“ A group of adventurers come across a child's body on their adventures, odd being such a remote location. Their is no detectable sign of violence to the child, nor are their any signs of life. Suddenly the child opens its eyes, looks towards the group and introduces themselves to the adventures.
If this wasn't odd enough, the child can't remember where they are from, only their name and age. Stranger yet, the child has a tattoo on their right shoulder of a family crest, to a family that died out over 200 years ago.”
“ All magic is suddenly gone. No mage can sling sorcery anymore. This upsets all empires and civilizations. It is soon discovered though, trough the combined work of mystics, scholars and dreams, that all the magic has been drawn into a single orb in a vast tower located at one of the poles. Whoever gets there first wins the greatest price in history, access to all the magic in the world. But who owns the tower?”
“ When running a new party, get around the question of plot density by having the first discovery to be a deck of fate, or whatever you call it. If you use a real deck, you should definitely stack it to have the desired outcome, which is to curse the party to attract weird things to happen and involve them. This should not be told to the players at the time, so that they won't just up and try to get themselves 'decursed'. Though quite why they would want to is beyond me.”