[UA] Madhouse (long)

[Mark K]

***Warning***

Greg Stolze, Tim Toner, Steven Roman look no further to this or related 
postings...

Massive Game Spoilers...

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I'm serious you bitches, the only people you are cheating are yourself, no 
peeks!

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Good, I think they are gone.

I am planning to run my game group (including the lovable yahoos mentioned 
above) through a short UA campaign of approx. 6-8 sessions this summer.  
Much of the plot has been gleaned from comments from this list and my own 
ideas.  It is at least partly designed to confuse experienced players and 
make them questions some meta-elements around traditional game plots.

The Back-story:  I will explain this in a linear fashion first, but the 
campaign will be about revealing this in reverse order.

Johnny Kaine was a punk rocker from the late 70's/early 80's with a love for 
the occult.  He melded the two together over time to create Phonomancy, 
Magick based on sound, particularly the furious rifts and energy of punk.  
Johnny, with the help of his "muse," one "Lilly Blade" (Kinda a Sid and 
Nancy feel on the surface) decided to create an album ("The Black Fever"), 
and deliver Magick to the masses.  Now the two had been on The Sleepers 
radar for sometime due to their high jinks at concerts, and the Sleepers had 
tried to deal with them covertly (introducing the members to hard drugs, 
financially messing with them, briefly institutionalizing them, etc - 
accelerating all the "normal" Behind the Music problems). However, when the 
Black Fever went into production, The Sleepers said to hell with the covert 
and decided to obliterate.

The Sleepers pulled out the big guns and went to the studios where Johnny 
and his mates were finishing their recordings.  They did a job on Johnny 
that made the job on Dirk Allen look like a school yard taunting.  They 
broke Johnny's mind, destroyed the master copy and even erased a bit of 
reality (The studio was on Sycamore Street by the by...).  Johnny is now a 
washed up alcoholic with memory problems.  Due to The Sleeper’s memory 
reconstruction, he believes his "opus" resulted in all the terribleness - 
the physical destruction, the deaths of Lilly and his band mates, his own 
insanity.  To tell the truth, that was all mostly the work of The Sleepers.  
As a caveat, Johnny, Lilly, and the band were not the only ones present at 
the “erasing.”  A "roadie" type, a journalist, a body guard, etc. were also 
present at the studio and got caught in the crosshairs.  These are the PCs.

The Game:  The characters start off as amnesiacs in a terrifying psychiatric 
hospital.  (To simulate this, the Player's will be given blank character 
sheets and brief physical descriptions.  Part of the brief descriptions will 
include apparent "delusions" they suffer from.  As they attempt things, 
scores and stats will be added to their character sheets).  They are 
actually in a facility run by The Sleepers.  They are drugged and cannot 
trust their senses.  They will be presented with an opportunity to escape.  
If they do so, they will likely try to put their former lives together as 
the mind-altering drugs leave their systems.  In the short term, this will 
provide positive benefits.  Their character sheet will round out, scary 
hallucinations will stop, superficial information they gather will fit 
nicely and a sense of identity will (re)develop.

But here's the kicker.  If they press beyond the superficial, Madness Checks 
and Failure Notches will start to escalate, passions will ebb, in sum, they 
will learn that in their former lives they were really bad people.  In game 
terms, some will be sociopaths, they will learn their delusions are more 
real then they thought - distortions of the bad things they have done, for 
sure, but representations of their former actions all the same.

The players, and therefore their characters, will have to make the decision: 
  Do they want to press on, and learn the whole sorted truth at considerable 
personal cost (and perhaps destruction), or is ignorance bliss?  
Additionally, if they trace the line all the way back, does Johnny want the 
truth and his memories back?  And what if a copy of the Black Fever actually 
survived, and locked in Johnny's head is its location.  Is the world 
prepared for proof of the existence of Magick?


So what do you think?  Does it have potential?

Any suggestions for pulling it off?

Any suggestions for character concepts, details or scenes that would be 
powerful?

Any suggestions or comments would be appreciated,

M.

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