Unknown Armies: Special Order Effects Generator

The premise of Mak Attax, Break Today and all the successor conspiracies in UA3 is that you put magickal charges in foodstuffs using a Ritual of Correspondence, people eat the food and the charges fire off to generate a random supernatural effect. The conspiracies have different systems to generate the charges, different modes of operation for handing them out and different reasons why they do it in the first place but they use similar underlying mechanics.

 

According to the principle of Blind Targeting, someone who opposes the conspiracy's goals/principles who eats a Special Order suffers an Unhappy Meal effect. They get hurt or debuffed or prevented from carrying out an evil deed. A friendly who eats a Special Order gets a beneficial effect. It may not be exactly what they want, or even what they need, but it helps them somehow. A normal person could hypothetically get anything. The hope is that they get something neutral or beneficial that makes them more accepting of magick broadly (or of the specific conspiracy's beliefs). All conspiracies that distribute Special Orders have some variant of the same rule that you monitor and help people who consume your Special Orders, like tripsitting someone when they take acid. Because Special Orders are distributed along Ley Lines (the highway system where the fast food restaurants are sited), their power is enhanced far beyond what should normally be possible by spending a single minor charge.

 

Coming up with random supernatural effects on the fly that fit all these parameters is a lot of work for something that happens multiple times per session. The original Break Today book had a D100 lookup table of examples, which ranged from permanent superpowers to instant death. While it was a great example of why the antimagick conspiracies wanted to exterminate Mak Attax (they blinded me and turned my son into a dog!) it was in serious need of an update. Here's how I handled it in my recently wrapped Colonel's Table game, expanded to include the other Special Orders factions from UA3 Book 2 and the upcoming Statosphere series.

 

The Colonel's Table: Masterpost

 

 

Unknown Armies: The Colonel's Table, a burgerpunk game about the magickal revolution. Blood magic. Scary monsters. Brainwashed cultists. Mad bombers. The snap of the deep fryer as a bubble of hot fat leaps out to kiss your face just below the eye. You aren't insane. You aren't stuck in a dead end job that will eventually kill you. You're workin' for the Colonel. 

 

The Colonel's Table: Finale

 

On the eleventh day the Coterie launched its offensive against the Court. Ed Vespier was reeling from the events at the Bible Museum. Sebastian Gentry was dead, his agricultural agents uninterested in pursuing the feud further. The Cadre knew where the Court's next shipment of Special Orders would arrive. The Burger Queen's allies were in disarray and violating the treaty was worth it because they believed they could win.  

 

The FBI Agent's files showed that the truck carrying the charged burgers necessary for the Court to manufacture Special Orders would travel through town along the state highway to the East Wenatchee restaurant. The local cops were subverted by the Cadre through Arch and Rob, they'd allow it as long as the violence didn't escalate to a level they couldn't ignore. Cameron Wilson the labor organizer had already laid the foundations two nights prior for an anti ICE demonstration which would block the road at that time. Jazzy Boulevard the mad bomber made an IED and stuffed it in a backpack for the Cadre to use. 

 

Following the death of Deacon Moses the night before, Hank, Fonz and Pagan were assigned the mission. The refrigerated truck carrying the Court's Special Orders would stop in traffic and they would either secure the load of charged meat inside or deny it to the enemy. The Cadre hired Sauza the Bridge Troll to provide backup. They gave him two Special Orders out of their three for the night and he agreed to bring a brute squad of his most trusted hobos and fentanyl addicts. The rest of the Coterie would go after the Court operation in East Wenatchee. Keep Alice, Neal and the Lost Boys busy. 

 

The Colonel's Table: Session Ten

 

Pagan the troubled foster kid was excited. One of his friends at school was a member of a secret magickal paramilitary organization and invited him to join. He spent the last few days working at a shitty fast food place on the state highway but tonight was the night he would be initiated into the mysteries.

 

He arrived at the Wenatchee KFC at around 9 PM to find it closed. The lights were off, the doors and windows barricaded from the inside with furniture. Fonz Trepanier, Pagan's learning disabled friend from school, shouted down to him from the roof. A hand reached up and yanked the kid down out of the line of fire. A fat guy in a uniform ballcap peered much more cautiously over the parapet. When he saw Pagan he quickly lowered a stepladder down to ground level. Pagan climbed while the fat guy covered him. 

 

On the roof:

• Mick Redhook, portly ex-military type with a lisp and an AR/Red Dot combo 
• Commissar Nadia Gage, clad in her signature red scarf and toting an SKS
• Fonz Trepanier, excited to be there and rocking a Mini 14 

They told Pagan to keep his head down. The Church's goons had showed up armed (like Nadia told them to if they were ever going to show their faces again) and were somewhere out there in the dark. But they could handle it. Right now they needed Pagan to find Moses, who would have orders for him. Fonz was excited to tell his friend all about his adventures but the adults sent him on his way. Nobody shot at him out of the dark on the way down the ladder.

 

The Colonel's Table: Session Nine

Cameron Wilson joined the Colonel's Secret Coterie because the cute commissar in the red scarf gave him a rousing lecture about the struggle of the workers and trade unionism and how he they could seize the means of production together. He was a labor organizer and the Wenatchee Valley shop seemed ripe for unionization. On recruitment her lectures had gotten weirder. Marxism Leninism Colonel Saunder's Thought. Liberation of the productive forces of magick.
 
Nadia Gage wasn't working that night. It was just Cameron, Mick and Fonz. Fonz got in an argument with a customer at the register and Mick sent the new recruit to help the excitable teenager. A fit woman in her thirties, clad in a Tom of Finland type leather jacket and peaked cap covered in buttons, stared at the menu. The raccoon on her shoulder stared at it, mimicking her. Fonz yelled at her that animals weren't allowed in the store. Cameron took over and asked her more gently to put the creature outside. It was a health code violation. She looked at him like she realized for the first time where she was. She had been somewhere else. She wasn't used to ordering food in restaurants, or hearing any voice besides her own. The buttons on her coat all read the same thing: 
 
EXPLORERS OF THE FURTHEST REALMS
 
All in different colors but all with a wedjat, an eye of Horus. She picked up the racoon and put it on the floor. It obediently waddled to the exit and waited until she opened the door and allowed outside. Then she ordered a family sized bucket. Cameron gave her three of the ten "special" pieces that Nadia had told him to distribute at his discretion. The lady in the jacket paused to peer around the interior partition at the bathroom door, then left the store. She gave a drumstick to the racoon, who ate it in a circular motion like an ear of corn.
 
With that resolved, Mick lisped to Cameron that he had another job for him tonight. He was the only member of the away team who hadn't yet been involved in a crime. His job was to take this box of two sandwiches and a chicken fries to this address in the south side of town to meet up with Hank, who would have further orders for him.

 

The Colonel's Table: Session Eight

 

Hank the new recruit to the Colonel's Secret Cadre parked his Hilux down the road from the restaurant and entered to find Nadia Gage, Mick Bonnavera and Ozzy Packard working that night. Nadia kept her gun in her holster and told Hank that he wouldn't be working in the store tonight. He needed to go find Edgar, who had been told not to show up in the first place, and tell him that Nadia had been interrogated by federal agents. An FBI hood by the name of Special Agent In Charge Esme Parkreiner asked her if she knew anything about the big pile of ANFO the domestic terrorism unit found in an abandoned house in East Wenatchee. Nadia's face appeared on a conspiracist's pinboard found at the scene. Edgar would know what to do after that.

Nadia gave Hank a sack of three special orders. Chicken sandwiches and a thing of fries. He passed an elderly cyclist on the way out, clad in spandex and clasping a forty in a brown paper bag as he entered the restaurant.

 

Against Mapping

 

Many years ago the Alexandrian guy noted in his OD&D retrospective that mapping sucks. More recently the Coins and Scrolls guy noted something similar about his OD&D game. And maybe a day after that the His Majesty The Worm guy said something identical on his discord about his OSE game. After running two campaigns of Esoteric Enterprises where I enforced player mapping, then one where I didn't, I agreed with all three of them. 

 

Then a couple weeks ago, the Knight at the Opera guy posted his advice about what to do if you tried mapping and everyone hated it. I was excited to learn his fix and it turned out to be the exact thing that I had already tried, which made everyone miserable. "Balls and sticks" style mapping where you give the exits and directions out of the room, rather than the precise dimensions of every wall and corridor. 

  

A while back I wrote Against Torches. If I'm against torches, which never really did anything to me, I'm definitely Against Mapping, which is a whole lot worse.

 

Holiday in Caledonia Masterpost

The year is 410 AD. The place is a veteran colony, founded by retired legionnaires in the far north of Roman Britain.

It’s been years since anyone heard news from the nearest town, let alone from Londinium or Rome.

This year’s harvest was bad. Winter is fast approaching. Starvation is a real possibility, if the things in the wood don’t get you first.

Welcome to Caledonia.

 

Holiday in Caledonia: Music Post

Dahl

 

A lot of Judero and other overlap with Mythic Bastionland. This one was finished long before I read Mythic, but sat on the shelf until I had a chance to playtest it.

 

Unknown Armies - Holiday in Caledonia Playtest 2 Part 5

 

They had for twenty five years fought for provinces and kings and borders and most of the time had not understood or cared about any of that. They did it to defend each other and after a quarter century of doing so you'd think it would have gotten stale. Maybe it did. But here they were again. The three Veterans Valerian Tarquin and Rusticus. Rusticus' son Drusus returned from the wars in the south with his lieutenant Seaxneat and their company of hired swords. Clad in suits of chain and crossing the moor in the sun through clouds of steam disgorged by the snow as the top layer melted. The mercenaries sang a song. It wasn't one the elderly Veterans recognized but the theme was familiar.

 

Drusus rode the Colony's one horse. His own horse had been stolen by the Horned Ladies after his father Rusticus took it on a stealth operation. That horse returned. It made upset sounds and the symbols painted on its body in woad tried to communicate something. Blue handprints. Was something wrong with the horse? No, it was the other way around. Rusticus recognized that the horse was distressed because something happened to its owner.

 

They weren't marching by daylight. They stood at the foot of the mountain amid a field of boulders and old menhirs. They didn't remember how they got there, other than they walked. They didn't remember how the situation with the Saxon who fucked Drusus' sister was resolved. Who was left behind to guard the camp. The moon and a fire somewhere up the mountain illuminated the scene. Someone sang in the language of the Horned Ladies. 

 

The Colonel's Table: Session Seven

 

Three people died and twenty eight were injured in the blaze. EMS who triaged the scene assumed Jazzy was just another smoke damaged attendee. They pulled him aside and he was worried he'd been identified as one of the perpetrators. They told him he had a heart attack and was lucky to be alive. They didn't find the dimple where the adrenaline autoinjector pierced him through the thigh.

 

At the restaurant on the following night, Fonz excitedly filled Jazzy and Edgar in on what he heard at school: that paranormal investigating fat kid Byron Irons who they fed a special order that one time rescued everyone. They were locked in the ball room but he got the door open somehow and they got out before the place caught fire. He felt bad because he could have saved more people but he was a hero!

 

There was no mention, from the news or from Fonz' classmates, of what happened to the monster in the basement. Or whether the police had discovered the bodies with machete wounds. 

The Colonel's Table: Session Six

At about 9 PM, the Cadre boarded the shuttle bus for the religious retreat Edgar Vespier invited them to the night before. Mick warned them beforehand that they'd be searched, so they each ate a special order prepared by Nadia before she got off work for the night.

• Laine the elderly Fool
• Jazzy the Mad Bomber 
• Jonah Klein, a new recruit to the Colonel's operation

Like an undercover cop doing coke to fit in with hoodlums, Klein told himself that eating a mouthful of delicious fried chicken was an unpleasant but necessary step on the road to his dream of animal liberation.

 

The bus was full of people from the same rung of society as the Cadre. Drug addicts, petty criminals, night shift workers at dead end jobs. They recognized a couple of them. The fat kid who they fed a Special Order the night before. Also Jazzy's cousin Lil' Skeez, the Soundcloud mumble rapper who he rescued from the ICE raid on the trailer park.

 

Unknown Armies - Holiday in Caledonia Playtest 2 Part 4

The rest of the mercenaries arrived with Drusus the next day. There were ten of them, a mix of Latins and Britons and Saxons. The Veterans quartered them in the horreum because it was the biggest building that could be enclosed with a door and heated with a fire. The women of the colony didn't trust the strange men to sleep in the same houses as their children, even if their leader was a member of the family. That leader, Drusus, sat in council with the other Veterans in his father Rusticus' house. Together they planned the raid on the Horned Ladies. The colony didn't have enough food for everyone for the whole winter. They needed to steal some cattle.