The Rex Of the Old 97, Again
Continuing with the third of four suggested campaigns for my home game group here in Chicago. This one is a rerun from 2008 because a) I didn't get to run it and b) it fit the parameters for the new game. (As before, props to robotnik's Unknown USA game, to which this might act as an "unauthorized Purist prequel.")
Those parameters, as you may have guessed, were "Westerns." My players decided (generally) collectively that they wanted to see a (generally) Western game this time around. We've played (and loved) Dogs in the Vineyard, but it doesn't really have the kind of long-campaign legs my group has become accustomed to. Hence these four choices instead including, as I noted above, one game that we all thought dead emerging out of the heat distortion ...
THE REX OF THE OLD 97
The Centennial Exposition of 1876, so the word on the Spirit Telegraph goes, was a missed opportunity. The Civil War busted up America's foundations, and every Jack and Knight and Knave out there has been drawing as many cards as he can to win himself King on the ruins. What could have been a re-Founding became a secret Fort Sumter; magick thrown down and claims made that can't be unmade. The Pinkertons, fresh from smashing the Klan, are trying to nail everything down; the Informationale and the Anarchitects are trying to blow everything up. The Gold Lords and Silver Men have squared off against each other; the Trismos command their strange railway specters, though the Good Roads Club screams that the specters command the Trismos. And word has it that the Great Gray Guns, fled from the South, are massing somewhere in the West, in a town called Tombstone...
My initial notion for the game is that it will run over a longish historical scope, possibly finishing up at the Pan-American Exposition in 1901. As with most Unknown Armies games, you will collaboratively determine your own narrative structure: Are you trying to enforce your own cabal's vision of the new America? Are you a band of Anarchitect heralds, or a Pinkerton squad? Do you serve Gold, or Silver, or some other element? Are you freelance heroes, riding in to save the day, or Jacks at the table playing to rake in all the chips?
System: Unknown Armies 2nd ed., with magick schools tweaked for the 19th century where necessary. Depending on how speedy-snappy Greg Stolze is with his in-progress Unknown Armies 3rd ed. rules, we may give those a spin this time out.
Those parameters, as you may have guessed, were "Westerns." My players decided (generally) collectively that they wanted to see a (generally) Western game this time around. We've played (and loved) Dogs in the Vineyard, but it doesn't really have the kind of long-campaign legs my group has become accustomed to. Hence these four choices instead including, as I noted above, one game that we all thought dead emerging out of the heat distortion ...
THE REX OF THE OLD 97
The Centennial Exposition of 1876, so the word on the Spirit Telegraph goes, was a missed opportunity. The Civil War busted up America's foundations, and every Jack and Knight and Knave out there has been drawing as many cards as he can to win himself King on the ruins. What could have been a re-Founding became a secret Fort Sumter; magick thrown down and claims made that can't be unmade. The Pinkertons, fresh from smashing the Klan, are trying to nail everything down; the Informationale and the Anarchitects are trying to blow everything up. The Gold Lords and Silver Men have squared off against each other; the Trismos command their strange railway specters, though the Good Roads Club screams that the specters command the Trismos. And word has it that the Great Gray Guns, fled from the South, are massing somewhere in the West, in a town called Tombstone...
My initial notion for the game is that it will run over a longish historical scope, possibly finishing up at the Pan-American Exposition in 1901. As with most Unknown Armies games, you will collaboratively determine your own narrative structure: Are you trying to enforce your own cabal's vision of the new America? Are you a band of Anarchitect heralds, or a Pinkerton squad? Do you serve Gold, or Silver, or some other element? Are you freelance heroes, riding in to save the day, or Jacks at the table playing to rake in all the chips?
System: Unknown Armies 2nd ed., with magick schools tweaked for the 19th century where necessary. Depending on how speedy-snappy Greg Stolze is with his in-progress Unknown Armies 3rd ed. rules, we may give those a spin this time out.