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{{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
Why risk so much of yourself for impressive but seemingly minor power? You'll need to reach the cosmic level to find out...
This is a fantastic and extremely gritty roleplaying game. Combat is brutal and
Warning: many of these examples contain severe spoilers for those playing Street-level campaigns!
{{tropelist}}
* [[Adult Fear]]
** This trope runs rampant in the Weep scenario "Garden Full of Weeds."
* [[Ambiguous Gender]]
* [[Amusing Injuries]]
* [[Another Dimension]]
* [[Anti-Magic]]
* [[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.
* [[Arc Number]]
* [[Arc Words]]
* [[Ascended Fanboy]]
* [[Ascend to
* [[Attack Drone]]
* [[Becoming the Mask]]
* [[Berserk Button]]
* [[Better Than It Sounds
* [[Body Horror]]
* [[Booze
* [[Brand X]]
* [[Cast
* [[Clap Your Hands If You Believe]]
* [[Clockwork Creature]]
* [[Chainsaw Good]]
* [[Chunky Salsa Rule]]
* [[City of Spies]]
* [[Cosmic Horror]]
* [[Crazy Homeless People]]: There's plenty of these, but watch out.
* [[Critical Existence Failure]]
* [[Crowning Moment of Funny]]
{{quote|
* [[Deconstruction]]
** 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.
* [[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.▼
** Why is magic falling behind technology? Because technology is just better, and more reliable.
** [[Blessed With Suck|"Real shame about love, isn't it?"]]▼
** Why isn't the supernatural more widespread? Because it makes you batshit crazy, and you don't trust what batshit crazy people tell you.
* [[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?]] - you can face the very principles of reality one on one. You can even take their place.▼
▲* [[Deus Sex Machina]]
* [[Disability Superpower]] - Some schizophrenics actively channel the backwash from any magic cast nearby, which can be [[It Got Worse|a Very Bad Thing]].▼
* [[Easter Egg]] - {{spoiler|Page 333.}}▼
▲* [[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?]]
* [[Easy Amnesia]] - the Personomancer spell The Mirror, Crack'd is a magical case of retrograde amnesia with some interesting side effects.▼
▲* [[Disability Superpower]]
* [[The End of the World As We Know It]] - {{spoiler|what happens when the number of Invisible Clergy hits 333.}} Not necessarily a bad thing, if the right people are in charge.▼
* [[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.▼
▲* [[Easy Amnesia]]
* [[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"]].▼
▲* [[The End of the World
* [[Fisher King]] - Known as "The True King" in this game, and one of several sample Avatar classes.▼
▲* [[Equivalent Exchange]]
* [[The Fool]] - Another Avatar type. Known specifically for doing foolish things and somehow surviving.▼
▲* [[Eye of Newt]]
* [[Functional Magic]] - Mostly rule magic, although ritual magic is popular and wild magic shows up.▼
* [[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.}}
* [[Gadgeteer Genius]] - Mechanomancers▼
▲* [[Fisher King]]
* [[Gender Bender]] - avatars of the Mystic Hermaphrodite.▼
▲* [[The Fool]]
* [[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.▼
▲* [[Functional Magic]]
▲* [[Genre Savvy]]
* [[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]]
* [[Guns Are Worthless]]
** Which is pretty realistic. Guns are surprisingly unwieldy and hard to use for people that haven't practiced with them, a problem that becomes ten times worse when threatened and under pressure.
* [[Grey and Gray Morality]]
* [[Guttural Growler]]
* [[The Hecate Sisters]]
* [[Humans Are Special]]
* [[Immortality]]
* [[Inverse Law of Utility and Lethality]]
* [[Katanas Are Just Better]]
* [[Knight Templar]]
* [[Let's Get Dangerous]]
** Since their goal is {{spoiler|the creation of a new age of magic, one of the outcomes where their higher up dosn't ascend is the one they'd really want.}}
* [[Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards]]
* [[Liquid Assets]]
* [[Literary Allusion Title]]: "Unknown Armies" is a line cribbed from [[William Butler Yeats]].
* [[Loners Are Freaks]]
* [[Made of Iron]]
* [[Mama Bear]]
* [[Masquerade]]
* [[Milkman Conspiracy]]
* [[Mind Rape]]
* [[Mind Screw]]
* [[Misapplied Phlebotinum]]
* [[Muggles]]
** [[Muggles Do It Better]]: But adepts do it in ways that [[Confusion Fu|defy logic]]. Nobody gets to have it both ways.
* [[Nigh Invulnerable]]
* [[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]]
* [[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]]
* [[Off the Rails]]
* [[Paper-Thin Disguise]]
* [[Personality Powers]]
* [[Post
* [[Power Born of Madness]]
* [[Powered
* [[Powers
* [[Powers That Be]]
* [[Punctuated Pounding]]
{{quote|
* [[Real Life Writes the Plot]]: Being based in "the real world, except [[Mind Screw|real]]", 9/11 cast a pretty tall shadow over some of the events of the game. This particularly affects Mac Attax, who saved the world in 2000 only for the end to suddenly loom that much taller in 2k1.
* [[Reality Warper]]
** Get a major charge and this is the kind of effect you're looking at.
* [[Retconjuration]]
* [[Ret
* [[Rhetorical Request Blunder]]
* [[Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies]]
** 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]]
** Many of the other Rooms of Renunciation work by similar principles; e.g. the Room of Cold Reflection forces the victim to face the consequences of their selfishness, while the Room of Rusted Things shakes up apathetic people.
* [[Running Gag]]: A subtle one: almost every adventure book refers to an ambulance driver named Jesus who rescues people from alternate timelines or otherspaces.
* [[Sanity Has Advantages]]: No [[Weaksauce Weakness|Taboo]] to break, for example. Playing a [[Badass Normal]] in this game is perfectly feasible.
* [[Sanity Meter]]
* [[Sanity Slippage]]
* [[Scaled Up]]
* [[Screw the Rules, I Have Money]]
** Alex Abel, eccentric billionaire, created a powerful occult cabal from scratch
* [[Serious Business]]
* [[Sleeps
* [[Sourcebook]]
* [[Squishy Wizard]]
* [[The Trickster]]
* [[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]]
** 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]]
* [[Urban Fantasy]]
* [[Vancian Magic]]
* [[Whatevermancy]]
** However, calling everything _____mancy is mentioned as a modern fashion. The name "Urbanomancy" is an example of this, with the book [[Lampshaded|stating that if mages cared about language]] it would be called "Polisurgy". Earlier schools of magic were generally named things like The Way Of The Cogs, or The Way Of All Freedom.
** One notable fan-made school of magick from the website is "[http://ua.johntynes.com/content_comments.php?id=3139_0_3_0_C1 Tropamancy]". Yup. Inspired by this very wiki.
* [[Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?]]: The Fear passion encompasses both the fears listed in this trope with others such as victimization, losing control, and other things that key off one of the Stress meters.
* [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity]]
** And often the other way around too. Just ask Jeeter...
* [[Your Head Asplode]]
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Horror Tabletop Games]]
[[Category:Tabletop Games]]
▲[[Category:Tabletop Game]]
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