[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.




More information about the UA mailing list