[UA] How to move a Mak Attax campaign

[Mario Magallanes]

On 10/2/06, Jesús Couto <jesus.couto at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi.
>
> I'm going to start a PbP campaign of UA at some Spanish forum, and
> while I have Break Today and it has a lot of ideas to fill the time
> while the group grows (they will be starting at Street mostly unaware
> of the 2 "senior" members being Makkers), and I have some ideas about
> where I want to take them (A combo of To Go with a showdown between
> GLS and Mak Attax, with the players as the spearhead), what I'm most
> puzzled about is how to do the day by day till they get there.
> Roleplaying flipping burgers all day is not going to be very fun
> unless they somehow decide to make it Clerks 3 or something
>
> ¿Anybody with ideas about how to handle this? I mean, inmediate
> advice... the other kind of help I'm getting from you is having all
> the messages since I got here stored, and bet that I'll be mining that
> :-)

The simplest solution would be handwaving most of the daily routine.
Delta Green agents probably spend more time doing paperwork than on
the field, but you rarely see DG campaigns dealing with that.

A good idea would be discussing beforehand with the players what their
daily routine is like, so you can have a structure to work with. Say,
if one of the characters regularly goes to the parking during his
break for a smoke, you can use that to set an eeire scene in the
parking.

Things that go in their daily routine would include bosses and
coworkers, regular customers they've noticed in the restaurant, how
often they serve Special Orders and what kind of customers they're
inclined to target (if any), and the all-night diner or coffee shop
they hang out after the shift is over. The latter would be specially
useful as it provides allows the characters to gather, chat and
discuss issues without the restrictions imposed by their regular job.

Early in the campaign, you might set scenes in the restaurant to
establish the mood, then gradually move the campaign focus towards
what the Maks do outside of their regular job, and go back to the
restaurant only when something  relevant happens there (meaningful
interactions with customers or coworkers, unnatural phenomena going
rampant, or a nutjob entering the restaurant and taking everybody
hostage at gunpoint).

Furthermore, anything that you don't think that merits an in-character
scene can be posted in an OOC thread (assuming you set one) and
brought IC by the characters themselves via roleplaying, or in further
plot developments. Say, rather than roleplay the act of delivering
every Special Order (which will get repetitive after a while), the
players get to post brief descriptions of every customer that gets an
Special Order. Later, if they want, their characters can talk about it
while they're having coffee - or you can run with it and build a
subplot around the customer than got the charge.

-M.