Unknown Armies thread

In honor of the time of the year, and also for the latest update from the 3rd edition kickstarter... let's talk about Unknown Armies!

Other urls found in this thread:

mediafire.com/folder/x03hz0003i0fa/UA3e
tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

Sell me on Unknown Armies

System is fairly simple percentile rolls. I'll explain 3e since that's the one coming out: you have 10 basic abilities that govern what you could expect an average person to do, which are linked to your sanity gauges. You also have identities, which can replace abilities and allow you to do things like first aid, use firearms, or use rituals. Each ability or identity has a % value, you try to roll under it +- modifiers. Combat's quick and lethal, with most firearms being able to kill someone dead in two good shots and melee weapons also being able to manage it with a bit of luck. It's also one of the best uses of percentile dice I've seen, with the dice being added together for close combat damage and read as they are for firearm damage.

The most interesting mechanical point is the sanity system. There's 5 types (Violence, Unnatural, Isolation, Helplessness, and Self), with 2 tracks (Hardened and Failed). If you succeed a sanity check, you gain a hardened notch in the appropriate gauge, and if you fail, you take a failed notch. If you have more hardened notches than the rank of the check (1-10), you don't need to roll at all, because it's not something out of the ordinary for you, while if you have 5 failed notches you always "fail" (without rolling) sanity checks in that gauge. There's also becoming a sociopath, with its own downsides.

There's also passions and obsession, which allow you to flip the numbers on the dice when it would fall under them (passions once a session, obsession whenever you're using the linked identity)

I'll do the setting in the next post, because it deserves its own space, as well as magick (with the k, blame the 90s).

I think the best way I've heard the system described is "Humanocentric Cosmic Horror." Most of the setting is what we would recognize as the modern world with a few extra details (such as author Dirk Allen), as conspiracy settings tend to be. However, when you(r characters) start to look into the nature of the world, there are insane people breaking reality, either through their own obsessions or ancient occult rituals, devoted cultists attempting to ascend as deities, demons, holes in reality, the whole mixed bag.

And We Did It. It's not that adept magick makes you crazy, it's that you go insane, and fixate your identity on some contradiction in reality, which then allows you to break the world if you live up to your new view of it. Following these behaviors gives the adept charges, which they use for magick, and if they break some taboo they lose them all.

Thaumaturges are the old-style ritualists, which is a dying art. You can't make a new (proper) ritual anymore, so you're stuck trying to find the remaining working ones or using Gutter Magick for simple effects. They're limited in how many rituals they have, as well as what they're willing to do (so, you could try to create a Shoggoth-looking servant to work for you, but you lose your eye, even if it doesn't work)

Avatars are people who (try to) perfectly act out one of the "Archetypes" that dwell within the collective unconsciousness of humanity. If you're acting out the Warrior, you name some group or thing as your enemy, become more powerful by fighting that thing, become weaker if you don't act against them when you can, and your abilities make you more powerful at fighting that thing. Eventually, they can try to take the seat of Godwalker, who is the most powerful Avatar of a given Archetype, and then try to oust the existing Archetype and take its place, which allows you to help shape the universe when it next resets.

There's more, but post limit. I can answer any questions.

>Sell me on
This is a really obnoxious way of asking people to tell you about something.

Thanks I like Onyx path's Mage alot this seems right up my alley.

The biggest difference between UA and the WoD lines is that in WoD you start out shitty or special or whatever and determine your course of direction from there.

In Unknown Armies (at least at Street Level) you start out fairly normal, and through your own obsession(s) and curiosity you set yourself on the path to breaking yourself.

You Did It. If your character burns down an orphanage it's not because of his inherent nature (Vampire/Werewolf) or that it's collateral in a far more important war for reality (Mage), you did it because you had the choice to, and whatever you get out of it will always be a thin justification.

In World of Darkness, the general morality of the world is almost entirely evil.

Vampires are manipulating.
Werewolves are brutal.
Mages are uncaring.
Prometheans create unhappiness by sheer existence
Changelings are childish
Hunters are sanctimonious
Demons are amoral

But there's no such thing as any of these justifications for evil in Unknown Armies, and you can never place people into such easy categories to separate you from them. The morality of Unknown Armies is neutral. Good and evil are things people call one another, but you can still know when you're doing the right thing, and it's the fact that you have the ability for a purely untainted choice that makes the entirety of Unknown Armies, despite having all of the powers and the weird ass shit going on, legitimately human as opposed to WoD's rejection of humanity.

But it's not all doom and gloom. Generally speaking, if you want to play somebody that's entirely human you would think of that character as wanting to do the right thing at their core. After all, why would you not want to at least try to do the right thing?

In World of Darkness, whatever your character thinks of as the right thing is always the harder choice, each book places various obstacles in the way of doing what you know should be right, and in my eyes that cheapens the whole deal.

In Unknown Armies, whatever your character thinks of as the right thing is always accessible and can sometimes be as easy as doing the wrong thing. But, because we are human there are always unintended consequences that we can't just can't see.

Just saw this thread, and this is the first I've heard of 3rd edition. Worth it if I only have 2e but I've never formally played it?

Having played both, in my opinion 3rd edition is better than 2nd and I think will become the default version once it comes out of beta.

Is there a place to review the 3rd edition rules?

Any major differences I should be aware of? Would it be worth it to brush up on my 2e rules, or should I just wait for 3e to read that instead?

Me again Keep in mind, I've never actually played/run it, so I never went past the section in the book that says "Spoilers past here"

3rd will be updating the setting for the 2010s, which is really necessary in a setting that makes magic something that has to keep up with the times or die instead of something powerful and archaic. It's worth it for that alone.

In KS update 1.

It has something called pornomancers.

Can someone post up the rules here, please? KS is ip-blocked from where I am, and I can't seem to bypass it.

3e majorly overhauls character stats.

Body, Speed, Mind and Soul are gone. Instead, your character's base stats are linked directly to his Madness Meters. Each Meter has a Stat on each end, and as you become more hardened you become worse in one Stat and better in another.

Violence, for instance, is linked to two Stats: Struggle and Connect. Connect is your ability to talk to and empathize with people. Struggle is your ability to hurt them and take a beating. Connect is based on your Open Notches, with each notch representing like +5% on a base of 20-30% (forget the exact numbers). So if you have all 8 Violence notches Open, you have like 70% Connect but only 30% Struggle. As you take more Hardened notches, your Connect goes down but your Struggle goes up.

Core Stats are meant to represent base, elemental aspects of your character. Someone with a high struggle isn't necessarily a trained martial artist, but he hits harder and fights dirtier than someone with less Struggle, because he's been more exposed to and subject to violence.

The real way to customize a character is Identities. Identities are pretty much the evolution of UA2's do-it-yourself skills. A character can have an identity like "Police Officer 55%" or "Stoner and Surfer 44%". With each Identity you fill out a "I'm a ____, of course I can...". So for the Police Officer identity you have "I'm a Police Officer, of course I can shoot a gun, drive defensively, restrain someone, search a crime scene, interrogate a suspect, deal with bureaucracy." So anytime you run into one of those activities you can roll an Identity that fits the bill.

Basically you're supposed to play to your Identities when you can, and if you can't you have to fall back on your core stats, which are informed by how Hardened you are.

Beware. The use of nuclear necromancy is on the rise. It's said its status as a paradox art of genius-only complexity lends it horrific strength because of the small number and exclusivity of its practitioners. Hellfire is said to feature in the prominent by default, revealing that even divine themes are slaved to this hell end art. The anti-power of its creations is enough to turn the land to the absolute of what the universe allows in revulsion. It is nuclear both literal and in its necromantic threat potential. No nuclear necromancer invokes the art to toy around with creations. The burning deadstar red and ultrablack of its invocations melts down angel and starspawn alike.

All pyramids are suspect, launchpads of dark arts MAD. All nuclear plants are a dead star graveyard waiting for the sung animation of the screaming atomic-sealed army risen by the first detonation. Fear the sung phrase, 'Here they come, Here comes the End' and never let the name Eschatiel be linked to the face of the one who owns that name with the permission of God.

And for fuck's sake you sugar cult slacker, DRINK MOXIE BEFORE IT FADES FROM THE TIMELINE. You've already forgotten WHY it tastes like it does! Yet the concept still scarred our language globe with its meaning.

...

Best character sheet ever.

Someone remind me how the Contacts (the yellow post-it notes) work?

Anyone have a PDF?

Basically, if you're rolling against or to assist a relation, you can use that value, if I'm remembering correctly. On phone, so can't check now, but will as soon as I'm back to my pc. I'll also dig up a PDF for if no one else does by then.

Back, checked the PDF, and you can do one of three things:
>replace an ability (specifically has to be Connect, Lie, Notice, Status, or Struggle) when interacting with that person
>improve the relation by providing that person something
>coerce that person, but this reduces your relation
Also, I think Astral Parasites can eat them, but I'm too lazy to check.

>mediafire.com/folder/x03hz0003i0fa/UA3e
Should work, and has bookmarks. Backers are getting the full graphics version Soon(tm).

All scorpions are the same scorpion

Holy fuck thats a good one

tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

Okay, so listen. Everyone's been talking about how weird as shit reality's been lately right? Now, everyone I know who is in the know, know what I'm saying? Everyone I know in the know always goes on about how Cops being aired back in the Writer's Strike was the thing that broke reality and made people think they were action heroes and rock stars and made rock stars and action heroes seem pathetic. You know what I say? That's BS. See, it wasn't reality TV that did it, I mean we had documentaries and anthropological films and shit being recorded with video cameras, right? Maybe takes a few souls, but it doesn't break that fragile little reality bubble, not even close.

No, you know what did break it though? The Montreal Screwjob.

That's right! Brett Hart throwing the punch that broke kayfabe is the reason reality doesn't exist anymore. Not postmodernism, not the camera, wrestling. There has always been plays and shit, audience participation and shit, but even in those weird-ass performances, shit man even during the surrealist and dada movements when everyone was getting naked and punching people in art galleries, there was always that assumption that it's all fake. Not with wrestling though. Naw man, it was real, it's own little cartoon freak show version of reality contained in a stadium and brought to life by the hand of the Cocaine God. Then Montreal happened, and suddenly that cartoon world started to get real names, first Steve Austin, then John Cena. Now we got mermaids washing up to shore, dragons up in the Alps, superhero wannabes out in the streets, pop idols based off of voice synths, and psychics in celebrity's rolodexes.

Think about it, this all could have been avoided too. I mean it was inevitable, but at least reality wouldn't be as screwy as it is right now. All it would've taken was if Vince McMahon weren't such a god damn idiot. He could've kept his mouth shut, he could've just let Brett Hart go out with a DQ or a draw and let him hand over the champion's belt once they got out of Montreal. But he didn't. Instead he blew up two worlds with Brett Hart's one punch.

(not mine but reposted from a thread on Something Awful. Best UA rumor ever)

>Ms. Frizzle in her punk years.jpg

Is she the avatar of cool teachers

I always thought she was either the descendant or younger version of Baba Yaga

No, she actually gains charges every time Carlos makes an awful joke. Her job as a school teacher is just an excuse to be around him.

>Her job as a school teacher is just an excuse to be around him.
Somewhere out there, this sentence is the synopsis of some porn

I heard something about fandom based magic, is that a thing?

Sociomancers are all about building charges by fitting into and harnessing the power of fandoms, so yes.

The Adept Schools in UA3 are all a lot less self-destructive but actually a lot weirder. There are schools about fetishizing clothing, firearms and farming, of all things, combined with GNOMON, which is basically what Mr. Robot is leaning into by the end of season 2. It seems to be less about people being individually crazy and more about folks going off the rails as a group. It gives the impression that something went wrong with the world of UA3, which the deeper backstory confirms.

All the magic schools are based around obsession with something. For instance, 3e has
>muh gunz
as a valid source of power (two actually, but one is based around the gun as a symbol of civilisation, and I can't remember what the other is).

There's the 2e Videomancer, who gains magical power by always watching their show every day, and loses it for missing the show. Think obsessive MST3K fans back in 1997. This obviously limits their use in adventures, as they always need to be able to see that show at that time. The videomancer was deprecated out of 3e because of Netflix and shit meaning broadcasts are less and less important.

There's another form of magic in 3e that feeds off the fandom itself, rather than the source of the fandom.

What I like about the Adepts in UA3 is that they were clearly designed around what would be fun to play vs what is fun to talk about. A lot of the Adepts in UA2 are frankly almost unplayable like Videomancers and Bibliomancers, since they're tied down by locations and schedules. UA3 Adepts are less restrictive in that area but are maybe even more deluded since they've started obsessing and finding post-modern meaning in the most basic and primitive elements of civilization (clothing, weapons, farming).

In addition, the new schools all have a focus on group dynamics which the 2nd edition schools don't have:

>Fulminaturge
Not being able to shoot your gun, but still needing to have it with you can be a big liability problem in any situation where somebody manages to take your gun out of your hands.

>Sociomancer
If a group ever splits up, they have to be organized in a way so that the sociomancer is able to stay with everyone at all times. If one of the character's is meant to be a lone wolf having a clingy sociomancer can provide for some fun social dynamics.

>Viaturge
Your viaturge has to be the one that drives, it doesn't matter what the situation is.

>GNOMON
When shit hits your fan your GNOMON adept will be running away just so that he won't have to show weakness over his emotions. Either that or he'll be wearing a stupid mask, which will make social situations weird.

>Agrimancy
When the weather gets shitty your agrimancer can't be in charge of anything because he doesn't want to show weakness over nature.

The sociomancer's taboo is my favorite.

>Changelings are childish

what are you talking about

the game is a metaohor for being an abuse survivor

I'm talking about oWoD changeling

Exactly. A lot of the Charging and Taboo rules for UA2 were kind of about forcing players to ruin their characters lives and had a tendency to draw them AWAY from the action. Like a Videomancer would literally have to run across town at the same time every week, possibly in the middle of a mission, to watch his show or lose everything.

UA3 adepts are more about forcing the players as a group to cope with eccentricities. It's comparatively easy to keep taboo in UA3, but that only makes it more tempting to ALWAYS be charging. Which for stuff like the Fulminatuge can be a problem for others.

How does meme magic fit into ua

I'd say yes; I personally find 2e's rules more intuitive than 3e, and it takes next to no effort to update the 2e setting to the modern day.

then why did you mention Promethean, a CofD game

In Unknown Armies, reality itself is a meme.

>tfw bracing for Veeky Forums to become fucking insufferable when the books come out and the Naked Goddess' cults shift towards transwomen (along with the Mystic Hermaphrodite becoming better and now the Sexual Rebis)

just let me have my queer occult horror

Because Promethean were in oWoD as well, they just didn't have their own gameline

At the very least we will NEVER become as bad as those WoD fuckers. Also Mystic Hermaphrodite isn't in 3rd edition.

But that's not true?

They're in one of the supplemental books, a backer pledged to be the model for the art for it.

>the Naked Goddess' cults shift towards transwomen
Huh? The only hint of that in the book is the line 'all avatars of the Naked Goddess present as women'.

Well, in that case here's to hoping we don't have to see that backer's dick.

They were in Mage: The Ascension as a construct that could be made.

Isn't most of the cut 2e stuff coming back in Mine?

Book 3 details them in full and talks about how the Sect has splintered three ways: the old pornomancers, a cult of anarchists, and then a bunch of Sexual Rebis avatars led by a transwoman.

Please read the book.

Moreover Avatars of the Naked Goddess aren't even about getting ritually sex'd, it's about being unattainable.

I'm not sure that outside of the original Cult there's room in UA for sex adepts. The reason the Cult worked is that the paradox that powered them was super strong, but without that I'm not what kind of paradox could be absurd enough to build charges off of.

>a bunch of Sexual Rebis avatars led by a transwoman.

>A third, the smallest, consists of avatars or those claiming that status for the Goddess herself. They seem utterly incapable of expressing a clear ethos or goal, leading to speculation that mystery may be the Naked Goddess’ entire reason to exist.

Nothing there about Sexual Rebis or transwomen.

>One of the Federal agents, a man named Travis Becker, quietly renounced his previous life. Not just his job in law enforcement, either. He realized in that moment that he'd never been comfortable who he was and it was time to accept and embrace who he'd been all along. He quietly confessed, and those around him nodded and dreamily accepted Travis as Mira. Mira wondered about the Goddess, suggesting that seeking out Her mortal life would be fruitless, for flesh had only been her
cocoon.

>Though she isn't yet aware of it, Mira has become an avatar of the Naked Goddess. This is complicated in a number of ways, but in particular because no one can be sure what the archetype wants or represents.

I was wrong about the Sexual Rebis, but Mira leads a third of the Sect and is trans.

No wonder I couldn't find it. That bit's in book 2.

Sorry for citing it wrong.

I personally can't wait for how queer 3e seems to be.

And here I am wondering if Sex Ghost is a thing that will be in the full book or just a joke entry.

I trust Stolze not to handle it in a shitty 'look how progressive we are' way.

Stolze can be heavy-handed sometimes (the cannibal oligarchs come to mind), but when it counts he usually keeps it in check. We'll know for sure when it comes out, but everything so far has been fine.

I've never understood this complaint. It largely seems to come from "the only good representation is invisible representation" shitters.

Read some of the fiction pieces in book 1, my guy. Sex Ghost is here, and I have no idea what it's going to be. Any thoughts from the board at large?

Well, Unknown Armies has managed to steer clear of politics pretty well despite the co-creator of it having very strong political views. Poking the bear with either side of an issue does nothing productive when you're just trying to play a game.

My money is on _____________________sex ghost.

It comes from people like Paizo, who confuse gender identity with actual characterisation, thus making it feel like they're only concerned with checking the diversity boxes.

all I know is, if you want to fight off a ghost, you want a loaf of bread shaped like a dick.

No seriously, it's somewhere in the third book that bread shaped like fertility symbols (dicks) is super effective against undead of all kinds

>original game has an Archetype about being trans/genderqueer
>notable NPC is intersex
>major faction is about sex-positive women

>"steer pretty clear of politics"

As long as the authors opinion isn't written in to the book you can steer clear of it while having controversial things in your book. Also, the mystic hermaphrodite wasn't about being trans it was about swinging wildly between different views with the two sets of genitals just being a side note.

And the idiot who wrote Mage20 for cWoD, who did things like change the Sons of Ether to the Society of Ether because they'd 'cast off their sexist roots' or something.

That's pretty normal as far as UA's magick goes. I like the tea paintings, and might throw in a cabal of hipster snobs who're trying to create properly new rituals using tea, since rituals are sufficiently retro for them to appreciate as a magickal art. Maybe I'll have one be an Adept, who makes it their mission to bind the (not really) new adept magick into the old-style rituals.

I mean, you could be right. Guess we won't know until we get 3 conflicting stories about what they could be.

You have always mocked ze baguette, but now, in your time of need, you come crawling back to ze bakery.

Yes, because the Victorian elite were famous for their tolerant views on women. It's not like a faction rooted in one of the most gendered societies in history would ever have issues with sexism, oh no.

If you're going to bitch, at least bitch about things that make sense.

>French ghostbusting chef
I am not afraid of ze ghosts. I'd play that character, or watch a movie about them. It'd probably be better than the reboot.

Look out Pierre, the spirit, she is coming to kill us!

Jacque, but I thought the spirit was dealt with, no?

My, how you say, penis was not firm enough to hit the ghost!

honhonhonhonhonhonhon
honhonhonhonhonhonhon

If only I'd had enough money to get one of the reward tiers that let me get my picture in the books. I would have loved to be 'that picture of the guy threatening a ghost with a baguette'.

Well, if you're going to do that to the Sons of Ether, why not do it to the Sisters of Hippolyta as well?

Because the core concepts of the Sisters it that they're a female-only group. The Etherites aren't "the Victorian sexism group," it's an aspect of their existence that they grapple with.

So we've worked out that it sounds like a good idea, and a natural evolution of the society. But why then does /wodg/ think M20's full of the author inserting his politics, and use the SoE revision as an example of that? It's because of the delivery, which shows that it's not the content that controls whether or not people deride you as a virtue-signaller and panderer, but how you present that content.

I was going to write something comparing a name-change handled sensibly to one handled in a really obviously author-insert-politics way, but realised I have no idea how to write the latter.

Keep your WoD complaints in your general, you two.

The problem is, there's not much to do in UA threads except rumors and shitflinging about other games. The formatted version is coming out within 24 hours (hopefully), so that should provide something worth discussing. Bumping until then.

Sounds like they blended the mechanics of UA and Dirty World/Better Angels, which sounds pretty good really.

More so the mechanics of Unknown Armies and Over The Edge

That user is talking about the Sanity Meters being used as sliding scales between two stats, which is the core mechanic in A Dirty World and Better Angels.

>tfw you'll never play Better Angels

I am dumb

Saint Gulik is upset and worried about being replaced.

So rules exist for slenderman now

>real world-based setting
>includes types of people that exist in the real world

>FUCKING BULLSHIT POLITICAL MESSAGING

Do you also worry that kids will become killers from playing violent video games?

Makes sense to me. All of Stolze's projects are cross-pollinated with each other anyway. A Dirty World especially feels like it has the same DNA as UA3.

That archetype was also not about being "trans/genderqueer", it was about being a living contradiction, with the powers based on gender just as a side note. You could always be a Mystic Hermaphrodite and still be as straight as an arrow with no sense of body dysphoria.

>DNA
Don't remind me of the thing, double 3s.

>BREATHTAKING Design Strategy
It certainly is.

user, I'm a transwoman IRL. I support Stolze's politics, but whoever was saying they don't show in his works was an idiot.

Reign's (pretty rad) gender politics is testament enough to that.

>Unknown armies thread

Holy shit I didn't think Veeky Forums even knew this game existed. Fuck yeah postmodern magick.

So me and my homies are playing an Unknown game set in New Orleans. I've invested 75% of my starting identities into an identity called "Good Luck Charm," sort of a voodoo gift from an adorable niece that has a specific protection against harmful magic. So far I haven't had to roll it once. All the other characters don't know I have it and just think my character is a normie.

Did I fuck up by banking on this identity? Does specific protection from harmful magic in Unknown Armies merit the shittiness of my other, low-percentage identities? I dunno Veeky Forums I think I fucked up. On the other hand it would be fantastic if someone tries to lay serious juju on me and my character shrugs it off because fuck your magick.

>mfw I'm playing magickal Luke Cage and somehow no one has shot me with spells
>in an Unknown game
>where there is magick in EVERYthing

just kill me famalamadingdong

I feel like it'd be almost impossible to play an entropomancer for more than a few sessions. I mean every adept is self destructive as fuck but they seem particularly likely to have something terrible happen (There's always that at least 1/10 chance gaining that significant charge kills you)

I mean I suppose that's the point to playing one, it just seems odd