[UA] Re: Bueller? Bueller?

[Goran Lonnqvist]

I've been running a weekly UA campaign for almost a year. Everybody just loves the game, and it's like nothing we've ever played before. It's set in Sweden and begun at street level, but now it has developed into a global level campaign.

The players have joined the Sleepers, but they still don't know if the Sleepers are the good guys or the bad guys. In fact, no one seems to be good or bad (except TNI Scandinavian Division), just more or less crazy.

The characters don't always trust each other. It has happened that a character has pointed a gun at someone else in the group during a discussion, sometimes without the threatened character being aware of it, but often we play for hours without even rolling dice.

Four characters have died or vanished, but only once has a body ever been found by the authorities. The characters don't trust the authorities. They suspect that someone has infiltrated the police. Maybe even the government (it's said that the prime minister once was broadcasted live at two different places).

They have found a key made by Nostradamus, which can open doors to other places (or times), and an old watch made by some occultist named Hoffman, which is said to contain a minute stolen from God when the world was created.

And then it's the Sumerian ritual. Last time a cultist spoke the words and made the sacrifice, one of the characters ended up with 8 hardened notches in the Unnatural meter, another got insane, the Order of St. Cecil went in with flame-throwers, and Wu Zhanhan got really upset over the phone.

So, we're playing the hell out of this game. It works and it works very well, even when no one has a clue about what's going on.

If you're gonna GM Unknown Armies and don't know how to "explain" the setting to your players, don't worry. It will pretty much explain itself when you start to play. The players will soon figure out that it's not about vampires or werewolves, but about secrets, rumors, and sects than worship the twisted bodies of crucified children.