First off, I listened to Ep 52/53 twice in a row, these spawned _so_ many ideas for me to tweak my own homebrew world. Before this I had not heard of Lou Anders, but I am now going to get his Bones and Thrones books to share with my son. And Yes I too have read the Elric series by Michael Moorcock, they're great.
= Fishing Competition = A hero or creature has slain a bunch of sharks in the area, which has causes a population explosion in smaller fish in the area.
1-Druids create a fishing competition, and offer 3 'different' magical items as the prize. By different I mean feather token or figurine of wonderous power or ioun stone, underused stuff.
2-Clerics of the Sea God (trying to increase worship and gather converts) create a fishing competition, and offer houses (they've got huge tracks of land!) as the prizes.
3-A giant sea beast demands tribute of 300 fish (tuna not kippers!) by midnight tomorrow night or it will attack Lake town!
= Ratfolk =
Fritz Lieber wrote some great Lankhmar (Fafhd=Barbarian, Gray Mouser=Rogue) stories with Ratfolk beneath the city. Decades later William King wrote the Gotrek and Felix series which has the Skaven, chaos magic using ratfolk for Warhammer Fantasy 'old world'.
Both series are highly recommended. If you like the strength & guile interaction that Thor/Loki, Worf/Riker and Chewy/Han Solo have, you'll enjoy these books.
= Airship Pirates =
Ever seen the movie or read the book for Stardust by Neil Gaiman? great stuff and Airship pirates in the middle of it. Lots of plot twists, rich fantasy story.
- Maybe the pirates have a bad reputation, but are like robin hood, raiding evil merchants and slavers only?
- Perhaps the pirates are allies with Storm Giants, fighting a evil Cloud Giant group, the Storm Giants and pirates are loosing, and need supplies/equipment now.
- Maybe the pirate are under Mind Flayer control! you could have the pcs confront the evil Mind Flayer boss in his cabin, he turns around slowly in his chair while patting an Intellect Devourer on his lap like a Bond villain.
= Flash from the Past =
- in the game i'm currently running the pcs have had visions of past lives during eclipses and when they touch items they used in past lives. Some of these past lives were clerics and paladins, so they went to the churches and checked their records. They found out two of the pcs have traveled with/known a third pc in past lives, they also found that the third pc has been killed by a massive black dragon in four separate lives.
- what they haven't found out yet is there is a prophesy that the third pc is going to kill the world snake-so he is sending his children to slay every incarnation of the heroes.
. I think my favorite idea (and I forgot who mentioned it. Since I wrote Three different columns of ideas, but didn't label any) is the rat city. I like the idea of the players killing rats and finding out that they were actually people. There is also so much you can add/modifiy to the original idea for it to continually be interesting.
