One comment first: all five of these games could be run comfortably with Feng Shui. Also, all five of these are very dark. That being said:
1) I see three daughters of an old, insane king inheriting his kingdom. Well, two do. One tells the old man the truth and then goes into exile and raises a female samurai army, marrying the Prince(ss?) of a distant kingdom. She returns with her loyal samurai and has to win the battle both on the battlefield and with those the evil sisters have won over. Hilarity (and gratuitous violence) ensues.
2) Which of the thirty-six chambers of Shaolin houses the evil ghost-demon of a long forgotten kung fu master? Demons in the service of cackling eunuch sorcerers is old hat; put the evil right in the righteous fists of the monks who humbly serve the Emperor. In order to fly off walls and walk on willow branches, you have to make deals with bizarre, perverted, decidedly non-Confucian demonic powers...
3) By God, you finally got me interested in Starchildren. Invoking V for Vendetta is what did it, I think. Well, that and the The Darkness video that's on all the time now. Fighting space squid with the power of RAWK is inspiring, to say the least. Seriously, though, let's see, plots... I'm picturing Lou Reed and David Bowie in grey Berlin circa, well, Berlin. The glam is gone, Ziggy is dead, and the heroes are trying to tap into the power of the Drone and Metal Machine Music to fight fire with fire against the Conspiracy.
4) Law & Order, SV8, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Voluntary Castration. The Skoptsi (Shub-Niggurath or Cybele cultists, depending on whether you're going Delta Green or Hellboy here) have infiltrated SV8. Their decadent pre-Revolution backsliding into religiosity is doubly offensive to the People. But what happens when the Skoptsi are removed from their positions in the Politburo halfway through the campaign? Crop failures in the Ukraine, fertility rates plummet. Maybe they had something right after all...
5) History gets scrambled every session, eh? Sure does suck when your character goes to bed an expert chemist and veteran pastry chef and wakes up with the bizarre ability to hotwire a car and play left-handed piano etudes. Same personality, same appearance, TOTALLY different character. And the players never know which way they're going to turn out when they eliminate those "undesirable" histories.
Just add Dark! (tm)
1) I see three daughters of an old, insane king inheriting his kingdom. Well, two do. One tells the old man the truth and then goes into exile and raises a female samurai army, marrying the Prince(ss?) of a distant kingdom. She returns with her loyal samurai and has to win the battle both on the battlefield and with those the evil sisters have won over. Hilarity (and gratuitous violence) ensues.
2) Which of the thirty-six chambers of Shaolin houses the evil ghost-demon of a long forgotten kung fu master? Demons in the service of cackling eunuch sorcerers is old hat; put the evil right in the righteous fists of the monks who humbly serve the Emperor. In order to fly off walls and walk on willow branches, you have to make deals with bizarre, perverted, decidedly non-Confucian demonic powers...
3) By God, you finally got me interested in Starchildren. Invoking V for Vendetta is what did it, I think. Well, that and the The Darkness video that's on all the time now. Fighting space squid with the power of RAWK is inspiring, to say the least. Seriously, though, let's see, plots... I'm picturing Lou Reed and David Bowie in grey Berlin circa, well, Berlin. The glam is gone, Ziggy is dead, and the heroes are trying to tap into the power of the Drone and Metal Machine Music to fight fire with fire against the Conspiracy.
4) Law & Order, SV8, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Voluntary Castration. The Skoptsi (Shub-Niggurath or Cybele cultists, depending on whether you're going Delta Green or Hellboy here) have infiltrated SV8. Their decadent pre-Revolution backsliding into religiosity is doubly offensive to the People. But what happens when the Skoptsi are removed from their positions in the Politburo halfway through the campaign? Crop failures in the Ukraine, fertility rates plummet. Maybe they had something right after all...
5) History gets scrambled every session, eh? Sure does suck when your character goes to bed an expert chemist and veteran pastry chef and wakes up with the bizarre ability to hotwire a car and play left-handed piano etudes. Same personality, same appearance, TOTALLY different character. And the players never know which way they're going to turn out when they eliminate those "undesirable" histories.