In Unknown Armies 3, the stage is the framework for the campaign. It’s described as a “loose collection of seeds for the GM to play with and the players to use as a wish list.”
By the end of the first session (or Character Phase), these seeds are pulled together into a world that encompasses the cabal group, its individual characters and their relationships. Important locations, items and other characters are identified. Scenario objectives and campaign themes will emerge directly from how these seeds are combined.
The seeds that are chosen become the hooks that engage the players and GM “to want to peel back the layers of the occult underground and cast their revelations against the stage’s backdrop.”
Before the First Session
Start collecting seeds to bring to the first session, at which the group will begin selecting and arranging them into the broken world they want to fix.
Seeds can be any kind of content and media that depict potential elements and events in the campaign world, for example:
- images of people, places, devices and incidents
- gifs and short videos
- songs, jingles and music videos
- snippets of poetry and quotes
- fortune cookies, matchbooks, and other found items
Gather enough seeds to get through the character phase – at least half a dozen is good to begin.
There are three steps where players formally introduce new elements to the stage. Each player should have at least that many to give them different options as the world and cabal takes shape.
Open a Seed Bank
It may be useful to create a ‘seed bank’ for players and the GM to deposit their collection of elements. This serves as a shared pool that is drawn from during the first session.
The seed bank takes any form that the whole playing group can access and is comfortable with, for example:
- Pinterest board
- G+ community forum thread
- shared Dropbox folder
- Google Slides presentation deck
Any seeds that are not brought into play during the character phase could still be used by the GM, surfacing later on as the campaign unfolds.
Create the Stage
In a meatspace group, the ‘pins on a corkboard‘ method is recommended to build up the entangled web of conspiracy, drawing lengths of string between physical pictures, note cards and other elements to denote relationships and connections. Whiteboard, markers, magnets and so on can work equally well.
Increasingly groups are playing online. There are several tools that can provide the same effect as the corkboard method. Platforms such as roll20.net offer virtual tabletops for gamers that may be used to lay out the seeds. Other video conferencing tools, such as Google Hangouts, Skype and Discord, can be combined with virtual whiteboards or collaborative drawing tools to the same effect.
Reference: UA3 Book 2: Run (p25 | p24 pdf).