Unknown Armies Thread

I loathe the double/triple column layout and yes, the art is generally bad.

Strange how a game from the mid-90s can have better graphic design that one in 2017.

Mostly agree with your assessment. Tying all your basic stats to the Madness Meters is thematically fascinating, but something I've found works way better on paper than in practice. It's like the system tries to simultaneously be more and less "mechanical", and it doesn't quite fully pull it off.

I'm not sure I'm in favor of what they did to the Comte de Saint Germaine. I'm all in favor of shaking up the metaplot, but it always makes me roll my eyes when cosmic cycles that have been in place since literally forever get broken just in time for whatever the current time is. Aren't we just that special?

The Adept Schools in the 3rd edition core book leave a lot to be desired. Many are pretty situational (not many ways to use an Agrimancer or Viamancer in your typical UA game taking place in just one city), others feel comparatively bland, and whatever they called TvTropesMancy is just really, really cringey. I wish they'd have at least kept some of the most iconic UA Schools, like Plutomancy and Entropomancy, if only to give people that kind of idea of what the setting is like. Though I suppose you could argue that this is a game very much about the current zeitgeist, and today's collective unconscious isn't what it was back in the 1990's. And they did put a few of them in the first supplement, for what it's worth. The Avatars are mostly equally boring, but at least they had the good mind to bring back some of the classics. Worse comes to worst, you can always play the Fool.

Wish there was a good starting adventure, or even a couple. Even if you never played Bill in Three Persons, it was an incredible read in terms of introducing you to the "mindset" of writing an Unknown Armies story.

Got fucked over at some point, but came back thanks to the mystical power of "being just a bunch of guys with a common goal." Now they're fragmented and in a holding pattern, but the basic idea and food-based charge transfer is still alive and well.

I like double-column, but hate triple-column and understand where you're coming from.

Also, it's because of how stark 2e's art was that it was good. There's a certain feeling to the rough black and white that the soft, photoshopped look can't really match.

For a single, brief, eternal moment in July of 1945, Julius Robert Oppenheimer became Prometheus. He gifted mankind fire from heaven, and lived out the rest of his days suffering for what he's done.

They're working on a bunch of sample adventures now, according to the KS updates. Have to wait and see if they still get the feeling right, though.

I like the Archetypes but agree completely about the Adepts. At least the rules are similar enough that you can do a straight port, and Fulminaturgy (at least, the order taboo variant) is neat.

Mechanically, my group didn't have any problems in play, but that's partially thanks to how well-made the character sheet is and how much information it's able to condense for the madness meters. Whoever they got to design that should've been their overall graphic designer.

Yeah, 3/3/03 had to have something important happen, but I would've preferred if it was left vague, less "Comte and Freak switched places" and more "the Comte and the Freak walked into an otherspace, and what came out was something different," with a few ideas for what that "different" could be to be used at the GM's discretion.

You know... this IS a pretty potent mythic archetype, all things considered. Prometheus gives mankind fire and is punished by Zeus. Maui gives us fire and loses his sisters. Raven grants us the sun and loses his beautiful white plumage. Lots of mythologies have a story that follows that pattern. They give humanity fire, or light, or the sun - something that symbolizes our potential for greatness or to overcome nature - but they suffer for it.

Nowadays, this is the archetype of Alfred Nobel and his dynamite, Einstein and Oppenheimer with the atom bombs, or Von Braun and his rockets. In a less dramatic sense, it's Marie Curie dying from exposure to the radiation she's discovered. It's the men who sacrificed or suffered eternal torment for the advancements they gave mankind.

What are the Channels of the Firebringer?

It's kind of a vague archetype for Unknown Armies, desu.

How do they get a Major Charge? Clinically die from the health complications resulting from a piss poor diet, yet being revived via purely mundane medical means?

Bumpty

I cant wait for someone to start eating and a few days later hear you talked about in a 'that guy' thread.

This is actually livable and 'healthy' on the short term though the professor themselves are ambivilant about the results, it's hard to say what the long term nutritional effects would be.

But yes, you could survive and not even necessarily be fat off of fast food.

cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html

>For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate one of these sugary cakelets every three hours, instead of meals. >To add variety in his steady stream of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Haub munched on Doritos chips, sugary cereals and Oreos, too.
>His premise: That in weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most -- not the nutritional value of the food.
>The premise held up: On his "convenience store diet," he shed 27 pounds in two months.
>For a class project, Haub limited himself to less than 1,800 calories a day. A man of Haub's pre-dieting size usually consumes about 2,600 calories daily. So he followed a basic principle of weight loss: He consumed significantly fewer calories than he burned.
>His body mass index went from 28.8, considered overweight, to 24.9, which is normal. He now weighs 174 pounds.
>But you might expect other indicators of health would have suffered. Not so.
Haub's "bad" cholesterol, or LDL, dropped 20 percent and his "good" cholesterol, or HDL, increased by 20 percent. He reduced the level of triglycerides, which are a form of fat, by 39 percent.
>"That's where the head scratching comes," Haub said. "What does that mean? Does that mean I'm healthier? Or does it mean how we define health from a biology standpoint, that we're missing something?"

Another backer here. I ran a full campaign and played in one or two one-shots with 3rd edition and I can only somewhat agree with you three.

I'll start with the cons, listed in order of importance:

-The default skill system being tied into your madness meters makes sense on paper, but when playing it turns into a shitshow. There is very little reason to EVER pick identities to replace your positive skills unless you're in a long running campaign or your GM is an asshole that's peppering each session with tons of sanity checks. If your identity replaces a negative skill and you gain enough notches you still get the benefit of having notches so the only loss is in your positive skill which a high sanity check game likely wouldn't be using that much anyways.

-The layout on the books is so bad that I can barely figure out how character creation works from first glance. It doesn't help that I have to consult 2 different books in order to assemble a proper party. Looking up rules in general is such a chore. This was NEVER a problem with 2e.

-With Adepts moving closer to being like Avatars, and more low risk magic options available, Avatars are pointless as options. You could homebrew Avatars out of existence and it would barely change any Street or even Global level game.

-The expansion content is all lame except for the new Paragon Places and the trash/clean magic
--One of the expansions is dedicated entirely to telling you things that you might want to check out for inspiration. It's helpful, but do recommendations really deserve their own entire book?

-GNOMON was moved to book 2 for no reason. Book 1 was meant for players so if you went out and physically bought a copy you'd have to look online to get GNOMON

-The art is fucking awful, and the music is locked off to higher tier pledges for no reason and never mentioned in official updates so I had to actively search for it to know it still exists

But on to the positives (and here's where I disagree with the other two):

-The new identity system is fantastic once you get used to it: great for new players as they only need to think about 3-4 bits of fluff to tie into the crunch of their characters, great for GMs because you no longer have to remember all your fiddly homebrew rules like you did with skills, and great for experienced players due to how many options are meaningful when picking your aspects.

-Adepts charge gathering mechanics have been standardized so that it's easier to reliably get and maintain charges. Gone are any of the adept schools that require you to stay in one spot like Bibliomancers, and gone are the schools where gaining charges is just doing something stupid and rolling the dice like Entropomancers. The added mobility and reliability makes playing an adept way more fun.

-I have some gripes about some adept taboos being incredibly stupid (like Vestimancy's taboo being so incredibly specific you'd have to engineer situations for it to ever come up), but for the most part the new taboos and charges all tend to play off of each other pretty well unlike in 2nd edition. A Sociomancer can't be alone so when you split the party the Sociomancer has to go with someone. Viaturges can't be a passenger which lends itself to interesting logistical problem. Fulminaturges can't use a gun to actually harm you (that alternative taboo is stupid and defeats the entire fun behind the school), so someone else has to be with one if shit hits the fan. Agrimancers have to rely on others to do their work for them in case the weather turns.

-Gutter Magick is cool

-I love the Paradigm Place concept in one of the expansion books, basically buildings can be Avatars now and there's a list of Avatar schools for buildings.

-Book 3 being filled with rumors is super neat.

-Some of the new lore is pretty neat like The Milk and The New Inquisition going full cult.

Overall while I'd normally say stick with 2nd edition, with the Tynes site dead you might as well play 3rd edition.

Unknown Armies has kind of lost its appeal to me with the new edition. I'm looking forward to the new version of Over The Edge to see the Identity system get refined more than I am anything Unknown Armies related in the future.

Wasn't the new version of Over the Edge just the same one with a fancier cover?

The new version isn't out yet.

twitter.com/atlasgames/status/885976339722981376
twitter.com/atlasgames/status/871816577456517120

Is the Kickstarter out?

Not yet.

Another backer here. I've said this before about the art change from 2e to 3e; 2e art made it look like a game about Unknown Armies characters, 3e art makes it look like a game about Unknown Armies players.

My biggest gripe by far is that, according to the new Statosphere website, all of the art for future UA publications (player made content included) will be photo art. I understand wanting to maintain a visual aesthetic for branding purposes but I'd feel so much better about the UA team if they'd just admit that the photo thing was a huge misstep and open the floor to other mediums. I refuse to believe anybody actually thinks the art in 3e looks good.

I agree with all of this. My current plan is to cherry pick the stuff from 3e that works, backport it, and stick with 2e.

>They're working on a bunch of sample adventures now, according to the KS updates
They sent out seven of them for playtesting a while ago, I don't know if there's more than that in the works. I ran one of them and read through them all, they range from good to dangerously closer in tone to Shadowrun than UA. One of them is extremely similar to the Night Shift setting we came up with here a while ago.

Wait, what? I was a high level backer and I never got anything. What gives?

I believe you had to sign up for it. I'm only a Charger and I got them.

I think you had to opt in to it at some point. I'm pretty sure it was in an update email from the KS but this was several months ago so I don't really remember.

>The music
I frequently forget I even signed up for that reward. It's not a great album, it sounds like pretty much any other generic action soundtrack. I've been sticking to Portishead and ambient tracks for my UA soundtrack needs.

Man, every post 3e UA thread has been such a bummer. The shit we were coming up with back when it was all speculation was better than most of what ended up in the books.

I figured the music would be bland anyways. The guy they got to do it had the least impressive portfolio imaginable.

God it sucks that the new UA has been so lackluster in almost every aspect. I can't even call it a cynical cash grab, they just really seemed to have missed the mark.

UA and Delta Green were the only two rpg releases I was really looking forward to, I guess I can't really say I'm surprised that one of them didn't end up living up to the hype.

Just keep living in the pre-3e world, user. There's more hope there.

That's why I'm excited for the new Over The Edge, because at the very least we're going to see a refined version of the Identity system out of it. Unless the new version of WaRP decided to shit itself or doesn't go OGL for some reason, in which case I'm not trusting Atlas again with a Kickstarter.

Instead of more 3e disappointment, here's some content. It's not quite finished, I still want to flesh out the Mak Attax members and some stuff with the ending but I've been the only one looking at it for a while and want some second opinions.

Do we know anything about how it would run?

Nope. I'm only assuming they'll refine the Identity system because it's FROM Over The Edge to begin with.

Bumping thread for this concept. It's fucking amazing.

I've been running a game (now on hold as I'm abroad) and I've been having a grand old time. The players are trying to take down a (mostly) mundane human trafficking ring with their spooky powers, but I'm introducing a few more straight weirdos as time goes on.
My only gripe with the system is character creation is a hassle, neat in concept and the end result looks pretty, but I ended up with a bulky piece of cardboard that I eventually had to throw out.
Art sucks, but rules are fun.

What is better for starting out, 2e because it's more established or 3e because it's new?
I've been interested for a while now after randomly comming across UA threads.

I'm inclined to say 2e because it's more comprehensible and has got more material going for it, but here's the thing: UA, by its nature, is completely inseparable from current events, culture, and fads. Moreso than perhaps any other RPG, it is a game about the current zeitgeist, meaning each book is only good for so long before becoming outdated and thus losing much of its postmodern charm. If you must use the 2nd edition, your options are essentially to either run it as a "historical" game set in the early 2000's (potentially losing some impact), or updating the setting and possibly mechanics to fit the current day, with or without help from the third edition.

Mostly what said, but I think 2e presents a much more interesting setting than 3e and I'd recommend it to a new player any day of the week. 2e might not be as postmodern as it used to be but it's still way cooler that 3e.

This bit from the first few pages of the UA 2e book sells the game better than anything in the newer books imo. 3e is has some cool bits but nothing about it has grabbed by interest like even the worst parts of 2e.

By my understanding, "healthy" just means you're getting adequate, but not excess, calories, protein, vitamins, and dietary minerals. So, provided you supplement your junk food with a multivitamin and drink milk or something you should be good to go. You don't even need the multivitamin if it's just a temporary diet, because it seems to take a long time for actual damage to happen once your diet is deficient.

The reason junk food can safely be considered unhealthy is that, by design, it's easy to go over the healthy range of calories, and it only has a few of the vitamin/mineral spread.

Where this guy was getting his protein, I dunno, but it could well be that there's more in the particular kinds of food he ate than I know of.

This is a good start but I think it needs to get a little more specific, it seems like it would end up being too similar to The Martyr as it is.