Need to get out of a slump? Get writing? Need inspiration for a short story? Why not try the "Roll for Plot" and see what you land on.
This series explores a "Roll for Plot" guide. Starting off with Fantasy!
Later we'll explore:
Sci-Fi, Horror, Mystery, Romance, General Fiction, Romantasy, Sci-Fi Romance, Monster Romance, Trope Subversion and of course Character Creation.
Setting
A mystical forest with glowing trees.
A kingdom built atop floating islands.
A bustling city where magic is forbidden.
An ancient, crumbling castle cursed by a forgotten spell.
A hidden underground realm of strange creatures.
A village that appears only during a full moon.
A massive library filled with living books.
A sacred temple guarded by elemental spirits.
A dangerous wasteland where dragons roam freely.
A market where anything—even time—can be bought.
A war-torn land on the brink of destruction.
A celestial realm where mortals are unwelcome.
Protagonist
A runaway prince or princess with a stolen relic.
A sorcerer whose magic is slowly consuming them.
A knight betrayed by their own kingdom.
A rogue with a map to a legendary treasure.
A bard whose songs can alter reality.
A half-human, half-mythical creature struggling to fit in.
A cursed warrior seeking redemption.
A scholar obsessed with forbidden knowledge.
A young farmhand destined to awaken an ancient power.
A shapeshifter who has lost their true form.
A healer who can mend anything—except their own wounds.
A ghost bound to complete an unfinished quest.
Plot
The protagonist must retrieve a stolen artifact before it falls into the wrong hands.
A prophecy predicts their rise or downfall, and now everyone wants them dead.
A secret guild offers them a mission they can’t refuse.
They must unite warring factions against a common enemy.
A portal opens, bringing forth creatures from another world.
The protagonist wakes up with no memory—and a bounty on their head.
An ancient dragon chooses them as its rider.
They accidentally unleash an ancient evil and must set things right.
A magical plague is spreading, and they may be the key to stopping it.
They must win a dangerous tournament to claim their birthright.
They uncover a long-lost kingdom hidden from the world.
The world is ending, and only a forgotten legend holds the answer.
Twist
The villain is actually their long-lost sibling.
The protagonist is not who they think they are.
Magic is slowly fading from the world, and they must restore it.
The real enemy has been manipulating them from the start.
A prophecy was misinterpreted—they are the villain.
A friend or ally betrays them at a crucial moment.
The story takes place in a dream—or an illusion.
The villain was trying to save the world.
The protagonist must sacrifice something dear to them to succeed.
The protagonist and villain are two halves of the same soul.
A powerful deity has been guiding (or deceiving) them all along.
The shop bells chimed and Jackson looked up from the counter where he’d been polishing machine parts. The woman wore simple pieces that were neat and clean, but a few seasons old. He frowned as he watched her look at the instruments in the window and display cases on the walls. If she could afford any of them, Jackson would eat a boot.
“Hello, sir.”
Jackson placed down the gear and straightened. He rarely got called sir, he was just a shop assistant as his uncle loved to remind him, but he fully planned on taking control of the perceived status of being an experienced occultist.
“Morning, ma’am. How can I assist you?”
“I heard you sell devices that can protect a person or place?”
“Indeed we do.”
She clasped her hands together. Her gloves lacked lace. Still, if Uncle Jonathan knew he didn’t give a customer proper respect, he’d be yelled at.
“What type of protection do you need?”
“I’m cursed and would like it removed.”
Jackson raised an eyebrow. “Can I have more detail?”
“I’m a private vocal instructor, and teach several young ladies in town. However, many of them are getting sick and I believe me, or rather my curse, is the reason why.”
“Ma’am, there are many reasons why someone may get sick-"
“Every single one of my pupils? Ten young ladies across the city? Whose ailment tends to rapidly decrease in my company?”
Jackson sighed. This was the problem of your family having an occult shop – everyone believed the supernatural was the reason for their troubles. But his uncle had built a reputation – every problem heard. For his uncle to truly teach Jackson how to be an occultist, not just run the shop, he had to uphold the same standards.
Listen. Offer a solution.
Maybe, make a sale. With no guarantee it would work. They couldn’t know the rules every spirit operated by after all!
“I’ll call for tea,” Jackson said, gesturing to a small table in the corner. It’d allow him to watch for other patrons while listening to the tutor's troubles but provided a more proper location to have a conversation than a counter filled with grease, dirty rags, and cuts of metal.
#####
The music tutor was Ms. Emily Farthington, and the more she spoke the more Jackson realized she might truly be cursed. Every young lady she taught developed the same symptoms, and the illness hadn’t spread to the household. More damning, further exposure to Ms. Farthington seemed to increase it's severity.
First, it was a sore throat, which made an appearance halfway through the lesson. The girl would be recovered by the next lesson, only for the singer’s hoarseness to reappear during vocal warmups. The ailment had started to linger for the days between lessons, leading to difficulty breathing, coughs. One student had collapsed as Ms. Farthington knocked on the door to announce her presence.
“One family fired me,” Ms. Farthington said, staring at her empty tea mug. “They feared something about me was making their daughter sick. My perfume, perhaps. Another family informed me that the girl went from struggling to breathe to riding within a week. They then told me that by releasing me from their services, they hoped their daughter could make similar progress."
She stared up at Jackson, tears in her lashes. "I lost my seventh client this morning. If I’m to retain my lodgings, I can’t lose my other three.”
“You feel no illness yourself?” Jackson asked. He racked his mind for which of his uncle's devices might help, but most were preventative. They established wards before a possession or haunting happened.
“None.”
“What about in the past?”
“Oh, I’ve had my share of bad days.”
“Anything like what your students have experienced?”
“I,” she reached for her neck.
“Ms. Farthington?”
“When I was younger, my sister and I came down with a similar illness. The difficulty speaking, then the coughs, having a hard time getting air. The doctor said something had gotten into our lungs. We were sick for over a month, and she succumbed to it.” As she spoke, she rubbed her hand over a spot on her chest.
Jackson watched the movement. It was too close to her neck to be in remembered pain. A charm, thin enough to not cause a bulge? “What are you worrying with?”
Ms. Farthington startled, blushing as she realized what she was doing. “Oh. My sister was a magpie. She would discover small, shiny objects on the street or shop floors and bring them home. When we were sick, she used a brass disk as a worry talisman. It was one of the few treasures our mother found and gave her. I paid a jeweler to etch her likeness and turn the disk into a necklace years ago.”
“Can I see it?”
“I’m afraid there’s rather a few layers between my fingers and the clasp.” She said stiffly.
He coughed into his hands and scrambled to recover. “Right. Well, I believe that disk may have something to do with your curse. I’d like to run an experiment. Can you bring it back later today?”
She rubbed at the same spot, before nodding. “If you think it’ll help. I can’t afford to lose more students.”
“I do.”
“I’ll come by shortly before you close, if amendable. I’d rather this curse lifted sooner than later.”
#####
Jackson twirled the disk in the dim candlelight. Ms. Farthington had given it to him only after he promised not to damage it. He’d also promised to only hold it a single night, the tutor was very attached to the memento of her sister, which meant there was no chance to ask his uncle’s advice.
He rolled the chain in his fingers, watching the disk move. The etching on one side was well done, immortalizing a girl of ten. Her resemblance to Ms. Farthington was similar enough Jackson wondered if they were twins. There were occult connections between twins. Not always, but often. Was the spirit pushing back the veil and gripping the throats of young singers, cursing her sister’s students?
What would she have against the other girls?
He spun the disk in the other direction and watched the candlelight flash off the one-inch circle. It’d been lovingly taken care of, the brass polished to a high sheen.
Uncle Jonathan used bronze frequently; one could tell a lot about spirits based on how the metal took on a polished look.
Brass had few uses, mainly defensive. There were several devices in the shop, full of pendulums and searching rods, that emitted a wave designed to keep spirits away. Brass knuckles were able to knock a possessing spirit out of a man. And in the cellar, the dark chamber where his uncle kept those ghosts and ghouls he had trapped, were pieces of polished brass in locked wooden boxes.
Jackson watched the disk twist. Was the piece of brass a defensive tool or a trap for Ms. Farthington's sister? Now that it wasn't around Ms. Farthington's neck, his test was live. Pity it put Ms. Farthington at risk.
Jackson didn’t have his uncle’s ability with the supernatural, but he was very good at business.
######
When Ms. Farthington failed to show the next morning to claim her memento, Jackson closed up the shop to pay her a visit. She lent a room at a popular boarding house, so it was no matter to hail a carriage and tell the driver where to go.
Jackson had expected two results of his test – either Ms. Farthington would get sick or not. As it turned out, she’d gotten sick quickly. The mistress running the house hesitated to let Jackson see her, but when he mentioned he believed Ms. Farthington cursed and had the means to help, the mistress instructed a maid to take him to the appropriate room.
Watching Ms. Farthington struggle with the same illness her students had caught, he came to two conclusions. One, the disk had not been serving as a trap for the dead sister rather but as protection for Ms. Farthington. Two, the spirit causing problems was going after Ms. Farthington specifically.
Jackson wasn’t a full-fledged occultist. His uncle grudgingly taught him, and he’d never tried understanding a spirit by himself. However, he had witnessed the process multiple times, and the maid peering from the corner had no way of knowing it was his first spiritual diagnosis. With that in mind, he took a deep breath and stepped toward the bed, ignoring the faint smell of sweat.
Jackson pulled out and unwrapped three small bronze instruments, arranging them around Ms. Farthington’s pillow. His uncle had a knack for reading them in seconds, half science, half intuition. Jackson took longer but got answers he was confident in.
The spirit was family. It wanted revenge. The desire had been present for a while, possibly linked to the deceased sister. There was no other reason the memento was strong enough to reflect the curse for so long.
Jackson turned to the maid. “Did someone in Ms. Farthington’s family pass recently?”
She nodded. “Her mother, six months ago.”
“Must not have had a good relationship,” Jackson muttered.
He padded his pockets, wincing. There was a reason his uncle had a bag of supplies ready to go instead of grabbing items before leaving the shop. Jackson hadn’t brought the tools needed to talk to a spirit or any of the blessed items required for banishment.
All he found was a lighter, some tobacco, and the brass disk. He’d have to trap Ms. Farthington’s mother within the visage of her daughter.
Jackson looked around for an oil tray, but the boarding house had traded lamps for electric lights. Instead, he used a tea saucer and the back of a hand mirror as ashtrays, placing them on separate sides of the room. Some herbs produced a smoke that clung to spirits, allowing them to be seen. Tobacco wasn't ideal, but it would suffice. He lit the leaves, lamenting the loss of a good smoke.
Jackson had only seen his uncle trap a spirit a few times. Usually, Jonathan sent a spirit to the world beyond or talked it into leaving – both far easier. He asked the maid to leave, for her protection of course, and felt relieved when she nodded.
If he failed, no one would know and he could blame Ms. Farthington’s death on being there too late. He should have been called early that morning.
Cursing his inability to plan, Jackson hastily went through Ms. Farthington’s vanity. He found a brass hat pin, which would do. Now to herd the spirit into the disk.
Jackson watched the smoke swirl, looking for a spot where it stuck and didn’t flow with the air currents. An ash cluster appeared hovering over Ms. Farthington’s head. Slowly he stepped toward it, brass disk on his outstretched palm. As soon as the disk was under the ash-dusted form, Jackson brought the hat pin down from above as if he were performing an overhand clap.
“Drat,” he said, meeting resistance. He’d managed to condense the spirit, trapping it between the hat pin and disk. Jackson struggled to push the pin down, pressing against the air three inches above his palm.
On a whim, Jackson flipped the charm so the portrait of Ms. Farthington’s sister faced up. The spirit screeched. Jackson strongarmed the spirit into the brass, slamming the hat pin's shaft onto the disk.
At the supernaturally loud ding, Ms. Farthington opened her eyes and gasped.
Jackson quickly arranged his hair and collar before attempting to spread out the smoke.
“You were right, Ms. Farthington.” Jackson picked up the instruments near her head one by one. “You were cursed by your mother. I imagine she was upset your childhood illness took you instead of your sister, and saw a chance to remediate that. You’ll live, and your students are healed. I’ll be taking your etching of your sister though, I had to trap your mother in it.”
Ms. Farthington blinked at him. Jackson tugged on his lapels. “The shop will send you a bill for services.”
He rushed out to the sound of the maid exclaiming in awe at Ms. Farthington’s quick recovery.
Jackson rubbed the brass disk in his pocket. He’d have to show his uncle he was an occultist in his own right, not just an apprentice to mind the shop and polish the inventory.
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This story is my part of my Roll for Plot series, where I write a story each month based on dice roles. While I'll always share them on Tumblr, you can read then a week early if you subscribe to my Ko-Fi.
I want to try something new next year - roll die to come up with a custom prompt and use that to write stories! The plan is a 10D will determine genre, a 20D will determine an item central to the plot, and a 6D will determine what the main conflict will be.
All that's left is to determine what number is what. Help a girl out? Top selection will be the highest-ranked roll and we'll move down from there.
As there's a limit on poll options, we'll have two for Items. Poll One. Poll Two.
I want to try something new next year - roll die to come up with a custom prompt and use that to write stories! The plan is a 10D will determine genre, a 20D will determine an item central to the plot, and a 6D will determine what the main conflict will be.
All that's left is to determine what number is what. Help a girl out? Top selection will be the highest-ranked roll and we'll move down from there.
I want to try something new next year - roll die to come up with a custom prompt and use that to write stories! The plan is a 10D will determine genre, a 20D will determine an item central to the plot, and a 6D will determine what the main conflict will be.
All that's left is to determine what number is what. Help a girl out? Top selection will be the highest-ranked roll and we'll move down from there.
As there's a limit on poll options, we'll have two for Items. Poll One. Poll Two.
I want to try something new next year - roll die to come up with a custom prompt and use that to write stories! The plan is a 10D will determine genre, a 20D will determine an item central to the plot, and a 6D will determine what the main conflict will be.
All that's left is to determine what number is what. Help a girl out? Top selection will be the highest-ranked roll and we'll move down from there.
"Burn these," Lady Francis said, passing along a stack of letters.
Susan took them with a slight bow, stuffing them into her apron pocket, barely interrupting her dusting of the library. From the corner of her eye, she continued to watch her employer sit at the table reading a novel.
At least, she assumed it was a novel. Ladies usually read novels. The rate at which Lady Francis flipped the pages also indicated it was not a book full of knowledge to digest.
Susan withheld a sigh, aligning the books on the shelves with a cloth-covered hand as she finished her chore. Susan didn't dare touch one – the bumpy leather covers, the gold embossed letters – because she knew she wouldn't be able to resist slipping one into her apron pocket and Lady Francis or her husband would certainly notice its absence. But letters to be burned? Well. No one would know if Susan didn't feed them to the fire.
They sat in her apron pocket all day, Susan patting the space to ensure she hadn't lost them every time she switched chores.
She only pulled them out when she got home, sitting on her bed in her shared room at the boarding house. Amelia, her roommate, watched her in the vanity mirror as she washed her face. Amelia also worked as a maid for a wealthy family in the city. Based on the soot she scrubbed off, that day's tasks had been a lot of fireplace cleaning.
"Did you steal letters again?"
"It's not stealing if they're not wanted."
"One day, someone is going to find your collection of scraps. It won't matter that you can't read, they'll still believe you took them for some nefarious purpose."
Susan spread the letters on her knees, tracing their shape. The greeting at the top, the paragraphs flowing down the cream paper, the departure at the end. A name, signed with a flourish.
Amelia was right. Susan couldn't read and had no one to teach her. Lady Francis allowed Susan to handle her papers because she was illiterate. Her salary wasn't enough to allow her to attend classes either, not with the only schools accepting female students having tuition higher than a month's rent.
Susan had only reached New York City by asking for directions, but that wasn't uncommon in the rural parts of Connecticut she had lived in. It was rare for a woman in her town to know how to sign their name. What was the point? What did she need to read? She knew where all the shops were and there was no one she wished to write letters to.
She didn't need to read in the city either, many people didn't and it was no big trouble to ask for directions. But it would make things easier – reading the labels in shops or the names in windows. She could get the news from the paper, not wait to have someone tell her what it said.
"I'll read someday." Susan slipped the letters into a basket near her bed. Her collection was growing, filling half the wicker basket.
"Well, staring at those paper scraps every night is not going to make the knowledge appear in your head."
"You never know." Susan slipped out of her work clothes, careful not to step on the hem. The fabric was thin enough that if she did, the resulting rip might be too large to mend.
Amelia sighed, digging into her trunk for her sleep shift.
"Reading isn't proper for women, Susan."
"Says you. One day, I'll memorize my entire collection. Every word. Every drop of ink."
"You better stop pilfering then. The more you collect, the more you'll have to memorize."
Susan hadn't considered that, but the next time something to burn crossed her hands, the children's letter practice sheets, Susan pocked them.
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