Here’s the deal, I’m pretty tired - so here’s five ideas for you to use in your game to inspire your players to adventure.
The Twist?
They’re all deeply flawed.
Meat Swarm. A little village is being terrorised at night by a reanimated corpse. But the body has been dismembered and the body parts are just flying around punching, kicking and biting people. The players must find where the body is chilling out during the day and defeat it without cutting it up more. - assuming it’s just one body, that is. Who’s making these things?
The Chaos Aleph. Poorly stored magic items have interacted creating a chaos node in the vault of a bank under a city. As a result, until the party solves the thing - the genre of the city shifts periodically. Lurching from fantasy to western, noir, farce and so on - the city remains the same but the physics of the world and narrative tone shift - so sneaking is easier during a heist, but it’s harder to cast the right spells in farce.
Contract Negotiation. A distraught relative asks the party to find the stolen corpse of their deceased loved one. The party finds the corpse as part of a zombie work crew, digging out a collapsed mine - all the zombies signed a contract whereby their remains are effectively hired for work after death by a necromantic start-up, they were all paid in life and now have decades of work ahead of them.
Horserer. A horse attempts to hire the party to clear out a ranch that’s been taken over by evil beast-folk. The horse can’t speak or nothing, but it is a powerful sorcerer that has for some reason been transmuted into the form of a horse, but they’re into it. They can only cast spells without somatic or verbal components, or use metamagic to dodge the requirements. How do the players work out what the fuck is up with this horse.
Flavour Town. A noble of the Fey Court has cursed a village with deliciousness, everyone entering the town discovers that anything and everything is edible and delicious, but the longer they’re there more things become desirable - the town and players aren’t far from rampant cannibalism. Do the players manage to become un-tasty in time? Do they break the curse? Do they literally eat shit?