Free Idea Dumping Ground

I give you a baddie for your Roleplaying campagins - the Orca Chieftan - first model and the second one, no more Ms. Nice Cetacean!.

She's an angry mermaid - "Orca Mer" - who knows that the way to a sailing man's heart is through his sternum.

She could be an anti-villain or a straight up aquatic baddie that your players have to face.

If you want to use her as your PC - knock yourself out.

Ditto using her as a base - let me know what you come up with.

For those of you who are new to Hero Forge - visit https://www.reddit.com/r/HeroForgeMinis/ for more info!

• 1st model direct link
• 2nd model direct link

In a discussion on another website on the line between cliches and necessary genre conventions, someone observed that you never see a mystery novel end with the detective throwing his hands up and saying, "Damn and blast, I've no idea who did it."

So being a contrarian, I immediately thought of what it would take for that novel to work without it being an anticlimax. My idea:

The twist is that The Watson was the killer, and he's only been playing the role of the dim sidekick, planting fake evidence throughout the case and using his Obfuscating Stupidity to distract the detective whenever he gets too close to the truth.

As a bonus, this was also a case of Who Murdered the Asshole, and the victim was so foul (e.g. a murderer himself) that by the end, the audience is hopefully rooting for the killer to get away and the detective's long started to look like an Inspector Javert for being so determined to lock him up.

Edited by Wheezy on Dec 12th 2021 at 1:58:40 PM

One day, the past starts changing.

The protagonist is watching a movie he's seen 27 times and notices the main character's trademark outfit is different. It can't be an edit; he's watching it on an old DVD. Historians across the country check their books to find they all say America was founded in 1796. The bizarre part is, the world doesn't look any different: living people's memories are exactly the same, and all of the changes somehow still led to an identical present, but by different routes. Everyone still remembers where they were on 9/11, except Wikipedia, records, and photographs clearly show the World Trade Center was dismantled right before the new one was built due to an undiscovered structural flaw. Yet the same people have all died of various other causes since, and the wars of the aughts were still fought, but over something completely unrelated.

...Alternately, the present did change, and a middle-aged Kurt Cobain shows up for a gig, claiming he hung out with the band yesterday, and thinks he's the one being pranked when people scream and cry on seeing him.

The important part is that everyone remembers the past as it was in Real Life, but that's clearly not what happened anymore. It's the Mandela Effect made real on a global scale, and causes mass hysteria.

What's the cause? A superbeing Rewriting Reality? Timelines somehow merging? That's up to you.

Edited by Wheezy on Dec 17th 2021 at 9:16:52 AM

One of my characters, the talking gorilla Jason, is a Gentle Giant, so he has a few pets. As of right now, he has a Labrador Retriever, an American Shorthair cat, and a scarlet macaw. I was thinking of him getting a few more. A sulfur-crested cockatoo for another bird, and quite a few reptiles (a frill-necked lizard, a rosy boa, and either a turtle or a tortoise; I haven't decided which kind yet). And since there's a Time Skip leading up to Volume 8, I thought of him getting another dog and cat. I don't know, maybe a tropical aquarium while I'm at it? ^_^;;

A collection of scary minis I have made in Hero Forge.

Alright, alright, alright! It's a dump of my previous work (plus one!) for all y'all to enjoy. In the spirit of shows like In Search of..., SCPFoundation and those wacky Youtube videos comes a dump of spooky HF minis!

Released to public domain as a base, as a resource and for all your RP, GM and campaign needs. If you use them as an SCP or somesuch, post a link in the comments of my Reddit posts or on these forums so we all can enjoy!

Edited by TairaMai on Dec 25th 2021 at 6:38:35 AM

The Event fails to completely destroy society, and the ones that survive continue to produce new technology, take the freed-up resources etc. for themselves, and grow, leading to a world that's about 70% post-apocalyptic and 30% utopian.

Edited by Wheezy on Jan 3rd 2022 at 4:58:37 AM

An alien swarm descends on Earth... and it turns out they're very nice model guests.

It's what they're fleeing that's the problem.

Edited by Wheezy on Jan 8th 2022 at 7:12:57 AM

I keep thinking of a story that utilizes the same themes and idea from games like Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear, Xeno Gears, etc. Not an exact copy but something that deals with themes of memory, identity, postmodernism, growing up, politics and heroism. I would like to see it take place in a modern suburban setting with normal people of all ages. Ia m not sure what kind of story it would be but I am sure someone with writing chops can pull this one off.

A future where video game AI has become advanced enough that there are laws prohibiting making NP Cs/enemies too smart (because frankly creating a thinking, feeling person for the express purpose of killing over and over raises some ethical questions. The protagonist of the story is an inspector for an agency tasked with enforcing those laws and relocating A.I.s that violate it.

A beginning of an zombie apocalypse-like story where the threat comes from something that affects (not infects) the living, making them hellbent on hunting down anything that makes sounds and aren't dead or looking any different with the exception of being completely quiet and rarely blinking as their focus is on listening on anything that might "not be them".

It starts in a small town, and as the "apathy-affection" spreads, it slowly succumbs until only a few are left unaffected and hiding, while new people arrives through the road, unknowing of the dangers the "quiet town" holds for anyone that doesn't know the rules of survival in it.

The affected does not "bite" people to make more of themselves.

They hug them.

Hard.

And if you can't get them off in time, they will squeeze the sound of your soul out of you and make you into one of them.

And they are pretty much the same people they used to be, only... "different", and not shy of killing anyone that isn't "them" if they realize they can't "affect" them gently in any way or get close enough to do so...

An idea - a team of heroes has one of their members get Death of Personality. The character has their brain not just washed but folded, pressed and starched.

But the villain(s) did too good of a job. The character is so smart and "upgraded" that they reject their new villain masters and side with the heroes.

Of course the heroes are horrified at what happened to their trusted friend. And now the character has to work fast to avoid a terminal case of death while saving the heroes.

Edited by TairaMai on Mar 8th 2022 at 12:18:52 PM

I kinda just got the idea for a Fractured Fairytale universe-hopping story about a character who keeps winding up in different fairytale stories having to either move the story along or change the events of them to catch the villain who they keep following into these different stories. My working title idea is "Fairytale Speedrun". I kinda really like this concept so I might actually try and use it one day

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 9th 2022 at 8:29:42 AM

I wound up with a strange but potentially interesting premise.

A dude, for vauge backstory reasons, had came to hate the very concepts of lies, secrets and deception, and thus seeks to expose the truth as much as he can (and also hating the concept of fiction as a side effect). Sounds heroic right? The twist is that he is surrounded by people in the Idol and Vtuber spaces, which relies upon a carefully crafted persona and by extension technically deceiving the population.

A Pirate movie, but with the structure and vibe of The Caper.

Okay some sort of life finale. In other words something like "death" but they don't actually die, or they do but they turn into something else. I've imagined that this would be in a superhero/science fiction type of story. So that death isn't exactly as taken seriously as a 'life finale.'

This is something I'd actually like to work with, but also release to the public domain so I can see everyone else's take on it.

A classic-style fantasy where all the humanoids are actually descendants of humanity. The human presence on the planet is because it's a Lost Colony that's been cut of from the rest of mankind for a thousand years. Elves evolved from the colony ship's psychic navigator, dwarves were engineered to be perfect miners, goblins are mutants, etc. There's a hefty ammount of Future Imperfect and Clarke's Third Law, with, for example, "magic wands" actually being various types of sci-fi guns and Golems being robots.

Edited by dvorak on Mar 16th 2022 at 12:39:25 PM

This reminds a bit of a softer Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri... with an odd side of Lamarck Was Right, if I'm understanding the implications of the premise.

A satirical heist about two knives, six horseshoes, and sixty-one horseshoe nails being stolen from the office of the Queen's Remembrancer, a week before the Quit Rents ceremony. The actual heist ends up being dwarfed by the political fallout; the thieves turn out to have been hired to steal the purely-ceremonial annual rent of (significant parts of) the City of London, so that a foreign government can ransom them back in exchange for the British Museum returning their own stolen cultural artefacts.

I keep thinking about a story about the art of storytelling. It is probably nothing new but I want to have a "schizophrenic" approach to the story where it can be silly or serious depending on the book. The main character could be a student who seems to think he knows about storytelling but he really doesn't. It can also be a commentary on the different types of storytelling that are often employed by many writers.

This is incredibly cool.

This too. I like the idea of him starting an anonymous social media profile or even a Vtuber channel of his own (with a voice changer) where he talks about what they're actually like IRL and unknowingly leaves enough clues as to their real identity to dox them.

It's easy for the Vtubers to tell he's someone who knows all of them personally, but they don't know each other, so they can't collaborate to figure out who he is. But when he provides enough information for a Stalker with a Crush to find one of them and kidnap her, he's forced into a Heel Realization.

Edited by Wheezy on Apr 8th 2022 at 5:27:35 AM

I once tried to write a fanfic told as entries in a shared journal between the characters, however I was never really sure how to pull it off and gave up. But I still like the concept a lot. I think it was inspired by that one journal you can find in Pokémon Ranger Shadows of Almia.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 9th 2022 at 5:06:40 AM

In the trailer for the new Jurassic World movie, Claire says "Humans and dinosaurs can't coexist. We've created an ecological disaster." Incidentally, I had a story idea just like that.

One of my post-Cataclysm cultures, Regnum Leonis, a new Roman Empire set up in East Africa, sent hunting parties to Atlantis to capture the dinosaurs there and bring them back to make their gladiator games more exciting. It worked for a good long while, but some of the dinosaurs escaped, and began to establish themselves in their new African homeland, and they might be spreading through the rest of the Old World.

The End of the World as We Know It Is a month away. The Comet will crash into Earth, human sacrifice, cats and dogs livening together mass hysteria. But then... within 6 (is that cutting it too close?) Houres of impact the comet gets deviated by a second undetected meteor now Earth has to face Consequences.

Edited by Shyhero on Apr 24th 2022 at 5:57:57 AM

A Mad Scientist finally creates the Ultimate Life Form, in the form of a Brilliant, but Lazy Girl that would rather sleep than assert dominance over earth. Hilarity Ensues.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Apr 25th 2022 at 8:04:32 AM

That would be a great cartoon.

It took me a minute to get what you meant by the consequences, but I love that idea. The world's been living The Purge for a month, a billion people are dead from murder or night-before suicide, everyone's quit their jobs, cities are in ruin from vandalism, and many governments have collapsed. It might actually be the end of the world in the Mad Max sense.

Edited by Wheezy on Apr 26th 2022 at 12:47:21 PM

A heist story taking place in a superhero setting, with the crew consisting of minor supervillains.