[UA] starting a new campaign

[Greg Stolze]

>Re 1) I thought about letting my players create their characters with
>fewer points than usual and at stage 3 they get the remaining points to
>buy magic, avatar skills or other fancy stuff.
>I'm still looking for a good starting scenario. I need something which
>is sufficiently weird and helps melting the PCs together into a group.
>Bill in 3 Persons would be good. Unfortunately one of my players
>already has played it. :-(

Pinfeathers?

>Re 3) I'm still not sure how they find out they have powers, too. Maybe
>it could be a slow process, like they subconciously still remember how
>it works and after the unnatural phenomena become more frequent they
>(hopefully) will figure it out on their own. But I'm not sure whether
>this could work. It's a new group and I don't know all of my players
>that well yet.

Build lots of trust, first and foremost.  Players are (rightly, I think)
very protective of the essences of their characters, and giving the GM
control of something as important as backstory is a big trust issue.  Make
sure that you surprising them with stuff gets the reaction "Whoa!  Cool!"
not "Whoa whoa whoa!  UNCOOL!"

One way to handle it would be imply that they could have the opportunity to
learn magick later, and you want to know what you think their characters
might get into so that you can weave it in seamlessly.  (The surprise
being, of course, that they knew it all along.)  But this does leave you
only half a surprise.

A more trust-issue-intensive way to do it is to give them weird urges.  Say
one of them is an entropomancer but doesn't know it.  When he's at a busy
intersection, pass him a note (or whisper to him) "It suddenly strikes you
that it would be a good idea to close your eyes and dash across the
street."  Similarly, an epideromancer might develop a (to the player)
irrational terror whenever he walks by a barbershop or tattoo parlor.

You give them free choices, but a few Self checks are bound to happen now
and then.  If they give in to their weird urges -- and consequently charge
up -- you can pull them out of trouble later by letting them use random
magick (or even formula spells) that spend the charges they don't know they
have.

If it was me, I'd do it like this.  The first time they use a power, they
don't realize they're doing it.  The second time, they're pretty sure THEY
did it, and so on.

-G.

Living with a toddler?  Well, I guess it's not that much different from any
other room mate who thinks that squatting naked on the kitchen floor eating
pretzel sticks is a good way to start the morning.

Oh wait.  It is different.

www.waylay.com
www.thehungersite.com



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