Spoiler warning: This thread will (likely) contain spoilers both from the Dark Terrors book and the "Counting Coup" adventure. Stop reading if you don't want to see those!
There was one whole section of the Terrors book that was full of teasers of elder-god cults with strange powers, ancient corrupting artifacts, the activities of Gaf and co. But it is pretty short on specifics and game stats.
What I'm specifically looking to do is modify the last part of the Counting Coup adventure. It featured a cell of Sioux intelligence service who had become toxic shamans -- the Runners first encounter them in an abandoned military base then race to foil their plot to release material already extracted from that base. It happens that I not long ago ran a port of the adventure from NAN vol 2, which features a toxic maged led group -- the Runners first encounter them in an abandoned military base then race to foil their plot to release material already extracted from that base. I'd like to think that there is more to adventures in the NAN than the lingering corruption from the US military, you know?
So I'm looking to Dark Terrors to supply a different mode of corruption of the intelligence cell. I was thinking that they could have gotten their hands on a corrupting artifact or a (partial) copy of the book of Gaf, or something like that. Things I need to decide, and would appreciate any ideas on, are:
- Interesting corruption
- What unusual magic/powers to give them that makes them distinctive and tough, but not too crazy lethal.
- What the big threat is that the Runners will feel a need to do something about (since presumably they will not setting off dirty bombs to poison broad swathes of land as in the written adventure).
I'm working on ideas, but sometimes input from other people helps keep the ideas fresh (in a long game one's ideas tend to fall into certain ruts or patterns sometimes, which is part of why I like to make some use of printed adventures since they add some variety in style).