I ran my first UA session last weekend... (LONG)

[Heaver, Paul A.]

Ok, this is my first time posting to a list, so I hope I don't screw up
too much.

I noticed everyone asking if someone's actually RUN UA, and my players
made characters (finally) and played the intro adventure last weekend.

I had to force them to finally make characters, but I don't think that's
UA's fault.  They heard "dipsomancy" and "pornomancy" and just got
turned off to the game, and they also are really into the Deadlands:HoE
campaign I run and half of them wanted to play that.  After taking a
vote (2 for UA, 1 anything BUT UA, and 2 HoE) I convinced the group that
variety is the spice of life, and the intro adventure isn't that long.

The characters they made were fine characters, but I think we've been
playing "killing people has no repurcussions" genre games for too long.
I told them they'd be playing people in the New Inquisition, and the
adventure would start as they were driving separately to the place where
they would meet for their first assignment.

One ex-marine who got thrown out for killing people who were
surrendering to him in the Gulf War.  3 Violence hardened.
One ganger who got into the whole NI thing for the $$$, also a
3-Violence hardened person.
One vigilante mystic.  Not an adept, but was a 2-unnatural hardened
type.  The PCs seemed to think that hardened was good, no matter how
often I read the list of what happens when your hardened levels go up to
them.
One dipsomancer, the only mystic, modeled after the Mitchell character
in the last Joel episode of MST3K. Only took the unnatural stresses that
were required.
And, my favorite, one old bitter man, who ran a puppet show for children
and tries to teach kids right and wrong.  He has a rage stimulus about
bad teenagers, and well, killed one once.  Oops.  Got his past erased
and is working for the NI.  Has one "failed" Violence box. :)

Happily, their characters all took to the skill system pretty well,
other than the "ARGH!  I need to spend 20 more points in Soul" or
occasional similar outburst.  They all picked interesting obsession
skills (Government Conspiracies for the ex-marine, occult lore for the
vigilante mystic, etc) and we started play.

>From the start, it was difficult to get some of the characters (ok, only
one: the ganger) to stop to help the sheriff.  They did all the expected
activities, and mainly found out who the people were because the ganger
looted their wallets and found out they were all the same. :)

In the supermarket (I thought about making an Unnatural Check for the
time-travel thing, but decided against it.  I didn't want to drive them
insane too quickly) they watched the robbery wondering "what's going
on?" and one of them noticed Bill and they followed at a safe distance
to his car and watched them drive away.  For some reason, the vigilante
decided firing his pistol at the retreating car.  He didn't hit anything
important, so I decided to ignore any repurcussions for now.  I also
don't want to arrest them on their second session, there might not be a
third. :)  They warped out when the car got away, since they couldn't
stop Bill anymore at that scene.

In the apartment, the party busts into the room and all get to make
Unnatural Checks at seeing the faceless man.  The vigilante and
dipsomancer were hardened enough I decided, so the other 3 try.  The
marine fails and runs off into the hallway (the marine did not succeed
in a single check all night, he loved it.  We're all very masochistic
players).  The old man runs off on general principle, and the ganger
opens fire.  On the faceless man.  Kills him in two shots, the first
knocking his chair over and the second taking off his face.  Fails the
violence check and decides he's frozen at the idea that he was able to
kill that thing.  So the cops will get his "gunprints" as a murder
weapon, thanks to the fact that I read the bit about forensics in the
book.  Meanwhile the vigilante decides that torture is bad, and opens
fire on Bill.  Of course, there are no other ways to stop a person with
a knife from doing anything.  Sigh.  So thanks to poor rolling, he fails
to injure Bill other than a graze (rolled a 10 or so), and puts a lot of
bullets in the wall, where the cops will get them later.  The party
calms him down after Bill, screaming "AIIE!  Don't kill me!" and hiding
behind sofa, under sofa, etc, makes it clear he doesn't want to die, and
they converse for a while about Bill, his daughter, epideromancy, etc.
They split up, half to guard Bill and half to go talk to the daughter's
mother, to see if his story checks out at all.  The mother talks to them
and is happy to hear that they say they captured Bill, and is going to
give a fairly detailed description to the cops later on, but nothing
much will become of that.  The party checks out the story and is decided
that, yes, Bill is who he says he is.  Meanwhile, the guarding members
tell Bill not to drive anywhere tonight and then convince him that he
should do something else, which I forget now what it was.  Drive the
other direction I think.  They don't seem interested in the "find the
daughter" thing (with a dead Don, they won't find her anyway), so they
then vanish.

At the third location, they do all the expected actions, except the old
man gives himself up to the police and gets arrested.  He gets thrown in
a police car, where he convinces them that he was there checking up on a
friend when it all went down and gives them info on where the cultists
are, and what his friends look like.  He also warns the cops that his
friends are armed and very violent, which I found amusing.  The cops
raid the place and things are about to get bad, when the dipsomancer, in
a fit of weirdness, uses his magic to do the impossible.  He figured
that making a halo around one of the other party members, and make him
glow and fly in the air, would be impossible.  I was inclined to agree.
He rolled, failed, flip-flopped, made it.  The new Jesus tells the
cultists to go peacefully with the cops.  While the cultists are staring
(and most of the cops too) the other cops that didn't notice it sucker
punch the cultists and start piling them into the police cars.  The
party vanishes right before getting arrested by the cops.

So car #1 drives past on the crossroads.  I was trying to think of
consequences after the fact, and the only thing I can think of are
forensics on the two guns used at the murder scene, and a few
descriptions of the party in wildly different locations at the same
time.  The Jesus incident at the end gets written off as too many
hallucinogens in the air during the raid.  I'm thinking their first
assignment by Able's men will be "there's been a weird activity
recently, and magic has been pointing out the name "Bill Toge", go find
him and bring him in for questioning."  That should be fun.  And the
players, even the one who originally voted against it, seemed to enjoy
themselves.  Woohoo.

Paul