The few days ago I saw a request on MeWe for
Good blogs for Adventure Seed ideas? I’m looking for one or two short sentence prompts to build on. The more grim, dark and seedy the better. Betrayals. Murders. Narcotics. Abductions. Etc.
Jeremy Hart
I figured that since I recently printed, cut, and sleeved all 1,548 Story Engine Deck and Deck of Worlds cards, I’d give them a run.
Just for fun (for some value of ‘fun’) I decided to ignore the base cards and just threw together the Horror expansion, and the Gothic and Eldritch Horror boosters. Let’s see how it works out.
- An immortal ghost hunter wants to dispossess an elaborate sepulchre, but it will shatter a delusion they are dependent on.
- A naïve ancient wants to uphold a family legacy involving a vision-inducing toy, but they must cross a line they swore they would never cross.
- A first responder wants to rescue from oblivion an isolated hamlet, but someone they could have saved will die.
- A worshipper wants to cover up the horrifying secret of a profane harvest, but only the dead will know of their sacrifice.
- A pseudoscientist wants to perform a forbidden ritual with/in/on a slumbering heath, but it will lead their enemy straight to them.
- A groundskeeper wants to set an elaborate trap with a nightmarish asylum, but they will be trapped in a prison of their own making. [alt: “but something horrifying will be set free”… this was not an easy call]
- A demented sailor wants to settle an old score with an undying cult.
- A revenant wants to solve a murder [their own?] and their only lead is a demonic memento, but they must return to the site of their old trauma, an unexplored fen.
- A slasher wants to escape their vision of being killed in an eldritch painting, but they will live the rest of their life with false memories. [I suspect this might be after achieving their goal…]
- An apparition wants to destroy a monster whose only weakness is a grandiose music box, but they will never be able to truly die.
- A quiet child wants to torment someone with a violent awakening ritual, but the memory of what they did will haunt them forever.
- A demonologist wants to remove corruption from a crumbling cabin, but they will have to release something they once locked away.
This was a pretty casual run at it. I quickly picked an Agent, Engine, Anchor, and Conflict card for each, plus one or two Aspect cards. I’ve used the basic template here, which is pretty formulaic. Since they’re seeds formulaic is fine. I can explore other templates later, or apply more variation when I flesh them out.