[UA] The Royal Tennenbaums

[Royal Minister of Stuff]

--- Mark Fender <themarkfenderexperience at yahoo.com>
wrote:
> As ...an homage to Sandman #1...

Actually, this bit is throwing me off a bit.

> I'm currently trying to get
> together a UA game dealing with the ramifications of
> the death of a great patriarch. 
> I'm trying to keep the archetypal UA weirdness out
> and
> concentrate more on just randomly weird occultic
> shenanigans (less avatars, more unnatural
> phenomenon).
> Any ideas from the list? 

Okay, how about:  The Patriarch isn't involved in the
occult at all.  Perhaps he discovered that magic
worked but hated the very idea, down to his big, muddy
boots.

He did his best to shield his children from it,
discouraging anything that might be even remotely
magical, from tales of Santa Claus to Halloween
Campfire Stories.  No Disney, no Shakespear and, well,
not much literature of any kind, for that matter,
except for non-fiction.

Of course, this sort of thing never works, especially
if the dead patriarch was a Great Santini kinda dad.

So, all the PCs are involved in the occult to get back
at Dad, but, because of the family dynamic, they've
tried (sometimes successfully, sometimes falling
miserably short) to keep their explorations to
themselves.

Make the patriarch soap-opera/murder mystery rich and
encourage the players to pick archetypes from that
genre and then twist them with magical secrets instead
of regular skeletons in the closet.  If one guy's an
alcoholic or a gambler, then he's actually a
dipsomancer or entropomancer.  If one character is the
family slut, get her to be an iconomancer who worships
Susan Lucci or put her in the Cult of the Naked
Goddess.

If you want to avoid magic stuff altogether, connect
the entire family to the Priory of Sion.  I know it
seems obvious, but wouldn't it be kind of weird to
know that the reason poppa had so much power and
influence was that he's the son of the son of the son
of (etc. etc.) God?  Make sure the family is very
fundamentalist (Christian) in their beleifs.  Or maybe
they're shi'ites.

=====
-- Rp Bowman, Royal Minister of Stuff
The Electronic Nation of Yokeltania:
http://www.geocities.com/yokeltania/

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