[UA] UA Bitterness (long and mean)

[Tom Lynch]

> However, I do have a serious problem with the lack of structure.  There's
> just no place to start when designing adventures.  When I first started
> GMing, I liked creating my own worlds from scratch, with plots and
cultures
> completely of my own devising.  When I grew a bit longer in the tooth, I
> found that I perfered pre-created game worlds, since several skilled game
> masters have already put the work into describing and characterizing the
> towns, providing conveniant plot points and basically making it easier to
> keep the world whole.  UA is very "build it yourself", in many ways, and
> while I've done that before it's not as easy as it once was.

Hmm... My School Group, to borrow the acronym (actually Uni, but never
mind...) has roughly the following policy for our term-long campaigns:
Week 1: Offer games, split up into game groups, character gen, possibly with
brief guidelines (as well as being connected to the Occult Underground,
you're all in the Mafia. I got a thanatomancer, a sniper, a Confessor, a
Merchant, a Necessary Servant... and a driver), possibly not. Group discuss
backgrounds and bat around suggestions for how they may have met. GM accepts
one of these or decides to introduce the characters to each other
in-campaign. GM then either runs for about a hour to get them properly into
character before session end, or we hit the bar. GM analyses character
sheets over following week and lets plot ideas percolate...

Week 2: GM starts campaign proper, if he didn't last session, having had
time to figure out how they all come in.

Week 3, in certain games: Key NPC is killed. ( "They shot the plot!" is a
common cry at Lancaster).

Week 3-9, in the rest of the games: Campaign continues as normal.

Week 4-9 in games where plot was shot: Campaign limps on as GM figures out
how to stop, say, a Jedi killing Luke Skywalker because 'he looked at me
funny' and because GM is a cretin.

Week 10: Campaign is brought to something resembling closure. GM asks
players if they want to continue outside Soc time in following terms.
Discussion is had, often with a positive bent. Retire to bar, where most
people cheerfully discuss events of term/upcoming games/whatever the hell we
feel like, while Jon (GM whose plot was shot on at least three separate
occasions through the term) cries into his beer.

The point of which, I guess, is... sometimes with UA you can have a very
basic campaign structure (they're in the Mafia), but by getting chargen done
sufficiently before the first session, you know what to do (hit them with
Golems to stop the adept grinning about his power, freak them out with
hidden use of Personamancers and Urbanomancers through the campaign, and
take advantage of the fact that none of your players know the background, so
you can use Carnals and Snowfallen or anything else you feel like safe in
the knowledge that it'll surprise them.

The other thing I recommend is playing with a mix of Cthulites and
Cyberpunkers, so that half the group spots everything and the other half
spots nothing. Then split them up and put the Cthulites in a position where
lots of Notice rolls are required to cotton on to what's happening, while
the Cyberpunkers can be made happy by introducing them to a TNI strike team
or a psychotic Entropomancer with a number of large charges.

Remember, a lot of modern occult players love their Cthulhu. They take
Notice low so they don't lose Sanity, and the madness meters are close
enough to San to the uninitiated that they assume the same is true for UA.
Missed Notice rolls often got given just enough info to know something was
out there.

Watch movies like The Birds. That, apart from godawful Tippi Hedren, is how
I play UA...

Until I switch to John Carpenter's The Thing and catch them napping.
***
Tom
Don't hit the keys so hard, it hurts.



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