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 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)