Monday, January 10, 2022

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

DO WHAT YOU WANT 'CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE was an eleven session playtest for the Brethren of the Curb, a Mak Attax successor conspiracy from the upcoming Special Orders book on Statosphere. The players were food truck pirates with a recipe for dumplings and a quest to make Salem the new Tortuga.
 
Photo by me, for once
 
I really overloaded the corkboard and the campaign took about twice as many sessions as I expected, but I enjoyed every one. Unknown armies takes a lot of work compared to something more pick up and play like Delta Green, but offers a much richer menu of options, both narratively and mechanically.
 
Here are the play reports for each session.
Writeups of game content (NPCs, factions, otherspaces, magic items et al) will either appear in the final Special Orders book, a separate book, or on this blog, depending on how well they fit into each one.


 

Unknown Armies - DO WHAT YOU WANT 'CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE - Music Post

Music used in DO WHAT YOU WANT 'CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE, an eleven session playtest for the Brethren of the Curb, a Mak Attax successor conspiracy from the upcoming Special Orders book on Statosphere.
 
Bao Down mascot costume - rejected concept

Unknown Armies - DO WHAT YOU WANT 'CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE - SESSION 11

Rachel's unspeakable servants were born. The eruv was set up, granting Tal Safdie control over Salem's minor magicks. Endemic Spice retired to their rented cottage, while the Bao Down gang met up to discuss their next move. They still needed to guarantee the New Maks' independence. Rachel could allocate an unspeakable servant to protect the McDonald's where they worked, but that would still leave Dandy vulnerable to demonic possession. DBD had a plan for this, worked out with Endemic Spice. He would teach Dandy Hirsh capsacinaturgy, so she could make herself too spicy for demons to infest.
 
Dandy was a teenager, and lived with her parents in Peabody, adjacent to Salem. She was grounded after being caught underage drinking at the site of an attempted mass shooting at the Blood For Sex Club a couple nights ago. Rachel bought her "grounded" Status and assigned it to one of her unspeakable servants, confining the beast to the Bao Down truck. Dandy accompanied the crew to Mack Park, where DBD made the offer: he'd make her an adept in a spicy spell school, which would keep the demons away. Dandy was a little suspicious, she knew from the anon list that being an adept was no laughing matter. But the crew was able to persuade her that it was worth the cost. She sealed the deal by eating an extremely spicy dumpling and gaining a few percentages of DBD's power.
 
Rachel asked if Dandy was ok with Bao Down putting an unspeakable servant in the Ronald McDonald statue outside the McDonald's where the New Maks worked. Dandy asked what an unspeakable servant was. Rachel showed her the one in the truck. Dandy freaked the fuck out. Rachel and DBD calmed her down. Dandy also mentioned that a guy from the Court had offered them all great scholarships if they'd sell out the Rite - the two cabals had a truce, but that didn't preclude economic warfare. Rachel confirmed that this man was Sin Woo-Jin, and he was not to be trusted.


Now it was time to load an unspeakable servant into the Ronald McDonald statue outside the Salem McDonalds. The statue was solid plastic and they needed a way to hollow it out. There were a number of ways they could do this, but they'd just observed the cigar smoking mage Alice use her powers to delete an engine out from inside a vehicle. And she had given them her cell number, in hopes that Reba would call her. And Reba was kind of into the whole "butch cigar smoking Jaws" thing.

Sunday, January 9, 2022

Unknown Armies - DO WHAT YOU WANT 'CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE - SESSION 10

While the rest of the Bao Down group was driving around Massachusetts setting up the unspeakable servants and fighting the Court of the Burger Queen, Reba was setting up the artifact eruv around Salem, to symbolically enclose it so that Tal could extend their magick exclusion ability over the whole town. Reba was joined by the Indian mages of Endemic Spice:
  • Ramachandran the Videomancer
  • Ardhanari the Mancymancer
  • Leatherface the Reverse Vigilante
The eruv, a fishing line charged with several decades of geomantic energy from Boston, needed to be strung up around the borders of Salem.

Leatherface knew how to operate a cherrypicker, and Ramachandran had the money to rent one. It would take all night and then some, but they had the technology and the expertise to hang it on the power lines. Yellow vests and hard hats ensured that nobody would ask them questions while they "worked the lines" at night.

They were in the Harmony Grove Cemetery when they ran into trouble.