult knowledge in fonts. The space between letters forms Aklo runes and when certain sentences are typed out in these fonts, they form spells that summon hungry monsters.
• African militias weaponize dragons with great effect. A rebel group in Nigeria led by someone like Henry Okah takes over oil production and demand more favorable terms from the West.
• New meaning to the word twink: in a D&D-style fantasy world, adventuring/dungeoneering is a sexual fetish for ultra rich old perverts. They outfit pretty young mercenaries and wizards to fetch rare artifacts from remote corners of the world – but all the magical items have scrying devices so the pervs can watch the adventurers hack oozes and squirm through tight corridors.
• a few teenagers find a buried alien artifact – ipod sized supercomputer with self-replicating nano fabricators. The geek figures it out first and builds high tech battle armor for himself and his friends to fight crime and protect the world from evil aliens. Twist comes when the geek realizes there’s too much work for him and his friends. Recruits several hundred 4channers/Anon members and gives them an identical suit of battle armor. They set up a system of watches so that there’s always one on duty at all times. The world is now protected by anarchist geeks with alien hypertech but everyone thinks there is only one. Alternatively they fight scientologists who use Xenu derived alien tech to try and dominate the world – Anonymous geeks die in battle but there’s always more teens ready to fight and die for the lulz.
• Meat packing companies frequently hire immigrants to work in the slaughterhouses as they can’t get citizens to work in the plants. One slaughterhouse hires a southeast Asian immigrant, from the tcho-tcho tribe. He does well at his new job and sends a letter to his tribe explaining he can get all of them jobs at the slaughterhouse. That’s when the tribal shaman and priest of Shub-Nigguruth decides to immigrate to America. Within months, the slaughterhouse becomes a hidden bastion of the cult, as they breed living cattle with horrific monsters and raise horrid undead guardians from grafted flesh sculptures of various creatures.