[UA] Tom Waits Songs As Campaign Material

[Michael Athey]

Crossposting this from RPG.net; thought you guys might want to take a look at it...
 
Sunshine Cab Company 

My entire Unknown Armies game is based on songs. Seriously. Tom Waits songs. He's got it all in there - character names, situations, imagery, blah blah blah. I plan to give the players the lyrics to each song before each session to give them some artsy fartsy headspace to work with. Then I'll play the song at the end of the session. It'll be Deep. 

Hang On St. Christopher: This is a song about somebody driving around and telling St. Christopher, patron saint of travelers and cab drivers, to hang on. Its therefore the main titles for my Cab Company based game. 

Everything You Can Think Of Is True: A creepy song from 'Alice' about how there's a lot of weird shit out there. It fits in nicely as the first story I plan to run, which'll start out mundane but get positively David Lynch. 

Diamonds On My Windshield: A sort of beat-poet Kerouac jazz number about somebody driving through snow/rain on their way home. There's a throwaway line about a drive in and a bald Wisconsin hitchhiker. I extrapolated that into the hitchhiker needing to get home to his drive in which is now owned by a mobster and who gets the PCs entangled in the whole mess. 

9th And Hennepin: Weird and dark little poetry about a city street corner and some somewhat random imagery from a hotel or bar or something. This became a story about a hotel that's connected to the House of Renunciation and which traps people in their transitional state after getting their heart broken. The Girl With The Tattooed Tears is likely to be the main NPC the PCs deal with. 

Heartattack and Vine: Sort of rockabilly number about yet another street corner and people snorting cocaine and other fun things. This story'll be about a Narcomancer using a drug that makes people nuts, part of his plot to break up reality into something trippier. Philly Joe Remarkable and Shorty'll probably be NPCs, though I haven't decided much more about them. 

Martha: A very sweet, romantic song about an old guy calling a girlfriend of his from decades before. This story, in turn, will be relatively upbeat and sentimental. Something to do with getting an elderly man in contact with a lost love; perhaps they're two halves of an Avatar and people want to prevent this. Love stories aren't my forte, obviously... 

Step Right Up: A funny song in which Tom patters out a bunch of advertising jargon about some nonsensical product. Fast moving and a little desperate, so I figure I'll kick it off with a chase scene. There's gonna be some dingus that a salesman of Weird Items has that a bunch of people want. Its like a Mad Mad Mad World meets Pulp Fiction. Sort of. 

Everything Goes To Hell: Very cynical song about how nobody's worth trusting and everything goes to shit anyways so why bother. This'll be the story in which the Sleepers find out what the Cab Company's up to and try to shut it down, probably resulting in a few friends of the PCs dying and the Company going to pot. Knowing my players, it shouldn't be too hard to play to their worst fears and pessimism about NPCs here. 

Yesterday Is Here: A song about how you'll have to wait for Yesterday 'cause Tomorrow doesn't look too promising. This is going to be the story in which the PCs enter the Room of Second Chances as the Dispatcher's ritual kicks in. They all get to revisit events from their past in which they made shitty decisions, including events from the game. My Donnie Darko rip-off, in other words. 

Lucky Day: A song from the end of 'Black Rider' which basically depicts a guy going crazy after accidentally killing his girlfriend. Oops. For the game, its mostly just my send off for the Dispatcher, who'll likely be A) dead, B) insane, C) sent back to his old loser life after the PCs and the other factions confront him about his ritual thing. 

I've got an idea to end the final session of the game with one of two songs: Tom Waits "Lullabye", from Blood Money, which is a twisted little nursery song, or Radiohead's "Lucky", which is a song about hope in the face of awful things. One would be for the Downbeat Ending, the other'd be for the Happy Ending. I may end up just using both.


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