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Hey folks, for various reasons I'm working on a quick JS character generator for Unknown Armies. Can I ask you guys to give it a try, and let me know what you like / hate / would like to see added? The package is at http://www.mediafire.com/?8yb9yupa3sc6c82 - just unzip it anywhere and load index.html in your browser of choice.
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Jun 2, 2011 08:46
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Hey, that's pretty neat. I'm planning to run Pinfeathers for some friends in the near future, I'll have them test it out and get some feedback for you.
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Jun 2, 2011 09:44
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I'm thinking of running a game of Reign. Pretty simple basic plot, they'd be tasked with restoring a small town that's been destroyed in a war. Clearing out the bandits and animals that have claimed the outskirts, dealing with the local black market, establishing trade routes and relations with local nobles and restoring the local seat for the nobleman that's been given control of the region. That sort of thing. Thing is, I've never run it, none of us have ever played it. Should I start them off at the default level or somewhere higher? Are they any obvious pitfalls that I'd want to avoid as a DM or steer them away from as players? It's going to be a custom setting because I've only got the enchiridion to work from rather than the full rules. Low magic, maybe one use items and morale attacks, nothing in the way of direct damage. Any tips would be appreciated.
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Jun 10, 2011 21:50
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I'd start at normal beginning characters; even a starting-level character is pretty capable. The biggest thing you need to bear in mind is that Reign is a pretty lethal system; one-shot kills can happen quite easily. If the characters are rebuilding a town, you might want to make sure people take a few esoteric disciplines since they're probably going to be doing a lot of non-combat and Company-level things. Have you taken a look at the free supplements? Lotta great stuff in those.
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Jun 10, 2011 22:16
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I want to introduce my group to Unknown Armies but I'm not sure what would be a good scenario to run for them. The first one in the core book is a bit intense and I wonder if I could pull it off, and the other one isn't good for street level which I was hoping to do as the group doesn't know the setting. Does anyone know a good introduction module or an ideas to help introduce the world's elements to people new to the game? Just advice for someone running the game their first time would be really appreciated too.
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Jun 10, 2011 22:26
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I believe the most famous UA scenario is JailBreak, and it looks drat fantastic, but is also incredibly demanding from a DM. If you're up for a challenge, it can be a great low-level introduction to the system. Unfortunately, UA doesn't really have many full modules in the style of D&D, etc. - almost all of them, even the books of one-shots, tend to be basic outlines and character lists left to the DM to flesh out. I also recommend rifling through Hush Hush ( the Sleeper book). It's got a stack of fast one-shot incidents that are great for single-session games. I've used them for my TNI campaign, as they're pretty flexible. It has fun incidents like 'drunken fleshworker melts a guy at a bar', a couple unnatural bug hunts, some good old fashioned Haunted McGuffin hunting, sexy cannibalism, and so on. Drunken fleshworker chap could serve as a jumpstart scare to a campaign, leading into him trying to hunt down the player witnesses. The Sleepers are furious, the Vatican has a long-standing grudge, and Abel's boys are sniffing around, looking for a way to screw everyone.
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Jun 10, 2011 22:44
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Thanks. I have Hush Hush and Lawyers, Guns, and Money right here. I haven't finished Hush Hush yet but I'll make sure I hit that section of it.
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Jun 10, 2011 22:46
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Evil Mastermind posted:I'd start at normal beginning characters; even a starting-level character is pretty capable. They'll be told that this won't be a dungeon crawling all combat game, but that they probably will end up fighting sometimes. I'm just concerned that starting characters won't be enough for them each to work in most situations. I'm thinking of providing them with a guard squad of 3-4 threat 4 minions to help them out in combat (assuming that as they die they'll replace them with followers they've gained), but then I worry that if someone does design/roll (some of them might demand random rolled characters, they're like that) a full-on combat character, they'll feel a bit gypped. Is it just futile to hope everyone can always play a part in a scene?
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Jun 10, 2011 22:56
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Do you have a specific location in mind for your game? Are your fine folks going to be working for one of the big dogs, or struggling along by themselves? My advice for running a first time game of UA is making sure that players have both a clear goal and reason to work together. One of the difficulties with the system is that urban characters don't always know where to go to find weirdness, or necessarily want to seek it out. Unlike D&D adventurers, who know that they should be killin' orcs in a 10x10 room, Joe Frank at the Taco Hut is less likely to want to risk life and limb in the occult underground. One of the advantages of having them work for an existing cabal is your ability to hand out clear-cut missions to players, helping them to know exactly what they should be doing and giving them a reason to do it. Also, UA can generate terrible party conflict, which can be good and bad, depending on your playstyle. I house-ruled that all PCS in my campaigns had to have known each other at least a year, and at least casually trust each other.
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Jun 10, 2011 23:05
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goatface posted:They'll be told that this won't be a dungeon crawling all combat game, but that they probably will end up fighting sometimes. I'm just concerned that starting characters won't be enough for them each to work in most situations. I'm thinking of providing them with a guard squad of 3-4 threat 4 minions to help them out in combat (assuming that as they die they'll replace them with followers they've gained), but then I worry that if someone does design/roll (some of them might demand random rolled characters, they're like that) a full-on combat character, they'll feel a bit gypped. Sadly, yes. I can't think of too many games that allow everyone to be useful all the time. Threat 4 minions are pretty heavy-duty; I'd see how the character fare against in combat on their own at first rather than give them a bunch of extras. (I mean, 3-4 Threat 4 minions is pretty much one rank of Might.)
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Jun 10, 2011 23:19
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Well, I was going to have them given control of the town and it's assets. It would be a company with ones across the board. They'd have the remnants of the town guard under their control, a few battle hardened veterans who'd survived the war and come back home, a small treasure fund, a few farms and small businesses and a population that didn't like these outsiders who'd not lived through what they had. Maybe I'll just be sure to start them off easy, let them bring the support if they think it necessary.
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Jun 10, 2011 23:26
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I think specialized characters can always feel useful if they're able to practice their speciality in most scenes that they're in. REIGN is one of those games where you can frame separate scenes for different groups of characters quickly, and give everyone something to do. The key is to allow each PC to naturally go to where they think they'll be useful. If they're fighters, they'll probably seek out opportunities to fight. If administrators or negotiators, then they'll probably try to go places where that will prove useful. And if there's some field of conflict that they're obviously hampered in, like you describe, then the first arc can be about acquiring the soldiers/defenses they'll need to defend themselves.
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Jun 10, 2011 23:33
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TNI and Sleepers are great for groups that are new to UA because it is very easy to build traditional mission-based scenarios around them. "Your superior in the Sleepers informs you that word is spreading of a miracleworker and physic healer in South Central Los Angeles who may be the real thing. Investigate and shut them up or kill them messily if it turns out to be true." "Alex Able wants you to find and make contact with the Freak so he can offer it something. Locate it, give it whatever it wants, just get it to the Chicago safe house."
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Jun 10, 2011 23:37
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goatface posted:Well, I was going to have them given control of the town and it's assets. It would be a company with ones across the board. They'd have the remnants of the town guard under their control, a few battle hardened veterans who'd survived the war and come back home, a small treasure fund, a few farms and small businesses and a population that didn't like these outsiders who'd not lived through what they had. Also, I'm very tempted to steal this idea.
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Jun 10, 2011 23:39
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Pope Guilty posted:"Alex Able wants you to find and make contact with the Freak so he can offer it something. Locate it, give it whatever it wants, just get it to the Chicago safe house."
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Jun 10, 2011 23:41
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Alright, thanks guys. I wasn't going to have them be a part of an organization but I will now.
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Jun 10, 2011 23:47
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Evil Mastermind posted:Also, I'm very tempted to steal this idea. Feel free, it developed out of a side discussion in grognards.txt
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Jun 10, 2011 23:52
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The Freak is a perfectly reasonable person. Sometimes. Sometimes.
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Jun 10, 2011 23:54
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goatface posted:I'm just concerned that starting characters won't be enough for them each to work in most situations. I think the big takeaway that we had from our brief dalliance with REIGN is that you really don't need as big a dice pool as you might think. Four dice is enough to have a reasonable chance of a width 2 set, and five dice seemed to be the sweet spot before diminishing returns began to really kick in. Even with a basic 85 point buy, you can get total pools up to 4-5 dice in several skills pretty cheaply, and still have enough to get ED/MD in one or two 'spotlight' skills. An ED is only 2 points, so they should definitely have at least an ED in one or two skills linked to their highest stat. For what it's worth, we never found a way to work with magic that satisfied us, and didn't use much in the way of martial paths/esoteric disciplines; we ended doing a low-fantasy style of game and thought it worked pretty well. As noted before, though, combat is really drat lethal, so make sure everyone's wearing a helmet and/or understands that they really do want to buy at least a little parry/dodge, even if they're planning a less combat-oriented character. The other important thing I figured out was that giving them a Company is a great way to let them focus on gameplay elements that interested them. My group was more combat-focused, so anytime there was some sort of major social challenge for them, they'd always "send [the] company diplomat to deal with it", and we just handled it as a company Influence roll. On the other hand, we almost never rolled company Might actions, because the PCs were happy to game that out in detail.
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Jun 10, 2011 23:56
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TheTatteredKing posted:Alright, thanks guys. I wasn't going to have them be a part of an organization but I will now. I'll be damned if I can find it, though.
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Jun 11, 2011 00:11
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TheTatteredKing posted:I want to introduce my group to Unknown Armies but I'm not sure what would be a good scenario to run for them. The first one in the core book is a bit intense and I wonder if I could pull it off, and the other one isn't good for street level which I was hoping to do as the group doesn't know the setting. Really, I recommend Bill in Three Persons from the core book. I've quite successfully run it in the past and might be running it again sometime again in the near future (WaywardWoodWose?). My players pretty much had no clue about the game and it worked out wonderfully as an introduction to Unknown Armies. Unfortunately it has also been the ONLY thing I've run for Unknown Armies.  Bi3P was remarkably easy to run, mainly in the setup and transitions between the scenes: The players don't have to know each other, or even initially be in the same country, and the three main scenes can last only as long as you want them without disturbing much of anything of the flow of the story. Making scene transitions sudden and jarring can add to the strangeness. As far as preparation went, all I did was jot down notes in the margins of a photocopy of the adventure, such as appropriate places for Stress Checks and maybe some extra details on an NPC or somesuch.
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Jun 11, 2011 00:32
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Squidster posted:I believe the most famous UA scenario is JailBreak, and it looks drat fantastic, but is also incredibly demanding from a DM. If you're up for a challenge, it can be a great low-level introduction to the system. JailBreak is, perhaps, the greatest rpg one shot for a gaming convention. It doesn't do as well when you have a smallish group to play with though. It really works best if you have players for at least all but 1 or 2 of the characters. Otherwise it puts A LOT of work upon the GM. Pope Guilty posted:The Freak is a perfectly reasonable person. Stolze made a post about the Freak on rpg.net when people were curious what exactly made it so powerful. GregStolze posted:Things the Freak can do that you can't: Go into a gunfight bare-handed and confident. Shift appearance. Make money rapidly by selling psychic surgery. Kill with minimal effort.
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Jun 11, 2011 01:32
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Holy poo poo. How deep does this rabbit hole go? So i'm reading Unknown Armies for the first time, just now, and I get to the What You Hear part. The very first thing: There is a man who lives behind a trap door in the sporting goods section of a Wal-Mart in South Dakota. If you ask him for a lemon, he will accurately predict your future for you. 6 years ago I was at a Wal-Mart loving around after hours with some friends, and a homeless dude asked me if I wanted a lemon. I remember this because he was the first homeless dude i'd really interacted with, and the stench just kinda stuck with me. I live in South Dakota. 
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Jun 12, 2011 03:28
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Verr posted:Holy poo poo. How deep does this rabbit hole go? Y'know, if he randomly offered you a lemon he probably randomly offered other people lemons too. Someone involved in the making of the book may well have met that very same dude in South Dakota and used him for inspiration. You may be as few as two degrees of separation from Greg Stolze.
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Jun 12, 2011 05:30
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I've had a lot of success running one-shot haunted-house style games for new UA players: the characters are trapped together in one location, which becomes increasingly hostile as time goes on, until they put together the pieces of what's going on and the plot reaches a climax. The most recent one I ran started with six strangers realising that their overnight train journey had gone on for far longer than it should have. And in fact, the train hadn't stopped for several hours. It eventually transpired that they'd been sucked into the result of a ritual conducted by a cult of railway workers hoping to send themselves to the court of the King of the Trains and usurp his position.
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Jun 12, 2011 11:00
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Squidster posted:I believe the most famous UA scenario is JailBreak, Jail Break is pretty famous, and pretty great, but I would say the most notable scenario is The UA Scenario You Can't Run Anymore, At Least Around Here. Pope Guilty posted:The Freak is a perfectly reasonable person. "Sometimes" isn't doubled for emphasis -- The Freak is sometimes reasonable and The Freak is sometimes a person. If it were possible to empathize with something like it, you'd feel sorry for it, you really would.
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Jun 12, 2011 16:53
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Test Pattern posted:Jail Break is pretty famous, and pretty great, but I would say the most notable scenario is The UA Scenario You Can't Run Anymore, At Least Around Here. I don't believe I've heard of this one.
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Jun 12, 2011 23:05
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Crudeboy posted:Really, I recommend Bill in Three Persons from the core book. I've quite successfully run it in the past and might be running it again sometime again in the near future (WaywardWoodWose?). My players pretty much had no clue about the game and it worked out wonderfully as an introduction to Unknown Armies. I'm not sure whether I just suck as a GM or if my players weren't prepared for Unknown Armies, but I had a lot of difficulty with Bill. My players got wrecked by the supermarket scene. I tried to emphasize that combat is really, really deadly, but one of them still tried to take down the gunmen. A few unlucky rolls later, and two of the three players were seriously injured and just surrendered to the robbers. None of them had any real diplomacy skills, so when they met up with Bill Dos, they freaked out and got pummeled into submission by fleshworking, at which point they said "Jesus, fine, torture him all you want!" They worked with him on Don and got the address, but just let him bail once that was over. They tried calling the cops on him. I wasn't sure whether or not that would stop Bill, so I erred in favor of Bill. Probably a mistake on my part. Bill Trois was just a complete clusterfuck. No one had any idea what to do and the scene just played out as it would have otherwise. Since they screwed up so badly, I decided to give them all 10% in a skill called "Shift." Since they were at the heart of such a potent temporal anomaly, they could all tap into that dissonance and reroll a failed action once per encounter. Every time they used this skill, they would gain a percent in it. When it got to 50%, their Splits or Doppelgangers or whathaveyou would come gunning for them, and they would have the same percentage in "Shift." If the splits managed to kill their counterparts, they'd be able to shift the timeline and take the place of the original. If the players killed them, they'd be able to absorb the memories of the lives they'd been living since being formed, and pick up a few extra skill points while losing their Shift ability. But we never played again, so oh well. Had they succeeded in any capacity, the "Sheriff" would have given them all magic name tags. The idea was that they would draw people who needed to find the players to them, making it a handy plot device. I was going to warn them that if they put their real names there, it would make them a lot easier to find, by both their friends and enemies. Kind of a goofy idea, but I wanted to encourage them to pick codenames and get them into the spirit of things. Somberbrero fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Jun 13, 2011 |
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Jun 13, 2011 00:06
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Thuryl posted:Y'know, if he randomly offered you a lemon he probably randomly offered other people lemons too. Someone involved in the making of the book may well have met that very same dude in South Dakota and used him for inspiration. You may be as few as two degrees of separation from Greg Stolze. I'm famous! Now I pretty much have to run a game with this premise.
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Jun 13, 2011 03:28
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Test Pattern posted:"Sometimes" isn't doubled for emphasis -- The Freak is sometimes reasonable and The Freak is sometimes a person. If it were possible to empathize with something like it, you'd feel sorry for it, you really would. Eeeexactly.
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Jun 13, 2011 03:30
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Crudeboy posted:I don't believe I've heard of this one. He's referring to "Fly me to Heaven," a one-shot with pre-gen characters who are flying to Manhattan, when a crazed occult terrorist hijacks the plane and decides to crash it into the downtown. All so he can ascend to the archetype of the Terrorist. Yep.
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Jun 13, 2011 06:19
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Squidster posted:He's referring to "Fly me to Heaven," a one-shot with pre-gen characters who are flying to Manhattan, when a crazed occult terrorist hijacks the plane and decides to crash it into the downtown. All so he can ascend to the archetype of the Terrorist. this was written well before the time that you are thinking of as well, iirc 
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Jun 13, 2011 06:25
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Somberbrero posted:Bill Toge difficulties. I ran this scenario twice with different groups, once quite successfully and once disastrously. The first time through, despite one player reading the scenario ahead of time and deliberately screwing everything, still turned out narratively satisfying and had some fun twists and turns. The second time, the players just bum-rushed the supermarket scene, got gutshot and terribly wounded, to the points where I had to fudge their hp to not kill 'em. Then in the apartment, they were so terrified of Bill that they just fled the apartment and ran. Then they showed up in the desert and just ran. They played their characters well, but those characters did not want to do interesting things. Now, team two just try to kill every unnatural thing or adept they see, because Oh poo poo They Could Kill Me In One Round. The lethality of the system made them into paranoid sociopaths. Despite my best efforts, they see combat as being rear end in a top hat-dm time, even though they have drat good combat skills and kill the poo poo out of most mooks. Team one basically disintegrated due to shenanigans, but ran fairly well for some months before.
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Jun 13, 2011 06:28
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Gerund posted:this was written well before the time that you are thinking of as well, iirc Published in August, 2001. Literally a single month before.
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Jun 13, 2011 06:30
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Squidster posted:He's referring to "Fly me to Heaven," a one-shot with pre-gen characters who are flying to Manhattan, when a crazed occult terrorist hijacks the plane and decides to crash it into the downtown. All so he can ascend to the archetype of the Terrorist. What's really interesting is that you just flat out can't run this anymore without some substantial modification. Not for any kind of "too soon" reasons, but because people react so differently to this kind of thing now. Players gut reaction will more than likely be to mob the terrorists and screw up the scenario before it gets to the occult stuff.
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Jun 13, 2011 12:03
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Bosushi! posted:What's really interesting is that you just flat out can't run this anymore without some substantial modification. Not for any kind of "too soon" I remember hearing some talking head on TV arguing that the 9/11 attacks simply wouldn't work now for that exact reason.
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Jun 13, 2011 13:28
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Bosushi! posted:What's really interesting is that you just flat out can't run this anymore without some substantial modification. Not for any kind of "too soon" I ran it almost exactly as written recently, as an interlude in an ongoing campaign. The players saw events unfolding on the news at the end of one session, then spent the next session with a pool of sheets for passengers on the plane, and someone playing the terrorist as an NPC. He actually very nearly succeeded in finishing the ritual before they got up the nerve to take him down. Admittedly, this is in the UK, so players might react differently here.
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Jun 13, 2011 16:33
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Exculpatrix posted:Admittedly, this is in the UK, so players might react differently here. There's also the fact that they knew what the outcome was since you showed it to them on the news - so they probably played things out so that the outcome was similar to what the news reported.
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Jun 13, 2011 17:04
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Exculpatrix posted:I ran it almost exactly as written recently, as an interlude in an ongoing campaign. The players saw events unfolding on the news at the end of one session, then spent the next session with a pool of sheets for passengers on the plane, and someone playing the terrorist as an NPC. He actually very nearly succeeded in finishing the ritual before they got up the nerve to take him down. I almost said "American players" but figured the rest a the world was affected by the events and might react in a similar manner. It would be pretty interesting to see how several groups played it out. Although, I suspect having a player cast as a terrorist is a bigger game changer than you guys being from the UK I also thought of another, more grognardy, reason that the scenario wouldn't work. In a post 9/11 world I can't see Simon wanting continue his plan to ascend via the Terrorist. At least not in that manner. He was going for something new and shocking that would connect him to the concept forever. Osama already did it and might have even unconsciously ascended. The scenario write up states that Simon wanted to ascend under a new archetype, because he wanted power with little resistance, and he might not want to take the chance that Osama didn't ascend. Free Gratis fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Jun 13, 2011 |
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Jun 13, 2011 17:52
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Lemon Curdistan posted:There's also the fact that they knew what the outcome was since you showed it to them on the news - so they probably played things out so that the outcome was similar to what the news reported. Ah, they didn't get the full thing on the news, they just finished a session with a "Breaking News: Terror in the air as Flight US207..." and a glimpse of a recurring antagonist with his new terrorist name.
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Jun 13, 2011 18:08
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