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.

 

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.

 

The Colonel's Table: Session Five

 

Edgar woke up early to someone banging on the door of his apartment. He decided to go back to sleep but they wouldn't leave him alone. He went to see who it was and found the pair of occult detectives who pestered Thad at the register the night before. They pretended to believe he was a fellow occult detective investigating the KFC. He tried to turn them against the Church and the Court. They went along with his bullshit and encouraged him to share paranormal information. Manny, the fed with a combover, tried to hypnotize Edgar, who shook his head and snapped out of it after losing a few seconds. The guy lost his cool and started yelling, trying to intimidate him. The disgraced detective kept his mouth shut and Sebastian took over. They didn't need to know anything Edgar could tell them about alternate universe portals or giant bugs. They just needed a Special Order. Either he delivered them one, or they'd put in a tip that Ada Kallio was diverting drugs to feed her painkiller addiction. He had a day to decide, after which she'd leave the hospital in bracelets.

 

The Colonel's Table: Session Four

 

Jazzy woke up to a whistling sound. Someone in the trailer park where he lived raised a hue and cry to indicate law enforcement presence. He rolled out of his hammock and peered out the window to see what was up. The porch lights of the assembled double-wides showed bulky figures in a mix of uniforms and pieced together body armor with no identifying markings. It was an ICE raid.
 

A trio of armed and armored feds, one fat one tall one short, banged on the door of his trailer. He kept his cool. He had no obligation to answer the door or allow them entry. One of his two fraternal cousins who he shared the unit with likewise kept his cool. The third guy booked it. He ran out the back door and the three DHS goons, on hearing the sound of the door slam, ran around the manufacture home to pursue him. Which signaled to Jazzy that this was a random raid, because they didn't post up behind the building before knocking like they would if they were serving a warrant. Jazzy's cousin, a soundcloud noise artist with a studio above a martial arts dojo in the city, made it across the yard before the tall and short guy tackled him. The fat guy swaggered in after them, and in the light of the streetlight on the other side of the fence he noted the strange tattoo on the back of his neck.

Jazzy didn't want to deal with this shit, but he couldn't just let his boy get arrested. The guy was a citizen, as far as he knew, but he would undoubtedly babble and say something incriminating about drugs or somesuch. Thinking quickly, the mad bomber opened his bag of tricks and threw together a crude noisemaker that would simulate the sound of gunfire with a series of bangs. He crept outside and tossed the device to the other side of the park. It landed and went off, sending the tall and short ICE hoods diving for cover. The fat guy turned imperiously and dared the unseen shooter to fire. Either tall or short fired his weapon in the direction of the bangs and the other two followed suit, lighting up an unfortunate airstream across the aisle from Jazzy's residence. The goons left Jazzy's cousin cuffed on the ground, and didn't notice when the bombmaker crept out and rescued his wayward relative.

The Colonel's Table: Session Three

On the third night, Fonz Trepanier kept the police busy at the front of the house while the rest of the cadre went over the facts of the case with Nadia in the breakroom.

• Edgar, disgraced cop and Epideromancer
• Jazzy Boulevard, ex-con and mad bomber
• Laine Kornell, elderly bombe addict and Fool
• Thad Albright, juvenile delinquent and Wage Slave

By this point Laine's eyesight had deteriorated completely, nerves destroyed by the methanol he ingested two nights before. Nadia had anticipated this. She had put in the order to "Organs in Mains" on the night of the incident and had a Fedex package with the answer inside. A pair of lenses, like jewelers loops or old cameras. No digital components, no indication that they were meant to replace the human eye. Nadia steeled herself and asked Laine if he was ready for enucleation. The old Fool crushed the last of his catalytic converter dust and snorted it. It was a miracle he had somehow drove to work in this state and now he was ready to solve the problem. Even though, he insisted, his eyes were fine.

The Colonel's Table: Session Two

 

Two burger warriors showed up for work that night, accompanied by two new recruits to the Cadre.

• Laine Kornell, elderly bombe addict
• Thad Albright, wage slave
• Jazzy Boulevard, ex-con
• Edgar, disgraced cop

Mick and Nadia were off that night but the restaurant was fully staffed without them. Orlock Bonnavera, Ozzy Packard and Fonz Trepanier joined the quartet for a total of seven frycooks. When the restaurant was overstaffed like that, it meant someone was being on a dangerous mission while the others held down the fort. Orlock took the four out back for a "smoke break" and explained what needed doing. He shouted like he was still in the restaurant and trying to be heard over the endless shrieking and beeping of the machines. It was just how he talked.

 

The Colonel's Table: Session One

It was about 9:00 PM at the Wenatchee combination KFC/A&W on the interstate. In attendance: 

• Thad Albright, juvenile delinquent, working the fryer
• Laine Kornell, elderly bombe addict, at the drive through
• Whistle Jack, working homeless, on the register

They were supposed to have backup but they were alone for the night. Nadia, the gun-toting Maoist who usually explained what they were supposed to do for the conspiracy, left a rack of chicken fresh out of the tophet (which the Coterie insisted on calling the pressure fryer) with a sticky note:

 

SERVE THESE

CHOOSE WISELY

 

The Colonel's Table: Special Orders

Magick is a force for liberation.

 

It could be. It should be. The people who have supernatural power don't want to share. The people who have mundane power don't want to compete with supernatural power. Together they engage in a tacit conspiracy to suppress the magickal revolution through the coercive apparatus of the state and through organizations operating in the occult underground.

 

The Colonel's Table - Pitch Document

You know this is not how things are supposed to be. Maybe you've always known. Maybe something happened that showed you. A crack in reality that granted a glimpse of another world which made the real world of dead end jobs and shrieking alarms and medical bills look like a drug induced nightmare. Maybe you wanted more. Maybe you were afraid. You thought you could get by if you just shut your mouth and played by the rules.

 

That's what they want. To keep you weak, scared and disorganized. To keep you quiet while they take what they want. While they selfishly hoard power that could solve everyone's problems if the parasites and bureaucrats and landlords just stepped out of the way.

 

Not you. You're not scared anymore. You're going to fight and you're going to win or die trying. 

 

You're a domestic terrorist who works at KFC.

  

The Unknown Armies Open Table?

 

I've cooled off on open table games over the last decade or so. Pacing is really important, maybe the most important part of running a game, and ensuring every game ends at a "good stopping place" where you can swap players/characters in and out is a pain. Playing with a consistent cohort who don't need everything explained to them repeatedly (not just rules explanations but repeated recaps of who they are, who the NPCs are, what's going on in the game world) is way better.

 

On the other hand, I thought about running a UA3 open table long before I got sick of running this style of game. Weekly open table games get better attendance at the RPG club than oneshots demoing new systems, which struggle to scrape together even a couple players.