Unknown Armies: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"You did it!"''}}

 

 

 

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.

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 at the Top|your power]]. And that's if you're ''successful.''

* [[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.

* [[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.

* [[Cast from Hit Points]]: Epideromancy works this way, as do certain rituals. There are also many magick schools that are more indirectly self-destructive.

* [[Clap Your Hands If You Believe]]

* [[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.

* [[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. }}

* [[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?"]]

* [[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"]].

* [[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.

* [[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.

* [[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.

* [[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.

* [[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.

* [[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.

* [[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.

** 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]]

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Horror Tabletop Games]]

[[Category:Tabletop Games]]