Unknown Armies - DO WHAT YOU WANT 'CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE - SESSION 1

Session one opened with the Bao Down truck selling dumplings at the Bread and Roses festival in Lawrence, Massachusetts, a Labor Day event commemorating the 1912 Textile Worker's Strike. The truck was doing great business, slinging delicious kosher dumplings at the edge of the live music venue. Cannon Song, the post-post punk made up of the New Maks crew, was playing a set. Rachel's unspeakable servant, Scooby the Shoggos Boy, was disguised in a dumpling based mascot costume with disturbingly dexterous hands. The monster was more than capable of running the food truck himself, freeing up the characters to wander around doing RPG character stuff without constantly being tethered to the steamer and the register.

 

 

Reba and Rachel got out of the truck and walked to the edge of the park where the festivities were set up. At the edge of the quad, a small crowd was gathered around an unmarked white van. The crew knew this was Forty Winks, a friendly Brethren of the Curb cabal who made their living with illegal alcohol sales. They were set up a deniable distance from the event, and doing a brisk trade - reselling malt liquor is profitable if you don't pay excise taxes on the transaction. The crowd of college students, teens pretending to be college students, and middle aged men didn't seem to mind being fleeced.

Tanya Summers, leader of the truck, introduced the rest of the gang to Reba, who was a personal friend of hers, and to Rachel, who looked like a square but was instantly identifiable as a Brother of the Curb thanks to the mystical identity they both shared. Tanya offered Reba a couple bottles of colt 45 for the truck, and Reba went to get her some dumplings in return. Rachel noticed that Corbin, the youngest member of the Forty Winks crew, was a telekinetic, when he stopped a dropped bottle from smashing on the street using only his mind. Corbin and Matt (the third member of the crew) weren't interested in selling Rachel their eyes, but had some other information to offer: a Mak Attax crew from India arrived in Salem recently, and were staying in a two million dollar cottage owned by the Brahman Occult Society. Rachel put the word out that she was working on a ritual involving human eyeballs and animal corpses. Corbin surprised Rachel by knowing exactly what she was talking about, and telling her he didn't want to hear anything more about it. The Forty Winks crew clearly knew a lot more about magick shit than they let on, considering none of them were even full casters.

 

Back at the festival, Cannon Song finished their set. DBD was due on stage, but he was too nervous to go up without chemical assistance. He ducked into a portajohn, inhaled one of Reba's blunts, and was about to wash it down with a bottle of hot sauce purchased from a nearby Dominican market, when he was interrupted by a gremlin with the face of William Shatner. The gremlin, name of Jim, offered DBD a mysterious package, which he had been told contained "the good shit" by a mysterious benefactor. Inside was a little pepper, so squat and flat it looked like a peyote button. DBD put the hot sauce back in his pocket and scarfed the chili. It blasted his mouth, throat and sinuses, but also upped his adept score by one point, as he saw a brief flash of light in his nonexistent third eye. It was agony, but he managed to keep it together... Sort of. The gremlin warned him to duck after he finished singing, then ran away before Tal could get a good look at it.

DBD went up on stage with his guitar, and began to sing his self-written version of John Lennon's Imagine, in honor of his friend Tal. 

imagine there's no gender
we all share a human soul
no cocks or pudenda
between our legs, just a…

He vomited on stage. Choked a little, but then kept singing. It was difficult for Tal to watch. It was difficult for everyone to watch. Nobody threw a bottle at the stage or anything, it was more uncomfortable than just straight up bad. At the end, Tal forgot the gremlin's advice, and was thrown off the stage in mid stage-dive by the blast wave from the KFC a couple blocks away exploding.

Unknown Armies - DO WHAT YOU WANT 'CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE - SESSION 0

I played a superb twelve session campaign of Unknown Armies featuring ¥0, a Japanese successor conspiracy to Mak Attax from David Tormsen's upcoming Special Orders splatbook. I really enjoyed the game, and after the playtest game wrapped I felt comfortable enough with the game to run it myself, featuring my own fan organization: The Brethren of the Curb, food truck pirates with their own vision of the magickal revolution.

 

Unknown Armies 3E begins with "corkboarding", a world creation exercise where the group chooses an objective for the campaign, based on the premise set by the GM and whatever the players are interested in doing. Then the players and GM go around the table and take turns developing their characters and adding plot elements and connections to a relationship map, which then forms the basis of the action in future sessions.

We finished corkboarding in a single four hour session We had one new player (to UA, not to RPGs) and several experienced players. Everyone had spend the week running up to the game discussing their plans in the discord, and they all arrived with basic concepts for their characters, food truck, and objective, which definitely sped things up. Most of the players were also contributors to the Special Orders book, and had been marinating in the setting for several months, so they had a good feel for what the tone and setting of the game should be like.

THE TRUCK

The group pretty quickly zeroed in on the idea of a Kaifeng/Ashkenazi fusion truck. They came up with a rotating list of dumplings to serve:

• Hoshin Duck Bao
• Brisket Bao
• Spicy Chicken Bao
• Chive Bao
• Soup Bao
• Pastrami Bao with mustard sauce
• The Scorcher

They decided to call the truck BAO DOWN, PEASANTS, which according to Tormsen can be rendered pictographically in Chinese as 包下农民. They also decided that since the cuisine they were shooting for barely used milk anyway, they could shoot for a Kosher certification and just not have dairy products anywhere in the vehicle.

THE CHARACTERS

In the players' own words:

• DBD aka Deebeedee aka David ben David aka Daoud bin Daoud. Born in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank to a secular Zionist family, DBD was so ostracized and bullied by his peers he ended up hanging out with the local Palestinians who beat him up much less because they liked having him as gangly Jewish mascot. Ended up abandoning his post during his IDF service and traveling the world to find himself until he ate a spicy burger in Goa that caused a religious experience in the bathroom and made him the world's first Capsaicinurge. Having run out of his grandparents’ money, he has joined the Brethren to build up experience so he can return to Israel, avoid a prison sentence for desertion, and create peace.
• Rachel — WASP redhead with a ponytail, grew up in the house of a Boston Brahmin clan that fell into disrepair, early 20s. Part Unspeakable Servant, lived in and around New England her whole life. Wants to acquire the resources to fix American society, permanently. Wears an eyepatch over the glass eye that resulted from making her first Unspeakable Servant.
• Reba - Hong Kong Kaifeng/American Ashkenazi, nonbinary, age 35. Culinary school dropout and former Mak. They grew up in Hong Kong, but are now unable to return there after the Whisper Wars ran them out of the underground and participating in the recent protests saw them labeled as an American provocateur by the PRC. Sincerely believes that magick is a source of beauty and wonder that is neither good nor evil on its own, and that it should be spread and brought into the light to make the world a more interesting and open place.
• Tal Safdie they/them - Lebanese American, crustpunk, merman hair with a bushy beard (well, for a teen), 19. Estranged from their parents. Disillusioned by the lack of direction and goals of their fellow crust punks, so glommed onto the first group of people that seemed motivated, ideological, and vaguely lefty. Trigger Event: A female crust punk detritomancer tried to feed Tal to the pile. This probably accelerated my leaving crust punk culture

After a short discussion, the players elected Reba the captain. 

THE OBJECTIVE

The Brethren of the Curb are opposed to the tyranny of several other Mak Attax splinter conspiracies, chiefly the Court of the Burger Queen and the Colonel's Secret Coterie, both of whom have a history of forcibly annexing or destroying anyone who gets in their path. The players were interested in this type of inter-faction intrigue, but wanted a motivation that was positive and constructive in nature, rather than laser focused on destroying someone else.

 

After some deliberation, they found a mission statement that encapsulated what they were interested in:

MAKE SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS THE NEW TORTUGA

 

They further broke the objective down into several milestones - concrete goals they'll work towards over the course of the game.

1. Make unspeakable servants to keep the peace (Intense)
2. Figure out who burned down the KFC (Petty)
3. Guarantee the local Mak's independence (Intense)
4. Change local fast food ordinance (Intense)
5. Build solidarity among local food trucks (Petty)
6. Keep cataphracts out (Intense)
7. Create a local occult pirate council (Petty)

 

THE CORKBOARD

Rather than give a blow by blow, I'll just describe the final result. Here's a screencap of the finished board (the software doesn't have an option for a high resolution export).

Esoteric Enterprises - Dungeon Entrances

Meant to write this one up a year ago, forgot about it until now.

Dungeon entrances for Esoteric Enterprises. The core rules text gives various entrances. Sewer tunnel, crypt, housing project, nightclub, etc. Besides these locations, there's very little flavor or gameplay given to the surface city. More types of entrance means more flavor for the surface city.

Photo by JJ Harrison

GALLERY

Not a full on Occult Gallery, but a surface structure that could have a painting or two linked to one. It also has a hidden staircase or hatch that leads into the underworld.

They charge a fixed fee per use of the dungeon entrance. Say $50 per person, or $40 per head for a group of four or more people. This is framed as a "suggested donation" but they aren't unlocking the door unless you pay. This one-time fee includes entry and exit, they aren't going to toll you twice. If you enter somewhere else and exit through the gallery they don't charge you.

MAFIA CONTROLLED BUSINESS

A bar, bathhouse, restaurant, or other legitimate front. The backroom or basement has the stairs down to the dungeon, watched over by armed wise guys.

Entry into the undercity is free (for anyone not known to be a police informer or enemy of the family). Anyone exiting to the surface through this entrance is taxed 10% of the value of the loot recovered. Safe from exit campers, at least.

Obviously the guards on the stairs are gun toting Mobsters, with a Lieutenant somewhere on the premises in case they need backup.

MUSEUM

A museum in an old building. It's closed at night, patrolled by security guards. There's a closed wing in the back, under renovation or used for storage. In that room is a staircase going down to the underworld below.

If the stairs go down to a dungeon node populated by a faction, the room is guarded by a couple NPCs or creatures from that faction.

NECROPOLIS

The dungeon entrance is in an old mausoleum. The necropolis is guarded by a militia drawn from the wealthy families whose ancestors are entombed there. They assume anyone entering at night is here to pillage graves. They politely escort trespassers out on the first offense, and shoot on subsequent violations.

The militia are Thugs with rifles, pistols and shotguns, plus a couple leaders who use the Mobster stat block.

If too many gunfights break out in the Necropolis, the police kick the militia out and establish a permanent presence there, making it even harder to enter and exit.

 

NIGHTCLUB
The top level is a normal nightclub. The bottom has underworld creatures and doorways leading into the dungeon. Entry and exit are free, but the tables are occupied by a random faction every time the players visit, which can result in awkwardness or violence.

WAREHOUSE

Or other abandoned building in a violent or abandoned part of town. No faction controls it, but there's always a random encounter when you enter or exit. It's highly likely that intelligent humans camping the exit are waiting for adventurers to emerge so they can rob them.