a ee ih eae tts Ce | aeATLAS GAMES PRESENTS NKNOW| ARMIES FIVE STAND-ALONE SCENARIOS BY TIM DEDOPULOS, GEOFFREY C. GRABOWSKI, NICOLE LINDROOS, GREG STOLZE & JOHN TYNES aut director Thomas Moning graphic design, illustrators. Rob Nemeth cover artist Dennis Dotiler photos & production ohn Ines ‘Dan Parsons Jim Povelec editors Grog Stoke publisher John Nephew Matt Roach Brian Sradiy Timothy Toner John Tynes special thanks to Michael Doisey Dennis Detwiler Tim Dedopulos Ken Hite John Nophew Jeff Tidball is cme by Greg Sik jl Torri we by Tide yal revo pblhe lees of the oem Ans ‘os Gomes co coer The intel proper ron "Unk A 1/4 Gamer ender ee, With the exept teal ep flows "hubs 1938 cee eet Cen mage Ton Deeps ano Then rt stig bal al G beter noe ‘Tent il Wy cd od nr nvr ieee ty / Scr tng et soe lig pe ae ISBN 1887804731Sop The opont The Gon The Stn Gon TheFermhoore The Ung Room Th Dang Room The Uy Rae The Paty. Satheom bee (est Used Belo Neder Dade Ups ath ocd St oom The Gli atid the He. 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(pen Oe: The Dak Ser ‘ming wie Dt Sle Cees Wil, Dark Sila Ht Ardy: Dark Sor (pon Te: One ofthe Foy ing the Hole Shopehrig Beas 72 (pion The: The Goverment Experi. 73 ‘ming the sis Gormnent Pt. 73 Neenah Kor 4 Nevin Wer oe obec Bargitoa Tinahy Jones Ban 7 UW Von Merch 78 ich Densky 9Introduction cone thing, it turned into another.” Hfwe'vedone ourjobs properly, you're not going to like Because if we can’t surprise you, if, sion, because someone didn't show up or just because you're feeling a litde contrary today. When that ‘one of the scenarios in this book. we can’t throw you a curve ball You'll be reading along, perhaps and shake up your notions of day comes, One Shots is ready for oceasionally cackling with sadistic what Unknown Armies is like, in glee at the strange fates that await you And of course, you can al ways scrap all our ludicrous plans your players, and then boom— and just rip the pages apart, yank there it will be. The scenario that ing out a character here, an idea makes you yelp out loud, “What there, and then fitting the pieces were they thinking? I'm not gonna run this!” If so, we're delighted some jigsaw puzzle of your own to hear it. Sec, i's easy to do a design. There's alot of useful stuff you've chosen into some loath- book of middleoftheroad adven in this book, no matter how you tures, a collection of scenarios decide to put it into play. 1 Any- way, it's time to wrap this appeti- er up and let you get on to the main course. Use these scenarios in good health, don't run with scissors, and for the love of pete— the next time someone asks you if you're a god, you say YES! rousing finish? 4 OF course, we'd be rather derelict in our duties if we threw allthis crazy stuff at you and expected you to somehow make it all fit in your campaign into one coherent storyline. (Even wwe aren't that contrary.) As you hopefully know from reading the back cover text before you put down your buckage for this book our very first supplement for the age, the scenarios in One Shots game... well then, it’s gonnabe a are just that: oneshots. Each loooong product cycle. J So yeah, comes with pre-gen PCs, ready for that color inside the lines and en- these five scenarios are all over the you to photocopy and hand out to courage you to say things like, © got your player- your group, so you can grab any “Yeah, I get it. I know what this versusplayer conflict, your search- scenario you like and spring it on damn map. We’ puppy is all about. I gor it all fig- and-retrieve assignment, your psy- short notice. We know it can be tured out.” 4 But we're just some chosymbolic melodrama, your tough to get a campaign going, or contrary bastards. We'd rather action-packed metaphysics, and maybe you've already got one to- that you came out of this book just to prove that we've got a pair, gether-maybe even, gasp, for saying, “You know, every time I the book ends with the end of the some other roleplaying game—but thought this game was gonna be freakin’ world. How’s that for a would like to take a break one ses-JAILBREAK by greg stolze UNKNOWN ARMIES \ “POWER COMES FROM THE END OF A GUN.” ELDRIDGE CLEAVER. “OUT, AWAY FROM ALL-THAT'S WHERE TERROR AND BEAUTY MERGE. DONT LOOK FOR THE OCCULT INTHE CITY, SURROUNDED BY COUNTLESS PRYING EYES AND NOSY NEIGHBORS. LOOK IN ISOLATION, WHERE {T CAN. GROW. UNDISTURBED URIEL STERNEThis adventure may bea departure from the typical RPG scenario. Osually, the players are a co- herent group, working together towards some shared goal. In “Jailbreak” ths is assuredly not the case. Some of the PCs are escaped prisoners, and others are their hostages. The ‘convicts want to get away clean and evade capture, while the hostages want to be freed from the convicts Ie’s more complicated than dividing the players up into two teams, however. Some of the convicts may be sympa- thetic to their prisoners. They might even like their hostages better than their allies. As for the lawabiding citizens, they're a mixed bag, At least one (a captured prison guard) will probably want to confront the convicts. The others might agree, or they might just decide to go along with their cap- tors in order to escape with their lives. It is essential that your players understand that the ac tion in this adventure comes from them interacting with each other. If the hostages don’t try to escape, or the con- viets are uncharacteristicaly friendly and kind, this can be a damn boring scenario. On the other hand, if you get your players scheming against each other, this can provide a very taut and suspenseful evening's play. Afterall, players know the GM really should be fair to them: they have no such guar- antes with each other. If the players are sitting back and passively waiting for you to entertain them, you may want to show them the near by boxed text labeled “Helpful Hint.” The first step to running "Jailbreak" is to assign charac ters to players, or let them pick. The choices are: + Steve Updike, a wife-beater and the leader of the es caped prisoners. + Jake Spundie, a corrections officer captured by the cons. + Uder Krazmersky, the aged owner of the farmhouse where the cons hide out. + Morton Willits, a quiet convict with a firm set of moral standards. + Bila Krazmersky, Uder's lovely wife. + Juan Riccinto, who was falsely convicted and is looking ‘out for himself + Janet Mattice, a lawyer and one of the hostages. + David “Ieepick” Leyner, a con man and small fry hood, * Donna Ngwashi, Janet Mattice’s client. If you're going to assign the characters to your player, [recom ‘mend assigning them in the above order, starting with the unsa- vory Steve Updike. The frst three characters have the most ob- Helpful Hint ete tin ‘vious conflicts with each other: Steve leads the cons, Jake won't rest until they're stopped and Uder just wants to be left alone— possibly to the point of being willing to kill everyone. If you let your players pick, don’t worry too much if Jake, Steve or Uder doesn’t get picked: that just means you ‘ean run the odd man out as a GMC, pursuing his agenda and possibly screwing with both sides. The only pitfall to avoid atall costs is having one player be against all the others. If ‘one player picks a convict and the rest of your players have chosen to be hostages, it’s going to be very hard to run a fai, balanced game. Ask your players to reconsider and if they hesitate, explain the problems of having three (or whatever) players gang up on one poor lone soul. This brings up the question of how you're going to han dle the PCs scheming against each other. You can do this ‘one of two ways: transparent or opaque. If you run this sce nario with transparent actions, everyone stays at the same table and announces their actions normally. This means that, if the hostages are down in the basement picking the locks ‘on Spundie's handcuffs, the convict players can hear it. It ‘would be dishonorable of those players to take advantage of this “outofcharacter” knowledge, and GMs may have to cep players in line to prevent such cheating. In an opaque game session, when PCs are separated and doing things thatthe other players shouldn't know about, the ‘Gf has to maintain an “information quarantine” between the separated players. It could be that the players all stay at the ssame table, but when one wants to take a secret action she ‘writes it on a piece of paper and slips it to the GM. (In some opaque games I've played, the PCs eventually stared handing messages to the GM that said “I don't want to do anything secret, but I want people to suspect that I am.”) Another op- tion is to take the players into another room and resolve events there, out of earshot ofthe other players. ‘A transparent session has the advantage of moving fast: the GM can go back and forth between different (but simulta- neous) actions easily and use this transfer of attention to build suspense. For instance, ifthe hostages in the basement have said they're picking the handeuff lock, the GM could have them roll... and then switch to the other group without telling them if they failed or succeeded. Similarly, ifthe convicts go upstairs to investigate the peculiar thumping noise, the GM can cut out ava suspenseful moment and go to the other group. Of course, an opaque scenario can have the same kind of switching, but the difference is that when the GM leaves the room, the tension is usually broken. In a transparent game, all the players are immersed in the game at all times, even when their characters are “offstage.” In an opaque game, there's some unavoidable down time: the payoff isthe genuine sus- pense of wondering what the cons or hostages are up to “Transparent scenarios are best for players who have a firm sense of the boundary between player knowledge and character knowledge, and for players who are interested in creating the most diverting tory overall. Opaque scenarios are er uo 6 BeaUnkyown ARMIES “other side” characters. Running “Jailbreak” as a Conventional Scenario If the idea of pitting your players against each other doesn’t sound like fun to you or them, you can easily run this in the standard RPG style: just have them all play convicts or all play hostages. There are only four convicts, so if your group is large they may be stuck in the role of the hostages. To make the conversion, all you have to do is assume the roles of the best for players who tend to identify strongly with their char acters and have an intense drive to get their own way. Neither ‘way isbetter or worse, they're just different. That said, opaque scenarios tend to be a litle easier to run and play. Setup ‘The setting of “Jailbreak” is a small farmhouse close to the (fictional) Surrey State Medium Security Penitentiary. Some of the characters are prisoners who've escaped from Surrey. Others are simply caught up in the action. Surrey isn’t a jail for hardcore, violent criminals. Mainly it's filled with an uneasy mix of nonviolent repeat offenders, first time violent criminals (usually crimes of passion), and drug users serving mandatory sentences. It was recently the home of “Father Freedom,” a cult leader convicted of fraud— though he was guilty of a great deal more than that. In any ‘event, one of his followers drove a truck full of dynamite and blasting caps into the wall during his exercise time, and he es