Unknown Armies

Is this game any good?
Has any one ever played it?
Got a good story you could share?

Bumpity. I also am interested, because handbook is actually interested but I don't really see a comepelling plot that could be made out of this.

It's extremely good, one of my favorite games out there, but it is kind of difficult to get a hang of. The rules are simple but the setting draws from a lot of concepts that are gonna be almost entirely unfamiliar to you unless you're a fan of obscure occult trivia and new age mysticism. It's a game that takes a whole lot of creativity both to play and run properly but it's such a cool and weird game that reading the books is entirely worth your time.

Anybody have any thoughts on how the 3e books are shaping up? I've only skimmed through them so far but it looks like there's some interesting stuff in store.

Oh well, not like I'm letting the annual UA thread die like this.

Storytime!!

>be gm for an UA campaign
>set in Rome, present day
>all characters are completely normal people, except one which is a catholic exorcist
>inquisitor is here to investigate an homicide, probable demonic involvement
>girl was found in one of rome's many Villa's (walled parcs, ex-noble residences), devoured to the bone, marrown gnawed away etc.
>victim was a gispy, police though she was killed and then the body eaten by rats
>second player, made a college art student, specialized in medieval art
>third player was a pathologist

>Scene 1
>same villa in which the murder occured
>player2 (college student) is running in the villa (quite common activity)
>enters one of the various thickets
>pauses a bit, due to heat, sees a white rat standing on a log
>comes closer
>sees another rat
>then another
>then another
>around a hundred rats are enchroaching her
>starts to get jittery
>walks away
>rats move with her. Notices rats are keeping the circle around her, moving backwards. Very light unnatural check, fails
>hellnope.jpg
>runs away, rats chase her, bite her on the anckles various times
>exits the thicket, smashes into the priest
>end scene 1

It's a great game, my players have alittle bit of a hard time wrapping their head around global or higher games, so usually we begin with street level and then I slowly go turning up the notches of the abstract concepts of the setting. Only really playeed it once, and it was kinda underwhelming, the GM only read the first part of the book (so street level) but said it was OK for me to make an adept. the thing with the GM was that he is used to running CoC games, so his horror has a really clear point, even if the horrible thing is some non euclidian monster. He didn't get much of YOU DID IT so this was a bit of a problem.

It's amazing, the first rpg about the occult that actually takes it seriously. The idea of "postmodern magic" practically writes stories by itself, it's a game where you can shamelessly rip off popular culture and have it makes sense in the games own reality.

>Scene 2
>anatomopathologist working
>middle aged guy found dead in his apartment, half decomposed so no readily evident cause of death
>no family, single, sewer worker
>friends reported he had taken some days off due to persisten cough
>autopsy time!
>char is pretty densensitivized to corpses, so no check
>patient has some bite marks from rats, no other sign of violence
>gangrene in the extremities
>swolled and necrotic lymph nodes
>advanced decomposition even though the body has been dead for not so long
>evidence of lungs compromision
>hellno.jpg
>get blood, lymph and tissue sample to process
>end scene 2

>Scene 3
>priest goes to gypsy camp
>people are extremely suspicious and downright aggressive
>until they learn he is a priest
>modd changes compeltely, they beg for his help
>something stalking the camp
>two other people have gone missing
>dogs and other pets have been found dismembered and half devoured
>first victim was the camp's matriarch, which was also reputed to be a witch
>second victim was a child, disappeared near the Tevere (rome's river). Not actually confirmed as a victim, he just disappeared
>priest investigates the matriarch's shack, takes some old books

>Scene 4
>some days after the initial scenes
>college student is sleeping, bit of a fever
>dreams of a white rat, following it to the river
>dream continues with her entering the sewers
>she reaches an underground cathedral, half flooded. Various wall paintings she half-remembers having already seen.
>glimpses something. Big, tailed, red eyes, maybe humanoid. Checks unnatural, fails, wakes up screaming
>she hears rats chittering in the walls
>runs to the bathroom, takes a shower
>notices a big, purplish blisters on her thight
>end scene 4

>scene 5
>anathomopathologist is examining lab results, it's late evening
>yersinia pestis
>the motherfucking plague
>in the sewers
>notifies authorities, recommends getting plague serum just in case
>hears noises from the obitorium
>comes from the sealed compartment of the sewer worker. Spoopy check, but he's desensitized
>opens it
>rats. Hundreds. Gets swarmed by a tide of vermins as they escape. Checks, fails and starts maniacally stomping them
>suddenly no more rats. No traces of them, but the body was picked clean.
>doctor is still extremely jittery
>nurse comes pratically running, saying that they have had a girl rushed in with plague-like symptoms
>end scene 5

>scene 6
>priest examines books
>finds out that the matriach's ancestors somehow sealed with a ritual an old plague demon, underneat Rome.
>throughout the ages, the seal has always held, but periodically gets weaker
>in the last century, the ritual effectiveness has been decreasing steadily
>this led the matriarch to experiment more unhortodox methods to keep the demon in check
>as a result, the ritual still keeps it confined, but he can roam in the bodies of the infected, including plagued rats
>the demon has steadily learned how to manipulate the infection, ends up managing to create a long-term, chronic version that infects rats, and goes on to create a vessel, a white rat.
>this leads to an escalation between the demon and the gypsy witch
>End scene 6

After this the campaign sadly stopped, but the continuation would have had a delirious conversation between the college girl and the inquisitor, the college girl trapped in a demonic dreamscape underneat rome, the inquisitor diving into the sewers to confront the demon (which would have been played by the girl and the inquisitor acting together to solve obstacles), the doctor finding another entrance to the sewer in the basement of the hospital, and a climatic battle in which they would have been given the choice between unleashing the demon, killing it by driving it into the college girl (killing her in the process), or driving it into the boy (which was still alive and was being prepared as a living vessel), transforming the boy into a walking containmen ritual

I'm about to be running a game of 3e. We're doing the first session/corkboard shit tomorrow, hopefully.

Personally, I like 3e fluff-wise, and crunch-wise my only issue is that a lot of older stuff can't be translated without some small amounts of homebrew.

I'm also a little sad about the Comte, since it means I can't shove Bill in Three Persons, or any of the other adventures on that line, into my game, unless I replace the Comte with Indrick, but that's a very screwy situation

My players are, so far, an Epideromancer, a ex-circus performer Personamancer, and 2 police detectives.

Anybody got their hands on Book Four: Expose yet?

Very cool user. Were you running this as a series of solo sessions or what? Did the PCs ever meet each other or was that gonna happen some time later?

A couple of years ago I clicked on Veeky Forums to find out what the hell a "traditional game" is supposed to be and stumbled upon an Unknown Armies thread that completely captivated me, I spent the entire night reading the thread and trying to make a sense of what the nonsense is everyone is talking about all while being immensely entertained.

It's what got me into the hobby and I will always remember it fondly, too bad you can't find a group for it in the bumfuck part of germany I live in.

If you don't mind playing online try the game finder threads on here. Chances you'll get a full campaign or long running group out of it are slim but I had a pretty good string of one shots over IRC with a group I found on Veeky Forums

In fact, I'll just throw my email out there if anybody in the thread wants to try to get a group going. I'm limited to text chat since any audio or video stuff like Skype kills my shitbox laptop. I'm available pretty much all day Friday-Sunday and nights PST the rest of the week.

It's funny that you say that, because Unknown Armies has enough of a dedicated German following to get its own German translation that even includes extra rules for firearm restrictions.

Is your timezone CEST?

No, PST.

Ah hang on I know who you are. I'll send you an email.

Alright, sent.

The german translation also has pretty great all new original artwork and I'm pretty sure they localized some other aspects too.

I wonder if the translators will do something similar for 3e once it's fully released.

Curious, what are some recommended readings to get the most out of UA?

It sincerely was a trial to see if it worked as a system and as mood.

We had little "mini-sessions", average duration 30-45 minutes. They were usually fillers when our normal game was starting late or ended early.

They met, but only tangentially. It was run in such a way that 2 pg would never need extensive interaction with each other

Tim Powers is an obvious one, a lot of UA draws heavily from his books. Last Call, which I haven't finished yet but is a very fun read so far, is an interesting take on an ascension battle between a group of Avatars.
Read about different types of divination to get inspiration for Adepts or gutter magick, Wikipedia is a good place to start.
There's an old website called chaosmatrixDOTorg which I assume is/was run by real life chaos magick practitioners but everything on there reads like it's straight out of the Occult Underground.
Delta Green's material on The Fate is a good example of a cabal that gets extremely powerful.
That's all I can think of off the top of my head but if you can get your hands on a copy of UA3e's newest work in progress book "Expose" it is filled with examples of movies and books that are workable as inspiration for UA games.

Forgot to mention the most important thing you can do is familiarize yourself with modern culture. So much of UA's cosmic level stuff is rooted in what is important to humanity right now. Look at what people obsess over, who they idolize, why they do it and you'll find the most powerful Archetypes of today.

You also used to be able to use the John Tynes site which would collect all sorts of real life weird shit for use in Unknown Armies games on top of all the homebrew stuff, but that's been dead for months now.

Everything is still on there I think, you just can't submit anything. The 3e Kickstarter mentioned some kind of new site in the works for submitting UA material, maybe that's why it's down.

Think Greg plans on re-making more or less the same thing on his own site, instead of making people rely on John's old thing

Our corkboard.
The Objective is to solve a murder, and nothing else was defined, because Arthur and Victor's players decided they wanted the murder to be their Trigger Event, and nobody added anybody to explicitly be the murderer or victim.

I want to play an adept of some kind in the most recent edition. My character is going to be a Discordian, but have more of a dry, understated sense of humor and be entirely earnest about the fact that he genuinely worships Eris.

What type of -mancer should I be?

Entropomancer, obviously
Ask your GM if you can use a school from 2e, or else try and homebrew up a more modern version of Entropomancy, or something like that

Actually, no, you can't even read what's on there anymore.

Bummer. Hopefully that means Greg's site is almost done.