Unknown Armies thread

Sell me on Unknown Armies

>>50045981
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).

>>50045981
>>50046283
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.

>>50045981
>Sell me on
This is a really obnoxious way of asking people to tell you about something.

>>50046508
Thanks I like Onyx path's Mage alot this seems right up my alley.

>>50046808
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.

>>50047008
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.

>>50047258
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?

>>50050834
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?

>>50050878
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?

>>50050878
Me again >>50051073

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"

>>50050834

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.

>>50050998
In KS update 1.

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>>50045981
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.

>>50051073
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.

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>>50045981
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.

>>50053983
Best character sheet ever.

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

Anyone have a PDF?

>>50054047
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 >>50054282 if no one else does by then.

>>50054047
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.

>>50054282
>https://www.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

>>50054733
Holy fuck thats a good one

http://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.

>>50055000
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)

>>50045447
>Ms. Frizzle in her punk years.jpg

>>50055038
Is she the avatar of cool teachers

>>50055128
I always thought she was either the descendant or younger version of Baba Yaga

>>50055128
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.

>>50055185
>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

>>50054672
I heard something about fandom based magic, is that a thing?

>>50055908
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.

>>50055908
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.

>>50055998
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).

>>50055971
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.

>>50055998
>>50055908
The sociomancer's taboo is my favorite.

>>50047258
>Changelings are childish

what are you talking about

the game is a metaohor for being an abuse survivor

>>50056171
I'm talking about oWoD changeling

>>50056129
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.

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How does meme magic fit into ua

>>50050834

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.

>>50056220

then why did you mention Promethean, a CofD game

>>50057590
In Unknown Armies, reality itself is a meme.

>tfw bracing for /tg/ 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

>>50057681
Because Promethean were in oWoD as well, they just didn't have their own gameline

>>50057698
At the very least we will NEVER become as bad as those WoD fuckers. Also Mystic Hermaphrodite isn't in 3rd edition.

>>50057703

But that's not true?

>>50057732

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

>>50057698
>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'.

>>50057752
Well, in that case here's to hoping we don't have to see that backer's dick.

>>50057736
They were in Mage: The Ascension as a construct that could be made.

>>50057752
Isn't most of the cut 2e stuff coming back in Mine?

>>50057797

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.

>>50057797
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.

>>50057866
>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.

>>50057946
>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.

>>50058012
No wonder I couldn't find it. That bit's in book 2.

>>50058119

Sorry for citing it wrong.

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

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

>>50058133
I trust Stolze not to handle it in a shitty 'look how progressive we are' way.

>>50058174
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.

>>50058174

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

>>50058136
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?

>>50058238
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.

>>50058256

My money is on _____________________sex ghost.

>>50058238
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.

>>50058256
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

>>50058269
>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"

>>50058300
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.

>>50058238
>>50058283
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.

>>50058290
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.

>>50058273
I mean, you could be right. Guess we won't know until we get 3 conflicting stories about what they could be.

>>50058290
You have always mocked ze baguette, but now, in your time of need, you come crawling back to ze bakery.

>>50058350

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.

>>50058376
>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.

>>50058402
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

>>50058402
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'.

>>50058399
Well, if you're going to do that to the Sons of Ether, why not do it to the Sisters of Hippolyta as well?

>>50058528

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.

>>50058543
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.

>>50058649
>>50058543
>>50058528
>>50058350
Keep your WoD complaints in your general, you two.

>>50058667
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.

>>50052914
Sounds like they blended the mechanics of UA and Dirty World/Better Angels, which sounds pretty good really.

>>50059727
More so the mechanics of Unknown Armies and Over The Edge

>>50059768

That anon 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

>>50059794
I am dumb

>>50054733
Saint Gulik is upset and worried about being replaced.

So rules exist for slenderman now

>>50058300
>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?

>>50059794
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.

>>50060788
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.

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>>50061033
>DNA
Don't remind me of the thing, double 3s.

>>50061139
>BREATHTAKING Design Strategy
It certainly is.

>>50060788

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

>>50061401
Reign's (pretty rad) gender politics is testament enough to that.

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>Unknown armies thread

Holy shit I didn't think /tg/ 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 /tg/ 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

>>50061715

Why would I shoot you with magic when I could just shoot you with a fucking gun?

>>50061715
My gut is thinking yes. Trying super hard to keep bad things from happening to you while tanking your ability to do cool or useful things for the party is pretty much Playing UA Wrong.

I thought Identities were supposed to have broader uses; why would you have one that only does one thing?

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>>50061779

Because maybe it's just my DM, but magickal practitioners in Unknown seem to want to make a point of using their magic whenever possible. Particularly adepts. They have this notion that they've slaved and bled for the ability to mentally or psychically put the hurt on you, and they want to use that.

But yes, guns are a problem. That's why I have an officially sociopathic wannabe-vampire (whose obsession is slowly turning him into some kind of Parasite avatar, we don't even know) an ex-spec-ops guy and a resurrected Nazi entropomancer on my side.

Odds are one of them will take the bullet because they're more menacing than me

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>>50061860

>cont'd from >>50061867

Because my DM says so.

No, literally. I tried to explain how the Specific Protection from Magic option in the supernatural identities area had a variety of uses. He says no, it can only protect me from damage to my wounds caused from magic. Which I think is horseshit because the text says you can shrug off mental magic and other stuff as well.

Tl;dr I conceded that it only does one thing after much hemming and hawwing with my GM over it.

I just wanted to play someone immune to magic, I thought it would be a cool and kind of creepy thing to introduce into the setting. When everyone is chasing charges this guy is just... magicless. Magick bounces off him. How did it happen? Will he become a target for magickal experiments? Will he ever get his own rap album like he wants? That last one is less important.
>Criminal lowlife who weirdly is anti-magic somehow: the character concept

Sounds like your GM is worried that you're trying to game the system. It's a decent character concept but there needs to be a chink in his armor, since being untouchable by magic is kind of a problem for Ua. He probably should have told you to tone down the percentage is all.

>>50061439
I havent really done reign, how is it?

>>50061779

Because the Gun isn't just a gun. The Gun is a symbol. It's a symbol of power and self-sufficiency. A symbol of both danger and protection. It's a symbol of revolution and progress. Its mere presence can deter aggression, or incite it.

My point is, the Gun holds a special place in the human psyche. And in Unknown Armies, the the human psyche is the place to be. To a particular kind of gun-wizard (because I refuse to call them anything else), the idea of actually *shooting* the damn thing comes off as--well--a little crude. It sullies the impact of the Gun as a symbol by reducing it to the gun, a weapon.

Remember that scene in Army of Darkness where Ash introduces his boomstick? That's not a gun, that's a Gun. If only Ash had known what to do with it.

Does it make all that much sense? Well, no. If it did, you couldn't do magick with it.

>>50062896
You replied to the wrong guy, nobody is criticizing the Fulminaturges here

>>50062491

Not him, but great. I won't go into too much detail (I don't want to hijack a UA thread, because I love UA just as much), but Reign is in my opinion the best incarnation of the ORE yet.

>>50062946

Well shit, I guess I got all excited for nothing.

Is this a game where I could practice katathlipsurgy? From katathlipsi meaning depression and -urgy meaning to move or form.

>>50063423
Depression magic? Sure.

For starters:

What's a rule that those that practice your depression magic school must never break? Saying they must never be happy would be too easy, though.

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>>50046700
Stay salty my friend!

>>50063552
They may never alleviate another's depression. But moving their own off onto other people is a-okay.

>>50063678
How do they keep a steady supply of depression to move off into other people? Can they magically generate depression in themselves?

>>50063678
That's fucking strong.

Next up are its charges (basically the UA equivalent of spell slots), let's start with the Minor charge:

What action, or set of actions, does the katathlipsurge need to perform to gain more power?

Here are some examples:

The Vestimancer must create a new garment from scratch in order to gain a minor charge. Sew a shirt together, knit a scar, crochet a pair of socks, etc.

The Sociomancer must immerse oneself entirely in their own society for a few hours to gain a minor charge.

The Fulminaturges gain a minor charge by displaying their gun in public for at least two hours.

The Agrimancer gains a minor charge every time he/she slaughters a small animal he/she raised from its infancy. It can't be an insect.

>>50061867
>Because maybe it's just my DM, but magickal practitioners in Unknown seem to want to make a point of using their magic whenever possible.

>Use gun
>Gunpowder trails, bullet casings, eye witness accounts of me fleeing the scene as old ladies head to their windows to see what the fuck that noise was, serial number on gun, finger prints, and so much more

>Use magic
>Any evidence of the magic in the eyes of law enforcement or casual bystanders will be either dismissed and laughed at out of court, or outright be unnoticeable

Gee, why WOULD they use magic?

>>50064680
The counterpoint to that is if you use magic too publicly you'll get shanked to death by Sleepers.

>>50063803
Different anon but I figure the charging scheme would center around developing your own depression: destroying personal relationships, actively self-sabotaging, rejecting treatment. Then you shove your carefully cultivated sadness children out into other people like a sad-sack mother of monsters.

>>50064789
What about, instead, denying yourself simple solutions to problems that would have made you happier?

Got a headache?
No Advil.

Find five bucks on the ground?
It stays on the ground.

Somebody gets your order wrong at a restaurant?
That's your meal, now.

Have the money to eat out, and no food in the fridge?
Skip out on eating.

Somebody gets your name wrong?
Don't correct them.

>>50064885
Are these actually problems now? Am I a depression Mage without knowing?

>>50064964
The only difference between having magic and just having a regular miserable existence is that you have a choice with the former.

>>50064885
No reason not to have both. You could go for an oddball charging structure where you generate minors by ignoring solutions and then tamp them down by compounding the issues this generates til they merge into significant charges.

>>50065065
Yeah, that can work too.

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I rencently started to read everything by J.L.Borgès and DAMN this must be the main inspiration for this game.

>>50064787
I thought I read that in UA3 that the Sleepers are kaput.

>>50045447
I liked the 2nd edition, what are the major differences?

>>50065982
They've been replaced by an association of cops called the thin blue line

>>50045447
Oh good Unknown Armies is getting a fucking terrible kikescammer edition.

RIP another good game

>>50066101
Most of the major cabals are gone or significantly reduced, replaced by new ones.

The mystic hermaphrodite is now the sexual rebis.

The freak is now the new first and last man, and the comte saint germain has become a crazy old lady called "old mother apocalypse" after a wierd event that happend on the 3rd of march 2003.

That's the BIG stuff.

>>50066158
The subtext of everything seems to be that the world was SUPPOSED to end on 3/3/2003, but the Freak and the Comte had a meeting and from then on everything went sideways and now the universe is kind of running past its expiration date.

>>50066101
Mechanically it's got a huge overhaul too. It's still d% based and you've still got madness meters, impulses, Adepts and Avatars and the like but otherwise the components that go into your character are significantly different. See the character sheet posted here >>50053983 to get an idea of how things have changed.

>>50065402
Borges is a huge influence on Unknown Armies, the same way he's a huge influence on The Invisibles (and pretty much all of Grant Morrison's work, really).

>>50066150
Fuck off. Thanks.

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bump for more blurbs

I need more creepy majic stuff to weird out my players with

>>50064680

Well, using magic is also what pushes you further into crazy town in Unknown Armies so there's that.

But yeah, I agree magic is a better offensive tool. And forensics is a pain in the ass. I've been mopping up after the other players constantly in this game : bleaching bloodstains, bribing cops, recording conversations so that the judge will know who drew first if we ever go to court. Of course I doctor the recordings, but come on, I'm a criminal

The others have been treating it a little like a Coen Brothers movie. I'm more of a No Country guy myself, and so is the DM. Soon we're gonna get fucked by some savvy normies or piss off the wrong godwalker. I've got my getaway car ready.

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>>50064885
>>50064789
>>50063678

See I'm looking at this and thinking the taboo should be more along the lines of never being able to resolve your own problems (so can't do therapy, can't just talk misunderstandings out, can't admit you fucked up ever etc...), but you can foist them onto other people and shift blame.

Of course that's partly because I think I secretly want to play Mrs Marple or Mary Worth (from the newspaper comic strips) in an UA game, just this strangely cheery, meddling vortex of calm in a sea of disfunctional weirdos - oh no dearie, *I'm* not sad or depressed, dear me no, I'm grateful for the simple things in life. Now tell me about the problems YOU started having shortly after meeting me, dearie. maybe I can help...

The flip side of this is that Depressors tend to be very prone to becoming demons when they die (and take their remaining charges with them... something that might make former depressor spirits something worth hunting or harvesting).

>>50063727
I figure that them realizing that they can only be happy by making others miserable eventually turns them into a black hole of depression.

>>50057590
Honestly I've been waiting for the Meme Magick writeup

I want to run Unknown Armies, and run it like an urban fantasy Rick and Morty, where there's weird, sometimes even silly strange shit going on that tests the perseverance and last traces of virtue in already damaged human beings, and sometimes they fail horribly, but sometimes they surprise themselves and do something beautiful.

Is this an appropriate tone for Unknown Armies?

>>50065982
They aren't dead, it's just that most Sleeper agents are now the equivalent of a bunch of kids putting on Guy Fawkes masks and pretending to be the real Sleepers.

Real Sleepers still exist, but they won't tell you. Fake Sleepers will run up to you and go "I'M A SLEEPER"

What if we ad-hoc'd the various schools of 3e and aligned them to major 4chan boards?

GNOMON - /b/
Fulminaturgy - /k/
Meme Magick - /pol/
Katathlipsurgy - /r9k/
Vidyamancy - /v/

I mean we go on a site filled with postmodern rituals and counterculture every day, it fits like a glove

>>50070981
Sounds pretty great, actually. That fits the tone just fine.

They can explore Otherspaces.

>>50071001
/b/ wouldn't be an adept, it would just be one big avatar of The Fool.

/g/ - GNOMON
/k/ - Fulminaturgy
/fa/ - Vestimancy
/o/ - Viaturgy
/pol/ - Either Motumancy or really confused Sociomancers
/an/ - Agrimancy
/tv/ - Cinemancy
/p/ - Cameraturgy

>>50071102
I mean more like invent new schools, like ones based on shitposting or vidya or dubs

>>50071102
>/b/ not being Le ebin nonemoose

>>50071102
/pol/ has kind of written it's own adept school on its own, look at some of the posts by the guys who take that Kek shit a little too seriously

>>50071172
GNOMON isn't exactly "le anonymouse". It's about pledging your body to basically Magic Skynet.

If anything /r9k/ would be the most susceptible to GNOMON more than anyone because they literally call themselves robots.

>>50071216
What if magic skynet was made out of thousands upon thousands of gibbering /b/tards all connected to one another in a vast cesspit of incredible but unfocused power

Also /r9k/ depression magic was getting fluffed above

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>>50066158

>mfw when my gm only does local stuff and never touches on the big weird cosmic characters like Germain and FALM

feels depressingly street level. I wanna tussle with gods gosh darnit

>>50069416
I really enjoy the shifting idea. The idea of "you can never lessen the amount of suffering in the world, but you can redistribute it" is quite an interesting set of rules to play within. Especially if you can only push yours around. Gotta go into the mission feeling suicidal to be effective at all.

>>50071832
Streetlevel is imo bestlevel

>>50072252
Yeah, to play anything more than street level you pretty much need an entire party that has read all the sourcebooks, and it's hard enough to find UA players in the first place.

>>50072318
Not to mention it's so much more tangibly human which is arguably the point of UA

Plus Street Level is where Adepts rule, whereas a Global and Cosmic they become irrelevant secondary players to the Avatars.

I'd love to see a UA scenario where some school or group of schools actually manage to derail things enough that the Invisible Clergy has to take things seriously.