Story Templates

As a DM, a heavy burden is placed upon you. In general, you're forced to have a skeleton and remold it as the characters react to it.

Ideas and Guidelines

The story templates below are a skeleton to try to cover various ways to do a pre-made plot in the official setting. Many areas are intentionally vague, allowing for DMs to place things where they need. HAZE and the Agents are large and the enigmatic enough to throw in tons of antagonists. BLUE is supposed to be a small organization at this point, there rarely should be more than a half dozen DM-created NPC 'officials' who do no work but hold power. Operatives make up a great majority of BLUE though, there's about ten times as many who actually go out on missions and who have more flexibility as antagonists because of this.

As will be mentioned, an important aspect is taking things from your player characters. They'll bring in concepts, locations, goals, and most importantly to you tons of support characters. Simply put, the best way to avoid railroading is making it so if they end up disabling an antagonist it just doesn't matter. You always want a few in play, that benefit from the continued existence and destruction of other groups. It can be mundane geopolitical stuff or far more mystical energy-robbing stuff.

If a characters chooses a race with unique features, make sure to give them reasonable cause to try to use the feature rather than them just guessing. Simply allude to possible hidden things with characters or descriptions. Any time a character uses their feature out of combat, it should have some impact. Perhaps it's necessary to advance the plot, perhaps it just brings a new item or area into play, or perhaps it even hinders them (never forget this is an option!). The features shouldn't be fully positive all the time, but obviously if you use it against them too much they'll feel they're being abused.

In general, the ideal size for a group is six people, with being a bit smaller better than a bit larger, though they can work. A DM PC can always help balance the numbers, especially for guiding the others one way or the other.

That said, the principal here is for the full group working together to be emphasized in major encounters (and maybe not always then). Instead, the DM is often encouraged to break into threes groups of two, two groups of three, or even a group of four and another of two. Sometimes grouping like parties, like putting together the stealthiest two to make the way easier, other times opposites complement one another, like a tank defending a hacker. Obviously you want to switch up groups, but small groups like this work well for character and relationship development, particularly in the early missions.

Every few missions, the DM might want to throw in a setting NPC, especially if they don't have a PC. For the most part, these NPCs make it mostly a 'grace mission,' they tend to be there to show off and facilitate the mission. That said, even if the mission is successful by default, there are many degrees of success, and an unorganized group may find themselves struggling to stay alive, much less carry out any objectives. These characters are often there to help lay out some new ideas for the group or help after the loss of a PC, but they're also important for exploring the personalities of the PC, especially as they tend to hold rank on them.

Assuming they're following the pre-made plot, the DM is encourage to create a rival group. It might be made from ideas the DM had for characters, alternate ideas the PCs had before they chose theirs, or a combination. But this group should be very involved with matters from the PC group. They might be (in part) actual traitors in disguise, or they might just be (in part) exemplars of BLUE that one of the PCs has problems with, but the two groups clearly are in competition from the PCs' views. This group is generally going to perform better than the PCs at the beginning, but as time goes on it will be clear the PCs are better in some way. There's a lot of ways for this to go, perhaps one looks for an edge in darker places, perhaps they end up taking a mission too hard for them, or perhaps one tires of the operative style. The way the NPCs respond is left up to the DM, and the more varied the responses in the group the more organic and flexible the relationships are.

It should also be noted that time around the base is generally covered for a bit in this. Sometimes hanging around the base reacting to what has just happened takes up the majority of a session, sometimes the characters practice a bit of a hobby before their next assignment, whatever. The important thing is the characters have lives outside of the missions. This is especially important for having fun with the rival group. Perhaps the mages in both groups attend the same lectures when off-duty, growing close as friends outside of their groups, and maybe more. Perhaps they grow close to an official, or just as interestingly have a dislike for them. Everything small can have a huge effect if you just let it, so if you allow a bunch of small things to accumulate you always have something to snowball if they ever nip something big you were planning in the bud.

The First Mission

The default scenario opens in HAZE headquarters, Ace's office. He has most characters who chose BLUE as their alliance in the room. PCs who chose another organization are assumed to be spies placed into BLUE, and Ace is aware. DMs are able to deviate from this however they want, but the templates are written with this in mind.

The first mission is Redux, ruler of the Formric, has called into HAZE with a complaint. It seems that a few workers have been reported missing in a certain cave, and a nest of animals or a small group of thugs are expected as the culprit. BLUE has promised able protection to the race, so the group is sent into what is expected to be a low-level mission. The group heads underground, meeting with either a NPC guide or a PC Formric or Drow. These are the only two that should be exempt from the opening scene, unless you're deviating for other reasons.

The group heads into the cave, meeting with a small number of animal enemies, Corrupted Adamites abound in particular. As they journey deeper, they might find a few corpses, partially destroyed. Eventually they reach a humanoid whom has dark trails of energy run off of him like oil. He moves slowly but deliberately, firing off large blasts of power. This should be slow-moving and easy for characters to dodge, and incredibly painful if they do not. As the PCs hammer into him to try to detain him, he shoots one upward, collapsing the tunnel on himself. The group is to report this back to Ace.

Ace is concerned about the description, as it doesn't sound like a natural inhabitant of this plane. He encourages characters to hang around the headquarters while he investigates this, giving them their salary for a successful mission as well as a small bonus for it being more dire than expected.