Secret Santicorn: Stealing the Sitch

Prompt: Stealing situations from books, movies, and videogames for fun and profit.

Movie: Inception: 
    The party has to get into someone’s mind and either remove, or harder still, implant a memory or idea there.  This will make them much easier to manipulate in the real world.
    The characters have a limited macguffin to enter the mind of the target, and have to heist-like move through surrealistic situations, with a limited ability to impose their own visions, with the assistance of mundane “seed” objects that have a stronger persistence than the mindscape they are in.  These seed objects should provide a limited narrative control to the players, and for maximum effect should be things that they identify through research of the target, things that link to strong emotions and memories the target has associated with them.

Movie: Dark City: 
    There is a device that lets its user extract memories as bodily fluids which they can then inject into other people.  They can then use alchemy to mix and match collections of memories. 
    This device could be used by a cabal to try to manipulate some chosen one to their own nefarious ends. 
    The PCs might use it for similar nefarious purposes, or might instead use it to transfer knowledge of spells, recover lost memories from squidzards, fey, or doppelgangers, or possibly even to recover lost information from ghosts or undead. 

Movies: Star Wars: 
    There is an imminent threat that threatens the governance of the world(s), but there are rumors of a vulnerability to a well-timed attack. The characters must make a desperate play to expose that vulnerability to the focused might of the Resistance forces, or must find information about that vulnerability, and get that information back to them. 
    In a fantastic setting, that might be something like setting the Dragon Repellent device out of alignment, allowing the dragons to attack, to finding the vulnerability of mecha-tarasque, and couriering it to the defenders of the realm. The goal of this kind of mission is not for the party to singlehandedly defeat the threat, but to play a pivotal role in making that defeat possible. 

Movie: True Grit: 
    The party is hired by a child to avenge her on the killers of her parents. 
This can be played straight, with stone rigging at heart strings,  or with possible future utility, if the family has some sort of power the daughter still controls, or it can have twists, if the killers were avenging deaths the parents caused

Book: The Peripheral: 
    The characters are pulled into another world to perform a service (“I cast summon monster VI”).  They see something nobody else does, and are repeatedly summoned to get information and help someone in that other world.  Then the opposition of that world starts sending attackers at them in their own world. 
    This other world might be a fae or genie society, svart elves, or a society from the not too near future.

Children's Book: There's a Monster at the End of This Book: 
    The characters, or one of them, has a prophecy that they will find a monster at the end of a dungeon. When they get to the end, they find out the monster is them. This could be played lightly if the character(s) are considered monstrous by society at large, or could be played very darkly if the character(s) are “normal humans” who do dark things to stop the monster from getting them before realizing they are the dark thing. 

Book: The Three Musketeers: 
    The characters are sworn to the Crown, and find nefarious plots by a significant ally of the Crown who is secretly trying to set up a coup, and always manages to either look like a defender of the Crown or to make the characters own motivations look questionable. 
    To stay true to the source, this situation should have plenty of melodrama, including mistaken Identity galore,  conveniently overheard discussions or monologs, and significant bonuses for attempting swashbuckling or derring-do, which should fail forward even as there is a cost for that failure. 

Movie: Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch: 
    The characters made an effort to get a big payday, but instead are deeply in debt to some very unsavory types, and now they absolutely need a huge payday.  Meanwhile, there are other big scores in the works.  If the characters play their cards decently, they can scoop some of those other scores.  If they play their cards really well, they can collect the big score while their problems take each other out.
   In reality, in elf games, the characters usually only manage to play their cards decently, although I've played with crafty players who managed to pull off the play really well.  Games like Blades in the Dark, which are oriented towards these sorts of situations and have rules like flashbacks and bonuses in return for stress make it much easier to get do well in these situations.  I'd suggest some sort of flashback mechanism house rule when playing this with classic elf games, especially if they don't have a number of divination options.


    This last one is more of a device than a situation, but….
Show: Letterkenny/Books: The Deathgate Cycle, amongst others:
    Certain characters repeatedly appear, at least to the view/reader in a certain way to trigger a certain response.  In The Deathgate Cycle, it’s Zifnab, or, err, Nabfiz, or, err, whatever his name the wizard, forgetting just about everything but somehow accomplishing his end goal, providing near-omnipotence and humor in one tidy package.
    In Letterkenny, the character is very different, in the form of Bonnie McMurray, a character whom the all of the Hicks except Wayne are attracted to, but who is only attracted to Wayne, and dresses provocatively to try to gain his interest.  The effect is to get the audience’s attention, but not in the same way as that forgetful wizard.