I thought today I’d let you in on a little secret.  GM’s cheat.  I know.  Big surprise.  But the key here is that sometimes, we get into weird situations and don’t know how to get out of them.  When that happens, a friend of mine and I like to exchange notes.  I thought other people might get a kick/story idea from these.  So, here’s one that hit a short while ago :

My friend is running a modern day game with supernatural elements.  Could be Chill, could be Cthulhu, could be something else.   The setup is that the group works for a secret organization that fights the supernatural.  They’ve had a couple run-ins with a particular cult and the game master wanted to bring the matter to a head, but hadn’t decided who the villain really was.  Currently the heroes have possession of an ancient artifact and are in a safehouse in England at the home of a fellow agent, a rather cowardly nobleman with a butler who is in actuality a secret cultist.

My friend had a few ideas in mind for the future.  First, he wanted to keep the butler with the group.  Next, the cult is trying to get the artifact and will steal it from the heroes. The heroes pursue and are astounded when a bunch of gigantic worms (aka Dune) emerge from the ground and attack. When they vanish, the pattern of their holes is in an ancient occult symbol.  The evil thing they’re chasing commands a a powerful warrior known as the Undying.  Eventually, the Undying will turn on the evil in the end and ally with the heroes.

With all of that, I proposed three possibilities.

Option 1) The butler suddenly suggests that his grandmother was interested in ancient legends and told them to him as bedtime stories.  If he seems to have enough information, the heroes will probably drag him along.  He suggests that the ancient evil might be Firbolgs.  The Undying could easily be a powerful Sidhe and the artifact they’re chasing is a key to open a gateway to Connacht, the mysterious lands where the Firbolgs were banished centuries ago.  The evil force could be Sreng, the king of the Firbolgs, who left his lands centuries ago to see if his people could return.  He saved the Sidhe’s life against something else and now the Sidhe is pledged to serve him until his death (couched in poetic terms).  Both Sreng and the Undying were trapped in a tomb until a recent disturbance by the cultists.  I left the thing that he wants unknown.  In the battle, the heroes enact the poetic terms and the sidhe is now freed (such as “I shall serve you until you doth fall on Terra’s green shores, etc.).  Since the Sidhe doesn’t really even like the Firbolgs, he now switches sides.

Option Dos)   The butler “accidentally” activates another artifact, a pair of rings made for a married couple, and targeted himself and one of the heroes.  If the wearers of the rings separate for too long, then they both weaken and die.  Of course, it might just be an unpowered forgery, but the butler doesn’t need to reveal that.  In this case, the patterns of the worm tracks actually form a pattern that looks familiar, it is a pattern of lines used as a fram one a Greek vase base at the safehouse.  This is the “calling card” of Echidna, the Greek ‘Mother of all Monsters’, the evil the cultists worship.  She spawned the worms to aid the cultists get their hands on the artifact.  The heroes follow the guy with the artifact and discover that he’s awakened Echidna and even mated with her.  The offspring is the Undying, a terrible beast with infinite martial skill, but no life experience.  The heroes must prevent the guy with the artifact from giving Echidna the artifact because it is the key to release her true husband (Typhon).  In this case, the Undying thinks all of this is a game until the heroes teach him about death and he decides he doesn’t like the game and swaps sides.

Option C)  I suggested that the simplest way to keep the butler with the heroes was to invite a new player to take that role.  People almost never resist the inclusion of a character actually played by a person.  For this, the worm holes form a pattern that is reminiscent of Hindu artwork.  The artifact is from the Indian subcontinent, brought back by one of the nobleman’s ancestors during the colonial period.  While the heroes chase the guy with the artifact, a group of assassins (followers of Kali) show up to fight them.  However, the assassins just want to get the artifact for themselves.  The cultist is actually serving an Asura (lesser diety) named Daksha, an ancient Indian demon with the head of a goat.  Daksha’s power is limited so long as she bears the head, a curse from Shiva.  However, the artifact will transfer the curse to another and restore Daksha’s power.  The Undying is a stone statue brought to life by the Daksha and controlled by a mystical ruby.  If the heroes can get their hands on the ruby, they can control the statue.

So, three setups for a game.   A little something for everyone.