UA & Trollbabe

[Bryant]

So we tried something a little different in our Unknown Armies game last night. One of the players is moving away (sniff), so we wanted to wrap up his PC's story. It was not going to be possible to do that within the context of the current scenario. Rob, never one to shy away from trying something difficult, decided to layer a 60s flashback and a Shaverian Hollow Earth flashsideways into the game in order to lay out the Myth as it applied to the PC.

The Shaverian Hollow Earth bit was run using modified Wushu rules, and the 60s flashback was run using the core Trollbabe mechanic.

I don't have much of interest to say about the Wushu experiment, except that I think we slipped a little by not requiring players to split their pools into offense and defense. For the pulp genre, it worked OK -- Rob wanted us to succeed almost all of the time -- so no harm done.

The Trollbabe experiment worked like a charm. We did not use the Trollbabe framing techniques, but we did use Trollbabe character creation and task resolution. The feel of PCs as outsiders is excellent for Unknown Armies characters, particularly adepts and avatars. We defined "magic" as "knowledge" for the one PC who did not have any sort of magical ability; that worked out OK as well.

I don't see any reason why Trollbabe style framing and scene requests wouldn't work for a global-level UA game, although I'm not sure about street-level stuff. I think that using player narrated failures as a way to give players more control over their Madness Meters would be very liberating. I am also wondering if one couldn't adapt connections as a way of mechanistically shedding Madness Meter points, as well.

[Jere]

The Trollbabe experiment worked like a charm. We did not use the Trollbabe framing techniques, but we did use Trollbabe character creation and task resolution. The feel of PCs as outsiders is excellent for Unknown Armies characters, particularly adepts and avatars. We defined "magic" as "knowledge" for the one PC who did not have any sort of magical ability; that worked out OK as well.

I don't see any reason why Trollbabe style framing and scene requests wouldn't work for a global-level UA game, although I'm not sure about street-level stuff. I think that using player narrated failures as a way to give players more control over their Madness Meters would be very liberating. I am also wondering if one couldn't adapt connections as a way of mechanistically shedding Madness Meter points, as well.

Perhaps it was because I didn't participate in the Trollbabes one-shot done earlier through our adhoc group but I felt rather uninspired by that flashback. Though I think it could be because we really just ignored all the framing and scene request stuff.

I really wish the gm had had the time to provide more details to us previous to the game. That way there could have been less Rob speaking through us and more us doing riffs on the material.

Jere

[Bryant]

I really wish the gm had had the time to provide more details to us previous to the game. That way there could have been less Rob speaking through us and more us doing riffs on the material.

Hm, interesting point. I don't think I felt as put off by the strong framing Rob did, which might well be the result of previous exposure to the mechanic.