[UA] A little help?

[Paul Wrider]

Hmmm...Just a couple of quick thoughts...
First of all, nice job.  Just reading this is wiggy enough to make me dwell, much less playing through it.
Okay, so how to revisit a scene and still keep it creepy.  Not easy.  There's a reason why magicians will only do their tricks once for an audience - never give them a second chance to think.
My initial feeling is to bring them all back to that moment...without telling them, or any clues that they are back in the same situation.  Specifically I would put them all in the role of the children or even the deviant truck drivers, altering details (due to personal outlook) enough so that by the time they realize what's going on, it's too late to change events.  That way, they got their chance, and blew it.
It's hard for me to get into details, not knowing the specifics of your players/their characters/the situation, and if they guess what/who they are too soon and you still insist that things happen the same way, I guarantee they'll feel railroaded  (cause, well, they have been).  The ideal is for them to realize too late, and have events occur just as/or slightly better than they did before.  If you're really good they'll be convinced that if they had just gotten a handle on things sooner, it all would have been okay....heh, heh.
-Wrider
 
  Mark Kiel <markkiel at hotmail.com> wrote: About two years ago I took a group through their initial UA campaign. It 
included BTi3P, Joy and Sorrow, Pinfeathers, Exhaustion, etc. They wound up 
a team for Able and the TNI. In the middle of the campaign I threw in a 
non-UA related session. For some reason it wound up being the most defining 
moment for the campaign. Quite simply, the ratty Honda they were driving 
across country in (they were “laying low”) broke down and a couple of hicks 
picked them up in their truck. While driving them to the “Service Station” 
the guys mention “their kids” a couple of times. After some time passes, 
and after they drop a few ominous innuendos, the hicks get aggressive and 
attack the women in the party. This results in melee, and some serious 
damage to the party members (physically and psychologically…). The group 
wonders what these monsters might have done to “the kids” and decided to 
check out the guys’ home. (Their driver license was in the glove 
compartment.) The place was an absolute calamity of horrors. Run down, 
filthy, dangerous, with lots of unexplained weirdness. (Violent baboons in 
cages, a weird/icky “nest” in the living room, it just went on and on…) 
When all is said and done, the group was attacked by a rapid dog, the little 
girl they met outside the house stabbed one of the PCs and it eventually 
dawned on the players that the children might have actually been the ones 
who did something horrible to the adults.

The campaign eventually continued on in a cannon fashion, but the players 
continued to reference the one particular session. About 12 sessions later, 
the game stagnated and we took a hiatus. Last week we returned to it and 
the players really moved and shook and changed their fortunes considerably 
(thanks in part to some seriously gutsy bargaining at the Swap Meet…). One 
of the characters said that he wanted to go back and revisit some places and 
things that went “bad” the first time around. The freaky house out in the 
country was at the top of his list.

If they do indeed return to it I would like it to be as memorable the second 
time around… And completely different.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

M.

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