| From: | Neil Clark neil.clark@**********.com |
|---|---|
| Subject: | UB handout (really fraggin LONG!) [was: neo-anarchists guide] |
| Date: | Fri, 5 Mar 1999 15:12:28 -0500 |
trick I
>> could think of to allow the group to acquire this during the run. They
>> didn't bite at all. It was very frustrating. Here it is, this
wonderfully
>> written piece of fiction that spells out a lot of answers to questions
they
>> had, and it was totally wasted.
>Something similar happened in my group; they discovered the hand-out
alright, but when I gave them the book they >sort of browsed through it and
put it away because it was too much to read there and then...
great Kibo! that sounds like a tragedy. : (
personally, when I ran UB, I didn't think the Missing Blood adventure was
worthwhile, and I didn't want to sit around for 4 hours, waiting for
everyone to finish reading and hand it on to the next person. so, what I
did was: ...,
(I'm laying out how I handled the adventure blow-by-blow. maybe this will
be useful for GMs planning to run the adventure in the future...as I felt my
strain of the UB adventure worked wonderfully, and Missing Blood by itself
is kind of lame and anticlimatic, in my humble opinion)
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***
I arranged with one of the players ahead of time to be a fishook--I'll
explain in a sec. he's a fine roleplayer, but his character was by choice a
bit..ah..soft-minded.
so we agreed that without the knowledge of the group this character (I
guess I should start calling them by their names), Gumbo would take some
independant-of-the-group action and become interested in the Brotherhood.
I just had the player over one weekend, and what I did was, thouroughly
read the primary interview between one of the journalists and the rep.,
where he asks about the leader and such. I just kept in mind what the
representative's responses would be like, and had the interview.
what I did from there was start them off with the plain old Missing Blood
adventure, but... right when they were about to run out of legwork to do, I
had the freelancer journalist hacks from the handout contact them, and ask
for their assistance in their investigation. the journ's explained it was
because the players already had brushed against the UB lightly (the UB
asassins targeting Bramba), and the journ's needed experience, and
protection.
so from there, I just converted what of it I could into 2nd person (the
'you' perspective). most of the conversations between Wanderly and Davitt I
just read aloud to the group, in alternating voices. because the group
decided on a whim to rent out Victoria's apartament, and used that room as a
stakeout, and the journalists were there, so they just had these
conversations in front of the group.
for the multitude of interviews with UB representatives, I mostly had the
street sam, Grey, go to the meetings. the decker, Mark, rigged up Grey so
everyone could hear and see through Grey's senses, and they could whisper
things into his radio-linked-cyberear if they had suggestions for the
ongoing interview. I didn't actually make them buy any equipment or mess
with any actual game mechanics, I just said, what do you know, Mark happens
to have the right stuff in his bag of tricks. when necessary, I would have
the journs suggest questions that were asked in the handout, so the
interview could reveal more information and be more interesting overall.
anyway, as they investigated and investigated, I let Gumbo menion lightly
that he was interested in these UB guys. the troll, Lad, also got
interested. the group was 4 players, and the point of having half of them
pro-UB was that, as the more enlightened half learned more, cultivated
suspicion, and started to feel the UB thing was very sinister somehow, the
group became split down the middle between anti-UB and pro-UB. it made for
a lot of inter-group-dissention and made things very cinematic, as they
anti-half would always want to walk off to a UB meeting in the middle of the
night, and the wiser half, the ninja-adept Mitsukai, and Grey, would have to
try talking them out of it. "but the UB is wonderful! I'm off to go join
the light and all, see you two later!". see the tension this caused? I
liked the effect very much.
I let them get to the point where they interviewed the Mindfragger
survivor, that messed-up girl in the hospital. for some reason, that
chilling interview had the opposite intended effect on them, as they decided
to go run into the Octagon, and see for themselves what these spiny,
exoskeleton-endowed boogymen really were.
I thought this would be a Bad Thing, so I said along the way they passed
Madame Ulisha's house. they had heard her menioned before, so they decided
some info-gathering couldn't hurt and stopped by her place, bribed a few
questions about her. and just as their questions started to get juicy, I
decided it was time for the attack. instead of slowing the game down with
combat vs. ant warrior flesh forms, I just said they heard a "whoomp!"
outside and what do you know, someone had pelted the house with
molotov-cocktails, and the house was burning down.
I said that Ulishia glanced at the wall (secret entrance to nursury) and
the door, and finally crashed through the door, not even opening it (I let
the characters wonder how the "mortal" woman smashed through a doorway). I
told Lad, the astrally-percieving adept, that for an instant, he saw
Ulishia's eyes enlargened and multi-faceted (like with the first interview
rep.). the clever player yelped out something about bug spirits, but no one
in the group agreed with him, so the secret was safe for now.
after they ran out of the building, I told Gumbo, who has level 5 cyberear
sound filters, that he heard the sound of an infant crying inside. the hook
worked, and he, as well as the rest of the group following him, ran inside
the inferno (Gumbo had an air tank), where he noticed the secret doorway and
found the nursury, and saw the deformed-hybrid-buggy-infant. MissingBlood
says it was dead of pillow-suffocation, but I just said it had the blanket
over it, and that it had passed out due to the carbon dioxide of the burning
building.
from there, they figured out pretty well what the UB was all about, and
went home to contemplate. as a side note, when they got home, they noticed
that Mark and the street doc companion had split, apparently freaked out by
the vid-link-feed from Grey.
Grey decided to join the UB "under false pretenses", and so I let him go
to the circle-therapy type meeting. Gumbo, also a member, went along. I
had the leader take Grey outside and give him the speech about how she was
dissapointed he had tried to join under "false pretenses". Grey's player is
a good player, played along well, saying "I'll be back. and I'm not the
only one.". Grey, a fearsome sammy, refused to be escorted outside, and
opted to wait in the lobby for the meeting to end so he could take Gumbo
home.
when the meeting was over, everyone was filed out, but not Gumbo. Grey
decided to wait it out. I had the leader put on a physical mask spell and
come out under the guise of Gumbo. I told this to the player of Gumbo, and
advised him to play Gumbo as if something wasn't quite right. it worked,
and after a whole load of tension-lined interrogation of the disguised mage,
they blew her cover and geeked her.
where's the real Gumbo? they realized he must still be in the HQ, and it
was very late at night. so they decided to go back for him. and they did.
the lobby layout has it so there's a stairway to the basement floor, and an
elevator to the top. as they sat around in the lobby bickering about what
to do, I said the elevator lights went on, indicating something was coming
down to this floor. they stood in the darkness of the stairway, and waited
for... it was a worker ant, which they killed. it was lugging along a
gross sac of some kind (I said think the Brain Bug from Starship Troopers,
without a face, and smaller). they cut open the sac to find a naked human
in the fetal position. on a snap judgement, they killed it. they went
downstairs, and I made up what was downstairs. I said they found a secret
entryway into a cavernous underground structure. there they found a warrior
ant guarding a bunch of the sacs. they killed the ant, and cut open the
sacs, liberating the human-looking ones, and they found Gumbo in one of the
sacs. I decided ahead of time they would rescue him before he became a
host.
I reasoned then that the cutting open of sacs alerted the hive, so a few,
4-5, more ant warriors ran downstairs to attack them. the adept died of the
quickness loss power, and the troll almost kicked it as well. when they got
outside, refugees as well, I had one of the rescued be the shaman Many-Names
from the handout. I had him pique the attention of the group by making the
vague comment "that was some nice work you guys did in there. brings back
memories". that got their attention, and so they had the little discussin
with him, where he told them about how the UB was a Plot To Take Over The
World (™). they were beat-up, and decided to go after the queen upstairs
after they'd patched up a bit.
I had Davitt leave to conduct the adventure where he tries to liberate
O'Connal, but he died, so Wanderly was left. Wanderly started to write his
book, and finished, emailing them the surviving copy (the one in the Denver
Haven got zapped, as per the handout)
whew...you can imagine how long this took in real-life-time. but it was
well worth it. from there, I linked it to Bug City. I had the UCAS
militairy arrive in front of their shoddy little apartament in dual T-birds,
tons of milspecced troops filed out, and a leader finally walked out. Grey
had a Lone Star background, so I added that he recognized this leader-type
as the secretary of state--one position below President of UCAS. he buzzed
up to the apartament, and what do you know, they let him in. he gave them a
breif speech about how he couldn't give any details, but if they came with
him, he could take their copy of the UBexpose book. they liked this, and
came along.
::gasp for breath::
the militairy dropped the runners off in Chicago, where the UCAS and Ares
Arms were containing a riot-of-sorts. the secretary of state handed them an
envelope, which said on the surface RUN. they got the hint, and ran towards
the crowd that was trying to escape. the squad didn't like the sight of
them getting away, and fired after them. no dice rolls, I said they escaped
into the crowd. from there, explosions went off from where they ran (the
wall being established). and then just to add to the mood, I had the
Cermack blast go off, described a mushroom cloud rising. the
astral-percieving adept and a magician decided they fancied percieving the
blast, and they died from looking at it.
the remaining group read the letter inside the envelope, from the
secretary. basically, the Secretary said he appreciated their efforts to
alerting him to a Plot To Take Over The World ™, and he appreciated that
they'd somewhat Saved The World ™...
but to be as safe as could be, he had to assume that since they had come
into such intimate contact with the Bugs, that he had to assume they were
"contaminated" (maybe possessed by the bug spirits), and so they had to be
"contained".
::gasp for breath::
sorry if that was unbearably long, because it was. hopefully this can
inspire some GMs to, in the future, have a much better UB adventure than I
though Missing Blood allowed for.
that took me forever to write, so if you GM's who read this have any
creative thoughts or input or opinions on this, tell me?
--Neil
[ neil.clark@**********.com ]
AIM: CrythalX
SIN: 29384733
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