Adventure Calendar 2020 1: Celebrations

Happy December!

After last year doing a festive writing prompt through the month, I’m dumb enough to do it again. Having covered festive traditions largely as I thought of them last time, this year I’m going with hooks based on film, song, book and other titles. I will probably mostly stay generic, but I may specify settings and genres for some. Some overlap may occur.

Adventure Calendar 2020

1: Celebrations

“Sure! We saved the world, I say we party.”

Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Prophecy Girl

As I started last year with the simplest idea, I’ll look at it again as it’s something that could come up in every game with a suitable holiday and repeatedly in the same game.

How do the player characters celebrate the holidays?

And for a plot hook spin on it:

How would the characters organise a larger celebration?

A game with a large social scene involved is the obvious place to put this. Fantasy games have royal courts, state occasions and diplomatic dinners. The Vampire family of games has the regular Elysium and special occasions where the Damned hang out. This can be a chance to social climbing, or something foisted on the characters, and the threat of leaders being displeased if the occasion is a letdown can add to the tension.

But many settings could have a festival, a surprise party for a friend’s birthday, or something like that. Buffy stresses more about Thanksgiving dinner than the attack by vengeful spirits that interrupt it.