One of the factions in UA is named Mak Attax, and I wanted to do a book about them for two reasons. One is that the group (short order cooks conspiring to undermine reality by infiltrating the world’s biggest burger chain) was perceived as too silly for the gritty tone of Unknown Armies. The other reason was that I felt UA was perhaps becoming too sunk in misery, despair, and the evil that men do.
So. My self-imposed goal was to make the Maks a serious group despite their reputation for altruism and impracticality. Of course, I liked the idea that they were impractical, and that most of the occult groups in UA are. While efficient and capable gangs are great for movies and novels, I actually suspect that they’re less common in reality… and should be less common in games. Not just out of some farcical grasp at ‘realism’ but because it makes more sense for the player characters to be the highly accomplished ‘main characters’ if they’re operating in an environment where every screws up some of the time, and some of the people screw up almost every time.
With Break. Today., I think it accomplished my goal. I stressed the diversity of the group, demonstrating that some of them had very selfish and ignoble designs on the cosmos, while even the ‘decent folk’ had often endured horrible things in pursuit of something that seemed, at the start, so clean and nifty. Plus, I think the title actually worked, and I usually hate coming up with titles.
