Title: Danger Rings
Description: After a late-night game of Gold & Goblins, a young boy vanished on his bike ride home through the sleepy town of @@ANIMAL@@ins, @@NAME@@. The locals, including his frantic mother, the local sheriff, and a bunch of random teenagers, have come to you for help, and all of them have different theories about his disappearance.
Validity: everybody
Option 1: You find Sheriff Bopper, @@ANIMAL@@ins' chief of police, in your chair with his feet on your desk, smelling of alcohol and with a cigarette in his mouth. "Look, kids go missing like this all the time. My deputies--who I assure you are very competent--are looking for him right now, and I'm sure he'll turn up by the end of the week. So let me handle it, and butt on out of my peaceful little town." He heads out of your office to find a cup of coffee.
Effect: local police have taken a page out of Little Bo-Peep's book in their search for missing persons.
Option 2: Winona Byers, the mother of the lost boy, bursts into the room, obviously distraught. She clearly hasn't showered or slept in days, and she begins to nail up Maxxmas decorations around your office, all while mumbling to herself: "The government's got to do something. My boy's disappeared! I know he's alive, I know he's here, but they won't help me, they've got to help me. That's my boy!" The lights in the room begin to flash, and she starts screaming, "Will!? Will!? Where are you, honey!?"
Effect: The government puts forth a supernatural effort to find lost children.
Option 3: Her teenage son walks in, along with some of his classmates. They look like they've been bullying him, but you're not sure you can blame them. "Look," he says, "my little brother's didn't get lost, he got abducted. There's a monster out there, and I'd show you photographic evidence, but my camera got broken..." he glances at one of the other teenage boys, whose hair is nicer than anyone's you've ever seen. "You need to put together a monster-hunting squad," says the teen with the nice hair. "I'm talking guns, flame-throwers, home-made clubs... and if people want to help out, too, you should let them. I know I'd love to take a swing at it."
Effect: @@NAME@@ counts on high-schoolers to protect it from monsters.
Option 4: Suddenly, a bunch of even younger kids ride in on bikes. You could've sworn they're the cast of the latest Stephen Kingberg movie. They're led by a girl with short hair who introduces herself as "Twelve", although maybe she was just telling you her age. "It's not just monsters!" she says. "The deep state is involved--they're doing this dangerous research and now one of their test-subjects is loose and they're trying to cover it up. Your government is behind this, and you need to make it stop--clean up the mess you made, stop these crazy experiments, and get out of @@ANIMAL@@ins!"
Effect: The government is shutting down programs it claims never existed in the first place.
Option 5: Once everyone has left, your Premier Administrator of Paranormal Apparitions walks into the room, wearing the same creepy white lab coat he always does. "Obviously you can't tell those people what's really going on. They wouldn't understand that what we're doing is for their own good. It's hard to explain--frankly, I'm not even sure you'd understand yourself. Let's just say that it involves cool lasers and maybe another dimension. It's going to have some great results for our intelligence community, even if we've had a couple, um, miscalculations along the way. You wouldn't want to discard all that just because some poor mom is going batty, would you?" He cracks his knuckles menacingly.
Effect: The government has stranger things to worry about than a few disappearances.
All help and advice is more than welcome. Parts that I think are a bit weaker are the title, and perhaps the description itself is too straight-forward. (One note on the description--I know I've seen an NS version of Dungeons and Dragons referenced in an issue before, but I forget what it's called. If anyone remembers, I can replace 'Gold & Goblins' with that.) I also know that writing effects is a very fine art, so help is welcome there too. But then of course, I'm new to this whole thing, so help is welcome anywhere.
Oh, and an edit right off the bat: I don't really know how validity works either. I assume for something like this it would be by option, but I'm not sure which options should be ruled out in which cases.
