Thirty Plots for Seven Samurai

The Seven Samurai plot has been used in everything from A Bug's Life to Mass Effect (and every other Bioware game) to Red Hand of Doom but damned if it doesn't still work. The enemy is out there, with numbers and power too great to confront directly, and they're coming to wreck your shit if you don't find some seriously impressive way to even the odds fast. It's such an archetypal plot but you can fight off the horde in so many ways and it leaves so much room for improvisation that I never get sick of it.

Prepping for an adventure like that you need to know who the enemy is and what they can do, have a rough timeline for when and how things go bad without opposition, and think of a few likely ways the players can help their allies or hinder the enemy. But if they try something else you've already got the framework of how the enemy reacts to being foiled, maybe some cute little point chart for how minor victories and defeats build over time, and there's room for both unorthodox solutions and different degrees of partial success. Like if in your prep work you decide that blowing up the bridge in front of the enemy's march delays an attack by two days, but the druid convinces the mammoth king to stampede the enemy's baggage train instead, you already sort of have a plan for that even if you didn't know your setting even had a mammoth king until the druid's player suggested it. It's all the freedom of a sandbox setting but with the urgency of a doomsday clock - they can attack from any angle and retreat when they need to, but the army's still marching and it won't stop itself.

If your system of choice has some sort of city-building or dominion rules system (or you're feeling ambitious enough to make one), nothing makes players more invested in a location than having it be one they've built and managed themselves. It's the old "give them the sun and make them fight for the moon" bit, but again, somehow it always works.

Of course the downside of being able to try anything is having an infinite number of things to try - uninformed decisions are basically just coin flips, so scouting out priorities and opportunities should be quick and painless. If the war effort is vast and your players are in positions of authority, it's nice having a friendly advisor NPC around to handle routine scouting reports and suggest "Well if you don't have any business of your own to attend to, we've learned that these locations are particularly on fire today..."

THIRTY THINGS YOU CAN DO TO HELP THE WAR EFFORT

Many of these were inspired by the Myth series, which doesn't get enough love

1. Protect or recover a gold shipment sent out to mercenaries
2. Capture and train beasts of war, or liberate beasts forced to fight in a gladiatorial arena
3. Convince reluctant or blackmailed allies of the enemy to switch sides
4. Stir up internal dissent and incite rebellion
5. Rescue prisoners of war or smuggle out an enemy that wants to defect
6. Defend an isolated town from an imminent invasion
7. Clear a ruin or stretch of wilderness of monsters so you can build or repair fortifications
8. Sneak behind enemy lines to sabotage a factory or raid supply lines
9. Blow up a bridge or train tracks, cutting off enemy retreat or securing an ally's escape
10. Steal enemy battle plans or ciphers, or disrupt communications
11. Hunt down and kill or kidnap key enemy personnel
12. Root out a scout, spy, or assassin in friendly territory
13. Hold off against overwhelming odds until reinforcements arrive or a task is completed
14. Destroy or steal stockpiled ammunition or weapon prototypes
15. Kill or capture a traitor before s/he can give away plans to the enemy
16. Defend a foreign diplomat, merchant, or scientist from assassination
17. Harass an army to draw off soldiers before a major battle
18. Scuttle a flagship or moving fortress
19. Uncover the secret weakness of an invincible enemy
20. Gather a crucial ingredient to build a magical device
21. Help a town recover from a plague or natural disaster
22. Destroy whatever means the enemy is using to bring in troops behind your defenses
23. Negotiate an alliance with a neutral nation or strange outsider community
24. Recover an artifact from an ancient ruin before enemies can do the same
25. Set up an ambush for a group of troops separated from the main army
26. Secure a route through inhospitable terrain to attack from an unexpected direction
27. Take out an artillery battery or fortress to secure a key location
28. Curry favor with an organized crime syndicate to smuggle in needed supplies
29. Consult an oracle or sage at a hidden temple or place of power
30. Stage an elaborate heist from a bank, train, airship, casino, or treasure galleon

Monsters of Catalpa Lake

Went camping this weekend on a small lake near Mt. Hood. Here's what I found.

• Abiel, a subrace of bee-folk, live in subterranean colonies of about 50 – 200. Vassals harvest fireweed and rhododendron nectar to create spiced honey, naphtha, and poisons causing madness or false death. Knights are tasked with fighting off myrmidons and dracodons. All abiel are fertile, but queens kill the offspring of other unions and destroy their eggs if found. Some young queens are assassins and will infiltrate established colonies to kill the old queen and take her place.

• Avalanchers are a type of earth elemental with roughly simian bodies formed from jagged shards of volcanic rock. Like Tolkien's stone giants, they are genial bruisers who rise from the scree during thunderstorms to laugh and throw boulders for sport. Convincing the avalanchers that other species can't survive this entertainment is often difficult given the language barrier and clamor of stone.

• Bark Spiders are three-foot grey spiders that congregate along the trunks of bare pine trees. At rest they are almost impossible to distinguish from curled dead branches. Their skuttling movements are likewise almost identical to the sound of clattering branches in the wind. Bark spiders are lead by astronomer-priests (always perched highest in the trees) that give the order to attack when the stars all align for auspicious hunting.

• Chaos Flies are the least offspring of the region's many trickster spirits. Naturally invisible, they appear as dog-sized houseflies with disturbingly human smiles and hands if detected. Their words manifest as normal-sized flies that whisper eggs into your ears that hatch into cruel suggestions. If found and approached directly the chaos flies can be bargained with, secrets for secrets, favors for favors, though deals struck often have unforeseen consequences.

• Dracodons (giant dragonflies) are the region's alpha predators. Three types are known to inhabit the area. Sapphire darters are fast and nimble, striking in bolts of lightning and plucking out eyes as they pass. Emerald clubtails are slower but stronger and even more massive, and they hunt by disgorging sprays of acid on their prey. Red-veined needlers are small and fat but filled with a deadly poison that corrupts both body and spirit. They are the favored servants of minor devils, and many have been taught to measure sin for their masters or re-knit fiendish bodies. Dracodon courtship is complex, perilous, and messy - the actual intercourse is doubly so.

• Driftwood Hags are dracodon nymphs that have learned to put off their final molt so they might continue to grow in magical power and intelligence. They live in hollowed out driftwood logs with spells and rituals carved in the log's knots and whorls. Many know spells to reanimate their shed carapaces or enchant their retractable jaws as vorpal weapons.

That is not the natural order of things bugs don't eat fish fish eat bugs you cut that out

• The Faceless are a clan of lost human children that have stolen magic from the driftwood hags to keep their bodies small and nimble while their minds continue to mature. The ritual has left them blind, but they've learned to echolocate to compensate. Other tricks include drawing out shadows into black cords for rappelling down trees or strangling people, and hiding their souls in their shadows so they resurrect unless their bodies are burned or left in the sun at high noon.

• Moss wisps congregate in the branches of trees, looking like tufts of fur or vegetation with a soft, ethereal green glow. Usually immobile, they leap out and mob any sources of open flame, dying in droves to release choking black smoke and clouds of infectious spores. Strangely, they also respond to music, and skilled performers can coax the wisps from their perches to float on ley lines and reveal sites of power through their ghostly processions.

• Myrmidons (thanks, Qelong!) are a degenerate offshoot of the ant-like fomorians banished from the plane of law for their rapacious cruelty. What their legions lack in tactics or equipment they make up for with discipline, stamina, and sheer weight of numbers. Their slow march through the region ignores natural obstructions and batters down all resistance, taking slaves to infect with their squirming red broodlings and leaving behind a mathematically perfect line of chitinous brick highway.

• Scallamen are the last sorry survivors of the region's ongoing war against vertebrate life. Once a proud and noble race of philosopher-newts, the scallamen are now the “men in the walls”, hiding from myrmidons and driftwood hags in well-camouflaged mud huts and shanty towns. Though they retain their famed knack for regenerative magic, most bare the lingering scars of bark spider attacks or badly-regrown limbs devoured by dracodons. Those seeking to restore this fallen race to glory will have to overcome their lethargy and learned helplessness in addition to the driftwood hags' curses. An alliance with The Faceless might work, but the scallamen seem as terrified of the dark children as everyone else.

• Silt Sirens appear as waterlogged corpses with lamprey mouths and dead black eyes, but they can use glamour to take more beguiling forms when needed. Regardless, their skins are just husks; their actual bodies are made of stagnant water and leech-infested muck. They work in hunting packs to lure travelers into the region's still lakes - one disguised as a victim, another group "attacking", and a third lying in wait. About one in three can cast spells as druids or sorcerers. Favorite spells include animate mud, sudden decay, blood to silt, wall of leeches, and spell parasite.

• Vulture Wasps look like giant wasps and act like vultures, natch.