[UA] Unknown Armies LARP - Just concluded.

[Adrian Long]

Hi All,

I just thought I'd post up a comment to say that just over a week ago,
the UA LARP I've been running on the first Sunday of every month came
to a conclusion.

I've already posted something very similar to this email over in the
LARP forum on rpg.net, but I thought I'd essentially mirror it here
just so folks here can read it an comment - I'll warn you, it's a bit
long.

The thread, by the way, can be found here:
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=272597
There's been a small amount of follow on discussion, but not much so far.

The first three and a bit sessions are also covered in more detail by
an "actual play" thread over there, if anyone's interested:
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=244693

But, alas, after those three sessions my head started to break trying
to work out what had happened where and in what order (largely due to
about half of everything being run by SPFS my co-GM, and there being
rather a lot going on).

So... the game:

To cut a long story short, two small Cabals of PCs joined forces
(along with a small amount of backing from a TNI operative) and
eventually worked to prevent the subversion of the true king avatar by
a somewhat less benevolent version.

The way that this was planned was by what I've been calling "loose
plotting"... Players were given some guidance in character gen to
ensure we ended up with groups that would hang together, and an
overall situation was created. How that situation would be resolved
was not planned for at all, but was instead left up to the players.

As it happened, it wasn't until the forth game that they actually
discovered the existance of a cabal calling themselves "The King's
Men", who were the followers of a powerful follower of a twisted
version of the true king path. Prior to that, they'd been exclusively
hunting down TNI, as they'd found more evidence of TNI than anything
else due to events prior to the start of the game.

Over time they discovered sleeper entanglements (the king's men had
not always been as neat and tidy as they could have been), and a
couple of PCs made (or more accurately, re-made, as they'd both
unknowingly encountered them before) contact with agents of different
rooms of the house of renunciation. They were also approached by a TNI
agent, who offered resources and assistance - they eventually relented
and let him in to the group in a very limited fashion.

In the penultimate couple of sessions, the PCs discovered more about
the kings men, even to the point of speaking to the dead Royal
Physician, who was killed by TNI, having been abandonned by the King,
and is now possessing a different body. It also became apparent that
one of the PCs (who had started out looking for her vanished twin
sister, and found she was actually a sextuplet) was in fact one of six
proxies to the king. Of course, all of this investigation meant that
the king actually noticed them, and set out to address the threat (he
had to or he'd break his taboo).

So the final session began with several of the PCs having been beaten
up or in some other way inconvenienced (discredited and disgraced,
fired from their job, etc...). After a short time in which the PCs
managed to discuss what had happened to them, the house where they
have been meeting was attacked by three kings men (including the royal
executioner), who were trying to abduct the now aware (and so able to
use the link the other way round) proxy.

About half the PCs did the sensible thing and ran away, stealing the
PDA/SatNav system from the bad guys car as they ran (including the one
the attackers were after).

The other half engaged in combat using a mix of annihilomancy,
dipsomancy and general beatings, resulting in several down-but-not-out
PCs and another PC being driven off in the bad guys car. A bit more
dipsomantic wrangling and persuasion of demons resulted in the
dispomancer unintentionally summoning up her dead ex girlfriend (who
was somewhat pissed at her living lover being left for dead on a
garden lawn, and also that she'd returned to the booze after quitting
it and starting to turn into a flying woman avatar). Some further mojo
happened, resulting in the demon ending up in the head of the royal
executioner, leading to him driving his car into a wall at about
70mph.

PCs regrouped a short while later, and basic first aid was applied.
The old royal physician (who has a grudge against the king) was called
up again, and she/he (female demon, male body) and epideromancy was
used to patch up the worst injuries.

The stolen PDA was used to locate the King's base of operations: a
small privately owned hotel in the countryside nearby, and a special
kind of plan was hatched. The kind that only PCs can make.

The first complication was that one of the other six proxies (a new
and never before encountered sister) was still alive, and was in the
hotel.

This meant that the king would be able to dump magickal attacks into
either of those two sisters. The PCs had worked out a way to sever the
proxy connection by using a cliomantic charge site that had been
"spiked" by the sleepers in an attempt to scupper the King's Herald (a
cliomancer). The thing they left there eats magic, and would happily
eat a proxy link.

So, the first part of the plan was to get this new proxy sister out of
the hotel and for both sisters to go to the memorial and have the link
broken, then the PCs would be able to take out the King without him
dumping it onto them.

Their plan to do this involved sneaking into the grounds, scaling a
wall, cutting the bars from her window, tying off a rope in her room
so she could climb down and then fleeing.

The PC who came closest to actually being able to do this was the
quiet, shy and slightly creepy guy. It turns out that being a stalker
and a bit of a peeping tom had left him able to climb pretty well (how
else do you get to the good vantage points?) , so he was the one they
sent in.

He climbed the wall, but found that he couldn't cut the bars as he had
nothing to brace himself to, except the bars he was trying to cut.
Thankfully, the girl inside opened the window (although it was still
blocked by bars on the outside). After a brief, stilted exchange, she
tried to cut the bars but couldn't, so she tied the rope off inside,
giving stalker boy something to hold on to so he could cut them.

Unfortunately, a silent alarm went off (and the king sensed the danger
to his power), so a ruck began. It was quite a complex fight,
involving the king, three king's men and about seven or eight PCs. The
other PCs got the sister to the memorial and severed the links as
planned.

They hadn't really had much of a plan beyond breaking the link, other
than "do something", so the fight continued, with nobody attacking the
king until they'd heard the proxy links were down (nobody knew if he
could send mundane damage to his proxy or just magickal). Several PCs
were unconcious and close to death, and another was held down on the
ground with the king about to smack a heavy flagstone down on his
face, when the king ran out of his ability to dump damage into his
land and followers right at the same time as another PC shot him in
the face.

So he fell. Several of the PCs will be feeling the damage they took
for the rest of their lives, but all of them survived. Most of them by
the skin of their teeth, but they survived. Had the King defeated this
final attempt to depose him, he would have ascended.

In a final quirk, the PC who shot him felt a kind of cosmic imminence
immediately afterwards, and knew that if he'd decided to take charge
there and declare himself king, he would have ascended. After all,
he'd just usurped the usurper in an armed coup d'etat - something
which embodied the courrupted king perfectly, and because he'd
succeeded, he embodied it better than the existing king.

However, as he had passions that prevented him from being an
oppressive ruler, he gained a hardened self notch instead and remained
here on earth, leaving the uncorrupted true king archetype in the
invisible clergy and saving the concepts of benevolent rule and rulers
that are bound by laws.

All in all, I think the game went well, and it left the players
wanting more. They'll have to wait a bit, as I'm going to leave it a
while before I run any more ongoing LARPs, focussing instead on one
offs and the other monthly LARP I co-ST for.


-- 
Adrian Long
GM Runnymede Unknown Armies
http://www.eggbox.org.uk/ua/
Runnymede Dark Ages Co-ST (Independant Game)
http://www.darkages.runnymede.camarilla.org.uk