Not Really a Write Up of Unknown Armies: Thy Will
Saturday
I woke up feeling fairly crudy the next day, but a little more food and Todd Furler's 1 pm Unknown Armies game revived me. "Thy Will" came with a warning that there might be in character discussion of religion. I don't want to give away the plot for folks who might play in it, so I'm not writing this up, just giving a cast list and a few notes.
- Todd Furler -- GM
- Todd Morman -- Jared Tripp
- Leslie Stroskey -- Gloria Wimmer
- Cary Collett -- Mary Bartolacci
- Me -- Eduardo Mendoza
There were two uncast PCs for this run. Todd had thought that Gloria didn't need to be cast and did need to be played by a woman. He's basing this last opinion on how he's seen the character played in the past. I'd like to be able to disagree, but I think he may have a point. Certainly, I can't tell without seeing the game run several times with folks of different genders playing the role. I do think that, given that none of us took the 12-year-old boy, it really was important that she be cast. The character he was most sure absolutely needed to be cast was Jared, and I'm not entirely sure he was correct. Again, I'd need to see more games to form a more informed opinion.
Todd gave us a few guidelines to ensure we'd have a good time.
- Detachment. You are speaking for your character, not yourself
- Roleplay
- Primacy -- your PC is -your- PC. If you embelish, your embellishment becomes fact. If you happen to know more about some facet of someone else's PC's life than the person playing said PC, good for you. Now, shut up.
He also talked about the character and player levels of the game, saying that it was just fine to use Out of Character knowledge, if necessary, to make a better movie. He said that if we really felt our PC would do something that would just make things crash and we really didn't want to either do this or break character, it was okay to tell players, "My PC will do X -- Stop me!"
Oh yes. No script immunity. Well, more precisely, in my arrogant opinion, very limited script immunity.
As Patrick Riley noted, the game is not as confrontational about religious issues as the description makes it sound. This may be a weakness, but it is one I had no problem with. In other words, it's not as edgy as it might have been, and that's okay. It was edgy enough for me, plenty harrowing, and philosophical.
After the game, I returned the ticket for my 10 pm CoC game, The Convicts, realizing that I just didn't have the stamina for it. I grabbed another buckey milkshake and sushi roll, and went into the dealers' room with the certificate that Atlas Games gives to people who play in Todd's UA games. As it was only good for 50% off on Atlas or SJG products, I was forced, forced, I say, to get latest ed of GURPS Bio Tech at half off, on account of coupon only good this con only on selected stuff at SJG / Atlas booth.
