[UA] IRC game report

[Zuki Akula]

Hey guys, newbie to the list here with a first posting

I had alot of fun running UA last night on IRC with a few  non Diced RP 
and/or UA experienced players, it was a street level one shot by Scott 
Dorward - Lamp Posts in Bloom - a truly awesome little scenario that 
practically runs itself.

IRC worked amazingly well for running the game, and I was lucky enough 
to have a really awesome set of players joining in who really got into 
character and who fought their corner well.  With the nature of the 
scenario being so character centric, the freeform RP style of IRC really 
helps bring out the intense emotions of the characters giving them time 
to really explore the horror.

I have a great time running, for a GM is mostly about governing 
conflicts between the characters who are kicking off, and this run was 
true to form, IRC allowed me to run scenes in different places 
simultaniously and have private chats with all the characters about 
their motivations behind the scenes without any delay at all, and this 
pretty much made up for the fact text can sometimes be slower than voice 
RPing.

I scaled down the combat system alot, having the players set stakes in 
combat rather than Unknown Armies slow methods of resolving hand to hand 
combat. The system was very unobtrusive but did get confusing for some 
players who had never been in any kind of diced system, but I tried to 
make the game as freeform as possible. This worked reasonably well but I 
feel i could have handled it better...for me the worst thing in an IRC 
game is to be bogged down in many dice rolls and conflict resolution. - 
I used some freebie IRC dice software which worked nicely.

I am definitely up for running another IRC game sometime! Woot! I also 
streamed appropriate music thru shoutcast during the game, at some 
points playing the right music really got everyone into the mood of what 
was going on.

Robin