[UA] Demos and Character Creation Workshops

[Trent Redfield]

Hello all.

I've been doing my best for years to spread Unknown Armies to as many people 
that play RPGs as I possibly can.  I've found that running demos right out 
of the One Shots book has worked well.  I've been lucky enough to live in 
places with game stores that have gaming tables and I've been able to take 
advantage of that.

My problem has been that I'll easily fill up the seats for a demo, but it 
has been very difficult to get people to go beyond that and setup a 
campaign.  In the last few months I've come up with a good solution.  A week 
after I run a demo I hold a "Character Creation Workshop".  People have 
responded well to this, especially since UA has such a unique character 
creation process.  What I've done at these workshops is take a character 
from the demo I ran, usually Jailbreak, and then "reverse engineer" that 
character.  Basically we look at how the character came together and the 
connections that make that character real.  Updike and Uder in Jailbreak 
work well for such a purpose.  Updike's motivations and worldview are quite 
clear and Uder is a mechanomancer, which allows us to discuss the details of 
UA's magick system.  After doing that and comparing UA to other games, 
especially d20/D&D which is most RPGers main reference point, the 
participants sit down and create a character for UA.  Walking them through 
this process really connects them to the system and the setting and has been 
exciting for them.

After one workshop here in Wisconsin, one of the participants, who had been 
in a previous UA campaign I ran, decided to start running UA.  We're now in 
a UA campaign that's been going for about 6 weeks.  I ran Jailbreak in 
Duluth, Minnesota last week and this wed I am doing the character creation 
workshop follow-up.  I talked to one of the players after the demo on Wed 
and he is starting a UA campaign this week and is going to use the workshop 
I am hosting/running to kick off his campaign.

Basically what I am saying is that having a workshop like this really 
cements the demo experience and is a great way to pull people into Unknown 
Armies.  I think it can be a very powerful too for increasing the interest 
in and awareness of this great game.

- Trent Redfield

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Toolbar provides one-click access to Hotmail from any Web page – FREE 
download! http://toolbar.msn.com/go/onm00200413ave/direct/01/