On the Road

By Reverend K.

I had a dream. It was somewhat strange as most of my dreams are. I dreamt I was lost. I stopped into a quickie mart to get direction only to discover that the entire place was computerized and that the white trash girl behind the counter was having trouble running the place. she wasn't much help but she did direct me up the road. I turned off onto this little side road like she told me and found the access road going up and up at an impossible angle. the car almost didn't make it. I found a huge manse with the name Longview carved into the stone wall around the place. The parking lot was large with space for over 50 cars there were a few but not a one younger than 40 years old...all in spotless condition. The Mansion was similarly well kept but as near as I could tell,completely uninhabited and had been so for years. The only signs of life at all was this mechanical monkey...it gets a little fuzzy after that.

Oh Yeah, I had a point...

When I awoke it came to me that this was the seed for an extremely strange game...and as I lay in bed thinking it came to me that Mage would have to be the game.

One of the lovely things about Mage is that it has a capacity for surreality that all of the other games lack. Vampire is too sturm und drang with all it's politics and occasional moments of sphincter clenching horror. Werewolf can get strange but mostly it's too busy being a game about a hopeless fight against impossible odds. Wraith has it's moments where reality gets bent but...Mage is still the hands down winner in terms of raw weirdness potential.

I decided that it might be an interesting idea to create a road chronicle for Mage which involves traveling from place to place and dealing with the strange and unusual that can be found in the forlorn places of the world.

Elements of a Road Chronicle:

Places that Call

There are places that have an irresistible draw to the supernatural. Whether it's a nameless abandoned house out in the middle of nowhere or an old shaded road that leads away from the lights of the interstate. In the dream, I have no idea why I turned off the main road and drove into Longview...except a nameless certainty that there was something waiting there for me. It's certainly possible that that place was some sort of psychic venus flytrap. God only knows what sort of horrors or wonders lurk behind the facade of a roadside attraction or fruit stand. Heck, some of these places are abandoned for a reason!

a small list of possibilities follows:

-Shallowings of abandoned chantries

-Tiny remnants of the storm umbra

- A lone shaman's hut

- A clapboard house that is seriously haunted

- An entire ghost town

- A small village made up entirely of Fomor (new England seems to have problems with this one)

- A lost lab dating back to the days when the Sons of Ether were still members of the Technocracy

- Incredibly secret technocracy bases out in the middle of nowhere. Some with staff, and some, strangely without...Perhaps they were eaten.

-Abandoned mines...Abandoned for a reason.

- Lost highways, some of which lead to damnation and others which lead to the One True Road...

-Tent revivals with actual miracles

-Roaming phenomenon (like ghost buses or trains.)

- Habitats of large beasts (like thunderwyrms or oasis banes)

-Portals into alternate timelines or realities

-Forgotten aztec temples and grand kivas of the plains Indians

-Breakdowns by the side of the road. (yours or somebody else's)

-Deadman's Curve w/ deadman

-The Bates Motel.

- A town filled with extremely strange people, not one of whom is supernatural. nor is there some type of supernatural phenomenon. the people are just weird. Read Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" for a good example.

The people that you meet

If your players envince a well-founded desire to stay away from such terrifying places, There is no reason why trouble can't find them. The Road has a host of colorful types that can cause all sorts of drama:

-Traveling corax,nuwisha,and gurahl

-Stationary anansi and mokole

-Silent striders, bone gnawers, and ronin

-Eshu

-Gangrel,(who just want to be left alone for the most part)

- Ranting nutjobs (in a dinner or on a greyhound, ranting incoherently about something that concerns you directly)

-Survivalist nuts (quasi-christian cults,militia groups, neonazis,Klansmen,nephandi training grounds or a mix of all of these)

-Mortal bikers fighting a shadowy war against undead bikers

- Cannibals and serial killers of the normal sort.(almost always driving a van)

-Sabbat,anarchs,autarkis, and inconnu fighting the occasional turf war.

- UFO abductees

-UFO's

-Craft Mages

- State troopers, Fomor, Risen, or just plain pissed off.

-The Devil, fresh from Vegas in a seersucker suit,string tie, alligator boots and a cherry red 75 Impala ("Can I take you where you're going?")

-Lone shamans going about their business

-Imbued hunters gone squirrelly or on the lam.

-Supernaturals who consider themselves "retired"( A 75 year old werewolf who runs a gas station, or a son of ether house painter living out in the sticks.)

-Locals who know way more than you think about what's going on in terms of the supernatural. (Indians,New Englanders, and Appalachian types tend to fit this mold most often.)

-Pissed of naturae and kami protecting their territory (Most prevalent in the northern midwest and Canada.)

-Psychotic Truckers (ever see Duel?) could be a fomor or a Get of Fenris

 

Other Elements of a Road Game

- This type of game suits itself to a cross platform game if you choose. although it should be noted that the characters had best have a compelling reason for staying together. any Vampires should possess Protean or Serpentis so that they can shelter themselves easily. Garou had best be resigned to the fact that they will be considered an outsider anywhere they go and will probably be subject to chiminage at any caern they visit. (unless they are striders) even a Mortal Psychic might not be out of place in this type of game.

- Since a surreal landscape is one of the major elements of the game, The Spirit World can play as large a role as you wish. Perhaps your wandering leads to umbral exploration or perhaps you happen upon denizens who have wandered into this reality and are finding their way around.

-Recurring characters might seem to be problematic. Most other games seem to revolve around a place and a particular set of major NPC's. This type of game demands a bit more work to create interesting people to meet but this is not to say that characters can't meet one another again down the road...for good or ill. If you really want to have a few set stock characters at all times, you could always have your players be part of a band or a circus or a gypsy kumpania.

-Transportation is very key to the whole experience of a Road Game. as such, you are perfectly within your rights as a GM to limit the amount of Correspondence that you allow your players to have. it kind of defeats the purpose of having the parties RV break down if you've got a mage that can move the whole team. it also makes serious threats easily escaped...and that's no damn fun.

-Keeping the players moving is also very key to the whole tone of the game. This is not to say that you can't have the players stay in an area for a while and make friends and enemies, but there should always be some sort of motive force pulling at the players.

Perhaps one of them has a group of persistent hunters on his ass, deserved or not. Perhaps one of them is searching for something. it might be as abstract as enlightenment or as concrete as a lost relative (Kwai Chang Kane) or a killer with one arm (Richard Kimble). Heck it might be that the characters have a case of itchy feet and a love for the open road.

You just never know.

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