You have 2 days left. Then it will be over.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/atlasgames/unknown-armies-third-edition-roleplaying-game
It is long funded. They've run out of stretch goals. Keep your money. Nut don't come crying in a week and claim that you didn't know.
Now, to the crucial question that plagues every budding adept of the occult underground:
How do you find players for this crazy game?
>>46938975
"Who wants to play unknown armies?" Tends to work pretty well.
>>46938975
Those FUCKERS put the reference companion over the second soundtrack. I don't give a shit about some random joe making music for a game I already chose what music to go with, I want a god damn reference companion.
This has probably asked enough times in the past, but what do you guys think the Cruel Ones are?
>>46939488
There was a mention somewhere about how demons have very little ability to understand the world around them in their natural place. The cruel ones could very well just be other demons.
>>46939488
Short writeup I made in 5 minutes for my headcanon.Picture an old grandfather with a hair-trigger temper and a train set. Certainly, when the grandkids are over, he'll let them play with the train set a bit, maybe even make a few lasting changes to the railways. But if any of them REALLY screws things up, the shotgun's coming out.
Now imagine there's more than 300 grandfathers, the train set is the world, and they have a hell of a lot more than a shotgun.
These are the Cruel Ones, the former Clergy members, now content to keep the world running in more-or-less the same way rather than attempt to grab any new power for themselves. Admittedly, when you have the power the Cruel Ones have, you don't really NEED any more power.
I agreed to host the new rules and world in 2 weeks.
Yesterday I had the gamma books printed.
It's 500 fucking pages!
Please tell me I don't have to read all of it to get it? Or at least tell me I'm gonna get a minor charge every 50 pages or so...
Also thanks again to the anon who did the indexing.
>>46939582
First book is the rules, definitely read those.
Second book is GM information, look at the bookmarks and you can tell what's important. Skim the rest.
Third book is rumors. They're fun to read, but you can manage a good campaign without them.
>>46939543
That's elaborately stupid if you go by literally any of the fluff concerning them, but whatever
Like the nature of the Invisible Clergy, there isn't one set explanation, and it's probably in poor taste to nail them down and define them
Even ancient and wizardly demons in the fluff crap their pants at the mention of them, so having them turn out to be some 'misunderstood' but explainable element is fairly nonsensical, but UA lore is designed to be a symbolic Rorschach, so you can run whatever faggy universe you like I guess
>>46939600
Oh, sorry, I was just taking a guess having not really known that much about the Cruel Ones besides that bit of text in 2nd edition's book.
To answer my own question, I think because YOU DID IT and all, the Cruel Ones are simply the personification of humanity's fear and helplessness at the unknown. From the loss that comes after death, to being alone in the universe, to simply not being understood whether because you're isolated by your wealth or people don't believe you're a wizard when you're also a hobo-they're horrendously powerful because unlike Avatars they're something of a universal constant to all humanity.
Something like the phenomena that lets Otherspaces come into being, and pretty much the only thing the Invisible Clergy truly fear. I wouldn't even consider them truly sentient so much as they are vast aggregates of anxiety and dread that interfere in situations that invoke humanity's perception of their purview. What the collective consciousness thinks "should" happen subconsciously, behind their motivations and desires.
>>46939543
That doesn't explain that one ritual in the Max Attak sourcebook that explicitly invokes the Cruel Ones and vaporises dudes when summoned, though. Or that one interpretation of the Stratosphere with the three masked women in the cages, who swoop down on some of the Clergy players.
>>46939714
That sounds like a pretty good answer.
>>46939714
>that one ritual in the Max Attak sourcebook that explicitly invokes the Cruel Ones and vaporises dudes when summoned, though
Because of bits like this, I like the idea that they're the white blood cells of the universe. Like an immune system for reality. Not truly sentient, but simple forces of nature, like gravity. Hence "Cruel Ones," because they can be mercilessly, thoughtlessly cruel in the fulfillment of their purpose.
Whenever a Major Charge fizzles or a mad Adept tears a hole in the world, the Cruel Ones are there, ready to set things straight and annihilate the survivors in order to preserve the consensus reality.
So the Hyperion Cantos are really UA scifi novels, right?
>Lions and tigers and bears
>The void which binds
>Technocore and Vatican
>Anti entropy Shrike
>Planck time combat
>The wisdom of Frank Lloyd Wright and the fate of humanity
...
>>46940001
Man, Hyperion Cantos got so weird.
>Planck time combat
Those liquid-silver skinsuits should have literally vaporized the planet with the momentum of casually walking around in one
>>46940083
OMG what's next?
>I never consume any fiction that proliferates the FTL lie?
>>46940329
>I never consume any fiction that proliferates the FTL lie?
You jest, but there are a lot of people like that
MORE IDEAS FROM THE KICKSTARTER CHAT:
Anon Armies: Hackers and bloggers trying to change things for (their own idea of) the better in a cyberpunk future.
Han Own Armies: Peasants, wandering alchemists and priests trying to change things fro the better in 1st century China.
Unknown Amiss: Secret agents on the run are challenged to make choices which bring into question the nature of their own identities.
Ah! Non Amis!: French revolutionaries, among them small time mystics, philosophers, criminals and deviants of all sorts struggling to force the RIGHT change before the new wind finishes blowing over the guillotine.
>>46941079
Han Own Armies and Ah! Non Amis! sound amazing.
>Read unknown armies
>absolutely love the system, the lore, how magic works
>particularly love the rumours, making mystic significance out of the mundane is great
>while brainstorming campaign ideas can't help but see the "magick" in real life current events.
Anyone else do this?
>>46940001
>>46941079
Oh, Lord, running a Hyperion Cantos game using the Unknown Armies system.
>>46942147
What's the max damage on a FORCE gun?
>>46943538
You know, I think a system meant to simulate the gritty wounds caused by switchblades and 9mm pistols is really up to the task of simulating that caused by guns which can be used to carve one's name on the moon.
>>46943538
Death wands don't count damage.
They don't damage.
They simply remove all life.
>>46941609
That's the best part about games with lore based in obscure stuff that actually exists. I was in a book store the other day and saw a book in the occult section about female figures in mythology, specifically the Flying Woman Archetype, and I got chills.
>>46941609
Everyone does. It's one of the major selling points. And it used to be even better in older editions. This time around I feel they're starting to lose touch. Which is why I am still hoping someone puts together the /tg/ schools discussed in earlier threads.
>>46941079
Unknown Amish: Take a wild guess.
>>46945495
Norse mythology?
>>46945495
Everyone is Agrimancers.
Armies Anonymous
>All the donation levels I could afford are "Pony"
Nah. I like the idea of the game though.
>>46948987
The gamma rules are out there. Check the threads from 3 days after the KS started.
Has anyone had a chance to play with the new rules yet?
Do they run smoothly, or are there still a lot of edges to be filed down, mechanically?
>>46949234
I ran a game last week. We made characters using 3e rules and planned on testing them out but I sort of ended up falling back into 2e over the course of the game once the pace picked up because I didn't feel like looking stuff up. All I can say is that the character creation section needs some serious organization to make things go smoother but besides that it's easier than ever to make interesting characters with good motivations and fun goals. My favorite part is how the madness meters now directly affect your stats as they change. The main difference really seems to be how characters are statted, like the fact that we didn't have any issue falling back on 2e rules makes me think that nothing too major has changed mechanically between editions.
>>46952735
Did they replace tv watching with something? I remember reading people say that UA was out of date.
>>46954018
None of the 2e adept schools are in the new edition, though they are easily translatable. So the TV watching school is not in the core rules anymore, though it still in the setting. Here's the entry.
Videomancy
TiVo and Netflix have delivered a one-two punch from which this school of magick may not
recover, for videomancy is devoted to the old model of TV watching. The videomancer charges her
batteries by watching a new episode of ‘her’ show—each such adept has one program that serves as
Bible, ouija board, lover, confidante and financial advisor. Missing any broadcast episode of it is
taboo. The proliferation of cable channels showing programs in syndication has simultaneously
made it easier to get minor rerun charges, while raising the risk of taboo. Videomancers have powers
over AV recording, messages, sound, vision, and stupidity. Their domain is the shared culture of the
lowest common denominator.
>>46939043
The reference companion got funded.
Hi I'm currently GMing a 4 year long nWoD campaign and finished a 2 year long CoC campaign a month ago. What is unknown armies.
>>46955222
It's a far out game.That I've never had a chance to play.
>>46955222
Another game set in modern times. The supernatural is not separate from humanity, it IS humanity.
What do you want to know specifically?
http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/atlasgames/unknown-armies-third-edition-roleplaying-game/
The donation rate is ticking back up again. Do you think they're going to add more stretch goals? I hope so, I have three different copies of Godwalker from various bundles.
>>46955222
A modern game/setting based heavily on the works of Tim Powers. Humans are the only powerful force in the universe and magic(k) is real but it works through symbolic connections and collective consciousness and using it often requires you to be a weird obsessive freak. People who like WoD, CoC and the like tend to also enjoy UA. It's crazy and strange and very stylish but it has a reputation for being difficult to run because it takes an intense amount of creativity to really do the setting justice.
>>46955962
The new edition actually isn't that hard to run now, though.
>>46955962
>magic(k)
Man, seeing it spelled magick always makes me roll my eyes and take whatever the person is saying less seriously.
>>46956001
Which is perfect for this game. Pretty much everyone who knows magick is an asshole.
>>46956001
It kind of works though, at least in the older versions. UA borrows a ton of flavor from the spiritualist revival that was happening around the time it was first published where people were still hanging on to the Crowley definition of "magick" as a practice separate from the stage "magic" that you go to see at Las Vegas. It's a cheesy term, but it's there for a reason.
>>46955577
I guess the basics, mechanics of the game such as how you roll, any good source books, pros and cons. Basically anything I could learn from going on a General if UA had one.
>>46957080
UA's rolling mechanics use percentile dice for every roll with the target number being whatever your skill/identity is, with modifiers rarely in the mix. Unknown Armies really loves doing "roll only when absolutely necessary, and accept the consequences of a failed roll". You generally want to aim as close to your target number as possible without going over, and a roll with two digits that are the same is either a critical success or a critical failure depending on if it goes over your target number. Rolling 01 is an even more critical success, and rolling 00 is even more of a critical failure. Some rolls can be flipflopped which means you can take the ones and tens value and flip them depending on which is more beneficial to you: 73 -> 37, 29 -> 92.
The mood of characters in Unknown Armies is a pretty good blend of WoD characters with CoC characters, that is you can have various magical powers and things you believe in that keep you sane, while also having to manage your own sanity seeing the world around you. The former are your Passions, while the latter would be your Stress Gauges.
You have four passions that define what your character believes: Rage, Fear Noble and Obsession. Rage is generally what upsets your character, something about others or society that your character has a hard time keeping calm about. Fear is what your character fears the most, either about society, general phobias, or something internal that your character just does not want brought up. Noble is either the most positive aspect of your character, or it's a belief that your character can cling to when shit hits the fan. Obsession is what your character thinks about most often. Obsession is different from the other three passions, mechanically speaking, as it's mainly there to assist you on rolls, for example: If your obsession is about hiding your secrets from others you could use that to flip flop any rolls against you that involve trying to divulge your secrets.
>>46957816
After your passions you have the Stress Gauges, which is where it starts to get interesting.
You have five Stress Gauges, Violence, Unnatural, Helplessness, Isolation, and Self, each one sort of acting like an individual sanity meter that has much wider mechanical changes than something like CoC.
Violence is your exposure to violence, as this goes up your Struggle stat goes up (which is basically your general fighting stat), but your Connect goes down (equivalent for Empathy in WoD).
Unnatural is the closest to the CoC sanity meter, it raises your Secrets (equivalent to Occult/Politics in WoD), but your Notice goes down (your stat for pretty much any roll to notice things out of the ordinary).
Helplessness is your exposure to situations where you had no control over your life, it raises your Dodge (general reflexes), but decreases your Health (equivalent to Constitution).
Isolation is your exposure to experiences that made you feel truly alone, it raises your Pursuit (used for chases and investigation), but decreases your Status (general rolls to determine how trustworthy your connections are to various organizations).
Self is your exposure to situation where you lose your individuality, it raises your Lie (pretty self explanatory), but decreases your Knowledge (equivalent to Intelligence)
Most of the other mechanics aren't that much to talk about, so I'll skip ahead to Adepts and Avatars.
>>46958249
Since Unknown Armies is all about magic and sanity loss, you can always choose to play as magic users if you want, but magic users tend to carry some big consequences that balance them out with regular joes.
Adepts get their magic from some form of obsession, they gain power by collecting charges, and have taboos that they must not break or else they will lose all of their charges. There are different adepts schools out there that can make each adept radically different from one another. One school, viamancy, is focused on cars as a cultural icon and the freedom of being a driver. Viamancers have some spells that can get them out of danger, and lots of spells that can only be cast behind the wheel, but their taboo is that if they are ever a passenger in any vehicle they lose their charges. If viamancers want to keep their charges they must always be the driver, even if they are riddled with bullets and bleeding out.
Avatars get their magic from becoming an archetype for humanity. Avatars must mold their lifestyle to fit whatever archetype they hope to emulate, and slowly gain or lose favor based on how well they achieve the archetype's goals. Avatars are usually less powerful than adepts, but their punishment for breaking their code is much less severe. An Avatar of The Demagogue must be there to convince others to follow his or her ideals, and must never admit to being wrong. An avatar of The Messenger must deliver the truth to others to others, and when confronted with hard evidence must accept it, no matter how much of a personal sacrifice accepting it means.
>>46958427
>>46958249
>>46957080
And that's basically the gist of Unknown Armies. You don't really need to know much out side of that to play it. There's plenty of backstory out there, but most of it is up to the interpretation of the GM.
>>46958479
Thanks. I can maybe look into getting into this.
>>46959225
Rules wise 3rd edition looks to be the best, but its formatting is a bit of a mess since it's an alpha. 2nd edition is also fine, but suffers from a similar problem to oWoD where some lore things are just really outdated and wouldn't make sense if you set the game in 2016.
>>46959449
Why is the alpha called gamma?
Isn't it usually alpha > beta > release candidate?
Isn't it also alpha beta gamma (delta ...)?
So if gamma holds the same place as the RC, and Atlas labeled their 'alpha' as gamma...
Does that mean UA3 has already been released? The alpha (=gamma) is it. All this anticipating something more finished is just a con to generate charges somewhere?
>>46961304
Yeah that bugged me too. I have no idea.
So anyone tried the new game? how does the identities system compare against the skill system?
>>46961362
>how does the identities system compare against the skill system?
I'm not green on what elephant testarossa square.
>>46961454
What?
>>46961362
I think the only way I can sum it up is that it makes for a better experience in game, but man is it really hard to use in character creation. I tend to think up of a bunch of skills for character and think about how the characters got those skills later on, but the identity system kind of forces you to make more of a concrete life for your character.
>>46961454
are you ok? are you having a stroke?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yop62wQH498
>>46961304
>>46961347
It's 'gamma' because that's the third letter of the Greek alphabet. 3's all the way down, man.
I'd really like to give them my money. But they don't want it apparently.
>http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/chaos/texts/exor.html
Check out this real life advertisement for the Occult Underground.
