[Forum Game] Spontaneous Stories

One-Winged Eagle

Spontaneous Stories is a storytelling game where participants make up a story from randomly selected elements. A player rolls 1d20 four times:

• The first roll represents the hero.
  
• The second roll represents the villain.
  
• The third roll represents the setting.
  
• The fourth roll represents the plot twist.
  

The sides of the dice correspond to the Tavern Tales themes. Roll 1d20 four times:

1. Arcane
   
2. Artifice
   
3. Bardic Lore
   
4. Command
   
5. Dragon
   
6. Faith
   
7. Nature
   
8. Martial Arts
   
9. Occultism
   
10. Psionics
    
11. Savagery
    
12. Thievery
    
13. Tracking
    
14. Transformation
    
15. Undeath
    
16. Warfare
    
17. Reroll
    
18. Reroll
    
19. Reroll
    
20. Reroll
    

For example, suppose that a player rolls 1, 2, 3, and 4. That player would then have to tell a story that incorporates those elements. Perhaps the protagonist is a young wizard’s apprentice (Arcane hero), the villain is a massive robotic golem (Artifice villain), the conflict takes place during a live opera performance (Bardic Lore setting), and the opera singers are secretly working for the golem (Command plot twist).

Scoring is completely subjective — the winner is whoever tells the most entertaining story. The bards who often play this game prefer bawdy, humorous stories.

I took this from Tavern Tales, again.

Dice here. The first poster rolls the dice. The next poster tells the story, then rolls their dice. This is basically improv. Roll the dice or just pick some themes that you want to see in a story.

Optional Rule: If you get the same number twice, reroll.

I roll: 9; 2; 4; 15.

So the hero has ties to Occultism (contracts with monstrous powers), the villain with Artifice (gadgets and gizmos), the setting has elements of Command (marshaling armies), and the plot twist has to do with Undeath.

Alduin

The setting is neo-Hong Kong, after a meteor strike levels most of the planet and leaves it as one of the few functioning nations on Earth. It's basically a more advanced North Korea, with a self-repairing and seemingly infinite army of automatons under the control of the villain acting as police/military force. The protagonist is a young hacker living on the fringes of the law who inadvertently stumbles upon a website that allows him to contact Hell itself. By making a deal with a Goetic demon, he manages to gain power over hellfire.

The twist is that at the final confrontation, the villain is revealed to have been dead all along. His spirit is bound to his dead, shriveled body using cybernetics and black magic. He was a previous dealer with said Goetic demon and the hero is essentially acting as a glorified repo man.

I roll: 7, 5, 10, 16

Yarrun XIX

Isn't 17 supposed to be a reroll?

Alduin

Oh shit, sorry. I fixed it.

One-Winged Eagle

Hero (Nature), Villain (Dragon), Setting (Psionics), Plot Twist (Warfare).

Jungle Boy of Mind Forest the faces the titanic wyrm known as the Great Genocider, who burns all things. But little do they know that they are both fighting on the same side, in a war without end.

Next story: 8 (Martial Arts), 14 (Transformation), 15 (Undeath), 1 (Arcane).

Yarrun XIX

A tribe of wandering nomads, trained in the physical arts, make camp in an abandoned city. They soon discover that the city is less than abandoned -- mindless zombies lurk in the shadows, led by a vampire who takes on the faces of those he kills. The tribe is slowly divided and whittled away until only a handful of them live. Separated and unable to trust one another, they must reach the ritual grounds and release the necromatic magic that curses this place, allowing them to leave.

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