Unknown Armies: Difference between revisions

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* [[Arc Words]] -- "You did it." In every sense of the phrase.
* [[Ascended Fanboy]] -- A whole team of them: the Team Salvation is a team of occult do-gooders who used to play RPGs and read comics together as kids. The team leader's motivation is explicitly defined as "Be a superhero".
* [[Ascend to Aa Higher Plane of Existence]] -- A very popular goal in the game is to ascend as an Archetype, a fundamental principle of the universe. {{spoiler|This is the ultimate goal of many cabals, since they can then shape the next ''universe'' under their own principles.}}
* [[Attack Drone]] - A common Mechanomancer toy.
* [[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.
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* [[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 Withwith Suck|"Real shame about love, isn't it?"]]
* [[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?]] - you can face the very principles of reality one on one. You can even take their place.
* [[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.}}
* [[Easy Amnesia]] - the Personomancer spell The Mirror, Crack'd is a magical case of retrograde amnesia with some interesting side effects.
* [[The End of the World Asas 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.
* [[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"]].
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* [[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 Byby a Forsaken Child]] - The Hotchkiss Compass from ''Godwalker'', an artefact that utilises an aborted hermaphroditic foetus to detect Mystic Hermaphrodites.
* [[Powers Asas 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]].
* [[Powers That Be]] - the {{spoiler|Invisible Clergy}} have incredibly vague motives other than those tied to their Archetype, operate from ineffable levels of the cosmos, and {{spoiler|[[The Gods Must Be Lazy|can attack only indirectly, mostly by affecting probability, causing lucky coincidences, or siccing associates on you]]}}.
* [[Punctuated Pounding]] - the Freak does this to {{spoiler|Jolene}} in ''Godwalker'':
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** 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 Withwith 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 From Hit Points]]. Especially true if they go for the Major charge, which involves permanently damaging themselves in some hideous way. (Amputation's a popular one. The Freak ''drank acid.'')