/tg/, I wish to know of Unknown Armies.Saw a thread about it a few days ago that immediately spun off into in-jokes, so I was totally lost, but I did catch a few glimpses of interesting things; for one, there was a guy who gained powers by spending money frivolously, and another who ate magical items.This is all very cool, but again, that thread spun into inside jokes so quickly I couldn't learn anything about the mechanics. What is the system itself like? What are its strengths? Its weaknesses? (If I remember, someone said it was laden with outdated pop culture, would that get in the way of the actual game?)I mean, all the art I've been able to find about it makes the game look very Call of Cthulhu-esque, but the stories are the exact opposite. What gives?
Non-OP bump! I am also interested.
>Rumors
>>20393978Okay, the nipple headlights are a bit much.
>>20393892Unknown Armies threads usually spin into randomly generated conspiracy threads because in UA these things are plot hooks.
>>20393892Magic is real. This is not knowledge for the general public. At it's simplest, the players are members of the general public who have seen something inexplicable and are attempting to discover the truth. This is frowned upon by people that know the truth.
>>20394062Sorry I only saw the thumbnail and it was a random picture I got in the dump thread. This better?
>>20394297To be honest, that makes it sound even more like Call of Cthulhu.
All right Unknown Armies mechanics. Let's start with the basicsThe system is a percentile where you have to roll under or equal to the target number, which can be either your base stat or your specific skill. There are four base stats: Body (strength, toughness, endurance), Speed (Agility, dexterity, reaction time), Mind (knowledge skills and perception), and Soul (social skills and most magic). The skills are determined free form for each character, so they can encompass just about anything, but each one has to be tied to a related base stat. You also get some skills at a minimum level (15%) free, like a General Knowledge (mind) roll, Driving (speed), and Struggle (Body). There are three kinds of checks which vary in difficulty. The first kind are Minor Checks which happen whenever you aren't in danger with plenty of time. These can be succeeded by rolling under either the base stat or the relevant skill, but the roll is used mostly for determining how well you succeeded. These kind of checks can be made without a relevant skill without any penalties, though you most likely won't do very well. If you have above 15% in a relevant skill you automatically succeed Minor Checks. The second kind are Significant Checks, which are made when you could fail, but there is no danger or time pressure. Rolling under your skill means you succeed well, while rolling under your base stat means you just barely passed. You can make these without a relevant skill by taking 30% of your base stat.Finally there are Major checks which are made when you are in danger or there is not time, such as in combat. You must roll under you relevant skill to succeed. If you attempt these without a relevant skill, you can make a Hail Mary by only rolling one die and hope it succeeds, though that mechanic requires some knowledge of the crit system to understand.
>>20394525Tell me more, sensei!
>>20394525Crits are different than most other systems in that there are two kinds. If you roll a 00 that's a critical fail and if you roll a 01 that's a critical success like normal, but there is another kind of crit called a match where you roll the same numbers in the tens and ones. So a 77 is a more dramatic failure or success depending on whether it succeeds or not. These effects tend to be smaller than 01 or 00, which are supposed to be the best or worst possible, but they are still notable and can lead to extra damage in combat or whatever.That is the reason why the previously mentioned Hail Mary is important, because to succeed a Hail Mary you have to roll a matched success or critical. The thing I wrote about only rolling one die on those is wrong, you roll two dice on a Hail Mary, so please ignore it.So that is the basic system, but you are probably wondering why the whole Matched thing exists. Well that's because of a few neat things that encourage roleplaying. For starters, most characters have an Obsession. Its a thing which occupies them in their idle time, the thing they think about when they try to get to sleep at night. This can be just about anything, though it should be fairly broad; something like making the world a better place, becoming rich and famous, or the British royal family. A serious influence on their life and worldview. Each obsession is then tied to a related skill they possess, so the one about becoming famous could be tied to singing or acting. That skill now gets all rolls related to it flip flopped, meaning you can change the ones die with the tens die and vice versa. Thus that 81 failure then becomes an 18 success, which makes the rolls with matched numbers more important because they cannot be flip flopped.
>>20394769Furthermore each character has three Passions; a Rage passion, a Fear passion, and a Noble passion. These can normally only be activated once a session, but the rules vary and it is normally played by ear.The Rage passion is something that makes them furious like injustice, hurting children, or bad drivers. When they encounter that thing in a situation they can flip flop or reroll their checks to hurt whatever is causing it, though the damage must be immediate. You can shoot the guys or tackle that hitman, but you can't use it to screw with their credit rating or win that promotion to spite them. The Fear passion is something that the character is terrified of like spiders, doctors, or tight spaces. It is also tied to one of the Madness Meters, but the madness system is too complicated for just this post. The point is when the character encounters their fear passion they can flip flop or reroll to run away from the thing. Pick the lock, speed down the freeway, but no fighting back.Finally there is the Noble passion. This is a higher goal your character has in mind, something they do as a good for other people. This can be immediate, like standing by your friends, or abstract, like eliminating nuclear weapons. The point is it is a selfless thing and any skills used to achieve that end can be rerolled or flip flopped, regardless of circumstances.The sum of these parts means that there are now concrete mechanical rewards for roleplaying a character well, as doing that well literally makes you more effective.
Are there any questions before I go on to madness and magic?
>>20394402The biggest difference between Call of Cthulhu and Unknown Armies is best said in three simple words.You Did It.
I love the UA system so much. But the magic system triggers my Rage passion.
>>20394991No no, go straight into the madness!
>>20395008To expand on those three words in order to make them make any sense to an outsider:In CoC, oWoD (to a lesser extend nWoD) and Dark Heresy, there are big bad monsters that lurk in the darkness. There are things things bigger than humanity pulling the strings and fucking the world up. In Unknown Armies, humanity is alone. Everything is fucked up solely because humans fuck things up.
Now Madness works in certain meters. They have ten Hardened and five Failed notches both of which are gained by making a mind roll in stressful situations. If you succeed the check you get a Hardened notch and if you fail you get a failed notch. The difficulty of the check ranges from one to ten, with lower numbers being easier and higher more difficult. So if you a lot of hardened notches and face a fairly low level stress check, you automatically pass. Getting more failed notches makes you unstable and when you get five you go outright crazy, normally by manifesting a phobia or something low key. When you fail a stress check you have three possible reactions. You can either fight and try to destroy the thing, get frightened and try to run away, or freeze and just sit there deer in the headlights.But succeeding them doesn't get you off scot free. Each hardened notch represents your character getting more jaded and it becomes difficult for them to understand and empathize with other people as this occurs. Furthermore there are mechanical downsides because when you completely fill two meters or get thirty five hardened notches total, you become a psychopath and can no longer activate any of your passions. You also can't use certain types of magic, so too bad about that.
>>20395299Well, shit. Is there any way to remove notches? I mean, if not, it'd just take a dick GM to constantly put you in front of stressful situations until you go crazy either way.
>>20395363Time and therapy, mainly. Of course, therapists will also tell you that you can't learn the deep secrets of the universe by cutting yourself and listening to the blood, so you know those guys are full of shit.
>>20395299The different kinds of Meters all represent different stresses.The first is Violence, which is physical action that harms another person or being. People instinctively hate violence and getting hurt and this represents that reaction. A level one check is being attacked with a weapon, level four is killing someone in a fight, and level eight is getting tortured. As you gain more hardened notches you stop valuing life and eventually couldn't care less when someone near you dies while getting failed notches makes you fear anyone who could harm you. Think PTSD in veterans, freaking out a firecrackers and attacking children who point toy guns at them.The second is Unnatural, which represents things which violate how you think the world works. Getting shown that ghosts exist or finding out your mailman is a clockwork version of Abraham Lincoln would both trigger unnatural checks. As you gain hardened notches you stop thinking there is any consistency to the world and the whole thing is simultaneously random and meaningful. The stamps you got in the mail are clearly a sign your being watched because their numbers all add up to primes, that kind of stuff. Failing means you are just certain that the world isn't real or that somebody is playing a trick on you.Next is Isolation, which may not go over very well with 4chan. This is being deprived of input, both sensory and social, which will eventually make you solipsistic or mad. Blindfolds and solitary confinement count as Isolation checks. Failing these checks makes you dependent on people and insanely afraid of being alone, you may start talking to yourself or make up imaginary friends. Hardened notches make you unable to relate to people, at first a bit standoffish but you later lose touch with visual cues and become practically autistic.
>>20395530Damnit, I skipped Helplessness. It is supposed to come after Unnatural and represents how much control you feel you have. Getting fired or failing something vital would be low level while getting possessed and forced to desecrate your mothers grave would be high level. Hardened notches make you fatalistic as you lose your distinction between accidental and intentional. Anything could happen and you can't change it. Failure makes you unable to trust anything, sometimes causing obsessions with double checking everything and a hatred of chance as screwing you over.Finally there is Self which is sort of a tricky one. It consists of how you view your own actions and checks of it are normally what you think you wouldn't do. Good people don't murder, but I am a good person and killed a guy. Basically guilt and self loathing. Failed notches make you feel like you are outside yourself, an actor playing a part or a person along for the ride. Hardened notches destroy you ability to form your own opinions, you don't really like or dislike your wife and its of no real consequence whether we divorce or not, that sort of thing. There just isn't any consistency there.
>>20395776Anything about Madness or should I move on to Magic?
>>20395776Sounds like Id-Superego stuff. Hardened makes you forgo most social trappings, sliding you squarely into Id. Failed means you are trapped by your Superego role, as you struggle to keep "normal".
>>20395815Please, don't hesitate on the magic. I want to know how spending money can possibly make you more powerful.
There are three kinds of Magic: Ritual, Adept, and Avatar. As I note, I absolutely adore the UA magic system and it is my absolute favorite thing about the game. It is what makes UA the best modern Occult game out there, the mechanical bits are just cake. I also adore the scheme that goes into explaining it, because it basically says that magic comes from living your life wrong. The Cosmos is an ordered place where normal people do normal things and get rewarded by mundane channels. They are the upstanding citizens of humanity. Magicians are criminals and they gain their power by doing what they shouldn't and breaking the Cosmos over their knee.Ritual magic is in some ways the easiest, in that convoluted metaphor above it would be equivalent to dumpster diving or panhandling. It's not exactly criminal, but its messy and decent people will turn their noses up at it. It consists of a series of actions, which are normally convoluted with obtuse symbolic meaning, that achieve a magic result. Stuff like butchering a pig then sculpting its skin into a hat while saying a long Hebrew prayer so that you will be invisible like that unclean animal is to G_D. Baroque and kinda pointless stuff with few appreciable benefits, for that pig-hat would only work on Fridays after sundown. Rituals do have a few advantages though. They can be used by anybody, though people with other magic can use them more easily, they work reliably, provided you find the one in a thousand that actually does something, and they have no restrictions past the initial requirements from the ritual.
And then?
>>20396098Adept magic (I'm supposed to be spelling this magick cause that's what they do in the setting, but screw that) is the equivalent to robbery or con games. It is flashy and gives immediate payoff, but only with personal risk or cost. Adept magic operates on a mana system, called charges, which come in three kinds: Minor, Significant, and Major. Major charges can break down into ten significant charges, and significant to ten minor, but you cannot change minors or significants up the ladder. You gain these charges by doing or acquiring stuff, though the specific things needed vary by the kind of magic. Let's work with an example, Plutomancy is fairly simple. This is magic that works by money. You get a minor charge from getting anywhere between 100-999 dollars at once, a significant for anything between 1,000 to 99,999,999 dollars, and a major for one hundred million and up in a single payment. Big money. Furthermore all of the spells used in plutomancy have to do with money, either directly or indirectly. You can use it to buy things but never receive the bill, predict the future by reading how the person's finances will be affected, or literally buy someones will to make them hurt themselves. Hurting people is called a Blast by the way and it is normally direct which makes Plutomancy's especially cool. Buying their will means people will slam their hands in doors or shoot themselves with the gun in their hand. But all the spells have to revolve around money and the things further from that them cost more charges. Plus some things are just completely beyond their reach.
>>20396451Adept magic also requires behavior to change in addition to just charges. First it has to be your characters obsession skill and it literally consumes their life. Second is the taboo, a behavior which is completely forbidden for the adept. Violating taboo clears the character of all their charges and normally causes them great stress as well, you can't fake your way as an adept. For Plutomancers this is spending more than two hundred dollars. Plutomancers are miserly bastards who hoard their money because the power of money doesn't come from spending but rather from having. You also can't use your charges to make more charges and therefore money gained by magic doesn't count for the Plutomancer's charges. Nothing in life is free. Finally Adept magic has to be paradoxical, as seen above because money has no use if it can't be spent.Adept magic has lots of different schools and I'm not going to go into all of them, but that is probably where the wasteful expenditure thing you heard about came from.
>>20395910>spending moneyYou sir are doing it wrong! Hoarding that shit will make you a magic yuppie beyond all others!
>>20396482Finally there are Avatars, who are the welfare cheats and embezzlers of the cosmos. They work with the system and gain their power by conforming to expectation in a way that benefits them. They all conform to a Jungian archetype, stuff like the Mother, the Warrior, and the Scholar, which gives them powers related to that role. Warriors fight better, mothers care for children, scholars know things. This works by making a soul skill called Avatar: The Whatever and you get powers as you put points into it. Another example: Messengers. Messengers are people who travel around and spread the truth, informing the people of what is going on. At low levels messengers are simply more convincing when they tell the truth, forcing people to make stress checks in helplessness or self if they want they try to deny it. Then they can magic their way through barriers to the message, forcing open locked doors with a successful check. Later they can begin to divine the truth itself and arrive at important events instantly so they can spread the news more quickly.Avatars don't use a mana system so their powers are more consistent than adepts, but they do have a taboo which would distance them from their archetype. Warriors can't back down from their enemies, mothers can't put children in danger, Scholars can't obscure information, and Messengers can't lie. Violating taboo makes the avatar skill unusable for about a day and lowers it by a point or two. The GM should also lower points if they avatar doesn't consistently do something to connect them to the archetype. The other advantage avatars have over adepts is that they don't have to be crazy, they just have to play the role. Their taboos generally aren't as bad, messengers are as bad as it gets, and they can think without having that weirdo adept paradigm. Big advantage if played correctly.
The guy explaining this is doing a grand job of it.Avatars walk the beaten tracks of the collective unconscious. By following roads that most people accept exist, you bind yourself to certain behaviours, certain symbols. Do that enough, strongly enough, for long enough and not only will you be good at it, but the strength of the collective unconscious will bend reality so that you're empowered to do the things your Archetype does (we *did* it! Oh god, *we* did it. We did *it*.)Avatars of the Mother are at first (up to 50% Avatar skill) comforting and maternal; they can quickly help people who've just failed stress checks and can heal small amounts of physical damage to those who view them as mother-figures. Higher up (50-70) and you've literally got the strength of a mother bear when protecting your charges. Your Avatar skill works for initiative and hand-to-hand combat, with a bonus of 5 damage. Up to 90%, and it's a rank-10 Self check to attack you. 90+ and you can't die, even if someone kills you (when defending an endangered child). Once your duty of care is finished (you get the child to safety or defeat the attackers), you die.As you can see, the first channel takes up 50% of avatar's skill. You've got to get over that hump to start getting at the real mystical mojo. All avatar channels are the same, 50-70-90-90+. 99% is special, that's Godwalker territory, and There Can Only Be One per Archetype at a time. They get a fifth, personalised channel all to themselves... and get to set their sights on the Big Prize. I'll leave that to the other guy, as he's better at this than me but I'll ask him to spoiler Cosmic knowledge and I'm speaking with a gravelly voice like I've drunk acid. He'd do well to spoiler knowledge of the Clergy.
There are lots of other cool things about the game, both mechanically and fluff wise, but I think these posts have covered the basics. You could run a whole campaign without encountering any of the other mechanics. Anything unclear or unanswered?
>>20396915No, kind annon, you did a fantastic job. I now only wonder about which editions and sourcebooks are the best, if you would be so kind.
>>20396893Adepts, on the other hand, can pull weirdass obviously Wrong stuff from the get-go. There's little explaining a Blast with mundane means, and some of those things are brutal. It's still safer and easier to shoot someone, though. You don't have to earn every bullet through ritual symbolic actions, and you're not forced to choose between using your bullets to shoot people and using them to further other magickal ends.Adepts are not aiming for the Avatar brand of cosmic power. Why gamble on being The One when you can be One of the Big Boys? Also, Adepts are batshit crazy. Their all-consuming obsession with a singular paradox strips away layers of consensus and reveals reality for what it is: Flawed. They drive their obsession like a wedge into one of those flaws, and work at it, picking at the edges like a kid with a scab on his knee, until they can see the juicy flesh underneath. Yum.Adepts can rework reality in the ways they want to without having to do the things Avatars do. Adepts just have to find a way to gain a Major charge to do it. Of course, that's not easy and the ways they can rework the world or fly completely in the face of natural laws are limited to ways tied into their particular kind of Crazy.Adepts and Avatars are completely at odds with one another. It is, in theory, possible to be both. That way lies madness. That is shtick of the Mystic Hermaphrodite, but that is an Avatar path that is best understood once you understand Unknown Armies.
>>20396915Quick minor question. This thread mentions that you can't build minor charges up into sigs, but I seem to recall reading somewhere that adepts got that power somewhere along the line. Did some sourcebook do this or was it an edition change?
>>20396915That was the best damn job of summing up UA I have ever seen. The one thing I'd cover is that it's fairly common to rename your basic skills. That free Struggle 15% you never plan on raising? Why not write "Nerdy Slapfight 15%" on your hacker's sheet instead? Drive 45%? "Adrenaline and Octane 45%". General Education 75%? "Wikivore 75%".Also, if you're looking to write more... give us a few tidbits of info about The Freak and The First and Last Man and Mak Attax.Also, to the OP: UA can really, really be summed up by "You Did It". The first edition UA cover has that being spelled out by the blood of the dead guy on the cover.As to UA being pop culture laden, yes. It's a game of humanity and the way we are and why we are the way we are and what the way we are does to the universe. It is very much meant to be run present day, present time Cue the Lain introduction and its laugh. Ahahahahaha!.You have to reconsider UA fluff on how you'd run it in 2012, or have a group of players old enough to remember what living in the 90s was like if you're going to run games set then. For instance, the first ed Infomancer does not work with how the internet goes today; mechanically it's broken and its paradox is no longer a paradox to common thinking; it was phased out in 2nd ed. The Cryptomancer's paradox failed, and crypts were phased out. UA is steeped in pop culture, yes; we wouldn't want it any other way.An example of how UA changes: Some folks wrote the Mediamancer and I've rejigged that into what I think the infomancer would grow into in time for a 2012 campaign: http://pastebin.com/K09gnBar
>>20397163This is part of the published adventure To Go, which concerns a group of NPCs all of whom want to Ascend, to become part of the Big Spoiler in the Sky. When you go Up, you get to dictate a few changes to the way things work. One of the people trying to Ascend wants to make charges be combinable. It's a big, unbalancing change to make; best only for use in games set in the same continuity as a game of To Go that had that particular character ascend.For what it's worth, I have a friend who ran To Go and had a PC ascend at the end instead - it is, he argued, more fun for it to not just be playing kingmaker with NPCs but racing them to a prize and fighting for it. Also, we run what is a sort-of extended continuity between most UA games run by five or so GMs in this town, and didn't want to make huge changes like "charges can be combo'd" that'd throw off future things.
There's an official fansite for it too.http://ua.johntynes.com/Lots of fanmade stuff, some of it terrible, some of it good, and some of it mine.
>>20397316>and some of it mine.So EXTRA terrible.
>>20397393That's why it's in its own category.
>>203970692nd Edition is vital and all that is really necessary to run a game. It has all of the rules introduced in sourcebooks and a good amount of the new Avatars and Archetypes, plus all the setting information.Post-Modern magic is the next most vital in my opinion, it has a ton of new Adept schools, some of which are in 2nd edition as well. Then there are the artifacts, who wouldn't want a magic horror language? Statosphere is good but not as nice as PoMoMa. The new archetypes are kinda shakey and they don't really compare to the adepts of PoMoMA. The stuff about the Comte de Sant Germaine is nice though Hush Hush, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, and Break Today are situational. They are nice books don't get me wrong, but they all focus on a specific faction which you won't need that much about if you aren't focusing on them in your game. If you get any of them, get Break Today for the familiar rules.The other reason to get Break Today is To Go, which is the only full campaign ever given for UA. It is one of the best and can be run without Break Today but that only improves the experience. To Go is almost essential, even if you don't run it you can loot it for weirdness.Weep is better than One Shots but both are definitely worth the purchase. Jailbreak is a fantastic one-shot and the rest of the book is lootable. Weep is much easier to incorporate into an ongoing campaign, which was the point of the book after all. Swap Meet is just hilarious to drop in for macguffins, A Few of My Favorite things for absurdity, and Drink to That for drama. I still haven't worked up the balls to run Garden Full of Weeds, but just reading the thing is worth it.Don't bother with Ascension of the Magdalene, some of it is good but you just can't shove 17th century Prague into a modern horror game. Plus the D20 makes me sick.
I'm also gonna have to request some cosmic spoilers up in this bitch, mostly the ones mentioned here >>20397208.
>>20397515I think "To Go" is fantastic. I plan on lifting the Las Vegas portion wholesale for a Changeling game.
>>20393892>Saw a thread about it a few days ago that immediately spun off into in-jokesThere are no injokes in UA. OnlY codes
Has anybody ever run And I feel fine from One Shots ?
If you correctly complete the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle with no mistakes n exactly three hours, thirty three minutes in ink mixed with the blood of an Entropomancer, then swallow the finished puzzle, you'll be protected from the Bodybag's magick as long as the puzzle is being digested.
Okay, can anyone give us a storytime detailing some of the metaplot here. It sounds downright juicy, but I don't have the time these days to delve into a new system.
>>20397208>>20397520Well I can't tell you much about the Freak. We know almost nothing about him, other than that she is a fleshworker and the best damn Mystic Hermaphrodite around. He pulls chains out of his lungs to gain his magic and then she walks around beating up anyone else who try to take his place. Woman's a freak, plain and simple, and I hope that Dirk Allen kills him somehow. Old drunk's gotta be good for something The next request has a similar problem in that we don't know squat about the Comte de Sant-Germain. First man to ever exist, yeah that's important. Plus the immortality ensures he will be the last man alive come apocalypse time. But we just don't know much about him besides the wandering and mystery. He's got plans, that much is certain. Now the last request I can oblige. You see there is the group called Mak Attax that works as burger flippers at a certain clown having chain. Real low on the totem pole, can't keep a secret to save their lives and wants to "bring about a magickal renaissance" whatever the hell that means. Idiots the lot of them, with their secret mailing list and grand plans. [spoilers] Course they did manage the largest ritual in world history on Jan 1st 2000, so there may be something to them. Still idiots though, rambling on about a Kundalani uniting America [/spoilers]
>>20397816Damnit, how the hell did I fuck up spoilers?
In short as one of the people above told it.You Did It.All the supernatural phenomena are man made. Demons are dead people that couldn't move on and are now stuck between the worlds trying to feel things again you can surrender you body to them for answers that only invisble sociopathic bastard that can get anywhere give you Gods were once human avatars that became so good with being embodiment of idea that they became idea itself and you can become it too if you try hard enough.333 is number of Gods that are needed to reset this universe. There are currently 332 of them out thereFirst and Last man was there and will be there.There are also insane buisnessman, Ancient conspiracies set on keeping world in check and magical superheroes. There are also Room but other people would be more suited to explain them.If you want i can post short summary of Adept systems
>>20397850>If you want i can post short summary of Adept systemsPlease do, any further info would be appreciated.
Bibliomancy: You are obsessed with books and knowledge Books are more important than what is written in themCliomancy: History and changing perception of common things/what has actually happened History is a lie a consensus that majority has reachedDipsomancy: Alcohol and cheating (yes if you pay the magical price you can do any thing you want) Paradox is that it gives you power and takes it away at same timeEntropomancy: Chaos(or to be more specific challenging fate and laughing in her face) and random coincidences They take control by surrendering themselvesEpideromancy: Changing (permanently) yourself and (not per se permanently) others. They create by destroying, they craft their identity from destroying their formMechanomancy: Gearpunk, Hell Yeah ! They are living in the past and refuse to move into present
Mechanomancy: Gearpunk, Hell Yeah ! They are living in the past and refuse to move into presentNarco-Alchemy: Extra happy magical drugs that make you stronger, smarter, open your eyes to another world and many more fun things! It kills you with every dose you take while elevating you to new heights and only hope they have is elevate before body diesPersonamancy: Pretending and changing who you are You manipulate identity and you accept that identities are a liePlutomancy: Money and getting what you want (from few cents to few years of life)They can't use their gains. Point of having money is having moneyPornomancy: (Ritual) Sex and changing how people feel about eachotherYou shouldn't enjoy it, Pornomancers preform certain rituals and if they have sex not in ritual form they lose all their magic
Urbanomancy: City and everything within it City is everybody and nobody it doesn't need you and it needs youVideomancy: Television shows and understanding people/ events through observation changing reality to tv version of it It isolates and connects you from other peopleAmoromancy: Love and emotions more specifically obsession with somebodyAnnihilomancy: Destruction of everything except truthCryptomancy: German - Lying and changing the reality to fit with it; English - Finding out secrets and/or hiding them.
Iconomancy: Becoming your idol and doing everything they could but better Infomancy: Information and control over perceptionsIrasciamancy: Anger and controlling of itKleptomancy: Stealing and making stealing things easierOneiromancy: Insomnia and making other people live in your dreamsThanatomancy: Ritual serial killing and control of dead demons are dead people too
All right guys, I'm going to sleep. I would write up more stuff but I'm about ready to fall over. I think this thing is good Unknown Armies fodder, what do you think?
Good Night
Also general rejoicing that we can finally have UA thread with
Holy shit, I had no idea what UA was, but now I'm damn determined to run a game with it. Many thanks, everyone!
I was wondering. How would i run Akibarangers in Unknown Armies ?
>>20398108That is insane!
>>20398081You should also check out Don't Rest Your Head
For those who don't know.Akibarangers is a show about group of otakus that are brought together by a slightly sane scientist that developed a way to make delusions come true. She uses that way to protect the Idea of the city from the Evil Corporation (literally the name of the villains) that wants to destroy it and recreate as extension of other Cities. Destroy the city of filthy neckbeards that don't bring in enough money into city of sportsmen/nightclubs/tourist attractions and so on.Main Heroes are chosen as people that are deluded enough to be ok with fighting vile miscreants in strange dimension that exists in Super Sentai show. Man doing his darn best to be a Red from shows., a Cosplayer and a Girl that is obsessed with martial arts so much she can dream them.What i am thinking about how to fluff it for UA. Make them all Avatar of a Sentai Team from Red till lowest assistant so that they would get powers from and this whole clusterfuck plan to become godwalkers ? Or videomancers deciding to make the world a more FUN place by using their powers ? Or even just random adepts and avatars deciding to be heroes while dressing up in conveniently coloured costumes.
>>20394104Little known fact: Peas didn't originate from planet Earth. Scared of their influence on human psyche, the US government has been covering up this knowledge by systematically erasing references to peas from every zoological text ever since the 1930s. Against this background, the 1960s hippie slogan 'Give peace a chance' suddenly takes a much sinister tone.
>>20398625Obvious, in hindsight.
>>20398625On a vegetable related note, have you heard of this Irishman? He's apparently channeling an old Archetype, The Farmer. He's recently made these super potatoes that have a fairly good chunk of vitamins and mineral content.Plus, the things are huge, though some people say it has a slightly metallic taste to it. I wonder how he does it.
>>20398780Little known fact: The humming sound you hear when flipping a coin is the result of air flowing over microdots embedded on its surface. It is the sound of an ancient Buddhist mantra, albeit at a frequency that's only perceivable by dogs (and cats). This is a part of a long-running plan of the Catholic Church to convert household pets to worship their awesome GDO DOG GOD OD.
Any objections to archiving the thread as a reference for future UA noobs, like myself?
>>20398987Not really, but I'm quite sure there are other threads like this already archived.
>>20399013Skimming sup/tg/, not so much. It looks to be mostly plot ideas, rather than an actual explanation of the game. I'll stick it up, then if it doesn't attract peoples attention they'll clear it out soon enough.
>>20398959Addendum: The 'Missing G' in the Catholic mantra has been source of debate over centuries. The latest rift within the church happened roughly 30 years ago, when a group of theologians calling themselves O.G. (Origins of G) formed their own splinter sect. They masquerade as thugs and disseminate their theological treatises in cryptical popular music songs. The most famous of these, 'Straight Outta Compton', lists their main points of faith and is seen as the modern equivalent of Luther's 95 theses by those in the know.
You know something strange?Unknown Armies is the second system I ever read the book for.The first was DnD 3.5.I fell in love. The system, the setting... it was amazing. I'd never read anything like it before. It was the late 90s, early 00s, I was young and stupid and didn't know what 'urban fantasy' meant.Well, that's a lie. It reminded me a bit of some books I had read, in elementary school. Spooksville. Legitimate horror, better than Goosebumps, because it had recurring characters. A real sense of the unknown, not just scary things happening. It went on. I wonder if I can find those books again?And yet, for all my love, all my perverse semi-asexual lust, I've never once played UA. Thought about it plenty. Wrote up campaigns, come up with characters, homebrewed... it occupies my spare time alot. Not a week goes by I don't do something for this glorious nugget of a system.Yet I've never played it once.
>>20399096None of your players want to give it a go?And as my friend pointed out to me, it reminds me of American Gods.
>>20399127I've pitched it to them a few times. Each time, something a little different. "Why can't we just play World of Darkness, we know that system?" "Why can't we just play d20 modern urban arcana, we know that system?" "Why can't we just play call of cthulhu, we know that system?"Oh, such rage. Such terrible, horrible rage.
>>20399138And when you respond 'It has lots of cool stuff that I'm personally interested in, and I really really don't want to go through all the trouble to convert it to another system', what they then say?
>>20399138But you can just take Urban Arcana and slowly change it into Unknown Armies. Mage the Ascension is as much fun as UA and it will make you happy and give them lots of delicious mindfuck.Also i am enraged as one of my players walked out in the middle of the game because there where not enough fights. And i explained it to him that you don't fight in UA.
>>20399214Sounds like a pretty shitty player to be honest.
This thread is still alive? Excellent, more newcomers need to see this.
>>20399096>>20399138 We have found your ObsessionAnd it is way too meta there, dude I think you should take a break.
>>20401433Take a break? Why? I'm not hurting anything... I'm just preparing. One day.One day, I will play.And then... it will be glorious.
Anyone know where the Perpetual Motion Machine rules are? I looked in the core book Mechanomancer section, but I couldn't find it.
I loved UA when I had a decent group to play it with.Eventually we were sort of "done" if you know what I mean. We had explored all that could be explored. I thought that was the end of it, but lately we all got together again to play Enter The Shadowside, which I hear is a /tg/ thing. It's very much like UA and oWoD, and we're enjoying it tons. It's like UA but more focused, more solid. Not to say UA is fuzzy... gah, it's hard to explain. It all comes down to your DM.
>>20397821no s at the end. [spoiler]
>>20397850One thing that's wrong, canon-wise here, in the 333 section.There's not 332 archetypes ascended - the 333rd will be the First and Last Man (probably) so once 332 go up, we'll be done very soon afterwards, and signs of the End will be visible, though what they will be we don't know. There's probably more than half the seats filled, but the precise number is up in the air>>20401591You're never done with UA. UA, if you play it heavily, becomes a filter through which you view things. Not all the time, but you can look at the news and think "Well, the most obvious explanation here if the UA one" more often than you'd expect. UA is voluntarily letting yourself get caught up in pareidolia, apophenia and synchronicity. They are, after all, the product of the same tendency to pattern recognition that predisposes humanity to religion and superstition and suchlike.
