Alright, random RTD idea I haven't been able to get out of my head. I'm too busy to run it, but maybe one of you guys will find it interesting.
You were once just a happy (human/elf/dwarf/etc) in your local village, plying your chosen trade, and generally living a simple, yet good life. Sadly, it was not to last.
One night, while (taking a stroll/collecting rare night-time herbs/consuming six too many barrels of booze/etc), a couple of unsavory rogues crept up on you from behind. After a brief, violent, and unnecessarily painful (for you) scuffle, you were knocked out, and taken to who knows where.
When you awoke, the first thing you noticed was a pounding headache. The second thing you noticed was that you couldn't move your limbs, them being strapped to a wall via metal bands. The third thing you noticed was an intricate set of magical runes surrounding yourself on the wall. And the fourth and final thing that caught your eye was (Insert # of players here - 1) other people similarly bound to the wall, apparently in the same predicament as yourself.
After perhaps an hour of rather strained small talk and pointless guessing ("What ho, old chap, nice day to be bound to a wall in some unknown, probably magical prison, eh?"), an ancient wizard walks in.
"They called me deranged... but no, I'll show them. I'LL SHOW THEM.", he yells to nothing in particular.
Oh dear.
He takes out a number of small capsules made of some metal you can't identify. Each of them seems to contain something different, judging by the various sounds they make (or don't make) as he fumbles with them. After a couple of mishaps where a dropped capsule rolls across the floor, he's finally set up one of the capsules in front of each of you.
By this point your thoughts are somewhere between "Oh no", and "Get on with it already!".
The next thing he does is produce a pouchful of dust, which he uses to draw what you presume is a circle, which he stands in the center of. In reality it looks more like an egg that a drunkard smashed and then attempted to put back together by hand, but you decide not to point that fact out.
Finally, he produces what is most likely a spellbook, and begins chanting a ritual while holding up a crystal of some sort. Magical energy streams out from the crystal, shimmering through the capsules, and into yourself and the other prisoners (one beam per capsule/prisoner combo.) You feel an sharp pain in your chest, as the chanting and energy intensifies.
The wizard continues his mad spell, as the light intensifies to be almost blinding. At this point you feel that death would be a welcome relief. However, the wizard stumbles over a word, before stopping in horror.
"NO! NOT NOW! I'M SO CLOSE!", he yells, as the light suddenly moves in reverse, back from yourself, through the capsules and into the crystal. The crystal begins to glow, first a dull red, then yellow, and then proceeding to become white hot, the wizard dropping it to the ground in pain.
Finally, it explodes.
The resulting inferno is confined to the space within the wizard's circle-approximation, and leaves nothing but vaguely magical ash behind.
The bonds constraining yourself and the others all snap, apparently undone by the wizard's death. You breathe a sigh of relief... and apprehension.
Sure, you were apparently free. But still, you had no idea where on earth you were, whether there were any other guards or such in this place, or what the after-effects from that botched magical ritual might be.
Still, you had a feeling that it was that last one that might be the biggest problem...
I suppose I could expand on the idea if someone else is interested in running it (or just hearing more about the idea), but my schedule is too full for me to commit to running an RTD myself.