Ideas Are Easy

[RyanW]

Agents of Anubis
PCs are troubleshooters for the Temple of Anubis at Hardai (which will, a few hundred years in the future, be called Cynopolis). They are tasked with tracking and returning treasures stolen by grave robbers, stopping sorcery that threatens the peace of the dead, dealing with ghosts lingering in the world of the living to avoid judgment, etc.

[ericthered]

Lonely Super Powers

One PC has a very subtle super-power. They've had it all their life, and they've never done anything noticable with it. They don't know where all the other people with powers are. Then, they notice someone else who has a power.

How open should they be? why hasn't any one else shown powers before? How does this upset their nice little life? Can be run as a solo campaign, or players can take up supporting roles.

The original scenario involves a middle aged women who can read minds noticing a new neighbor whose mind she can't read. Who happens to be a cop.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Lonely Super Powers

One PC has a very subtle super-power. They've had it all their life, and they've never done anything noticable with it. They don't know where all the other people with powers are. Then, they notice someone else who has a power.

How open should they be? why hasn't any one else shown powers before? How does this upset their nice little life? Can be run as a solo campaign, or players can take up supporting roles.

The original scenario involves a middle aged women who can read minds noticing a new neighbor whose mind she can't read. Who happens to be a cop.

I can image the character being confused and scared when they realize that not everyone can <insert ability here>.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

They are, yes. Ivory Tower, Gray Area, Uncanny Valley, Friend Zone...

1, 4, 3, and 5, respectively. I can't figure out #2. I'm trying to think up an area for Slippery Slope to apply; obviously it's an ice-capped mountain, but... I guess it causes people who compromise on any little thing to immediately go to the opposite side? Or just lose their balance and fall.

I agree Ivory Tower seems to be the best one.

Gray Area reminds me (tangentially) of a setting I came up with. It's one where everyone has innate access to magic, and they have a sixth sense for detecting other living things, particularly people. However, if a person ever kills someone else (killing animals and monsters doesn't count), they immediately and irreversibly lose access to magic and their sixth sense, but the sixth sense of others can no longer detect them. This makes them harder to detect (most people have grown up with a certain degree of reliance on this sixth sense), but if you do see one it's immediately obvious they've killed, as your sixth sense tells you they aren't there. Considering how to convey this (the idea was actually for a video game setting), I decided characters who had killed would be completely in grayscale, with no color to them (indeed, the game itself would have fairly bright and vibrant color; once the main character inevitably killed someone, it would immediately switch to grayscale, then color would bleed back in, stabilizing with a darker palette). Note the characters wouldn't literally go gray - they'd look exactly as they did before - it's just difficult to get across how different they'd seem to a normal person. In the setting, it's believed a person who has killed and lost their magic has literally lost their soul (not much a stretch, considering they "feel" empty).

Warfare is a good deal different in such a society - most soldiers will capture rather than kill, but there would be special divisions made up of sentient or "tamed" monsters and those who have killed before (let's call them "grays") who could kill with impunity (but could also be slain readily by enemy soldiers). Executions either use similar individuals or elaborate deathtraps (which circumvent the "no killing" rule), or perhaps one could be punished by being forced to kill another person. Grays would be unlikely to be able to get legitimate employment outside of the above, so their enhanced (relative to normal folk) stealth abilities would likely result in them becoming sneaky thieves and assassins and the like.

Originally Posted by RyanW

I can image the character being confused and scared when they realize that not everyone can <insert ability here>.

An underused trope (is it even used enough to count as a trope?), but a good one. An example here.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Varyon

1, 4, 3, and 5, respectively. I can't figure out #2.

Dark Forest theory. A forest that makes you feel paranoid and ready to kill any stranger you see.

I'm trying to think up an area for Slippery Slope to apply; obviously it's an ice-capped mountain, but... I guess it causes people who compromise on any little thing to immediately go to the opposite side? Or just lose their balance and fall.

To capture the Slippery Slope it has to be a relatively gradual incline that isn't obviously dangerous, so people will step on it. Maybe a transparent slime mold?

[Luke Bunyip]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Dark Forest theory.

Specifically:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Like hunters in a "dark forest", a civilization can never be certain of an alien civilization's true intentions. The extreme distances between stars creates an insurmountable "chain of suspicion", where any two civilizations cannot communicate well enough to dissipate mistrust, making conflict inevitable. Leaving a primitive civilization alone is not an option due to the exponential progress of technological change, and a civilization you have detected might easily surpass your own technological level in a few centuries and become a threat. If you have detected a civilization, then you have also confirmed that said civilization will eventually be able to detect you. Therefore, it is in every civilization's best interest to preemptively strike and destroy any developing civilization before it can become a threat, but without revealing their own location to the wider universe, thus explaining the Fermi paradox.

This text here is just so this post gets accepted

[SolemnGolem]

Originally Posted by Luke Bunyip

(re: the Dark Forest theory)

I loved the Remembrance of Earth Past trilogy - the final book had two superweapons that were utterly chilling to me (one of which I'd seen in some form with Legends Star Wars EU stories, and the other one of which was new to me at the time I read it).

I hope Liu Cixin does many more novels on a similar scale.

For my idea:

Squirps

Biri the Squirrel has had to watch sadly as her beloved forest became settled by large unkempt bipeds. Though they've generally left her alone (one trapped her in a cage for a bit and fed her nuts before she escaped), her animal friends have not fared so well. With her trees disappearing, Biri has been reduced to stealing edible stuff from the bipeds and their stores.

The first chapter features Biri's tree being felled and the bipeds putting down a midden, and starting to bury their dead nearby. Biri helps several of her friends escape, and continues her foraging, until several other woodland animals mention a "ghost of the forest" that wants to help. Biri finds the ghost of the forest - a covering of dust on a great dead tree - that speaks to her in a haze, telling her that it once knew thought and memory and aspirations... but now it's so reduced that it only knows dreams.

The second chapter features Biri stealing various things from the bipeds and collecting them to the Ghost so it grows. Eventually, it fruits and there are mushrooms and rhizomes on the tree. The Ghost asks Biri to bring it to the midden and leave it there, and it would chase away the bipeds once it grows strong enough.

The final chapter features the Ghost in fullscale fungal outbreak. The bipeds are sickening and dying - the animals aren't doing too well either... and the forest trees are suffering from a blight and rotting as the Ghost takes them over. The Ghost is over-delivering on its promise to destroy the bipeds, as well as threatening to take the forest and critters along with it. Biri needs to team up with the remaining animals and a few scattered humans to generate fire, and torch the midden and graves where the Ghost's neural net is most concentrated.

Thus defeated, the Ghost once again fragments into disorganized sub-sentient fungal spores. Biri and her forest critters face an uncertain future as the remaining bipeds regroup and reassess their circumstances with a long winter ahead.

[ericthered]

Keepers of the Troll Brigade.

Nothing fights quite like a monster. The PC's are the humans in charge of collecting, training, caring for, and keeping from mischief a military unit composed of brute beasts in the shape of men. It is their job to teach them how to march, how to obey orders, how to keep ranks, and how to target soldiers wearing the correct uniforms.

They're big, they're dumb, and they're all yours... but they're also the key to victory in the coming war.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by SolemnGolem

...

For my idea:

Squirps
....

That's pure SCP territory, both squirrel and intelligent fungus. The fungus could easily be a form of SCP 610.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by RyanW

I can image the character being confused and scared when they realize that not everyone can <insert ability here>.

What kinds of powers could be obscured by an assumed taboo?
Sleep based or timed abilities are the first things to spring to my mind.