[UA] Critique my Con Scenario please

[Gareth Hanrahan]

> Okay.  I've signed up to run UA at a convention this weekend and would
> like to solicit critiques of the plot I'm thinking of.
>
> I'm going to offer some Pre-Gen's.  A Con Artist with Mob Connections,
> A Car Thief Brawler, a Burglar, a Militia Type Gun Nut, and maybe a
> Dipsomancer of some sort.  They're a crew of thieves who have some
> knowledge of the Occult Underground.  They may (or may not) have picked
> up a Dipsomancer when they started getting into it.

> Questions:
> 1. What kind of booby traps would a Bibliomacer who collects rare rock
> records have?
Razor-sharp records on spring-loaded discus throwers (probably too silly).
Magic dance tunes that trap the hearer in a permanent dance until they die
of exhaustion. Sonic blasts.

> 2. How can I finagle Scene 2, where they realize they were hired by the
> guy they robbed?

How are they contacted by their employer? That'll affect how much they know
about him.

> 3.  Which is a better resolution - that a PC picked up The Bad Man's
> business card in the apartment, or that Mak Attax heard of the PCs?

Neither grab me. You need to make the final resolution more dependant on
player action. I'd let the characters find the Bad Man's card in the
apartment, as well as giving one of the characters a contact with Mac Attack
AND have the Sleepers press their claim to the device. It's basically a hot
potato - the question is, how do the characters get rid of it safely?

> 4.  Is this too much?  All the factions and whatnot?  Really - I
> haven't run a game in god knows how long.  Am I expecting too much?  I
> think I get four hours to do all this in.

Ok...you can throw lots of factions in, but it will confuse the players a
bit. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but don't make any of the plot rely
on the players really understanding the factions. UA is still a fairly niche
game, and you can't rely on getting a table of players who know the game at
a con (if you're lucky, you'll get one or two who know the game, but don't
count on it). Therefore, you have to give them all the info they need within
the context of the scenario.

Gar