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.

 

Wistrom

HOW TO DO IT 

When someone eats a special order, roll a D10 for the general effect.

 

1D10 EFFECTS
1 Healing/Damage
2 Sensory
3 Luck/Probability
4 Protection/Weakness
5 Psychological
6 Physical Manifestation
7 Acquisition/Loss
8 Transformation
9 Transportation
10 Information  

 

Roll another D10 for the theme, chosen from the table which corresponds to the conspiracy that prepared the Special Order. These are a mix of that conspiracy's beliefs, cultural associations attached to the fast food restaurant where they work, and the physical product they serve.

 

COTERIE THEMES

1 Apocalypse
2 Biblepunk
3 Americana
4 Maoism/Third Worldism
5 Chicken
6 Frying
7 Military
8 Grease
9 Kentucky
10 Guns
 

COURT THEMES
1 Monarchism
2 Wealth
3 Control
4 Branding
5 Knights
6 Flame Broiling
7 Have It Your Way/Have It Her Way
8 Impossible Burger
9 Debt Bondage
10 Beef

MELUSINEAN THEMES

The Drip State doesn't use Special Orders. They dose coffee with Rasa Shastra Alchemy to induce specific mental/emotional states in people they want to manipulate.

RITE THEMES

1 Nostalgia

2 Conformity

3 Comfort

4 Optimism

5 Determination

6 French Fries

7 Toy 

8 Gold

9 Plastic

10 Obesity

 

¥0 THEMES

1 Ancient Japan

2 Trains

3 Agriculture/Farming

4 Buried Crimes

5 "Cool Japan"/Soft Power

6 Alienation

7 Safety

8 Generational Conflict

9 High Technology

10 Cold Food

 

A Special Order might fire off immediately on consumption, might fire off when some parameter implied by the 2d10 roll is met, or might fire off in a tense situation like combat. It might be baneful or beneficial or random. What exactly happens is up to you.

 

McMahon

EXAMPLES

COLONEL'S SECRET COTERIE

Two nines: Transportation and Kentucky.

 

One armed bandit Chandler Sazerac raises his gun up to blow Fonz Trepanier away. The drumstick he consumed earlier that night fires off first and teleports him to Kentucky.

 

Nadia Gage needs to get across town, but her bicycle has two flat tires. A Kentucky Derby winning horse arrives to carry her to her destination faster than she could pedal herself.

 

(The horse is also a physical manifestation. Both the effects and themes lists have overlap and sometimes the category you rolled will work better if you infringe on an adjacent one)

 

COURT OF THE BURGER QUEEN

Three and Seven. Luck/Probability and Have It Your Way/Have It Her Way. 

  

Doctor Keller wipes Whopper sauce on his fistful of napkins and keeps drawing Queens at the weekly poker game. It makes it easy to put together winning hands, but he has to fold a few times so people don't think he's cheating. Still, he saves his daughter's college fund and deepens his gambling addiction in the process.

 

Hank Trinli eats a Big King at the airport BK. He gets bumped from his flight. The guy who gets his seat at the last second must reach his destination for the Court's plans to succeed.

 

(I cheated with this one, but not all Special Order effects are overtly magickal. The True Order of Saint Germain goons who got debuffed by charged burgers during the Safe, Happy New Year operation in 1999 did not realize that their subsequent misfortunes had a supernatural cause).

 

SCOTTISH RITE

Six and Eight. Physical Manifestation and Gold. 

 

Graxa sits on the bench by the bridge and thinks about jumping. He can't make rent this month. He reaches into the bottom of the bag to get the last of the fries. When his hand comes out his index finger has been transmuted to solid gold. 

 

The Golden Arches appear enormous on the horizon as Yadon drives home at night. A nostalgic childhood memory writ onto the landscape by sensory deprivation? A horrible new form of advertising? He swerves off the road and narrowly misses the child unconscious on the pavement. 

 

¥0

Snake eyes. Healing/Harming and Ancient Japan.

 

Yakuza leg breaker Muta "Monster" Mikami runs after a piece of shit kid from the occult detective agency. He cuts through an ornamental planter and steps on a Yayoi period spearhead buried just under the freshly turned earth. The rusty iron point gets stuck in his foot and he trips.

 

Yoshida dies on the railroad tracks. He lost too much blood and couldn't move. But Nadeshiko would not let any of the boys leave for the operation without prebuffing. The butterflies descend to feed on the sake oozing out of him. Go away, shades of the unborn years, he thinks, allowing himself to be irritated by ghosts this one time. When the rabble eat their fill and fly away, he can stand again.