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Whether or not they're conscious avatars, for every Sage of [anything useful to your character], there's a Sage of Anime, Sage of Video Games, Sage of Porn (actually useful in some UA campaigns), Sage of Comic Books and a Sage of Baseball.
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Aug 27, 2011 20:08
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| # ? Jun 4, 2024 15:46 |
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For those of you who haven't pledged yet, Greg rejiggered the rewards on the Kickstarter for "Dinosaurs...IN SPAAAACE!!". There are a few $30 "PDF, book, and patch" packs left.
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Aug 27, 2011 23:17
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:Sage of Anime, Sage of Video Games, Sage of Porn (actually useful in some UA campaigns), Sage of Comic Books and a Sage of Baseball Which would nicely explain wikipedia actually.
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Aug 28, 2011 15:12
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As long as we're talking home-brewed adepts here's mine: The Junkmancer also known as Hoarders or Curators (MacGyvers) Historical practitioner: The Collyer Brothers Central Paradox: If everything has value, nothing is valuable. Selflessness as Selfishness. The Junkmancer believes that everything he owns is valuable and useful, that rotting pile of newspapers sitting in the corner, an important historical record, those rusting cars in the front yard, someone might fix them and make them worth some money some day. If there is empty space around a Junkmancer he'll start to fill it with the most worthless junk. The Junkmancer unlike the Bibliomancer collects without discernment or care for the things he collects. The only thing that matters is that there is a lot of them and that they might be useful or valued by someone somewhere. A collection is a lot of things, two guns is not a collection, and your hoard is made of collections of things not immediately obvious as valuable, requiring rare or specialised knowledge is not counted as immediately obvious. The Junkmancer because he believes things are useful can expend a minor charge to make a useless thing useful in a given future circumstance or a type of object can be made valuable to one person for a short period of time. For example "All these paper clips I've collected must be good for picking locks". A significant charge can make anything on hand immediately useful in a situation or extremely valuable to one person or simply valuable to many people. A major charge can make something very valuable to a very large groups of people, i.e. beanie babies, or rewrite how a particular type of object is used. Other suggested formula spells: Minor: Making things resistant to wear and tear, preserving food. Significant: Duplication of objects. Anything that alters inanimate objects comes into a Junkomancer's bailiwick. The amount of charges, like Bibliomancy, is dependent on the size of the hoard, however the condition of the various collections doesn't matter. However to gain charges you must demonstrate the usefulness and value of your hoard without the aid of magick. Minor Charge: Use something useless [stunt with an object], start a new collection (takes a lot of time and space), convince someone to willingly take, use, or value an object from your hoard. Significant Charge: Someone else values or uses a part of your hoard willingly. Develop a strong emotional attachment to a collection so much so that it can never leave your presence (this must be inconvenient to others) Major Charge: You must convince, without magick, a body to take a major part of your hoard and publicly tout its value. Basically a museum must come and put your collection on display, or a library has to come and make a wing out of all your mouldy books, or an auction house that puts up a collection for sale which encounters furious bidding. Taboos: Letting someone take something you own, you own the food you buy, or have collected when that person don't value it or find it useful, important note Junkmancer's aren't kleptomaniacs they keep things that they have come to own, they don't steal objects, theft kind of goes against their whole ethos. Not significantly growing a collection in a 12 hour period. Selling or giving a valuation of something for more than or equal to its worth.
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Aug 29, 2011 08:09
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Calling them McGyver's is inaccurate, McGyever never hoarded stuff. Hoarding is anti-McGyver. An Improvisor adept with a taboo against bringing anything to a scene could be interesting... fez_machine posted:Selling or giving a valuation of something for more than or equal to its worth.
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Aug 29, 2011 09:55
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I've been thinking about an idea for a campaign seed. The supreme charge: Avatars aren't the only ones with the potential to one day reshape the world in their image, Adepts have a way too, they just have to get the really big charge, the one that makes major charges seem like minor charges. Bibliomancers fight to get the rarest books, but what would happen if a Bibliomancer "collected the whole set?" Cliomancers have heard that there might be a Major charge on the Moon, wouldn't it make sense for Mars to have something even better? What kind of charge would an Entropomancer generate from playing Russian Roulette with a nuclear silo? What happens if a Plutomancer somehow gets ALL the money? The Supreme charge is probably just a prank made up by a Cliomancer, probably.
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Aug 29, 2011 10:46
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Splicer posted:Calling them McGyver's is inaccurate, McGyever never hoarded stuff. Hoarding is anti-McGyver. It's GM fiat really, the hoarder is a purely emotional speculator, in essence the hoarder can only see the emotional/charge value of their hoard/collection, ideally the hoarder would say "Oh you like those toothpicks?! Well, I've had them for a long time, I didn't think anyone was still interested in toothpicks. Give me a price and they're yours." all the while rubbing their hands in anticipation of a significant charge. It would probably be better phrased as breaking taboo if the hoard adept values anything on market principles rather than purely emotional ones. It's in game purpose is to stop the 3,000 dollar a pop toothpicks, which would only generate minor charges sold individually, from derailing the campaign, adepts aren't supposed to be rich. I probably wasn't clear in that significant charges are the only ones that can create use immediately in scene, minor charges have to prepare usefulness for the future. Not bringing things kind of goes against the concept, instead they have to be constantly surrounded by junk, loud smelly uncomfortable junk, remember they have to keep all food they don't eat, it's not just one paperclip but an overfull purse of them. If a player's character isn't looking like a baglady they're probably breaking taboo. Edit: In fact the improviser sounds like a great avatar class rather than an adept. Adepts are about decadence/over-abundance and avatars are about asceticism/restriction. fez_machine fucked around with this message at 11:55 on Aug 29, 2011 |
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Aug 29, 2011 11:36
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:Supreme charge Aaaaannd now I know what I'm going to be doing the rest of the day. My players won't know what hit them.
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Aug 29, 2011 14:57
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One of these days I'm going to run a game that is on the surface a hard sci-fi story about a manned mission to Mars. NASA has gone 'all in' for the establishment of a permanent resupply colony so there's a lot of people on this ship and they're going to be in space for over two years. Sanity meters won't seem out of place. The more I think about it, the more potential this scenario has for UA weirdness. Several Archetypes could be replaced if the mission is successful, or does Mars have it's own Stratosphere? With so much (supernatural poo poo) riding on this mission it's certain that a crew of qualified, mentally stable astronauts is not going to happen.
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Aug 29, 2011 22:20
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A trip to Mars would definitely nail godhood for a couple of the Archetypes. The Explorer, for one. Bye-bye Columbus. Smarter, more creative people than I could probably think up a few others.
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Aug 29, 2011 23:26
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The 333 crewmembers of the USS Stratosphere lined up at the entrance to the ship. Captain Geisen Macdermott stands at the front of the line and boldly turns the hatch to open the door. He steps through and his 332 crewmembers follow him in. As the last man in the line passes through the black opening, Captain Macdermott emerges from the door, he salutes mission control and heads back through the door.
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Aug 30, 2011 09:38
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May Chen could feel a drop of sweat forming on her forehead. -2 minutes to launch- -All gauges sat, fueling complete- "Ms. Chen! I'm transferring full control to your console for launch. Our lives are in your hands" -Don't concentrate on risks, concentrate on results- -I'm sitting on a big explosion waiting to happen- May extended her arm forwards. She reached for the control stick. She reached for the stars.
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Aug 30, 2011 22:54
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And somewhere, at a large mahogany desk, the richest man in the world sits, the barest hint of a worried frown on his face. The live feed of the launch is arrayed before him on a bank of high-definition televisions, each showing a different news channel. Alex Abel watches. And waits.
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Aug 31, 2011 12:49
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Deep in the bowels of the ship, the rumbling begins. In the rows of passenger compartments the three hundred souls not actively involved in piloting the ship get to make Rank-2 Helplessness stress checks. Good thing they're strapped down pretty good, eh?
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Sep 1, 2011 06:32
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I'm going to post this in the Best Gaming Experiences thread, but it also belongs here. Let me tell you about my first Unknown Armies experience. It was a streets level campaign called Lullaby. There were three other players other than me, and all of us had never played UA before. Our GM, Mani, had run this particular campaign twice before on an actual table, but this time we were playing over AIM chat, which turned out to be a huge boon once things started going off the rails. The characters and their players (I'll use their actual names because there's nothing bad or embarassing about any of this):
The party is formed with Fuse as the leader and financier, Gary as his enforcer and Mark and Lynch as consultants, basically. Lynch was brought in by Gary to make and plant listening devices. The setting and story of the game is an island town called Vinalhaven, where there have been reports of strange happenings going on involving vandalism, nightmares and a strange, troubled girl named Elsie. I'll post Mani's info dump on it actually: quote:Vinalhaven, a small Maine island town not far from Rockland, is a storybook community of around 1,200. Their biggest claim to fame is probably that the author of Goodnight, Moon once lived there. There's a small Historical Society which sells her books, and displays a few relics from the ancient Red Paint civilization that once inhabited the island. There is only one K-12 public school, only one library, only one nature preserve, only one lighthouse - and only one way to get on or off the island (a ferry ride of about 1hr 15mins to/from Rockland). There's a small swell of tourism in the summer, but above all Vinalhaven's community prides itself on its friendliness and its people. It's worth noting that the previous two times that Mani ran this campaign, the PCs had been religious types: once a squad of catholic exorcists, and the other was a televangelist and his entourage. We didn't have any kind of religious connections, it was more based on Fuse's interested in the occult due to his activities in Japan. So we arrive in town in the rain and set-up shop at the hotel. Things are immediately off to a weird start when Fuse's assistant and chaffeur, Ise, is acting very paranoid and jittery. He's found in possession of a strange novel called This Cold Black. Before we can grill him to figure out what's going on, a window is smashed and a small girl is making off with Mark's luggage. We give chase into the storm but she's gone. Lynch, however, picks up a strange giggling sound in the air thanks to how his Notice skill is augmented by a skilled called Ears Like a Safe Cracker. We stay the night at the hotel. I have Lynch begin setting up his radio equipment and cruise the airwaves for signals. Meanwhile Fuse, Gary and Mark all sit down for storytime as Mark begins to read This Cold Black. Now I wasn't actually around for this part because the way the game worked was that when different parts of the group would receive exclusive information, we'd split off into our own chats with the GM. This would factor heavily into later parts of the game. From what I understand, they got sucked into a nightmare where, like, water and giant squids started exploding out from the book and prompting sanity checks that I think Fuse at least failed. From that point on, Fuse (and Dylan) became extremely paranoid around any and all books, and basically forbade Mark from even touching one. It's worth mentioning at this point that there was sort of a meta game going on here. Dylan said at the start that he was obsessed with Fuse surviving this campaign. Now Ben and I, we saw things differently, so we made it our duty to complicate things as much as possible to increase the odds that someone would die horribly. Ben accomplished this by giving Mark almost no sense of self-preservation and leaping headfirst into whatever supernatural challenge popped up. With Lynch, I contributed to our cause by steadily increasing his paranoia and erratic behavior as the game went on, fueled by booze, lack of sleep and weird radio messages. So while they're having their reading rainbow adventure, Lynch is in his room scanning for radio signals when he comes across a weird, carousel tune playing on a channel without any discernible source. Mani actually sent me an MP3 of the tune; I think it was from Silent Hill but it was creepy as hell. If I can dig it up I'll play it here. It's so sudden and alarming that Lynch spazzes out and breaks his nose against a piece of furniture. The next day we do some investigating, splitting up into two parties. Lynch and Gary go to speak with Elsie's former elementary school teacher, Helen, while Fuse, Ise and Mark go to the library to see what they can find out about This Cold Black. Lynch plants a bug in Helen's office while she explains to the two of them about how distressed Elsie's mother Lisa is, and about Castro, the old mulatto guy who lives in the Lighthouse who was found with Elsie after she went missing. It's about this time that Dylan begins his pattern of improbably good dice rolls. He must have passed more than 80% of his checks, and rolled more single digit successes than the rest of the group combined. It was unreal and basically allowed Fuse to do practically whatever he wanted. His obayun skill practically became a jedi mind trick. After Gary and Lynch finish with Helen the party regroups in the town center in time to find a crazy guy screaming at the top of his lungs while hanging from a flagpole in the town square. Before much else happens he's struck by lightning and falls to the hard ground below; and yet comes up fine. This is JJJ (I forget his full name), an exorcist whose come to town to expel the demons possessing Elsie. Lynch later discovered that JJJ had a radio show that he picked up some broadcasts on. JJJ gets carted off to the hospital, since he just got struck by lightning and all. Our party heads to the hospital to speak to Dr. Latham, Elsie's child psychologist, but to our chagrin it turns out that JJJ was a step ahead of us; be broke loose from his restraints in the emergency ward, beat the hell out of some nurses and disappeared. We run into him in the hall. We try to talk him down at first but he's full of zeal and god's love, so we have to do it by force. Here, ironically, in spite of Dylan's boss rolls he sorta doesn't do that well in the struggle, and it's dragging pretty bad until I manage to roll well enough to have Lynch grapple JJJ while Gary and Fuse beat the tar out of him. The whole time, Mani is openly rolling dice and randomly telling us that JJJ is evading our attacks through increasingly improbably coincidences. After we finished the game, Mani revealed that JJJ was an entropomancer, although he didn't know about the true nature of his powers and just assumed that god loved him so much that he protected him from harm. We manage to subdue JJJ and the cops take him away. We come out of it with minor injuries, but luckily we're in a hospital. Afterwards we recoup from our heroics, and Gary and Lynch head up to talk to Latham while Fuse and Mark talk to the authorities. Turns out he's not in, but his office is unlocked, so I sneak in and plant a bug in his office. We bolt as he approaches, splitting up. And here is where things start to go nuts. Gary gets out of the hospital but Lynch ends up going deeper in, and there finds Elsie. In the only lit cell in an otherwise totally dark hallway. Oh and it's soundproof. And her neck is wrapped in bandages. I put two and two together and realize that they gave the girl a tracheotomy to remove her ability to speak normally, and put her in a soundproofed cell for good measure. So this is all pretty terrible. She can only communicate through drawings, and the first thing she asks is "Can I Go Now?" I actually have a long conversation with her, discovering, among other things, that the spooky carousel that Lynch heard on the radio was some kind of lullaby that Lisa sang to Elsie, and that more importantly Lynch has a weakness for little kids. I left promising her that I'd be back to get her out and bring her to her mother. I should note, also, that all of this took place in a private chat away from the rest of the party. None of them knew that I had personally met Elsie. while this is going on, Mark, Gary and Fuse are having their own little adventures. Gary and Fuse go to talk to Castro while Mark stumbles into some kind of weird other space where he meets a boy calling himself Ego, who talks about the Mother and the Devourer and the Victim and the Host and a bunch of other weird stuff. This is actually the last full session that Ben plays with us for several weeks. A combination of technical issues and real life concerns kept knocking him out of the game. All of these occurred as solo sessions with their respective party members, so none of us know what the other is really up to. Gary and Fuse's experiences with Castro are equally uncanny, and in the end he does something to Fuse that scrambles his speaking abilities before kicking them out of his lighthouse. He also reveals that he is the author of This Cold Black. As is revealed in the post game, Castro is a Bibliomancer, and also an Avatar of the Outsider or something. When the party regroups at the hotel after all of this happens, Gary and Fuse are shaken. Especially Fuse. Especially. He's talking about going back to Castro and putting the boots to him, medium style. He's extremely agitated. He's talking about him being a crazy sorcerer and stuff. It's at this point that Lynch's paranoia is getting really ratcheted up from a combination of more booze, less sleep and another creepy radio message, this time a rock song that dissolves into a gutteral chanting of "I'm always watching you", and I decide not to tell the rest of the party that Lynch met Elsie. Gary and Fuse retrieve a bunch of tapes that Latham made of his sessions with Elsie, and they have Lynch analyze them, which I do in another solo session. The tapes reveal a few things-- the first one is actually the doctor talking to Lisa and Leland. Lisa is a total wreck and Leland is becoming increasingly distressed with the whole situation. Another tape has Latham speaking to Elsie directly; however, Elsie is speaking gibberish. And then Latham starts speaking gibberish, unconciously. After listening to the tapes over and over and over again and dissecting every bit of dialog, begins to understand a few words in Elsie's strange language. Understand them like he's known it all his life. For the rest of the game, this language continues to creep up into his speech at random. Okay so now Lynch is in a really weird mood. He's got a constant buzz going, hasn't slept in days, is being hounded by mysterious radio signals and now his brain is being rewritten. He begins to see Fuse's threats of violence as his very real intentions instead of just venting. This leads to the turning point in the game, where everything goes haywire. Lynch is taking a break from his analysis to get food and while he's at the diner, Mark walks in. Ben managed to get himself in order enough to try out a game, but no sooner does he enter the chat than does his connection die on us. Then he's back. Then he's gone again. This goes on for about a half an hour, during which the game is at a complete standstill. Finally Mani gets sick of it, and when Ben disconnects for the last time he has Mark simply pass out on the table. I take his phone and call Fuse and tell him what happened. Then I decide to leave before they arrive. Through the emergency exit in the back. Which sets off the alarms in the diner. I figure, why does it matter? The ambulance is coming anyway. My objective here is to visit Castro before Gary and Fuse decide to go over there and put the screws to him, mostly to satisfy my own curiosity while I still can. Fuse and Gary arrive soon after, and realize that Lynch left through the emergency exit. Gary goes out the back and sees Lynch just barely in view, and they give chase. And now I'm running to because, hey, I'm being chased! This leads to an hour long chase scene of Lynch trying to outmaneuver Gary and Fuse. As it proceeds, each side is becoming increasingly sure that the other side is up to something, and the paranoia of the characters becomes the paranoia of the players since no one really knows exactly what the others have been doing. I almost get away with it, but then Gary rolls and 01 on his Notice check and realizes that Lynch is heading for the lighthouse. Fuse calls Ise and they give chase in their car. Lynch beats them there just barely and races up the lighthouse to the top, where Castro has locked the door and covered it in police tape (later revealed to be a sealing spell), but Lynch is able to convince him to let him in by saying that he met Elsie and by repeating "The darkness is safer than the light", the key phrase that he was able to understand from her gibberish. Castro lets him in a few minutes before Fuse and Gary catch up. I get a really awesome scene in Castro's library where I get to monologue about Lynch's history with music and his own obsessions with radio, and solidifies in my mind that Castro is on our side. Meanwhile, the opposite is happening with Fuse and Gary, who are now convinced that Lynch is totally unhinged and that Castro is even more dangerous than they predicted. When they finally get to the top of the lighthouse, Dylan and I have an intense and awesome cellphone argument through the door, where it comes out that Lynch met Elsie. He asks Fuse if he wants to talk to Elsie, and then plays some of her gibberish which he recorded to a microcasette through the phone. Fuse practically throws the phone down. Finally Castro comes away with a book-- another copy of This Cold Black, which he uses in conjunction with the original copy to see that JJJ has escaped from police custody and is heading for the hospital. Then this exchange happens. I'm paraphrasing, but: quote:Lynch: You've got bigger problems than me right now. I didn't know this at the time, but a giant squid had just erupted from the ocean nearby and was approaching the shoreline. They flee, and now the party is not only split, but actively working against one another. I'm now determined to save Elsie not just from the doctors who want to take her off the island for more testing, but from Fuse and Gary who are obviously dangerous. This is exacerbated by the fact that Dylan/Fuse has come to believe that Elsie is also dangerous, so I genuinely think he may do something bad to her. I talk to Castro for a while and learn some things. He took in Elsie after she ran away, and through his research learned that her gibberish language is called Alter Tongue, and that it has the ability to spread to people who hear it. He used her language to write This Cold Black and attached a bunch of Bibliomancer spells to it. Castro gives Lynch his second copy of This Cold Black and I head for the hospital. On the way I call Elsie's mother Lisa to meet me behind the hospital. I head over, sneak in through the back, and reach Elsie's room just in time to see Fuse, Gary and Mark preparing to throw down with JJJ, who has just broken through the soundproof glass. When my turn comes up I aim the book at them and open it like it's a cannon. I honestly was expecting it to flood the room with water or summon a squid or suck them all up like a pokeball, but what it did was fill them with feelings of weakness and victimization and, in Fuse's case, make him even angrier because not only had Lynch betrayed them, but he had brought along the one thing on the island he was most afraid of. I get drawn into the brawl and its a free for all, and during the melee Elsie tries to break free. JJJ almost gets her but in his moment of victory, right when he has the upper hand...he just up and walks away. Mani explained it after the game. Because he didn't really know how his own powers worked, when JJJ thought he was exorcising spirits he was actually summoning demons. If he succeeded, the demon would have tried to possess one of us and we'd have to save against it. However, he did not succeed. He botched it, very badly. And as a result, he was possessed. And the demon, finding himself suddenly in a shiny new body, decided that he had better things to do than fight a bunch of humans. Lynch shouts to Elsie that her mother is outside and she bolts for the fire escape. Mark (Ben was finally able to rejoin us) made a snap decision and ran with her, trying to carry her outside to her mother while Lynch was determined to hold off Fuse and Gary. Unfortunately for him they had much higher struggle scores, and they had weapons. Lynch, however, had a complete lack of regard for his own safety. I get the crap beaten out of me. In the middle of the fight Gary pulls his gun intending to threaten me, but Chris somehow fails a roll so badly that the gun actually goes off. It misses Lynch by inches but deafens him, and since his hearing is so good he's really messed up. I actually have to make a sanity check, since Lynch's fear impulse is silence, which I pass. I keep on fighting until I basically get KO'd, but by this time Mark is almost out the door. Fuse and Gary give chase, and they run right into a squad of police cars waiting outside. So we all get arrested. Everyone spends part of the night in the hospital, and the rest of the night in the slammer. Over night we get visited by weird dopplegangers of Elsie, each with weird distorted faces. The next day we make bail-- thanks to Ego, the weird kid that Mark met earlier. It's Mother's Day, and Elsie is scheduled to be shipped off the island. We leave the jail and the whole town is in chaos. Its being vandalized by an army of Elsie duplicates. In the middle of it all we find Mark's lost luggage, which happens to be soaked with urine for some reason, and inside we find pills. Antipsychotics. At the same time I get a phone call from Lisa, who is utterly unhinged, screaming about how Elsie is not a bad girl and how she needs her daughter back and on and on and on. She bellows something about the pills aren't working anymore and we figure that the meds we found in Mark's suitcase were hers. Just then, an ambulance pulls up to a stoplight, and Fuse has a revelation. He runs up to the driver and tells him he has a fuel leak, and when he gets out jumps him while Lynch gets in the driver's seat (I have the highest Drive skill in the party). We gag the guy with Mark's piss stained clothes and throw him in the back, then strip him of his EMT uniform. Our plan is simple: 1.) Pretend to be EMTs 2.) Go to hospital, pick up Elsie 3.) Uhhhhh I dress Lynch up in the EMT's outfit and we head for the hospital. We get there and Gary gives Lynch his stungun, in the event that I need it, but when I come in an orderly, partly speaking Alter Tongue, throws Elsie into my arms and says to get her out of here. So that was pretty easy. We take the ambulance (and the hogtied EMT) away from the hospital and plot our next move. In the process we have one of the best exchanges in the game, something like this: quote:Fuse: Castro is a psychopath and a sorcerer! He wrote that damned book! Afterwards Fuse spends some time talking to Elsie, who answers his questions with a combination of body language and writing. When asked if she's afraid of Castro she shakes her head, and then confirms that by writing "Kastrow" when Fuse asks if there's anyone on the island that was nice to her. During this time we get a call from Helen (Elsie's teacher), who's with Lisa at her home with Doctor Latham, saying that Lisa is calmed down and that we should bring Elsie back. Now we're starting to formulate a plan. By this time, incidently, we're all convinced that Latham is the villain, possibly the Devourer that Ego spoke about. Using a valuable book that we found at the hotel (a signed first edition of Player Piano), Lynch "calls" Castro, thinking that maybe he can hear him through one of his books. Afterwards Lynch says "I feel retarded." Our plan is to get everyone together at Lisa's house and settle things there. What amazed me about this final act is how our group dynamic had shifted. We were all on the same side, but instead of Lynch coming to his senses, they had all basically joined his side, kinda vindicating his craziness. I also discovered something about Lynch during this act. I was concerned that I was sort of acting out of character by having him behave more rationally and less impulsively given his prior actions, but then I realized that he hadn't had a drink in almost 48 hours. He's not schizophrenic; he's just a really bad drunk. So we drive the ambulance to Lisa's home (we still have the EMT in the back, by the way) so that everyone can air their grievances. Helen greets us and leads us through the house and up into Elsie's room. The whole while we're hearing the creepy carousel lullaby that I heard at the start of the game. When we reach Elsie's room we discover that we had vastly miscalculated things. Latham wasn't the devourer; he was dead on the floor with a pair of scizzors in his neck. Lisa seems Elsie, and all hell breaks loose. I wish I had Mani's description on hand, but in sort order:
So it turns out the Devourer and the Mother were the same thing. Oopsie. Two of our party fail sanity checks but select Flight anyway so they bolt out. I grab Elsie and run, while Gary has the decency to haul Helen away from being horribly killed. We managed to break out of the house and make it to the ambulance and start driving away. Lisa crashes out of the house and gives chase and Lynch floors it down the street. At the end of the street he stops. For once, Dylan and I are 100% on the same page. I turn the van around, tell everyone to buckle up and say a prayer to the god of random number generators, and roll to run that bitch over with a van. Success. Mani said afterwards that that's the first time anyone's tried to hit the Devouring Mother with a car. I score a direct hit and smash right against and over her, but she's not quite dead yet. Gary opens the window and starts firing uselessly at Lisa, and I end up pulling away in the van to get away. Elsie now crawls into the front with the piece of paper reading "Kastrow" on it, so we drive to the lighthouse. When we arrive Lisa is catching up. We untie the EMT and have him drive away with Helen while we head into the Lighthouse. Now at this point Mani had an ending in mind. We were supposed to climb the Lighthouse, and then we fight Lisa in Castro's library alongside him. That's not what happens though. Instead, while we all run for safety, Gary hangs back and stands his ground. He draws his weapon and fires one last time before retreating with the rest of the party. And rolls a 01. At this point the chat explodes into hysterics as he adjusts his aim and fires right into Lisa's womb, which, in conjunction with me hitting her with the van, does enough damage to kill her outright. She goes down and is shriveling up and Gary goes over to her and delivers a coup de grace with his gun to her head while saying "Happy Mother's Day." So yeah. Unknown Armies owns.
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Sep 1, 2011 17:25
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Okay, did the GM write that campaign? Because it's loving incredible, seriously. Just given your description of it I was already pretty drawn in and caring about what happened to the characters. That's awesome.
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Sep 1, 2011 19:35
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Not only did he write that campaign but he made a trailer for it and put it on Youtube. I'll get it from him next time he's online. He's working on a new game for our crew once he wraps up our post-game stuff.
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Sep 1, 2011 19:41
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Extremely solid stuff! I recognize individual elements from various sources in the UA canon, but he's really worked them together well. I look forward to hearing more from your group! And if you ever need another player...
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Sep 1, 2011 20:53
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Here is the trailer that my GM made for the game, and here is the music box theme that Lynch heard over the radio. Imagine hearing this at like 1:30 am while drunk out of your gord.
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Sep 2, 2011 02:57
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So I was thinking something over today, and I need some clarification as to whether this would work. Could a Vidomancer cast Dumbin' It Down on an enemy adept of a different school, explain why TV shows are the only way to experience the universe, and stand back cackling madly while the opponent goes batshit because he "learned" more than one school of magick?
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Sep 2, 2011 04:03
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I think he could logically inflict some madness checks, but I don't know that the spell can fundamentally change someone's worldview. More likely than not, if the adept didn't reject the new information utterly, they might just re-channel their existing obsession in a more tv-friendly version. Like a fleshworker starting to channel Dexter, Mutant X, etc. or incorporating television into their cutting must-watch-CSI-without-blinking-until-eyes-are-dry-like-sandpaper-scrape-away-lies-and-find-44-minute-truth. A Plutomancer would probably become even more of a Gordon Gekko wannabe, if that's even possible. A Dipsomancer might find themselves drinking alone, watching flickering Cheers reruns in the ruin of their dreams as they weep false-nostalgia tears into salt-stained vodka. A sip of a brew like that would be like a punch in the gut.
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Sep 2, 2011 05:00
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I can explain homeopathy to you guys and I'm sure you'll completely understand the theory behind it and how it is supposed to work. With that total understanding, you will probably think that homeopathy is stupid as hell.
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Sep 2, 2011 08:12
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Does anyone have any links to some user generated "What You Hear" lists? I remember reading one, I think it was linked in the grognards thread for some reason, but it had some pretty great stuff in it like using Tarot Cards no longer working for fortune telling because the US Mint transferred the power of the Arcana into state quarters.
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Sep 8, 2011 03:18
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RPG.net has rumors for everything. But this is the original.
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Sep 8, 2011 18:13
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Greg's latest Kickstarter "Dinosaurs...In Spaaace!" has 11 days left, and needs just over grand. If you haven't pledged yet, now's the time.quote:Dinosaurs. Rockets. The 1950s. What do they have in common? They're saturated with coolness. But can they somehow work together?
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Sep 13, 2011 17:33
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Evil Mastermind posted:Greg's latest Kickstarter "Dinosaurs...In Spaaace!" has 11 days left, and needs just over grand. If you haven't pledged yet, now's the time. There's still ten of the second extra set of 30 dollar reward slots, which nets you a PDF copy, a signed softcover copy mailed RIGHT TO YOUR HOME, and some sort of cool patch thing. What's keeping you?
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Sep 13, 2011 17:37
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He's also sucking up the cost of international shipping on those books, though if you're nice you can give him another five or ten bucks.
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Sep 13, 2011 17:43
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Don't be a wuss, he's still doing the $100 Executive Package. The preview made me bust out laughing, so I'd love to see this get printed and talk my new group into it some off-week. Plus a signed hardback would be sweet as hell. Still needs about 600 dollars, though. Hopefully he gets it.
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Sep 19, 2011 02:56
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Oh god, I just read the free "in SPAAACE!" pdf and it is sexy. If only the hardcover wasn't a hundred dollars.
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Sep 19, 2011 05:14
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Verr posted:If only the hardcover wasn't a hundred dollars. Indeed. I'm not in a position to afford it at that price, as much as I would like to. I settled for the slightly less awesome softcover book/PDF/patch deal, which is a steal at $30. I certainly hope this gets the funding. $515 to go.
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Sep 19, 2011 10:58
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Threw down thirty for the paperback. So close yet so far.
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Sep 19, 2011 17:24
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I bumped my pledge from 30 to 33 dollars so there could be an even 100 bucks left to reach full funding. Someone buy an executive package!
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Sep 20, 2011 00:43
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Funding has now been attained. If you still want to join in there are 5 days left.
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Sep 20, 2011 15:37
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I can't wait for my origamiraptor 
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Sep 20, 2011 15:47
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I'm running Jailbreak in a week for four/five people and I'm wondering if anyone has advice! Did you use the transparent method or the opaque method, and does it matter how much experience the players have had roleplaying? I was also thinking about an Adept school based on a combination of asceticism and conspicuous consumption. The school is all about proving ascendancy by acquiring material wealth and achieving your long-term goals only to deny them, just to show everyone how above it all you really are. Charges are gained by marrying the woman of your dreams and initiating a very public divorce the day after or winning the Nobel Prize and then writing a book about how dumb the Nobel Prize is, giving away your prize money, and publicly defacing your medal. Minor Charges would be based on giving away your possessions as if to prove you have enough to give away. The paradox is that you are entirely dependent on all these things you reject to prove how much you don't need them, and the Taboo is taking advantage of the fruits of your labour. I'm not sure yet what the Charges are used for, but I was thinking it could be a combination of bootstrapping and demonstrating the insignificance of the material world by going without food or water for weeks on end and overcoming the fact that you're on fire to act normally for a few rounds. Coping with situations in which you would otherwise need material goods would be in there too. The blast would make people forget the purpose of their possessions (Guns, computers, phones, ovens) and leave then unable to cook or use a bed for a while. Edit: I was thinking of handing little notes to the convicts and the hostages before the game. "You need to let the hostages know who's in charge, don't let them jeopardise your escape!" for the convicts, and "Don't back down! You need to get out of here as soon as you can, take every opportunity to escape." for the hostages. I don't have much experience GMing, so if this is a bad idea feel free to tell me. Bootstrap Beefstud fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Sep 27, 2011 |
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Sep 26, 2011 10:07
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Just FYI, the PDF version of Dinosaurs...in Spaaace! is already available.
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Sep 27, 2011 18:13
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The RPG Now Production Description Page posted:... No really, Token Effort tramples drunkenly over all difficulties with honey-badger insouciance... Oh Greg... 
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Sep 27, 2011 22:35
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Greg's making another new system.
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Oct 16, 2011 00:49
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Evil Mastermind posted:Greg's making another new system. That reads like an odder version of ORE, tbh. Not sure if I like it.
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Oct 16, 2011 01:25
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| # ? Jun 4, 2024 15:46 |
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Having only taken a brief look at the textfile, it felt really unintuitive at first. I'd have to read in more detail to get a better idea of what was going on.
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Oct 16, 2011 01:29
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