[UA] A Few of My Favorite Things

[Christopher]

I would say that Bi3P can have the *impression* of railroading. The PCs are
thrown into a weird situation; what they do with it is up to them. The
scenario goes out of its way to tell the GM to allow the players to make
their own decisions and not force them into any particular action. The
scenario has a "best" outcome, and consequences for failure, but that's to
be expected. Actually, if I'd railroaded my players from the first group, it
probably would have ended up better. I also didn't railroad the second
group; several reasons may exist why this one went better: it was the second
thing I ran with them; I did a better job; they were for the most part a
Circle of Friends; and it was more interesting for this particular group.
They only failed to stop the second Bill, hesitating to try to stop the man
who just unraveled two cops. Still, I think the scenario can be successful
with *no* Bills stopped.

"A Few of My Favorite Things" is a railroad. While individual actions still
have meaning, for the most part it is something to be experienced and
survived. The scenario states, "If for some bizarre reason the PCs hurl the
old man's body out the back of the ambulance...." This is, in fact, what
happened in my game, which is a pretty good indicator of how it went.

Jonathan's plan to blow through it and get to something meatier in the
session may work, though. Still, I went through the scenario quickly as
well, setting up each scene after the other. We didn't have time for
anything else. We'd spent the first part of the session with two players
discussing seeking out the Bill Toges taken away in ambulances. The "alpha"
was dead set against it, because he had already decided that it wouldn't do
any good. He had a tendency of vetoing plans he considered a waste of time,
but not offering anything else up. I'm personally quite glad he's found
World of Warcraft. Always something effective to do there.

Christopher Smith Adair

-----Original Message-----
From: Nis Jasper Nicolaisen [mailto:jnicolaisen at gmx.de] 
Sent: Monday, February 07, 2005 1:53 AM
To: x-opher at bigfoot.com; The Unknown Armies RPG Mailing List
Subject: RE: [UA] A Few of My Favorite Things

I thought about running "Few of my favorite things", but didn't in the end.
I too liked the atmosphere and surrealist images, but then, there's not much
to do for the players. Bill has its fair share of railroading, too, but my
players coped with that pretty well, since the feeling was that within the
segments they were free to explore and make decisions as they saw fit. FOMFT
doesn't seem to allow for any kind of decision, meaningful or not - things
happen around the players no matter what they do. 
And since I was planning to take it to a German setting for my German group,
I'd have had to emulate the sepcifically American imaginary, which would
have put even more strain on the whole thing. Bottom line: It's a great
read, I got some nice bits to use in scenarios of my own, but it's probably
not a good idea to run it as written.

Jasper
  

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