A scenario premise for Ashen Stars The lasers take a contract to stop an isolated planetary despot from starting a disastrous, self-destructive war. The mystery: how to do that. Since the Mohilar War the the planet Endemia has retreated from the rest of the Bleed. Their economy locked into a failed policy of self-determination, its […]
Tag Archives: ripped from the headlines
A while back we learned of the vials of supposedly destroyed smallpox virus that turned up in a laboratory storage room in Bethesda, Maryland. Luckily, no one was exposed to the deadly disease, allowing us to guiltlessly mine the incident for scenario inspiration. How you might use it depends on the game you’re currently running: […]
Given the persistent weirdness of FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, it should come as no surprise that they were the first major sports administration to permit the use of mutant powers in professional competition. In the DNA-twisted future of Mutant City Blues, only one thing has changed about the world’s love of football: America now […]
NASA’s Cassini probe has detected any icy object in Saturn’s rings that may be a nascent moon. The small object may already be falling apart, making for a story less less impressive than the “baby moon” headlines suggest. So let’s fix that by ripping it from the science headlines for Ashen Stars. The lasers snag […]
A Calgary dentist who bought John Lennon’s tooth at auction says that he looks forward to cloning him in the near future. After finding a jurisdiction with loose bio-ethical regulation, he intends to raise the child in a music-friendly environment—though without exposure to drugs and cigarettes. Rip this story from the headlines for Mutant City […]
Insurers specializing in high-end art have become increasingly worried by the proportion of their clients’ art collections stored in a small handful of warehouses, mostly in Switzerland. By stashing their art at a so-called free port, the hyper-rich avoid taxes and customs fees. To rip this story from the headlines, we can see an obvious […]
A Ripped From the Headlines Scenario Hook for Ashen Stars In a development that raises the prospect of bespoke organs created with cells extruded through a 3D printer, a patient in a June 2011 procedure received a new windpipe grown specifically for him. 3D scanning technology provided the template for an exact replica of his […]
A Ripped From the Headlines Scenario Premise for Ashen Stars As this article reveals, the conversion of mortgages into complex financial instruments did more than provoke the 2008 global financial meltdown. The data-tracking process used to spin fragments of mortgages off into a tradeable derivative—creating a sort of mortgage slurry, if you will—now makes it […]
A Ripped From the Headlines Plot Premise For The Esoterrorists When viral videos appear on the Internet documenting a mystery sound heard in farflung locations throughout the world, skeptics declare them obvious fakes. It doesn’t take a sound engineer to tell that they’re electronically generated, possibly from a sample of the Godzilla scream. But the […]
According to a conspiracy theory both odd and oddly un-sinister, a youthful Barack Obama, as part of a secret CIA program, used to teleport to Mars. Why, the official denials only serve to confirm it! To rip this from the headlines into an Ashen Stars scenario… Teleportation technology doesn’t appear in the game setting. It’s […]