Highway Zero
Nov. 17th, 2002 11:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotnik2004After talking about it for ages, I'm finally trying to get an Unknown Armies game started. Everyone who reads this journal has, I expect, already gotten the e-mail about the game (except, I guess for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mgrasso—feel like commuting to Boston for the game?), but I'll post it here anyway so I can point people to it online.
You need a man to go to hell with.
—Tuesday Weld
UNKNOWN AMERICANA is an Unknown Armies game about cars, crooks, and the secret occult history of the USA. It's the great American occult road movie that never was, with surf rock on the 8-track and 500 horses under the hood. It’s a road trip across an America that looks like ours but has an occult underground of magickal adepts seething under its surface.
There are highways with secret names. There are wicked witches in the west. There are bad men searching for cities of gold.
What is this game about? Well, it’s about secrets and history, power and lies, magic and consequences. Mostly it’s about America. Along the way, we’ve got muscle cars and malt liquor, trailer trash adepts and the Weekee Wachee mermaids. We got John Henry’s orichalka hammer, we got the true meaning of The Wizard of Oz, we got the Dixie Mafia searching every secret highway in the South for the One True Death Car of Bonnie and Clyde. We got your dipsomancers and cliomancers, your dukes and avatars and all that Unknown Armies heady goodness. All we need is some player characters with a full tank of gas and more curiosity than what’s good for them. Rock and roll.
DAY / TIME: I’d like to play every two weeks, probably on a weeknight, but that’s negotiable. If scheduling proves hard, I would be happy even with a monthly game (in which case I would alter the pacing of sessions to resemble linked one-shots more than a continuous campaign).
LOCATION: My place in Jamaica Plain (walking distance from the Orange Line T, semi-ample parking). Or I’m happy to move it if someone else’s place is more convenient for the majority.
GAME SYSTEM: Unknown Armies 2nd Edition. No previous experience necessary. (The first 36 pages of the rulebook, including character generation, are available as a free PDF at the Atlas Games website.)
GENRE: Hard-boiled surreal occult honky tonk road movie. Southern fried blue collar ex-urban magick. Tim Powers meets Barry Gifford, if you know who either of those guys are. If not, don’t stress about it. Think Neil Gaiman’s American Gods but better, or imagine Preacher, Foucault’s Pendulum, and Smokey and the Bandit in a fatal three-car pileup.
SETTING: America, in all its gaudy beauty and tacky glory. Highways and truck stops and trailer parks and bizarre roadside attractions. The Heartland. The Delta. The Mother Road.
SOUNDTRACK: From Delta blues to surf rock to classic roots Americana. Robert Johnson. Dick Dale & the Del-Tones. Elvis. Johnny Cash. The Band.
STORY / PREMISE : Specifics to be discussed with players. UA is (or I think it should be) a very character driven game, and I want to work with all the players to come up with a specific campaign frame (ie, who are the PCs and what are they up to?) that gives all the PCs something interesting and worthwhile to work towards. Balance between investigation, action, and character development also to be discussed with the players.
GAMING STYLE: I know everyone says this, but here we go: I’m looking for players who like story telling and roleplaying, not rules-lawyering and power-gaming. My GM-ing style is rules-light and the priorities are always a) having fun, b) telling a cool story, c) playing lively, interesting characters.
ABOUT ME: I’m 31, a PhD student in history at Harvard, been gaming and GMing off and on since Basic D&D came in a red box. I live in Jamaica Plain with my wife, who remains a non-gamer but is gamer-friendly or, as we like to say, "geek compliant."
I've got a handful of interested players, all of whom I know would be great. The X factor for everyone, including me, is scheduling. If we can't make it biweekly, I might end up running this as linked, monthly one shots, with a recurring cast of characters but a more episodic structure than your standard campaign. Like the annual Cthulhu games I ran in college—there were connectors between stories, but because the gap between games was so long, each one had to be a satisfying chunk of story on its own.
I'll post some character ideas and campaign frames I've cooked up soon. This game has been in my head for a while and I've generated a fair amount of stuff.
mgrasso—feel like commuting to Boston for the game?), but I'll post it here anyway so I can point people to it online.You need a man to go to hell with.
—Tuesday Weld
UNKNOWN AMERICANA is an Unknown Armies game about cars, crooks, and the secret occult history of the USA. It's the great American occult road movie that never was, with surf rock on the 8-track and 500 horses under the hood. It’s a road trip across an America that looks like ours but has an occult underground of magickal adepts seething under its surface.
There are highways with secret names. There are wicked witches in the west. There are bad men searching for cities of gold.
What is this game about? Well, it’s about secrets and history, power and lies, magic and consequences. Mostly it’s about America. Along the way, we’ve got muscle cars and malt liquor, trailer trash adepts and the Weekee Wachee mermaids. We got John Henry’s orichalka hammer, we got the true meaning of The Wizard of Oz, we got the Dixie Mafia searching every secret highway in the South for the One True Death Car of Bonnie and Clyde. We got your dipsomancers and cliomancers, your dukes and avatars and all that Unknown Armies heady goodness. All we need is some player characters with a full tank of gas and more curiosity than what’s good for them. Rock and roll.
DAY / TIME: I’d like to play every two weeks, probably on a weeknight, but that’s negotiable. If scheduling proves hard, I would be happy even with a monthly game (in which case I would alter the pacing of sessions to resemble linked one-shots more than a continuous campaign).
LOCATION: My place in Jamaica Plain (walking distance from the Orange Line T, semi-ample parking). Or I’m happy to move it if someone else’s place is more convenient for the majority.
GAME SYSTEM: Unknown Armies 2nd Edition. No previous experience necessary. (The first 36 pages of the rulebook, including character generation, are available as a free PDF at the Atlas Games website.)
GENRE: Hard-boiled surreal occult honky tonk road movie. Southern fried blue collar ex-urban magick. Tim Powers meets Barry Gifford, if you know who either of those guys are. If not, don’t stress about it. Think Neil Gaiman’s American Gods but better, or imagine Preacher, Foucault’s Pendulum, and Smokey and the Bandit in a fatal three-car pileup.
SETTING: America, in all its gaudy beauty and tacky glory. Highways and truck stops and trailer parks and bizarre roadside attractions. The Heartland. The Delta. The Mother Road.
SOUNDTRACK: From Delta blues to surf rock to classic roots Americana. Robert Johnson. Dick Dale & the Del-Tones. Elvis. Johnny Cash. The Band.
STORY / PREMISE : Specifics to be discussed with players. UA is (or I think it should be) a very character driven game, and I want to work with all the players to come up with a specific campaign frame (ie, who are the PCs and what are they up to?) that gives all the PCs something interesting and worthwhile to work towards. Balance between investigation, action, and character development also to be discussed with the players.
GAMING STYLE: I know everyone says this, but here we go: I’m looking for players who like story telling and roleplaying, not rules-lawyering and power-gaming. My GM-ing style is rules-light and the priorities are always a) having fun, b) telling a cool story, c) playing lively, interesting characters.
ABOUT ME: I’m 31, a PhD student in history at Harvard, been gaming and GMing off and on since Basic D&D came in a red box. I live in Jamaica Plain with my wife, who remains a non-gamer but is gamer-friendly or, as we like to say, "geek compliant."
I've got a handful of interested players, all of whom I know would be great. The X factor for everyone, including me, is scheduling. If we can't make it biweekly, I might end up running this as linked, monthly one shots, with a recurring cast of characters but a more episodic structure than your standard campaign. Like the annual Cthulhu games I ran in college—there were connectors between stories, but because the gap between games was so long, each one had to be a satisfying chunk of story on its own.
I'll post some character ideas and campaign frames I've cooked up soon. This game has been in my head for a while and I've generated a fair amount of stuff.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2002-11-18 05:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-11-18 10:27 am (UTC)Though I'm not wild about being a mechanomancer. Luckily there are some other ways to handle this.
Re:
Date: 2002-11-18 01:18 pm (UTC)No need to be a clockworker if you don't want to be. I'm entirely open to general "weird talents" even if they don't fit any of the adept or avatar schools/paths. (Though I'm sure there's an avatar path or two in John Henry / Wayland.)
no subject
Date: 2002-11-18 02:06 pm (UTC)I've got a hardscrabble scrapper who knows how to read the hidden truth in road maps floating around my brain.
"Yeah, you tuck a rural route in along the highway like that, it's like leaving a kid with his momma too long. There, where it finally splits off, you're gonna have trouble around there. I bet a lot of people've been killed near that intersection."
no subject
Date: 2002-11-18 02:20 pm (UTC)Hey... what if they were brothers?
I'll send you guys (and the other interested players) an email about the game tonight.
no subject
Date: 2002-11-18 02:23 pm (UTC)Oh, man. That'd be a nice touch if the characters happen to work out that way. I don't wanna unduly influence anyone else's character conception, but it'd be cool to keep that in mind.
no subject
Date: 2002-11-19 07:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-11-19 02:41 pm (UTC)Sorry, sorry. Truly I am.
no subject
Date: 2002-11-20 08:19 am (UTC)Can we be called Bo and Luke?
no subject
Date: 2002-11-20 04:45 pm (UTC)(Bo and Luke? Aii.)
no subject
Date: 2002-11-20 06:30 pm (UTC)Come on, you can be Luke!
no subject
Date: 2002-11-21 07:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-11-19 05:19 am (UTC)May I eavesdrop on said list?
no subject
Date: 2002-11-19 02:44 pm (UTC)(I love the Route 66 / Fisher King / Yellow Brick Road / American ley line connection. Things are taking shape, o yes indeedy.)
no subject
Date: 2002-11-19 02:59 pm (UTC)My Character idea
Date: 2002-11-19 08:56 am (UTC)Playing a mundane could excuse my lack of setting knowledge. Or there could be something freaky about his background, like he hears spirits and takes huge amounts of heroin to keep the voices quiet. Or the whole college student going to a funeral thing could just be a cover story, and I could work out something diabolically cool with Rob that I keep secret from the rest of y'all.
That's what I've got now. It's just starting to take shape. Comments and guidance from others would be welcome, of course.
Christopher Tatro, trying to figure out how to register and not be anonymous
Re: My Character idea
Date: 2002-11-20 07:11 am (UTC)To get an LJ account, you have to get an activation code. I have 'em coming out my ears because I have a permanent account, so just drop me an email (durrell@innocence.com) and I'll send you one.
Re: Joining LiveJournal
Date: 2002-11-20 08:17 am (UTC)If you see this drop me email, I'll send you an activation code if you still need one.
Jeremiah
Re: Joining LiveJournal
Date: 2002-11-20 08:31 am (UTC)Brant's initial character concept. On the rocks.
Date: 2002-11-21 08:44 am (UTC)So, here's my basic character concept. I'm posting it now so that when you lucky bastards meet on Monday--while I'm yawning through my Politics of the Middle East seminar--you can have a rough idea about what to expect from me.
The skinny: I play the one-time follower / best friend of an avatar. Said avatar had progressed far along the path, which worried another avatar / cabal who viewed such competition as a threat. This avatar / cabal ambushed the avatar my character was loyal to while the two were hanging out. Fight scene. My character is badly beaten and knocked unconscious. Upon awakening he finds no trace of either his friend or the ambushers, so he staggers home. There he finds a letter from his avatar-friend, explaining that he had to skip town or risk another abduction / assassination attempt. He says he won't be able to contact my character for a long time, because that might reveal his location to his enemies. My character's soul is shattered, he becomes utterly despondent, but he vows to find his friend no matter what. Besides, he can't stay in town, or the guys who attempted to abduct / assassinate his friend may come after him thinking he knows the avatar's whereabouts. So he empties his savings account, sells all the stuff he doesn't need, packs and sets out for the wide open country. Every large town or city he visits, he attempts to contact the members of the OU to see if his friend may have passed through. He has almost given up in the past, when he hasn't found any hints as he to his friend's whereabouts--one time, he even bought a plane ticket home. But as he was walking through the airport to his terminal, he found a clue. Conveniently placed on the terminal seat he was going to take was a piece of paper, an advertisement, which read: "DJ Byzar in Old Derbyton! Recently arrived in the US from Ibiza!!! LIVE!!!" His friend, his avatar, was alive. In Old Derbyton--a town that my character can't find on any maps, and no one has ever heard of. But he's gonna find it, and when he does, he'll be that much closer to finding his soulmate.
Thoughts? If it sucks, I can change it. I figure that after the airport my character hooked up with the rest of the group--he hitch-hikes around the country looking for Old Derbyton, and is willing to hang out with anyone who'll give him a ride. Let me know what you guys think.
- Brant
Re: Brant's initial character concept. On the rocks.
Date: 2002-11-21 02:32 pm (UTC)I like it. We might want to play with specific details to fit in with other storylines, but the central idea of a PC searching for someone lost, in a place that can't be found on regular maps, is great. More ideas coming to you via email.