Welcome to Unknown Armies, the game where magic's made up and humanity does matter. That's right, humanity really matters, just like which door leads to the STI or swingers convention.
>Book 1 mega.nz
>Book 2 mega.nz
>Book 3
mega.nz
>Musick 1
mega.nz
>Musick 2
mega.nz
>Musick 3
mega.nz
Today's question is: What or whom do you think caused the 03/03/03 event? We know the Comte and the Freak met up in the Bon Ton Ton and swapped places, but why?
And remember, all scorpions are the same scorpion!
MOTHERFUCKING BOOK 4
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
THEY ADDED MY FAVORITE FAN SCHOOL AND MADE IT CANON
dropbox.com
I almost forgot the link to the manuscript! I really dig the Tamer and Shaman, because animal companions are my jam, but the Smoking Adept School is pretty rad as well! Apart from, you know, the cancer.
I'm pissed off that they made the Significant charge so boring though. The Carcinomancy fan school had a much more interesting Significant charge that let you take one whenever you wanted, at the cost of permanently raising your addiction score which basically turns into a stress check whenever you see a smoke.
Please explain Unknown Armies to me.
All I really know is that Greg Stolze is RPGesus and that I should convert to Stolzism. But all the "the true purpose of aglets is sinister" memery is kind of a turn off when I prefer more down to earth urban fantasy, while Unknown Armies seems more... out there. It also kind of seems like Mage: the Ascension but weirder.
Is it filled with philosophies on the nature of violence? I hear UA handles violence and trauma well.
Do I need all three of those books to play?
Unknown Armies, at its core, is really all about taking mundane things and making them supernatural while also mixing in symbolism, often times adding in an unexpected spin to make things fresh.
It also thrives on the idea of "what you're expecting will happen is probably not going to be how it works", but without being convoluted.
For example:
Gun mages in Unknown Armies are not allowed to shoot people.
Anarchist Mages that thrive off of destroying communities need the communities to exist to gain power in the first place.
Trucker Wizards are all about freedom and wanderlust in every aspect of their being, but for all they talk about freedom, in order to gain power they have to shackle themselves to a job that always has a destination that they need to go to.
Followers of GNOMON feel a deep connection to each other, but in order to do that have to isolate themselves from society.
Unknown Armies' central concept is that humanity is responsible, ultimately, for everything. By the collective unconsciousness, we shape reality. Everyone has free will, so you can't be forced to do anything, but the weight of the symbols that humanity as a whole recognizes have power. Knowing they have power lets you mess with them.
To play, you'll need Book 1 and Book 2. Book 1 has all the main rules, while Book 2 has all the GM stuff. Character and setting creation is a group effort between players and GM, so you'll need at least that section. Book 3 is just misc weirdness to put in the game.
Book 1 explains UA better than I probably could, since it's written by Stolze himself.
I'm currently running a MtAw and it's really making me pine for UA. I understand the mythology of Mage pretty well, but my players barely have a handle on it. UA is a lot easy to understand, I think. "Act like a Warrior and you'll be more warrior-like. Get really obsessed with cars and you'll start having powers over cars". I'm doing my best to suppress my impulse to cancel the whole thing and move to the greener pastures.
The aglet memery comes from the various entertaining rumors that were in UA2, full of weird stuff.
Hey chimplords who backed the Kickstarter
Are the PDFs in BackerKit right now the final PDFs or is that coming soon/later?
Books 1-3 are the pre-press versions which have messed up bookmarks, but are final in terms of artwork.
Book 4 is just a bunch of unedited text at this point.
If you want something 100% done I suggest waiting.
>Gun mages in Unknown Armies are not allowed to shoot people.
How does that even work?
>Anarchism as chaos as opposed to syndicalist democracy
Reeeeee
That really does sound like Ascension to me, which I have to say I found profoundly uninteresting. I mean, I like Awakening's way of handling things, where symbols have power and all that, but it's not this wacky thing where belief shapes reality.
>I'm doing my best to suppress my impulse to cancel the whole thing and move to the greener pastures.
If your players aren't having fun (which I assume, when you say they don't have a handle on it) and you're not having fun...
>Anarchism as chaos as opposed to syndicalist democracy
It's really not what you think. When I say Anarchist I am not saying somebody that believes a society without a state is good, I am saying someone that just wants to fuck with society and justifies it by calling themselves an anarchist. I'm talking about a school of magic that is almost quite literally that image of those people going "MORALITY IS FOR FAGS EVERYONE SHOULD BE DICKS" and they're just stabbing each other in the back in a chain. I suppose a more correct term would be Punk magic.
They gain power by fucking with people.
>Gun mages in Unknown Armies are not allowed to shoot people.
>How does that even work?
The gun is a deterrent to those that would do you harm. It's the spines on a porcupine, or the colorful pattern of a poisonous frog. You don't step on a porcupine, and you don't eat the colorful frog, because you know not to. If a gun has to be fired it breaks the symbolic power gained through deterrence. Fulminaturgy (gun magic) is all about using spells based on the relationship between the gun as an icon and the world, with only one spell actually based on causing direct harm (which also makes you lose power if you use it because that also breaks deterrence).
"Fulminaturgy is
concerned with the relationship of the individual
to society. Guns are very often found on the
hips and in the hands of civilization’s anointed
defenders — cops and soldiers. They’re also a
very fast path to being rejected by the commu-
nity. The reason the debates about open carry
and gun control aren’t just tranquil discussions
about regulating a machine, is that a gun is a
lever that changes how society relates to you,
and how you relate to it. So fulminaturges
have power over perceptions of social position"
-From the book
>When I say Anarchist I am not saying somebody that believes a society without a state is good, I am saying someone that just wants to fuck with society and justifies it by calling themselves an anarchist.
I'm aware, but it's still a pet peeve.
No, I still don't think, you understand. The Motumancers (asshole punk mages) are not at war with a singular entity. They are at war with literally the entirety of humanity outside of their individual self and will scream "WAKE UP SHEEPLE" because it gets a reaction, and reactions give them power.
Motumancers are not together fighting for their views, because working together would go against their way of gaining power.
Motumancers do not represent chaos, humanity itself is already chaos. Motumancers represent EXTREME individuality coupled with constant aggression to rebel against a system that does not exist.
No, I get it. But that kind of "Anarchy is complete Chaotic Random chaos" is not what anarchy as a political philosophy is, and it being associated with Anarchism is a pet peeve. Anarchy isn't about smashing everything just to smash, it's about dismantling abusive and exploitative socioeconomic systems in favour of communal driven socialist systems, generally with direct democracy.
That's why it's a pet peeve. I don't like Anarchy being associated solely with... well, anarchy.
But you yourself are labeling anarchy as a whole into a specific box that doesn't even apply to the entire definition. You're only describing marxist-anarchist belief. You're not even taking into account the various other groups that are under the label of anarchy like anarcho-primitivism, anarcho-capitalism, geoanarchism, egoist-anarchism, and various other beliefs that are not your own but still share the label.
I've played a short street-level campaign in UA once and absolutely loved it! It was such a roller-coaster and definitely one of my favourite tabletop experiences. Campaign was about gonzo journalist and ambulance worker investigating strange accident with parade balloon at Chicago, and through the course of it we dealt with Devil of Blues, project Monarch, Elmo and carjacking of school bus full of kids.
It's amazing how this setting twists mundane things into something so captivating. I want to play it again, but it's hard to find players that will be interested in this system.
>Still want to make a katathlipsurgist in this game some day
I'll have to get around to actually playing it.
>katathlipsurge lamenting about not being able to enjoy something
I'm on to you, you little shit.
Anarcho-Capitalism is *not* Anarchism.
theanarchistlibrary.org
And it's not so much that I'm against calling the firebrands Anarchists. They are. Wearing a bandana over your face and throwing a molotov is anarchism as well, but that's a means to an end. My problem is that pop culture and popular understanding associates that and ONLY that with Anarchism.
> My problem is that pop culture and popular understanding associates that and ONLY that with Anarchism.
You're getting angry about a school of magic literally made about pissing people off, it even has a lot of spells named after stale memes just to piss off people tired of seeing them. You realize you've fallen for the bait of the school itself, right?
Yes, yes, people who set out to be annoying annoyed me.
My frustration is more focused at the creators, though, in that they chose to call such a group anarchists (presumably, from the way you tell it; for all I know there's a long dissertation about how they're not actual anarchists)
They don't need to explain anything because there are anarchists that are actually like that. Individualist Anarchism, or even Anarcho-Primitivism when taken to an extreme can begin to resemble such it, and Punk culture often trends towards anarchist belief systems.
Your particular branch of anarchy which you are calling the one true anarchy does not represent the entirety of a loose term that just means not believing in the existence of a state.
Complaining is my main method of inducing negative emotions in others so I can get more power.
>Complaining is my main method of inducing negative emotions in others so I can get more power.
The Sleepers are going to beat your ass for this one, katathlipsurge, mark my words.
>there are anarchists that are actually like that
Yes, and what I am trying to explain to you is that I dislike the notion that "anarchy is chaos lolrandumb" is THE ONLY FORM OF ANARCHISM.
Magic schools do not represent their entire school of thought, they don't even form cohesive groups. Actual groups in Unknown Armies are never tied to a single school (except GNOMON).
...
I'm not that experienced with Unknown Armies but after reading the books I became quite intrigues with it.
But I still don't think I "get" those wacky rumors like the picture in , are they actually supposed to be plot hooks and the GM should figure out some answers for them should the players decide to investigate?
Or are they just there to be entertaining to hear (which they really are) and put the players into the right mindset of just how weird the universe is once you see past the surface?
They're both.
>>etc
fuck off to Veeky Forums or something
Am I being dumb here or does the tobacco mage section not actually say how you get cancer other than by the cancer curse spell?
Haven't read it yet but are you wondering why there aren't any rules for how a player would naturally get cancer?
Wouldn't that take many years to develop even with heavy smokers and most campaigns probably don't take place over such a long time?
It's at the very beginning, roll 00 and you get cancer
They also have rules for having cancer, it develops and fucks your shit, but it can go into remission. Also gives you a major charge, which I think is cool.
I'd probably spend it on being able to turn into smoke without charges, if my GM allowed it.
I also thought it'd be cool to be able to oracle the future with cigarette ash for a few minors. Unless that was a spell I glanced over it and forgot.
>not wanting the ability to control people through their nicotine addictions
That also sounds cool! But turning into smoke should work most of the time, while not everyone smokes.
Though, having a ward against people who have smoked would be cool. Rank per cig they've smoked.
Oooo, maybe possessing people with a cigarette?