[UA] Re: Group whinges/ my campaign

[Ville Halonen]

Dylan Craig wrote:
>But: in UA, where you can come at the meal with a variety of different implements, how equally do you split the task of coming up with the basic premise behind the game?
>
>a - you come up with the idea, then sell it to the players
>b - you come up with the idea, everyone talks about it
>c - your -players- come up with the idea, they sell it to you
>
>Experiences?

Umm. I think roleplaying's a mutual experience, and regard the GM as Game MODERATOR instead of Game Master. Most of the time.

That makes me favor C. We sat in a cafe/bar, and the players were thinking of an idea for a group. I was yeaing and naying and commenting. They ended up arranging illegal raves at odd locations in LA. Then there was the debate of whether or not they wanted to be into the occult, and all of them wanted to try magicking. I try to build the game around the characters, not the opposite. That's why there have been delays in UA and especially Blue Planet (which has been in our plans for 1,5 years; we've never gotten to playing it). We've played a few times, but I still don't think it's late to change the characters a bit. After all, the boozehound and the urbanomancer haven't done much. Yesterday the urbanomancer came up with an idea that his character has dreams of a great city, that he wants to build someday. I like it.

Suits well with my plans, that are going to revive the LAOU. The first session saw the New Year 2001 party (later I made it 2000—not simply because of the Millennium crap, but I wanted more time between the game time and the real time), and at 3:33 AM the dipsomancer discovered a smashed human clockwork in the toilet. Then the lights went out, and a lunatic began ranting about how all the joy and happiness in the parties were really a pathetic disguise for their miserable lives and so on. He had a guy with him, Ralph, a golem (and the personamancer, reading bits of the book without my permission, thinks he's a clockwork) whose presence caused the "unnatural" phenomenon of lights going out. 

The 3:33 is a coincidence that has consequences. The characters have thrown one party after that, noticing *something* odd about it, not quite realising what. Soon they'll find out they're having big trouble inviting new guests: the New Year people just keep coming—even from beyond the grave as revenants and demons if they've died. Eventually things fall apart, people will get bored for some reason or the other, but they still come. (In the second party the boozehound somehow got transferred to the New Year's party, although all the guests were clockworks that broke down in the end. The guests at the real rave also seemed to be the same person or their relative or...)

In my plans and what I've done I've relied too much an symbolism, which has kind of limited my creativity, as I've always wanted a great symbol for everything that happens. Now I'm reducing the symbolism and bringing in more stuff that they can react to.

Downplaying the dipso and the urbano too much in the past (the personamancer had fun time playing the clockwork-smasher, picking up some $800,000 from a bank and bumping into the guy's ex, who he'd been beating and then trying some magick on her: 00 [it's more complicated than that, but enough of these parentheses and OT], and it became a siggy blast in the middle of a bright day in the street), I'm trying to get the former hooked by getting him into some mysterious bar, which is probably only in his imagination, but he gets from there a bottle of booze. With every sip he hears a few words of "truth" and the only way the bottle could be refilled would be by some creepy ritual. The UA way of approaching "in vino veritas", and a symbolic AND cool approach to alcoholism?

Anyway, the way I'm going to revive the LAOU involves the neverending party phenomenon, an existing clockworker whose creation the smashed one was and the guy who saw the smashed clockwork (his homosexual lover) and freaked out, writing of his experiences to some mailing list that the Sleepers keep an eye on. The characters are going to have a little chat with this fellow the next time we play, continuing their previous, if short, conversation. After that, the witness won't tell the same truth twice. 

There's going to be some sort of rush of OU people to LA; the Annihilomancers will also return in the end. My dearest hope is that the characters will try to gain power: after all, there's the urbanomancer, the danger-hungry entropomancer and the personamancer going for immortality.

Gonna be a long one, that. And as one of my friends comes back from his going-around-Europe, he'll be joining us as some sort of new Malcolm X. Or that's his plan now, at least.

But, one thing that has been going on around in my brain: *why* is the party going on forever? Is it the 3:33 thing, or was it affected by some major spell (clockwork creation?) nearby, or something else entirely? Or do I have to explain it at all?

Other suggestions from more imaginative people are welcome, also!

-V
Moderately amateur game moderator


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