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{{work}}
{{quote|''"You did it!"''}}
'''Unknown Armies''' (abbreviated UA) is an occult-themed [[Role
The game is divided into three levels: street, global, and cosmic. At the street level, you know only this: there is something very weird happening, and you've had a glimpse of it. Now you're about to find out just how strange the world really is. Only at the global level do you learn the truth: magick is real, it's [[postmodernism|postmodern]], and it's everywhere.
The world you know is only the surface. The Occult Underground swarms beneath it like a nest of bugs. Adepts alter reality with the power of their own obsessions and madness. Avatars gain the favor of the cosmos by playing their part in the collective unconscious. Those without magick hunt down those with for their own purposes—to control, to suppress, or to assimilate. Sounds pretty interesting, right? There's a catch. There's always a catch. All labor in secret for fear of [[Torches and Pitchforks|the sleeping tiger]]: magick may be powerful, but all the forces of the arcane aren't worth much compared to the panicked masses on a witch hunt. Further, magick power is bought at a steep price. You can alter human flesh only by scouring your own. You can gain the strength of the archetypal Warrior only by never relenting, even when tact or sanity say you should back down. You can bring about anything with magick—provided you're willing to sacrifice your humanity to do so.
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Warning: many of these examples contain severe spoilers for those playing Street-level campaigns!
{{tropelist}}
* [[Adult Fear]]: Possibly more common than unnatural fear. Sure, you might have your body torn to bits by an [[Eldritch Abomination|Unspeakable Servant]], but there's a much higher probability that you'll just lose your mind, become a recluse whose divorce from society is directly tied to a divorce from reality, and watch everything you loved or cared about slip away from you, until all you've got left is [[Lonely
** This trope runs rampant in the Weep scenario "Garden Full of Weeds.": the city district of Garden View is an example of extreme urban decay made worse by supernatural phenomena. This means that there's a serial killer who traps peoples' souls in his sunglasses, but it also means that just about everyone is below the poverty line, every family is abusive, and extreme racism is coupled with rampant gang violence. Oh, and a Loogaroo running around murdering children under six months old.
* [[Ambiguous Gender]]: The shtick of avatars of the Mystic Hermaphrodite. At upper levels, this evolves into instant sex changes.
* [[Amusing Injuries]]: The Laff Riot videomancer spell protects everyone in the area from gunshots, reduces other types of attacks to five damage, and can turn a fall from a skyscraper from street pizza into an embarrassing pantsing. Watching the Detectives can retroactively turn any major injury short of death into a single point of damage. [[Game Master]]s who enjoy the [[Rule of Funny]] can have quite an lot of fun here.
* [[Another Dimension]]: The Otherspaces are like alternate realities where the rules of existence are fundamentally different. Since they're disconnected from real time and space, they can be useful for transport... but they're generally difficult to reach, and they're often very dangerous, if not [[Sanity Slippage|maddening]].
* [[Anti-Magic]]: The sample NPC, Eustace Crane, is a walking fifty yard bubble of this that ironically wants to believe in magic. Other sources exist.
* [[Anthropomorphic Personification]]: Each member of the Invisible Clergy is one of these, personifying an idea of what a human being can be. The very concepts of things like [[The Fool]], [[The Hecate Sisters|The Mother]] and [[The Trickster]] (among others) are represented by ascended mortals in the Clergy.
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* [[Becoming the Mask]]: A constant worry if you're a Personamancer.
* [[Berserk Button]]: The Rage passion for a character is whatever seriously pisses that character off.
* [[Better Than It Sounds/Tabletop Games]]: If [[David Cronenberg]], Tim Powers, [[Christopher Nolan]], [[Thomas Pynchon]] and the late [[Robert Anton Wilson]] met at a role-playing convention, that's what they would play.
* [[Body Horror]]: Various, but Epideromancy is the #1 source in the game. It's a magic style revolving around molding the bodies of others like clay and powered by self-mutilation... think about it. Its signature attack spell ''isn't'' the one that lets you break bones or tear flesh just by touching someone, it's the spell that lets you mold flesh about the area of your palm. Its most common use? ''Seal someone's mouth and nose.''
* [[Booze-Based Buff]]: Dipsomancers, and most of the artifacts they make. Pity you have to be drunk to gain the benefits.
* [[Brand X]]: {{spoiler|
* [[Cast
* [[Clap Your Hands If You Believe]]
* [[Clockwork Creature]]: nearly anything made by Mechanomancers.
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* [[Chunky Salsa Rule]]
* [[City of Spies]]: While not ''explicit'', the Sleeping Tiger (ie. The general public) pretty much turns any game of Unknown Armies into spy central. With weird ass magic.
* [[Cosmic Horror]]: subverted. It's the anti-[[Lovecraft
* [[Crazy Homeless People]]: There's plenty of these, but watch out. Unknown Armies has a disproportionate number of hobos who are also powerful wizards.
* [[Critical Existence Failure]]: Averted; you automatically pass out/otherwise go unconscious at 5 HP and die at 0, but you take cumulative stat penalties depending on how messed up you are.
* [[Crowning Moment of Funny]]: the ''[[Beyond the Impossible|rulebook]]'' has one, of all things. In the description for Videomancers:
{{quote|Paddy Orleans has [[Stealth Pun|fetishized]] a number of shows, and he needs a lot of significant charges to fuel his habit of calling fictional characters to life for half-hour increments. Usually he does this for purposes of [[Rule 34|bizarre sexual gratification]], but at least one guy who pissed him off is now in an asylum, convinced that Mr. Clean and the Pillsbury Doughboy are going to jump him again the next time he sleeps. }}
* [[Deconstruction]]: the game plays with most of the tropes you see in modern fantasy games, but makes sense of them the most mundane ways possible
** If they can change reality, why aren't Adepts in charge? Because the very nature of their power makes them loony, and the price they pay to work their miracles makes them as useful as a carefully chosen tool, only weirder.
** Why is magic falling behind technology? Because technology is just better, and more reliable.
** Why isn't the supernatural more widespread? Because it makes you batshit crazy, and you don't trust what batshit crazy people tell you.
* [[Deus Sex Machina]]: pornomancy. Subverted in that pornomantic sex rituals aren't much fun at all to their practitioner, and having ''regular'' sex is taboo to them.
** [[Blessed with Suck|"Real shame about love, isn't it?"]]
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* [[Equivalent Exchange]]: There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. To do magick, you have to pay the price. Controlling probability means you have to take insane risks now and then, you have to hurt yourself to mold flesh, and you can't spend your money if you want to magickally manipulate the stock market.
* [[Eye of Newt]]: Ritual Magick. Sample ingredients in the GM section include [[Noodle Implements|"A lock of hair from a red-headed lover", "Those Groucho glasses with the fake nose and moustache", and "A copy of the Torah, translated directly from Hebrew into Klingon"]].
* [[Face Heel Turn]] / [[Heel Face Turn]]: {{spoiler|One of the biggest events in 3rd edition was the Freak and the Comte Saint-Germain switching places and inverting morality. The Freak is now an idealistic androgine that calls hirself the Human Eternal and is in charge of being the new First and Last Man (the only constant between universes), and the Comte is a [[Grumpy Old Man|bitter, cranky old lady]] called Old Mother [[Meaningful Name|Apocalypse]] who wants to make the current universe eternal and stop new ones from being created, by killing all of humanity if necessary.}}
* [[Fisher King]]: Known as "The True King" in this game, and one of several sample Avatar classes.
* [[The Fool]]: Another Avatar type. Known specifically for doing foolish things and somehow surviving.
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* [[Genre Savvy]]: An avatar gains power by acting out a particular archetype. Unlike adepts, an avatar doesn't have to believe in his role, only be willing to act it out.
* [[Ghostly Goals]]: A ghost's personality has no subtlety; they can only act to fulfill their Obsession. If they want revenge, they will chase you to the end of the earth. If they want to collect every last Pokemon card, you better not have a tight grip on that Charizard.
* [[Go Mad
* [[God Was My Co-Pilot]]: the {{spoiler|Comte De Saint-Germain}}, immortal [[Physical God|uberpower]], [[Heroic Sociopath|sadistic bastard]], and appearing in at least half the stock campaigns as a bit part, sometimes in simultaneous roles halfway across a state. Often provides [[Deus Ex Machina]] and [[Diabolus Ex Machina]].
* [[Guns Are Worthless]]: averted, at least for more skilled users. Someone with poor skill needs extreme luck to do much damage with a gun, though.
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* [[Grey and Gray Morality]]: In spades. Among the key factions are a private army of a dictatorial plutocrat (who genuinely wants to make the world a better place; albeit with him running it), a devoted hidden order determined to protect the world from magic's excesses (or just stop the flamboyant mages from ruining the game for everyone else, OR maybe just a pack of serial killers with a justification), and a gang of idealistic youngsters looking to make the world a better place (but who might have turned themselves into the perfect tool for someone looking to rule it). True examples of purely malignant or benign groups are very thin on the ground. {{spoiler|Well, other than demons. They're pretty much bastards. But even then, they're selfish and ruthless, not serving a greater evil.}}
* [[Guttural Growler]]: The Freak, as a result of drinking acid.
* [[The Hecate Sisters]]: These are said to be "masks", or recognized spiritual icons that mirror the Archetypes. It's an open question as to which is which (though "The Mother" is fairly unambiguous).
* [[Humans Are Special]]: One definite given in any UA game, on account of how the cosmos pretty much revolves around the collective will of humanity and its chosen representatives.
* [[Immortality]]: One goal to aim for; apparently, if Dirk Allen could ever get this for the Freak, the Freak would stop hating him so much...
* [[Inverse Law of Utility and Lethality]]
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* [[Literary Allusion Title]]: "Unknown Armies" is a line cribbed from [[William Butler Yeats]].
* [[Loners Are Freaks]]: mechanically, any individual who is alone for prolonged periods of time ''will'' fill up the Isolation failed bar to go insane or head a long way toward going sociopath.
* [[Made of Iron]]: While combat is very deadly, certain adepts and
* [[Mama Bear]]: A powerful avatar of the Mother gets big bonuses whenever defending someone that sees them as a mother figure.
* [[Masquerade]]: The occult underground stays hidden because whenever magic is discovered by the public, murder is soon to follow. The core book cites numerous instances throughout history in which accused magic-users have been lynched ''en masse''. They even have (pretty elegant) rules for angry mobs and their consequences.
* [[Milkman Conspiracy]]: This is the game where one of the major dealers in the Occult Underground is {{spoiler|a fast food chain that uses its meals in an attempt to align the chakra points of the American consciousness.}} And it only gets weirder from there.
* [[Mind Rape]]: Entropics, demonic possession, and dozens of adept spells like the one that instantly spread a rumor to every one on Earth.
* [[Mind Screw]]: And how! With extra strength in any scenario written by John Tynes. In one notable case, {{spoiler|he wrote a scenario in which you run into a woman who fires bullets from her mouth by screaming "I'm a gun!", heal a man by binding pages of the [[bible]] to his body, free a young girl from a circle of corpses who drop coins from their mouths in a constant trickle, before fleeing in an ambulance ride with [[Jesus]] from murderous cars who can only be hurt by tossing the aforementioned coins at them. Man, all I wanted was some change. I don't love you anymore. (Said scenario is "A Few of My Favorite Things", from Weep.)}}
* [[Misapplied Phlebotinum]]
* [[Muggles]]: but don't you mess with them. They are officially referred to as "the Sleeping Tiger," and the book includes some sobering tables outlining what happens when they wake up.
** [[Muggles Do It Better]]: But adepts do it in ways that [[Confusion Fu|defy logic]]. Nobody gets to have it both ways.
* [[Nigh Invulnerable]]: A powerful avatar of the warrior becomes immune to physical harm: but only when fighting those he is ideologically opposed to.
* [[Obstructive Code of Conduct]]: The Taboo of any magick-user is basically this. There are some behaviors that you cannot engage in, ever, or you weaken your power in some way. On a meta level, the Self meter is meant to be this for the players, to prevent them from doing just anything (destroying own life's work, cannibalism, public denying their most deeply held beliefs) with their characters.
* [[Only a Flesh Wound]]: the Videomancer spell "Watching the Detectives" is intentionally designed to invoke this trope.
* [[Our Demons Are Different]]: They're actually this world's version of [[Our Ghosts Are Different|ghosts]], and are universally <s> quite bitter about not being able to move</s> terrified of moving on to the next life.
* [[Our Werewolves Are Different]]: victims of demonic possession by a demon that had previously possessed an animal, which spontaneously and [[Retcon|retroactively]] change shapes.
* [[Off the Rails]]
* [[Paper-Thin Disguise]]: a high-level avatar of the Trickster can disguise himself perfectly with just a few token props.
* [[Personality Powers]]: Adept magic has to match the adept's obsession, and avatar powers match the archetype's theme and personality.
* [[Post-Modern Magik]]: The [[Trope Namer]]. Adepts twists the meaning of culturally relevant phenomena, like TV or booze, to achieve their enlightenment. Some rituals are based on VHS tapes, or Bruce Lee paraphernalia.
* [[Power Born of Madness]]: Magic works by taking something that isn't ''supposed'' to work and ''making'' it work.
* [[Powered by a Forsaken Child]]: The Hotchkiss Compass from ''Godwalker'', an artefact that utilises an aborted hermaphroditic foetus to detect Mystic Hermaphrodites.
* [[Powers as Programs]]: Skills can be stolen in a number of ways, both temporarily and permanently, even supernatural ones. The infomancy skill to do so is called Download, [[Lampshade|pointing this out]].
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** The characters piss off the Comte, get a unfiltered vision of {{spoiler|The Statosphere}}, screw up a magick roll with a Major charge...
*** You can't piss off the Comte. It was all a part of his plan, after all...
*** The Cruel Ones show up.
*** [[Our Angels Are Different|...maybe?]]
* [[Room 101]]: The Otherside Room is a mystically empowered version, showing any fool trapped in it the very worst of his or her beliefs. This is non-partisan and all-accepting, by the way; stick a hardline Christian and a hardline Communist in there, and both will walk out with their beliefs torn down.
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* [[Screw the Rules, I Have Money]]: Plutomancy, where holding down a good-paying job fuels your magic (and spending too much for any one object is taboo; most live in modest homes to avoid wiping their power with their mortgage payment).
** Alex Abel, eccentric billionaire, created a powerful occult cabal from scratch: the New Inquisition: that embodies this trope.
* [[Serious Business]]: Adepts in general, as well as their lower-powered siblings, Mageekians. To be fair, said Serious Business causes actual magick powers.
* [[Sleeps with Everyone but You]]: One theory behind the {{spoiler|Naked Goddess is that she ascended as The Girl Everyone Can Have But You.}}
* [[Sourcebook]]
* [[Squishy Wizard]]: subverted with fleshworkers, who are usually enormously tough...but go down all too easily all too often because they [[Cast
* [[The Trickster]]: Another one of the archetypes a character can channel. The powers of an avatar of the Trickster are pretty much straight from the trope, which is of course the idea.
* [[Unexpected Gameplay Change]]: The most obvious consequence of casting the Ritual of Light is that Unknown Armies changes from being a "rules and dice" RPG to a pure story-telling RPG. Instead of rolling d10s to determine the outcome of any given check, the gaming group votes on whether they think the outcome should be a success or failure. The GM's vote does not count for more than the players'. This is because the player characters who cast the ritual are linking directly into the Statosphere: for a short time, reality is defined purely by their will, and their choices.
* [[Unfazed Everyman]]: {{spoiler|Depending on the outcome of To Go, this archetype may just ascend to the pantheon
** On a less spoilery note, everyone in a campaign who is directly involved in magic but [[Badass Normal|doesn't practice it]] is automatically this.
* [[Unreliable Narrator]]
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Horror Tabletop Games]]
▲[[Category:Tabletop Games]]
[[Category:Tabletop Games]]
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