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Unknown Armies: Difference between revisions
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* [[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
* [[Brand X]] -- {{spoiler|Mak Attax}} is using a certain multinational corporation ( {{spoiler|1=McDonalds}}) to further its agenda. The corporation is almost never mentioned by name. Ostensibly, this is because of the power of [[True Name|True Names]].
* [[Cast From Hit Points]] -- Epideromancy works this way, as do certain rituals. There are also many magick schools that are more indirectly self-destructive.
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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 From the Revelation]] - "Sanity cannot exist for long under conditions of absolute reality." There are a lot of things that can cause you to gain some notches on the madness meters, but suddenly gaining an understanding of some cosmic truth is the most likely to cause a [[Freak
* [[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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* [[Let's Get Dangerous]] - {{spoiler|Mak Attax}} were the joke of the Occult Underground. Then they managed {{spoiler|to get two dozen terrorists arrested in a single night and perform the single largest magical act in recent memory}}. (And then they proceeded to {{spoiler|do bugger all afterwards}}, until {{spoiler|the events of the To Go campaign, the culmination of their Great Work. Depending on the outcome of the campaign, one of their higher-ups may ascend as the new True King.}})
** 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]] - averted. Adepts require not only a decent skill level to cast any sort of spell successfully, but also must charge up by doing particular ritual acts. Attacking via magic is less efficient than just using a gun. Avatar magic is flat-out linear, providing particular effects at a particular level of skill. Ritual magic progresses randomly, depending on the whims of the GM. Psychics are generally even more limited.
* [[Liquid Assets]] - played more literally than most, as an avatar of the Merchant can trade any intangible good between two other people.
* [[Literary Allusion Title]]: "Unknown Armies" is a line cribbed from [[William Butler Yeats]].
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* [[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
* [[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.
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** Get a major charge and this is the kind of effect you're looking at.
* [[Retconjuration]] - a few of the high-powered magicks can do this. If you sell something to Thorvald Drake, the past changes so that you never had it in the first place. A werewolf has either always been a human, or always been a wolf, depending on what it is right now. While Cliomancy can't ''actually'' change the past, it can change what everyone ''thinks'' happened.
* [[Ret
* [[Rhetorical Request Blunder]] - Less scrupulous (and less sane) Avatars of the Executioner have been known to interpret statements like "that guy really pisses me off!" as an excuse to murder someone- an Executioner can't kill anyone they haven't been ordered to by someone they consider an authority.
* [[Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies]] - The players piss off The Freak, {{spoiler|the number of Archetypes in the Invisible Clergy hits [[Arc Number|333]]}}, pop in a CD full of Alter language...
** 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...
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