[UA] (no subject)

[Steve Dustin]

Well, I'm in the preliminary stages of constructing my UA campaign.  
Hopefully, after our Feng Shui campaign (just now starting) winds down in a 
few months, I'll have a enough settings, characters and motivations to keep 
my players running and guessing and busy.  Anyway, I wanted toss out my 
brainstorming ideas for the moment and see if anyone wanted to contribute.

First off, I'm going to introduce UA using "And I Feel Fine" from "One 
Shots", and use it as a one-shot.

***SPOILERS***










I think beginning with the end of the world would be a great start.  
Although the scenario is kind of ambiguous, I think making it the actual 
end, with reality unraveling around the PCs would be fitting.  I've decided 
to use the Shapechanging Beast option, and have all the PCs suffer 
inexplicable blackouts to keep them from guessing whose doing what.  Of 
course, the little kid is going to be the monster.  And sometime either 
close or after the written climax in the book, I'll have a forlorn Alex Abel 
wander into Hellmouth, Az; describing his tale of woe how he was the world's 
most powerful man and then squandered it.  Now he's looking for the Last 
Place on Earth, where Saint-Germain is going to ascend.  Its here the Clergy 
will come down, scoop up the last people, and use them to reseed the next 
incarnation of the world.  The PCs can try (or die trying) to reach this 
fabled location, which will probably be either Alburqueque, NM or Pismo 
Beach.  Anyway...I think the first scenario will go ok, and the players will 
have something of an idea what the hell is going on in the campaign, and 
what it is that everyone is so crazy about.

Under that backdrop, I'll reverse time and have my players create new UA 
characters.  Of course, my brain hasn't engaged beyond that initial idea, 
except for the following bits: it'll be set in the Western US starting in 
our hometown of Portland, Oregon.  I want the major story arc actually to be 
the Grail Quest, using the Grail Guys from PoMoMa (are they the Grail 
Knights? Grail Dudes? Grail-bees? I don't have my copy handy)-- something 
simple in concept, but obviously infinite in scope.  I've got a copy of Last 
Call, but the story didn't really grab me, it just seems like something to 
plunder for ideas.  I haven't finished it.

As for canon UA, I'll stick to what works for my campaign, then molding or 
throwing what doesn't trip my trigger (goodbye Max Attax).  The general 
overview of the world works (IC, Archetypes and all) of course, and I love 
the characters of the Freak and Dirk Allen.  They'll be upfront and center.  
I'm not too interested in the TNI, although, I'd like to use it in the 
background unless my players go that direction.  Naked Goddess video is an 
obvious Grail object, and I'll probably give everyone some kind of Grail 
obsession (not a literal rules obsession), to keep the Grail at the center 
of the whole debacle.  It also give me an excuse to use "old-timer" occult 
magicians, hundreds or thousands of years old who remember the old ways: 
Kabbalah, Hermetic magic, etc, and find all these upstart wippersnappers to 
be nothing but annoying.  Of course, their magic isn't as powerful as it 
once was, but they are
*hundreds of freakin years old*.  That's gotta be worth something.

Other things to consider: I've been reading Hite's Suppressed Transmissions, 
and really want to plug Coca-Cola as some sort of alchemical device into 
this whole thing somehow.  There's some advertising agencies in town, 
Weiden-Kennedy ('Just Do It' for Nike) specifically, and they seem ripe to 
use as a springboard, considering how much they sway public opinion.  Of 
course, the Pacific Northwest is home to Bigfoot (it would be too easy if it 
was literally Bigfoot, of course), but I can see that as the Grail to any 
crazy wacky Bigfoot hunter.  And pockets of militia, waiting for the end of 
the world.  Of course, I'd like to use the whole Western US as the backdrop, 
and UA-ify things like Area 51, the two valleys (connecting them, of 
course)--Silicon and Death Valley, the stretch of road that James Dean died 
on (and where platinum blonde Mansfield [forgot her first name] lost her 
head) and other great tidbits.

Everything has to be connected to this Grail story arc.  My question to the 
list: how have people used this before, and has anyone got practical 
experience with the Grail-bees?

Much longer than I anticipated,
Steve Dustin
yetiseti at hotmail.com

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