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Unknown Armies: You Did It!
Neaden
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
What will you risk to change the world?
Think of the weirdest, most dysfunctional people that you know. The guy obsessed with watching every single old star trek episode, the bum who spends his last dime getting drunk, the moron who never takes anything seriously, yet somehow never gets hurt, the weird drug addict who swears that things make so much more snese when you're high, the angsty goth kid who cuts herself to establish some kind of control. Now imagine magic was real and secret. Who do you think would be able to find it? The guy with the 9-5 job, loving wife, and 2.5 kids? Or them?
Unknown Armies is a roleplaying game of power and consequences, of symbolism and postmodern magic. Its about a world where a grindhouse porn star ascends to godhood. Where the power of stories can save you life, or kill you. Most importantly Unknown Armies is a game about people. You will not find any vampires or werewolves running around here, Cthulhu is not going to wake up and eat you, the world is going to end, but its going to be because of us, not some stupid monster. Unknown Armies is a game about obsession, and what you would do to fufill it.
But enough about the atmosphere, what about the system? Unknown Armies works on a percentile system. You have a stat (Body, Mind, Soul, and Speed) and a Skill (Anything you want). Depending on the situation, you might need to roll under the stat (Looking up the current president of Algeria because you're bored on a monday afternoon) or under the skill (Trying to shoot the bloody, screaming, toothless epideromancer who's running straight at you). There are bonuses and penalties for things like matched successus and failiures.
What really makes UA stand out though, is its magic system. There's no mana that comes back at a constant rate, or meorization of spells. An adept is simply someone who is obsessed enough that he or she can shape reality around that obsession. They get the power to do this from following their obsession. So a Bibliomancer (Book magic) could get a minor charge by going to the local B&N and picking up some Stephen King books, a significant charge from a signed, first edition printing of It, and a major charge for snagging one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They could then use these charges to retrive information thats written down in any book, to instantly know the entire contents of a book, or deprive someone of the gift of language.
You don't have to be crazy to get magickal powers though. There are also avatars, people who managed to channel an element of familiar archetypes, such as the mother, the warrior, or the pilgrim. By acting like this archetype, even unknowingly, the universe will help them out. If someone is extremely close to the collective idea of what a mother should be, then the universe is going to help her out.
But the best thing about Unknown Armies is that it is fun. The system is simple, you never need to roll more then two dice at a time, the book gives out bucketfulls of rumors to help you get stories started, and anything you want can be a skill, so long as its reasonable.
Tl;Dr Unknown Armies, a game where you play a freaky obsessed loser, but if you stay smart and are willing to sacrifice enough, you can change the world.
Think of the weirdest, most dysfunctional people that you know. The guy obsessed with watching every single old star trek episode, the bum who spends his last dime getting drunk, the moron who never takes anything seriously, yet somehow never gets hurt, the weird drug addict who swears that things make so much more snese when you're high, the angsty goth kid who cuts herself to establish some kind of control. Now imagine magic was real and secret. Who do you think would be able to find it? The guy with the 9-5 job, loving wife, and 2.5 kids? Or them?
Unknown Armies is a roleplaying game of power and consequences, of symbolism and postmodern magic. Its about a world where a grindhouse porn star ascends to godhood. Where the power of stories can save you life, or kill you. Most importantly Unknown Armies is a game about people. You will not find any vampires or werewolves running around here, Cthulhu is not going to wake up and eat you, the world is going to end, but its going to be because of us, not some stupid monster. Unknown Armies is a game about obsession, and what you would do to fufill it.
But enough about the atmosphere, what about the system? Unknown Armies works on a percentile system. You have a stat (Body, Mind, Soul, and Speed) and a Skill (Anything you want). Depending on the situation, you might need to roll under the stat (Looking up the current president of Algeria because you're bored on a monday afternoon) or under the skill (Trying to shoot the bloody, screaming, toothless epideromancer who's running straight at you). There are bonuses and penalties for things like matched successus and failiures.
What really makes UA stand out though, is its magic system. There's no mana that comes back at a constant rate, or meorization of spells. An adept is simply someone who is obsessed enough that he or she can shape reality around that obsession. They get the power to do this from following their obsession. So a Bibliomancer (Book magic) could get a minor charge by going to the local B&N and picking up some Stephen King books, a significant charge from a signed, first edition printing of It, and a major charge for snagging one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They could then use these charges to retrive information thats written down in any book, to instantly know the entire contents of a book, or deprive someone of the gift of language.
You don't have to be crazy to get magickal powers though. There are also avatars, people who managed to channel an element of familiar archetypes, such as the mother, the warrior, or the pilgrim. By acting like this archetype, even unknowingly, the universe will help them out. If someone is extremely close to the collective idea of what a mother should be, then the universe is going to help her out.
But the best thing about Unknown Armies is that it is fun. The system is simple, you never need to roll more then two dice at a time, the book gives out bucketfulls of rumors to help you get stories started, and anything you want can be a skill, so long as its reasonable.
Tl;Dr Unknown Armies, a game where you play a freaky obsessed loser, but if you stay smart and are willing to sacrifice enough, you can change the world.
Neaden on
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Posts
Thanks for the sales pitch, you shill.
Thank you, Rubacava!
He joined two years ago just to wait for the opportune moment.
Don't be stupid. He's just trying to encourage us to look at the game he enjoys.
Now that thats out of the way, website wise there is The official site which has some good stuff, a couple short stories if you want to see the writing style and also a PDF preview of some of the rules. Even better though is the fan run http://www.unknown-armies.com/ that has new schools of magic, archetypes, and plenty of rumors. If there is enough interest I suppose we could get a game on going, honestly though I've never played a P&P RPG online before, and they do seem to have a tendancy to break apart. I merely hoped to discuss one of my favourite P&P games, in the same vein as the Shadowrun and D&D threads.
God I hope not, if I ever seem like an UA adept I'll need to drasticaly reorder my life. Like I said in Unknown Armies you play a freaky obsessed loser. Now there are degrees of loseresness, but you're going to be weird, and you're going to be obsessed. Adepts are freaky and obsessed on a whole 'nother level. These are not normal people, they are not people that you would probobly hang around with. The largest occult conspiracy in the world is a bunch of minimum wage burger jocks at McDonalds, and they might be the most powerfull to when they actually manage to act with any unity.
The it is everything.