Actual Play – Collision on I-81 (5/28/2011)

GM: Todd Furler
Players: Duane O’ Brian, Sean Nittner, Michael Wilson, Travis Smalley, plus two.
System: Unknown Armies

Billing

Collision on I-81
Game system: Unknown Armies
Start time: SAT, 9:00 AM
# of Players: 6
GM / Judge: Todd Furler
Description
What’s supposed to be a simple week of training starts off with a horrific car accident. And things get worse from there. CHAR: Provided LVLS: Normal folks

Getting to the game

This game only happened by the narrowest of margins for me. To get in I would have had to sign up Friday night (which I didn’t). I looked at the schedule for Saturday noon games and nothing looked at all interesting, so with 15 minutes before Todd’s game started I rushed up to the room and crashed the game.

A major downside to this was not being ready to game. I.e. I hadn’t showered or changed clothes with is a total gamer hygiene snafu. Luckily my lovely family brought me some essentials (breakfast, a clean shirt, deodorant, a toothbrush and toothpaste).

When I arrived, I was first in the waitlist but people in the game were showing up and filling the seats. A single player, a friend of Michael Wilson sent text to bow out and I was in! Awesome

The Setup

Todd opened up the game, introducing us as a group of engineers (and their supervisor) that worked together for a firm and were being sent off for some regulatory training. One the drive, however, we got in an accident, the Collision on I-81. Out of nowhere another van appeared and our vehicles smashed into each other. The other vehicle got the worst of it, several were injured and one died. Luckily we were mostly just startled but otherwise okay.

The characters were a fun group. Bill, our boss, had the exterior of being a caring guy, but had some skeletons in his closet. Seth was the newbie that wasn’t technically qualified for the job. Amanda (my character) was a really good natured woman who wanted to prove herself. We also had the frat boy, the family guy and my favorite (Michael’s character) the ice queen that gave up having any kind of personal life for her professional career.

The game is the thing

As Todd may very well run this game again at Gen Con, I’m not going to write anything about the story, suffice to say, it was a great one.

What rocked

Todd always does a fantastic job delivering a game full of people that are very real and very diverse. I love his portrayal of NPCs.
The plot never required our characters to give up on our previous beliefs about the natural world (as many games that incorporate supernatural elements do).

The player character interaction was great, particularly between Dwane and Travis and Michael and me. Michael and I had a great scene where his character snubbed my so hard, the character relationships really changed, which is something I love to see.

I had two epicly bad rolls (I think 99s both of them) that created some amazing twists in the game, both involving car accidents. Todd did an amazing job of making those horrible failures push the story forward.

Todd Furler! Awesome GM.

What could have improved

It seemed like there was a lot more about the characters that could have come out in the course of a longer game. With four hours (which is my preferred length btw) and a lot of story bits to experience, I left wondering a lot about the other characters. Given out particular ending, I doubt we would ever had found out.

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