[UA] Bueller? Bueller?

[Liam Routt]

My game is currently on long-long-long-term hiatus...

I've got the start of a set of web pages about the game at:

   http://www.routt.net/Caligari/Cabinet/Aurora/

But the most interesting stuff (the Journal) is pitifully incomplete.

We were playing extraordinarily slowly (consistently once every two 
weeks for about three years, but only covered about two or three weeks 
of game time in that period), but were really enjoying it. The only 
thing that stopped us, in the end, was a spate of kid creation (my 
family and then one of the other pairs of players). I expect we will 
restart in a few years...

In a nutshell, the game was to be about an idea from Lawyers, Guns & 
Money, I believe - that Alex Abel has a kid and has had that fact 
burried by magical means. The start up was the characters being drawn 
together by None, the surviving cryptomancer who helped to hide Abel's 
kid. She didn't say much directly, and instead the overall result 
was that they became the focus of TNI interest. Primarily the game so 
far has been about surviving that, realizing it for what it is, and 
trying to form a group that can act against it.

Along the way the Naken Goddess ascended (they still have no clue about 
this), several people died, including one who accidentially became part 
of the Clergy for a time, and was able to make the world forget one of 
the characters completely while bringing her back from a violent death. 
Another character has been abducted and tortured by TNI, and the rich 
doctor character has nearly had his business, friends, and family 
destroyed; one of his closest friends is possessed by a demon who has 
taken *his* family out into Wisconsin and is planning to ritually 
slaughter them in an attempt to stay in the body permanently (the 
characters haven't managed to follow up on this much at all, and I 
fear the family may not make it)... Oh, and another of that character's 
associates is a nasty mechanomancer who delights in killing children 
with "faulty toys"...

On the other hand, the character with mental powers has started to learn 
to control them... The character who is a budding cryptomancer has 
managed to evade *everyone* (including the rest of the party) and is 
getting some real research done (turns out her father was the other 
adpet who worked with None, who drew them together)... The character 
with all the problem friends has managed to convert his obsession with 
death into a full-blown thantomancy skill (as a doctor he now goes 
looking for those near death to watch them... and is driving himself 
nuts)... Another character has remembered that she was a Sleeper agent 
in Russia  two years ago and was tracking a nasty mechanomancer when she 
lost her mind... Of course there is also the character who found that 
her street tough nature was simply the result of wishful thinking and a 
ritual cast by another player and she is, in fact, a weak junkie whore; 
she's the one who got shot and was given the chance to completely cease 
to exist, only to be remade as the dream tough by the person who was 
a part of the Clergy at the time...

They've made some powerful friends, including one of the most powerful 
independent Dukes, a dwarf dipsomancer, and a Sleeper agent (who is 
"involved" with the tough now), and the Urbanomancer of the city (who is 
way more powerful than they realized, but tends to keep quiet).

As things were left, the group has been taken in to the Sleepers (and 
some downtime was to follow). However, one of their number fled 
(searching out her Urbanomancer father-figure/romantic interest who she 
found had caused someone to be literally ripped apart because of her)... 
One is in a coma (that's the thantomancer) in an Order of St. Cecil run 
hospice... No one even remembers the cryptomancer, as a result of her 
powerful magic... So that only ones really left the are Sleeper agent 
who had regained her memories, and the tough who is sweet on the local 
Sleeper agent...

There was *way* too much going on at the same time in the game. I like 
that sort of setting, and it was working well to completely mystify the 
players as to what was going on, or even how many things were affecting 
them at the same time. I subscribe to the "strange attracts strange" 
theory, and for me the confluence of destinies surrounding this group is 
strong enough to make a hell break lose around them, a fact that None is 
using to her advantage (she's basically on the run and looking for a way 
to strike back). I tend not to fully plot things out, though, so a lot of 
the seemingly important details only come out in play (as clues or 
situations dictate what is going on). I was just to the point of working 
out about the nature of the magic used to hide Abel's kid, and was 
making notes (lost in a subsequent disk crash) on a lazarus-like 
character whose body pieces regrow or live when removed. It suddenly 
became obvious that this character was a close friend of Abel's that 
he's had used to protect his child, and that, in my world, he would 
become the Freak when the characters located him and rescued him. Of 
course such a quest would probably take the rest of the players' 
lifetimes at the rate we play...

Essentially I was taking a lot of the major aspects of the game world 
and making them directly relevant to my players. I was intent on 
throwing them in to the deep end with no support at all and getting 
milage out of their gradual acquistion of knowledge. In the end the game 
was much more about the personal relationships between the characters, 
who got along spectacularly badly, but desperately needed one another. 
That aspect drew each session out into a lengthy war of words, and 
almost always made it impossible for them to stay focused on any one 
thread of the vast tapestry of the situation they were in. On several 
occasions they made lists of all the things that they might want to find 
answers to, but rarely managed to follow up on even one. The power of 
the experience, and the success of the game, was in the characters, 
which were centre stage. In theory all of the characters were supposed 
to feel the story was about them, and I think I managed that reasonably.

I do hope I can get back to it...

Take care,

Liam
--
Liam Routt                                               liam at routt.net
Darcsyde Productions                     http://www.routt.net/Caligari/

        -- still waiting for the Absolute Destiny Apocalypse --