Hello,

I've had the game for a few months but haven't yet had a chance to run it. For some reason i'm finding it difficult to think up suitable plots, I have to get into a fairy tale mindset.

So i'm seeking inspiration. What sorts of stories have people come up with? How do your players cope with the game's concepts?

Well if you want inspiration why not look at the Grimm's Faery Tales for some easy ideas. I know for my group I ran a Spiderwick based game with my nieces and there is lots of great ideas found within the Spiderwick mythos. I think you can even look to other kids stories and even classics and borrow from them like Wizard of Oz, Lord of the RIngs, Alice in Wonderland, The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe. Another is Where the Wilds Things Are (Which there is a post about here on the boards). Even look to movies for a source of inspiration. Just get some kids and toss really weird stuff at them to get them into the Grimm Lands or into a world of your own creation based on ideas plucked from various sources.

HOOK AND LINE:

While reading Alice in Wonderland, I got the idea for one where the kids stumble upon the house of The Dutchess from Alice in Wonderland and find the Cheshire Cat and everyone else turned to stone. Because everybody loves the Cheshire Cat and probably want some way to free him [and there's a rumor going around that there is a way to free him] they must infiltrate the Brick House and steal the stone piglet statue and bring it back to the Dutchess's house. Upon it entering, the statue splits into five little piggies, who all start doing things bent on the rhyme of "This little piggie". The kids must figure out through knowledge and dreaming that they must give the squealing piggie to the stone Dutchess. Once this happens the players are to find that the inhabitants are quite sane...a little too sane in fact, and the Cheshire Cat does not grin, but instead glowers and purrs and meows when spoken to, or ignores the players intirely. The Dutchess will be ranting off about morals in a hypnotically sane way and can hypnotize the players into falling asleep. What they must do instead is to either start sprinkling pepper all over the place, have the dutchess spout out a particularily violent moral, or have her spout off some form of wording that sounds violent. Example: "You can't have slaughter without laughter." As soon as this realization occurs, the Cheshire Cat will grin and disapear while the rest of the household will try to murder the kids as thanks for bringing madness back.

REWARD:

Once the kids are 'safe', they'll find the Cheshire Cat appearing before their eyes, eternally thankful for what they have done. His lines will cycle between playfully fun and darkly cryptic. His tail will wag when he's happy and he'll purr when he's angry because some of the sanity is still left in him and he even feels the need to take a bath in water, the thought of wich terrifies him (if he does take a bath though, he'll go completely mad and get his maddening foresight and imagination back). As a base reward, the children are challenged to a game of hide and seek with the Cat, a task which is almost impossible and requires great amount of teamwork, focus and seeking ability. Once they find the cat, they all gain a point of Seek and anybody with the animal friend ability can attempt to recruit the cat temporarily or perminantly. The grade required for this is made easier once the cat has gone completely mad [is actually halved] because the cat loves to help people, especially those who are mad enough to give a cat a bath. Stats for the Cheshire Cat are totally up to the Narrator as this encounter can happen whenever and should be atuned to not breaking the game, but he must have the ability to vanish and reappear no matter what. The fun thing about the Cheshire Cat is that his model can also switch between the dark Alice model, the Disney model, the Lewis Carroll model, or any other form of grinning cat that you can think of.

Starting an overall game:

I also have a meta going on in which the kids must go through the ritual of dethroning the Rotten King in order to find the door to Babylon at the end of the world, but upon doing so, they must also find the twelve Babylon keys in which to unlock the door [which appear during the majority of their quest]. This door leads to the discovery as to why the Grimm Lands exist and what the identity of Melusine really is. I don't want to ruin the ending yet in case my players see this, but I can tell you that the way I started was by having seven days at school with normal things happening interwoven with cryptic messages in their texbooks, desks [blood in the desk, always cool], lockers, dreams and skizophrenic utterances of twisted Humpty Dumpty rhymes in a demonic voice. I then have different things happen to them depending on who they are. The Dreamer basically is like "Oooh! Shiny magical door! I've always wanted to open one!" the Bully is about to punch the new Nerd on the block, when suddenly when he breaks his face in, reality itself shatters around him and the nerd laughs manically, etc. The kids then start off in the closet of The Devil's Grandmother [from the Grimm tales], who is a nice lady and introduces a bit of where they are and seems to have something to do with Melusine. Eventually they're free to leave, but once they do, the house disapears behind them and they find themselves 'insert place here'.