Corrupting Influences (GM for F)

[Raveled]

I tried this before, but my fellow player dropped out. I would like to tell a story where corruption is a central theme. I am a big fan of stories about corruption, stories where an innocent and pure character becomes dark, sadistic, and self-centered.

I want to be clear that this is not a Game of Thrones style of pounding a character with tragedy after tragedy. I don’t want to heap misfortune on your character until they are crying in the corner. I want to seduce a character down a path that will see them abandon their moral center and embrace a darker side of their nature. At the end of this I want a person who would think their original self a naive fool, and who their original self would consider the worst possible villain.

Below are a few of my scenario ideas for this story. You may notice that most of them have have fantastical elements; I’m a fan of such things. I think there’s a much greater difference, and therefore a much sweeter climax, when Arthas returns to Lordaeron with Frostmourne, then when the veteran cop indulges in the same vices he hated seeing in the police when he was a kid on the streets; or when Lucius embraces Slaanesh in his quest for perfection, versus when the corporate lawyer begins embezzling and laying in the same ways she vowed to fight when she started law school.

Obviously I’m looking for a longer story with this one; it might stretch to a year or more. I’m a big fan of action-oriented stories because I find action scenes easy to write and Chandler’s Law makes it simple to get a story going when it has stalled. Of course just because there’s guns and explosions doesn’t mean your character has to be Sarah Connor; but a complex courtly or political melodrama isn’t likely to hold my attention for long.

ON HIATUS

The Dark Knight of the Force

My first attempt at this, which faltered and fell apart. This story is about a young, newly-minted Jedi Knight who gets in over her head and finds herself drawing on darker powers to protect herself, and complete her mission. I expect this story would be set during the era depicted in the Old Republic MMO, but don’t expect to be playing that game.

ON HIATUS

TAKEN

A Darker sort of Grey

A twist on the one above. Rather than a Jedi with a mission, this would be a half-trained Jedi on the run from the Empire. Maybe she is the Padawan of a Knight cut down during Order 66; maybe she was the chosen apprentice, or daughter, or even wife of a Jedi who survived that and hid out for a time. However now she’s on her own, and she has to survive on her own.

TAKEN

Barsoomian Boomers

This game is a bit harder SF. YC is a farmer or ecologist, assigned to the terraforming of Mars. So were your parents, and your parents’ parents, and your parents’ parents’ parents; a multi-generation project to create a new home for humanity to settle on. Now it’s finally coming to an end. Automated Resourcing and Extraplanetary Sciences Corporation has founded Mars Station One, a civilian settlement for humans to live on and expand across Mars.

Except along with the city, ARES is supposed to give the original workers a plot of land to work on their own. That land isn’t happening, and ARES is putting all sorts of impossible demands on the workers to get their land. A group of discontented engineers, calling themselves Barsoomians, have tried to protest publicly against ARES’s actions, but the corporation has cracked down on these demonstrations with shocking brutality.

You’ve lost a loved one in these demonstrations, which has driven you into the arms of the more radical Barsoomians. How far will you go for your revenge and your freedom?

TAKEN

Black Magic Woman

You come from a long line of mages, and your entry into the premier magical academy in all the planes was guaranteed. You just expected to be… better at it.

You’ve coasted on your family’s name and favor-mongering, but soon this facade will come crashing down and ruin your life. Your only way to succeed is to delve into darker, more forbidden magics.

TAKEN

Devil on Your Shoulder

You never thought magic was real. You just bought that book to go with your Halloween costume, and you only said the spell on a dare. Now there’s a whisper in the back of your mind, something that you can’t explain away as stress. It’s offering to help you with your life, and you’re having such a hard time. It sounds like it really wants to help you…

Knight of the Tentacle

The kingdom is under siege by monsters out of legend, monsters that kidnap and defile young women, and even more deviously sending these corrupted maidens back to seduce and trap their loved ones. You enlisted in the knightly orders to fight just such maddening tempters, never dreaming that you would be ambushed, beaten down, and captured.

Now you wake up every day to be tortured and tempted and teased, violated and drugged until you’re just a plaything in the hands of the creatures that would destroy your home. What will you do in the face of such a seduction? How long will it take to break you and make you their creature -- and what will you do when you return?

Absolute Power Corrupts…

You were the sole survivor of the lightning storm, the only one doused with that weird glowing chemical, the unlucky sod at the party who picked up the syringe full of a glowing purple drug. Whatever it was awoke some hidden potential in you, and from then on you’ve been… different. Stronger, faster, tougher, or with powers no normal human should have. You know the word for them, superpowers, and you know that the movies say you should become a superhero. But altruism was never really your thing, and now that you’ve got the means you sort of want to just take what you’ve always wanted…

A few more words on this seed: yes, this a superpowered individual who turns bad. I’m not looking to write about Superman wrecking Metropolis, though. I intend for this to be a more street-level game, with a character more like Cole from Infamous or Black Canary, an individual with a few tricks up their sleeve that puts them above their fellow man. As I intend for this to be a long-term game, ideally they would eventually have long-term goals like taking over their city’s underworld or something else of suitable scale.

[Raveled]

I've had a few folks take up these stories, so I'm going to lock this thread for now.

[Raveled]

I've decided to open this one up again, and even added some new stories to to what's already there.

[Raveled]

I've gotten several good responses this, so I'm going to close this thread once again.

[Raveled]

Opening this up once more.