The following tables gives the Managing Editor gonzo content on
the fly for your Fear & Loathing USR, as the good Dr. would have you do it. Gonzo adventures by their very
nature are improvisational, and you are encouraged to go with your player’s
suggestions, respond to their crazy ideas and turn them into sordid, depraved
nightmares. I have seen others suggest that when you have used a result from a table that you cross it out and replace it with one of your own! This is excellent advice and is encouraged for this table as well.
Using other adventure hook generators I've found on the web and reskinning them with gonzo chrome has yielded the following forty one adventure hooks. Feel free to help me get to 100!
Gonzo Adventure Generator; (roll 1d100) actual location
of event, foreign or domestic, is left up to the discretion of the ME.
1. The
police think the PC’s are responsible for a car bomb that went off in front of
a political campaign headquarters. Can the PC’s find the real culprit before
they are hunted down themselves? Do they dare, knowing that the criminal
operates with a frighteningly degree of sophistication?
2. The
PC’s are arrested by the local police upon first entering town. Once in custody
the police captain attempts to deliver the PC’s to a murder death cult.
3. A
woman falls into the street from the second story window in front of the PC’s
and dies on impact. Soon after, a man with a gun comes out and complains that the
sites were off, that him and his wife were playing a game of “William Tell”. He
hopes that the PC’s will help defend himself from a murder charge as witnesses.
As soon as the police show the man quickly disappears into a maze of side
streets. The PC’s are arrested and held for the “murder”.
4. The
PC’s are invited/sent on assignment/gate crashing a political fundraiser by an
important socialite. They could be looking for a potential job opportunity,
being extorted, what have you. At some point the PC’s are told to wait in an
empty room. Soon after entering the room, the PC’s realizes they are locked in.
5. The
PC’s stops to witness a funeral procession for a beloved celebrity. Soon after
passing, the PC’s hear an explosion and witness the hearse erupt into a smoking
fireball.
6. In
need of food and shelter from the elements (in the middle of a natural
disaster), the PC’s come to a ruined casino/restaurant/airport full of reveling
looters.
7. As
you step out of the bar, a disheveled girl smashes into you. "The dog is
loose again!" she exclaims as she attempts to hide behind you. You turn
back in the direction she came to see a; (roll 1d6) 1-2 metal construct. 3-4 loping
maniac. 5-6 alien entity charging toward you.
8. Someone you know has come
across a big story and wants to get together an investigative team. Later you
meet at a hotel room only to find murder, drugs, and mayhem.
9. While spending a day boating
your anchor gets snagged on something hard and impossible to dislodge. The
water isn't too deep and you have diving gear onboard.
10. You find a strange machine in
the basement of your new apartment. Do you turn it on?
11. You are asked to go find the
whereabouts of a coworker who went missing on assignment.
12. You wake up in an unknown
location with several other amnesiacs. What have you been doing over the last
few hours/days/years?
13. You wake up in a dumpster
behind a Chinese restaurant. You have $50, a .45 automatic, a cassette tape in
some strange language and no memory.
14. A contact of yours works in
the morgue, and he called to say a cadaver suddenly sat up and left the
building.
15. Smugglers are landing illegal
contraband onshore. Their supply ships remain anchored well outside any
exclusion zone. How does the stuff get ashore? No diving equipment is ever
seen, and no other vessel ever approaches.
16. You get lost outside of
Tijuana in the dead of night on Los Díos De Los Muertos.
17. A young activist calls you up
and tells you to come up to northern Canada. Due to global warming hideous
creatures trapped in the ice for millennia are coming alive. This has got to be
some mad, radical hippie stunt just to attract attention to their cause, right?
18. You are at home one night
when you hear frantic knocking at the front door. You arm yourself and open the
door to face....you! Thinner, haggard looking, wounded and yelling. "C'mon
they'll be here any moment! We've got to get away! Now!"
19. It was a Tuesday just like
any other Tuesday in the City of Lights, a cheap bottle of Whiskey three
quarters full beside a silent phone, when there is a knock on the door. Another
dame, another doll face. “How much do you charge for your services?” She has a
package she needs delivered.
20. You are picked up in a night
club by an intense young lady. She insists you come with her to a motel. Here
she shows you her; (roll 1d6) 1-2, city map filled with pins, lines, newspaper
clippings, fetishes, etc. 3-4, mass of tentacles and gaping maw splitting her
abdomen from throat to groin, filled with an insane conglomeration of razor
sharp fangs... 5-6, a kilo of coke, and transcripts from an illegal wiretap.
21. People who work at a PCs
place of work / at the local fast food restaurant, etc. keep turning up dead,
in the same bizarre way (Spontaneous combustion? Partially cannibalized?) Local
Police don't seem inclined to investigate.
22. You receive a complex paper
from a local university professor the same day he is reported missing.
23. Someone has stolen your lawn
flamingo, an unforgivable offense. To make matters worse they taunt you by
sending pictures from around the world of your beloved decoration in various
countries. But when you look at the photos and compare them to news articles
from these places you start to see a pattern emerge… Paranoid delusions or a
nefarious plot? Either way, you are going to get your damn flamingo back!
24. Something strange has been
captured on CCTV. When it was viewed, several people flipped out, and are now
residing in the local sanitarium. However, copies were made, and are doing the
rounds on the internet. The footage comes with dire warnings, about "What
you are about to see...was captured...while...and made people mad....etc."
It now has a cult following, with an online club who "Saw the film and
didn't go mad”.
25. After turning out an old
house or University stores you discover a "Grow your own Top Secret
Life-Form" kit. With a few simple chemicals, and the protein goo contained
in the included glass cartridges, you can grow a weird living being in four
days! At first it is content to simply feed on scraps.
26. Invasion;
(roll 1d6) 1-2 giant snakes, 3-4 alien beings, or 5-6 the feds, invade the; (roll
1d6)1-2 resort 3-4, training camp, or 5-6 country farm you are currently
staying at.
27. You're working late in the
hospital one night, when; (roll 1d6) 1-2, Secret Service arrives with someone
who has been shot. You are sworn to secrecy. 3-4, a loud noise alerts you to a
break in at the pharmacy. What was taken? There is a blood trail. 5-6, the
ghost of a dead relative tells you where confederate gold is buried.
28. Someone gives/lends/asks you
to research a clock. The clock in question resembles a Grandfather clock.
Ornately carved in wood and inset with semiprecious stones. It has a fairly
mundane face, but has many other dials inset in it and around it. The clock
chimes at irregular intervals and with several different chimes. Some quiet,
some loud, some in frequencies beyond normal hearing. What is the purpose of
the clock? How does it work?
29. You are travelling by plane.
A star-vampire materializes in the cabin, and starts sucking the life out of
the passengers. If it makes it forward to the pilot, you’re all going to die.
Can you and your fellow investigators dismiss the beast with only an in-flight
magazine and a few bits of plastic cutlery?
30. A conservation agency wants
to hire you to stop a fracking operation from disrupting a natural cave complex
near a fault line. And they are prepared to use any means to succeed.
31. The old woman who lives
upstairs from one of the PC's, a recent stroke victim, divulges future
terrorist attacks in the middle of mundane sentences. She has no knowledge of
these other words she speaks but they are coming true.
32. In an overwhelming sense of
paranoia a powerful politician wants to hire the PC’s to find a mole within the
party leaking info to another campaign’s political operatives. Is it all a
twisted hallucination?
33. Invited to a dinner party by
an old physician friend of the PC's, they arrive to find out he is still at
work at the local sanitarium. His housekeeper informs them that the good doctor
has sent word they are to go ahead and eat without him. He will join them
later. A few hours pass and the doctor has still not shown up.
34. Someone sends them a warning
to “Leave town and never return” Are they brave enough to stay and find out
why?
35. All the PC’s electrical goods
go haywire and try to kill them.
36. The investigators are
travelling in the hills when they come across an old car. Inside the car is a
set of clothes that might be a disguise of some kind. They also find a suitcase.
Inside are; (roll 1d6) 1-2 some papers. 3-4 a million dollars. 5-6 antidote to
the zombie plague.
37. A music album is released.
The music is surreal and nonsensical, but it sells well... and a rumor
circulates that if it is played at the same time as a specific pre-existing
film, then the music synchronizes exactly with the action. No-one is sure
whether it is a coincidence, but a film student who became obsessed with the
sync is found mysteriously murdered. Some who watch the synchronized film/album
are able to see a hidden message in the combined works.
38. A coworker, and/or friend has
been kidnapped. You are going to get them back.
39. Activists
want to get evidence of animal rights violations on the circus in town. They
appeal to a man of your particular skills for assistance.
40. After
the (national sporting event) your neighborhood is placed under quarantine.
Some type of fever is what you are being told.
41. At
the bus station a homeless woman grips your wrists and says; (roll 1d6) 1-2 “I
reckon Melvin, he ignored it ’til it blowed up in his face. He was obsest ’til
it all come undone with this wallet Clarence lost.” 3-4 “Retrace your steps.” 5-6 “Code 20,
officer needs routine assistance. Commissioner’s Office reports possible
Promoting Prison Contraband, in 800 block of Adams Street. Suspect is 390W,
clearly intoxicated apparently biracial female, wearing silver tooth
decorations. Over”.
