One-Shot Pickup Plots

Posted by Ginger Stampley on August 31, 2004 at 10:04 AM

One of the GMs I used to game with a lot had a list of a half-dozen or so pickup plots that he could run for his friends on a moment's notice. The list, for a D&D-style fantasy game, started with "attack the tower", "defend the tower", and "assault the Temple of Set" (for values of "assault" that could mean anything from sneak in and grab something to full-scale military assault, depending on the character set). I remember those in particular because I played through them several times.

My husband has started running a pickup-style Amber game for some friends of ours, and after the first session, we sat down and came up with a list of pickup plots you could do for an Amber game on short notice. The things we decided we needed were one-sentence generic plots that could be reused with different variables (e.g., different villains, different shadows, different trappings), and were generally character-driven (so different character mixes would drive the plot and so combat numbers alone didn't make a difference). We came up with this list.

I think I'm going to start making lists of quick-and-dirty pickup plots like this for a number of genres I like. Given that gaming opportunities are sometimes catch-as-catch-can, it'll be good to have confidence that I can pull out a plot and run something on short notice.