The Compilation of Epic d20 Modern and Future Encounters and Locations

[ThisOne]

This is meant as a shared resource. Post your awesome encounters, locations, plot hooks, etc. that you've used or just dreamed up. Each post should contain an idea even if you just want to comment. It can be sci fi, modern fantasy, action, whatever. Also, try to avoid really cliche ideas.

(8 of these have actually been used in my games)




1: Players must board and fight their way through a nuclear missile submarine/aircraft carrier to steal a nuclear warhead to really stick it to the BBEGs.

2: Players are on a bus when it is hijacked by bank robbers or terrorists. Now they have to do something about it...like crashing the bus into an apartment building in the densest residential district in the city and starting a major firefight.

3: Players have to steal or hijack a jet with advanced ASAT weaponry to start a war...as a distraction.

4: Players are stopped at a speed trap after a mission where a cop sees advanced body armor and automatic weapons. The most spectacular car chase ever ensues until the PCs are cornered on a suspension bridge, surrounded by SWAT with a helicopter or two to boot.

5: Players must infiltrate a 0-gee shipyard inside space suits but face unexpected resistance in an insanely complicated battlefield.

6: A minor noble fakes his death in an aircar crash and joins a mercenary company to escape an arranged marriage to the girl of his nightmares.

7: A rival challenges a PC to a duel at high noon...with high performance fighter planes.

8: Players are must fight aboard a WWII Japanese aircraft carrier raised from the depths by magic and armed with magically enhanced nuclear weapons that will tear rifts between dimensions, destroying their home city.

9: Players are modern wizards in the service of a mysterious order who make their home in a pocket dimension that looks like a soulless and spotlessly clean office building. They are equipped with magical briefcases, smart-phones, and suit jackets that adapt to suit their needs.

10: Players must fight a war under the oceans of Europa in order to oust a secret military facility of some enemy or another.

11: Players must fight to defend their crashed helicopter in an open swamp in the middle of enemy territory.

12: Players must fight in the partially completed trans-atlantic maglev tunnel.

13: A PC has the ability to turn into innanimate objects, or maybe a particular vehicle...in a modern setting.

14: Players must break a friend out of an orbital colony that has been quarantined on account of massively antibiotic-resistant superplague. What will they do if their friend is infected already...

15: You aren't quite sure how you wound up there, but you now have to fight a demon inside the LHC...and it's T minus five minutes until it turns on and kills you all.

[ThisOne]

Wow, nothing in 2 days?

Okay, I'll bump the thread with a few more:

16: For whatever reason the players become responsible for taking care of/entertaining/showing around the child of an alien diplomat. This works better with alien aliens (as opposed to rubber forehead aliens) with alien personalites otherwise it is much less interesting. This could be adorable if the alien in question is young and friendly or traumatic if the party has to deal with a violent adolescent who wants to assert his dominance over everything. Probably best as a non-combat encounter,

17:You wake up in the morning next to someone you don't recognize or remember (and you don't recall going out last night). She only speaks [insert ancient, dead language here]. This is going to be very, very hard to explain, and there are probably going to be problems with culture shock and a lack of documentation. You can't exactly deport somebody back in time.

18: Players must fight their way out of an asteroid being mined in planetary orbit before it collides violently with the ground. Unfortunately, there are only three shuttles.

19: Players must fight in a field of glass that was the remanant of an orbital bombardment form some ancient war.

20: You wake up floating in 0-gee inside a spaceplane with several other people you don't recognize. Your chrono says it's been a month, but you can't remember anything. The autopilot tells you that the shuttle is preparing to land.

[Moofaa]

21. Players must capture a well-known smuggler and bring him to justice. Unfortunately hes located on a space station with a large number of henchmen. Even worse the local authorities have banned the carrying of weapons (the bad guys, of course, have bribed the same authorities to look the other way at their own weapons).

[industrious]

22. You wake up in your office to find a single message from a number you've never seen before. It simple says. It has begun.

[Thomar_of_Uointer]

23) A megacorporation has just finished a twenty-year project to put solar satelites into orbit to meet half of the world's power needs. Unfortunately, a madman hijacks the network and can now use the microwave power transmission beam to vaporize any person, building, or city he desires.

24) Scientists discover the first sign of intelligent life in the universe! It's a mile-wide ball of gray goo on a direct collision course with Earth.

[The Anarresti]

25) PCs are hired by a Zaratan (or some other ENORMOUS creature) to go inside it's body and clear it of an infestation of parasites.
EDIT: numbered

[Thomar_of_Uointer]

26) An interplanetary conflict arises when a marginally advanced alien civilization informs Earth-dwellers that Sol is going to disrupt the orbit of one of their colony planets in a few centuries. Humanity has 12 months to relocate before the entire Solar System gets vaporized and turned into rector fuel.