[UA] In media res

[Frank Lohmann]

John (wild at park.net) wrote:
 
> Can't really do that with the players - well, I can, but then they're hardly
> starting in media res ....

For convention play (or at any other time I don't really have the time for the 
drawn-out "Meeting at the Tavern") I simply tell the players where the game 
starts and ask them how they got there (like: the game starts at some ultra-fine 
Pizza shop. What are you doing there?), listen to the player's explanations (and 
make a few mental notes) and let the action run it's pace...

And yes, that's the way they do it in "Feng Shui"... 8)

Another option I have started to experiment with is the following, inspired by 
the movie "The Ususal Suspects": Before each gaming session, I tell the players 
about some dark interrogation room, with cigarette smoke heavy in the air and 
some bloke who's bound and being questiond by a bunch of men whose faces he 
cannot quite see, and who are basically asking questions about the campaign. 
I've only done that twice yet: Before the first game session, the interrogators 
were showing the man photographs of the characters, saying something along the 
line of "we know that you know them, and we want to know all about it...", then 
threatened and beat him until the man agreed to cooperate. Then the 
interrogators ask him to tell the story from the start, form the point the 
characters met the first time. The blokes says something along the line of "I 
haven't been there personally when they all first met, but from what I heard, it 
was all during the 1999 WTO Riots..."

Cut to a description of streets filled with smoke and tear gas, people throwing 
stones at policemen, the likes. Turn on the stereo and play Prodigy's 
"Firestarter". Enter the characters and let things play out. It worked 
wonderfully...

Second time I used it, some part of the interrogation referenced to the last 
gaming session (thereby providing a handy recap for the players too lazy to take 
notes) and another explanation by the bound man of how things went from then 
on... Again, after a couple minutes of dialogue the action cuts to the PC's, and 
then the actual adventure played out...

Already, my players are wondering who the heck this bound man is (their 
characters haven't met him yet), who the interrogators could be, and what's all 
behind this... Anyway, I just hope that they won't shoot the poor bloke outright 
when he actually appears in the campaign for the first time... 8)

Anyway, I plan to do these interrogation scenes as a kind of meta-story, 
probably even working in clues or hints for the campaign as the game progresses 
("...and when exactly did you realise that she was a spy of the NI?"), and 
letting the characters crash the interrogation and free the bound man near the 
climax of the campaign. I just hope it'll work out well...

As for your suggestions:

1. - A perferct start for convention and one-shot play. I've found my characters 
waking up in strenge places a lot of times. However, you're right - some start 
like this usually leads to some kind of escape/jailbreak-scenario, but maybe I'm 
just unimaginative...

2. - Ahhh, the classic "Bill Toge"-beginning... Haven't used that for anything 
else than that particular scenario yet, though...

3. - That's a nice idea - something between "Innerspace" and "Dreamscape" (oops 
- remember to have an NPC looking like Dennis Quaid... 8) ), with lots of 
possibilities to throw *carloads* of weirdness at the characters... The players 
will probably take a lot of time to find out what exactly is going on, and you 
should make it as hard for them as possible... Possible inspiration, apart from 
the movies I already mentioned (especially "Dreamscape") would be Michael 
Moorcock's "Fortress of the Pearl" (not very UA'ish, being an Elric-Novel, but a 
good read about a Dreamquest) and probably the movie "Cube" (for the "finding 
out what's going on"-part...).

My 2p
	Frank
-- 
Frank Cord Lohmann           
GEOMAR - Forschungszentrum fuer marine Geowissenschaften 
Wischhofstr. 1-3   24148 Kiel   Germany 
Tel : +49 431 600 2334



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