I watched two completely unrelated movies today and got an idea from them. I wanted to write it down before I forgot.
First there was The Undefeated, one of the early team-ups of John Wayne and Rock Hudson. It is a western-action flick from 1969. It is set primarily 4 years after the Civil War, although it does give you a little story in the beginning just after a war about our two protagonists and where they stood during that conflict.
John Wayne plays the honorable warrior Colonel John Henry Thomas who leads a team of loyal Union soldiers into their last battle with the Confederates, who despite a surrender a few days before, still want to fight on. We find out that his men are more loyal to him than anything that has to do with the Union and when he retires to become a cowboy out west, they follow. Rock Hudson is a loyal Confederate who is giving up everything he has in the US to flee into Mexico – Colonel James Langdon. He takes his men, as well as all the families in one big wagon train to escape to Mexico instead of facing Union justice.
These two factions – once enemies on the battlefield – must join together against the waring factions of Mexico and bandits to survive. This is the core concept I wanted to pull from this story. Two former enemies banded together, dealing with their own internal struggles and mistrust, to fight a common enemy. Setting this up in a role playing game can be tricky. If the settings provides you with opposing factions, then even better, otherwise the GM will have to come up with opposing factions on their own.
The second movie is called The Lair, a cheap low-budget Shudder horror flick that draws from movies like The Outpost and Aliens. Set sometime in the modern Afghanistan conflict, a pilot gets shot down and ejects over enemy territory. She is chased by other enemy ground forces until she stumbles onto a rocky dead end with a large old and rusty metal door with Russian writing on it (stenciled and painted on it). A battle ensures and an explosion opens the door accidently.
Long story short, she stumbles on an old Soviet black site from the 80s that contains some twisted experiments – mutants from cross breeding local humans with alien bio-genetic material. She escapes, find some US and British soldiers hold up in a firebase and they have to fight the mutants that are now awakened. One by one, the characters are killed off in gruesome ways until only a few survive. While a little heavy on the tropes, The Lair is so much like one of my one shots, I could not resist.
So idea stems from two key aspects.
- Two groups of opposing soldiers are forced to fight together to survive. This creates great drama in the party and that is always good for story.
- Stumbling across and getting trapped in an ancient secret location that is a hiding place of the thing they have to fight.
Here is a general idea I am formulating in my head.
BASICS
Background: In a region/world rules by an ancient empire [EMPIRE] brought down by rebel factions, now these rebel factions war with each other. During a period of a tense cold war, two parties of opposing factions end up in the same location for whatever reason (each will be different but can be related to the ancient hidden tomb/base/facility – see below).
Also, a sense of mystery and value must be cast on all things associated to the EMPIRE. Anything IMPERIAL items found must be brought back to home base to be studied.
Sample ideas:
- ALPHA PARTY – Sent to the region to establish a secret military base close to the enemy’s borders.
- BETA PARTY – Gained intelligence that APLHA is in that region and sent to investigate.
or
- BETA is sent to investigate rumors of an ancient secret in the region
- ALPHA is searching for lost personnel – pilot/scout/scientist
or
- ALPHA is escaping from a recently conquered land by Faction BETA
- BETA is scouting out into wild lands
The location of the adventure is important. It has to be a neutral and wild region to both parties – neither side has holdings here. Perhaps disputed lands or barbarian lands that are uncontrollable by either side. For now, we will just call it the WILDS. There can be other threats here – raider bands, barbarian patrols or the like.
The two factions meet in an area where they unknowingly will discover and get trapped in a secret hidden IMPERIAL base with dark secrets.
PULL
The two parties – ALPHA and BETA – need to have some tense moments before discovering the secret but it should not result in combat. A level of mistrust and paranoia settles amongst the two groups.
Then they need to have somewhat of a unifying moment. The group is attacked by a raider band or other regional threats.
A neutral third party of NPCs is introduced – perhaps explorers or scientists or monks in the same area. If some skills are needed to be filled in (science or medical), one can be left alive, but most if not all of the third party should already be dead and all that is left are their notes. How they died seems mysterious.
PUSH
The notes or the surviving NPCs points to a hidden facility underground where strange things were done. The notes indicate that the scientists believed it was an ancient IMPERIAL weapons lab of some kind. This should peak both party’s interest enough to retrieve any kind of information before the other – nothing wrong with a little competition. Once they find the secret facility, they find a lot of fascinating things but also get trapped inside.
GIMMICK
This can be anything. The movie had an army of alien-human mutant hybrids with Venom-like tongue tentacles that once attached, small tendrils would invade the target’s mind and draw information from it. But it can be anything befitting the setting you choose.
Regardless of what it is, it needs to be such a threat that the two groups join together to fight it off and find a way out. Perhaps, even, the two groups will decide that neither side should have “such power” and destroy it.