General Category > Plot and Game World

GH2: 100 Starting Scenarios

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Joseph Hewitt:
The opening scenario for GH2 needs to change. The game's opening should be exciting, it should establish the setting, set the mood, and it should also provide the player with some idea of what options are open to them.

I've started making a list of possible openers. For the time being I'm not worrying about how these would fit into the random plot generator or anything else, I'm just thinking about what would make a good start. Please list your own ideas. Once we get 100 or so of them, I'm going to start looking at how they can be modeled.


* Scene: barracks. There are raiders approaching, so your squad mobilizes to deal with them. Afterwards your commander goes off to a meeting and your squadmates wonder what's really going on.
* Scene: your apartment. The landlord needs the rent, your friends question your decision to become a cavalier, but you just got a hot lead on a job that might solve everything.
* Your parents were refugees from Luna. You are worried about Aegis's encroachment on L5. Talk with your sister/brother/friend who reveals that they've decided to join the Aegis Space Force.
* You're meeting a boyfriend/girlfriend somewhere later. Suddenly, the news reports that the Blades have announced a terror attack about to happen there.
* Scene: A shuttle. You're going back home after a trip. Suddenly, the ship is attacked by mecha! Escape or fight back? What about the other passengers?
* Scene: Temple. You have been training and meditating. Speak with the monks about graduation, get sent to speak with master, only  to find that they've been killed.
* Scene: Prison. You've just been released from the iso-cubes. The warden asks about your goals, suggests asking someone about a job. One of the other prisoners asks you to help them get out.
* Scene: Family home. You've cleaned things out after the death of your parents. Speak with police officer who investigated.
* Scene: Your place of business, a hospital or garage. A stranger arrives in a barely functional mecha. They give you a cryptic message for some NPC, then promptly die.
* Scene: Tomb. Your parents were refugees from Crihna. Shortly before they were to retire, one of them dies fighting the Aegis Space Force. A friend of the family, a captain, offers you the chance to have your revenge.
* Scene: An asteroid. Your exploration/camping expedition is interrupted by the arrival of an escape pod. The survivor is disoriented, but it soon becomes apparent that they're being followed.
* Scene: A government building. You're there when a maniac with a bomb shows up, taking everyone hostage.

Trucidation:
Hmm...

* You show up for work one morning to find a pile of rubble instead of the modest offices of the mercenary team you signed on with a few months ago.
* The charismatic section head vanished in the middle of the night with the grant money, leaving you and a bunch of other junior researchers in the lurch.
* For years you've whiled away your life with other bored and idle megacorporate heirs. Then one day you catch sight of a really attractive pilot and all of a sudden you have a goal: to become a hotshot ace pilot yourself. Besides, the tedium of endless parties, drugs, and meaningless relationships was killing you inside.
* Your triumphant homecoming from college with a freshly minted degree was marred by the presence of police officers who escorted you to the precinct to identify the body of your elder brother. He was the only family you had left, who'd been taking care of you since your parents died when you were both young.
* Your commercial pilot's license just came through and you immediately quit your job as a teacher. The principal, a bully and patronizing s.o.b. who loved making you miserable, hadn't wanted to let you go out of spite - so you suplexed him. In front of witnesses. Giving the ass what he deserved sure felt good but that assault rap may have killed your new career as a pilot before it even got a chance to take off. However, surely not everyone is picky about whom they hire...
* Paranoia regarding an alleged government cover-up of the truth behind the ingredients of soya-lentil based foodstuffs got you in trouble with the authorities more than once. In order to continue your investigations you will need a cover to distract the watchers put on you. This is where that new job comes in.

Burzmali:
1. Scene: Home?
You wake up with your mind completely blank, as you panic, some details about the last few days begin swimming through your head.  Your mother(?) opens the door and informs you that you were in found unconscious at the site of an explosion the yesterday.  The doctors patched you up, but they warn that you memory may take a few days to return, and when it does, the police are going to want to talk to you.

2. Scene: As above, but no explosion or other overt act. You were knocked out and your memory disrupted when someone applied a nerve whip to your temple, but you were not robbed or otherwise harmed.

3. Scene: As 1, but your mother(?) begins pressing for details about what you saw.  After a few questions, a blast opens the wall and the police storm in.  We the dust clears, they escort you out, but the woman, who you now realize was not you mother, is missing.

magic.coding.fairy.peridot:

* Scene: a luxury apartment. Your date with the corporate heir/only son of a pirate chief/heir apparent to a cult seemed to be going so well until he wouldn't take no for an answer and got violent. You grabbed a kitchen knife to defend yourself and now he's dead and they're after your head.
* Scene: aboard a pirate ship. Your routine commercial flight was ambushed by pirates. For the most part they spaced everyone who wasn't ransomed, but you persuaded them to let you serve as cabin boy. Now you have to try to either escape or persuade them to keep you alive.
* Scene: a cardboard box in a dank alley. Growing up on a tramp steamer you and your family were poor but independent until the big corporations forced you into bankruptcy and took your ship. Now you need to somehow make ends meet, and get back at them if you can.
* Scene: aboard a pirate ship, in a corporate office, or in a government building. While you were still in school you were quietly approached by an ordinary-looking woman who persuaded you to infiltrate the pirates/corporation/government. But now your contact is dead on her way to a clandestine rendezvous with you and you're on your own. Do they know about you? Can you still find out their secrets and bring them down or do you flee and fight them from the outside?
* Scene: in an isolated laboratory. You were so close to the breakthrough, but now they want to shut you down over one piddling accidental death! If you can only finish building your robots/biomonsters/clone army you could free your home from under the yoke of the oppressor/show all the doubters/replace all those inefficient humans!
* Scene: standing before the altar, shocked, as gunshots echo above the body of your husband-to-be. Who has done this? They must pay!
* Scene: standing in a suddenly-empty house. Your husband has fled, taking with him key papers/valuable items from the company/pirates/government you work for and leaving nothing but an insulting note. Not only has he offended you by leaving, your employers think you were involved. You have no choice but to chase him down and clear your name.
* Scene: an empty theatre. You were a member of a very popular pop group until, to your surprise, your bandmates stormed off the stage vowing to never have anything further to do with you. Now you're trapped in a recording deal - you have to form a new band and make it to the top or they'll take everything you've got.
* Scene: a courtroom. A key witness has refused to testify against a criminal you caught. You know it's because he saw a top mobster glowering in the back of the room, but can you prove it? These crooks are getting away with murder!
* Scene: fleeing a palace. You were an important official in the government of your spinner when an armed junta came smashing into the palace. They shot all of the old guard they could catch, but you made it out ahead of the death squads. Not you need a new life and maybe a new face too.
* Scene: a basement music studio. A heavy knock sounds on the door: the Revolutionary Guards want in, and you know music is officially a counter-revolutionary act. They'll shoot you if they catch you. But there's a side door, and maybe you can make it to freedom.
* Scene: a hospital room. Still weak from giving birth, you ask to see your baby and the nurses are strangely evasive. When you stagger into the babies' room, you see the door hanging off its hinges and smoke everywhere: someone broke in and took them all. Slavers? Genetic experimenters? Ransom-seekers? You have no idea, but you have to find them.
* Scene: a burned-out building. You're so tired you can barely stand; your firecrew has been running from one terrible fire to the next, and they look like arson. Now it's your fire station that they torched. Who is setting these fires and why?
* Scene: a devastated checkpoint. Press-ganged into the army, you were guarding a checkpoint from guerrillas who you'd franky rather be joining, when an attack demolished your whole patrol. Only through a freak chance did you survive. Time to take revenge on the guerrillas - or to slip away from the press gangs and join them?
This is fun!

LomLom:




* Scene: Your home. While you're fixing your breakfast you flip on your news terminal. Your name is plastered all over it, wanted by the government and the police, with warnings for members of the public not to approach you. You have absolutely no idea what you're supposed to have done.
* Scene: Prison. Maybe your crimes were unforgivable, maybe you just pissed off the wrong people, maybe you were framed, but whatever the case you're in for a long stretch. Or so you thought. A year into your sentence you're dragged out of your cell by men in black carapace armor and taken to another facility where you're fitted with a bomb-collar. A person in a sharp suit tells you that you belong to them now, and that if you want to keep your head on your shoulders you'd better do exactly what they tell you.
* Scene: Military/Police/Mercenary faction building. You're a cadet and this is your graduation ceremony. You've just received your certificate from the Higher Up when mecha infiltrators from a rival faction attack.
* Scene: Office/Laboratory. A respected colleague hasn't shown up for work in days and isn't answering calls. Your boss asks you to check up on him at his home. When you get there there's no sign of him, but just after you finish calling your boss to let him know, you get an e-mail from the missing colleague telling you he's on the run because someone is trying to kill/abduct him.
* Scene: Theles Spinner hab building. Your gang has been under attack by a rival gang using military grade equipment and experimental devices and none of you have any idea where they're getting them from. Your gang boss tells you to find out who's supplying them and why.
* Scene: Nightclub/Mall. A person is running through the crowds, closely pursued by two thugs who look like they mean business. The running person bumps into you and you're both sent sprawling. You have seconds to decide whether to get involved or not.
* Scene: Your home. You wake up and head into the lounge. Whah? Where did those Dragon Serpents come from? The snakes move in for the kill but then your front door flies open and gunshots ring out, icing the biomonsters. Your mysterious rescuer tells you you're life is in danger because of the project/research/case you've been working on and tells you to go with them.
* Scene: Your home. You get a call from a wealthy client, the kind that pays well for your shady services. They're very interested in someone/something and will pay top money for information, or better yet, retrieval.
* Scene: Tohru Spinner. The corporations are all skirmishing in 'plausibly deniable' actions to be the dominant one after the rebuilding is done. One of them gets ruthless enough to use unmarked combat mecha inside the Spinner, and during the battle a stray plasma bolt flies through your window and kills your pet Marsh Lobster. Lobby, NOOOOO!!! Someone's gonna pay...
* Scene: Your home. Journalism turns out to be tougher than you thought. Your editor says that you'd better start writing something more newsworthy than this Z-list celeb gossip drivel or you'll be out of a job. Just as you're starting to despair of finding anything juicy, an old contact calls you to tell you he's found out something unbelievable that you just HAVE to hear.
* Scene: Temple. The temple master summons you and tells you about disturbing visions he's had. He charges you with finding the person/place/thing he saw in the visions.
* Scene: Temple. Turns out your temple was secretly run by a criminal group looking to attract gullible celebrities and take all their money. Revenge ensues.
* Scene: Space. Your first mission for your faction didn't work out so well. Your lancemates are toast and here you are, surrounded by four custom high-end mecha. You're braced for the end when the lead mecha opens a comm-channel and says they're going to let you go so that you can warn your faction not to try to mess with them again.
* Scene: Home. You're e-mailed a photo of yourself in a comprimising intimate situation with a Yatate pole-dancer and a Gremlin in a tutu. Hey, that's a photoshopped fake! No one's going to believe you though. The sender has certain demands if you don't want the photo going public, and it looks like you'll have to play along for now.
* Scene: Mall. An eco-preservation group is holding a 'Save the Space Worms' rally in the mall. With the cops' attention on the demonstrators, raiders stealthily hit a store belonging to your faction (or just where you work) and take your friend hostage as they flee with the loot.
* Scene: Government HQ office. You got a call 'inviting' you to meet with a government representative. You went along and they say they know about the questionable legality of your activities. They could get you sent down, but they're prepared to overlook these things if you just do one 'simple' job for them.

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