[UA] Critique my Con Scenario please
Gaston Phillips
gastonphillips at mac.com
Wed Mar 24 19:02:15 PST 2004
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.
Scene 1. We meet the characters inside a New York apartment building.
They have broken into a library of records. Someone hired them to
steal an old toy record player. (Think my first Sony) It's in a
Bibliomancer's Library Vault (in what used to be Lester Bangs's
apartment) full of rare and old vinyl records.
What kind of weird booby traps would a bookworm have that I might
spring on them for an In Media Res opening?
Scene 2. They play the record to make sure it's what they came for.
It is, in fact, the old recording of the Alter Tongue. The PCs are
infected. Things get a bit weird.
Scene 3. When they go back to meet their contact, they find him
murdered by The Sleepers. It also somehow becomes apparent that he is
also the guy who they robbed - i.e, he hired them to rob him.
(I had this idea that the Bibliomancer, having gotten a major charge
from the recording of the alter tongue, realized the charge was
"poison" and that the Alter Tongue was bleeding into all the other
recordings in his library)
The PCs find out, through connections, that TNI is sending an intercept
team to take out the Sleepers who are transporting the record.
Scene 4. Car Chase. The Sleepers, TNI, and the PCs are all on the
road.
Scene 5. Riot. The TNI goons wake the tiger. The record starts
playing. The PCs, already infected, all know instantly when the record
begins to play. The Goon with the plastic turntable hoofs it into a
warehouse.
Scene 6. Dungeoncrawl. The warehouse has been transformed into some
kind of weird otherspace nightmare. Scenes from the Alter Twins'
nightmares, and from the institution they were in (I imagine they end
up in a place like Willowbrook) come to life. I want to set this in
the Swingline Stapler factory, because I want animated staplers as part
of the story.
Scene 7. Resolution. Either (1) The Bad Man, or (2) An avatar of The
Merchant who works for Mak Attax dials the phone closest to the PCs and
offers to "buy" their infection by "selling" a safe place to store the
record player.
Questions:
1. What kind of booby traps would a Bibliomacer who collects rare rock
records have?
2. How can I finagle Scene 2, where they realize they were hired by the
guy they robbed?
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?
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.
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