From: jhm@sni.ca (John H. McMullen)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp
Subject: STORY: Into The Dungeon [Champions] 0/2
Summary: Intro to story, not necessary to read it.
Date: 4 Sep 91 14:22:13 GMT

Have you, as a GM, ever spent a long time setting up a plot thread,
only to discover that you don't care about the story by the time it
happens?  This is especially annoying if there is information the
players must discover during the course of the story.  This story
is one answer to this problem.

The story in the next two posts is derived from my (now discontinued)
Champions campaign.  It is in the form of an article written for
_People_ magazine by one of the NPCs, and was used in the campaign as a
bridge to let players know what had happened over several days.   (If
you've read _Those Who Favour Fire_, posted quite a while ago by Brian
Dorion, this is the magazine article referred to.)

I flatter myself that it is a slightly different take on the
dungeon crawl.  You may find something of use in it.

How this story came to be:

For some months I had been referring to this mysterious dungeon
outside of town; since the campaign was set in present-day
Kitchener-Waterloo, no dungeon should exist.  We got closer and
closer to the point where the players were going to actually
explore the dungeon, and I suddenly realized (a) this was going
to blow my entire real-time campaigning style out the wazoo,
since it would take several sessions and then I would have to
scramble to incorporate real-world events into the campaign; and
(b) possibly more importantly I did not *want* to do a dungeon,
with players mapping every hex and carrying tons of equipment and
setting up their usual extensive precautions.

Instead I prepared this story and presented it to the players. 
With their approval, it contained the events of the last couple
of days and all of the information they would have received from
the dungeon crawl.  (They did approve, though I suspect that was
because I presented it to them as a fait accompli; one or two of
them do not appear the best light here.)

Doing it as a story-that-would-be-history meant, however, that I
didn't want to make significant changes to Player Character lives,
since that should (always) be co-operative.  So the focus was
shifted to the NPCs (the normals, the Sphinx, and Black Widow
herself).

This version is an edited version of that one presented to the
players; some information extraneous to the story (some might say
not enough) has been removed.

The necessary campaign background should be in the story, but here's
the quick skinny anyway.

A disease occurred which caused super powers.  In the beginning,
the infection was localized in Kitchener-Waterloo, so that was
where all the paranormals were.  The players designed the
characters and I re-designed them because I knew how the powers
worked.  Many players designed characters based on themselves.

There will be other stories set in this milieu; it is enough like
Wild Cards that I feel uncomfortable trying to sell them, but
there are stories I want to tell, and I can use the practice.

Credit Where Credit Is Due:

Rod Currie, aka The Crimson Ace, created by Rod Currie.
Brian Dorion, aka Scatterjack, created by Brian Dorion.
The Glove created by Jim Gardner.
Godspeed created by Ronald M. Green.
The Foz, aka Bengal, created by Viktor Haag.
Anita Kilgour created by Anita Kilgour.
James Nicoll, Telepathic monster, created James Nicoll.

Oh, yes-- Black Widow had a secret identity to protect, so
sometimes she lied.

-- 
John McMullen     Siemens Nixdorf Information Systems
jhm@snitor.UUCP   2235 Sheppard Ave., Willowdale, Ontario  M2J 5B5
"When you asked me to live in sin with you, I didn't know you meant `sloth'."
                   -- David Oster