[UA] The Boy in the Box

[Stuart Anderson]

Chad Underkoffler wrote:

> I see it as: making the parents occultists gives rhyme/reason to
> the abuse of one of the twins.

    It's a good idea, but I'm not going to go with the occultist
folks or the twins. The folks are as much victims of the situation
as the children who are being abused. The Boy i/t Box has come to
realize that his manipulation of the people around him has led to
some unexpected and intolerable side effects. He's acting out to get
some grown ups to put some boundaries on his behavior. It's got to
be someone with some psychic juice, because that's where the kid
operates.
    The tension in the scenario comes from the PCs first response
(putting a hurt on the foster folks and getting the kid out of
there) being completely inappropriate. There's your paradox.
Depriving the kid of the folks destroys his voice. He'd have to
start over with someone else. So he will try to prevent that from
happening. Further, he's a generally good kid, and he doesn't want
to see the folks punished for something he knowingly influenced them
to do. But the abuse he taught them has no upside for the other
children. They gain no superpowers from the isolation and pain. So
that has to be stopped.
    The challenge for the players is to see the kids in the scenario
as individuals, rather than manipulative plot devices. Further, they
have to find some compassion for figures they normally wouldn't. I
guess I wanted this scenario to be the opposite of a pattern-finding
exercise. I wanted it to be jarring and uncomfortable.
    One of the PCs is an underutilized operative from the Bureau of
Land Management. We still do the UA/DG shared universe thing. We
have a loose thread from an old In Nomine game that I'm going to
pick up. With help from the Simpsons, I think the foster dad,
working on his hobby farm, uncovers a skeleton, and some kids from
the land grant college discover that the skeleton is pretty odd.
That will be enough to get the characters onto the farm. It's kind
of Scooby-Doo, but it ties up some stuff we left lying around a long
time ago, so I think it'll work. When the Boy i/t Box senses someone
who can help him, stuff will start poppin. I think I can get some
other loose ends involved as well.
--Stu


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