[UA] First Run

[Saul Peers]

Oy!

I just ran my first UA game last weekend, and it ended up being a total flop 
of gigantic proportions.  It may have something to do with the fact that I 
haven't quite been on top of my roleplaying game recently, or simply the 
fact that I tried to have the players develop their own motivation.  Anyway, 
it flopped, nobody did anything and the Bad Guys won.  Sorta.  Whatever.

Let me tell you what happened.

One of the PCs, Bruce, worked for a local Plutomancer drug dealer named 
"Clip", who was trained in New York by a powerful sorcerer named Victor 
Cant.  Clip had a magickal contract with Mr. Cant, requiring the former to 
work for the latter for a period of 20 years.  This involved handling 
Victor's buisness in Burlington, Vermont, specifically the Zombi smuggling 
ring that moves the wanked-out Zombi into Montreal.  This is headed by a 
mysterious group of Vodoun Bokor called the Rouge Kabal.

The second PC is a conspiracy nut named Tim, who's hot on the trail of the 
Zombi smugglers when he rolls into Vermont.  Following a couple of 
smugglers, he finds a barn where the "slaves" are kept, as well as some 
occult paraphenilia, as well as a Voodoo Mojo bag meant for Victor Cant.

Back to Clip.  It turns out that several years ago back in New York, Clip 
had cheated another mage, a sleepwalker named Biff.  Biff went to jail and 
Clip got a magickal artifact in the shape of a mirror, powers unknown.  
Well, Biff just got a major charge; used it to feign death and, once buried, 
have cohorts from the outside dig him up.  He's coming after Clip, and he 
hasn't slept a week since his time in the tomb.  HE, in turn, is being 
followed by a sleeper executioner who wants Biff dead, since the very fact 
that he's walking around is a threat to the occult underground.

The basic plan was, everybody arives at the warehouse, Biff enters and kills 
Clip, assassin enters and tries to get Biff, knowledge of the artifact leaks 
and hilarity ensues as the PCs try to wrangle the device for themselves.

It didn't turn out that way at all.

Tim picked up the third PC, john, and they got down to the buisness of 
blowing the organization wide open.  Tim was a Cryptomancer and John an 
Infomancer, so you can understand how they'd get their jollies from doing 
this.  I could never get Tim, John and Bruce together at the barn together.  
Instead, Bruce flies off to try to located Tim and John, who Clip now thinks 
is Biff (They'd broken into the barn and been spotted earlier).

It just ran so badly it was astounding.  Maybe I'll just go back to playing 
Trinity.

Saul


>From: Eric Eves <eeves at erskine.edu>
>Reply-To: ua at lists.uchicago.edu
>To: ua at lists.uchicago.edu
>Subject: Re: [UA] Starting a UA campaign
>Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 23:55:37 -0500
>
>
>
>Scott Hacker wrote:
>
> > Also, some players have been a little disappointed by
> > the amount of skill points standard chargen gives- any
> > suggestions?  How powerful is a starting UA character,
> > relative the starting characters in other roleplaying
> > games (say D&D, Shadowrun or something)?  How broad
> > should character skills be?  What are some good ways
> > of boosting start character power?
>
>
>UA characters tend to be a bit weaker than most game characters, by and
>large.  Skills seem to work best if they're fairly broad, covering a
>fairly broad range of aptitude and knowledge.  Fr'instance, if a
>character wanted a skill in Gambling, (Part Money and Fools With the Use
>of Games of Chance and Skill), I'd let him be skilled with various
>games, know how to execute and recognize various methods of cheating, be
>able to find a local game where he can make a good dollar, figure out
>how good a player is fairly quickly, and probably have some low-level
>criminal connections, all with one skill.
>
>
>As for boosting character power, the best way is usually giving the
>characters either half again as many or twice as many skill points,
>depending on how powerful you want them to be.
>
>-Eric
>
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